Angus Hawkins - Parliamentary Government

'Parliamentary Government' and Victorian Political Parties, c. 1830-c.
1880
Author(s): Angus Hawkins
Source: The English Historical Review, Vol. 104, No. 412 (Jul., 1989), pp. 638-669
Published by: Oxford University Press
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'Parliamentary Government' and Victorian

Political Parties, c. I83 0-C. i88o '
'I B E L I EVE that, without party, parliamentary government is impos-
sible'.1 Disraeli's emphatic declaration to the people of Manchester,
in April I872, bound together two elements basic to the mid-Victorian
view of the British constitution. This article examines the precise rela-
tionship between party and 'parliamentary government'. In what way
was party essential to 'parliamentary government', and how should
this affect our understanding of the nature and function of parliamentary
parties during the nineteenth century?
The development of political parties has been one of the major refer-
ence points charting the course of historical investigation into the Vic-
torian era. This revered historiographical landmark has been
approached from a number of directions, delineating the nature of party
within a variety of contexts. The organizational context has pointed
to the development of party machinery both inside and outside of West-
minster as testimony to the growing sophistication and influence of
party. Here the works of Norman Gash, for the period prior to I867,
and H. J. Hanham and E. J. Feuchtwanger, for the years following
the second Reform Act, are seminal.2 Second, the electoral context
has suggested increasingly partisan voting in the country, which, in
turn, imposed party discipline upon MPs. According to Gary Cox
this occurred between I857 and I868.3 John Vincent's earlier work
offers corroborative evidence.4 E. J. Feuchtwanger and J. P. Mackin-
tosh point to the years immediately after I867, while Alan Beattie
and Kenneth Wald defer the widespread acceptance of party voting
This article owes much to the knowledge, generosity and kind criticisms of Mr Alan Beattie.
I am very grateful to Dr Michael Bentley, Dr Ronald Huch, Dr Angus Macintyre, Dr Ian Newbould,
Dr Frank O'Gorman, Dr Joseph Tiedemann and Dr Albion Urdank for their comments and valuable
suggestions. Dr Newbould also kindly allowed me to read the typescript of his forthcoming study,
'Whiggery and Reform I830-i841: the Politics of Government'. The American Philosophical Society
generously funded the research upon which this article is based.
i. The Times, 4 Apr. I 872, 5.
2. N. Gash, Politics in the Age of Peel: A study in the technique of parliamentary representation,
183o-i850 (London, 1953); H. J. Hanham, Elections and Party Management: Politics in the time
of Disraeli and Gladstone (London, i959); E. J. Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, Democracy and the Tory
Party: Conservative leadership and organization after the second reform bill (Oxford, I968).
3. Gary W. Cox, 'The Development of a Party-Orientated Electorate in England, I832-198',
British Journal of Political Science, xvi (I986), I87-2I6.
4. John Vincent, The Formation of the Liberal Party i857-i868 (London, I966) and idem, Poll-
books: How Victorians Voted (Cambridge, I968).
I989 VICTORIAN POLITICAL PARTIES, C.I830-C.I880 639
as an electoral norm until the i8 80s.1 A third s

