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(f) Reasons for surprise

and regret that Louis XVIII.

should espouse this cause.

I

only put forth the powers of his own genius, and only used the wholesome vigor of the law. He never thought of calling to his assistance the Allobroges, or the Teutones, or the Scythians of his day; and I now say that if Louis XVIII. shall call upon the modern Teutones or Scythians to assist him in this unholy war, the day their hordes move toward the Rhine, judgment will go forth against him, and his family, and his counselors; and the dynasty of Gaul has ceased to reign.

struction of

tions through

every aggravation of disgrace—it is too much for | on the good-will of his patriotic countrymen—and them now to come forth and calumniate his memory for transactions in the benefits of which they participated at the time, as his accomplices, and the infamy of which they have since surpassed with the usual exaggeration of imitators. I rejoice that the Spaniards have only such men as these to contend with. I know that there are fearful odds when battalions are arrayed against principles. I may feel solicitous about the issue of such a contest. But it is some consolation to reflect that those embodied hosts are not aided by the merits of their chiefs, and that all the weight of character is happily on one side. It gives me, however, some pain to find that a monarch so enlightened as the King of France has shown himself on various occasions, should have yielded obedience, even for an instant, to the arbitrary mandates of this tyrannic junto. trust that it will only prove a temporary aberration from the sounder principles on which he has hitherto acted; I hope that the men who appear to have gained his confidence only to abuse it, will soon be dismissed from his councils; or if not, that the voice of the country, whose interests they are sacrificing to their wretched personal views, and whose rising liberties they seem anxious to destroy, in gratification of their hatred and bigotry, will compel them to pursue a more manly and more liberal policy. Indeed, the King of France has been persuaded, by the parasites who at present surround him, to go even beyond the principles of the Holy Alliance. He has been induced to tell the world that it is from the hands of a tyrant alone that a free people can hold a Constitution. That accomplished Prince-and all Europe acknowledges him to be, among other things, a finished scholar-can not but be aware that the wise and good men of former times held far other opinions upon this subject; and if I venture to remind him of a passage in a recently recovered work of the greatest philosopher of the ancient world, it is in the sincere hope that his Majesty will consider it with all the attention that is due to such high authority. That great man said, "Non in ulla civitate, nisi in qua summa potestas populi est, ullum domicilium libertas habet."6 I recommend to his most Christian Majesty the reflection that this lesson came not only from the wisdom of so great a philosopher, but also from the experience of so great a states-liament and our press. As long as England reman. I would have him remember that, like himself, he lived in times of great difficulty and of great danger-that he had to contend with the most formidable conspiracy to which the life, property, and liberty of the citizen had ever been exposed-that, to defeat it, he had recourse only to the powers of the Constitution-threw himself

Never has liberty had a home, except in a country where the power was in the hands of the people. The words are from the treatise of Cicero, De Republica, a considerable part of which was for the first time brought to light by Maio, and given to the world in the year 1822.

What, I ask, are the grounds on which the necessity of this war is defended? (4) The real It is said to be undertaken because object is the dean insurrection has broken out with free institu success at Madrid. I deny this to be out Europe, the fact. What is called an insurrection, was an attempt to restore the lawful Constitution of the country-a Constitution which was its established government, till Ferdinand overthrew it by means of a mutiny in the army; and, therefore, when a military movement enabled the friends of liberty to recover what they had lost, it is a gross perversion of language to call this recovery, this restoration, by the name of insurrection-an insidious confusion of terms, which can only be intended to blind the reason, or play upon the prejudices of the honest part of mankind. Let the pretext, however, for the war be what it may, the real cause of it is not hard to conjecture. It is not from hatred to Spain or to Portugal that the Allied Sovereigns are for marching their swarms of barbarians into the Peninsula-it is not against freedom on the Ebro, or freedom on the Mincio, they make war. No, it is against freedom!—against freedom whereever it is to be found-freedom by whomsoever enjoyed-freedom by whatever means achieved, by whatever institutions secured. Freedom is the object of their implacable hate. For its destruction they are ready to exhaust every resource of force and fraud. All the blessings which it bestows-all the establishments in which it is embodied, the monuments that are raised to it, and the miracles that are wrought by it-they hate with the malignity of demons, who tremble while they are compelled to adore; for they quiver by instinct at the sound of its name. And let us not deceive ourselves; these despots can have but little liking toward this nation and its institutions, more especially our Par

mains unenslaved; as long as the Parliament continues a free and open tribunal, to which the oppressed of all nations under heaven can appeal against their oppressors, however mighty and exalted-and with all its abuses (and no man can lament them more than I do, because no man is more sensible of its intrinsic value, which those abuses diminish), with all its imperfections (and no man can be more anxious to remove them, because none wishes more heartily, by restoring its original purity, to make it entirely worthy of the country's love)-it is still far too pure and too free to please the taste of the con

and the ag

of Ru sa at

of Turkey.

