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ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27, 1855
I cannot, I am sure, better express my sense of the kind reception
accorded to me by this great assembly, than by promising to
compress what I shall address to it within the closest possible
limits. It is more than eighteen hundred years ago, since there
was a set of men who "thought they should be heard for their much
speaking." As they have propagated exceedingly since that time,
and as I observe that they flourish just now to a surprising extent
about Westminster, I will do my best to avoid adding to the numbers
of that prolific race. The noble lord at the head of the
Government, when he wondered in Parliament about a week ago, that
my friend, Mr. Layard, did not blush for having stated in this
place what the whole country knows perfectly well to be true, and
what no man in it can by possibility better know to be true than
those disinterested supporters of that noble lord, who had the
advantage of hearing him and cheering him night after night, when
he first became premier--I mean that he did officially and
habitually joke, at a time when this country was plunged in deep
disgrace and distress--I say, that noble lord, when he wondered so
much that the man of this age, who has, by his earnest and
adventurous spirit, done the most to distinguish himself and it,
did not blush for the tremendous audacity of having so come between
the wind and his nobility, turned an airy period with reference to
the private theatricals at Drury Lane Theatre. Now, I have some
slight acquaintance with theatricals, private and public, and I
will accept that figure of the noble lord. I will not say that if
I wanted to form a company of Her Majesty's servants, I think I
should know where to put my hand on "the comic old gentleman;" nor,
that if I wanted to get up a pantomime, I fancy I should know what
establishment to go to for the tricks and changes; also, for a very
considerable host of supernumeraries, to trip one another up in
that contention with which many of us are familiar, both on these
and on other boards, in which the principal objects thrown about
are loaves and fishes. But I will try to give the noble lord the
reason for these private theatricals, and the reason why, however
ardently he may desire to ring the curtain down upon them, there is
not the faintest present hope of their coming to a conclusion. It
is this:- The public theatricals which the noble lord is so
condescending as to manage are so intolerably bad, the machinery is
so cumbrous, the parts so ill-distributed, the company so full of
"walking gentlemen," the managers have such large families, and are
so bent upon putting those families into what is theatrically
called "first business"--not because of their aptitude for it, but
because they ARE their families, that we find ourselves obliged to
organize an opposition. We have seen the Comedy of Errors played
so dismally like a tragedy that we really cannot bear it. We are,
therefore, making bold to get up the School of Reform, and we hope,
before the play is out, to improve that noble lord by our
performance very considerably. If he object that we have no right
to improve him without his license, we venture to claim that right
in virtue of his orchestra, consisting of a very powerful piper,
whom we always pay.
Sir, as this is the first political meeting I have ever attended,
and as my trade and calling is not associated with politics,
perhaps it may be useful for me to show how I came to be here,
because reasons similar to those which have influenced me may still
be trembling in the balance in the minds of others. I want at all
times, in full sincerity, to do my duty by my countrymen. If _I_
feel an attachment towards them, there is nothing disinterested or
meritorious in that, for I can never too affectionately remember
the confidence and friendship that they have long reposed in me.
My sphere of action--which I shall never change--I shall never
overstep, further than this, or for a longer period than I do to-
night. By literature I have lived, and through literature I have
been content to serve my country; and I am perfectly well aware
that I cannot serve two masters. In my sphere of action I have
tried to understand the heavier social grievances, and to help to
set them right. When the Times newspaper proved its then almost
incredible case, in reference to the ghastly absurdity of that vast
labyrinth of misplaced men and misdirected things, which had made
England unable to find on the face of the earth, an enemy one-
twentieth part so potent to effect the misery and ruin of her noble
defenders as she has been herself, I believe that the gloomy
silence into which the country fell was by far the darkest aspect
in which a great people had been exhibited for many years. With
shame and indignation lowering among all classes of society, and
this new element of discord piled on the heaving basis of
ignorance, poverty and crime, which is always below us--with little
adequate expression of the general mind, or apparent understanding
of the general mind, in Parliament--with the machinery of
Government and the legislature going round and round, and the
people fallen from it and standing aloof, as if they left it to its
last remaining function of destroying itself, when it had achieved
the destruction of so much that was dear to them--I did and do
believe that the only wholesome turn affairs so menacing could
possibly take, was, the awaking of the people, the outspeaking of
the people, the uniting of the people in all patriotism and loyalty
to effect a great peaceful constitutional change in the
administration of their own affairs. At such a crisis this
association arose; at such a crisis I joined it: considering its
further case to be--if further case could possibly be needed--that
what is everybody's business is nobody's business, that men must be
gregarious in good citizenship as well as in other things, and that
it is a law in nature that there must be a centre of attraction for
particles to fly to, before any serviceable body with recognised
functions can come into existence. This association has arisen,
and we belong to it. What are the objections to it? I have heard
in the main but three, which I will now briefly notice. It is said
that it is proposed by this association to exercise an influence,
through the constituencies, on the House of Commons. I have not
the least hesitation in saying that I have the smallest amount of
faith in the House of Commons at present existing and that I
consider the exercise of such influence highly necessary to the
welfare and honour of this country. I was reading no later than
yesterday the book of Mr. Pepys, which is rather a favourite of
mine, in which he, two hundred years ago, writing of the House of
Commons, says:
"My cousin Roger Pepys tells me that it is matter of the greatest
grief to him in the world that he should be put upon this trust of
being a Parliament man; because he says nothing is done, that he
can see, out of any truth and sincerity, but mere envy and design."
