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216.: THE MINISTERIAL MANIFESTO EXAMINER, 22 SEPT., 1833, PP. 593-5 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II [1831]

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The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Introduction by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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216.

THE MINISTERIAL MANIFESTO

EXAMINER, 22 SEPT., 1833, PP. 593-5

This leader, strongly expressing Radical discontent with the Whig ministry, was followed in quick succession by six more (Nos. 217-21 and 223), all in reply to The Reform Ministry, and the Reformed Parliament (London: Ridgway, 1833), which went through nine editions. Though it was written in part by the ministers, its nominal author was Denis Le Marchant (1795-1874), a lawyer, principal secretary to Brougham, and intimate friend of Althorp’s, who had prepared reports for the ministers on the Reform Bill debates. Writing to Carlyle on 5 Oct., Mill says: “I have been very busy and active in writing lately; even on politics; did you detect me in those long-winded answers (in the Examiner) to the ministerial pamphlet? but I tell it not to the profane” (EL, CW, Vol. XII, p. 181). At that date only the first had appeared, but obviously the second (which appeared the next day) and almost certainly all the others had been written, for he left for Paris on 10 Oct. for his romantic interlude with Harriet Taylor, not returning until about 20 Nov., by which time the series had concluded. Writing of “The Close of the Session” in the Monthly Repository, n.s. VIII (Sept. 1834), Mill has occasion to recall what the Examiner had said at the end of the previous year’s session (CW, Vol. VI, p. 286), though he does not admit the articles to be his. The whole series appears in the “Political Examiner,” headed as title; this article is a first leader. The leaders are described in Mill’s bibliography as “A series of articles in reply to a ministerial pamphlet which appeared in the Examiner of the following dates and under the following titles: September 22d 1833 ‘The Ministerial Manifesto’ / September 29th 1833 ‘The Marvellous Ministry’ / October 6th 1833 ‘The Review of the Session continued’ / October 13th 1833 ‘Lord Brougham’s Law Reforms’ / October 20th 1833 ‘The Corporation Bill’ (signed A.B.) / October 27th 1833 ‘Conduct of the Ministry with respect to the Poor Law’ (also signed A.B.) / November 10th 1833 ‘Conduct of the Ministry with respect to the Post Office Department, and the payment of officers by fees’ ” (MacMinn, p. 34). In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, “The Ministerial Manifesto” is listed as title and enclosed in square brackets, with one correction: at 605.31-2 “from abuses” is altered to “from the reform of abuses”.

some one has remarked, that a political pamphlet is to our modern world what an oration was to the democracies of antiquity: and there is much justice in the comparison. Demosthenes, when all the acts of his administration were made the subject of a state prosecution, directed not against himself but against a friend who had proposed to confer honours upon him, vindicated his aspersed character by the noblest monument of inspiring and dignified eloquence which mankind have inherited.1 No one that we have heard of has placed himself in jeopardy, by proposing to confer any honours upon the present Ministry: yet they have thought themselves called upon to produce their little “Oration on the Crown,” and here it is.

One of the differences, however, between Demosthenes and Lord Althorp (besides others, which it is unnecessary to particularize) is, that Demosthenes composed and spoke his own vindication; Lord Althorp, or whomsoever else we are to consider as the representative of the Ministry, has caused his to be composed and sent forth by an understrapper. Now we confess a preference for the old ways. We like to hear what a man can find to say in his own justification. We would gladly learn, not what reasons can be found for one man’s doings after they are done, by another man who had no hand in them; but what were the very reasons which influenced the man’s own mind. Any person in office can find somebody to point to what he has done, and cry Huzza! but it is quite another matter when the Minister himself is called upon for his own explanation of the principles of his measures. A compte rendu by the Whig Ministry of the principles of theirs, would be worth having. It would do Lord Althorp infinite good to attempt the composition of one. Could but our Ministers once find in their hearts to commit themselves to a principle, fairly embark themselves with a principle, wed it for better for worse! But no—they are afraid of principles; they are of that kind of persons who never can see the consequences of principles: they are children, and principles are edge-tools: they have no confidence in principles, because they have no confidence, and do not deserve to have any, in their own capacity of either in the first place choosing right ones, or, in the second, of discerning where the dominion of one principle is limited by the conflicting operation of another. They are men of shifts and expedients. What they are from the necessity of their own want of knowledge and judgment, they fancy they are from the necessity of the case. It is their notion of statesmanship. It has been the notion of such statesmen as they are, in all ages.

