LIBEL CASE—SOMERS v. BRIGHT.
IN his speech at Manchester, Mr. Bright, alluding to the aristo- cratic influences which prevail in this country, made this re- mark :---
" It is a very old trick with the English Government to take advantage of these panics and moments of excitement. I found not long ago, in read- ing the Pictorial History of England, a note describing the particulars of a paper which Lord Somers, once Lord High Chancellor, wrote to King Wil- liam III., advising him at that particular moment to call a new Parliament. The passage runs thus :—' Heads of arguments to induce the King to call a new Parliament in the present ferment and disposition of the nation :-1. The art of governing England in watching and using such opportunities. 2. These opportunities do not last. 3. The neglect of making use of them must always turn to disadvantage. 4. The like opportunities not to be had again, there being no like occasion in view.' You will observe, if you trace our history from that day to this, that it has always been the cue of the Court and the Ministry for the time being to have Parliament dissolved at a junc- ture favourable to themselves, either when the people are in total apathy on some important political, question, or when they are excited in favour of something that is wrong.'
Somers is thus made to do duty as an aristocrat, whose tricks have been used to betray, the interests of the people, and to sacri- fice those interests for the Court and Ministry ! Who was this Somers ? Not an aristocrat, certainly, but one of the very picked specimens of what an Englishman may be and should be. He was the son of an attorney, who by his industry and talent ac- quired an independent fortune, which he left to his son ; and Somers pursued his father's profession in higher branches with greater distinction. We cannot say that he was no "gen- tleman," for he was thus of decent origin, though no aristocrat ; and gentleman he was in the highest sense of the word. For what is a "gentleman." We look to the old representatives of chivalry, and find among them no small sprinkling of men go- verned by clownish ideas and mean motives; and we have in our eye an hereditary nobility of nature, in aspect, mind, and heart, which traces its descent to a very modern counter in a retail shop, behind which stood a gentleman such as any country might be proud to produce. Birth no doubt gives its advantages—eseteris paribus; it affords the child a better chance of being surrounded by the circumstances that call forth our best qualities,—truthfulness, courage, generosity, and affection ; but if the qualities grow amid more doubtful circumstances and sterner chances, the stronger the test of the truly gentle nature. He is the most of a gentle- man who is the most governed by noble motives. And what was the work by which we know Somers ? He was the leading lawyer in that House of Commons which recorded for us the Bill of Rights,—which succeeded in making the record for us, after a contest which involved, and had for good part of a life- time involved, civil war, death, confiscation, and the loss of all that worldly men hold dear. And amongst those 'men Somers was one of the foremost, of the most steadfast, the most industrious, the most ceaselessly active, the most useful, and the most faith- fully clearsighted amid all confusions and storms. Is this the man to be held up before Englishmen seeking further political rights as an exemplar ad evitandum ?
John Bright does injustice to himself and his own studies when he speaks in this slack and confused way. He talks of "panics and moments of excitement : " why, we had had four reigns of "excitement," a fifth nearly over ; two of those reigns had been periods of civil war, one ending in the just condemnation of a king who had rebelled against the constitution of his country, and the fourth ending in Somers's merciful declaration that the king, who had stuck to his privilege but run away from his post, had abdi- cated." And the fifth reign, nearly closing when Somers wrote the passage quoted, had been one of such incessant conflict of the constitution against the old regime in all its Protean forma,—his Majesty James II., "the Duke of Berwick," the " Duke of York," the Grand Monarque and his protege,—with traitors at home, Tory and Papists, and traitors almost as bad, or worse, among ultra-Protestant intriguers,—that William, an honest man, but no genius, and no Socratic philosopher satisfied, even with the cup at his lips, of an immortal principle,—literally led a worn out life, 'contending against hope, but contending still to the close ; and bequeathing to us Englishmen, " Dutchman " as he was, our own constitution, strengthened and enlarged rather than weakened or contracted. And Somers, who had also gone through conflict, danger, doubt, and impeachment, from the very Parliament whose foundations he had so helped to fortify, was the adviser of that King.
"Moments of excitement and panic " !—why those were lives of trial, courageous life-struggles with death and destruction,
whole terms of man's existence on earth devoted to struggles for
us ; and we literally impair our title to the inheritance if we forget how it was won for us. " The aristocracy" !—Why who gave us Magna Charta but the Barons ? Who the Bill of Rights, but
"the Whigs " ? Who the Reform Bill, but the Whigs? Backed, you will say, by the people, as the Barons were, as William was, as Cromwell was. And be it observed that all these great statutes
of "our glorious constitution" were but the record of accom- plished facts,—treaties of peace' when the constitutional party had gained the ground contested. Such we believe to be the real history of all great reforms, whether in England, America, or Italy —a canon- taught by experience which is not without a moral for "further reformers" in these latter days. And if at times men of progress feel a little impatient, they may console them- selves with the reflection, that for all great national steps forward we need the concurrence of opinion, leaders, clearly shown neces- sity, and opportunity. Mr. Bright, with his Anti-Corn Law ex- periences, might perhaps have a word to say on that point. At all events the need was well known to those bold and wise men, who in that long struggle maintained constitution against prerogative, now with Declaration of Rights, and now with the Bill of Rights, ulti- mately passed as an Act of Parliament. And when, in his share of the ceaseless conflict and death-sick anxiety, William, fast sinking to his grave, was in doubt what to do, Somers pointed to the strictly constitutional course of summoning Par- liament, in those words just quoted as a specimen of the way in which aristocrats use " moments of panics and excitement wary in sacrifice popular rights before Courts and Governments. Read, with their context,—or even without any, context at all so that there be no misleading commentary,—the words are indeed but the simple utterance of a sound and hopeful rule to guide and sustain the reformer.
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