as the social context. Here the works of John Vincent, pointing to
the emergent power of a popular press, militant nonconformity and
organized labour during the I8 os and i86os, and of Richard Shannon,
dissecting the anatomy of a Gladstonian 'moral crusade' of the I870s,
are outstanding examples.2
These approaches to the broad issue of the nature of Victorian parties
are naturally reflected in responses to the more specific question of
the character of parties in Parliament. The development of party activity
within Westminster has been described in organizational, electoral and
social terms. Other approaches have also been adopted. The procedural
context has pointed to the changes that occurred throughout the nine-
teenth century in the manner in which both private and public legisla-
tion was handled. This setting describes the diminishing status of
individual backbench MPs and the increasing authority of the party
leadership and government in the control of parliamentary procedure.3
Another setting has been the statistical context provided by
analysis of division lists. Here the work of Derek Beales, David Close
and Ian Newbould for the I83os, W. 0. Aydelotte for the I840s,
and Valerie Cromwell for the i86os, for example, suggests the extent
of party discipline in the division lobby.4 Another setting may be
described as the political context. Here, narrative blends perceptions
of party with contingent executive, policy and strategic concerns, laced
for piquancy with strong personalities, to create an image of party
suspended in a solution of descriptive chronology.5
The aim of this article is to shift the direction of enquiry and, by
doing so, to suggest another context in which to look upon Victorian
i. Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, Democracy and the Tory Party; John P. Mackintosh, The British Cabi-
net (London, I962); Alan Beattie, English Party Politics: 166o-1906 (London, 1970); Kenneth Wald,
Crosses on the Ballot: Patterns of British VoterAlignment since i88y (London, I983).
2. John Vincent, Formation of the Liberal Party; Richard Shannon, Gladstone and the Bulgarian
Agitation i876 (London, I963).
3. Peter Fraser, 'The Growth of Ministerial Control in the Nineteenth Century House of Com-
mons', ante, lxxv (I960), 444-63; Valerie Cromwell, 'The Losing of the Initiative by the House
of Commons, 1780-I9I4', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th Ser., xviii (I968), 1-24.
See also Alpheus Todd, On Parliamentary Government in England: Its Origins, Development, and
Practical Operations (2 vols., London, I 869).
4. D. E. D. Beales, 'Parliamentary Politics and the "Independent" Member i820-i860', in R.
Robson (ed.), Ideas and Institutions of Victorian Britain (London, I967), pp. I-I9; David Close,
'The Formation of a Two-party Alignment in the House of Commons Between I832 and I841',
ante, lxxxiv (I969), 257-77; Ian Newbould 'The Emergence of a Two-Party System in England
from I830 to I841: Roll Call and Reconsideration', Parliaments, Estates and Representation, v (I985),
25-32; W. 0. Aydelotte, 'The House of Commons in the 1840S', History, xxxix (1954), 249-62;
Valerie Cromwell, 'Mapping the Political World of i86i: A Multidimensional Analysis of House
of Commons Division Lists', Legislative Studies Quarterly, vii (I982), 28 I-98.
S. See J. B. Conacher, The Aberdeen Coalition 1852-1855: A Study in Mid-Nineteenth Century
Party Politics (Cambridge, I968); and Angus Hawkins, Parliament, Party and the Art of Politics
in Britain, 1855-59 (London, I987). For an important study that extends this setting to include
the intellectual context concerned with the moral purpose of political activity see J. P. Parry, Demo-
cracy and Religion: Gladstone and the Liberal Party, i867-i875 (Cambridge, I986).
640 'PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT AND July
parliamentary parties. It attempts to un

in terms of function rather than defini
importance of the constitutional contex
parties operate. There have been many a
parliamentary parties for the 'Age of Peel', after I832. Norman Gash,
for example, offered an organizational definition of party divorced from
any constitutional context: a party was 'a body of politicians with
coherent organization and a rudimentary philosophy of action'. 1
Because this definition can be applied equally well to Geoffrey Holmes's
'rage of party' in the reign of Queen Anne as to early Victorian politics,
however, it is plainly inadequate as a means of explaining the historical
development of parties.2 Moreover, the deceptive continuity of much
language and some labels associated with political parties since the
seventeenth century, such as Whig, Tory and 'the Opposition', easily
expose historical understanding to the dangers of anachronism. The
perils of setting off in such a flimsy definitional craft as that provided
by Gash are all the greater when attempting to navigate powerful teleo-
logical currents. The temptation to see parties in Parliament as slowly
and gradually realizing an ideal as institutional instruments of the popu-
lar will, within a participatory democracy, is a real one. By imposing
an anachronistic paradigm, early mid-Victorian parties can appear to
be imperfect, yet embryonic, aspirants towards their later nineteenth-
century selves. The inclination of politicians themselves to emphasize,
for immediate practical purposes, continuity and cherished legacies (an
influential source of teleological distortion) underscores such historio-
graphical hazards. Avoiding anachronism requires an understanding
of parliamentary parties appropriate to the function ascribed to them
by contemporary constitutional wisdom.3 In the case of parties
between the first and second Reform Acts the appropriate context is
prescribed by the doctrine of 'parliamentary government'.
In I8 8 the third Earl Grey proclaimed 'that Great Britain stands
distinguished among the nations of the earth for the prosperity it has
enjoyed, and for the social progress it has made during the time it
has been under a "parliamentary government". 'The same year the
Edinburgh Review declared that 'parliamentary government included
all that was most essential to the mechanism of the state and the mainten-
ance of freedom:5
The triumph of the Reform Act of I832 consists not so much in the recogni-
tion of certain abstract principles, or in the readjustment of the franchise,
I. N. Gash, Reaction and Reconstruction in English Politics, 1832-i852 (Oxford, i965), p. 126.
2. G. Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne (London, I967).
3. The following argument that avoiding anachronism requires the recognition of the constitutional
context within which parties operate is the important message of Alan Beattie's English Party Politics.
4. Third Earl Grey, Parliamentary Government Considered with Reference to Reform of Parlia-
ment (London, i 8 S 8), p. i i.
S. Anon., 'Earl Grey on Parliamentary Government', Edinburgh Review, ccxix (July I858), 272.
I989 VICTORIAN POLITICAL PARTIES, C.I830-C.I880 64I
as in the fact that for a quarter of a century Parliamentary Government

