Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1120 page)

The House of Commons has undergone a still greater change. I told you in the last chapter what serious need there was in the eighteenth century for a “Reform” of thathouse, and how, during the twenty-two years of the Great War, that and all other reforms had to be put off. A very small knot of Whigs had never ceased to urge that reform even during the war. The foremost of these was
Charles, Earl Grey.

I have had to scold the Whigs a good deal during the reign of George III, and I am afraid
I shall now have to scold the Tories for their attitude during the first fifteen of these ninetyfive years. They held power right up to 1830,
and it was obviously their duty to take up this and many other questions in a serious and
“ modern” spirit. They consisted of two sections, the enlightened Tories, like Mr. Canning and Sir Robert Peel, who had sat at the feet of William Pitt; and the stick-in-the-mud
Tories, like Lord Sidmouth and Lord Eldon,
who were opposed to any change in any department of life. I think it was strange that the former as well as the latter section of Tories were opposed to reform of the House of Commons. The result was that it fell wholly to the Whigs to force it on; and the Whigs, being weak in Parliament did not scruple to appeal to the passions of uneducated people outside
Parliament. They encouraged “monster meetings,” “monster petitions” and such like.
There were riots in favour of Reform. Atone riot at Manchester in 1819 the soldiers had to be called in, and several people were shot.
Very likely these were only innocent spectators and not rioters at all; those who get up riots are usually careful to keep out of the way when their suppression begins. Stiff laws were passed in Parliament to prevent such riotous meetings for the future.

From 1820-30 the question of Reform was never for a moment allowed to slumber, and at last in 1832 the Duke of Wellington, who,
though opposed to Reform himself, was always moderate and sensible, advised the
Tories to give way, and a “Reform Bill” was at last got through both Houses, an eminently sensible and moderate Bill. The number of members in the House was not increased, but the absurd old boroughs with few or no inhabitants lost their right of sending members,
and the great growing towns got that right.
All persons in the counties with a moderate amount of property got votes for election of members, and all persons in the towns who had a house worth £10 a year. The educated people of Great Britain and Ireland were very fairly represented in the House of Commons between 1832 and 1867.

But this did not stop agitation outside. A
group of men called “ Chartists” began to cryout for something more, for the representation of the uneducated as well. They demanded that every grown-up man should have a vote,
that members of Parliament should be paid,
that a new Parliament should be elected every year, and so on. These men tried to get up riots in favour of their demands; inl848 it looked as if these riots were going to be serious.
But the thing fizzled out somehow. Twice since that time new Reform Bills have been passed, one by each party in the State, by the
Tories in 1867 (now called “Conservatives”),
and by the Whigs in 1885 (now called “Liberals” or “Radicals”). On each occasion the vote was given to poorer and less educated classes of the people, and on the latter occasion the distinction between counties and boroughs was practically abolished; every district in
Britain, whether of town or country, is now represented in the House of Commons pretty nearly according to the number of people living in it.

Unfortunately one exception to this principle has been allowed. With the exception of those from Ulster, the Irish members of the House of Commons since the Union of 1800
have never been loyal to our system of government, but have continually cried out for a separate Parliament in Dublin. The firstgreat agitator for this purpose was the orator
Daniel O’Connell, in the reigns of George IV
and William IV and at the beginning of Victoria’s reign. He has been followed by many others, notably by Mr. Parnell, and the agitation is still continuing. In order to hush this cry, British statesmen have allowed Ireland to have many more members of the House of Commons than the population of that island warrants. More than one statesman,
especially the famous Mr. Gladstone in 1885
and 1892, has thought of conciliating the Irish,
by granting them, under the name of “Home
Rule,” the separate Parliament which they demand. But most people fear that a separate
Irish Parliament would be followed by a complete separation between Ireland and Great
Britain, by the establishment of an Irish
Republic, and by the oppression of the well-todo and intelligent classes of Irishmen, who are certainly loyal to the British Crown. All
British politicians, on both sides, have, during the last seventy years, made haste to remove every real, and, indeed, every imaginary grievance of the Irish people, though they have earned no gratitude by doing so.

As regards the Ministers of the Crown,
whom we may consider next after Parliament as an “institution” of the country, it has beenwell understood, ever since George Ill’s death,
that the King “reigns but does not govern.”
He takes as his ministers men who are agreeable to the majority in the existing House of Commons. In quiet times there is a new House of Commons about every five or six years and there must be one every seven years. There is, therefore, very likely to be a change of ministry every time there is a new House. Before the first Reform Bill there were only about 300,000
electors; there are now over 7,000,000. But,
oddly enough, the larger the number of electors,
the more frequent are the changes of public opinion. In former days Whigs or Tories might well hold office through three or four successive parliaments; now it is very rare that either party holds it through two. The opinion of the electors has a curious habit of swinging right round in a very short space of time; and,
so, great changes in our rulers are of frequent occurrence.

These rulers or ministers we call the “Cabinet”; and in the Cabinet you will always find a “Prime Minister,” generally called the
“First Lord of the Treasury,” at the head of the whole thing; it is with him that the real responsibility lies. He explains to the King what he and his friends think ought to be done;
and, when he is a wise man, he generally findsthat the King’s advice on the matter is very well worth listening to. If the King does not approve of what his Prime Minister suggests he can always dismiss him; but it is of no use his doing this unless he can appoint some one else whom the existing House of Commons will follow; or unless he is prepared to dismiss the existing House of Commons and call a new Parliament. The King will do this last if he feels sure that the Minister and the existing House are leading the nation astray or are leading it where it doesn’t want to go. Any very
“revolutionary” proposal, such as the abolition of either House of Parliament, the surrender of India or the Colonies, the reduction of the
Navy very far below the strength necessary to defend the Empire, might quite conceivably obtain for a moment a majority in the
House of Commons, and, though it is unlikely,
it is just possible that the House of Lords might be terrified into accepting it. But
then
it would be the duty of the King to interfere, and to dismiss, at all costs, the Ministry which was rash enough to make such a proposal.

