The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction
• Textual Introduction: John M. Robson
• Acknowledgments
• Essays On England, Ireland, and the Empire
• Brodie’s History of the British Empire 1824
• Ireland 1825
• The Game Laws 1826
• Intercourse Between the United States and the British Colonies In the West Indies 1828
• Notes On the Newspapers 1834
• The Close of the Session 1834
• Postscript to the London Review, No. 1. 1835
• Parliamentary Proceedings of the Session 1835
• Postscript: the Close of the Session 1835
• State of Politics In 1836 1836
• Walsh’s Contemporary History 1836
• Fonblanque’s England Under Seven Administrations 1837
• Parties and the Ministry 1837
• Radical Party and Canada: Lord Durham and the Canadians 1838
• Lord Durham and His Assailants 1838
• Lord Durham’s Return 1838
• Reorganization of the Reform Party 1839
• What Is to Be Done With Ireland? 1848?
• England and Ireland 1868
• Appendices
• Appendix a
• Appendix B
• Appendix C: Textual Emendations
• Appendix D

PARLIAMENTARY PROCEEDINGS OF THE SESSION

1835

EDITOR’S NOTE

London Review, I (July, 1835), 512-24 (equivalent to London and Westminster, XXX). Headed as title. Running titles: 512-18, as title; 519-24, “Municipal Reform Bill” (change keyed by the paragraph beginning “The destructive part . . .,” 303). Signed “A.” Not republished. Identified in Mill’s bibliography as “The article entitled ‘Parliamentary Proceedings of the Session’ in the same number of the same work”; i.e., as “Tennyson’s Poems” (MacMinn, 45). There are no corrections or emendations in the copy (tear-sheets) in Somerville College.

Parliamentary Proceedings of the Session

in the postscript to the first Number of this Review,^[*] published while the Melbourne Ministry was in the process of formation, we explained why that portion of the House of Commons, who are entitled to the appellation of thorough reformers, ought not to connect themselves officially with any ministry which could be composed from the materials now existing in public life; and we described the attitude of support, but of qualified and distrustful support, which it appeared to us most consistent with the principles of the thorough reformers, and most conducive to their usefulness, that they should maintain towards the new administration. We believed that the Whigs would propose, on one or two important questions, measures considerably more extensive, and better calculated to facilitate further improvements, than would be proposed by any Tory ministry. On this ground, we wished that the Whigs should remain in office. That they were prepared to concede any improvements but those so urgently demanded by the public, that no government, raised to power by the public will, could refuse them without the immediate loss of office, we did not believe; nor, with regard to the greatest part of the evils which affect our social state, did we believe that the Whigs were, less than the Tories, attached to the evils, or less terrified at the remedies.

The course which we recommended has been that which the thorough reformers, both in the press and the House of Commons, have adopted. And that it was the advisable course, the conduct of the ministry has ever since been affording fresh proofs. To say nothing of minor matters, the Ministers have afforded us an opportunity of judging of them in regard to four great questions: the Corporations, and the Irish Church, the Ballot, and the Taxes on Knowledge. On the first two subjects their conduct has given ample reason why the complete reformers should support them; on the two latter, ample reason why that support should be, as we have already expressed ourselves, qualified and distrustful.

We are more desirous, on the present occasion, to dwell upon the favourable, than upon the unfavourable side. Yet, before we enter into an examination of the two measures which constitute the claim of the present Cabinet to the support of Reformers, we must make a few observations on the two other great questions just alluded to; because we deem it important that the Reformers should be under no mistake concerning the probable duration and limits of the co-operation which is practicable between themselves and the Whig Cabinet.

We shall begin with the Taxes on Knowledge,^[*] because it is the subject on which all we have to say will be soonest said.

