The Constitutional History of England from 1760 to 1860

of all the Ministers.-Detention of Napoleon at St. Helena.-Question whether the Regent could Give Evidence in a Court of Law in a Civil

uine of those who placed a loyal confidence in the old invincibility of English prowess could not have anticipated the unbroken series of glories which were to reward their efforts. For four years Lord Wellington had contended against all the most renowned marshals of the Empire,[172] driving them back from impregnable lines of defence, defeatin

oo fully occupied with measures necessary for the conduct of the war to leave it mu

ry much in the habit of withholding or abridging them. Other statutes, such as the Test Act, had subsequently been passed against every sect of Dissenters, though they had only imposed civil disabilities, and had not inflicted penalties. But the new Prime-minister was a man to whose disposition anything resembling persecution was foreign and repugnant. Before his predecessor's unhappy death he had already discussed with him the propriety of abolishing laws conceived in such a spirit; and he no sooner found himself at the head of the government than he prepared a bill to carry out his views. He drew a distinction between the acts inflicting penalties and those which only imposed disabilities. With these latter he did not propose to interfere; but, in July, his colleague, Lord Castlereagh, introduced into the House of Commons a bill to repeal the Conventicle Act and the Five Mile Act altogether, and, when it had passed the Commons, he himself moved its adoption by the Lords, enforcing his recommendation by the argument, that "an enlarged and liberal toleration was the best security to the Established Church, a Church not founded on the exclusion of religious discussion, but, in its homilies, its canons, and all the principles on which it rested, courting the investigation of the Scriptures, upon which it founded its doctrines." At the same time, while urging the repeal of acts which he truly branded as a disgrace to the statute-book, he was not

cided on retaining. As has been said above, he drew a distinction between acts inflicting penalties and those which went no farther than imposing political disabilities, feeling that any relief of Protestant Dissenters from such disabilities must inevitably lead to the concession of a similar indulgence to Roman Catholics, and not being as yet prepared to admit to Parliament the members of

ed it may be said, on all measures on which a Parliamentary vote was taken. But, in arranging his administration after Mr. Perceval's death, Lord Liverpool found it absolutely impossible to form one satisfactory either to the nation or to himself if it were to be confined to members in perfect agreement with himself on the subject of the retention of the disabilities affecting the Roman Catholics; and therefore, in order to be able to form a ministry generally strong and respected, he adopted the strange expedient of allowing every member of it to act independently on this one question. He made it what was

e a separate and different judgment, so that one may resist what his colleague advocates, is to abdicate the functions of government altogether. To permit such liberty was either a proof that the ministry was weak altogether-which it was not-or that its conduct on this question was weak. In either case, it was a mischievous precedent that was thus set;[174] and the fact that it has since been followed in more than one instance, is so far from being any justification of it, that it rather supplies an additional reason for condemning it, as being the cause of wider mischief than if it had been confined to one single question, or had influenced the conduct of one cabinet only. It has often been said that the name "cabinet" is unknown to the law, and that what we call the cabinet is

r allies, that he was to be regarded as "the common prisoner of all, so far that we should not give him up or release him without the joint consent of all." The question was full of difficulty. There were, probably, very few persons in this or any other country who did not coincide in the impropriety of releasing him, and so putting it in his power once more to rekindle a war in Europe. But it was a political view of the case, founded on a consideration of what was required by the tranquillity of Europe; and it was not easy to lay down any legal ground to justify the determination. Some regarded him as a French subject, and, if that view were correct, he could hardly be detained by us as a prisoner of war after we had concluded a treaty of peace with France. But, again, it seemed to some, the Lord Chancellor being among them, a questionable point whether in the last campaign we had been at war with France; whether, on the contrary, we had not assumed the character of an ally of France against him. And, on the supposition that we had been at war with France, a second question was raised by Lord Ellenborough, the Chief-justice, "what rights result on principle from a state of war, as against all the individuals of the belligerent nations-rights, whatever they may be, seldom,

oleon became sovereign of Elba, and which does not contain a single article which bears out the opinion that his sovereignty was limited or conditional. On the contrary,