But if this were statesmanship, and if all their measures, from the greatest to the smallest, had been such as absolute wisdom would have dictated, no Ministers who ever existed have done less, the Reform Bill excepted, to found vanity and self-complacency upon, than these. For, the little tricks and devices and moyens de gouvernement of other Ministers have sometimes been their own; but this Ministry has hardly ever done anything but give way to the suggestions of others. Never was there a Ministry whose own will, or whose own opinions, had so little to do with their actions; if actions they can be called which were the result of mere passiveness. The question with them has seldom been, what is right? but, what will meet with least resistance? what will be easiest to carry? And even in that, they have not looked beyond the two Houses of Lords and Commons to the nation, nor beyond the present year to the next. Yet a more self-complacent, self-applauding Ministry, one possessed with a profounder sense of its own absolute wisdom, is not perhaps recorded in history.

We can understand that a Minister who has taken office to realize some grand and long-cherished scheme of improvement, and who, by the wisdom and vigour of his councils, has triumphed over all the obstacles opposed to him by interest and ignorance, and accomplished his end, may look back to his successful efforts with feelings of self-gratulation and pride. We can pardon the Ministers for feeling considerable exultation at their success in carrying the Reform Bill. We can understand, again, that a Minister whose object has been to resist innovation, to keep things as they are, to uphold institutions, and when abuses are inextricably interwoven with the texture of the institutions, to uphold abuses; that a Minister who has been consistently conservative, who has opposed a bold and unyielding front to the spirit of the age, may feel elevated by the thought that he has done all that man could do for a good cause, and if he has not been wholly victorious, has at least prevented much evil. There is a third kind of Minister whom we could allow to take to himself, to whom we could cheerfully give, a large share of credit for his administration. This would be a man who, taking the reins of office in a period of transition, a period which is called, according to the opinions of the speaker, an age of reform, of destruction, or of renovation, should deem it his chief duty and his chief wisdom to moderate the shock: to mediate between adverse interests; to make no compromise of opinions, except by avoiding any ill-timed declaration of them, but to negociate the most advantageous compromises possible in actual measures: to reform bit-by-bit, when more rapid progress is impracticable, but always with a comprehensive and well-digested plan of thorough reform placed before him as a guide, and so that the partial reforms, one and all, may fit well into the general reform which is ultimately to be effected; to be ingenious in the contrivance of means by which the greatest amount of public good may be attained with the smallest loss to individual interests, and that loss again made up (when made up it ought to be) at the smallest expense to the public. Such a minister might be indulged in some feelings of triumph. But for a Ministry to sing hymns in their own glory for a set of measures in which they have had scarcely any share but as passive instruments, either of a strong popular cry or of some interested parties—which they have never known how to defend, even when defensible—of which they have shown themselves ready to give up the whole or any part, not indeed upon argument, but upon any show of strong opposition—into which they have really put nothing from their own minds, except such crudities as they were obliged to surrender at the first summons—and have had no resource for making the machinery work smoothly, but that of flinging public money to all who were dissatisfied, with a lavishness for which we can seek a parallel in none but the most profligate Governments,—this, truly, is too much. And yet these men are fully persuaded that no one, not perverted by factious motives or a splenetic disposition, can fail to join his voice in the chorus of praise!

It could be worth no man’s while to devote an article to the examination of the pamphlet before us. It is a summary of the legislative measures of the Session;2 as such, it serves the convenience of a day: beyond this, it has no merits to stand upon, but those of the cause it advocates; it shines, if at all, solely with the lustre of the deeds which it commemorates. Nearly all it does is to state the substance of each of the measures which the Ministry have carried through Parliament, and after each to applaud long and loudly. When ground is attempted to be laid for the applause by any arguments, it is by the most meagre abstract of those which were employed in the discussion.

