A.D. 1831.]

OPENING OF LONDON BRIDGE.

201

importance of making a further provision for the education, maintenance, and support of the honour and dignity of the princess, as heiress presumptive to the crown, which was agreed to; and in the house of commons, lord Althorp proposed an additional income of £10,000 a-year for the purpose, which was also agreed to. The princess, only child of the late duke of Kent and of the princess Louisa Victoria of Saxe-Coburg, widow of the hereditary prince of Leiningen, was born May 24th, 1819, the year before her father's death. She was now twelve years old.

Three

his honest, public-spirited exertions. His publications were in the house of peers, moved an address, representing the instituted for the sole benefit of the cheated, plundered, and insulted multitude, to whom he appeals for protection against the diabolical machinations of the villains in power." The Prompter, another of the penny publications, raised the cry, "Down with kings, priests, and lords. Either in war or in peace, kingcraft, priestcraft, and lordcraft is a system of murder, plunder, and spoliation." It does not appear, however, that these denunciations had any effect upon the feelings of the masses, so far as king William was personally concerned. The coronation of the king and queen seems to have been prudently postponed, lest in the existing temper of the public mind, disappointed and exasperated at the resistance to reform, there might have been some outrage, or lest the expense of the pageant should add fuel to the popular discontent. But there was a demonstration in London in favour of royalty, with which the court had every reason to be content. On the 1st of August, the anniversary of the acces sion of the house of Hanover, the king and queen went by water from Somerset House, with their retinues, in their state barges, to witness the opening of the new London Bridge. The lord mayor and corporation made extraordinary efforts for their entertainment, among which was an ascent in his balloon by the "intrepid aeronaut," Mr. Green. The king ascended the long flight of steps from the water without any appearance of fatigue, and received an enthusiastic greeting from the countless multitudes that crowded around the scene. The keys of the city having been presented by the lord mayor, and graciously returned, the royal party proceeded to a pavilion that had been erected for their accommodation. Having inspected the bridge, they returned to the pavilion, and partook of a splendid banquet provided by the corporation. Many members of the royal family were present, including the duchesses of Gloucester, Cambridge, and Cumberland, the duke of Sussex, prince George of Cumberland, and prince George of Cambridge. The lord mayor was permitted to propose the king's health, and Sir Claudius Hunter the queen's. His majesty then, out of a gold cup, drank to the trade and commerce of the city of London, after which the loving cup went round among the members of the royal family. Finally, the king proposed the health of the lord mayor and lady mayoress, after which the royal party returned in their barges to Somerset House, followed by the state barges of the lord mayor and the city companies, gorgeously decorated. The multitude along the banks hailed the spectacle with acclamation. The king enjoyed the demonstration exceedingly, and as a proof of his satisfaction, the lord mayor (Key) was next day created a baronet. On the same day their majesties entered the house of peers, when the king gave his assent to the queen's dower bill, after which she rose and curtseyed three times to the gentlemen below the bar, members of the house of commons.*

The coronation of their majesties was fixed for the 8th of September, and the necessary alterations were made in Westminster Abbey for the occasion. On the morning of the appointed day numerous labourers, in scarlet jackets and white trousers, were busy completing the arrangements. Forty private gentlemen acted as pages of the earl marshal, and devised a novelty in the way of costume, clothing themselves in blue frock coats, white breeches and stockings, a crimson silk sash, and a small, ill-shaped hat, with a black ostrich feather, each provided with a gilt staff. Their duty was to conduct persons provided with tickets to their proper places. fourths of the members of the house of commons were in military uniform, and a few in Highland costume. The equipages produced for the occasion were magnificent, the lord chancellor rivalling the lord mayor in this display; but neither of them came up to the Austrian ambassador in finery. The street procession commenced on Constitution-hill, and attracted thousands of spectators. Their majesties' carriage was drawn by eight horses, four grooms on each side, two footmen at each door, and a yeoman of the guard at each wheel. The crowds were in good humour with the spectacle, and manifested no disposition to dispense with royalty. The presence of the queen presented a contrast to the coronation of George IV. Of the regalia, the ivory rod with the dove was borne by lord Campbell, the sceptre and the cross by lord Jersey, and the crown by the duke of Beaufort. The queen followed, supported by the bishops of Winchester and Chichester, and attended by five gentlemen pensioners on each side, the train borne by the duchess of Gordon, assisted by six daughters of earls. There was no banquet, Government having the fear of the economists before their eyes, and the nation having too lively a recollection of the coronation folly of George IV.; but the king entertained a large party of the royal family and nobility, with the principal officers of his household. The princess Victoria and her mother were then in the Isle of Wight. Their absence from the ceremonial and the banquet was the subject of comment; but it was subsequently explained by the fact that the princess was in too delicate a state of health at the time to come to town and bear so much excitement. London the day was kept as a holiday, and at night there was a general illumination. "In short," says the duke of Buckingham, "there seemed so universal a satisfaction throughout the island, in consequence of this necessary connection of the king with his people having been performed, that the well-disposed began to believe that

