SPEECH ON REFORM BILL OF 1867,

Edinburgh, October 29, 1867.

He speaks not to any particular The representation had to be

[This speech may be regarded as Mr. Disraeli's final liberation of his own mind on the question of Reform. audience, but to the whole world. reformed, and the mere fact that the Whigs bad reformed it once, so far from being an argument why such work should always be entrusted to them, was rather a reason why any second reform should be undertaken by their opponents, as men more likely to redress the balance and appreciate the weak points of the existing system. The world could not stand still, nor parties either. And the Tory party indignantly repudiated the rôle sketched out for it by its adversaries of perpetual protestation and perpetual opposition. The following speech should be read together with one delivered by the late Lord Derby at Manchester on October 17, 1867. The two combined are the vindication of the Tory party from a strictly party point of view, and therefore I have inserted this one among the party speeches rather than among the reform speeches, though it must be owned that it travels over a good deal of the same ground.]

MR.

R. CHAIRMAN, my Lords and Gentlemen :-I know nothing more gratifying in the life of a public man— nothing in its toils and in its asperities more satisfactory and soothing, than an expression of sympathy from a body of his countrymen--nor is that gratification diminished if the sympathy comes from those who are not connected with him by any local sentiment. However much we may value the kind feeling of our neighbours, we are conscious that their estimate of our conduct may not be free from partiality.

In thanking you, Mr. Chairman, for the too kind manner in which you have introduced my name to this assembly, I cannot for a moment forget-for you have yourself expressed it with frankness-that it is chiefly to be attributed to the passing of

a memorable measure which has distinguished the present session of Parliament, and with which I have in some degree been connected. I had heard that her Majesty's Ministers had carried a measure for which they were entitled to no distinction, since they had only carried a measure for which for more than seventy years the Whig party had toiled in vainsince the period when, in the year 1793, Lord Grey had been defeated by the machinations of Mr. Pitt.

Now, my lords and gentlemen, I should not take an occasion like the present to treat of the pedigree of parties, though I think myself, and have ever thought, it a subject not to be despised, and full of very serious considerations and consequences-but when a statement like this is made, and upon it is founded a series of arguments which, if left untouched and unnoticed, appear to me to have the tendency of depreciating and misrepresenting the character and conduct of public men, I cannot allow it to pass for a moment utterly uncontradicted. It is important, because it is in another form a revival and repetition of the old party dogma, that upon the most important of political subjects—namely, the question how power should be distributed in the State-one of the great historical parties of England is to be forbidden ever to touch it. My lords and gentlemen, on principle-on abstract principle-I shall protest against such a dogma; but when it is introduced to us with historical illustrations, and recommended to our notice by an appeal to the annals of our country, and to the deeds of our statesmen, I cannot help pointing out to you and to the country the entire error of the statement. Why, the question of Parliamentary reform, if we are to go to the origin of that question since the constitution of this country was settled upon its present basis, was purely and entirely a Tory question. The question of Parliamentary reform was first introduced to public notice by the great statesman who flourished at the beginning of the eighteenth century. What their motives might have been-what were the merits of their measures-it is quite unnecessary for us now to consider or to touch upon, but the fact, and the historical fact remains. The great Tory leaders of that day, no doubt, were in a great minority in the House of Com

mons; and they believed, as has since been established as a fact, that they were in a great majority in the nation, and therefore they were anxious to alter the principles upon which the representation of the country should take place. Why, you had then motions for shorter Parliaments-motions for extending the suffrage far beyond the settlement of this year. You had motions brought forward even for secret voting, and that by men who, from their birth, their rank, their possessions, and their eloquence, are second to few of the great statesmen that ever flourished in this country. And when we are told that it was by the machinations of Mr. Pitt, who defeated Lord Grey in 1793, that the Whigs had been baffled in their perpetual efforts to carry household suffrage for seventy yearsand now have been deprived of their rightful heritage by the manœuvres of the Government of Lord Derby-allow me to say that the great leaders at the commencement of the eighteenth century who brought forward these measures for Parliamentary reform, and for a number of years with signal eloquence vindicated and recommended these measures, were defeated by a powerful and no doubt a very intelligent oligarchy, through whose paramount influence for a great number of years these opinions were in abeyance.

