The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction
• Textual Introduction
• France 1820–21
• 1.: Journal and Notebook of a Year In France May 1820 to July 1821
• 2.: Traité De Logique 1820-21
• Chapitre I: ConsidÉrations GÈnÉrales
• Chapitre II: Des IdÉes En GÈnÉral
• Chapitre III: Sources OÙ Nous Puisons Nos IdÉes
• Chapitre IV: Classification Des IdÉes
• Chapitre V: Des Notions Abstraites
• Chapitre VI: De La Division
• Chapitre VII: De La DÉfinition
• Chapitre VIII: Du Langage
• Chapitre IX: De L’origine Des IdÉes
• 3.: Lecture Notes On Logic 1820-21
• Debating Speeches 1823–29
• 4.: The Utility of Knowledge 1823
• 5.: Parliamentary Reform [1] August 1824
• 6.: Parliamentary Reform [2] August 1824
• 7.: Population: Proaemium 1825
• 8.: Population 1825
• 9.: Population: Reply to Thirlwall 1825
• 10.: Cooperation: First Speech 1825
• 11.: Cooperation: Intended Speech 1825
• 12.: Cooperation: Closing Speech 1825
• 13.: Cooperation: Notes 1825
• 14.: Influence of the Aristocracy 9 December, 1825
• 15.: Primogeniture 20 January, 1826
• 16.: Catiline’s Conspiracy 28 February, 1826
• 17.: The Universities [1] 7 April, 1826
• 18.: The Universities [2] 7 April, 1826
• 19.: The British Constitution [1] 19 May [?], 1826
• 20.: The British Constitution [2] 19 May, 1826
• 21.: The Influence of Lawyers 30 March, 1827?
• 22.: The Use of History 1827
• 23.: The Coalition Ministry 29 June, 1827
• 24.: The Present State of Literature 16 November, 1827
• 25.: The Church 15 February, 1828
• 26.: Perfectibility 2 May, 1828
• 27.: Wordsworth and Byron 30 January, 1829
• 28.: Montesquieu 3 April, 1829

23.

The Coalition Ministry

29 JUNE, 1827

it appears to me that the time is not come for the decision of this question. The evidence is not yet before us. Until I know upon what principles or with what intentions the coalition was formed, I can neither approve nor condemn it.¹ Coalitions in themselves are neither good or bad. Their merit or demerit must wholly depend upon the mutual understanding which takes place among the parties concerned, regarding the line of conduct which is to be pursued by them thereafter: and as of this we can have no direct information whatever beyond what those individuals think fit to afford us, it is their subsequent conduct which must itself decide whether their personal animosities have been sacrificed to principle or to place.

In this view of the question I have the fortune, whether good or ill, to differ from all those gentlemen who have attacked the ministry in the last and present debates: as well those, with the general tenor of whose political opinions I coincide, as those, to whom I am diametrically opposed. They all of them appear disposed to form their judgment of the coalition, not from the future conduct of the parties, but from the past conduct: and their principle goes to this extravagant conclusion, that any two persons who have ever differed on any important question of public policy, can never honestly, at a subsequent period, become part of the same ministry. Against this proposition, and any other approaching to it, I must enter my entire and unqualified dissent. I contend, that there always ought to be, and that it would be greatly to be regretted if there were not, a certain difference of opinion in every ministry. Let any one consider, what the effect would be, if the contrary maxim were received as a rule of political morality, and if it were thought necessary that a ministry should consist of persons who were unanimous on all questions. It is a mistake to say, that such a ministry could not be formed; no doubt such a ministry could be formed; but of whom would it be composed? Among hacks who would not scruple to sell their opinions for place, or tools who being either too ignorant or too cowardly to think for themselves, pin their faith upon some idol, whether that idol be a sect, a party, or an individual, this perfect unanimity might be found. But men of knowledge and talent, men of stored and cultivated minds, who avail themselves of the aids afforded by the understandings of others without surrendering their own, men who inquire for themselves, observe for themselves and judge for themselves, such men cannot, like mere passive machines, be formed after a model. Such men will differ and must necessarily differ, and a ministry, be it what it may, must either be composed of persons who differ, or it cannot be composed of such men. The coincidence of opinion which ought to be required in a ministry is not absolute coincidence; it is sufficient if they coincide more nearly with one another than any part of them do with their common opponents. That this degree of coincidence really exists between Mr. Canning and his Whig colleagues, if it could be doubtful before, has been made as I conceive tolerably clear by the recent divisions on the Corn Laws, and the Dissenters’ Marriage Bill.²