This great question the former Melbourne Government left as a kind of legacy to the present. It was understood, and, by a distinguished member of that Government, proclaimed on more than one public occasion, that the ministry intended to take off the newspaper stamps.^[†] The subject has been strongly pressed upon the present ministers since their appointment; numerous petitions against these taxes have latterly been presented to parliament; but, to all interrogations on the subject, ministers have returned evasive answers.^[‡] The people ought to make them understand, that by their conduct on this question they will in a great measure be judged, and that the sentence is only suspended until their budget is produced. The language which they have as yet held on the subject is little honourable either to their sincerity as reformers, or to their discernment as statesmen. They are told that these taxes are the grand hindrance to what no one will look his fellow-creatures in the face and deny to be the very most important end which any persons in public trust can aim at—the instruction of the people. They are told that, by reason of these taxes, the people, who are willing to be instructed, cannot get instruction, and those who are willing and desirous to instruct the people are debarred the means of giving them instruction. Now, to such a proposition placed before them upon such grounds there are several answers which they might have returned. One was, “It is right; let us do it:” and this would have been the wisest and most virtuous answer. Another was, “It is not right; let us not do it:” and this might have been an honest, and would not have been an absolutely silly answer. Our ministers have contrived to find a third, different from either: “It is right; but we do not know whether we will do it or not.” Mr. Spring Rice expressed his agreement in all the doctrines of those who object to the tax; but the glass-manufacturers also wanted to get their tax taken off, whereby we may drive a thriving trade in glass with all Europe; and the question must lie over until Mr. Spring Rice can decide which is best, an export of glass, or an instructed people.

What kind of statesmanship is this? The taxes on the diffusion of knowledge are either a positive good, or their existence is a violation of the first duty of a government; the most sacred claim of a people. Satisfy yourselves which of the two it is, and act accordingly; but for very shame, give over treating the question of the civilization of your people as a question of revenue—a question where the government is to find 400,000l. And this when, in four years, five millions of far less objectionable taxes have been taken off.

Before our next publication, ministers will have been forced to explain themselves categorically on this subject. For the present, we shall say no more upon it.

Ministers have declared their unabated determination to resist the Ballot. We view this declaration in a very serious light; and we think the importance of it will manifest itself more and more to all eyes.

A government which is determined to oppose the ballot must end by a coalition with the Tories. Without the ballot there will, in two or three years more, be a Tory parliament. We are unable to conceive how the evidence of this can be resisted. The majority of the electors, both in the old and in the new constituencies, are in a state of complete dependence upon the wealthy persons of their neighbourhood. Of these wealthy persons, a vast majority are Tories. The Reform Act did not change human nature. It did two things: it introduced into the constituency a large body of new electors, not yet corrupted by the foul influences; and it inspired the electors with an enthusiasm, which induced them very generally to brave those influences, and disregard the mandate of those who could do them good or ill. So stood the case in 1832: but in 1834? In two years, this effect of the Reform Bill had so spent itself, that the Tories, and those who were willing to act with the Tories, obtained within thirty of a majority of the Reformed House. The elections of Devonshire, Staffordshire, and Inverness-shire, were subsequent to that time. This the Tories call re-action. We call it the natural working of the constitution established by the Reform Bill; a constitution, which enables the people to carry all before them when driven by any violent excitement; but compels them, through the publicity of the suffrage, to exercise that power under pains and penalties, which prevent it from being ever exerted on common occasions, or in quiet times.

What did Lord John Russell and Lord Howick, the two ministers who made themselves spokesmen against the ballot, say to this?^[*] They said, it was true there had been intimidation, gross intimidation, and, in the election which had just taken place, that of Lord John himself, intimidation beyond all former precedent; if it were let alone, however, perhaps it would cease of itself! Public opinion, and the growth of intelligence, would in time restrain, nay, according to Lord Howick, had already restrained, and were restraining, the intimidation, every day more and more. A hopeful and cheering view of human affairs, truly; but, like most of the maxims of the Whigs when they are talking like Tories, they have been somewhat late in finding it out. Why abolish the rotten boroughs? Why not trust to the growth of intelligence, and the power of public opinion, which were acting upon the boroughmongers, every day more and more? Why turn out Sir Robert Peel? Would public opinion, and the progress of intelligence, have been without effect upon that minister? What need of a police? What need of laws, and courts of justice? Cannot you rely upon the growth of intelligence, and the influence of public opinion upon the thieves? What need of an army or navy? Why not disband our forces, and trust for our protection to the public opinion of Europe?