Now, how it comes to pass that after two hundred years, and many
years after a Reform Bill, the house of Commons is so little
changed, I will not stop to inquire. I will not ask how it happens
that bills which cramp and worry the people, and restrict their
scant enjoyments, are so easily passed, and how it happens that
measures for their real interests are so very difficult to be got
through Parliament. I will not analyse the confined air of the
lobby, or reduce to their primitive gases its deadening influences
on the memory of that Honourable Member who was once a candidate
for the honour of your--and my--independent vote and interest. I
will not ask what is that Secretarian figure, full of
blandishments, standing on the threshold, with its finger on its
lips. I will not ask how it comes that those personal
altercations, involving all the removes and definitions of
Shakespeare's Touchstone--the retort courteous--the quip modest--
the reply churlish--the reproof valiant--the countercheck
quarrelsome--the lie circumstantial and the lie direct--are of
immeasurably greater interest in the House of Commons than the
health, the taxation, and the education, of a whole people. I will
not penetrate into the mysteries of that secret chamber in which
the Bluebeard of Party keeps his strangled public questions, and
with regard to which, when he gives the key to his wife, the new
comer, he strictly charges her on no account to open the door. I
will merely put it to the experience of everybody here, whether the
House of Commons is not occasionally a little hard of hearing, a
little dim of sight, a little slow of understanding, and whether,
in short, it is not in a sufficiency invalided state to require
close watching, and the occasional application of sharp stimulants;
and whether it is not capable of considerable improvement? I
believe that, in order to preserve it in a state of real usefulness
and independence, the people must be very watchful and very jealous
of it; and it must have its memory jogged; and be kept awake when
it happens to have taken too much Ministerial narcotic; it must be
trotted about, and must be bustled and pinched in a friendly way,
as is the usage in such cases. I hold that no power can deprive us
of the right to administer our functions as a body comprising
electors from all parts of the country, associated together because
their country is dearer to them than drowsy twaddle, unmeaning
routine, or worn-out conventionalities.
This brings me to objection number two. It is stated that this
Association sets class against class. Is this so? (Cries of
"No.") No, it finds class set against class, and seeks to
reconcile them. I wish to avoid placing in opposition those two
words--Aristocracy and People. I am one who can believe in the
virtues and uses of both, and would not on any account deprive
either of a single just right belonging to it. I will use, instead
of these words, the terms, the governors and the governed. These
two bodies the Association finds with a gulf between them, in which
are lying, newly-buried, thousands on thousands of the bravest and
most devoted men that even England ever bred. It is to prevent the
recurrence of innumerable smaller evils, of which, unchecked, that
great calamity was the crowning height and the necessary
consummation, and to bring together those two fronts looking now so
strangely at each other, that this Association seeks to help to
bridge over that abyss, with a structure founded on common justice
and supported by common sense. Setting class against class! That
is the very parrot prattle that we have so long heard. Try its
justice by the following example:- A respectable gentleman had a
large establishment, and a great number of servants, who were good
for nothing, who, when he asked them to give his children bread,
gave them stones; who, when they were told to give those children
fish, gave them serpents. When they were ordered to send to the
East, they sent to the West; when they ought to have been serving
dinner in the North, they were consulting exploded cookery books in
the South; who wasted, destroyed, tumbled over one another when
required to do anything, and were bringing everything to ruin. At
last the respectable gentleman calls his house steward, and says,
even then more in sorrow than in anger, "This is a terrible
business; no fortune can stand it--no mortal equanimity can bear
it! I must change my system; I must obtain servants who will do
their duty." The house steward throws up his eyes in pious horror,
ejaculates "Good God, master, you are setting class against class!"
and then rushes off into the servants' hall, and delivers a long
and melting oration on that wicked feeling.
