Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches - Volume 4 by Thomas Badington Macaulay (e ink ebook reader txt) 📕

New England were more prosperous than the inhabitants of the Old World when Pennsylvania and New England were as loyal as any part of the dominions of George the First, George the Second, and George the Third; and we know that in Van Diemen's Land, in New Zealand, in Australasia, in New Brunswick, in Canada, the subjects of Her Majesty are as prosperous as they could be under the government of a President. The real cause is that, in these new countries, where there is a boundless extent of fertile land, nothing is easier than for the labourer to pass from the place which is overstocked with labour to the place which is understocked; and that thus both he who moves and he who stays always have enough. This it is which keeps up the prosperity of the Atlantic States of the Union. They pour their population back to the Ohio, across the Ohio to the Mississippi, and beyond the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains. Everywhere the desert is receding before the advancing flood of human life and civilisation; and, in the meantime, those who are left behind enjoy abundance, and never endure such privations as in old countries too often befall the labouring classes. And why has not the condition of our labourers been equally fortunate? Simply, as I believe, on account of the great distance which separates our country from the new and unoccupied part of the world, and on account of the expense of traversing that distance. Science, however, has abridged, and is abridging, that distance: science has diminished, and is diminishing, that expense. Already New Zealand is, for all practical purposes, nearer to us than New England was to the Puritans who fled thither from the tyranny of Laud. Already the ports of North America, Halifax, Boston, and New York, are nearer to us than, within the memory of persons now living, the Island of Skye and the county of Donegal were to London. Already emigration is beginning to produce the same effect here which it has produced on the Atlantic States of the Union. And do not imagine that our countryman who goes abroad is altogether lost to us. Even if he goes from under the dominion of the British Queen and the protection of the British flag he will still, under the benignant system of free trade, continue to be bound to us by close ties. If he ceases to be a neighbour, he is still a benefactor and a customer. Go where he may, if you will but maintain that system inviolate, it is for us that he is turning the forests into cornfields on the banks of the Mississippi; it is for us that he is tending his sheep and preparing his fleeces in the heart of Australasia; and in the meantime it is from us that he receives those commodities which are produced with most advantage in old societies, where great masses of capital have been accumulated. His candlesticks and his pots and his pans come from Birmingham; his knives from Sheffield; the light cotton jacket which he wears in summer from Manchester; the good cloth coat which he wears in winter from Leeds; and in return he sends us back, from what was lately a wilderness, the good flour out of which is made the large loaf which the British labourer divides among his children. I believe that it is in these changes that we shall see the best solution of the question of the franchise. We shall make our institutions more democratic than they are, not by lowering the franchise to the level of the great mass of the community, but by raising, in a time which will be very short when compared with the existence of a nation, the great mass up to the level of the franchise.

I feel that I must stop. I had meant to advert to some other subjects. I had meant to say something about the ballot, to which, as you know, I have always been favourable; something about triennial parliaments, to which, as you know, I have always been honestly opposed; something about your university tests; something about the cry for religious equality which has lately been raised in Ireland; but I feel that I cannot well proceed. I have only strength to thank you again, from the very bottom of my heart, for the great honour which you have done me in choosing me, without solicitation, to represent you in Parliament. I am proud of our connection; and I shall try to act in such a manner that you may not be ashamed of it.

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EXCLUSION OF JUDGES FROM THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. (JUNE 1, 1853)

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 1ST OF JUNE 1853.

On the first of June 1853, Lord Hotham, Member for Kent, moved the third reading of a bill of which the chief object was to make the Master of the Rolls incapable of sitting in the House of Commons. Mr Henry Drummond, Member for Surrey, moved that the bill should be read a third time that day six months. In support of Mr Drummond's amendment the following Speech was made.

The amendment was carried by 224 votes to 123.

I cannot, Sir, suffer the House to proceed to a division without expressing the very strong opinion which I have formed on this subject. I shall give my vote, with all my heart and soul, for the amendment moved by my honourable friend the Member for Surrey. I never gave a vote in my life with a more entire confidence that I was in the right; and I cannot but think it discreditable to us that a bill for which there is so little to be said, and against which there is so much to be said, should have been permitted to pass through so many stages without a division.