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plain. It behooves us, however, to take care
that we rush not blindly into a war. Perri
An appeal to arms is the last al- Daya
ternative we should try, but still it pared for wat.
ought never to be so foreign to our thoughts as
to be deemed very distant, much less impossible;
or so foreign from our councils as to leave us
unprepared. Already, if there is any foree in
language, or any validity in public engagements,
we are committed by the defensive treaties into
which we have entered. We are bound by va-
rious ties to prevent Portugal from being overrun
by an enemy. If (which Heaven avert!) Spain
were overrun by foreign invaders, what would
be the situation of Portugal? Her frontier on
the side of Spain can scarcely be said to have
an existence; there is no defending it any where;
and it is in many places a mere imaginary line,
that can only be traced on the page of the ge-
ographer; her real frontier is in the Pyrenees;
her real defense is in their fastnesses and in the
defense of Spain; whenever those passes are
crossed, the danger which has reached Spain
will hang over Portugal. If we acknowledge
the force of treaties, and really mean that to be
performed for which we engaged, though we
may not be bound to send an army of observa-
tion to watch the motions of the French by land,
because that would be far from the surest way
of providing for the integrity of our ally, at least
we are bound to send a naval armament; to aid
with arms and stores; to have at all times the
earliest information; and to be ready at any
moment to give effectual assistance to our an-
cient ally. Above all things, we ought to de
that which of itself will be a powerful British
armament by sea and by land-repeal without
delay the Foreign Enlistment Bill-a measure
which, in my opinion, we ought never to have

tinental despots-so long would England be the object of their hatred, and of machinations, sometimes carried on covertly, sometimes openly, but always pursued with the same unremitting activity, and pointed to the same end. But it is not free states alone that have to dread this system of interference; this grandement plan of marching armies to improve the expense the political condition of foreign nations. It is idle to suppose that those armed crities will confine their objections to the internal policy of popular governments. Can any one imagine that, if there be a portion of territory in the neighborhood of the Emperor Alexander peculiarly suited to his views, he will not soon be able to discover some fault, to spy out some flaw in its political institutions requiring his intervention, however little these may savor of democracy, supposing it even to be a part of the Ottoman government itself? If his Imperial Majesty be present in council with his consistory of jurists and diplomatists, I believe that it will be in vain for the Ulemah to send a deputation of learned Muftis, for the purpose of vindicating the Turkish institutions. These sages of the law may contend that the Ottoman government is of the most "venerable description"-that it has "antiquity in its favor"-that it is in full possession of "the conservative principle of social order" in its purest form-that it is replete with "grand truths;" a system "powerful and paralyzed"-that it has never lent an ear to the doctrines of a "disorganized philosophy"-never indulged in "vain theories," nor been visited by such things as "dreams of fallacious liberty." All this the learned and reverend deputies of the Ulemah may urge, and may maintain to be true as holy Koran; still "The Three Gentlemen of Verona," I fear, will turn a deaf ear to the argument, and set about pry-enacted, for it does little credit to us either in ing for some imperfection in the "pure and venerable system❞—some avenue by which to enter the territory; and, if they can not find a way, will probably not be very scrupulous about making one. The windings of the path may be hard to trace, but the result of the operation will be plain enough. In about three months from the time of deliberation, the Emperor Alexander will be found one morning at Constantinople or, if it suit him, at Minorca-for he has long shown a desire to have some footing in what he pleasantly termed the "western provinces" of Europe, which, in the Muscovite tongue, signifies the petty territories of France and Spain, while Austria and Prussia will be invited to look for an indemnity elsewhere; the latter, as formerly, taking whatever the King of England may have on the Continent. The principles on which this band of confederated despots have shown their readiness to act are dangerous in the extreme, not only to free states (and to those to which no liberty can be imputed), but also to the states over which the very members of this unholy league preside.