Neither does it follow, as was asserted by an honourable friend of mine³ on the former evening, that the two parties who have coalesced have either of them sacrificed even the principles on which they differ. And here again I am at issue with the new opposition though not more so, I will take leave to say, than they themselves are at issue with their former professions. It is no new thing for two cabinet ministers to speak and vote on opposite sides of the same question. Neither Mr. Peel nor Mr. Canning, although colleagues in office, sacrificed their respective opinions on the Catholic claims, nor, I will venture to affirm, will Mr. Canning and Lord Lansdowne though colleagues in office, sacrifice their opinions on the Test Act.⁴ A gentleman⁵ who spoke on the last night justly observed, that this question must come on next year, and that neither the Whigs nor Mr. Canning can sacrifice the opinions they have expressed, and therefore, said he, how can the ministry hold together? I should rather ask, why should they not hold together? If they cannot agree, why should they not agree to differ? Any ministry may hold together, who prefer one another and whom the majority of the two Houses prefer to any other ministry which could be formed out of the existing materials; and it is right that it should be so. The question is really too plain to stand in need of any further argument. Without standing here as the advocate either of Mr. Canning or the Whigs, and certainly differing most widely in my political principles from either, I must say it seems to me quite ridiculous to suppose that the mere fact of their coalescing as they have done implies any sacrifice of principle on either side.

Whether there has been any sacrifice of principle or not is a question fairly open to discussion: a question, as I have already observed which their subsequent conduct must determine. And it appears to me that in this view no part of their subsequent conduct is immaterial. It is all evidence: evidence to shew, on what principles the government is hereafter to be conducted: and though the evidence is not yet complete, there is no harm in summing it up as far as it goes. ^aIn foreign policy, for example, Mr. Canning’s earlier history suggests that he may go to^a far greater lengths than even the most liberal of their measures. Will the present ministry imitate so noble an example? Will Mr. Canning and his friends maintain the integrity of these principles inviolate? I confess my fears. Three months ago I should have felt no doubt that they who had persevered so long would persevere still. Up to this junction they have with a stedfastness and constancy most unusual in public men, adhered to their principles, through good report and bad, in defiance of the most bitter hostility from a large majority of that section of the aristocracy which was then the predominant section, and with which they were politically allied.⁶ They have now, however, connected themselves with a party, which contains many men of talent, many accomplished men, many eloquent men, and a majority, as I believe, in respect to personal objects, pure in intention: but a party, however, whose leaders have this unfortunate infirmity, that they never in their lives ventured except in an unguarded moment, to express more than half a principle at a time—they never dared to utter a liberal or a generous sentiment without qualifying it with something base and servile—their speech of today always explains away the speech of yesterday—they now are by turns the servants of God and of Mammon,⁷ and now endeavour to be both at once. It was to be feared that when these two sets of men came together, the better of the two would catch the infection from the worse. And so it has been. Whether truckling be really infectious, or whether Mr. Canning and his friends are grown more afraid of the aristocracy because they see that the aristocracy is more afraid of them, I know not, but for some reason or another, their character is totally changed. When any bad principle—any aristocratic principle—any principle favourable to abuses had to be put forward, it has been uttered in a bold, unflinching uncompromising tone: but as for principles of an opposite cast, principles to which those personages owe all their reputation, and but for which they would not be at this moment in office, since the late junction they have never been mentioned but to be compromised. Lord Goderich, for example,—once the manly and straightforward Frederic Robinson,—was so overcome by those brutal attacks at which, directed as they were against the mildest and most inoffensive of men, every man of common feeling must have been indignant, but which he would have treated as they deserved by simply despising them—he felt these attacks so bitterly that he condescended to make the most humble and submissive apologies for being in the right—hastened to explain away his high and honourable principles—reduced free trade to a better sort of preventive service—a mere scheme for the suppression of smuggling—and in terms with which even Sir Thomas Lethbridge⁸ must have been satisfied, declared his abhorrence of theory, that is of thought—of the application of philosophy to politics—of all which distinguishes him and his colleagues from the vulgar orators and vulgar statesmen of this and of former days.⁹ Mr. Huskisson¹⁰ —but it will be better to begin at the beginning, and take a view of the conduct of the new ministry, from their accession to office.