This piece of advocacy, we must observe, is grounded on a part only of the facts. It passes over three-fourths of the essentials of the case. It builds a lofty eulogium of the Ministry, exclusively upon what they have done. But their merits or demerits are compounded of what they have done, of what they have opposed, and so prevented from being done, of what they have failed in doing, and of what they have said. This last is by no means the least, is perhaps even the most important. The words of a statesman are deeds: the words of a reforming statesman have often greater results of good or evil than any other of his actions; for doctrines, in times like ours, weigh heavier in the balance of events than Acts of Parliament; and the doctrines which a Minister lays down may be large and comprehensive, and may help to educate the public mind for better things, while the measures of even the best Minister must be, for a long time to come, the result of a thousand compromises with adverse interests and prejudices. The sayings, too, of a Minister, in these times, are so much more his own, so much stronger an indication of the direction of his inclinations, than the remainder of his doings. Public affairs and the public mind are in a state which must compel any Minister to adopt many measures of reform. But it is what he says that enables us to judge whether his heart goes with what he does; whether if he could he would do less, or whether if he could he would do more. Nothing can be more unfortunate in this respect than the conduct of the present Ministers. They might have been excused for proposing half-measures, and even for what it is harder to excuse, giving up half of even the half-measures they proposed; had they but so spoken as to give the public assurance that their will was greater than their power. But instead of this, they made professions and adopted language, which seemed even intended to persuade every body of what we believe to be quite unfounded, that not the doing so little good, but the doing even that little, was forced upon them.

The advocate of the Ministry has judiciously kept all these things out of sight. He sees not, or if he sees, owns not, that men who talk as Tories, will never be trusted to for continuing to act as Reformers; that men who defend sinecures, and impressment, and the jobs in the Post-office, and who say that nine of every ten Englishmen would regret to see the Bishops turned out of the House of Lords, and that triennial Parliaments are inconsistent with the Monarchy, will never gain much credit for loosing their hold of a few abuses which the most inveterate Tory could not any longer hope to maintain.3 The people are ready enough to take the will for the deed, but they will not, in opposition to all appearances, take the extorted deed for the will.

Had the acts of the first Session been all that could be expected, a really reforming Ministry would have declined to be judged by them. It would have said, for it would have felt, “We could not in the first Session rationally hope to effect much; receive ye the little which we have done as an earnest of the much which we intend, and judge whether our doctrines and professions are those of men who are determined to go forward, or of people who are looking both ways at once, and providing themselves beforehand with a cover for an eventual retreat.”

Thus would have felt and spoken a brave and high-minded Ministry. But the advocate of these, is forced to drop all notice of that part of their conduct which might have been grand and comprehensive and courageous, their declarations of opinion and intention; and has rested their claims to admiration upon that part which must, let the men be what they would, have been narrow and petty and half-and-half—their Acts of Parliament.

Take one glance at these Acts of Parliament. Look down the table of contents of this our pamphleteer; see, in heaven’s name, what they are, these gifts of the Reform Ministry, for which we can never laud them too extravagantly, or bow our heads too low to do them homage. Ten years, or even five years ago, some of these things might have been matter of praise; but now! to hear a Ministry deified for the Irish Church Bill! for the Slave Bill! for the East India Bill! for the Bank Bill! for the Factory Bill!4

Have we now a reformed House of Commons, or have we not? Is the deliberate and strong conviction of the middle classes, the arbiter of our government, or is it not? If it is, where is the mighty merit, where is the merit of any kind, if some one or two popular objects have been accomplished after the discomfiture of the boroughmongers, more than would have been adopted by Parliament while the boroughmongers were in their strength? Even this moderate claim on our applauses does not belong to all the above measures. What Minister, even with an unreformed Parliament, would not have opened the China trade?5 The Duke of Wellington had officially notified his intention of doing so.6 What Minister, when the Bank Charter expired, would not have made some new arrangement with the Bank? What Ministry after Parliamentary Reform, could have avoided making some reform in the Irish Church? and what Ministry could have made that reform less? What Ministry could have helped passing some Factory Bill? and what Ministry could have passed the Ten Hours’ Bill, without considerable amendments?7 What Ministry could have helped making retrenchments? and what other Ministry could have made so much retrenchment go such a little way in affording relief? What Ministry could have helped, in the excited state of the public mind at the opening of Parliament, introducing some measure to provide for the speedy and complete emancipation of the negroes?

The merit of doing all these things, as is obvious to any person of common sense, could not possibly consist in the things themselves, but in the manner of doing them. And in the manner, which alone could be a ground of either praise or blame to the Ministers, they have deserved scarcely any praise, and a large measure of blame.

