a proper moment for a general discussion of Reform, or to enter into the question what that measure of Reform ought to be. I think, however, that this is a proper opportunity for expressing a strong opinion that this Reform.question should not be dangled before the public for party purposes from year to year; but that we should know where we really stand, and what the intentions of Her Majesty's Government really are upon this subject. The information which we have this evening received does not appear to me to harmonize with the statements made by Members of Her Majesty's Government in other places; and, therefore, it becomes necessary that we should be informed by the Government what are really their intentions upon this most important question.

has done so, his accession to office will | justified in making this inquiry as to complete the number of the happy family what are the intentions of Her Majesty's who now enjoy the sweets of office. If Government. I do not think that this is they are to be guided by the opinions of the hon. Members for Birmingham and Bradford, I am not quite sure but that it would be better that the hon. Member for Birmingham should be also a Member of the Government, in order that that hon. Member should bear his share of the responsibility of the measure of Reform to be introduced by Her Majesty's Government. This might have the possible effect of clipping the wings of the hon. Member for Birmingham. In addition to these facts, we have had a declaration from the Government that it is their intention to bring in a Reform Bill; and I think on one occasion the noble Earl at the head of the Government intimated a determination to stand or fall by that Bill. Under these circumstances, the Members of this House, and the public generally, naturally looked with the utmost anxiety and curiosity to Her Majesty's gracious Speech for an indication of the measure in question; and astonishment must have been very generally felt upon finding the terms in which the subject of Reform has been alluded to. The language of the Royal Speech is—

"I have directed that information should be procured in reference to the rights of voting in the election of Members to serve in Parliament for counties, cities, and boroughs. When that information is complete, the attention of Parliament

will be called to the result thus obtained, with a view to such improvements in the laws which regulate the rights of voting in the election of Members of the House of Commons, as may tend to strengthen our free institutions and conduce to the public welfare."

Now, I think we have a right to suppose that the information of Her Majesty's Government upon this subject was complete before the meeting of Parliament. But there is nothing whatever in the language of Her Majesty's Speech that can give us the slightest intimation of the time when the measure will be introduced, or enable us to judge whether the information required is to be given immediately, or to be postponed until next year. And there can be no doubt whatever that the intimation given us this evening by the right hon. Baronet the Secretary for the Home Department on this subject has contributed in no degree to remove the uncertainty that prevails as to the period when this measure of Reform will be introduced by Her Majesty's Government. Under these circumstances, I feel I am fully Sir John Pakington

MR. BRIGHT: Sir, I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that I do not feel in the slightest degree sore at the censure which he has just passed upon me with regard to observations which I have made upon the events which have taken place in Jamaica. I am a good deal used to the criticism of the right hon. Gentleman. In fact, I believe there is nothing which I have said anywhere - hardly anything which I have said in this House or in the country for the last twenty years-which the right hon. Gentleman has not found it I can assure him necessary to condemn. that he is very much mistaken if he supposes that I was actuated by any party feeling in anything which I said upon this distressing subject. If I had any party feeling, as the right hon. Gentleman interprets that phrase, I presume I should have been rather disposed to have said nothing that would be unpleasant to the Government and to the Administration, with whose general policy I hope to agree. The right hon. Gentleman might just as well be charged with having made a party attack upon me, standing, as he does, on the other side of the table, and cheered, as he has been, by the party of which he is one of the recognized leaders. But he charges me with having prejudged this question. Does he recollect that nearly every paper which advocates his politics in this country has been writing strongly in favour of Governor Eyre, and applauding the sanguinary transactions which have taken place in Jamaica? Does he know, further, that several speakers, well-known Members of