Resistance to them is a matter of duty to all nations, and the duty of this country is especially

policy or justice. I will not, however, look backward to measures on the nature of which all may not agree; I will much rather look forward, to avoid every matter of vituperation, reserving all blame for the foreign tyrants whose profligate conduct makes this nation hate them with one heart and soul, and my co-operation for any faithful servant of the Crown, who shall in performing his duty to his country, to freedom, and to the world, speak a language that is truly British-pursue a policy that is truly free-and look to free states as our best and most natural allies against all enemies whatsoever; allies upon principle, but whose friendship was also closely connected with our highest interests; quarreling with none, whatever may be the form of their government, for that would be copying the faults we condemn; keeping pace wherever we could, but not leaving ourselves a moment unprepared for war; not courting hostilities from any quarter, but not fearing the issue, and calmly resolved to brave it at all hazards, should it involve us in the affray with them all; determined to maintain, amid every sacrifice, the honor and dignity of the Crown, the independence of the country, the ancient law of nations, the supremacy of all

separate states; all those principles which are cherished as most precious and most sacred by the whole civilized world.

The views of England were wholly disregarded by the Allied Sovereigns, and on the 9th of April, 1823, the French army of nearly one hundred thousand men, under the Duke of Angoulême, entered the Spanish territory. They were received with open arms by the priests and the lower classes of the people, and after some severe conflicts forced their way to Cadiz within six months, October 4th, 1823. The English having no treaty with Spain which laid the foundation of their interposing to assist her, remained neutral, prepared instantly to strike if Portugal should be attacked. Ferdinand was invested with absolute power; and in direct violation of the terms of capitulation, a persecuting and vindictive policy was adopted toward the partisans of the constitutional government. Riego was executed at Madrid, November 6th, and great cruelty exercised toward his leading associates. Portuguese absolutists now put forth every effort in their power, conjointly with Ferdinand, to break down the constitutional government of Portugal, and in 1826 that country was invaded from Spain. The result has been already stated in connection with Mr. Canning's speech on this subject. The insurrection was put down within two months, and Ferdinand, fearing an invasion from England, was driven from his favorite design.

The student in oratory will be interested, in connection with this speech, to read that of Mr. Webster on the Greek revolution, delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, on the 19th of January, 1824. In the former part of this speech, the reader will find the subject of "Intervention" discussed not merely in the spirit of just invective against those concerned, but of searching analysis into its grounds and its consequences. He will find himself in communion with a mind of a much higher order than that of Lord Brougham-richer in its combinations, wider in its reach, more elevated in sentiment, more self-possessed in its loftiest flights of eloquence. Mr. Webster concludes this part of his subject in a passage which, though often quoted, may be given with peculiar propriety in this place, not only for the views which it presents of the remedy for these interventions, but for its prophetic intimations of the fate of the Duke of Augoulême and of the Bourbon race.

"It may, in the next place, be asked, perhaps, supposing all this to be true, what can we do? Are we to go to war? Are we to interfere in the Greek cause, or any other European cause? Are we to endanger our pacific relations? No, certainly not. What, then, the question recurs, remains for us? If we will not endanger our own peace; if we will neither furnish armies nor navies to the cause which we think the just one, what is there within our power? "Sir, this reasoning mistakes the age. The time has been, indeed, when fleets, and armies,

MM M

and subsidies were the principal reliances even in the best cause. But, happily for mankind, there has arrived a great change in this respect. Moral causes come into consideration, in proportion as the progress of knowledge is advanced; and the public opinion of the civilized world is rapidly gaining an ascendency over mere brutal force. It is already able to oppose the most formidable obstruction to the progress of injustice and oppression; and, as it grows more intelligent and more intense, it will be more and more formidable. It may be silenced by military power, but it can not be conquered. It is elastic, irrepressible, and invulnerable to the weapons of ordinary warfare. It is that impassable, unextinguishable enemy of mere violence and arbitrary rule which, like Milton's angels, "Vital in every part,

Can not, but by annihilating, die." "Until this be propitiated or satisfied, it is vain for power to talk either of triumphs or of repose. No matter what fields are desolated, what fortresses surrendered, what armies subdued, or what provinces overrun. In the history of the year that has passed by us, and in the instance of unhappy Spain, we have seen the vanity of all triumphs, in a cause which violates the general sense of justice of the civilized world. It is nothing that the troops of France have passed from the Pyrenees to Cadiz; it is nothing that an unhappy and prostrate nation has fallen before them; it is nothing that arrests, and confiscation, and execution sweep away the little remnant of national resistance. There is an enemy that still exists to check the glory of these triumphs. It follows the conqueror back to the very scene of his ovations; it calls upon him to take notice that Europe, though silent, is yet indignant; it shows him that the scepter of his victory is a barren scepter; that it shall confer neither joy nor honor, but shall molder to dry ashes in his grasp. In the midst of his exultation it pierces his ear with the cry of injured justice; it denounces against him the indignation of an enlightened and civilized age; it turns to bitterness the cup of his rejoicing, and wounds him with the sting which belongs to the consciousness of having outraged the opinion of mankind."

