Lord George Bentinck, Benjamin Disraeli [book club books .TXT] 📗

and requesting that the conversation which had taken place might be considered private. Upon this, Lord George Bentinck drew up a statement, 'setting forth all that had passed,' and forwarded it to the secretary as his reply. Subsequently, he met that gentleman, who admitted that 'every word in that statement, as respected the conversation which had passed, was perfectly correct.'

This being the state of the case, on the second night of the debate on Mr. Eliot Yorke's amendment, which we have noticed, and after the adjournment had been moved and carried, the government proceeded with some motions of form, which indicated their intention to secure, if possible, the third reading of the Corn Bill before Easter. Upon this, Lord George Bentinck, after a hurried and apparently agitated conversation with the Secretary of the Treasury and others connected with the government, rose to move the adjournment of the House. He then gave as his reason the circumstances which we have briefly conveyed. A scene of considerable confusion occurred; the Secretary of the Treasury admitted the correctness of the statement; the First Lord of the Treasury rejected the alleged authority of the secretary. Mr. Tuffnell, on the part of the Whigs, intimated that public business could not be carried on if the recognized organs were repudiated by their chief. The feeling of all parties coincided with Mr. Tuffnell; finally, an Irish repealer rose and announced that the government were bartering their Corn Bill to secure coercion to Ireland. Lord George Bentinck said the Coercion Bill was 'a second Curfew Act,' that nothing but necessity could justify it, and if it were necessary it must be immediate. Sir Robert remained irritated and obstinate. He would not give up a stage either of the Corn Bill or the Coercion Bill; he wanted to advance both before Easter. The mere division of the House between Free-traders and Protectionists had already ceased; there were breakers ahead, and it was not difficult from this night to perceive that the course of the government would not be so summary as they had once expected.

This strange interlude occurred after midnight on the 26th of March. On Friday, the 27th, the House divided on the amendment of Mr. Eliot Yorke, and the Corn Bill was read for the second time. On the reassembling of the House on Monday, the 30th, an extraordinary scene took place.

It appears that the cabinet, after painful deliberation, had arrived at the conclusion that, notwithstanding the importance of sending up the Corn Bill to the House of Lords before Easter, it was absolutely necessary to proceed at once with the Coercion Bill; and it was resolved that the Secretary of State should on this evening lay before the House the facts and reasons which 'induce the Government to believe in the necessity of the measure.' Mr. O'Connell and his followers had already announced their intention of opposing the first reading of the bill, an allowable but very unusual course. It is competent to the House of Commons to refuse a first reading to any bill sent down to it; but the journals afford few examples of the exercise of such a privilege. A member of the House of Lords may lay on the table, as a matter of pure right, any bill which he thinks proper to introduce, and it is read a first time as a matter of course; the orders of the House of Commons are different, and a member must obtain permission before he introduces a bill. This permission is occasionally refused; but when a bill comes from the House of Lords, the almost invariable custom is to read it for the first time without discussion. There are, however, as we have observed, instances to the contrary, and the Irish Coercion Bill of '33 was one of them. So pregnant a precedent could not be forgotten on the present occasion. The government therefore were prepared for an opposition to the first reading of their bill; but trusting to the strength of their case and the assumed support of the Whig party, they believed that this opposition would not be stubborn, more especially as there were numerous stages of the measure on which the views of its opponents might be subsequently expressed, and as they themselves were prepared to engage that they would not proceed further than this first reading until the Corn Bill had passed the House of Commons. The consternation, therefore, of the government could scarcely be concealed, when they found on Monday night that they had to encounter a well-organized party opposition, headed by Sir William Somerville, and sanctioned and supported in debate by Lord John Russell and Sir George Grey.

It would seem indeed a difficult and somewhat graceless office for the Whigs to oppose the first reading of a government bill, concerning, too, the highest duties of administration, which had received such unqualified approval from all the leading members of their party in the House of Lords, who had competed in declarations of its necessity and acknowledgments of its moderation, while they only regretted the too tardy progress of a measure so indispensable to the safety of the country and the security of her Majesty's subjects. A curious circumstance, however, saved them from this dilemma, which yet in the strange history of faction they had nevertheless in due time to encounter.