But reaction is the law of life. A time came when, at a period of public calamity, the country began to doubt whether it was wise to entrust to an oligarchy the most considerable portion of the power of the State, and began to believe that they ought to trust more to the power of the Sovereign and the independence of the nation; and when these opinions became prevalent shortly after the American war, and when the man, as always happens, appeared to advocate these opinions, who was that man? Why, it was a youth who had formed his mind by studying the conduct of the great statesmen of the commencement of the century. It is upon record that he gave up his days and nights to the study of their eloquence. His principles of finance and commerce he found in that treaty of Utrecht which was baffled by faction, and which would have given us the advantages of that free trade, now so much vaunted, a century before or more. There, too, he found those

principles of religious toleration which now have been adopted; and among other matters, Parliamentary reform; and he advocated it as the means by which alone he could control the oligarchy then predominant. And who was that youthful statesman? It was the son of Chatham-that very Mr. Pitt who we are now told by his machinations prevented Lord Grey, and has for seventy years prevented the Whig party, from conferring upon the English people the boon of household suffrage.

My lords and gentlemen, no doubt in 1832 Lord Grey was perfectly entitled to take the line which he did-Lord Grey fairly earned the leadership upon that question of Parliamentary Reform; but when Lord Grey made his Government he never pretended that in the policy which he recommended he was recommending a policy peculiar to the Whig party. On the contrary, he said from the first that it was impossible for him to form a Government except it was upon a broad basis. He appealed, and successfully appealed, to the followers of Mr. Canning-brilliant men, experienced in administration; but that was not enough, though it gave him experienced colleagues. He felt that he could not succeed in forming a Government without a considerable support from the Tory party, and he appealed to the Duke of Richmond, the father of one of my colleagues. Therefore I say that nothing can be more idle than this statement recently brought forward, that we have invaded a land upon which we had no right to enter that they, our political opponents, had a vested interest in this question of the representation of the people; that for seventy years they have been toiling in order to confer the boon of household suffrage upon the people of England, and that we have come forward in a manner most unauthorised, at the last moment, and are claiming a reputation for a result to which we are not entitled. I readily admit that after the Reform Bill of 1832 was passed, Sir Robert Peel, by that important political paper, the Tamworth Manifesto, and by his speeches in the House of Commons, pledged the Tory party not to disturb that settlement. Whether it was a wise step on the part of Sir Robert Peel or not, no one will deny that that compact was religiously observed by the Conservative party. Every man who ever

acted with them most scrupulously assisted Sir Robert Peel in carrying that compact into fulfilment; and I never heard it for a moment whispered that we ever departed from that public engagement. Well, but of course when the very minister who brought forward in the House of Commons the Bill of 1832— Lord Grey's Bill-announced only twenty years after it was passed, in the year 1852, himself then in the high capacity of Prime Minister of England, that that law was no longer adequate to the circumstances, and that he should himself introduce a measure which would supersede it,-the Tory party were immediately freed from the engagement into which they had entered, and it was for them to consider the course that they ought to pursue. I touch upon this point because it is a matter which now has, for a very long time, circulated with impunity, but with mischievous impunity, in the country. I want to show to you that our title was clear, even historically, to deal with the greatest and most important of political questions—namely, the distribution of power in the State. After Lord John Russell had announced that he had retreated from his doctrine of finality, and that he should take an opportunity of introducing a new Reform Bill, there was a meeting of the most considerable men at that time connected with the Tory party. Sir Robert Peel had then unfortunately quitted this scene; but there were such men as Lord Derby himself— others, some of whom are now in his cabinet-there were men who have left us like Sir Robert Peel-there was Lord George Bentinck, and others-men associated in the public mind with the maintenance of what are called high Tory opinions, many of them-they met, they considered the circumstances of the case, and arrived at a definite and determined conclusion, that under no circumstances whatever was the Tory party ever to be induced to oppose a new Reform Bill-that they would always assist its introduction, and then attempt to mould it into that form which they believed would be most advantageous to the country. To that resolution, passed nearly twenty years ago, they have invariably and religiously adhered; and I can only say for myself, that from the time I ever presumed at the request of my friends to take any lead in public affairs, I have