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Conceive that we are looking from the public gallery.
Directly before us, at the bottom, is a sort of sentry-box, surmounted by the royal arms. There, in an arm chair covered with green leather, sits the speaker, in his black robe and greyish mittens, solemnly dressed out in an immense wig, the wings of which fall to his waist.
At his feet is a narrow table, at which the principal clerk is seated, supporting on his two hands a large face, smiling impurturbably under a little _perruque_ that hangs over his head in the form of a horse-shoe.
The benches on which the members sit, are ranged rectilinearly in different divisions, to the right and left, and in front of the speaker. Every one places himself in the position that is most agreeable to himself, and sits, or stands, at his pleasure. Every member wears his hat, except when addressing the speaker. Every one speaks from the place in which he finds himself at the moment. It is not to the house, however, but to the speaker that they must address themselves.
The simple and country-like habits of the house are well suited to the character of representatives of the people. It proves that the Commons meet not to take part in a show, but to discharge the business of the country.
At three o'clock the speaker enters the chamber, preceded by the chief of the ushers, the mace on his shoulder, and followed by a sergeant-at-arms, with a sword at his side, and dressed in black after the French fashion. Arrived at his chair, the speaker first counts the members present. If there be forty, the session is opened, and the chaplain repeats his prayers, to which every member listens, standing and uncovered, with his face towards the back of his bench.
Generally the first hours are consumed in matters of minor importance. Local and private bills are discussed. The benches begin to be filled between eight and nine in the evening. The house is rarely full before midnight. From this period till two in the morning, they discuss great questions, such as are likely to bring on an important vote.
Such are the English. They distrust, beyond all reason, the frivolity of their own minds. They consider it always dangerous to embark in grave affairs, if their dinner has not been stored away to serve as ballast. It is indispensable that they should meditate and mature their opinions and their eloquence, while engaged in drinking their wine and grog.
When simple Mr. Brougham (the period of his greatest glory) Lord Brougham never came to the House of Commons until he had emptied three bottles of Port. It was at the bottom of his glass that he found calmness, wisdom, and discretion. But since his elevation to the House of Lords, his lordship is forced to speak fasting. It is in consequence of this change that he is now always intoxicated. The sobriety of his stomach produces the intemperance of his tongue and of his brain.
The invariable prolongation of its sittings late into the night, is the cause that the House of Commons never assembles on Saturday. Encroachment on the Sabbath would otherwise be an inevitable legislative sacrilege; and we must admit, that it would be with but bad grace that the Parliament alone should violate the Puritanical laws which it so rigorously maintains, and which prescribe, during the twenty-four hours of that sacred day, the most absolute and universal idleness.
Two words of personal statistics at present.
The House of Commons contains four hundred and seventy-one members for England, twenty-nine for Wales, fifty-three for Scotland, and a hundred and five for Ireland—in all, six hundred and fifty-eight. On important occasions, very few fail to appear at their posts. Six hundred and twenty-two voted, at the commencement of this session, on the election of the present speaker. Mr. Abercromby, elected by the opposition, obtained a majority of but eight votes over Sir Charles Manners Sutton, the candidate of the then ministry.
You observe that the chamber is divided into two parts, almost equal in size. On one side, the ministry and the reformers; on the other, the conservatives, forming the present opposition.
Each of these grand divisions may perhaps be subdivided. Among the reformers or whigs, radical reformers, pure radicals, and repealers;[2] among the conservatives, the old tories and the demi-conservatives. Such subdivisions, however, are useless. It is no easy thing to distinguish these different shades of opinion. Besides, they are every day becoming gradually less distinct, and will soon present but two parties.
[Footnote 2: The _repealers_ are Irish members advocating the repeal of the union between Ireland and England.]