As the Coercion Bill coming from the Lords appeared on the paper of the day in the form of a notice of motion, the Secretary of State, this being a day on which orders have precedence, had to move that such orders of the day should be postponed, so that he might proceed with the motion on the state of Ireland, of which notice had been given. The strict rule of the House is, that on Mondays and Fridays, orders of the day should have precedence of notices of motion, so that it was impossible for the Secretary of State to make his motion, that a certain bill (the Protection of Life--Ireland--Bill) should be read a first time without permission of the House, a permission always granted as a matter of course on such nights to the government, since the business which can be brought forward, whether in the shape of orders or motions, is purely government business, and thus the interests and privilege of no independent member of Parliament can be affected by a relaxation of the rules which the convenience of a ministry and the conduct of public business occasionally require. However, on this night, no sooner had the Secretary of State made, in a few formal words, this formal request, than up sprang Sir William Somerville to move an amendment, that the orders of the day should not be postponed, which he supported in a spirited address, mainly on the ground of the great inconvenience that must be suffered from the postponement of the Corn Bill. The motion of the Secretary of State would produce a long, exciting, and exasperating debate. Time would be lost--for what? To advance one stage of a measure which it was avowedly not the intention of the government to press at the present moment. Sir William concluded with a very earnest appeal to Lord George Bentinck and his friends, who might at no very distant period have the government of Ireland entrusted to them, not, for the sake of a momentary postponement of the Corn Bill, to place themselves, by voting for this measure of coercion, in collision with the Irish nation.' He called upon Lord George Bentinck to weigh the position in which he was placed.

This amendment was seconded by Mr. Smith O'Brien, the member for the county of Limerick, who warned the government that they 'were entering on a contest which would continue for months.' He taunted the minister with governing the country without a party. What chance was there of reconciliation with his estranged friends? After the treatment of that 'disavowed plenipotentiary,' the Secretary of the Treasury, who would be again found willing to undertake the mission of patching up a truce? He was not present when the terms of the treaty were exposed: but he understood, that if the government introduced this Coercion Bill before Easter, then that Lord George Bentinck would deem it wise, proper, and expedient; but if after Easter, then the complexion and character of the bill were, in the noble lord's judgment, utterly transformed, and it was declared to be quite untenable and unconstitutional. Was that the kind of support on which the government calculated for passing this measure?

The Secretary of State made a dexterous, conciliatory, almost humble address, in reply to the taunts of Mr. Smith O'Brien. He said that he was well aware of the fact of which he had been just reminded, that, in the present state of parties, the declared adherents of the government were a small minority; he even, while excusing the delay in the progress of the Irish measure, reminded the House of the curious fact, that since the meeting of Parliament, two successive Irish secretaries had lost their seats in the House of Commons in consequence of supporting the administration of which they were members.

The case of the government was really so good and clear, that for a moment it seemed the opposition could hardly persist in their unusual proceeding: but this was a night of misfortunes.

There had been for some time a smouldering feud between the secretary and the Recorder of Dublin. The learned gentleman had seized the occasion which the present state of parties afforded, and in the course of the recent debate on the second reading of the Corn Bill, had declared that the asserted famine in Ireland was, on the part of the government, 'a great exaggeration.' The secretary had addressed himself particularly to this observation in his speech on the 27th, the night of the division, and had noticed it in a tone of acerbity. He had even intimated that it might have been used by one who was a disappointed solicitor for high office, and whom the government had declined to assist in an unwarrantable arrangement of the duties and salary of the judicial post he at present occupied. The learned Recorder, justly indignant at this depreciating innuendo, resolved to make an opportunity on the following Monday for his vindication and retort. He rose, therefore, immediately after the skilful and winning appeal of the secretary, and pronounced an invective against the right honourable gentleman which was neither ill-conceived nor ill-delivered. It revived the passions that for a moment seemed inclined to lull, and the Protectionists, who on this occasion were going to support the government, forgot the common point of union, while the secretary was described as 'the evil genius of the cabinet.'

After this, it was impossible to arrest the course of debate. Mr. O'Connell, who appeared to be in a state of great debility, made one of those acute points for which he was distinguished. He said the government complained of the threat held out by those who opposed the bill, that they would avail themselves of the forms of the House to give it every opposition in their power. But what did the government do themselves? Why, they were trying to trample upon one of the sessional orders and to abrogate the forms of the House in order to coerce the Irish people. Lord George Bentinck said, that 'the chief minister had told them, that this was a bill to put down murder and assassination; in that case, if this bill were delayed, the blood of every man murdered in Ireland was on the head of her Majesty's ministers.' Sir George Grey followed, and avoiding any discussion of the state of Ireland, in which Lord George had entered, supported the amendment of Sir William Somerville, on the broad ground that the bill for the repeal of the corn laws