Take, first, their Slave Bill. It is scarcely worth while to recall to the memory of the public, which speedily loses the impression of abortive absurdities, what this measure was in its native crudity, in its first unlicked state, when, after a fortnight’s gestation, it started forth, not like Minerva, from the brain of Mr. Stanley, and having staggered for a few paces tottered and fell.8 That precious scheme, by which the slave was to be called a freeman, and under that title was to work by compulsion three-fourths of his time for a master, and the other fourth for wages which he was not to receive, but which were to be paid to the Government in order to be repaid to the master; that notable scheme by which the master was to be indemnified out of his own pocket; one-fourth of the labour of his slave being taken from him without compensation, and he being compelled to buy it back, in order that the money thus extorted from himself might be returned to him as compensation for what had been taken away!—these marvellous contrivances deserve to live only as examples of the “strange tricks” which may be played “before high heaven”9 by a raw journeyman statesman, aptly, by Mr. O’Connell, denominated a shave-beggar,10 when he extemporizes an act of legislation in reliance upon intuitive genius, without either knowing, or consulting those who know, anything of the subject.

These nonsensical phantasies, below the intelligence of an average schoolboy, could have passed, we confidently trust, no assembly of sane men in Christendom, and could not pass our House of Commons. Instead of them what have we got? Let us look at the provisions of the measure as they now stand.

The people of England were bent upon immediate emancipation: there were fears that in the imputed parsimony of a democratic Government, they would even demand the flagrant injustice of emancipation without compensation. The result proves one thing at least, that the danger did not lie that way. Have they obtained what they demanded? They have not. The slaves are not wholly and at once emancipated. Compulsory labour continues, and is to continue for six years. But though the slaves have obtained but a part, the people of England have paid the price of the whole. On the best official calculations which could be made, the twenty millions which have been granted are, as nearly as can be estimated, thefull market priceof all the slaves in our colonies. Emancipation without compensation was apprehended; but who ever dreamed that the gift of a reformed Parliament would be compensation without emancipation; that England would buy the slaves out and out, and not make them free! The masters are to have the full price of their slaves and part of the slaves’ labour too. An act of national justice is turned into a job for putting public money into the pockets of the owners of slaves.

And the slaves themselves; how is their well-being provided for? The opponents of immediate emancipation contended, and justly contended, that the good of the slave demanded a gradual relaxation of his bonds, in such a manner and by such steps that habits of voluntary industry, prudence, and self-controul, unnecessary in a state of slavery, but essential to the enjoyment and to the good use of freedom, might take root in his mind before he was altogether set free. To accomplish this purpose, what have the Ministers established? A system of pauper labour! ay, the very system the condemnation of which their own Poor Law Commissioners have made resound through every corner of the country;11 the system which awards subsistence to the labourer not according to his work, but according to his wants, and enforces labour, not by withholding wages, but by the powers of the magistrate; that most unhappy compromise between a state of slavery and a state of freedom, which combines only the evils of both; which renders labour odious by dissevering it from its reward, more completely than in slavery itself; the very system which has destroyed the industry and morality of the industrious and moral English peasant, have these sages adopted as a means of moralizing and training to voluntary industry men who have always been slaves!

It is for this that twenty millions have been added to the amount of the National Debt, and more than a hundred millions, as the event, we fear, will prove, to its unpopularity! Yet the sole chance for the working of such a system without the most calamitous consequences, lies in the very extravagance of the compensation. The only hope for the slaves is now in the colonial legislatures. The unexpected magnitude of the gift may allay their irritated feelings, and leave their eyes so far open to their true interest as to see the policy of exchanging the forced apprenticeship for a voluntary contract between master and servant for work and wages.