In

democratic opinions had totally disappeared from the him. His ministers saw their scrape, and prevailed upon

land."*

the press and the political associations to alter their course; they issued a mock proclamation, and promised the king a bill to repress the associations, which promise they never performed, and the king is quite satisfied, and goes on with them as well as ever!" He then puts the difficulties of his position very strongly, in order to quiet the importunity of his friends. The mutiny bill would expire on the 25th of March. What was to be done in the meantime? He must see the king, and advise him to refuse to create peers-tell him that he would form a government, convince him that he could thus protect him-form a government, dissolve parliament, have a general election, &c. Could all this be done in time, and could he convince the king that this course would be attended with success? He was by no means sanguine upon this point. "If," said the duke, “he should find that I saw the risks and dangers which, as an honest and experienced man, I could not avoid seeing, he would shake me off, and would found his compliance with recommendations of his ministers even upon what should have passed with me. Believe me, my dear duke, that no man feels more strongly than I do the dangers of our situation. The great mischief of all is the weakness of our poor king, who cannot or will not see his danger, or the road out of it when it is pointed out to him; and he allows himself to be deceived and trifled with by ministers. I know that the times are approaching, if not come, when men must consider themselves as on a field of battle, and must sacrifice themselves for the public interest."*

The king had previously made some additions to the English peerage. His eldest son was ennobled by the titles of earl of Munster, viscount Fitzclarence, and baron Tewkesbury. His son-in-law, the earl of Errol, in the Scottish peerage, was made a British peer, by the title of baron Kilmarnock. Subsequently, the following were admitted to the British peerage:-lord Fingal, lord Sefton, lord Leitrim, lord Kinnaird, and lord Dover. Many other additions were made afterwards, and in this way the government obtained twenty-two votes in the upper house. In other quarters, ministers availed themselves of the royal prerogative to strengthen their position there, and overcome the difficulties in the way of the reform bill. Twenty-eight baronets were created, and the honour of knighthood was conferred upon about an equal number. On the whole, lord Grey found the king more accommodating than might have been expected. The leaders of the opposition persuaded themselves that his majesty was not a free agent, and they were torturing their brains to invent some plan by which he might be extricated from what they believed to be his degraded and dangerous position. The duke of Wellington was evidently very much pressed by his followers to endeavour to open the sovereign's eyes. In December, lord Eldon had an interview with the duke of Wellington, and sat with him an hour in deep conversation, from which it appeared that he had written letters to a great personage, meaning the king. In July he had written to the duke of Buckingham, revealing the state of his mind. There was no one more anxious than the duke "to extricate the country from its present difficulties;" but he must take care that in the choice of the efforts to be made for that purpose, he did not augment their number and intensity, rather than obtain any relief. He considered that the king had brought upon himself all his troubles by dissolving parliament; and he complained that his majesty had made no effort, nor manifested any wish to make an effort, to ex-lence of the delusions of Edward Irving-then in the tricate himself. He described the king and his ministers, and a settled majority of the house of commons, as being "allied with the mob, the radicals, the dissenters of all persuasions, against the gentlemen of property of the country, the church, and all the establishments, religious, commercial, banking, political, &c."† The duke did not enter the new year with better prospects or in better spirits. In a letter, written on the 2nd of January, to the duke of Buckingham, he observed:-" When I wrote to the king in November, on the armament of the political associations, I had in hand a case on which I was certain that nineteen-twentieths of the whole country would concur with me. I did it likewise at a period of the year at which I knew that, if the king wished to get rid of the bonds in which he is held, I could assist him in doing so. There was time to call a new parliament, and the sense of the country would have been taken on a question on which there could be no doubt. What did the king do? He concurred in every opinion which I gave

*Courts and Cabinets of William IV.," &c., vol. i., p. 357. † Ibid., vol. i., p. 335.