Let me observe, then, once for all—if I should be less warm in my eulogiums on the present ministry, less indiscriminate in my panegyrics upon their wisdom and virtue, than some of their old and some of their new friends, it is by no means to be imputed to any dislike of the individuals, and still less to any insensibility to the services which they have already rendered. Those services would be inestimable, were it only that they are the first British ministers who have pronounced the words improvement, reform, liberality, philosophy. Indeed Mr. Canning may be convinced by the disapprobation with which the reformers now view some parts of his conduct, of the sincerity of the praise which they have bestowed on him heretofore. Most assuredly if that praise had emanated from the base motives to which it has been ascribed; if as has been more than insinuated by men utterly incapable of comprehending principles of action so greatly above their own level—they had attacked the Whigs because they were not in place, applauded the ministry because they were,—had such been their motives they would hardly have begun to qualify their applause from the time when the men whom they had applauded became all powerful, and ceased to flatter as soon as their flattery might possibly be profitable to themselves.

I would first advert to Mr. Canning’s nonsensical declaration upon the subject of Parliamentary Reform and the Test Act.¹¹ I call it nonsensical because I know no other term which will express its character so exactly. If Mr. Canning had said that his opinion on these subjects was unchanged, and that while it was so he should continue to act upon it as he had done previously,—however the fact might have been regretted its avowal could have excited no disapprobation in any reasonable mind. But to hear a man gravely pledge himself to be always of the same opinion—bind himself by a solemn promise that the arguments which convince him now, upon his honour shall convince him to his dying day—that what he thinks advisable now he will think advisable always howsoever circumstances may change, and although the evidence of the contrary should be as clear as day,—as he promises what it is not in his or any man’s power to perform, the promise is utterly ludicrous. I wish I could say that it were not also something worse than ludicrous. For although it is in no man’s power to resolve before hand that he will always be of the same way of thinking, it is in any man’s power to resolve to say he is of the same way of thinking, whether he is or is not. It is in any man’s power also to resolve to be disingenuous with himself—to resolve that he will never look at the evidence but on one side—that nothing but what makes on one side shall ever enter into his mind. But the man who can form such a resolution is in a state of mind than which one more immoral is not to be found in human nature. A resolution to be regardless of evidence implies on any subject, indifference to truth. But indifference to truth where the alternative of truth or falsehood involves that of justice or injustice, benevolence or cruelty, doing our duty or not doing it—causing the happiness or the misery of our country, is indifference to every human virtue. Parliamentary reform is a measure of which it is not criminal in any one to disapprove. But it is a measure which sincere men, virtuous men, aye and wise men, have approved of; and most certainly, if it is to be approved of, it is of such tremendous moment to the happiness and virtue of countless myriads, that hardly any human interest can compare with it in magnitude. And that this should be the question which a man chuses in order to resolve that he will never grow wiser—that because he, a fallible man, thinks that he is in the right, sooner than be convinced of the contrary he will practise every species of dishonesty upon himself—that on this subject his intellect shall be hood winked, his reason chained down—Sir, I can never believe that this was what Mr. Canning intended. The words must have been uttered in the warmth of the moment, and without due reflection on their import. Not that I would asser that such a declaration is viewed by general opinion in the light which it deserves. Indeed were we to take our notions of right from what we see and hear, we should suppose there was something heroic in swearing that if we were wrong, wrong we always will remain, and that a man who pledges himself to adhere right or wrong to the very opinions which correspond with his private interests, he is to be treated as if he had nobly immolated himself to the welfare of his country.

