The pith of his argument is that mere numbers can never form the ground of representation, which should rest on influence even more than interest.

“... It appears to me that those who are called parliamentary reformers may be divided into two classes. The first are those ... who would adapt the settlement of 1832 to the England of 1859, and would act in the spirit and according to the genius of the existing constitution.... But, sir, it would not be candid, and it would be impolitic not to acknowledge that there is another school of reformers having objects very different from those which I have named. The new school, if I may so describe them, would avowedly effect a parliamentary reform on principles different from those which have hitherto been acknowledged as forming the proper foundations for this House. The new school of reformers are of opinion that the chief, if not the sole, object of representation is to realise the opinion of the numerical majority of the country. Their standard is population, and I admit that their views have been clearly and efficiently placed before the country. Now, sir, there is no doubt that population is, and must always be, one of the elements of our representative system. There is also such a thing as property, and that too must be considered. I am ready to admit that the new school have not on any occasion limited the elements of their representative system solely to population. They have, with a murmur, admitted that property has an equal claim to consideration; but then, they have said that property and population go together. Well, sir, population and property do go together—in statistics, but in nothing else. Population and property do not go together in politics and practice. I cannot agree with the principles of the new school, either if population or property is their sole, or if both together constitute their double, standard. I think the function of this House is something more than merely to represent the population and property of this country. This House ought, in my opinion, to represent all the interests of the country. Now, those interests are sometimes antagonistic, often competing, always independent and jealous; yet they all demand a distinctive representation in this House, and how can that be effected, under such circumstances, by the simple representation of the voice of the majority, or even by the mere preponderance of property? If the function of this House is to represent all the interests of the country, you must, of course, have a representation scattered over the country, because interests are necessarily local. An illustration is always worth two arguments; permit me, therefore, so to explain my meaning, if it requires explanation. Let me take the two cases of the metropolis and that of the kingdom of Scotland.... Their populations are at this time about equal. Their respective wealth is very unequal.... There is between them the annual difference in the amounts of income upon which the schedules are levied of that between £44,000,000 and £30,000,000. Yet who would for a moment pretend that the various classes and interests of Scotland could be adequately represented by the same number of members as represent the metropolis? So much for the population test. Let us now take the property test.... The wealth of the city of London is more than equivalent to that of twenty-five English and Welsh counties returning forty members, and of 140 boroughs returning 232 members. The city of London, the city proper, is richer than Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham put together.... It is richer than Bristol, Leeds, Newcastle, Sheffield, Hull, Wolverhampton, Bradford, Brighton, Stoke-upon-Trent, Nottingham, Greenwich, Preston, East Retford, Sunderland, York, and Salford combined—towns which return among them no less than thirty-one members. Yet the city of London has not asked me to insert it in the bill, which I am asking leave to introduce, for thirty-one members.... So much ... for the property test.... But the truth is, that men are sent to this House to represent the opinions of a place; and not its power....

“Why, sir, the power of the city of London or that of the city of Manchester in this House is not to be measured by the honourable and respectable individuals whom they send here to represent their opinions. I will be bound to say that there is a score—nay, that there are threescore—members in this House who are as much and more interested, perhaps, in the city of Manchester than those who are in this House its authoritative and authentic representatives.... Look at the metropolis itself, not speaking merely of the city of London. Is the influence of the metropolis in this House to be measured by the sixteen honourable members who represent it?... ... So much for that principle of population, or that principle of property, which has been adopted by some; or that principle of population and property combined, which seems to be the more favourite form.... There is one remarkable circumstance connected with the new school, who would build up our representation on the basis of a numerical majority, and who take population as their standard. It is this—that none of their principles apply except in cases where population is concentrated. The principle of population is ... a very notorious doctrine at the present moment, but it is not novel.... It was the favourite argument of the late Mr. Hume.... The principle, in my opinion, is false, and would produce results dangerous to the country and fatal to the House of Commons. But if it be true, ... then I say you must arrive at conclusions entirely different from those which the new school has adopted. If population is to be the standard, and you choose to disfranchise small boroughs and small constituencies, it is not to the great towns you can, according to your own principles, transfer their members....