has been established in this country with greater purity and efficiency than
it ever possessed before, that during this period innumerable measures of
unequalled public importance have been adopted in rapid succession by the
legislature; and that while discord has shaken, and despotism subdued,
almost every other great nation in Europe, the people of England have never
been more heartily attached to their institutions, or more happily at peace
amongst themselves.
The implications of this celebrated system of 'parliamentary govern-

ment' for the function of parties in Westminster are crucial to an under-
standing of Victorian politics.
'Parliamentary government' emerged from the doctrine of executive
government, in the early nineteenth century, and was to be itself super-
seded by notions of 'party government' by the I870S. During the inter-
vening period, however, 'parliamentary government' rested on a well-
established constitutional doctrine concerned with preserving an auton-
omous parliamentary sovereignty. It was J. J. Park, Professor of Eng-
lish Law and Jurisprudence at King's College, London, in his Dogmas
of the Constitution of I832, calling for a realistic understanding of how
the constitution actually operated rather than a recitation of theoretical
conventions, who first saw what he called a system of 'parliamentary
government' replacing (in Park's phrase) prerogative government. For
Park the features of 'parliamentary government', as they existed, were
clear. The executive was formed from the leadership of the majority
party in parliament. As this executive also managed and controlled
the legislative process, executive and legislative fused in the House
of Commons. Loss of the ability by the executive to manage the legisla-
ture required resignation from office: 'It would be esteemed politically
dishonourable and improper, if [the government] were to retain office
after the support and adhesion of a majority in the House of Commons
should have been unequivocally withdrawn from them'.1 In Park's
view, in I 832, however, this parliamentary system faced a fundamental
dilemma. How to secure stable government, without corruption and
moral debasement, while also securing liberty and freedom from mis-
rule, without destroying the power of government to prefer the real
i. J. J. Park, Dogmas of the Constitution (London, I832), pp. 38-41. JohnJames Park (1795-i833)
was educated privately and entered Lincoln's Inn as a student in i8is. He was called to the bar
in I822. As a jurist of the historical school he was appointed to the chair of English Law and
Jurisprudence at King's College, London, in I 83 I. Dogmas of the Constitution was a series of lectures
given at King's College during the period of the reform debate. Park's reference to a system of
'parliamentary government' is, to my knowledge, the first use of this term. It subsequently entered
common usage. In I 8 5 8 Grey uses the term in the same sense as Park, in referring to the pre-eminence
of the House of Commons, where executive and legislative fuse, and party is required by the Cabinet's
need to manage Parliament in order to sustain its executive authority. Bagehot, in the I86os, gave
the term a rather broader connotation by associating it with the political supremacy of the middle
classes. A. V. Dicey, in The Law of the Constitution (London, I884), sees it as a legal, rather
than a political, concept. By the I88os, however, changes in the structure of national politics, were
requiring modifications to the established Park-Grey doctrine.
interests of the community to popula