In the first place, are there any whigs? Are the whigs a party? I answer, no. There are some great noblemen, some minister-lords, whose ancestors were whigs, but they themselves are not. To continue the leaders of a true political party, they have been forced to become radicals, and to make themselves interpreters and advocates of the popular wants. What has been {472} the result? The whigs and the radicals are absorbed, the one in the other. Seeing so many liberal concessions obtained by England, the Irish Catholics have followed the example of the liberals; they have put off their extreme demands; they have ceased to contend for the repeal of the union. Under the orders of O'Connell, they march behind the ministerial troops, and sustain them so as to prevent their falling back, come what may.
In the camp of the opposition there is the same fusion. Sir Robert Peel has dressed all the tories in the uniform of conservatives. Even the little irresolute batallion of Lord Stanley, has recently, with its chief, assumed the new livery of the defenders of the church and of the throne. The _tiers-parti_ has not been more successful on the side of the Manche than on the Parisian.
The question, then, is simply and plainly raised. It is the great question that is to be decided between the old society and the new, the same that was raised in France in 1789; only, if the throne is wise, here the whole war may be finished on the floors of Parliament.
The field of battle is now before the reader. You have the army of reformers and that of the conservatives in the presence of each other—each recognizing but one watchword, but one standard; the first, stronger and bolder, but having too many leaders, and a rear guard more impatient to arrive in action than the principal body; the second, more compact, better disciplined, and more obedient to its only chief.
Great as may be the exasperation on each side, you will rarely ever observe the belligerent parties, even in their hostilities, depart from their habits of chivalrous loyalty.
There is a sort of Parliamentary law of nations established in the house.
The opposition never takes advantage of the absence of a minister to interrogate his colleagues on matters foreign to their own departments.
Nor will a minister ever introduce a bill without notice; the courtesy, in this respect, is extremely great between the two parties. Challenges are regularly exchanged; the day and the hour are both fixed. If any member mentions his inability to attend at the appointed time, the motion is hurried or delayed to suit his convenience.
If the question should be one of importance, and the decision doubtful, whatever urgent business may call a member away, he will not desert his post, unless he is enabled to find among his adversaries some one equally desirous to absent himself. They make an arrangement then that both shall stay away, and this double contract is always held sacred.
In their struggles, though often violent, the blows are always generous, and aimed in front. However, the noise of the interruptions by which approbation or discontent is expressed, would astonish and terrify a stranger—above all, one unaccustomed to the discordance of English pronunciation. The sound is unusual, striking, and the more astonishing, as at first you are unable to tell whence it proceeds. There are six hundred men, seated, uttering savage cries of joy or anger, their bodies all the while remaining immovable, their features preserving their usual phlegmatic and calm expression. These tumults produce quite a fantastic effect. _Hear! hear!_ is the cry of satisfaction and encouragement. Listen to the speaker!—his discourse penetrates and touches the soul of the question; let us listen to him—hear him. _Spoke!—spoke!_ indicates impatience, ennui, lassitude. You abuse your privilege—you have said enough—you have spoken! This reproach is imperative—it is rarely resisted. _Order! order!_ is the call to order; it is a summons to the speaker to notice and reprimand the offending member who has passed the boundaries of propriety—for, to the speaker alone belongs the right to pronounce judgment on such occasions.
The speaker centres in himself the omnipotence of the chamber of which he is the representative. His authority is supreme, within as well as without the walls of the Parliament house. His situation renders him a personage of very high importance. He has his official palace, he holds his _levees_, to which none are admitted unless in court dress. Singular inconsistency! the very same Commoners who enter booted, spurred, with their over-coats and their hats on, into their own hall, would find the doors of their own speaker closed against them, if they should present themselves without ruffles and dressed _à la Française_. This rigorous particularity is unreasonable. Mr. Hume, however, in a recent attack upon this absurd etiquette, found himself unable to succeed against the powerful prejudice by which it is upheld. The sound sense of his objections only passed for radical folly. Thus it is that with the English the ancient forms of etiquette have deeper root than even their old abuses. You may be certain that they will have reformed the church, the aristocracy, and perhaps the crown itself, before the grotesque wigs of their magistrates. Their entire revolution will have been completed, while their new liberty will be still distinguished by the manners and dress of the _ancien regime_.