Mr. Canning has declared his hostility to the repeal of the Test Act. But what is become of those who called themselves the friends of that measure? Were they its friends only when the agitation of it might befriend them? The more I reflect upon the postponement of this question, the greater difficulty I find in attributing to it any creditable motive. What is the reason assigned? It would embarrass the government.¹² Gentlemen were not wont to be so scrupulous about embarrassing the government. If the repeal of the Test Act were like the Catholic question,—a measure there was any chance that the government would ever support,—it might be fairly said, Do not bring it on until the government can support it: but when the head of the government has positively declared his determination to oppose it, in what way, I would ask, would its discussion embarrass the government, unless exhibiting them in their true colours be the sort of embarrassment that is so earnestly deprecated? It could not be carried this year. But does any man in his senses suppose that it could be carried next year, or the year after? If it is not to be discussed until it can be immediately carried, it is abandoned indeed. There seems to be universally among public men a disposition to stave off discussion. They always seem to think that by a free discussion it is truth which suffers, and not error. They always chuse rather to put their trust in tricks and stratagems for the success of a good cause than the gradual effect of plain, open, manly and repeated discussion, upon the reason of the well intentioned and upon the prudence of the corrupt. This is a fatal weakness, but it is not a criminal one, and to this I am disposed to ascribe the temporary abandonment of the Dissenters. But if this be the motive, why not openly avow it? Why attempt to varnish it over by a flimsy, a hypocritical pretext? Why seek to ward off the too plausible charge of tergiversation by pretending that the Dissenters wished to postpone their claims, and that the postponement was to please them? I admit that the body of Dissenters did, at their meeting, yield a reluctant consent: but is it not known by whose persuasions, by whose earnest entreaties—by whose threats that consent was extorted? Is it any secret what distinguished member of the Whig party declared to them that if they insisted on pressing their claims at this moment he himself in the House of Commons would move the previous question;¹³ and what other member of parliament, though this latter far from being a distinguished one, cried out with the air of a man astonished to find himself so important a personage, that he would second it?¹⁴ Is it imagined that these things can be kept from the public? Do not at this moment a large body of the Dissenters believe themselves to have been sold—profligately bartered for place and power—sacrificed to appease those whom no sacrifice ever appeased, the Church and the Aristocracy.—I differ from them, as to the motives which they impute, and I am convinced that there is at present no deliberate purpose of sacrificing them—but yet I cannot but expect the Dissenters, if they expect to succeed, to trust to themselves, and not to men who have played fast and loose with every cause which they ever undertook.

In justice to the noble Lord who gave notice of the motion,¹⁵ I am bound to state the profound respect with which his plain and straight forward conduct has inspired me. It contrasts as strikingly with that of the men I have alluded to, as Dr. Lushington’s manly and honourable conduct on the Chancery question with that of Mr. Brougham¹⁶ —a man whom I would not willingly mention in any terms but those of praise—a man whose noble and disinterested services to the cause of education acquit him of all errors except errors of judgment, and should induce us the more readily to forgive his numerous failings, but not to overlook or disguise them. But I need add nothing to what has been said of the conduct of the Whigs both on this question, and on the Six Acts.¹⁷ On the latter question I must confess that their conduct in some degree surprised me. I was little prepared to expect from them any thing heroically disinterested, any very obstinate perseverance in the right after their hopes and their fears began to point to the wrong. But I did expect that the transition would have been more gradual. I did think that some little respect would have been shewn to public opinion, some little pains taken to smooth the downhill path that is trodden by reformed patriots whose exertions in the cause of liberty have at length earned the well-merited reward of a place. But no! they who had opposed the Act when the danger which it provided against was real, have turned round and supported it when that danger is universally allowed to be imaginary and when there is no longer the slightest pretext of its necessity. I thank them for it! This single fact will do more to open the eyes of the people of England than abstract truths though they were enforced by the eloquence of a Demosthenes. Believe me, the people will not be turned round at their pleasure. The people are generally in the main correct, in their judgment of public men, and it would be very imprudent to let them suppose that the premier can find Whigs to undertake any work which is too dirty for himself, even although it should be to support a ministry which will go along, as Mr. Brougham says with the spirit of the age,¹⁸ for which good end the Whigs are ready to run counter to that spirit every day of their lives.