his own party, have spoken at different | granted by Parliament. It has not been meetings in the same sense? I did not sanctioned and guaranteed by the Assemprejudge Governor Eyre. I took Governor bly and Government of that island, and Eyre's own statement-and I said then there are now many persons in this counwhat I repeat now-that there is not a try, I am satisfied-I grieve to say it, I Judge on the bench in the three kingdoms think it is a hideous thing amongst us— who will undertake to say, either in private who do not feel the same sense of wrong or in public, that Mr. Gordon was not and injustice when anything like this hapclearly murdered. The right hon. Gentle- pens if it be inflicted only upon those unman, perhaps, desired further evidence. I fortunate " niggers,' as they would if was content to take Governor Eyre's own white men had suffered in a similar manstatement. If it had been the statement ner. Now, I regard every life among those of some paper in Jamaica, or some paper men-and it is right I should so regard in New York-as news from the West them, every man of them, before the law Indies often comes to this country by and before the sovereign authority of the New York-I should not for one mo- Queen-as important as any life in this ment have thought of condemning Gover- country or in this House-and it is idle nor Eyre, or even of discussing his proceed to tell me that when I stand on a platform ings. But it was when I saw his own des- before thousands of my countrymen, when patch of four-score paragraphs, written with this great question is in the balance, I am the greatest deliberation and the greatest to consider, because they are black, the precision, in which he stated his own share lives of 2,000 subjects of the Queen as in the transaction, that I condemned him; nothing in comparison with the feelings of and I put it to the House (the country knows Governor Eyre and his accomplices. I tell perfectly well) whether any evidence which the right hon. Gentleman that it would has since been received has in the slightest want a very much stronger censure than degree lessened the gravity of the charge his; and I tell those who sit behind him against Governor Eyre. I recollect in this that it will want something more appalling House some years ago, when the noble than their cheers to keep me silent after Lord the Member for King's Lynn (Lord the atrocities recently perpetrated in JaStanley) sat here as Minister for India, maica. I believe, Sir, that at this moment that an hon. Friend of mine, the Member there is not a civilized and Christian counfor Northampton (Mr. Gilpin), brought for- try in the world in which all thoughtful ward a case where an officer in the English men are not directing their eyes to this army shot 500 Sepoys in cold blood. The country, to observe what will be the course noble Lord got up, not to defend it, for he of the Government on this question. I knew that was impossible. He never in agree with the right hon. Gentleman that his life had and he never will have in the the Government was right in appointing course of his life-a more difficult and un- the Commission, but not that they appointed pleasant undertaking than he had that it too soon. They delayed its appointment evening, to appear to offer some sort of too long. I complained, in one of these excuse for an atrocity unparalleled, I hope, speeches to which the right hon. Gentlein the history of Englishmen. There are man has referred, that my right hon. Friend persons in this country, many of them, who the Colonial Secretary allowed three weeks would have been glad that this matter to pass from the time when he read that could have been hushed up. They have despatch to the time when it was announced not learned, after thirty years of Parlia- to the public that that Commission was to mentary legal freedom existing in Jamaica, be issued. I have understood that there to regard those unhappy negroes as subjects were reasons for that delay with which I was of the Queen of African descent. They not then acquainted. I did not conceive were brought to that country not by their for a moment that the Secretary of State own consent. They or their forefathers had for the Colonies was a man hard and cruel, suffered every species of oppression and and unmindful of the interests of those wrong; their cries finally ascended to whose interests he has been appointed by Heaven, and the people of this country, the Queen specially to guard; and now outraged in their consciences by the con- when the Commission has been appointed, tinuance of that wrong, forced Parliament and when the circumstances have been to give freedom to that black population. before the public, I have no complaint to From the hour of their freedom until this make of him or of the Government. I am hour it has been merely the freedom content now, and leave the matter for the VOL. CLXXXI. [THIRD SERIES.]

M

thorough examination of the Commission. I upper and middle classes, the labouring I have no doubt that a thorough inquiry man paid no taxes, with a few trifling exwill be made and full justice done. There ceptions, for what he ate, for the clothes are others gone to that island from this which he wore, or for his house; and be country, Commissioners appointed by the was sure that the House was not about public. Why, Sir, if such transactions as to stand still in the course on which it had these could take place in the island of entered. He believed that it would conJamaica, and there was no man to point tinue to do all in its power to forward a finger at them in this country, what the interests of the working classes. He might happen in all our other colonies and was sure that every demand which those all the other dependencies of this wide classes might make would be dealt with Empire? And if law be not law to the in a fair and liberal and generous spirit. negro in Jamaica, how long will law be He did hope that if a Reform Bill came law to the working people or to any of before the House there would be no their friends in this country? I say, Sir, coquetting with such an important subject, that the right hon. Gentleman has allowed, but that hon. Gentlemen would fairly and it may be, an official sympathy for Governor fully speak their minds. For his own part, Eyre to weigh with him in this matter, and he would oppose any measure by which the he has thought it necessary to give me present franchise would be lowered; he notice that he would come down to the had seen the effects of democracy in AusHouse and pronounce a solemn censure tralia, and he hoped and trusted that Engupon my conduct. I tell him that in all land would not adopt a system which at the public speeches I have ever made the other side of the world had had such and they are not a few, as the House deplorable results. He could see no good knows there are no passages in those result that could be effected by the introspeeches to which I will to my last hour duction of such a measure, and if brought more firmly adhere than to those which the forward he could only again repeat that it right hon. Gentleman has commented upon. should receive his most humble but deterThere is nothing in them that I have to mined opposition. condemn myself for-there is nothing in them that I retract-and if the same circumstances happened again, I would repeat those passages, and, if God gave me power, with a more burning indignation would I condemn atrocities which have cast a foul blot upon the character of English Governors.