It is time to have done with these propositions for giving uncontrolled mastery over the people to an irresponsible few, and trusting to public opinion to prevent them from abusing it; these fond anticipations, that men will not do what is in accordance with their interest, and with the opinion of all those whom they care for, out of deference to the opinion of those for whom they do not care. Intimidation in elections will increase, not diminish. It will be greater in the next general election than in the last, as it was greater in the last than in any preceding. Not the intimidation, but the feelings which make men resist intimidation, will diminish. He who has once voted against his conscience, will have less and less sense of degradation in so voting, every successive time. There are persons who believe that a great and salutary effect will be produced upon the parliamentary elections by Corporation Reform. We believe that it will produce some, but nothing like a decisive effect. Though the corruption and intimidation, hitherto exercised by corporations, were to cease, there are ample means both of corruption and intimidation in other hands, and by these the municipal elections themselves may be perverted, and through them the corporation property again brought into corrupt hands. If Corporation Reform strengthen the ministry at elections, it will be chiefly by rekindling some sparks of the expiring enthusiasm; an effect which is in its nature evanescent, and cannot be reproduced. No ministry can continue exciting the people to a fresh fit of enthusiasm every year.

We repeat, then, that without the ballot we shall speedily have a Tory parliament; and that the present ministers will have to decide, whether they will support the ballot, or abandon office to the Tories, or coalesce with the Tories on their own terms. The exact time when this decision must be made it is impossible to foresee, but by no power can it be postponed for more than a year or two. When it comes, which course will the ministers choose? Probably they will not all of them make the same choice. The problem will then be reduced to its simplest terms: Who is for the aristocracy and who for the people, will be the plain question. Ought the government, or ought it not, to be under the complete control of the possessors of large property? Those of the ministers who think that it ought, with nearly the whole of the Whig aristocracy, will combine with the Tories in a determined resistance to all further extension of popular influences. Those who think that it ought not, together with two-thirds of those members of the House of Commons who now support the ministry, will form a powerful Opposition party, resting upon the people. The contest will then be short and sharp, between the two principles which divide the world, the aristocratic principle and the democratic; and in such a “stand-up fight,” he is an indifferent prophet who cannot foresee that the victory will be with the side where the strength is growing, not with that where it is waning.

In the debate on Mr. Grote’s motion,^[*] the complete reformers made an exhibition of boldness, concert, and parliamentary talent, which greatly raised their character in the House, and ought to convince them what a power they might wield, if they, who are the most instructed portion of the House, were not, unhappily, (with some meritorious exceptions,) the least enterprising and energetic. The votes showed a considerable increase in the number of the avowed supporters of the ballot, since the last division two years ago. But a still more encouraging symptom, to those who were present, was the temper of the House: the manifest favour with which the proposition was received, by all except the Tories and the immediate adherents of ministers; and the tone of confidence in their strength, we might almost say of triumph, assumed by its supporters. Though the question was lost, it might have been supposed that they knew it was about to be carried, so completely were all the signs of conscious superiority on their side.

We shall now state, as briefly as possible, our sentiments on the two great measures of reform to which the ministry have, in our opinion rightly, postponed for the present session all minor questions. We mean, of course, the Municipal Corporation Bill,^[†] and the Bill for reforming the Irish Church.^[‡]

We regard both these measures as, in point of principle, of the very highest moment; and from one of them we expect important practical benefit. The importance of the other consists chiefly in the principle which it recognises.

We regard the Irish Church Bill as the final blow to the superstition (once so strong, but which has of late been so rapidly wearing out) of the inalienable character of endowments, and, in particular, of ecclesiastical endowments. For the first time, the popular branch of the legislature has sanctioned the principle, that, saving all existing life-interests, Parliament has the right, paying a reasonable, and no more than a reasonable, regard to the original purposes of endowments, to deal with the surplus as it deems most expedient. The House of Commons have once deliberately announced this principle in a solemn resolution,^[§] and are about to pass a bill in which the power so claimed by them is actually exercised.

Considered with regard to its direct object, as a measure for reducing the sinecure church establishment of Ireland, the bill has two great defects. The first is, that it is a bill for the reduction of the sinecure church, and not for its total extinction. A measure of that extent, we believe, would not have been in advance of the public mind. No rational supporter of a church establishment now attempts to justify an inconsiderable minority in imposing their church upon the majority, or one nation in imposing theirs upon another nation. Even to attempt it is such an act of tyranny, as no nation ever submitted to but from the fear of the bayonet. Nothing can justify retaining the Irish Church, even on the most moderate scale, unless all other sects are to be established and endowed likewise.