The duke of Wellington was not singular in his despondency with regard to the course of events, and the perilous nature of the crisis; some of the greatest thinkers of the age were profoundly affected by the conviction that they were on the eve of a great convulsion-that the end of the world was at hand, and that our globe was about to emerge into a new state of existence. The unsettled state of society accounts, in some measure, for the preva

height of his fame; delusions from which such minds as Dr. Arnold's did not wholly escape. In reply to inquiries about the gift of tongues, that great man wrote:-" If the thing be real, I should take it merely as a sign of the coming day of the Lord. However, whether this be a real sign or no, I believe the day of the Lord is coming-i.e., the termination of one of the great ages of the human race; whether the final one of all, or not, that, I believe, no created being knows, or can know. . . . My sense of the evils of the times, and to what purpose I am bringing up my children, is overwhelmingly bitter. All the moral and physical worlds appear so exactly to announce the coming of the great day of the Lord-i e., a period of fearful visitation, to terminate the existing state of things— whether to terminate the whole existence of the human race, neither man nor angel knows-that no entireness of private happiness can possibly close my mind against the sense of it."t

Another cause of the general uneasiness and depression

"Courts and Cabinets of Wiliam IV," &c., vol i., p. 185. ↑ "Life of Dr. Arnold," vol. i., p. 302-3,

A.D. 1831.]

MORTALITY FROM CHOLERA.

203

boroughs to the light and air of freedom, by ventilating our electoral system, by draining the swamps of political corruption, and by subjecting the body politic to the influence of proper sanitary arrangements. This is just what the Reform Bill did for the British constitution. It was what lord Grey, lord Brougham, lord John Russell, and their colleagues felt to be absolutely necessary for the salvation of their country-to prevent political collapse; and what the duke of Wellington and his colleagues could not see, because they were still ignorant of social science, inhaling the morbific influence of that system which they laboured so strenuously to perpetuate.

It was a very busy time in the political world, that brief recess between the prorogation and the re-assembling of parliament in the last month of 1831. The old tory party had been broken up; but a new combination was spontaneously formed around the duke of Wellington, who was regarded as a rock breasting the fierce waves of revolution. of this new party each individual had a scheme to propose, a doubt to solve, or a suggestion to make; and the duke was constrained by a sense of duty to answer all their communications, which, with all his well-known brevity, caused an incessant occupation of his time, and a severe strain upon his faculties. He was at his desk at six o'clock in the morning writing letters, and still continued to write after dinner in the drawing-room, while Walmer Castle was full of guests, regardless of the buzz of conversation around him. He did not forget that the alarmists, who were now pressing upon him for guidance and protection, were the very men who had chased him from office a short time before. "You see how they come about me," he once observed; "they never were satisfied till they got rid of me as a minister, and now they want me to put my neck in the halter for them, as if I cared one farthing for their personal influence, or for their boroughs either, except that I know the importance of the latter."

of the public mind was the appearance, in the autumn of ruption. It was to be averted by throwing open our close this year, of the mysterious visitant, cholera morbus. This disease had been long known in India, but it was only of late years that it began to extend its ravages over the rest of the world. It followed the great tracks of commerce, or the march of armies, stealing slowly along the banks of rivers, the great roads and lines of traffic, and attacking city after city in succession. No barriers, no military cordons, no quarantines were able to arrest its progress. It was the pestilence walking in darkness, penetrating unseen, crossing rivers, mountains, deserts, and seas. Within two years it had carried off nearly a million of people in Asia. It made its first appearance in England at Sunderland, on the 26th of October, 1831. Its name had come before, spreading terror in every direction. The stories of its sudden effects, its dreadful ravages, its fatal power of quickly transforming vigour and beauty into utter weakness and agony, and of producing hideous defacement, had an appalling influence on persons of weak nerves, and diffused a contagion of alarm throughout all circles. They read of relatives flying from the couch of its victims; of whole families falling in rapid succession; of the rites of sepulture being abandoned to hirelings; of corpses being shot coffinless, in cart-loads, into unconsecrated holes; and they trembled at the approach of the dreadful plague to their own neighbourhoods. It appeared in Edinburgh on February 6th, 1832, at Rotherhithe and Limehouse on February 13th, and in Dublin on March 3rd, 1832. In all these places, and in many others, the mortality was very great. But it was still more severe on the continent. The deaths in Paris alone, between March and August, were no less than 18,000. But the fears of the community exaggerated the dangers of cholera just as they exaggerated the dangers of revolution. We know now that cholera could have been in a great measure averted, and that its mystery lay in our ignorance. We know that it always fell most heavily on the inhabitants of towns, hamlets, or houses where deficient drainage and ventilation, accumulations of putrescent matters, intemperance, and want of personal cleanliness most prevailed. It selected for the scenes of its habitation and its triumphs the usual haunts of typhus fever; and it effected its greatest ravages in the neighbourhoods of rivers and marshes. In London it was most virulent on the level of the Thames, and lost its power in exact arithmetical ratio to the height of the districts above that level. If it attacked a town or an army, and the inhabitants or the soldiers decamped, and scattered themselves over the country, in the clear air and pure sunshine, they escaped. It was possible, therefore, to guard against its power by a proper system of drainage and sewage; by proper ventilation; by personal cleanliness, temperance, and regularity; by the abolition of nuisances, stagnant pools, and open ditches; and by wholesome regimen and regular exercise in the open air. It is by attention to such means—that is, by cleansing away all filthiness, and by draining off all corruption-that public health is maintained, and that communities may bid defiance to the plague. It is even so with the plague of revolution. It was rendered formidable, it was attracted by political cor