MR. BUTLER-JOHNSTONE said, he congratulated the Government on the very modest position which the question of Reform occupied in Her Majesty's Speech. In common with the great mass of his countrymen, he had had some apprehensions with reference to the Reform question, and the manner in which Her Majesty's GovernMR. MARSH said, that he was glad to ment were likely to deal with it; but those hear the right hon. Gentleman (Sir John apprehensions were in a great degree rePakington) bear testimony to the high moved when he saw the distant and modest character of Governor Eyre for modera- manner in which the matter was alluded to tion, justice, and humanity. He was in the Speech from the Throne. He knew glad that the right hon. Baronet had that men of experience and tried patriotism brought forward the subject, as he himself may have taken the place of the veteran knew that Governor Eyre was remarkable statesman they had been accustomed to; but, for his kindness and humanity to the at the same time, they feared that a shadow Natives of Australia. As to the ques- behind the Treasury Benches might prove tion of Reform, he believed that no Bill fatal to them. Those apprehensions were would be passed that Session, and that not entirely groundless; for there were it would be useless to bring one forward. certain indications which led men to fear For his own part, he was quite satisfied that the Members of Her Majesty's Gowith the Bill of 1832, and with its mar-vernment might drift into the arms of vellous results. Since the passing of that the hon. Member for Birmingham, and Bill a vast number of measures had been adopted by the House, calculated to improve the condition of the working man. At present, the taxation of the country was so arranged as to lean as lightly as possible on the working classes. While an income tax has been imposed on the Mr. Bright

that the offspring of this union might be the ruin of the Constitution. The hon. Gentleman (Mr. Bright) had told the great Whig party that if they shrunk from this question of Reform they would become extinct. Now, he believed that the Whig party would become extinct-that a Whig

"When Glaucus of his judgment Jove deprived,
His armour interchanging, gold for brass,
A hundred oxen worth for that of nine,"

he might apply to him the epigram of
Martial-

in England would be as rare an animal | enigma. But this I can tell you, that if as a wolf if that great party listened to the circumstances have been such as serithe behests of the Member for Birmingham. ously to alarm Governor Eyre, they must He congratulated Her Majesty's Govern- have been circumstances of great moment." ment on having received into its ranks so He went on to speak of Governor Eyre as valuable an acquisition as the right hon. a man of great courage, and of great huGentleman the Member for London (Mr. manity. Although, therefore, I feel it my Goschen); but, while he felicitated the Mi- bounden duty to say nothing which shall nistry, he should condole with the right hon. prejudge the question, either in his favour Gentleman himself. At a meeting in the or against him, I do think it right, in the City the other night the right hon. Gentle meanwhile, to state what is a fact in the man seemed to consider it a case of very case, and that the knowledge of the repuserious hardship that he was compelled to tation which he has heretofore borne should give up his occupation as a merchant, for a not be kept back from the House. The position so humble as that of a Cabinet course which the Government have purMinister of England. Like the Lycian sued has been spoken of both by the right Princehon. Baronet and by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, but there is nothing that has fallen from them which I think calls for any reply or remark from me. They agree on the main in approving the course which was pursued by the Government, though the right hon. Baronet thinks we were too precipitate, and my hon. Frieud thinks we were not quite rapid enough. I am willing not to enter on that part of the question, but to leave it to the future consideration and judgment of the House. There is one point, however, on which I wish to set the right hon. Baronet right. He says-what has frequently been said that he feared too much influence had been exercised, and that in the course which we pursued pressure had been put upon us particularly by a certain deputation to which he took occasion to refer. Now, the fact is that when that deputation waited on my noble Friend, who was not able to be present, and was received by me, Sir Henry Storks was at that moment on his way from Malta to this country, having received from me an intimation of the purpose for which he was sent for to this country, and of the appointment which has been so much canvassed.

“Tam stupidus nunquam nec tu, puto, Glauce,

fuisti,

Chalcea donanti Chrysea qui dederas." As had already been remarked in the course of the debate, nothing more strongly showed the importance of the Session on which they were about entering than the fact that up to this only three of the topics touched on in the Queen's Speech had yet been discussed.