Besides the Prime Minister, the most important members of the Cabinet are the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who manages money matters, the Secretaries of State for War, for

Foreign Affairs, for the Colonies, for Home
Affairs, and the First Lord of the Admiralty,
who manages the Navy. Each is responsible for some particular part of the task of government; but all must agree upon all important questions, and the minister who doesn’t agree with the rest of the Cabinet must resign.

I shall not trouble you with a list of the ministries that have held office since 1815;
two things only you should remember: first,
that ministries are more short-lived now than they used to be; and secondly, that they are more dominated by the Prime Minister for the time being than they used to be. The most distinguished Prime Ministers have been Mr.
Canning (died 1827), Lord Grey (died 1845),
Sir Robert Peel (died 1850), Lord Palmerston
(died 1865), Lord Beaconsfield, better known as Mr. Disraeli (died 1881), Mr. Gladstone
(died 1898), and Lord Salisbury (died 1903).
Each in his own way has contributed something to the greatness of England; but each,
with the exception of Sir Robert Peel, has had a weak side. Speaking generally, those ministers who have paid most attention to finances and to internal reform have been less successful in upholding the honour of England abroad and in strengthening the Army and
Navy.

With regard to the law and the law courts,
it is not such a very different England in which we live from what it was in the days of our greatgrandfathers. The House of Lords is still the highest “Court of Appeal” in Great Britain and Ireland; but to hear appeals, only those peers sit who are specially appointed to be judges for that purpose. There is a Court of Appeal below it and a High Court of Justice below that. The judges are still appointed by the King, and still “go on circuit” four times a year to the several districts of England to try criminal cases, as they have done since the fourteenth century. There are also small courts called “county courts,” for small lawsuits, in some sixty different districts in England. Scotland has kept, since the Union of
1708, her own system of law and law courts entirely different from ours, but from them also you can appeal to the House of Lords.
Ireland has the same system of law as ours,
but has her own law courts with appeal to the
House of Lords. Each colony in the Empire has its own law courts and judges, and appeals from them and from the Indian law courts come not to the House of Lords, but to a few great judges in the Privy Council.

The one really great law reform has been that of the criminal law. In 1815 over onehundred and sixty crimes were still supposed to be punished with death. There are now only two, high treason and wilful murder, and, unfortunately, people who commit high treason are now too often let off. In 1815 a thief might be hanged if he stole five shillings’
worth of goods from a shop! He hardly ever was hanged, because he was tried by a jury and a judge, and juries preferred to declare him
“not guilty” rather than allow him to be hanged; so, as a rule, he got off altogether.
Even of those who were convicted and condemned to be hanged not one tenth were hanged. And this was because public opinion was more merciful than the law. From 1788
onward criminals who had just escaped hanging used to be “transported” to Australia,
and this went on till 1840. The other settlers in that continent naturally objected very much to this; and we now send our criminals to
“penal servitude” in large prisons at Dartmoor and Portland instead. No words can be too hard to use against the Tory ministers like Lord Eldon, who, year after year, from
1815 to 1830, obstructed the reform of the criminal laws as much as they could; most of the reforms in them were due to the
Whigs or to the more enlightened Tory, Sir
Robert Peel.

To Tory Governments belongs the credit of beginning to remove the laws which made a man’s admission to Parliament depend upon his religious opinions. Both Lord Castlereagh,
who died in 1822, and Mr. Canning, who died in 1827, had always been anxious to admit Catholics to Parliament; but it was just after Canning’s death that, first the Protestant Dissenters in 1828, and then the
Catholics in 1829, were admitted. Jews had to wait till 1853, and those who openly declared their disbelief in any religion at all till 1884.
The support of the State to the Protestant
Church in Ireland, which dated from the time of Elizabeth, was taken away in 1868. The zeal of the Church of England was, from 1829 onward, quickened by men like Newman and Dr.
Pusey, and religion is now a far more vital force in our daily lives than it was at the end of
George Ill’s reign. Differences of opinion upon religion still exist, and still occasionally lead to squabbles between Churchmen and Dissenters,
but they are being smoothed away; of all passions, religious hatred is now seen to be the most odious, and all reasonable men acknowledge that the teaching of sound morality is the main duty of all religious bodies. Without religion there can be no good morals, and without good morals the wisest laws are futile.

The Whigs are responsible for the abolition of slavery in our West Indian Islands (1833);
the importation of slaves from Africa thither had been prohibited as far back as 1807. They can also claim the credit of the “New Poor
Law” (1834), which refused to give food or money to the idle and improvident unless they would come into the “workhouse”; and this law made workhouse life sufficiently unpleasant,
so that lots of idle loafers, who had hitherto
“lived on the rates,” preferred to earn their own living. The same Whig Government in
1835 reformed the town councils of our cities and boroughs in such a way that every householder now gets a vote for the election of his town council. In 1889 a Conservative government extended this plan to the country districts also, and in each shire a “county council”
is now elected, which manages all local business such as the keeping up of roads, bridges,
lunatic asylums, and the police. It was Sir
Robert Peel who created the present magnificent force of policemen, and its members are still sometimes, in sport, called after him
“bobbies” and “peelers.”

Perhaps the most important of all reforms of the nineteenth century was the introduction in 1870 for all classes of the people of a system of schools, supported by the State and paidfor by a rate on each district. Every one is now compelled to attend some kind of school,
and a man may be sent to prison if he refuses to send his children to school. When I was a boy it was quite common to meet people who could neither read nor write; now it is the rarest thing in the world.