Let it not be said, that although this measure has its inconveniences, inconveniences of perhaps equal amount would have attended any attempt to accomplish at once the difficult transition from the disease of slavery to the healthful state of free labour. A most simple modification and extension of the Spanish system of manumission (actually advocated in Parliament by Mr. Charles Buller,)12 would at just one-sixth of the expense, have united compensation to the planters with a speedier emancipation to the slave. If the Legislature, instead of buying the whole of the slave’s labour, had bought for him the free use of one day in the week, and having fixed his price, had permitted him, on tendering one-sixth part of it, to purchase another and another day until completely emancipated; it may be shown by a simple calculation founded on the known rate of wages in the colonies, that a slave who employed the whole leisure thus obtained in working for wages, and the whole of those wages in purchasing the remainder of his freedom, would have achieved it, not in six but in about three years. Not only would the association have been the closest conceivable between labour and its reward, and the incentive to voluntary labour the strongest possible, but every slave would have had the power, if he chose to exert it, of being emancipated in a much shorter time than by the present plan; by means of voluntary, not as at present of forced labour: the moral, prudent, and industrious slave would have been emancipated first, and those who would have waited longest for freedom would have been precisely those who were least fitted for it. This combination of almost immediate emancipation with the best possible moral education for the negro, would have cost this country between three and four millions; and it is paying twenty for—what we have described.

But the Irish Church Bill! And what have the people gained by the Irish Church Bill? Except the Irish landlords, who will profit by the abolition of the Vestry Cess, what human creature will derive one particle of advantage from the Irish Church Bill? We beg pardon; we had overlooked the better cultivation of the church lands, which is a possible consequence of the abolition of fines for the renewal of leases.13 That is the sum total of the public benefit which will be derived from this vaunted Bill.

The few who still believe that there ought to be a Protestant Church of Ireland, may deem it a wonderful gain that the number and emoluments of the Bishops and richer clergy of that Church are to be reduced, and the savings converted to the general purposes of the Establishment. But what rational person sees anything to care for in this? Not the manner in which the plunder is distributed, but that they are plundered at all, is the complaint of the Irish people: that tithes are wrung from them, and their national property is detained from them, for the emolument of a priesthood who are not of them, whose faith they believe not, by whose existence they benefit not. The question is not now concerning the abstract utility of Church Establishments. The warmest friends to the Church of England have thought and think, that rich endowments, if useful for maintaining a religion, are most ineffectual for propagating it, and that the only Protestant Church suited to the condition of Ireland is a Missionary Church. The famous clause which asserted the right of the State to divert, not the endowments, but the additional value which it was supposed was about to be given to the endowments, to other purposes than those of the church, was never of much value as the assertion of a principle; such as it was, however, it was given up, for a reason worthy of quack politicians, that a principle, unless much was to be gained by its being immediately acted upon, was not worth contending about!14 When will they learn that the assertion of a single great principle of political morality is worth any twenty of such paltry measures as theirs?

The Church of England in Ireland must be swept away altogether. We do not blame the Ministers for not having done this at once, but if we could we would do it at once: the nuisance and insult should disappear from the soil of Ireland without delay, and cease forthwith to irritate her people. Pensions however should be given to the existing incumbents, equal to the amount of their present net incomes, abating the expenses now required by their station. Nor let it be forgotten that in the first edition of this Bill, it was proposed by the Whig Ministers to tax existing incumbents, and that the Radical members were foremost among those who forced them to abandon that meditated infringement of an important principle.15 Those who are liable to suffer from the reform of abuses may be taught by this, that though they will obtain less favour, they will have more justice, from the thorough, than from the half-and-half reformers; and that it is at least as much their interest, as it is the interest of all the rest of the community, that the reforms which must come, should be effected by those who will effect them on principle—not by those who, remaining motionless till forced to move, and having then no rule but to trim between adverse parties and give a little to one and a little to the other, are as likely to make the just rights, as the unjust pretensions, of both sides, burnt-offerings in the propitiatory sacrifice.

But what consistency, what rational principle of action can be in the minds of men who with one hand eradicate ten Bishops from the Irish Church,16 with the other, plant a hopeful commencement of an Irish Church in India;17 adding two new Bishops to the one who already existed, at the expense not of the European residents, who alone can benefit by them, but of the poor, overburthened cultivators of the soil; the pretence at first made of incurring no additional expense being almost immediately abandoned; and, to buy off the opposition of Mr. O’Connell and of Mr. Sinclair,18 more money wrung from the poor Hindoos to pay more clergy for the Catholics and the Presbyterians! Was this a time to create new Bishoprics, when the word Bishop stinks in the nostrils of two-thirds of the people? Was this a time to add to the expenses of Church Establishments? The only opposition to this enormity was made by several of the Radical members;19 who almost alone took the trouble to attend the later discussions on the India Bill, and were the cause, almost exclusively, of the few improvements it has undergone. We have no room to show up all the crudities of this most ill-digested Bill; and enumerate all the modes in which it heaps additional expenses on a people, whose taxes, though higher than they can bear, do not even now suffice for the expenses of their government. We will only mention that the Bill originally contained a clause which would have raised a religious war all over India, by turning loose, on account of the mere name of slaves, the inmates of every harem in the country;20 and that in opposition to the unanimous opinion of the Court of Directors, the Bill perpetuates and enlarges the monopoly of the most signally ill-conducted public institution of education in Great Britain (and that is saying much)—the College at Haileybury.21