MR. CARDWELL: Sir, I can assure you that I have no desire to continue the discussion which has been raised with regard to Jamaica. The object which I have in view is identical with the course which Her Majesty's Government have endeavoured to pursue, and that has been, while insisting upon full inquiry into all matters which appeared to them to call for inquiry, to avoid prejudging any part of the question. I should ill fulfil that intention if I said anything which continued the discussion of the subject beyond the point to which it has been the pleasure of the House to entertain it. All, therefore, that I rise to say is, that like the right hon. Baronet opposite (Sir John Pakington), I have known Governor Eyre only by the reputation which he has obtained and preserved in the service of the Crown. When I first heard, by telegram through the United States, that these deplorable occurrences had taken place, I sent for the Governor of Barbadoes, who happened to be in this country, and asked whether he could give me any assistance in explaining what these transactions meant. His reply was, "I can give you no assistance in reading this

SIR GEORGE GREY: One word before the Question is put. In reference to the construction which the right hon. Baronet the Member for Droitwich has placed upon an answer given by me to a question on the subject of Reform, it certainly never was the construction which I intended it should bear. The right hon. Baronet said it was very undesirable-—and I entirely agree with him-that the question should be kept dangling before the House and the country as a party question from year to year; and I think he said the answer which I had given left it in complete uncertainty whether the Bill founded

on the information to be obtained would be presented in the course of the present or of the next year. I certainly intended to give rise to no such uncertainty. What I intended to say, if I did not say it, was that until the day for the introduction of the Bill was fixed, and until the Government were in a condition to lay the information on which that Bill would be founded before the House, it was impossible to say what the interval would be. As to the general principles of the Bill the Government are agreed; but as to its details the Government cannot, of course, lay them before the House until the information on which they are acting is complete. Of course, if that information had been complete when Parliament met the paragraph in Her Majesty's Speech from the Throne would have been in different terms. That paragraph pledges the Government to communicate the information when complete to the House. It is intended to express-and does, I think, clearly express -the intention of the Government at the earliest period at which they can do so to lay a Bill before the House founded on that information.

of the Government (Earl Russell) stated in another place that this Bill would be brought before Parliament before the Easter vacation-I think he said he hoped before the end of the month. He has also stated, on another public occasion, that by that measure his Government intended to stand or fall. Now, that appears to me to be a sound and proper resolution. There has been a great deal too much paltering with this question. But what I am anxious about, and the point which I wish to urge on the consideration of Her Majesty's Government, is this :-If the measure is to be one by which they are to stand or fall, by which the fate of the Liberal Ministry and by which the domination of the Liberal party in the politics of this country for some time to come is to be determined, it should be a measure which will be worth standing or falling by. Now, there is some reason to suppose, from rumours and from utterances out of this House, that this measure-incomplete as it is declared to be by my right hon. Friend (the Secretary of State)-is simply to be a measure for the lowering the franchise in boroughs and counties. On behalf of a great portion of the Liberal party in this country-and I think of no insignificant portion of the Liberal party in this House-I venture to say that such a measure would not be a satisfactory adjustment of the great question of Parliamentary Reform. I feel satisfied the great body of earnest Reformers in this country are convinced, that one of the principal evils of the exist

MR. T. B. POTTER said, he had taken part in the great meeting held in Manchester on the subject of the Jamaica massacre. The antecedents of Governor Eyre were laid most fully before that meeting, and every credit was given to him for his conduct when he was in Australia. All that the meeting asked was for investigation, and the deputation to Earl Russell, of which he had the honouring state of things with which they must to be a member, preferred the same request. They judged Governor Eyre purely by the evidence contained in his own despatches. The meeting wished to do nothing condemnatory of him; they merely wished that the name of England might be vindicated from what they considered a blot on the national escutcheon.

That

grapple is the distribution of political power in this country. None of us-if I except some extreme theoretical politicians-wish to see political power simply distributed in this country according to heads of population; but we all know that there are in existence a number of wretched boroughs, which, for some reason or other, were reMR. BOUVERIE: It is quite clear, tained at the time of the Reform Act, but from the very oracular and mystical para- which ought now no longer to be retained. graph which closes Her Majesty's Speech, These are either purely nomination boroughs, that there is to be a Reform Bill. or else what are still worse boroughs fact, at any rate, seems to be estab-known to be the sinks of corruption. I say lished. But as the information is not no Reform Bill will be satisfactory to the complete on which that Reform Bill is to people of this country unless it attempts to be founded, I presume that Her Majesty's grapple with this evil. But it is not the Government have not completely made up mere question of the existence of these their minds as to what the nature of that small nomination and corrupt boroughsReform Bill is to be. Taking that to be there is at the bottom of this question the case, we had two glimmerings of light something much more important, and that thrown upon this subject in the course of is the question of the distribution of polithe last week. The noble Lord at the head tical power in this country. Those who Sir George Grey