It was, indeed, to the Duke of Angoulême and his family,

A barren scepter in their gripe,
Thence to be wrenched by an unlineal hand,
No son of theirs succeeding.

His uncle, Louis XVIII., died the next year; his father, Charles X., succeeded, and in less than six years was driven, with his branch of the family, from the throne (July, 1830); Louis Philippe, of the Orleans branch, succeeded, and met with the same fate in less than eighteen years (June, 1848); and the prediction of Lord Brougham as to Louis XVIII. and his dynasty was verified, even without his calling in "the modern Teutones and Scythians to assist him;" "judgment" did "go forth against him, and his family, and his counselors; and the dynasty of the Gaul has ceased to reign !"

SPEECH

OF LORD BROUGHAM ON PARLIAMENTARY REFORM, DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS, OCTOBER 7, 1831.

INTRODUCTION.

EARL GREY came into power November 22d, 1830, being the first Whig minister since the days of Lord Grenville in 1806-7. His life had been devoted to parliamentary reform, and he made this the leading object of his administration.

Ages had passed away since the apportionment of members for the House of Commons. The popula tion of England had five-folded. Many of the largest towns in the kingdom, such as Liverpool, Manchester, &c., had sprung into existence, and were without representatives; while a large number of places, sending two members each to Parliament, had sunk into mere villages or hamlets, and some, like Old Sarum, Gatton, &c., were actually left without an inhabitant. These places passed into the hands, or under the control, of the nobility and men of wealth, so that seats in the House of Commons, by scores upon scores, were bought and sold in the market. When Lord Grey first took up the subject in 1793, he offered to prove that seventy-one peers, by direct nomination or influence, returned one hundred and sixty-three members, and ninety-one commoners one hundred and thirty-nine members. Thus, in EDgland and Wales (exclusive of the forty-five for Scotland), three hundred and two members, being a decided majority of the Commons, were returned by one hundred and sixty-two individuals! These statements made a deep impression on the public mind; but such was the dread inspired by the French Revolution and its misguided friends in England, and such the reluctance of the higher classes to part with power, that every attempt at reform was instantly voted down, until 1830, when Earl Grey came into power.

On the first of March, 1831, the new ministry brought forward their Reform Bill in the House of Commons. It was designed to meet three evils: first, the appointment of members by individuals; secondly, the small number of voters in most boroughs and in the counties; and, thirdly, the expenses of elections. To meet the first evil, it proposed that sixty boroughs, enumerated in a schedule marked A, having each a population under two thousand, should be totally disfranchised; and that forty-seven others, in a sched ule marked B, with a like population under four thousand, should each be allowed only one member. Weymouth, which sent four members, was to have but two. In this way, one hundred and sixty-eight vacancies would be created, which might be supplied by giving representatives to the large towns, and by increasing the number of county members. In respect to the second evil, it proposed to give the right of voting in boroughs to all householders paying a £10 rent, and in the counties to copyholders of £10 a year, and to leaseholders of £50 a year. In regard to the third evil, that of election expenses, it disfranchised all non-resident electors, thus saving vast sums paid for their transportation to the polls: and shortened the duration of elections by increasing the facilities for receiving votes.

This bill was debated in the Commons with great ability on both sides for seven weeks, and was finally rejected by a majority of eight. The ministry immediately tendered their resignations, but the King (William IV.), who was in favor of reform, refused to accept them; he preferred to dissolve Parliament, and refer the question to the decision of the people in a new House of Commons. The elections, in all places where the popular voice could prevail, went strongly for the bill, eighty of the county mem bers being chosen under pledges to vote for reform.

The bill, with some slight modifications, was brought again into the House on the 24th of June, 1831 Here it was debated under various forms for nearly three months, and was finally passed on the 19th of September, by a majority of one hundred and six. It was now carried to the House of Lords, a large majority of whom were known to be bitterly opposed to the measure. The great body of the nation were equally resolved it should pass; petitions came in by thousands from every part of the kingdom; and the feeling seemed to be almost universal, "through Parliament or over Parliament, this measure must be carried."

In this state of the public mind, the House of Lords took up the subject on the 3d of October, 1831, and discussed it in a debate of five nights, which, "for skill, force, and variety of argument; for historical constitutional, and classical information," says an able writer, "was never surpassed." Lord Brougham reserved himself until the fifth night; and after Lord Eldon had spoken with all the weight of his age and authority against the bill, the Lord Chancellor came down from the wool-sack to reply. His speech was intended as an answer to all the important arguments which had been urged against reform during this protracted discussion. He began in a mild and conciliatory manner, unwilling to injure his cause by the harshness in which he too commonly indulged, and answered a part of the arguments in a strain of good-humored wit and pleasantry which has rarely been surpassed. But after repeated interruptions

some of them obviously designed to put him down, he changed his tone, and spoke for nearly three hours more with a keenness of rebuke, a force of argument, and a boldness of declamation which secured him a respectful hearing, and extorted the confession from his adversary Lord Lyndhurst, that a more powerful speech of the kind had never been delivered in the House of Lords.

speaker in ap

SPEECH, &c.