From the present ministers, however, we looked for no measure beyond a diminution of the monstrous establishment: nor do we blame them for not proposing what the House of Commons probably would not have passed. But the bill they have proposed curtails only one part, and that the least overgrown part of the establishment: it reduces the number and emoluments of the parochial clergy, but leaves the bishops and the deans and chapters untouched. Ten bishops and two archbishops seem rather a costly instrument of superintendence for the religious instruction of eight hundred thousand persons. Several English bishops, a body whom few persons consider to be either overworked or underpaid, have singly the charge of dioceses containing much more than that number of communicants. If there is to be an endowed Church of Ireland, one bishop, with a fitting number of archdeacons, would be an amply sufficient allowance of superior clergy for such an establishment.

If, however, to make the reduction include the hierarchy as well as the parochial clergy, would have endangered the success of the bill in the House of Commons, ministers are not to be blamed for stopping short where they did. The contest at present is not for the details, but for the principle. The battle is to be fought with the House of Lords, and any ground, if it be but of tolerable width, will do well enough to fight that battle upon. The Bill is a challenge of the House of Lords to mortal combat. We believe that the challenge will be accepted, and that, though the struggle may be protracted, this victory will be the final one.

On the Bill for the reform of Municipal Corporations our remarks will extend to greater length, because the subject is of greater complexity, and is one of those on which details are all-important. In dealing with the Irish Church, or with the taxes on knowledge, there is a straight path before us: only deal destruction sufficiently wide, and you cannot be wrong: there is a simple test to judge what measure is the best; it is that which destroys the most. But on the subject to which we are now about to advert, Parliament have not only to destroy, but to rebuild: they have to construct a local government: a task the execution of which involves most of the leading principles of the art of politics—a work not very dissimilar in its nature, and only second in its importance, to that of framing the constitution of a state.

It has fared, however, with ministers in this instance, as it usually fares with the statesmen of this generation when they attempt to be reformers. The destructive part of their measures is almost always good, but the constructive part bad. This has been the remark made by the best judges on most of the Whig reforms. It is remarkably applicable to the Reform Bill itself; and it is applicable to the Slave Bill; to the East-India Bill, to the Bankruptcy Bill,^[*] and in general to all Lord Brougham’s law reforms,^[†] which have swept away much that is bad, but substituted nothing which, in the opinion of those most competent to judge, is fit to stand as part of an improved system. The reason is obvious. Public men have now a work to perform, requiring far greater study and preparation than the works which devolved upon their predecessors, and this study and preparation they have not bestowed. They come to their task with minds not properly furnished. They can destroy, because to destroy is easy; even to perceive what deserves to be destroyed is generally not difficult; though this they seldom see until all the world is crying shame upon them for not seeing it. But to rebuild is a work of science; it demands a comprehensive survey and philosophical analysis of ends and means; and as they never have made any such survey, or performed any such analysis, they have no rule to go by but the rule of all unscientific craftsmen, the rule of thumb. By that, accordingly, they regulate themselves, and do, with as little alteration as possible, what others have done before them.

The destructive part of the Municipal Corporation Bill is of signal excellence. It tears down, with no unsparing hand, the old abomination. In the constructive part there is also one point of great merit—the liberal measure which has been dealt out of popular privilege. The ministry have shown no foolish distrust of the people. For the extension of the suffrage to all householders they are entitled to great praise; and if to this had been added the ballot, the responsibility of the town-councils to those whose interests are committed to their charge would have been nearly as complete as could be desired.

While, too, the town-councils are chosen by, and amenable to, the community, all other town-officers, except those intrusted with the administration of justice, are chosen by the town-councils.^* This is judicious. In local, as in general government, we are of opinion that the people should elect the body which is to control the executive, but should not elect the executive functionaries themselves; for all executive duties require some peculiar capacity (appropriate aptitude, as Mr. Bentham was accustomed to style it),^[‡] of which the people cannot judge previously to trial; and the fittest person may possibly not present himself, unless it is the special duty of somebody to search him out.

We have now mentioned the principal points which appear to us worthy of commendation, in the municipal constitution provided by the Bill. We proceed to the less pleasant duty of pointing out the cases in which, for want of accurate and comprehensive principles, previously known, and well-digested in their heads, ministers have only been the servile copyists of the errors of their predecessors.

Local government consists of two parts—administration and judicature. There must be a provision for the management of the collective interests of the local community, and there must be a provision for the administration of justice. The provision made in this Bill for local administration consists of the mayor, the town-clerk, and the town-council; the provision for justice consists of the mayor, the magistrates, and the recorder.