is existence depended.... He had placed himself out of the pale of civil and social relations, and, as the enemy and disturber of the peace of the world, he was delivered over to public justice." And the old Prussian, burning with a desire to avenge the indignities and injuries which he had inflicted on Prussia, avowed his determination to execute him as an outlaw, if he should fa

ude, or to abstain from concluding, any such treaty; and that, till we should conclude it, we had clearly a right to detain him as a prisoner of war. It must, at the same time, be admitted that modern history afforded no precedent for the detention of a prisoner for his whole life (unless, indeed, Elizabeth's imprisonment of the Queen of Scots may be considered as one), and that the

by reason of his royal character, could not give testimony." And therefore they had no doubt that the Regent, exercising his authority, was equally prevented from so doing. Colonel Berkeley's counsel had urged that, even if he could not appear in open court and be sworn, he had the privilege of communicating his evidence in a peculiar mode, by certificate under the Sign Manual or Great Seal. But the Attorney and Solicitor General professed that they could not discover whence this last privilege was derived; they urged, as an insurmountable objection to such a contrivance, that "all instruments under the Sign Manual or Great Seal must, in poin

examination could be proposed to him, was admitted by Colonel Berkeley's counsel. And that his testimony must be conclusive as to the facts stated by him, appeared necessarily to follow from the perfection ascribed by law to his royal character. For such remarkable exceptions, therefore, to the case of all other witnesses they could not but think that strong and decisive authority ought to be produced; while the silence of text-

ess, that opinion may be held to have settled the question. And, apart from the constitutional objections relied on by those able lawyers, it is evident that there would be serious practical objections to the sovereign being made a witness. It would be derogatory to his royal character to put himself in a p

en cessation of the excitement of war had begotten a restless craving for some other excitement to take its place, and none seemed so creditable as energy and acuteness in the discovery and removal of abuses. Complaints were made, and not without reason, of the working of the poor-law; of the terrible severity of our criminal code; of the hardships and sufferings of the younger members of the working classes, especially in the factories; of the ignorance of a large portion of the people, in itself as prolific a cause of mischief and crime as any other. But, though committees and commissions were appointed by Parliament to investigate the condition of the kingdom in respect of these matters, a feeling was growing up that no effectual remedy would be applied till the constitution of the House of Commons itself were reformed, so as to make it a more real representation of the people than it could as yet be considered. And a farther stimulus to this wish for such a Parliamentary reform was supplied by the distress which a combination of circumstances spread among almost all classes in the years immediately following the conclusion of the second treaty of peace.[178] The harvests of the years 1816 and 1817 were unusually deficient, and this pressed heavily on the farmers and landed proprietors. The merchants and manufacturers, who, while every part of the Continent was disturbed or threatened by the operations of contending armies, had practically enjoyed almost a monopoly of the trade of the world, found their profits reduced, by the new competition to which the re-establishment of peace exposed them, to a point which compelled them to a severe reduction of expenditure. The uncertainty felt as to the results to be brought about by the inevitable repeal of the Bank Act of 1797, and the return to cash payments-results which it was impossible to estimate correctly beforehand-had a tendency to augment the distress, by the general feeling of uneasiness and distrust which it created.

excitement by a meeting held at Birmingham, at which the leaders, assuming the newly-invented party name of Radicals, not only demanded the remodelling of the whole system of government, but, because Birmingham as yet sent no members to the House of Commons, took it upon themselves to elect Sir Charles Wolseley, a baronet of respectable family, as their representative to the Parliament, and charged him to claim a place in the House of Commons in the next session, by the side of those elected in obedience to the royal writs. Sir Charles was at once arrested on the charge of having at this meeting used seditious language calculated to lead to a breach of the peace; but the Radical leaders, far from being intimidated by this demonstration of vigor on the part of the government, immediately summoned a similar meeting in Manchester, announcing their

ary of State, which showed that a most alarming spirit prevailed over the greater part of the district. "The most inflammatory publications had been issued in the principal towns, at a price which put them within the reach of the poorest classes of society. The training and military drilling of large bodies of men under regular leaders had been carried on to a great extent for some time, chiefly by night; and there was no doubt that an extensive manufacture of arms was going on." What was a hardly inferior sym