The conduct of the Whigs on this question has been censured, often, and deservedly. But I have never heard Mr. Canning’s speech on the same occasion,¹⁹ properly commented upon. I am not disposed to scrutinize too closely all the acts of a ministry, which is compelled as the condition of its existence to secure a majority in two assemblies wholly independent of popular control. I can forgive so much, that I can almost forgive the screening of Lord Charles Somerset, though to my mind, there is scarcely a more humiliating spectacle than that of Mr. Wilmot Horton, benevolent and patriotic as we all know him, upright and sincere,—as we would so gladly believe him,—not only shielding from enquiry the conduct of that individual, who if he be not the most criminal is certainly the most ill used of men, but seeking a feeble protection for his client against the most serious charges by endeavouring to excite a prejudice against his accuser, and carping like a mere caviller against the time and manner of urging the accusations, instead of ascertaining that the accusations themselves are ill founded.²⁰ Sir, I can make so great allowances that I would not condemn even this very severely. But if they are compelled to do wrong, they are not compelled to defend by disingenuous artifices, the wrong which they do. I would ask Mr. Canning—if I were at this moment in his presence I would ask him whether it was worthy of his character—worthy of his talents—worthy of his candour in replying to Mr. Hume on the twopenny trash act, as it was formerly called, to affect to consider it as aimed against blasphemous publications—an act which as every child knows was enacted for the avowed purpose of putting down Cobbett²¹ —an act which when it was passed was expressly grounded upon the existing disaffection to government, and which included all publications touching upon Church or State or any subject connected with them. Does Mr. Canning presume so much upon our want of memory? Does he think that he can trifle with that to which he cannot but be conscious that he owes his present elevation—public opinion? Let him not presume too much upon his individual popularity; it will desert him as rapidly as his former unpopularity, when he ceases to deserve it. Let him not place his trust in newspaper praise—the hacks of the press always bow the knee to the idol in vogue. Does he imagine that the Times newspaper, for example, which now worships him as a God,²² would not turn and exhort the people to imbrue their hands in his blood if it thought that by so doing it would add 500 to its 15,000 subscribers?

But I must now pass to a still more painful subject. One week ago, the name of Mr. Huskisson stood higher with the nation for honesty and courage, combined with great talent, and the only really valuable knowledge, the knowledge of principles, than any living—I must almost say any minister. In the teeth of the most rancorous opposition, he had adhered nobly to his own course, had braved clamours, to which almost any other minister would have succumbed, and had braved them successfully. Even his enemies—and few men had more enemies, for few have so well deserved the enmity of the ignorant and the worthless—but the honest even among his enemies, while they disapproved of his principles, honoured the constancy with which he adhered to them. I use no rash expression when I say that the character of Mr. Huskisson did more to give dignity and respectability and public confidence to the ministry than any other single circumstance. And now—one short month after the most signal of triumphs over the strongest division of his opponents²³ —after having refuted every argument and disproved every fact which they alleged—he has covertly, by a clause in the new Customs Act,²⁴ conceded the whole of his principle together with much of its practical results to these vanquished and prostrate adversaries. Where were the Whigs then,—they who when credit was to be gained by it, claimed to themselves the merit which they had not, of originating these measures—where were they, that they did not resume their thunder when he who had usurped it had laid it down? We are apt, Sir, to suppose public men wiser than they are, and then to suppose them greater rogues than they are because we cannot otherwise explain how such wise men come to do such foolish things. But I cannot pay so poor a compliment to Mr. Huskisson’s understanding as to suppose him unaware of any inconsistency between his conduct now and on the reciprocity bill. No, it is truckling: it can be nothing but truckling, and all that is left to his previously enthusiastic admirers is to hope that although the instrument he is not the cause. But regarding it as the act of the entire ministry, I would ask is this the course which they intend to persevere in? Do they mean to undo when they have obtained power all the meritorious acts by which they gained it? They cannot be so blind to their real situation as to suppose that they were raised to their present elevation by any thing except public opinion, or that they will keep it one week longer than while public opinion strongly supports them. Do they suppose that they can ever be favourites with the aristocracy? Do they really imagine that they can ever outstrip their competitors in servility, or that men of genius can ever rival fools in self abasement? Do they think that the awkward sycophancy of men conscious of superiority, of men fit for and who have a taste for better things, men who detest the odious work, to whose whole nature it is alien, can ever equal that of creatures to whose base souls it is congenial, the hacks of office, the hirelings of power, who have not one idea that is not commonplace, one purpose that is not mean, and who swallow servility with greater gusto than their daily bread? No, to whatever degree these men may be so unhappy as to degrade themselves, the Church and the Aristocracy will still find others more degraded. Prostitution is not the game for them. It was no wisdom, not even worldly wisdom, to throw away the high reputation for principle, which they had acquired, and which it is not yet too late to retrieve. But it is not to be dissembled that a few more acts like this last will efface the distinction which the public has hitherto made between them and their opponents. They are in a difficult situation. The public already expected more from them than they could do, and had they even done all that was in their power, it would have been difficult to keep alive the enthusiasm which was at first excited by the change of ministry, but which their defeat on the Corn Bill alone retains in existence.²⁵ And if once the people cease to value them—if it once becomes a matter of indifference to the public whether they are ministers or not,—their reign is over. The hatred of the Tory aristocracy towards them is at this moment kept down only by their fears. Let those fears cease and their majority in parliament will not stand by them for a month, they will fall, and we shall see rushing into office, the rabble rout²⁶ of Tories headed by an apostate Whig.²⁷ The reign of dulness²⁸ will recommence: it will become the fashion, (as before the late change it was rapidly becoming) to affiche²⁹ ignorance, and boast of it as if it were a merit—every thing which savours of mind will again become an object of scorn and opprobrium—it will be criminal to possess any knowledge except the knowledge of routine, or to aim at any thing in public life except to make profit by pandering to the selfish and malignant passions of others—and diligently will that war be prosecuted which a noble personage has recently declared against the people in defence of the right and privilege of spoliation, and the other rights and privileges of his order.³⁰ When this would be the infallible consequence of the dissolution of the ministry, I need not say how earnestly I desire that it may continue. To ensure its continuance nothing is required but constancy. Let their actions be only worthy of their high character, and that country for which they have hazarded so much will most assuredly stand by them. The next session of parliament will finally decide their fate and ours: till then I must delay forming a deliberate opinion, and till then, therefore, I must decline voting upon the question before us.³¹