To begin with the administrative body—the first thing that strikes us is, that instead of a committee for the dispatch of business, ministers are creating in every considerable town a debating club. Such is the necessary effect of making the council so numerous—reaching from sixteen to (in the case of Liverpool) the number of ninety members. This is courting the very mischief which the greatest pains should have been exerted to keep out. In parliament, the evil of long speeches must be submitted to; for this reason among others, that it is part of the office of parliament to be an arena for the promulgation and mutual collision of political opinions. But the town-council-room is meant to be a place of mere business, and business of a very commonplace kind: the members therefore should not exceed the number who can discuss and transact business by conversation round a table. We think they ought never to exceed thirty.^* If the body is much more numerous, non-attendance will be the general rule, and the most important business will often be left in the hands of the few whose assiduity is stimulated by some private interest; while, on any occasion which brings the whole body together, its time will be wasted in declamation, and the real business of the town will be done carelessly, or not done at all.

We should have preferred that the election by wards had been universal. Requiring the electors to vote for the whole body at once, almost ensures their adopting the list tendered to them by some active and stirring junto in the town; or if they attempt to choose for themselves, they will choose carelessly, and give a vote to any one who asks for it: for men will take the trouble to make a conscientious selection of one or two persons, but not of twenty or fifty. Another consequence, which has been pointed out by several members of the House,^[*] is, that when there are two parties, the weaker of the two will be deprived of all influence in the formation of the town-council. And an additional inconvenience, incident to this, is, that if, in the interval between one election and another, the stronger party becomes the weaker—a revolution which parliamentary elections prove to be of frequent occurrence—there will be a sudden and abrupt change of the whole body, to the interruption, so far as they are concerned, of all public business. It is, probably, to avoid this evil, that the plan has been hit upon, of partial renewals, one-third of the council going out every year—a most infelicitous juste milieu, which unites the inconveniences of a long and those of a short period—annual elections, and only triennial responsibility.

The mayor is not to be the mere chairman of the town-council, but has important administrative (not to mention judicial) duties devolving upon himself. If this be right (and, with respect to the administrative duties, we do not say that it is not right), it appears to us most injudicious that the mayor should be changed every year. This is blind imitation of the corporation of London, and most of the old corporations. It is a contrivance for having the chief administrative officer always in leading-strings, never out of his apprenticeship. As soon as he begins to understand his business you dismiss him, and bring in another who is still raw, and fit to be a screen for the town-clerk: who, on this system, will pull the strings of the puppet, who is to be called the mayor, but whose sole office will generally be to shelter the town-clerk from responsibility.

The provision made for the administration of justice is more faulty still. It is a considerable improvement, doubtless, on the old system; but it has most of the defects which we are accustomed to see in the judicial institutions of our country, and it has them for no reason that can be perceived, except that we are accustomed to them.

What is wanted for purposes of judicature, is a local judge, transacting (under appeal to a properly-constituted tribunal in the metropolis) all the judicial business of the district, and no part of the administrative business. Judicial and administrative duties should never be united in the same hands; for they are different sorts of business: they require different qualities, different kinds of men: the mode of choice suitable to the two kinds of officers is different—so are the checks, and the kind of responsibility; and the experience of all nations testifies to the importance of keeping those to whom the business of judicature is intrusted free from intermixture in the other affairs of the world, that the administration of justice may be pure, not only from the reality, but even from the suspicion, of partiality.

The principle of the separation of judicial from administrative duties is adopted in part by the Bill, but in so limited and inconsistent a manner as shows that the framers have no due sense of its importance. And the provision for judicature is altogether insufficient.

There is to be a local judge, under the name of a Recorder, wherever the town-council express their desire for one, and their willingnes to pay him a sufficient salary. This is so far good. What did the ministers next? They looked round, to see what provision for local judicature had been made by the wisdom of our ancestors; and they found, that it consisted of a court, which decided no civil, and only some classes of criminal cases, including neither the greatest nor the smallest, and which sat only once a quarter. Without looking any farther, our ministers determined that the local judge whom they are about to create shall decide only these same sorts of criminal cases, and that he also shall only sit once a quarter. But why, if a local tribunal be useful in one sort of criminal cases, will it not be useful in another? and if useful in criminal cases, why not also in civil? and if it be good that justice should be accessible once in three months, why not on every day of the year? Why must the redress of wrongs be delayed, and why must innocent people linger in prison, while the Recorder who is to try them at the next sessions is practising as a barrister in London? These are questions which the framers of the Bill have not asked themselves. They would have found them not only asked, but answered, in the writings of Mr. Bentham, the great teacher in this department of practical politics. There are many branches of the art of government on which sufficient light has not yet been thrown; there are others, on which the best ideas which exist are scattered through a hundred writers: but procedure, and judicial establishment, are subjects of which the alpha and omega are to be found in Mr. Bentham; and it is perfectly disgraceful to any one who, in this age, attempts to legislate on those subjects, not to be familiar with his views on a branch of politics, the philosophy of which he may be said to have created.