“Let us now see what will be the consequence if the population principle is adopted. You would have a House, generally speaking, formed partly of great landowners and partly of great manufacturers. I have no doubt that, whether we look to their property or to their character, there would be no country in the world which could rival in respectability such an assembly. But would it be a House of Commons; would it represent the country; would it represent the various interests of England? Why, sir, after all, the suffrage and the seat respecting which there is so much controversy and contest, are only means to an end.... You want in this House every element that obtains the respect and engages the interest of the country.... You want a body of men representing the vast variety of the English character; men who would arbitrate between the claims of those great predominant interests; who would temper the acerbity of their controversies. You want a body of men to represent that considerable portion of the community who cannot be ranked under any of those striking and powerful heads to which I have referred, but who are in their aggregate equally important and valuable, and perhaps as numerous.”

He then adverted to the borough system as an indirect machinery for this purpose, and contended that those who would sweep it away must substitute “machinery as effective.” “... Now,” he continued, “there is one remarkable feature in the agitation of the new school.... They offer no substitute whatever.... I will tell you what must be the natural consequence of such a state of things. The House will lose, as a matter of course, its hold on the Executive. The House will assemble. It will have men sent to it, no doubt, of character and wealth; and having met here, they will be unable to carry on the Executive of the country. Why? Because the experiment has been tried in every country, and the same result has occurred; because it is not in the power of one or two classes to give that variety of character and acquirement by which the administration of a country can be carried on. Well, then, what happens? We fall back on a bureaucratic system,74 and we should find ourselves, after all our struggles, in the very same position from which, in 1640, we had to extricate ourselves. Your administration would be carried on by a court minister, perhaps by a court minion. It might not be in these times, but in some future time. The result of such a system would be to create an assembly where the members of Parliament, though chosen by great constituencies, would be chosen from limited classes, and perhaps only from one class of the community....” His own prescription for breaking monotony, he described as “lateral,” not “vertical” extension.

Disraeli determined to settle this question himself, and to settle it by the admission to the franchise of the “working” classes of the country, and not by lowering it to the “man in the street,” or the submerged tenth. In these views he followed the Toryism of Cobbett rather than the Radicalism of Hume. Discussing Lord John Russell’s proposals of 1860 “for the representation of the people” (which, though it adopted the principle of rateability, was, in fact, merely a reduction of the borough franchise to £6, and of the county occupation to £10), Disraeli labelled its “simplicity” as “of a mediæval character, but without any of the inspiration of the feudal system, or any of the genius of the middle ages.” It sought only to scale down a property qualification. The “claims of intelligence, acquirement, and education” were ignored. As regarded the borough franchise, not fitness, but number was the principle; and the numerical addition accrued to one class only.

“... Let us now consider,” Disraeli continued, “whether the particular class upon whom the noble lord is about to confer this great political power, are a class who are incapable, or who are unlikely to exercise it. Are they a class who have shown no inclination to combine? Are they a class incapable of organisation? Quite the reverse. If we look to the history of this country during the present century, we shall find that the aristocracy, or upper classes, have on several very startling occasions shown a great power of organisation. I think it cannot be denied that the working classes, especially since the peace of 1815, have shown a remarkable talent for organisation, and a power of discipline and combination inferior to none. The same, I believe, cannot be said of the middle classes. With the exception of the Anti-Corn Law League, I cannot recall at this moment any great successful political organisation of the middle classes; and living in an age when everything is known, we now know that that great confederation ... owed its success to a great and unforeseen calamity, and was on the eve of dispersion and dissolution only a short time before that terrible event occurred.” The upper and lower classes, he argued, were capable of organisation and ideas, and the organisation of the latter had been secret as well as disciplined. Their intelligence and their discipline, then, were reasons for conferring the franchise, but their traditional organisation was also a reason for care in its bestowal, and such discrimination as would not give them a predominance. “... What has been ... the object of our legislative labours for many years, but to put an end to a class-legislation which was much complained of? But you are now proposing to establish a class legislation of a kind which may well be viewed with apprehension....”

Disraeli discerned that what in England is discontent, on the Continent is disaffection; and that revolution abroad corresponds to reform at home. Chartism verged perilously on the uprisings which endanger countries where government is out of touch with the governed. It was a sign that institutions might be on their trial, and it demanded that those institutions should resume reality, and win once more the affections of the people.