The Bank Bill! here, at least, is a measure, vicious in its very principle, bad almost from the beginning to the end; a Bill for the prolongation and enlargement, not the extinction, of a monopoly which Lord Liverpool, seconded at that time by one of the members of the present Ministry, made no secret of his intention to destroy.22 We have entered fully into the demerits of this Bill on a recent occasion.23 The subject, no doubt, was intricate, and authorities differed; there is more excuse for the blunders of the Ministry on this question than on some others, but surely no ground for praise. Their mode of making up their opinion on this subject is characteristic of the quality of their minds. Incapable of forming his own judgment, Lord Althorp sought for authority on which he might rely;24 for practical authority, if we may adopt the phrase of those who have faith in blind routine, but not in reason. And whither resorted he for this trustworthy guidance? To the London bankers! as if dealing in money made men conversant with the principles of currency; or as if he should consult the man who drives his coach, concerning the best mode of building it. His coachman, at least, would have no interest different from his own: not so the London bankers; whose habits, whose riches, whose importance, were all identified with the system by which they had thriven, and could not, and cannot, but receive a considerable shock from even so slight a modification of that system as has actually taken place.

We must pause here; but the subject is not half exhausted. Undeserved panegyric provokes the utterance of censure, which else might have remained unspoken. Their own pamphlet has opened up the entire question of the merits of their administration; the papers in their interest have vaunted it as a triumphant display of merits beyond appreciation, to which none but Tories or Destructives25 can affect to be insensible; and by their good leave and that of the public, they shall hear the other side too. They shall learn what men who are neither Tories nor Destructives, but cautious though earnest reformers, think of them and of their measures. We shall resume our examination in the next paper.

[1 ]Demosthenes, De corona, in De corona and De false legatione, pp. 18-228. The friend was Ctesiphon, who had been prosecuted by Aeschines for proposing that Demosthenes receive a crown.

[2 ]This first parliamentary session of the Reformed Parliament ran from 29 Jan. to 29 Aug., 1833.

[3 ]On sinecures, see Spencer, Speech (14 Feb., 1833), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 15, col. 674; on impressment, James Graham (1792-1861), First Lord of the Admiralty, Speech (15 Aug.), ibid., Vol. 20, cols. 676-84; on the Post Office, Charles Gordon Lennox (1791-1860), Duke of Richmond, Postmaster General, Speech (16 Aug.), ibid., cols. 711-12; on Bishops in the Lords, Spencer, Speech (18 June), ibid., Vol. 18, cols. 984-5; and on triennial parliaments, Russell, Speech (23 July), ibid., Vol. 19, cols. 1123-8.

[4 ]Enacted in 1833, respectively, as 3 & 4 William IV, c. 37 (discussed by Le Marchant, p. 8), c. 73 (Le Marchant, pp. 10-18), c. 85 (Le Marchant, pp. 43-5), c. 98 (Le Marchant, pp. 35-42), and c. 103 (Le Marchant, pp. 54-5).

[5 ]By 3 & 4 William IV, cc. 85 and 93 (1833).

[6 ]The Wellington ministry’s intention was referred to in a debate on the East India Company’s Charter by Edward Law, Lord Ellenborough, who had been President of the Board of Control 1828-30, in a speech in the Lords on 21 Apr., 1831 (PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 3, col. 1738).