ance?1 The resolution of this profound constitutional dilemma came
to be seen in the nature and function of parliamentary parties.
If Parliament (particularly the House of Commons) was the auton-
omous arena from which the executive, as organized in the Cabinet,
drew its authority, then the protection of such sovereignty demanded
the exclusion of any executive authority derived from two powerful
rival sources - the monarchy and the people. This required political
associations in Parliament of a certain kind. It required associations
cohesive enough to fulfill the needs of stable ministerial existence; par-
ties sufficiently strong as to authorize an executive, without the Cabinet
being reliant upon the support of the royal prerogative. Yet it required
associations loose enough to prevent the executive being merely the
product of an electoral mandate; parties sufficiently weak as to leave
open the possibilities of ministerial defeat without a dissolution. With-
out organized parties of some cohesion the monarch would rule. With-
out parties experiencing some instability the people would rule. In
Bagehot's words, 'the House of Commons lives in a state of potential
choice, at any moment it can choose a ruler and dismiss a ruler. And
therefore party is inherent in it, is bone of its bone, and breath of
its breath'.2 Thus the nature of those parties integral to 'parliamentary
government' between the I83os and I870S was determined by their
constitutional function: to protect parliamentary sovereignty from both
the prerogative and the populace.
Closer examination reveals two subtly distinct views of party operat-
ing within the context of 'parliamentary government'; one Whig, the
other Peelite. The Whig vision of parliamentary parties drew on the
political theory of Edmund Burke, the political economy of Dugald
Stewart, and the parliamentary practice of Charles James Fox; it became
influential by the I83os and was given authoritative expression by the
third Earl Grey in his I858 essay, Parliamentary Government con-
sidered with Reference to Reform of Parliament. The Peelite vision
drew on Tory traditions of Cabinet government, the parliamentary
practice of Lord Liverpool, and notions of an impartial executive con-
cerned with order and stability; it became embodied in Peel's Conserva-
tive leadership of the I 8 30S and I 84os and suffered an irreversible demnise
in Parliament with Peel's death in I8 o. By the I8 Os the Whig vision
of party was triumphant in Westminster. Yet a historical irony exists
in the fact that the Peelite vision (with its emphasis on order) found
new life in the corridors of Whitehall as the ethic of a professionalized
civil service, while in Parliament, by the I870S, the doctrine of 'parlia-
mentary government' had itself given way to a 'two-party system' with
very different notions of sovereignty and executive authority.
i. Park, Dogmas of the Constitution, p. 59-

2. W. Bagehot, The English Constitution (London, I963), p. ix8.
There exists a crucial distinction between a 'two-party system' and

a constitutional context that recognizes the legitimacy of organized
parties. Prior to the I 870S the legitimacy and value of organized parlia-
mentary parties were most certainly recognized. Parliamentary parties
were even envisaged in terms of a two-party alignment. But nothing
resembling a modern 'two-party system' is discernible before the I 870s.
The constitutional context framing the modern British 'two-party sys-
tem' that emerged after I 8 67 has conferred a certain autonomy on parties
as the essential instruments of sovereignty. This autonomy is based
upon a mass membership, a centralized bureaucracy and an aspiration
towards ideological homogeneity. This has important implications for
how modern parties are supposed to behave. There is the assumption
that parties will be, and should be, cohesive; that party MPs will speak
and vote as a bloc; and that, in themselves, individual MPs have little
independent authority. The 'two-party system' pictures the constitu-
tion as a dialogue between two wholly cohesive parties competing for
the votes of a mass electorate so as to legitimize their power. Thus
MPs represent, via a vote for the party, the plebiscitary verdict of
the electorate on the performance of the current executive.1 The con-
stitutional assumptions that give credence to such a 'two-party system'
have no currency prior to the I870s.
Because the origins of mid-Victorian 'parliamentary government' lay
in the constitutional doctrine of the eighteenth century, certain estab-
lished themes, in modified form, proved significant in a nineteenth-
century discourse upholding parliamentary parties as the guardians of
parliamentary sovereignty. Constitutional authorities of the eighteenth
century saw the British polity as a 'mixed government', containing within
itself a system of checks and balances. This drew on an ancient govern-
ment ideal (going back through Polybius to Aristotle) combining ele-
ments of monarchy, oligarchy and democracy, so as to secure the
benefits of each, while limiting their attendant defects. Sir William
Blackstone's Commentaries on the Law of England (I765-9), William
Paley's Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (I785), and Jean
de Lolme's Constitution of England (I775) defined a doctrine of 'mixed
i. This very broad definition of the modern British 'two-party system' should not conceal the
fact that differing views of how this system operates exist. For discussion of what might be called
the 'party competition' model see A. Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York,
1957), where it is proposed in its purest form, as well as L. S. Amery, Thoughts on the Constitution
(London, 1947); B. Crick, The Reform of Parliament (3rd ed., London, 1970); and R. T. McKenzie,
British Political Parties (London, i9S S). For discussion of what might be called the 'party ideology'
model see S. H. Beer, Modern British Politics (London, i965), who approves of it; and V. Bogdanor,
The People and the Party System (Cambridge, I98I), who disapproves of it. For the important
contention that both these views exaggerate the continuous existence of the 'two-party system' since
the I870s, and that neither can explain why so much importance continues to be placed on the
idea of an 'autonomous' parliamentary arena see A. Beattie, 'The Two-Party System: Room for
Scepticism', in S. E. Finer (ed.), Adversary Politics and Electoral Reform (London, i975). For
the attempt to rescue the notion of 'parliamentary government' in a democratic context see R. Bassett,
The Essentials of Parliamentary Democracy (2nd ed., London, I964).
644 'PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT' AND July
government' that assumed a canonical status. 1 'Mixed government'