I now come to the third objection, which is common among young
gentlemen who are not particularly fit for anything but spending
money which they have not got. It is usually comprised in the
observation, "How very extraordinary it is that these
Administrative Reform fellows can't mind their own business." I
think it will occur to all that a very sufficient mode of disposing
of this objection is to say, that it is our own business we mind
when we come forward in this way, and it is to prevent it from
being mismanaged by them. I observe from the Parliamentary
debates--which have of late, by-the-bye, frequently suggested to me
that there is this difference between the bull of Spain the bull of
Nineveh, that, whereas, in the Spanish case, the bull rushes at the
scarlet, in the Ninevite case, the scarlet rushes at the bull--I
have observed from the Parliamentary debates that, by a curious
fatality, there has been a great deal of the reproof valiant and
the counter-check quarrelsome, in reference to every case, showing
the necessity of Administrative Reform, by whomsoever produced,
whensoever, and wheresoever. I daresay I should have no difficulty
in adding two or three cases to the list, which I know to be true,
and which I have no doubt would be contradicted, but I consider it
a work of supererogation; for, if the people at large be not
already convinced that a sufficient general case has been made out
for Administrative Reform, I think they never can be, and they
never will be. There is, however, an old indisputable, very well
known story, which has so pointed a moral at the end of it that I
will substitute it for a new case: by doing of which I may avoid,
I hope, the sacred wrath of St. Stephen's. Ages ago a savage mode
of keeping accounts on notched sticks was introduced into the Court
of Exchequer, and the accounts were kept, much as Robinson Crusoe
kept his calendar on the desert island. In the course of
considerable revolutions of time, the celebrated Cocker was born,
and died; Walkinghame, of the Tutor's Assistant, and well versed in
figures, was also born, and died; a multitude of accountants, book-
keepers, and actuaries, were born, and died. Still official
routine inclined to these notched sticks, as if they were pillars
of the constitution, and still the Exchequer accounts continued to
be kept on certain splints of elm wood called "tallies." In the
reign of George III. an inquiry was made by some revolutionary
spirit, whether pens, ink, and paper, slates and pencils, being in
existence, this obstinate adherence to an obsolete custom ought to
be continued, and whether a change ought not to be effected.
All the red tape in the country grew redder at the bare mention of
this bold and original conception, and it took till 1826 to get
these sticks abolished. In 1834 it was found that there was a
considerable accumulation of them; and the question then arose,
what was to be done with such worn-out, worm-eaten, rotten old bits
of wood? I dare say there was a vast amount of minuting,
memoranduming, and despatch-boxing, on this mighty subject. The
sticks were housed at Westminster, and it would naturally occur to
any intelligent person that nothing could be easier than to allow
them to be carried away for fire-wood by the miserable people who
live in that neighbourhood. However, they never had been useful,
and official routine required that they never should be, and so the
order went forth that they were to be privately and confidentially
burnt. It came to pass that they were burnt in a stove in the
House of Lords. The stove, overgorged with these preposterous
sticks, set fire to the panelling; the panelling set fire to the
House of Lords; the House of Lords set fire to the House of
Commons; the two houses were reduced to ashes; architects were
called in to build others; we are now in the second million of the
cost thereof; the national pig is not nearly over the stile yet;
and the little old woman, Britannia, hasn't got home to-night.
Now, I think we may reasonably remark, in conclusion, that all
obstinate adherence to rubbish which the time has long outlived, is
certain to have in the soul of it more or less that is pernicious
and destructive; and that will some day set fire to something or
other; which, if given boldly to the winds would have been
harmless; but which, obstinately retained, is ruinous. I believe
myself that when Administrative Reform goes up it will be idle to
hope to put it down, on this or that particular instance. The
great, broad, and true cause that our public progress is far behind
our private progress, and that we are not more remarkable for our
private wisdom and success in matters of business than we are for
our public folly and failure, I take to be as clearly established
as the sun, moon, and stars. To set this right, and to clear the
way in the country for merit everywhere: accepting it equally
whether it be aristocratic or democratic, only asking whether it be
honest or true, is, I take it, the true object of this Association.
This object it seeks to promote by uniting together large numbers
of the people, I hope, of all conditions, to the end that they may
better comprehend, bear in mind, understand themselves, and impress
upon others, the common public duty. Also, of which there is great
need, that by keeping a vigilant eye on the skirmishers thrown out
from time to time by the Party of Generals, they may see that their
feints and manoeuvres do not oppress the small defaulters and
release the great, and that they do not gull the public with a mere
field-day Review of Reform, instead of an earnest, hard-fought
Battle. I have had no consultation with any one upon the subject,
but I particularly wish that the directors may devise some means of
enabling intelligent working men to join this body, on easier terms
than subscribers who have larger resources. I could wish to see
great numbers of them belong to us, because I sincerely believe
that it would be good for the common weal.
Said the noble Lord at the head of the Government, when Mr. Layard
asked him for a day for his motion, "Let the hon. gentleman find a
day for himself."
"Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed
That he is grown so great?"
If our Caesar will excuse me, I would take the liberty of reversing
that cool and lofty sentiment, and I would say, "First Lord, your
duty it is to see that no man is left to find a day for himself.
See you, who take the responsibility of government, who aspire to
it, live for it, intrigue for it, scramble for it, who hold to it
tooth-and-nail when you can get it, see you that no man is left to
find a day for himself. In this old country, with its seething
hard-worked millions, its heavy taxes, its swarms of ignorant, its
crowds of poor, and its crowds of wicked, woe the day when the
dangerous man shall find a day for himself, because the head of the
Government failed in his duty in not anticipating it by a brighter
and a better one! Name you the day, First Lord; make a day; work
for a day beyond your little time, Lord Palmerston, and History in
return may then--not otherwise--find a day for you; a day equally
associated with the contentment of the loyal, patient, willing-
hearted English people, and with the happiness of your Royal
Mistress and her fair line of children."
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