[7 ]On 17 Jan., 1832, Michael Sadler had introduced “A Bill to Regulate the Labour of Children and Young Persons in the Mills and Factories of the United Kingdom” (2 William IV, PP, 1831-32, II, 1-10), restricting all those under eighteen years of age to ten hours a day or less—a restriction that it was hoped would in practice apply to all workers. On Sadler’s defeat at the election, Lord Ashley reintroduced a slightly strengthened version with the same title on 5 Mar., 1833 (3 William IV, PP, 1833, II, 263-80). The information gathered, first by the Select Committee and then by the Royal Commission prompted by these bills, forced the Home Secretary, Lord Althorp, to steer through the House a Government measure, again with the same title (4 William IV [1 Aug., 1833], ibid., II, 281-95), which was enacted as 3 & 4 William IV, c. 103 (1833). This measure, while it restricted the hours of those under thirteen to nine per day, did not include the ten-hour provision, which was not secured until 10 Victoria, c. 29 (1847).

[8 ]Stanley, Speech on the Ministerial Proposition for the Emancipation of Slaves (14 May, 1833), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 17, cols. 1193-1231; the provisions Mill castigates in the following sentence are in cols. 1223-7.

[9 ]Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, II, ii, 121; in The Riverside Shakespeare, p. 561.

[10 ]Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847), the leader of the battle for political and religious equality for Irish Roman Catholics, applied the term “shave-beggar” to those in authority who wereallowed to learn by practising on Irish affairs as apprentice barbers learned by shaving beggars. See his Speech on the Doneraile Conspiracy (12 May, 1830), PD, n.s., Vol. 24, col. 651.

[11 ]See “Copy of the Letter Addressed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Commissioners for Inquiring into the Poor Laws, Dated 23rd February last; and of the Answer Returned by the Commissioners” (5 Aug., 1833), PP, 1833, XXXII, 342-6.

[12 ]On 11 June (PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 18, cols. 577-8).

[13 ]See 3 & 4 William IV, c. 37, Sect. 65 (vestry cess), and Sect. 130 (abolition of fines for the renewal of leases).

[14 ]In what Mill refers to below as the “first edition” of the proposal, i.e., “A Bill to Alter and Amend the Laws Relating to the Temporalities of the Church in Ireland,” 3 William IV (11 Mar., 1833), PP, 1833, I, 339-416, the provision was in Clause 142; in the second version (22 Apr.; ibid., pp. 417-98), the Clause had become No. 147; after vociferous opposition to the proposal, the Bill as amended by Committee (25 June; ibid., pp. 499-586), which was enacted as 3 & 4 William IV, c. 37, did not include the provision.

[15 ]See the speeches on 14 Mar. by Joseph Hume and Daniel O’Connell, PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 16, cols. 661-2 and 664.

[16 ]By Sect. 31 of 3 & 4 William IV, c. 37.

[17 ]By Sect. 89 of 3 & 4 William IV, c. 85.

[18 ]For O’Connell’s opposition, see n19. For the Speech on the East-India Company’s Charter (17 July, 1833), by George Sinclair (1790-1868), Whig M.P. for Caithness, writer on ecclesiastical questions, see PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 19, cols. 801-2.

[19 ]See the speeches on 17 and 19 July by Hume, and on 19 July by O’Connell and Charles Buller, ibid., cols. 800, 1027-8, 1019-21, and 1028.

[20 ]By Sect. 88 of “A Bill for Effecting an Arrangement with the India Company, and for the Better Government of His Majesty’s Indian Territories,” 3 William IV (28 June, 1833), PP, 1833, II, 192.

[21 ]By Sect. 103 of 3 & 4 William IV, c. 85. For the opinion of the Court of Directors about Haileybury, see “Paper of Observations and Suggestions on Several Clauses of the East-India Bill” (10 July, 1833), Papers Respecting the Negotiation with His Majesty’s Ministers on the Subject of the East-India Company’s Charter (London: Cox, 1833), p. 327.

[22 ]For the view in 1826 of Jenkinson (Lord Liverpool), see the reference at No. 209, n5 (and cf. PD, n.s., Vol. 14, cols. 450-66). He was supported by Frederick John Robinson (1782-1859), Viscount Goderich (later Earl of Ripon), Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1826, and Lord Privy Seal in 1833; see his Speech on the Bank Charter Amendment Bill (14 Apr., 1826), ibid., Vol. 15, cols. 238-40.

[23 ]See No. 209.

[24 ]See Spencer, Speech on the Bank of England Charter (28 June, 1833), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 18, col. 1323.

[25 ]Towards the end of 1832, the term “Destructives” came into use to describe the Radicals. See The Times, 8 Dec., 1832, p. 4; and William Tait, “The Destructives,” Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, II (Feb. 1833), 575-7.