(though it recognized the executive, legislature and judiciary as func-
tional categories) countered any extreme concept of the 'separation
of powers'.2 Indeed, between I783 and i8oi it became increasingly
accepted that the House of Commons was the arena where the direct
interaction of constitutional and social interests occurred. Thus a consti-
tutional balance operating within the Commons became the safeguard
of liberty.3 In this form the fafon de parler of 'mixed government',
with its internal checks and balances, echoed on into the nineteenth
century. The commentaries of Paley, Blackstone and de Lolme survived
as authoritative texts, and Lord Brougham and Lord John Russell could
still evoke the language of 'mixed government'.4 In its focus upon
the Commons, the survival of hereditary elements in the constitution,
and the concern for an efficient and interdependent working of the
differing elements of government, in a convergence rather than a diffu-
sion of power, late eighteenth-century theory prepared the way for
the Victorian refinement of parliamentary sovereignty.
It was within this context that the function of parliamentary parties
became of increasing importance. It was Edmund Burke in I770, as
publicist of the Rockinghamite Whigs, who argued for the legitimacy
of parliamentary parties as the basis of both government and oppo-
sition.' Party in Parliament was to be the means of purging corruption,
i. The eighteenth-century notion of 'mixed government' is difficult and ambiguous, not least
because the terms 'mixed', 'separated' and 'balanced' were used loosely and sometimes indiscrimin-
ately. The term 'mixed government' could imply at least three possibilities. First, as in Paley, it
involved the representation of different social interests. Second, as in Hume, it involved different
decision-making processes; rule by the one, rule by the few, and rule by the many. Third, it could
involve both of the above. Though there is clearly a difference between the sociological emphasis
of Paley and the institutional emphasis of Hume, my argument suggests that these notions are relatively
indifferent to the functional emphasis of 'separation' doctrines.
2. M. J. C. Vile, in Constitutionalism and the Separation of Powers (Oxford, I967) argues that
the doctrine of 'mixed government', as it came to be worked out in the eighteenth century, was
an attempt to reconcile the doctrine of 'separation of powers' and the concept of legislative sovereignty.
A. H. Birch in Representation (London, 1972) observes that, in the English context, the doctrine
of the 'separation of powers' was the doctrine of 'outsiders'. Between 1770 and i832 the democratic
and subversive tendencies seen to be implicit in the 'separation of powers' doctrine became explicit
in the writings of propagandists for radical parliamentary reform, such as John Cartwright, Granville
Sharp, William Cobbett, David Williams, Obadiah Hume, James Burgh, George Dyer and Horne
Tooke. For a general discussion of the doctrine of 'separation of powers', and its attendant conceptual
difficulties and anomalies, see G. Marshall, Constitutional Theory (Oxford, I97I).
3. J. A. W. Gunn, 'Influence, Parties and the Constitution: Changing Attitudes, 1783-I832',
HistoricalJournal, xvii (I974), 301-28. See also idem, Factions No More: Attitudes to Party in Govern-
ment and Opposition in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1972), and H. T. Dickinson, 'The
Eighteenth-Century Debate on the Sovereignty of Parliament', Transactions of the Royal Historical
Society, 5th Ser., xxvi (1976), 189-210.
4. Brougham, in his Political Philosophy (I820), and Russell, in The History of English Government
(I82I), both preserved much of the language of 'mixed government'.
S. This argument is most forcefully proposed in E. Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present
Discontents (1770). See F. O'Gorman, Edmund Burke: His Political Philosophy (London, 1973),
andJ. R. Pole, PoliticalRepresentation in England andthe Origins of theAmerican Republic(London,
I 966).
and founding government upon good faith, shared