[1 ]When the Tory Prime Minister, Robert Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool, had a stroke in February 1827, his place was taken on 12 April by George Canning, who had been Foreign Secretary and leader in the House of Commons. Several leading Tories, including Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, Robert Peel, and John Scott, Lord Eldon, refused to serve under Canning. Consequently, some Whigs agreed to support Canning in a coalition: they included Henry Peter Brougham (1788-1868); Henry Richard Vassall Fox (1773-1840), Baron Holland; Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice (1780-1863), Marquis of Lansdowne; and George Tierney (1761-1830). Lord John Russell (1792-1878) and John Charles Spencer (1782-1845), Lord Althorp, were also supportive of the coalition, but less enthusiastic.

[2 ]The Whigs cooperated with Canning in supporting “A Bill for Granting Duties of Customs on Corn,” 7 & 8 George IV (29 Mar., 1827), PP, 1826-27, I, 413-18, which was defeated in the Lords. Subsequently successfully amended with Whig support was a motion on corn laws that would have had the same liberal effects as the Bill (PD, n.s., Vol. 17, col. 1339). The Whig measure, “A Bill for Granting Relief to Certain Persons Dissenting from the Church of England, in Respect of the Mode of Celebrating Marriage,” 8 George IV (14 May, 1827), PP, 1826-27, II, 21-4, was supported by Canning on 19 June, 1827 (PD, n.s., Vol. 17, col. 1345), and passed the Commons, though it was not enacted.

[3 ]Not identified.

[4 ]The Test Acts, designed to ensure religious loyalty, were 25 Charles II, c. 2 (1672) and 30 Charles II, 2nd sess., c. 1 (1677 [1678]). For Canning’s view that they should not be tampered with, see his Speech on the New Administration (3 May, 1827), PD, n.s., Vol. 17, col. 541; Petty-Fitzmaurice’s long-standing opposition is seen in his Speech on the Roman Catholic Question (27 May, 1819), PD, 1st ser., Vol. 40, cols. 438-40.

[5 ]Not identified.

[a-a]L] manuscript, TS [hiatus: the manuscript text ends at the bottom of a page and resumes in mid-sentence on a torn folio]

[6 ]The text ends mid-page; the next folio, 4r, which is cancelled by two vertical inked lines, reads: “The Whigs never were this, and they may now plead their former demerits in exculpation of their present conduct. They did indeed prepare, under the prostituted name of Parliamentary reform, a scheme for giving more power to those who already have it almost all,—the landlords: but I confess that, like Mr. Canning, I prefer Gatton and Old Sarum. I prefer the members who are accountable to nobody, above those who are accountable to men who have an interest in misgovernment. I prefer the man who openly buys his seat above the man to whom it is given on condition of being misemployed; I prefer the man who may do exactly as he pleases, above the man who is allowed to do as he pleases only when he pleases wrong. bAs I therefore prefer Mr. Canning’s no reform above the mock reform of the Whigs, I cannot but applaud them if they have really changed from the one to the other.b But we are told that the Whigs have degraded themselves by a junction with Mr. Canning. So far am I from agreeing in this opinion, cthat I must say, if there be any degradation in the case, it is on the other side.c Mr. Canning and his friends will certainly never lose by a comparison with the Whigs. They have done far more for the people than the Whigs would have dared to do in their situation; and until this junction they have with a stedfastness and constancy most unusual in public men, adhered to their principles through good report and bad, in defiance of the most bitter hostility from a large majority of the predominant section of the aristocracy.” The final word is on f. 4v, with two cancelled false starts, and then the text resumes.