In his resolve to spread the franchise in his own manner, and to neutralise the revolutionary bias of agitators and secret societies, he never lost sight of the growing force of public opinion. He himself was “a gentleman of the press;” in the improved and multiplied newspapers he hailed the great safety-valve afforded to England by that “publicity” on which “the great fabric of political freedom” has been reared. “Free intercourse,” he exclaimed in the ’thirties, “is the spirit of the age!” So late as 1872, he observed, “... That has been the principle of the whole of our policy. First of all, we made our courts of law public, and during the last forty years we have completely emancipated the periodical press of England, which was not literally free before, giving it such power that it throws light upon the life of almost every class in this country, and I might say upon the life of almost every individual.” In the press (the light of which he perhaps valued more than the warmth), he welcomed an antidote against hidden and perilous associations; and believed that if the self-respecting hand-labourer received the vote (as he was entitled to do), he would exercise it in the cause of freedom, of loyalty, and of order. In 1862, he declared “parliamentary discipline founded on its only sure basis, sympathising public opinion,” to be the watchword of his propaganda. The passage summarises much that I have discussed.

“... To build up a community, not upon Liberal opinions, which any man may fashion to his fancy, but upon popular principles which assert equal rights, civil and religious; to uphold the institutions of the country because they are the embodiment of the wants and wishes of the nation, and protect us alike from individual tyranny and popular outrage; equally to resist democracy” (as a form of government) “and oligarchy, and to favour that principle of free aristocracy which is the only basis and security for constitutional government; ... to favour popular education, because it is the best guarantee of public order; to defend local government, and to be as jealous of the rights of the working man as of the prerogative of the Crown and the privileges of the senate;—these were once the principles which regulated Tory statesmen (i.e. Bolingbroke and Wyndham), and I for one have no wish that the Tory party should ever be in power unless they practise them.”

In his great speech during the summer of the following year on “popular principles” and “liberal opinions,” as well as on the introduction of his actual Reform Bill, he gave expression once more to his distinction between “popular privileges” and “democratic rights”—

“... If the measure bears some reference to the existing classes in this country, why should we conceal from ourselves that this country is a country of classes, and a country of classes it will ever remain? What we desire to do is to give every one who is worthy of it a fair share in the government of the country by means of the elective franchise; but at the same time we have been equally anxious to maintain the character of the House....”

As a matter of tactics, Disraeli had of design framed the bill on lines stricter than he was prepared to concede. He desired that the re-settlement should be enduring, and he deliberately appealed to the co-operation of both parties for this purpose. He had “leaped in the dark,” he had “shot Niagara.” The storm of obloquy, desertion, and censure broke over his head, but he was unmoved, because his proposals were based on principles long held and patiently matured. Of the lodger franchise he had long ago been the “father.” An unmitigated household franchise he refused as too “democratic.” The “direct taxation” franchise and the “dual vote,” which were intended as barriers for the middle classes, he surrendered. That educational franchise which was bound up with a cause that from boyhood had been dear to him; that “savings-bank” franchise which established the right of industrial thrift to representation, he was forced to abandon, by the clamour of the very party that desired education without religion, and labour as the mere instrument of capital. Looking back impartially, these derided “fancy franchises” seem to me a deplorable loss, and even now it would be well to recognise that the mind and the character should have representative faculties wholly apart from the power of property. Disraeli was forced to cast them overboard that he might preserve the vessel itself during the party hurricane. But the essential qualifications of residence and rateability he maintained in the teeth of Mr. Gladstone, and under all the modifications of the principle which ensued. His mind was fixed to steer between the extremes alike of those who, under the mask of emancipation, purposed the despotism of a single class, and of those who desired to form the government of this country by the caprice of an irresponsible, an unintelligent, and an indiscriminate multitude. And he proved his earnest sincerity by the appeal which closed his speech on the second reading: “Pass the bill, and then change the ministry if you like.”

It is not within my province to track the maze of altercations which attended every step of a bill on which Disraeli, contrary to his wont, spoke more than three hundred times, or to raise the dust of controversy this year revived. But, were it so, I could prove how faithful Disraeli remained to the central ideas which had animated him from his youth. So far from having passed a “liberal” measure, he had passed under colossal difficulties, that for which he had long striven, and in a manner which remedied the defects of 1832 without endangering the repose of the State. Indeed, for the second time he actually re-created the Conservative party, and, to the surprise of some of his friends and all his enemies, discovered in the unknown region of the toilers, with whom he had ever sympathised, whom he had always trusted, but whom the Whigs had driven to revolt, and to whom the “cheapest market” Radicals perpetually begrudged protection, health, and alleviation—discovered, I say, in these elements—the pawns of ignoble partisanship—his truest props of order and of allegiance. The measure and the events of 1884 were to prove the rightness alike of his confidence and of his caution. The counties with a lowered franchise became a prey to agitators. The towns remained staunch and steadfast. And this, though in 1867 Mr. Bright had sneered at Disraeli for having “lugged” his “omnibus” of stupid squires up the hill of democracy.