As the government was determined to persevere, and to carry the reform bill by means of a large creation of peers, if necessary, some of the leading members of the opposition in the upper house began to think seriously of their position, a sort of appeal having been made to them, in a letter from the king's private secretary, suggesting the prudence of compromise and concession, in order to save his majesty from the painful alternative of a creation of peers. Accordingly, lords Wharncliffe and Harrowby put themselves in communication with lord Grey, and this fact was announced by the former in a letter to the duke of Wellington, stating that he entertained good hope of being able to arrange such a plan of compromise as would prevent the necessity of a second rejection of the bill by the lords, and so enable them to alter and amend it when it came into committee. The duke, in reply to this, said that he was glad of a possibility of an arrangement by mutual concession on the reform question; and that, for his part, all that he desired to see, under the new system, was a chance of a government for this hitherto prosperous, happy, and great country, which should give security to life and property bereafter. "The political unions," he

population were provided for at that moment." If the bill were to pass, even with lord Wharncliffe's improvement, "neither lord Grey, nor any nobleman of his circle, nor any gentleman of his caste, would govern the country six weeks after the reformed parliament met." Nothing came of lord Wharncliffe's negotiation with the government, which declined to make any material concession. It had the effect, however, of splitting the conservative party in the upper house, breaking the phalanx of the opposition, and thus preparing the way for the triumph of the government.

said, "had assumed an organisation which any man who could read would pronounce to be for military purposes, and nothing else. Their creed was only so far better than that of the United Irishmen of 1798, that they did not attempt to keep it secret; and this was no merit, because secrecy would deprive them of one of their most efficient instruments namely, terror. He was, therefore, for putting down the unions with a strong hand. That once done, the reform of parliament might be considered with honour and safety, if not with advantage. Till those unions were put down, it did not signify much, in reality, what course was taken." In the meantime, lord Wharn- So strongly did the latter feel the urgency of the case, cliffe had waited by appointment upon the prime minister that parliament was called together again on the 6th of at his house, in Sheen, where he discussed the reform December. It was opened by the king in person, who, in question with him for two hours, without ever adverting his speech, recommended the speedy settlement of the to the political unions, and he reported the issue in a long reform question; referred to the opposition made to the letter to the duke of Wellington. The result was that payment of tithes in Ireland; announced the conclusion lord Grey made some trifling concessions in matters of of a convention with France for the suppression of the detail, and that in return lord Wharncliffe gave him the African slave trade; deplored the outrages at Bristol; and assurance that he would do what he could to bring the recommended improvements in the municipal police of the opposition lords to take a more favourable view of the kingdom. On the 12th, lord John Russell introduced the ministerial scheme and its probable consequences. This reform bill the third time. It is said that his manner, like was followed by cordial shaking of hands, and permission his proposal, had undergone a striking alteration. His was given on either side to communicate with intimate opening speech was not now a song of triumph, inspired friends and colleagues. The duke of Wellington, however, by the joyous enthusiasm of the people. He no longer declined to take any part in those deliberations. He treated the opposition in a tone of almost contemptuous believed that the government could be carried on, though defiance. The spirit which had dictated the celebrated with difficulty, under the existing system; but under the reply to the Birmingham political union about the voice system which the reform bill would introduce, he doubted of the nation and the whisper of a faction, seemed to have if the government could be carried on at all. On the died within him. The feeling gradually stole upon him other hand, lord Wharncliffe forcibly put the case of and his friends "that they had raised a too mighty spirit continued resistance. To what could it lead? The house -one which would soon be unawed by their exorcism; of lords by its rejection of the bill, had given the country and which might, in its fury, destroy the whole order to an opportunity of expressing its will. But all the demon which the noble lord and most of his colleagues belonged, strations had been violently against the peers, scarcely any making no distinction between friend or foe." No longer in their favour; and where any support had been feebly anxious to excite and inflame, he dwelt upon the advanshown, it was with the condition that important conces- tages that would be produced by reform, and spoke of the sions should be made. Where, then, was the battle to be danger of further resistance in a tone of unfeigned alarm. fought? Was the house of lords to fight against the He used this topic now, not as a rhetorical weapon, but crown, the government, the commons, and the country? as a terrible truth-" one appalling to himself and his This was impossible. But the duke was still intractable. friends; and in accents of sincere, unsimulated affright, Lord Wharncliffe, he said, seemed to have forgotten "that he besought his aristocratic opponents to forego their the king and his government had entered apparently into resistance."* combination with the mob for the destruction of property. Consequently, even magistrates were afraid to do their duty; and if gentlemen came forward to express the sentiments which all the world knew they entertained, they ran the risk of being hunted through their own parks and gardens." This was, perhaps, an allusion to what had occurred to lord Wharncliffe himself, in Yorkshire, when it was said he narrowly escaped with his life, after the adverse decision in the lords. Lord Wharncliffe persevered in his efforts to change the duke's mind, but in vain. What his grace feared, he said, was "the destruction of the race of gentlemen in the country, and, with them, of its glory, its honour, and its prosperity. For it was a fallacy to believe that any class-least of all, the lowestwould benefit by that catastrophe. He defied all the political economists in the world to provide for more than 22,000,000 of people half so well as all the classes of the