So far as respects civil justice, and the higher criminal cases, the Bill leaves matters as it found them, and recourse must still be had to the courts in London, or to the judges of assize. For those cases, again, which are considered too small to be tried by the Recorder, the Bill provides a class of judges called magistrates, who are to have the powers of justices of peace, except those usually exercised by the quarter sessions. These magistrates are to be selected by the Crown, from a number of persons to be recommended by the town-councils. We would suggest a more distinct explanation in the Bill of the cases in which magistrates are to be liable to removal. They should be removable by the Crown, on an address from the town-council.

The powers of these magistrates, like those of all persons who, in England, are called by that name, or by the equivalent one of justices of the peace, are a monstrous jumble of administrative and judicial functions. They have summary jurisdiction in small cases. They have the power of committing prisoners to take their trial at the Sessions or the Assizes; a function, stupidly classed in common language under the head of Police, but which is strictly judicial. It is a preliminary trial of the prisoner, for the purpose of ascertaining, not whether he is guilty, but whether there is sufficient presumption of his guilt to require that he be put upon a more formal trial. And the consequence of an unfavourable verdict, on this preliminary investigation, may be the infliction of a severer sentence, in the form of imprisonment previous to trial, than would be inflicted on proof of guilt, for some serious offences. These preliminary investigations are, therefore, acts of judicature, in the strictest sense. They require judicial qualities, as exalted as any other kind of judicial business, and ought always to be performed by a person called a judge. The only functions which are really of police are the simply executive ones, the enforcement of the laws by interposing before an offence is committed, and the apprehension of the offender afterwards. Of the heterogeneous functions of the magistrates, these are the only ones which require a distinct set of functionaries. The judicial business of the magistrates, whether of conviction or of committal, should be turned over to the Recorder, converted into a local judge always resident on the spot. It is a rule of the utmost importance, that no one is fit to try the smallest cases who is not fit for the greatest; for the small cases are quite as difficult, concern a much larger portion of the community, and are far more liable to be neglected, or slurred over, because they attract so much less of the attention of any but the parties immediately concerned.

The proposal, that the mayor should be ex officio a magistrate, and that he should be the local judge in the absence of the Recorder, is so monstrous, that we cannot believe it will be persevered in. It is a complete departure from the principle which the Bill to a certain extent adopts, that of withdrawing all judicial powers from the functionaries who carry on the local administration. The mayor is the very head and front^[*] of the administration: in all the business of the town-council he is a principal party, and he has many administrative duties peculiar to himself. To crown all, this union of public functions of the most difficult and important kind is delegated to an officer who is to be changed every year; and in the smaller towns, to which the Crown is not to give magistrates except on special application, the mayor will often be the sole magistrate. We cannot easily conceive a worse. It will be, in reality, some mitigation of the mischief, that a permanent officer, the town-clerk, will generally dictate to the mayor all his acts, himself screened from being answerable for them.

The above are, we conceive, the principal objections to the detailed provisions of the Bill.^* Amendments have been placed on the order-book of the House of Commons, calculated to force the discussion of almost all these points; and we trust that the complete reformers, many of whom are well acquainted with the subject, will not let slip such an occasion for impressing upon the public many of the most important principles of organic legislation. That there are those among them who will not neglect the opportunity, we have reason to be assured.^*

But, after every abatement which the above considerations call upon us to make, from an estimate of the merits of this measure, it is still entitled to the character of being one of the greatest steps in improvement ever made by peaceable legislation in the internal government of a country. And we would rather waive the assertion of any or all of the objections to which it is liable, than expose the Bill itself to any jeopardy. But we fear no such result. On the contrary, we are convinced, that the more decidedly the reformers show that this Bill is not their ultimatum, and does not come up to all their wishes, the safer it will prove from mischievous defacement in the Tories’ House. Were the Reformers to let the Tories believe that with the present measure they are fully satisfied, it might tempt them to try whether we may not be satisfied with less. It is the safest, as well as the most direct and plainest course, to evince to the enemy that the improvement this Bill gives us is barely enough, and that there is not a particle to spare.