In his speech of 1859, Disraeli protested against any “predominance of household democracy.” He kept his word. Speaking at Edinburgh in the autumn of 1867, he remarked on this very topic—

“... It may be said you have established a democratic government in England, because you have established household suffrage, and you have gone much further than the measures which you previously opposed.... Now, I am not at all prepared to admit that household suffrage with the constitutional conditions upon which we have established it—namely, residence and rating—has established a democratic government. But it is unnecessary to enter into that consideration, because we have not established household suffrage in England. There are, I think I may say, probably four million houses in England. Under our ancient laws, and under the Act of Lord Grey, about one million of those householders possessed the franchise. Under the Act of 1867, something more than half a million will be added to that million. Well, then, I want to know if there are four million householders, and one and a half million in round numbers possess the suffrage, how can ‘household suffrage’ be said to be established in England?”

Thus the proper balance of power, which the bill of 1832 impaired by the exclusion of labour and the enfeeblement of aristocracy, was restored. The people were at last reconciled to their leaders. It had been by accident that the Whigs found themselves arbiters of the national fate in 1832, and it may be conceded that, according to their lights, they honestly did their best. To Lord Grey and his colleagues Disraeli was always just and respectful. But the breach then made demanded the amends which Disraeli had meditated for years. By cancelling qualifications arbitrary and irrational, by conferring political power only in conjunction with social and political responsibility, by regarding society more than the state, and influence than interest, by persistent courage and purpose, this great project succeeded and has endured. The day may come in the process of generations when, as Disraeli has imagined elsewhere, industry may cease to repose upon industrialism alone, and representation may also cease to seem the sole machinery of politics; when enlightenment and public opinion may form a real national conscience; and when leadership may prove itself independent of artificial forms. But till that day arrives, it will be madness in England to give each citizen, irrespective of any qualification but existence, a voice in the Legislature, or entrust them with the sway of an empire. His avowed aim and his accomplished triumph were “to restore those rights which were lost in 1832 to the labouring class of the country,” and to “bring back again that fair partition of political power which the old Constitution of the country recognised.” A year after its enactment, in his great Irish speech he spoke of it as “a most beneficent and noble Act,” and he added that he looked “with no apprehension whatever to the appeal that will be made to the people under the provisions of the Act. I believe you will have a Parliament full of patriotic and national sentiment, whose decisions will add spirit to the community and strength to the State.” “Time,” which was “Contarini Fleming’s” record in the book of “Adam Besso,” has proved the fulness of his foresight and the skill of the adjustment.

The mistrust of this great measure at the time, even by men of intelligence, may be justified by the objection that in the distant future Labour may resume its war against authority in its coming conflict with Capital; and that a rigid conservatism of defiance is preferable to an adaptive conservatism of development. But whenever that hour strikes, it will be seen that Disraeli’s statesmanship has prevented the revolution which a conservatism of defiance must have prepared and entailed. Disraeli will have helped to preserve the English immunity from the violences which mark such upheavals elsewhere. He sought with all his might to quicken Capital into duty, and to hearten Labour by conferring privilege, not as a sop, but as a reward, while, by alleviating misery through creative enactments, he has conservatised Labour and kept it in touch with the national scheme.

It may not, perhaps, have been wholly realised how harmonious Disraeli’s utterances respecting the progressive principles of representation in England have been. That is my excuse for treating the subject with insistence, though by no means with completeness. To have done so would risk the exhaustion of the reader as well as of the subject. Disraeli prevented the raid of alien and disruptive democracy from making England a home. Out of the common he extracted the choice. He revived the democracy long inherent in the English Constitution; he naturalised the democratic idea on the soil of tradition and order; and thereby he cemented the solidarity of the State and the welfare of the nation. He proved that “progress” is not synonymous with push, and that in going forward it is wise also to look back, lest the goal should be a precipice. Still, long as this disquisition has necessarily been, I may hope that it is not dull, since, in Mrs. Malaprop’s aphorism, “I don’t think there is a superstitious article in it.”