In England, the real and undeniable sovereignty is in the House of Commons. The British peerage is a mere phantom, a little more respectably clothed than that of France, but quite as much of a phantom. Still this very British Peerage, which is condemned to obey the Commons and register their edicts, preserves all the appearances of supremacy! It continues to command the Commons to appear at its bar, who regularly obey this summons, preceded by their speaker! And when the Lords, seated in their own chamber, have signified the royal assent to the wishes of the Commons, the latter withdraw, bowing as they go out! The real upper or superior chamber consents to be called and to appear always as the inferior.
How much do I prefer to these ceremonious _levees_ of the British speaker, the popular balls of the president of the French Chamber of Deputies, where no orders are given to the guards to prevent the entry of persons not in costume! Above all, I like those numbered letters of invitation—the four hundred and fifty-nine first for the representatives of the people, and then the four hundred and sixtieth for the Duke of Orleans, as the first peer of the realm, and so on for the rest. In France the peerage comes after the people!
It is much to be regretted that the French do not remove the abuses themselves, as they do their names and customs. Their system is different from the English, but it is very doubtful if it be the best. The latter are always very respectful subjects; they kneel {473} down at the feet of royalty in supplicating it to take their will for its pleasure. The former hold themselves erect and firm before their monarch, who leads them by the nose, suffering them all the while to proclaim themselves at their ease, the true sovereigns of the kingdom.
Mr. Abercromby, the present speaker, by no means solicited the honor of the chair which, at the opening of the session, was decreed him by the first act of the reformers. Constrained to maintain, in the name of the house, the privileges of that body, he represents that assembly with all the dignity that his grotesque wig will permit. Happily he has thick grey eye-brows, which harmonize extremely well with his light-colored official _perruque_. In spite of the enormous quantity of hair that overshadows his person, there is nothing savage in his appearance; on the contrary, a mild and affable dignity eminently distinguishes him; his manners are marked by a noble ease; he also speaks well, and his full and sonorous voice is admirably suited to the station which he occupies as president of a large and popular assembly.
The conservatives will never forgive him for having, even involuntarily, dethroned their candidate. They regret the airs of a superannuated dandy, and the old-fashioned elegance of Sir Charles Manners Sutton, who, having grown old in the chair, had been long accustomed to regard toryism with a favorable eye. It is true that Mr. Abercromby, an avowed partizan of the reformers, has not, in consequence of his acceptance of the speakership, become the inexorable censor of his radical friends. So that when O'Connell, provoked by some imprudent noblemen, branded them with epithets never to be effaced, Mr. Abercromby was guilty of the heinous crime of not interposing to check the vengeance of the outraged orator. Impartiality, according to the tories, would consist in permitting their attacks, without allowing the insulted or injured party the rights of defence.
I have now given you a general and hasty sketch of the leading characteristics of the house; it only remains for me to carry you to one of its sittings. We will select the occasion of the presentation of the bill for the reform of the English and Welch Corporations, which was, after a month of argument, finally voted. On the evening of the 5th of June, then, it was known that Lord John Russell was to introduce his bill in the Commons. What was to be the nature of this measure, so long promised and so impatiently expected on one side, and so much feared on the other? Curiosity in London was at its height; it was the third day of the Epsom races! No matter! Every one returned to the city—horses were abandoned for politics. As early as twelve the crowd began to encumber the environs of Westminster, pressing towards the gates of the palace of the Parliament. With great difficulty I succeeded in squeezing myself into the public gallery.
At three, prayers being said, the speaker having counted with the end of his little flat three-cornered hat the members in attendance, and more than forty being present, the session opened.
There was at first a long discussion of a bill regulating the distribution of water in the parish of _Mary-le-bone_; the debate was of but little interest, though Mr. Henry Lytton Bulwer, Mr. Hume, and Sir Francis Burdett look frequent part in it. My attention was fixed on their persons, if not on their discourses.
