BOOKS.
MAY'S CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY.* MODERN sentiment offers slight encouragement to the production of works of the class to which Mr. May's history belongs. By a curious change in popular feeling, which is itself the resultof causes to be sought for in the events of the last fifty years, Englishmen who, as late as 1830, whatever their party or whatever their class, attached immense importance even to the fictions of the Con- stitution, are now inclined to look with something like con- tempt on forms of government, and to treat with impatience authors who, content to leave alone the fascinating though indistinct laws of so-called sociology, study the prosy but certain laws of the Statute Book. It is indeed clear that a justifiable re-action from the influence of writers who thought that the key to English greatness was to be found in constitutional formu- laries and fictions, has already gone quite far enough, and that it is time to check the cant which, because the Con- stitution is not everything, treats it as being nothing. Consider- able gratitude therefore is due to Mr. May for forcing public attention to the vast changes which the last century has worked into the organization of the English Government. He shares all the sentiments, and all the prejudices, necessary for success in his labours. He belongs to that class of Whigs who, after having done greater benefits to their country than any other body of politicians, are from the very force of circumstances lessening year by year in numbers and in influence. He abhors at once Conservatives and Democrats, and looks with equal dislike on the Toryism of Lord Eldon and the Radicalism of Mr. Bright, and hence is fitted to become the annalist of the great Whig revolution, which, by giving political predominance into the hands of the middle classes, put a strict limit to the influence of the Crown, and raised up a barrier against which the waves of Democracy have broken in vain. Few persons who have not either studied Mr. May's pages, or else investigated for them- selves the history of George M.'s reign, have measured the ex- tent of that pacific revolution which was in a sense terminated and effected by the Reform Bill of 1830. Mr. May's first volume, and it is decidedly his best, brings into the clearest relief the enormous power possessed in 1760 by the Crown and by the great nobility. Ample revenues, social influence, and the power of dis- pensing valuable patronage secured to a King endowed with any ambition the means of making his will, if not supreme, yet, at any rate, most influential in the government of the country. Five or six great houses, by their party connections, by their long tenure of office, by their riches, and by the possession of seats in Parlia- ment, which were as much their own as their family livings or their family plate, were enabled, if supported by the people, to defy the Crown, and to care little for the people, if not opposed by the King. Direct popular influence bad, even in the House of Commons, if Mr. May is to be believed, very inconsiderable weight. Nominee members formed the majority of the House, and those persons, who might more properly be termed represen- tatives, frequently represented no one but an insignificant mino- rity of some insignificant corporation. Moreover, members of Parliament, whether placed in the House by the vote of a city or sent there in obedience to the will of a Peer, were, when George III, ascended the throne, exposed to a kind of cor- ruption as unknown at the beginning of this century as it is in 1860. Direct pecuniary gratuities were offered by Minis- ters without hesitation, and accepted by members without
• The Constitutional History of Engkind,1760-18130. Vol.. I. and IL Bp Erskine , May. Longman and Co. shame, and respectable politicians derived emoluments from pub- lic contracts, or from transactions in Government stock, at which the most needy and reckless members of Parliament would now affect at least to blush. If the House of Commons of a century back could hardly be recognized in the House of Commons of to- day, the nation which that House of Commons represented was, in many points, unlike modern England. The worst taunt that can now be levelled against an unprincipled demagogue is the ac- cusation that he aims at setting class against class. The whole object of the system of government which George HI. with the mass of his people conceived to be a near approach to the arrange- ments of a perfect commonwealth, appears to have been to keep the people divided into hostile classes. Readers of Mr. May's pages begin at last to wonder if any Englishman could boast of full legal rights. Catholics, Quakers, Unitarians, Jews, everyone, in short, who did not come within the pale of respectable orthodoxy, suffered under some legal penalty or insult. Persons who were not affected by legal enactments were exposed to social ostracism, and Radicals, Jacobins, or Reformers, were disliked by the people, prosecuted by the Government, and, during the long periods in which the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, exposed to no in- considerable danger of arbitrary imprisonment. It is not easy for a generation used to unrestrained personal freedom, and tole- rant of all forms of opinion which are not tainted with socialism or with heresy, to realize the fact that sixty years ago Lord John would have been counted a violent Jacobin, and John Stuart Mill have been held even as Tom Paine.
In so far as the condition of English society bas been changed through the direct influence of legislation, Mr. May records the steps by which the alteration has been wrought with great clearness and ability. When, however, he attempts to estimate the social changes which have accompanied the political progress of the nation, he is a much less satisfactory guide. In fact, throughout his book there is discernible an obvious want of ca- pacity to grasp the whole bearings of the facts which he searches for with admirable patience, and records with admirable impar- tiality. Hence it happens that, while almost every statement which he makes is in all probability strictly correct, the general impression which he leaves on his reader's mind is in many cases erroneous. On no part of his work has he expended more care than on the investigation into the extent of George the Third's influence, and into the nature of Parliament as it existed before the Reform Bill. Yet almost any candid student, who carefully weighs Mr. May's premises, will be forced to doubt some of Mr. May's inferences. The Crown was, he teaches, at any rate after the defeat of the coalition, and, indeed, it may be said from the beginning of the American war, all bat omnipotent. There is much which at first sight favours this view. That George III. triumphed over the Whig nobles, that he displaced Ministers at his will, that he kept men of genius in opposition, and kept men marked by nothing but mediocrity in office, is indubitable. It is also clear that he continued the American war when even the minister of his own choice wished for peace, that he forced on and supported war with France, and that, in defiance of Mr. Pitt's counsels, he put a veto on all projects in favour of Catholic emancipation. But though George III. did all this, and more than this, we doubt whether he really possessed the authority ascribed to him by Mr. May. His influence, his wealth, and his position could accomplish much ; but they could not have enabled him to run permanently against the will of the nation. George III. was inferior in intellect to almost all the statesmen whom he opposed, thwarted, and cheated. From his very inferiority sprang his strength. He represented and summed up in his own person every prejudice of his people. He carried on the war with America after Lord North despaired ; but Lord North saw the hopelessness of the war long before it was perceived by the farmers and squires who were their King's intellectual equals. The Coalition was hated by the King ; but, justly or not, it was abhorred by the country. If George III. desired a war which the prudence of his great minister would gladly have avoided, there is every reason to suppose that, incredible as it now seems, English- men at the end of the last century longed to fight every nation which dared to dispense with a King. On the subject of Catholic emancipation George III. was, as events have clearly shown, on the popular side, and it may well be doubte.d whether the com- bined influence of the Crown and of Mr. Pitt would have pre- vailed on Parliament to remove Catholic disabilities. Even in 1829 Parliament yielded not to principle, but to fear; and as it was the yeomen of England who disapproved of the concession made by Parliamentary prudence. Mr. May's mistaken view as to the
extent of George the Third's power is closely connected with the opinion which he manifestly entertains that Parliament be- fore the Reform Bill hardly in any true sense represented the nation. Here again abundant facts may be quoted to show that an assembly appointed as Parliament was before 1830, could give expression to nothing but the wishes of some few great nobles or of the Crown ; yet a general survey of the course of English poli- tics demonstrates that this idea, plausible as it seems, is incorrect. Chatham was kept in power ,by the force of his popularity, though disliked by the nobles and coldly looked upon by the King. His son was called to authority by the Crown, but he was the idol of a triumphant party, and his whole struggle with the Coali- tion is a curious proof of the indirect yet certain influence exercised by public opinion when once aroused to action. Par- liament, though unreformed, still was a Parliament.
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