MY LORDS, I feel that I owe some apology to your Lordships for standing in the way of any noble Lords' who wish to address you; but after much deliberation, and after consulting with several of my noble friends on both sides of the House, it did appear to us, as I am sure it will to your Lordships, desirable, on many grounds, that the debate should be brought to a close this night; and I thought I could not better contribute to that end than by taking the present opportunity of addressing you. Indeed, I had Anxiety of the scarcely any choice. I am urged on proaching the by the anxiety I feel on this mighty subject. subject, which is so great that I should hardly have been able to delay the expression of my opinion much longer; if I had, I feel assured that I must have lost the power to address you. This solicitude is not, I can assure your Lordships, diminished by my recollection of the great talents and brilliant exertions of those by whom I have been preceded in the discussion, and the consciousness of the difficulties with which I have to contend. in following such men. It is a deep sense of these difficulties that induces me to call for your patient indulgence. For, although not unused to meet public bodies, nay, constantly in the habit, during many years, of presenting myself before great assemblies of various kinds, yet I do solemnly assure you that I never, until this moment, felt what deep responsibility may rest on a member of the Legislature in addressing either of its Houses. And if I, now standing with your Lordships on the brink of the most momentous decision that ever human assembly came to at any period of the world, and seeking to arrest you while it is yet time, in that position could, by any divination of the future, have foreseen in my earliest years that I should live to appear here, and to act as your adviser, on a question of such awful importance, not only to yourselves, but to your remotest posterity, I should have devoted every day and every hour of tion he would that life to preparing myself for the

The prepara

wish to have made.

to the task before me; but cheered, on the other hand, with the intimate and absolute persuasion that I have no personal interest to serve-no sinister views to resist—that there is nothing in my nature or in my situation which can cast even the shadow of a shade across the broad path, I will not say of legislative, but of judicial duty, in which I am now to accompany your Lordships.

Answer to

have spoken

bill.

I have listened, my Lords, with the most profound attention, to the debate on this question, which has lasted during the those who five past days; and having heard a against the vast variety of objections brought against this measure, and having also attended to the arguments which have been urged to repel those objections, I, careless whether I give offense in any quarter or no, must, in common fairness, say, on the one hand, that I am so far moved by some of the things which I have heard urged, as to be inclined toward the reconsideration of several matters on which I had conceived my mind to be fully made up; and, on the other, that in the great majority of the objections which have been ingeniously raised against this bill, I can by no means concur; but viewing them as calmly and dispassionately as ever man listened to the arguments advanced for and against any measure, I am bound by a sense of duty to say, that those objections have left my mind entirely unchanged as to the bulk of the principles upon which the bill is framed. If I presumed to go through those objections, or even through the majority of them, in detail, I should be entering upon a tedious and also a superfluous work; so many of them have been removed by the admirable speeches which you have already heard, that I should only be wasting your time were I once more to refute them; I should only be doing worse what my precursors have already done far better. I will begin, however, with what fell from a noble Earl [Earl Dudley] with whose display I was far (1.) Lord less struck than others, because I was Dudley. more accustomed to it-who, viewing this bill from a remote eminence, and not coming close, or even approaching near, made a reconnoissance of it too far off to see even its outworks

task which I now almost sink under gathering from the monuments of ancient experience the lessons of wisdom which might guide our course at the present hour-looking abroad on our own times, and these not unevent--who, indulging in a vein of playful and eleful, to check by practice the application of those lessons-chastening myself, and sinking within me every infirmity of temper, every waywardness of disposition which might by possibility impede the discharge of this most solemn duty; but above all, eradicating from my mind every thing that, by any accident, could interrupt the most perfect candor and impartiality of judgment. I advance thus anxious and thus humbled The Marquess of Cleveland and several others had risen and given way.

gant pleasantry, to which no man listens in private with more delight than myself, knowing how well it becomes the leisure hours and familiar moments of my noble friend, delivered with the utmost purity of diction, and the most felicitous aptness of allusion-I was going to say a discourse-but it was an exercise or essay-of the highest merit, which had only this fault, that it was an essay or exercitation on some other thesis, and not on this bill. It was as if some one had set to my noble friend, whose accom

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