[7 ]Cf. Matthew, 6:24.

[8 ]For a bitter attack on the Coalition, see Buckler-Lethbridge’s Speech on the New Administration (11 May, 1827), PD, n.s., Vol. 17, cols. 745-51.

[9 ]The references are to such speeches by Frederick John Robinson, Lord Goderich (1782-1859), as those on 2 and 25 May, 1827, ibid., cols. 472-9 and 984-99. He was Secretary for War and the Colonies in Canning’s ministry.

[10 ]William Huskisson (1770-1830), then M.P. for Liverpool, with a strong reputation as a man of business, was President of the Board of Trade and Treasurer of the Navy in Canning’s ministry.

[11 ]In his speech of 3 May, 1827, already alluded to, Canning had declared that he would always oppose both.

[12 ]Russell, in his Speech on the Test and Corporation Acts (7 June, 1827), PD, n.s., Vol. 17, col. 1146, used this phrase. A meeting of the Protestant Dissenters’ Committee for the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts on 28 May (referred to below) had urged him not to move a Repeal Bill on 7 June, as he had planned (ibid., 11 May, col. 744). See the leading article in The Times on the matter, 5 June, p. 2.

[13 ]A parliamentary device to forestall a vote on a substantive motion; the motion “that that Question be not now put,” if successful, terminates the debate.

[14 ]The reference is apparently to a meeting of the United Committee for the Repeal of Test and Corporation Acts, held at the King’s Head Tavern, on 28 May, 1827, which was very little reported. Edgar Taylor, however, in “Corporation and Test Acts,” Westminster Review, IX (Jan. 1828), says that (seemingly at this meeting) Henry Brougham “ventured, as we are informed, to threaten them with himself moving the previous question, if, contrary to his views of public politics, they dared to create disturbance by any impatience” (p. 20). The M.P. who cried out has not been identified.

[15 ]Lord John Russell; see n12 above.

[16 ]Stephen Lushington (1782-1873), ecclesiastical lawyer and D.C.L. (Oxford), then M.P. for Tregony, Speech on the Court of Chancery (22 May, 1827), PD, n.s., Vol.17, cols. 962-5; Brougham, ibid., cols. 965-73 (in which he seemed to repudiate his many strong attacks on Chancery).

[17 ]When Joseph Hume moved to repeal one of the Six Acts, 60 George III & I George IV, c. 9, concerning blasphemous and seditious libels, the motion was lost for want of Whig support, though the Whigs had been loud in their opposition to the passing of the Six Acts in 1819. For Hume’s speech of 31 May, 1827, see PD, n.s., vol. 17, cols. 1063-6; the division is recorded ibid., col. 1083.

[18 ]Cf. Brougham, Speech on Trade with India (15 May, 1827), ibid., col. 841. For the phrase, see No. 5, n8.

[19 ]Canning, Speech on the Publication of Libel (31 May, 1827), ibid., cols. 1077-81.

[20 ]The conduct of Charles Henry Somerset (1767-1831) as Governor of the Cape of Good Hope had been impugned in a memorial to parliament in July 1825 by a banished settler, Bishop Burnett (a retired Naval Lieutenant), and defended by Robert John Wilmot Horton (1784-1841), M.P. for Newcastle-under-Lyme, on 8 May, 1826, PD, n.s., Vol. 15, cols. 964-5.

[21 ]Cobbett’s Weekly Political Pamphlet, a twopenny version of his Political Register, had been labelled “twopenny trash” in a leading article in the ministerial Courier on 2 Jan., 1817, p. 2; Cobbett gleefully seized on the label (see, e.g., Political Register, 6 Jan., 1820, col. 575). 60 George III & I George IV, c. 9, was designed to control such publications.

[22 ]See, e.g., “New Ministry and Mr. Canning,” The Times, 4 Apr., 1827, p. 7, and 9 Apr., p. 2.