Mr. Henry Lytton Bulwer is a young radical who leads a life altogether aristocratic. He is renowned for the elegance of his grooms and of his vehicles. Nobody wears a black frock so short and so tight. He speaks well and easily, with a voice somewhat unpleasant, his head elevated and thrown back after the fashion of men of small stature. He is the elder brother of the novelist, and is himself the author of a work on France, in which he judges of French manners, society, politics and literature with a degree of insane ignorance hardly less disgusting than the _naïve_ buffoonery of Lady Morgan. It is a distinguishing characteristic of the English, to write without knowledge, observation or study on every country they pass through. It is a pity that a man of common sense and intelligence such as Mr. Henry Lytton Bulwer, should have made his literary _debut_ by so vulgar a piece of national _gaucherie_.
There is nothing about the person of Mr. Hume that would strike you; he looks like a good-natured, unaffected, broad-shouldered countryman, independent in his character, and utterly careless of fashion. His mere manner, to say nothing of his words, expresses invincible aversion to all ceremony. His appearance does not belie his character. His enunciation has all the ease, firmness, and roughness of his opinions. One of the chief priests of radicalism—an inexorable and incorruptible reformer, he has sworn never to sit, but on the benches of the opposition; it is from fidelity to his oath, not from sympathy, as you might well conclude, that he now sits in the ranks of the conservatives.
Sir Francis Burdett differs from Mr. Hume both in his air, height, and figure. Picture to yourself a long body, about five feet ten inches, in white velvet breeches, with boots turned down at the top, and a blue frock. A white vest, a white cravat, a little bald, flat head, well powdered, will complete the portrait. The fate of public men who outlive themselves, is often singular. Sir Francis Burdett, ten years since, was as fashionable as his dress. He was the favorite of Westminster—the popular orator of the House of Commons. He caused himself to be imprisoned in the Tower, for having dared to speak too boldly against royalty. Now he is suspected by the people—they suspect him of voting with toryism. They despise him, they accuse him of versatility. “But,” he replies, “it is you, perhaps, who have changed. Reformers formerly, you are now radicals! Tories in my day, you are now reformers! I have preserved my opinions and my dress!” Well! the error is with you, Sir Francis Burdett; you should have changed also, or not have lived to become old. If you had died at the proper time, perhaps you might now have your statue of bronze near that of Canning, in Westminster square. Who knows if to-morrow the same people who formerly carried you in triumph, may not ornament your white breeches with the mud of the streets leading to the Parliament house?
At last the discussion touching the waters of Mary-le-bone draws to a close. The house having to vote on this unlucky bill, the galleries for the reporters and the public were cleared. This is the custom of Parliament; decisions never take place but with closed doors.
When I returned to the gallery, the hall presented {474} quite an altered appearance. The less piece was finished—the great one was about to commence. The ranks on the right and left grew thicker every moment—each member hastened to his post.
Lord John Russell, the official commander in chief of the reformers, had appeared on the ministerial benches, to the right of the speaker. By his side, you observed his principal aides-de-camp, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Spring Rice, with a large bald forehead, and the countenance of a Satyr, the most ready, if not the ablest speaker in the cabinet; Lord Morpeth, secretary for Ireland, a large young man whose premature grey hairs, appear at a distance to be of a light yellow, looking like a timid and blushing youth; Lord Palmerston, an old bloated dandy, whose fat face seems to swell itself out between his thick whiskers with more satisfaction since he is no longer led by the nose by Talleyrand—Lord Palmerston, who has not wished to be made a peer since his last return to power, pretending that his eloquence has a more open field in the Commons than it could have in the House of Lords.
In front of the ministerial group, and separated from it only by the table of the clerks, sits Sir Robert Peel, surrounded also by his conservative aids, among whom you may distinguish Lord Granville Somerset the quasimodo of Westminster, whose double hump does not prevent him from being one of the most alert to sound the Protestant tocsin against Popery.