CHAPTER VI. A Census is Ordered.-Dissolution of Pitt's Administration.-Impeachment of Lord Melville.-Introduction of Lord Ellenborough into the Cabinet.-Abolition of the Slave-trade.-Mr. Windham's Compulsory Training Bill.-Illness of the King, and Regency.-Recurrence to the Precedent of 1788-'89.-Death of Mr. Perceval.-Lord Liverpool becomes Prime-minister.-Question of Appointments in the Household.-Appointment of a Prime-minister.
The Union with Ireland was the last great work of Pitt's first administration, and a noble close to the legislation of the eighteenth century. But the last months of the year were also signalized by another enactment, which, though it cannot be said to have anything of a character strictly entitled to the name of constitutional, nevertheless established a practice so valuable as the foundation of a great part of our domestic legislation, that it will, perhaps, hardly be considered foreign to the scope and purpose of this volume to record its commencement. In November, 1800, Mr. Abbott, the member for Helstone, brought in a bill to take a census of the people of the United Kingdom, pointing out not only the general importance of a knowledge of the population of a country in its entire amount and its different classes to every government, but also its special bearing on agriculture and on the means requisite to provide subsistence for the people, on trade and manufactures, and on our resources for war. Such a census as he proposed had been more than once taken in Holland, Sweden, Spain, and even in the United States, young as was their separate national existence; it had been taken once-nearly fifty years previous-in Scotland; and something like one had been furnished in England in the reign of Edward III. by a subsidy roll, and in that of Elizabeth by diocesan returns furnished by the Bishops to the Privy Council.[148] He farther argued for the necessity of such a proceeding from the different notions entertained by men of sanguine or desponding tempers as to the increase or diminution of the population. "Some desponding men had asserted that the population had decreased by a million and a half between the Revolution and Peace of Paris, in 1763; others (of whom the speaker himself was one) believed that, on the contrary, it had increased in that interval by two millions." His motion was unanimously adopted by both Houses; and when the census was taken, its real result furnished as strong a proof of its usefulness as any of the mover's arguments, by the extent of the prevailing miscalculations which it detected. For Mr. Abbott, who had spared no pains to arrive at a correct estimate, while he mentioned that some persons reckoned the population of England and Wales at 8,000,000, pronounced that, according to other statements, formed on a more extensive investigation, and, as it seemed to him, on a more correct train of reasoning, the total number could not be less than 11,000,000. In point of fact, excluding those employed in the army and navy, who were nearly half a million, the number for England and Wales fell short of nine millions.[149] It would be quite superfluous to dilate on the value of the information thus supplied, without which, indeed, much of our subsequent legislation on poor-laws, corn-laws, and all matters relating to rating and taxation, would have been impracticable or the merest guesswork.
As was mentioned in the preceding chapter, Pitt found himself unable to fulfil the hopes which, in his negotiations with different parties in Ireland, he had led the Roman Catholics to entertain of the removal of their civil and political disabilities. So rigorous were those restrictions, both in England and Ireland, that a Roman Catholic could not serve even as a private in the militia; and a motion made in 1797 by Mr. Wilberforce-a man who could certainly not be suspected of any leaning to Roman Catholic doctrine-to render them admissible to that service, though it was adopted in the House of Commons, was rejected by the House of Lords. But Pitt, who on that occasion had supported Wilberforce, did not confine his views to the removal of a single petty disability, but proposed to put the whole body of Roman Catholics on a footing of perfect equality with Protestants in respect of their eligibility to every kind of office, with one or two exceptions. And during the autumn of 1800 he was busily engaged in framing the details of his measure, in order to submit it to his royal master in its entirety, and so to avoid disquieting him with a repetition of discussions on the subject, which he knew to be distasteful to him. For, five years before, George III. had consulted the Chief-justice, Lord Kenyon, and the Attorney-general, Sir John Scott (afterward Lord Eldon), on the question whether some proposed concessions to Dissenters, Protestant as well as Roman Catholic, did not "militate against the coronation oath and many existing statutes;" and had received their legal opinion that the tests enacted in the reign of Charles II., "though wise laws, and in policy not to be departed from, might be repealed or altered without any breach of the coronation oath or Act of Union" (with Scotland).[150] Their opinions on the point were the more valuable, since they were notoriously opposed to their political convictions, and might be supposed to have carried sufficient conviction to the royal mind. But his Majesty's scruples were now, unfortunately, revived by the Lord Chancellor, who, strange to say, was himself a Presbyterian; and who treacherously availed himself of his knowledge of what was in contemplation to anticipate the Prime-minister's intended explanations to the King. He fully succeeded in his object of fixing the King's resolution to refuse his assent to the contemplated concessions (which, by a curious confusion of ideas, his Majesty even characterized as "Jacobinical"[151]), though not in the object which he had still more at heart, of inducing the King to regard him as the statesman in the whole kingdom the most deserving of his confidence. The merits of the question will be more appropriately examined hereafter. It is sufficient to say here that Pitt, conceiving himself bound by personal honor as well as by statesman-like duty to persevere in his intended measure, or to retire from an office which no man is justified in holding unless he can discharge its functions in accordance with his own judgment of what is required by the best interests of the state, resigned his post, and was succeeded by Mr. Addington.
