The Years of Endurance Read Online Free PDF Page B

can fatten oxen better than his brethren, the other farmers. A German Baron could hardly believe this."— Wynne Diaries, III, 72.
     
    courts where the final word lay with the decision of twelve fellow-countrymen chosen from the general body of the nation. Strong though the opportunities of blood were, there was no profession to which a man of humble birth might not aspire. Dr. Moore, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1783 to 1805, was the son of a grazier; Lord Eldon, Lord Chancellor with one brief break from 1801 to 1827, the son of a coal-factor's apprentice.
     
    The way these strange islanders chose their rulers outraged alike foreign prejudice and logical formulas. An English election had to be seen to be believed. It was not that the political constitution of the country was democratic: it was on the face of it overwhelmingly aristocratic. The House of Lords was hereditary. Of 558 members of the House of Commons, 294—a majority—were returned by constituencies with less than 250 members. Many of the newer and larger centres of population had no representation at all, while an under-populated county like Cornwall still returned a tenth of the English and Welsh members. 157 M.P.s were nominated by 84 local proprietors, mostly peers, and 150 more on the recommendation of another 70.
    Yet the curious fact remained that the English parliaments of the eighteenth century represented not inaccurately the trend of popular political feeling. Not all the power and bribery of a few great lords, who regarded the Whig rule of England as something permanently ordained by heaven, could prevent the younger Pitt from carrying the country against the prevailing parliamentary majority in the famous election of 1784. The effect of corruption, openly acknowledged and shamelessly displayed, largely cancelled itself out. Those who sought entry to Parliament, being English, were individualists to a man. They were there for their careers or local prestige, or out of a sense of personal duty. They were seldom much interested in abstract ideas nor inclined to press them to inhuman extremes. They were often childishly sensitive to what their fellow-countrymen—and particularly their neighbours— thought of them. The very illogicality of the electoral system inclined them to bow to any unmistakable expression of public opinion; unlike both ideological despots and the representatives of a more rational democracy, they felt the intellectual weakness of their position and claimed no sanctity for their point of view.
    An example of this was the regard paid to county as opp osed to borough elections. The 92 Knights of the Shire were the elite of the House and carried far more weight than could be explained by their numbers. When they were united—an event, however, which only happened in a time of national emergency—no government could long withstand their opposition. This was because their election by forty-shilling freeholders gave them a real right to speak for England: they represented the substance of her dominant interest and industry. They were no placemen or carpet-baggers but independent gentlemen openly competing with their equals for the suffrages of their neighbours—of those, that is, best fitted to judge their character and stewardship. Before a county election sturdy freeholders rode into the shire town from every side to hear speeches from the rival candidates, to be canvassed by them in market hall and street, to march in bannered and cockaded processions behind bands of music, and to eat and drink at their expense in the leading inns and taverns. The most important of all county elections— because it represented the largest constituency—was that of the great province of Yorkshire: on the result of this the eyes of Ministers and even of European statesmen were fixed.
    In such contests, and even in those of the close borough, there was a wealth of homely plain speaking and even homelier conduct. The candidates, however splendid