Lord John Russell proceeded to explain the changes and modifications that had been made in the bill since it was last before the house. As the census of 1831 was now available, the census of 1821 was abandoned. But a new element was introduced in order to test the claim of a borough to be represented in parliament. Numbers alone were no longer relied upon. There might be a very populous town, consisting of a mass of mean houses, inhabited by poor people. With numbers, therefore, the government took property, ascertained by the amount of assessed taxes; and upon the combination of these two elements the franchise was based. The calculations necessary to determine the standard were worked out by lieutenant Drummond, afterwards under-secretary for Ireland. Upon the information obtained by the government as to the

Roebuck, vol. il., p. 236.

A.D. 1832.]

THE REFORM BILL RE-INTRODUCED IN THE COMMONS.

limits of each borough, its population, and the amount of assessed taxes it paid, he made out a series of a hundred boroughs, beginning with the lowest, and taking the number of houses, and the amount of their assessed taxes together, as the basis of their relative importance. Thus Schedule A was framed. In the original bill, this schedule contained sixty boroughs; in the present bill, it contained only fifty-six. The consequence of taking Mr. Drummond's report as a basis of disfranchisement was, that some boroughs, which formerly escaped as populous and large, were now placed in Schedule A; while others, which were better towns, were taken out of that schedule and

205

Schedule B, one to Chatham, one to the county of Monmouth, and the rest to the large towns, which, by the former bill, obtained power to return one member only. The new bill retained the £10 qualification. Every man who occupied a house of the value of £10 a-year was to have a vote, provided he was rated for the poor. It was not the rating, however, that determined the value; it did not matter to what amount he was rated, if only at £5 or £1, if the holding was really worth £10 a-year.

The second reading was moved on the 14th by lord Althorp, the chancellor of the exchequer. Lord Porchester moved that the bill be read a second time that day

placed in Schedule B, which now contained only thirty | six months. His motion was supported by Sir Edward instead of forty boroughs, as in the former bill. The Sugden. Sir Robert Peel had taunted the governdiminution in this schedule, consisting of boroughs whose members were to be reduced from two to one, was owing to the fact that the government had given up the point about reducing the number of members in the house of commons, which was to remain as before, 658. Thus a number of small boroughs escaped which ought to have but one member each so small, that every one of them ought to have been in Schedule A, that their members might be given to new, prosperous, and progressive communities. Twenty-three members were now to be distributed. Ten were given to the largest towns placed in the original Vot. VII.-No. 330.

ment with inconsistency in adopting alterations, every one of which they had resisted when proposed by the opposition. Mr. Macaulay retaliated with powerful effect, with respect to the conduct of the tories on the question of catholic emancipation. The right honourable baronet, while declaring his willingness to grant a measure of wellconsidered and safe reform, expressed his determination to oppose this revolutionary bill to the last. But to those who intended to yield finally he gave this advice:-"If it be intended to give way, yield while you can have the credit of graceful concession, and do not let it be supposed