Addington's ministry was made memorable by the formation of the Northern Confederacy against us, and its immediate and total overthrow by Nelson's cannon; and for the Peace of Amiens, severely criticised in Parliament, as that of Utrecht and every subsequent treaty with a similar object had been, but defensible both on grounds of domestic policy, as well as on that of affording us a much-needed respite from the strain of war; though it proved to be only a respite, and a feverish one, since at the end of two years the war was renewed, to be waged with greater fury than ever. But it was too short-lived for any constitutional questions to arise in it. And when, in 1804, Pitt resumed the government, his attention was too completely engrossed by the diplomatic arrangements by which he hoped to unite all the nations east of the Rhine in resistance to a power whose ever aggressive ambition was a standing menace to every Continental kingdom, for him to be able to spare time for the consideration of measures of domestic policy, except such as were of a financial character. But, though his premature death rendered his second administration shorter than even Addington's, it was not wholly unproductive of questions of constitutional interest. It witnessed a recurrence to that which cannot but be regarded as among the most important privileges of the House of Commons, the right of impeaching a minister for maladministration. A report of a commission appointed for the investigation of the naval affairs of the kingdom had revealed to Parliament a gross misapplication of the public money committed by the Paymaster of the Navy. And, as that officer could not have offended as he had done without either gross carelessness or culpable connivance on the part of the Treasurer of the Navy, Lord Melville, who had since been promoted to the post of First Lord of the Admiralty, the House of Commons ordered his impeachment at the Bar of the House of Lords; the vote being passed in 1805, during Pitt's administration, though the trial did not take place till the year following. In reality, the charge did not impugn Lord Melville's personal honor, on which at first sight it appeared to press hardly, Mr. Whitbread himself, the member for Bedford, who was the chief promoter and manager of the impeachment, admitting that he never imputed to Lord Melville "any participation in the plunder of the public;" and, as Lord Melville was acquitted on every one of the charges brought against him, the case might have been passed over here with the barest mention of it, were it not that Lord Campbell has pointed out the mode of procedure as differing from that adopted in the great trial of Warren Hastings, twenty years before; and, by reason of that difference, forming a model for future proceedings of the same kind, if, unhappily, there should ever be occasion given for a similar prosecution. The credit of the difference Lord Campbell gives to the Chancellor, Lord Erskine, who, "instead of allowing the House of Lords to sit to hear the case a few days in a year, and, when sitting, being converted from a court of justice into a theatre for rhetorical display, insisted that it should sit, like every other criminal tribunal, de die in diem, till the verdict was delivered. And he enforced both upon the managers of the House of Commons and on the counsel for the defendant the wholesome rules of procedure established for the detection of crime and the protection of innocence."[152] It is well known that on the trial of Hastings the managers of that impeachment, and most especially Burke, claimed a right of giving evidence such as no court of law would have admitted, and set up what they entitled "a usage of Parliament independent of and contradistinguished from the common law."[153] But on that occasion Lord Thurlow, then Chancellor, utterly denied the existence of any such usage-a usage which, "in times of barbarism, when to impeach a man was to ruin him by the strong hand of power, was quoted in order to justify the most arbitrary proceedings." He instanced the trial of Lord Stafford, as one which "was from beginning to end marked by violence and injustice," and expressed a "hope that in these enlightened days no man would be tried but by the law of the land." We may fairly agree with Lord Campbell, that it is to be hoped that the course adopted by Lord Erskine in this case has settled the principle and mode of procedure for all future time; since certainly the importance of an impeachment, both as to the state interests involved in it, and the high position and authority of the defendant, ought to be considered as reasons for adhering with the greatest closeness to the strict rules of law, rather than for relaxing them in any particular.