On what grounds, Sir, does the noble lord, the Member for Kent, ask us to make this change in the law? The only ground, surely, on which a Conservative legislator ought ever to propose a change in the law is this, that the law, as it stands, has produced some evil. Is it then pretended that the law, as it stands, has produced any evil? The noble lord himself tells you that it has produced no evil whatever. Nor can it be said that the experiment has not been fairly tried. This House and the office of Master of the Rolls began to exist, probably in the same generation, certainly in the same century. During six hundred years this House has been open to Masters of the Rolls. Many Masters of the Rolls have sate here, and have taken part, with great ability and authority, in our deliberations. To go no further back than the accession of the House of Hanover, Jekyll was a member of this House, and Strange, and Kenyon, and Pepper Arden, and Sir William Grant, and Sir John Copley, and Sir Charles Pepys, and finally Sir John Romilly. It is not even pretended that any one of these eminent persons was ever, on any single occasion, found to be the worse member of this House for being Master of the Rolls, or the worse Master of the Rolls for being a member of this House. And if so, is it, I ask, the part of a wise statesman, is it, I ask still more emphatically, the part of a Conservative statesman, to alter a system which has lasted six centuries, and which has never once, during all those centuries, produced any but good effects, merely because it is not in harmony with an abstract principle?

And what is the abstract principle for the sake of which we are asked to innovate in reckless defiance of all the teaching of experience? It is this; that political functions ought to be kept distinct from judicial functions. So sacred, it seems, is this principle, that the union of the political and judicial characters ought not to be suffered to continue even in a case in which that union has lasted through many ages without producing the smallest practical inconvenience. "Nothing is so hateful," I quote the words of the noble lord who brought in this bill, "nothing is so hateful as a political judge."

Now, Sir, if I assent to the principle laid down by the noble lord, I must pronounce his bill the most imbecile, the most pitiful, attempt at reform that ever was made. The noble lord is a homoeopathist in state medicine. His remedies are administered in infinitesimal doses. If he will, for a moment, consider how our tribunals are constituted, and how our parliament is constituted, he will perceive that the judicial and political character are, through all grades, everywhere combined, everywhere interwoven, and that therefore the evil which he proposes to remove vanishes, as the mathematicians say, when compared with the immense mass of evil which he leaves behind.

It has been asked, and very sensibly asked, why, if you exclude the Master of the Rolls from the House, you should not also exclude the Recorder of the City of London. I should be very sorry to see the Recorder of the City of London excluded. But I must say that the reasons for excluding him are ten times as strong as the reasons for excluding the Master of the Rolls. For it is well-known that political cases of the highest importance have been tried by Recorders of the City of London. But why not exclude all Recorders, and all Chairmen of Quarter Sessions? I venture to say that there are far stronger reasons for excluding a Chairman of Quarter Sessions than for excluding a Master of the Rolls. I long ago attended, during two or three years, the Quarter Sessions of a great county. There I constantly saw in the chair an eminent member of this House. An excellent criminal judge he was. Had he been a veteran lawyer, he could hardly have tried causes more satisfactorily or more expeditiously. But he was a keen politician: he had made a motion which had turned out a Government; and when he died he was a Cabinet Minister. Yet this gentleman, the head of the Blue interest, as it was called, in his county, might have had to try men of the Orange party for rioting at a contested election. He voted for the corn laws; and he might have had to try men for breaches of the peace which had originated in the discontent caused by the corn laws. He was, as I well remember, hooted, and, I rather think, pelted too, by the mob of London for his conduct towards Queen Caroline; and, when he went down to his county, he might have had to sit in judgment on people for breaking windows which had not been illuminated in honour of Her Majesty's victory. This is not a solitary instance. There are, I dare say, in this House, fifty Chairmen of Quarter Sessions. And this is an union of judicial and political functions against which there is really much to be said. For it is important, not only that the administration of justice should be pure, but that it should be unsuspected. Now I am willing to believe that the administration of justice by the unpaid magistrates in political cases is pure: but unsuspected it certainly is not. It is notorious that, in times of political excitement, the cry of the whole