XXIII. 1832. new and important interests were let in to the represen- CHAP. tation, the old ones were not extirpated. But in Scotland and Ireland the case has been far otherwise; in them the revolution has been complete. Not only have new interests and classes of society been let in to the constituency, but the old ones, in whom the power was formerly vested, have been practically disfranchised. There has been no amalgamation of constituencies, but an entire substitution of one for another. The old towncouncils in Scotland, in great part self-elected, have been succeeded by a host of ten-pound shopkeepers and householders, actuated by different interests, and swayed by different influences. 118. and impor The old parchment freeholders, who followed their directing magnate to the poll in Scotland, have been suc- Its lasting ceeded by a multitude of independent feuars in villages tant effects. and tenants in rural districts, influenced in many cases by entirely different interests and views. The boroughs in Ireland, which James I. planted in the soil to be a barrier against the Roman Catholics, have been turned, by the change of the constituency, into so many strongholds of Romish influence; the ten-pound freeholders, whom the Protestant landlords multiplied in such numbers to give them the command of the county elections, have become a vast army, officered by Romish priests, and guided by Romish influence. The consequences have been great, lasting, and decisive. So strong are old interests and traditionary influences in England, and so comparatively small the change in the representation there made, that within five years of the passing of the Reform Bill the Conservatives had recovered their majority in the English members. But they never have been able to shake the steady liberal majority against them in Scotland and Ireland; and in the decisive divisions in November 1852, which turned out Lord Derby's Administration, of the English members a majority of fourteen were on the Conservative side; of the English and Irish, taken XXIII. CHAP. together, a majority of five on the same side; but of English, Irish, and Scotch, a majority of twenty-one on the liberal. 1832. 119. sults of the Reform Imperial In its final and general result the Reform Bill has General re- thus arranged the imperial legislature. In England, the county constituencies, which formerly had been 52, returnBill on the ing 94 members, were increased to 82, returning 159 Parliament. members. In Ireland, five members were added; there was no change in the constituencies, but a great one in the voters composing them. In Scotland, the number of burgh members was raised from 15 to 23; the county members remain at their original level of 30. Every one of these burgh members, till within the last three years, when Airdrie, from powerful local influence, became an exception, has been in the liberal interest-a vast change, for formerly the whole fifteen Scotch burgh members were on the Tory side. Thus in the imperial legislature, as it now stands, there are 253 county members, and 405 for boroughs; an immense disproportion, when it is recollected that they are nearly in the inverse ratio of the population and wealth raised by these different classes of society, three-fifths of both of which are drawn from, or dependent on, the rural inhabitants.* Earl Grey and the authors of the Reform Bill were perfectly aware of this disproportion; but what they trusted to to correct it, was the belief, which they maintained to the very last, that the great majority of the borough members would be in the landed interest, and, in fact, returned by the adjacent territorial magnates.† The subsequent divi +"How stands the argument with respect to the agricultural interest? I am prepared to contend that the 144 county members of England will belong to that interest, and that of the 264 old borough members, there will be as large a proportion as ever in favour of the landed proprietors. There only re XXIII. sion on the Corn Laws affords a curious commentary on this CHAP. prediction; a memorable instance of the revolutionising of a state by persons in entire ignorance of the practical effect of their own measures. 1832. 120. on this the Consti England, as affecting relations. Such was the termination of the old Constitution of England. Thus did the great Revolution of the eighteenth Reflections century reach and triumph over "even the greatest, the most change in powerful, and the most persevering of its enemies." As tution of such, the change of 1832 is an event of paramount importance in English, second only to that of 1789 in France, our external in European history. More even than the revolt of Sièyes and Mirabeau has it modified the external relations and changed the foreign policy of the European states, for France always was a great military power, passionately bent on foreign aggrandisement, and the conquests of the Revolution were only the realisation, by the aid of popular strength, of what had been the dream of the Gauls since the days of Brennus. But the Reform Bill has entirely altered the foreign policy and position in the European balance of Great Britain. It has converted the chief Conservative into the leader of the Liberal powers, and brought the strength of England, not into the career of military conquest, but into that of social change and democratic ascendancy. And of the magnitude of the change which this Revolution has made in European relations, no stronger proof can be given than is afforded by the fact, that England and France are now united in a cordial alliance against Russia, the former enemy of the one and ally of the other; that their standards, for the first time since the Crusades, have appeared at Constantinople, not to overthrow, but to uphold the religion of Mahomet; that they have waved in main, then, the sixty-four new members, and even should the whole of these fall to the lot of the manufacturing and commercial interests, it will be a share to which those interests will be justly entitled."-Lord Grey's words, April 9, 1832; Parl. Deb., vol. xii. p. 23. XXIII. 1832. CHAP. triumph over the fields of the Alma and Inkermann in the scenes immortalised by the genius of ancient Greece, and repelled the hordes of the modern Scythians in the regions where the victorious Goths poured into the decaying provinces of the Roman empire. 121. fecting our social state. The influence of the English revolution appears still And as af- more conspicuously in the social state, colonial growth, internal and and what may be called pacific conquests of the AngloSaxon race. Whatever difference of opinion may exist in other respects, one thing will admit of no doubt, that it has immensely extended the outward tendency of the British people. As such it will be for ever memorable, and should be particularly noticed as marking the turning-point in English annals, when a series of causes and effects came into operation, destined ere long to arrest the multiplication of the Anglo-Saxon race in these Islands, and effect a mighty transposition of it to the Southern and Western Hemispheres. When we recollect that the annual emigration from the British Islands, for seven years prior to 1832, was from twenty to forty thousand a-year, and that it is now not less, on an average of years, than 350,000, it is evident that a vast heave of the human race has taken place, and is now going forward, and that few causes are so important upon the destinies of mankind as those which have brought about this marvellous change. It has doubled the already fabulous rate of Transatlantic increase—a million of souls, between natural increase and immigration, are now annually added to the inhabitants of -CHESNEY'S Results of the Census, 1854, p. 56; and Parl. Papers, May 16, 1854. XXIII. 1832. America; and it has caused a new world to spring up in CHAP.. Australia, which already numbers nearly a million of souls among its members, and last year consumed £14,000,000 worth of British manufactures, being four times as much as the empires of France and Russia put together, with their hundred millions of inhabitants.* emigration owing to produced by the Reform Bill. It must be obvious to every partial observer that this 122. prodigious change, with all its incalculable effects upon The vast the world in general, and this country in particular, is is chiefly mainly to be ascribed to the alteration in the dominant the changes class in the British Islands by the effects of the Reform Bill. The immense emigration, which constitutes so remarkable a feature in these times, and has now reached such a point as considerably to overbalance the annual increase of our population, can be distinctly traced to this cause. Out of the 368,000 persons who emigrated in the year 1852, only 87,000 were bound for Australia; 280,000 went to America. They were impelled, not by the attraction of foreign riches, but by the necessities of home situationsthey went not to the land of gold, but to the land of labour. Two hundred and fifty thousand of this immense multitude came from Ireland, and we are not in the dark as to the cause which sent them forth. + The famine of 1846, indeed, shook their confidence in the potato, the staple * EXPORTS (1853) OF GREAT BRITAIN TO AUSTRALIA, FRANCE, AND RUSSIA. In 1852, the remittances from America to bring out emigrants from Ireland were £1,404,000; in 1853, £1,439,000, through public channels alone, besides what was remitted through private channels.-14th Report Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners, pp. 56, 71. VOL. IV. 2 B |