d-perhaps, with some sarcastic reference to Gardiner's Six Acts in the sixteenth century-they were very commonly spoken of as Lord Sidmouth's Six Acts, that noble lord being the Home-secretary, to whose department they belonged. It is not necessary here to do more than mention the general purport of five of them. One prohibited military training without the sanction of the government; another empowered magistrates to search for arms which they had reason to believe were collected for illegal purposes; the third authorized the seizure of seditious and blasphemous libels; the fourth subjected publications below a certain size to the same stamp as that

sually dwell;" and it required six days' notice of the intention to hold such meetings, with their time, place, and object, to be given to a magistrate. It empowered the magistrate to whom such notice was given to alter the time and place. It forbade adjournments intended to evade these prohibitions. It forbade any one to attend such meetings except freeholders of the county, or parishioners of the parish, or members of the corporation of the city or borough in which they were held, or members of the House of Commons for such places. It empowered magistrates to proceed to the places where such meetings were being held, and, if they thought it necessary, to require the aid of constables. It enacted that any meeting, the tendency of which should be "to incite or stir

mselves, "the wickedness and folly of many of the speeches" made at the recent meetings. He expressed with great force his entire disapproval of the system on which these meetings had been conducted, and admitted that the martial array which had been exhibited, and the vastness of the numbers of those who had attended, were of themselves calculated to excite alarm; but he declared that "he could not on that account acquiesce in a total subversion of a popular right." On the other hand, the ministers themselves did not deny "the general right of the people to petition the Legislature, or to carry their addresses to the foot of the throne. And therefore (as Lord Harrowby, the President of the Council, admitted) there cou

the Petition of Eight, nor the Bill of Rights-which can be said to contain the whole of the British constitution. Its spirit and principles are, indeed, to be found in all the laws, to which they give animation and life, but not in any one law. And among its leading principles are those which embrace the righ

time they are bound not to legislate under the influence of panic; not to yield to fears having no substantial ground. And in their measures of precaution they are farther bound to depart from or overstep the ordinary law as little as is compatible with the attainment of their object. In all such cases each action of theirs must stand or fall by its own merits; by

ed by tens of thousands, were too large for deliberation, and were only meant for intimidation; and equally clear that, though the existing laws may have armed the magistrate with authority to disperse such meetings, they did not furnish him with the means of doing so without at least the risk of bloodshed (for such a risk must be involved in the act of putting soldiers in motion), and still less did they invest him with the desirable power of preventing such meetings. It was necessary, therefore, to go back to the original principles and objects of every constitution, the tranquillity, safety, and welfare of the nation at large. And it does not appear that this bill went beyond what was necessary

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t Fuentes d'Onor, in 1811. Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz had been taken in 1812, in spite of the neighborhood of Soult and Marmont. In July, 1813, a month after the formation of Lord Liverpool's m

n, his opinion that under no circumstances would it be possible to make any alteration in the laws respecting the Roman Catholics," but the Chancellor, Lord Eldon, who was generally regarded as the stoutest champion of the existing law, rested his opposition entirely on political grounds, explaining carefully that he opposed the motion, "not because he quarrelled with the religion of

to imply that Peel believed the Catholic question to have been left "open" in 1806; but there is not, so far as the present writer is aware, any trace of such an arrangement on record, and Lord Liverpool's letter to the King, of November 10, 1826 ("Life," iii., 436), shows clearly that he was not aware of such a precedent for

deposition of Napoleon, he himself constantly attributed his fall more to the Peninsular contest than to any of his wars east of the Rhine. And, indeed, it is superfluous to point out that almost to the last he gained occasional victories

Eldon," ii., 272. It is remarkable that in his "Life of Lor

General, Sir S. Shepperd and Sir R. Gifford, is given at

esire for theoretical reforms, or even for increased privileges, which excites in l

tion Bill"), 60 George III., c. 6, is given at full length in Ha

ld have supported the bill, if the ministers would have consented to adopt an amendment proposed by Lord Althorp, to limit its operation

to mention that these pages wer