[23 ]The shipping interest had attacked Huskisson for modifying the Navigation Laws, for example by 6 George IV, c. 114 (1825), to which Mill refers below as the “reciprocity bill” (see also CW, Vol. VI, pp. 123-47); Huskisson defended himself, disproving their case that British shipping had declined, in his Speech on the Shipping Interest of the Country (7 May, 1827), PD, n.s., Vol. 17, cols. 619-62.

[24 ]“A Bill to Amend the Laws Relating to the Customs,” 7 & 8 George IV (8 June, 1827), PP, 1826-27, II, 371-84 (enacted as 7 & 8 George IV, c. 56 [1827]). An unnumbered clause on p. 375 of the Bill added thirteen to the list of products that could be imported from Europe only in British vessels or those of the nation of origin.

[25 ]An amendment against the principle of the Bill (see n2 above) having passed in the Lords on 12 June, the government decided not to proceed to third reading (PD, n.s., Vol. 17, cols. 1238, 1258).

[26 ]Cf. The Two Noble Kinsmen, III, v, 106; in The Riverside Shakespeare, p. 1661.

[27 ]Probably Richard Temple Nugent Brydges Chandos Grenville (1776-1839), Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, political leader of the Grenvillites, a faction formerly associated with the Whigs. Buckingham’s hunger for high office was proverbial in political circles.

[28 ]Mill is using terms employed by Alexander Pope (1688-1744) in The Dunciad (1728), in Works, ed. Joseph Warton, et al., new ed., 10 vols. (London: Priestley, and Hearne, 1822, 1825), Vol. V, passim.

[29 ]A pencilled interlineation, contemporary but probably not Mill’s, reads: “trumpet the praises”.

[30 ]James Edward Harris (1778-1841), Earl of Malmesbury, Speech on the Game Laws Amendment Bill (11 May, 1827), PD, n.s., Vol. 17, cols. 733-8.

[31 ]Here appears in pencil, in the same hand that supplied the other comment: “General Remarks—I have expressed to you before in conversation that although we do not differ much in the essentials of our opinions as to Canning and the present administration, that we differ in the quantums of praise which we ought to give to them—I should say—that the style and tone of your language in the preceeding [sic] pages when applied to Canning Huskisson, Robinson etc. leaves not enough of difference between them and the Hampdons [sic?] Turgots in past times or the Humes Ricardos and Benthams at present—And it appears to me that we have Evidence enough on which to form an opinion—and that you have given this evidence in your speech—Don’t you think that you have in some degree admitted the usual party plea of the alternative in the last two pages—

Otherwise I think the speech very well calculated for its purpose—”

[6 ]The text ends mid-page; the next folio, 4r, which is cancelled by two vertical inked lines, reads: “The Whigs never were this, and they may now plead their former demerits in exculpation of their present conduct. They did indeed prepare, under the prostituted name of Parliamentary reform, a scheme for giving more power to those who already have it almost all,—the landlords: but I confess that, like Mr. Canning, I prefer Gatton and Old Sarum. I prefer the members who are accountable to nobody, above those who are accountable to men who have an interest in misgovernment. I prefer the man who openly buys his seat above the man to whom it is given on condition of being misemployed; I prefer the man who may do exactly as he pleases, above the man who is allowed to do as he pleases only when he pleases wrong. bAs I therefore prefer Mr. Canning’s no reform above the mock reform of the Whigs, I cannot but applaud them if they have really changed from the one to the other.b But we are told that the Whigs have degraded themselves by a junction with Mr. Canning. So far am I from agreeing in this opinion, cthat I must say, if there be any degradation in the case, it is on the other side.c Mr. Canning and his friends will certainly never lose by a comparison with the Whigs. They have done far more for the people than the Whigs would have dared to do in their situation; and until this junction they have with a stedfastness and constancy most unusual in public men, adhered to their principles through good report and bad, in defiance of the most bitter hostility from a large majority of the predominant section of the aristocracy.” The final word is on f. 4v, with two cancelled false starts, and then the text resumes.

[bAs I therefore prefer Mr. Canning’s no reform above the mock reform of the Whigs, I cannot but applaud them if they have really changed from the one to the other.b][lightly cancelled in pencil in MS]

[cthat I must say, if there be any degradation in the case, it is on the other side.c][lightly cancelled in pencil in MS]