[[*] ]John Stuart Mill, “Postscript,” London Review, I (L&WR, XXX) (Apr., 1835), 256; i.e., the essay printed at pp. 289-93 above.

[[*] ]See 10 Anne, c. 19 (1711).

[[†] ]See, e.g., John Russell, “Address to the Electors of the Southern Division of the County of Devon,” The Times, 20 Apr., 1835, p. 1.

[[‡] ]See John Charles Spencer, Speech on Stamps on Newspapers (22 May, 1834), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 23, cols. 1210-13.

[[*] ]Russell and Henry George Grey, Speeches on the Ballot (2 June, 1835), ibid., Vol. 28, cols. 447-52 and 427, respectively.

[[*] ]Ibid., cols. 369-471 (2 June, 1835).

[[†] ]Enacted as 5 & 6 William IV, c. 76 (1835).

[[‡] ]“A Bill for the Better Regulation of Ecclesiastical Revenues, and the Promotion of Religious and Moral Instruction in Ireland,” 6 William IV (7 July, 1835), PP, 1835, II, 379-427 (not enacted).

[[§] ]Russell, Resolution on the Church of Ireland (7 Apr., 1835), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 27, cols. 880-3.

[[*] ]2 & 3 William IV, c. 45 (1832); 3 & 4 William IV, cc. 73,85 (1833); and 1 & 2 William IV, c. 56 (1831).

[[†] ]Including 1 & 2 WilliamIV, c. 35 (1831); 2 William IV, cc. 34, 39 (1832); 2 & 3 William IV, cc. 51, 62, 110, 116, 122, 123 (1832); 3 & 4 William IV, cc. 41, 44, 67, 84 (1833); and 4 & 5 William IV, c. 36 (1834).

[* ]The only other exception is the auditors, who of course could not be chosen by those whose accounts they are appointed to check.

[[‡] ]Bentham used the phrase, for example, to describe Mill as fit for the House of Commons at the age of eighteen; see John M. Robson, “John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, with Some Observations on James Mill,” in Essays in English Literature, ed. M. Maclure and F. W. Watt (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964), p. 254 (citing Bentham Papers, University College London, xxxiv, 303).

[* ]In the French town-councils the usual number is fifteen; but the French councils have little to do except to vote money. They have not, properly speaking, the administration of the affairs of the town: that is reserved to the maire, an officer selected from the municipal council by the Crown, and responsible to the Crown for his acts.

[[*] ]See, e.g., Edward George Stanley, Speech on the Municipal Corporation Bill (15 June, 1835), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 28, col. 823.

[[*] ]Cf. Shakespeare, Othello, I, iii, 80.

[* ]In the above strictures, many unavoidable coincidences of sentiment will be found with one of Mr. Roebuck’s Pamphlets, which is dedicated to this subject, and with some excellent articles in the Globe. Both writers have done great service, and it is gratifying to us that our opinions are confirmed by such competent authority. [John Arthur Roebuck, A Letter to the Electors of Bath on the Municipal Corporation Reform Bill, in Pamphlets for the People, 2 vols., ed. J. A. Roebuck (London: Ely, 1835), Vol. I, 2nd pamphlet; Leading Articles, Globe, 22 June, 1835, pp. 2-3, 25 June, 1835, p. 4.]

[* ]Since the observations in the text were written, some of the amendments have come on for discussion, but have been negatived, we regret to observe, without a division. This is a grievous mistake on the part of the reformers. Their object was, not to carry their propositions, but to force public attention to the subject; and this is only effectually done when motions are pressed to a division. It was thus only that Mr. Hume succeeded in making the impression upon the public mind which so wonderfully accelerated parliamentary reform. We regret that Sir John Hobhouse should have lent himself to the vulgar misrepresentation to which we are so much accustomed from the Whigs, that to propose improvements in a measure is to endanger or obstruct its passing. [Speech on Corporation Reform (1 July, 1835), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 29, col. 162.]