mate authority of virtuous parliamentary endeavour. This constrained
the influence of an oppressive executive and, more particularly, the
potential tyranny of the royal prerogative. Such arguments, however,
opened up another danger. If the Rockinghamites could 'storm the
closet' in the name of parliamentary party support, how to avoid the
inference that party derived its authority (via Parliament) from the
people? Burke responded to this problem by invoking 'virtual represen-
tation'. This suggested that interests in the country could be considered
to be represented in Parliament without a direct voice or vote being
given to each member of the interest. Moreover, this doctrine freed
MPs from having to consider all interests equally. The further notion
that MPs represent a 'national interest' assumed all this, while freeing
MPs from constrictions implied by an electoral mandate. It was only
in Parliament that the relative merits of different claims could be con-
sidered, judged and compared. This decisively ruled out any populist
notions, while ensuring a limited role for the monarchy.1 Thus Burke
had nothing to say about the organization of party, or electoral and
extra-parliamentary matters. Parliament, in particular the House of
Commons, stood as the authoritative arena of national politics.
During the I78os and I790s, while in opposition, Foxite Whigs
exploited the political opportunities to act as a party, establishing, for
themselves, the notion of party as a permanent arrangement for both
government and opposition, safeguarding liberty and parliamentary
virtue.2 In I809 George Tierney declared himself to be a party man
and stated that no great object could be obtained in Parliament without
party.3 An emergent Whig vision of 'parliamentary government' drew
further inspiration from the Scottish Enlightenment in the writings
of James Anderson, George Chalmers, James Macpherson, Gilbert
Stuart and, particularly, the political economy of Dugald Stewart. Lord
John Russell, Lord Brougham, the future editors of the Edinburgh
Review, Francis Jeffrey, Francis Horner and Sydney Smith, as well
as Lord Lansdowne, the Earl of Dudley and Lord Palmerston were
i. See Burke's famous speech to the electors of Bristol of November I774, where he declared
that individuals, even those not enfranchised, were still nationally represented, since MPs should
represent the national, not local or sectional, interest. MPs were emphatically not delegates. See
O'Gorman, Edmund Burke; F. Dreyer, Burke's Politics: A Study in Whig Orthodoxy (London,
I979); and C. B. Macpherson, Burke (London, I980). Both Paley and deLolme had also grappled
with the implications of public opinion for parliamentary authority. For Paley the national interest
was to be discerned through reasoned deliberation in Parliament, not by reference to extra-parliamen-
tary clamour. Elections were not a mechanism for transmitting the popular will; their function was
remedial: Paley, Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, ii. 205-20. Similarly deLolme tended
to see the representative process as a means of controlling, not amplifying, popular opinion: deLolme,
Constitution of England, p. S I.
2. See F. O'Gorman, The Emergence of the British Two-Party System, I760-i832 (London, I982),
pp. 27-43.
3. See Gunn, 'Influence, Parties and the Constitution', p. 325.
all Stewart's students at Edinburgh Univ

House of Commons to be in command of t
He also, in support of Burke's argument
by David Hume, identified the proper s
as influence.2 Not that influence which
tion' and which during the eighteenth c
of the court, through the offer of places,
etc., but an influence working, via party
status and deference.3 In articles in the
Jeffrey, between I807 and I8I2, and Brougham, in i8ii and i8i8,
publicized these views.4 Legitimate influence, through the instrument
of party, reinforced the natural authority of the aristocracy; an influence
all the more legitimate because, Whig argument ran, the English ruling
class was a more open elite than the closed privileged caste which had
existed in France.5 Party also served, Jeffrey argued in I8I2, to tame
popular, and potentially violent, discontent.6 As Russell asserted in
I82I, the foundation of every durable government was the common
consent of the realm.7 But the popular will was to be channelled
through the influence of a hierarchical social order, focusing on the
calm deliberation of parties in Parliament. This undercut any direct
subversive extra-parliamentary pressure, and quietened popular clam-
our claiming to express the will of the people.8 In I822 Brougham,
i. Stewart's lectures on the British constitution were reconstructed from his notes, edited by
Sir William Hamilton, as Lectures on Political Economy (2 vols., London, I 8 S S). Lansdowne, Dudley
and Palmerston also lodged in Stewart's house while students at Edinburgh. Lord Melbourne went
to Glasgow University to be taught by John Millar, who dedicated his study of the constitution
to Charles James Fox.
2. Stewart, Political Economy, 11. 4 I. For an important recent discussion of Stewart's ideas
and influence see Donald Winch, 'The System of the North: Dugald Stewart and his pupils', in
S. Collini, D. Winch and J. Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics: A Study in Nineteenth-Century
Intellectual History (Cambridge, I 9 8 3), pp. 2 3-62.
3. It was, as one Whig apologist wrote in i8i9, the 'unquestionable duty of the aristocracy,
placed between the crown and the people, to exert the influence of rank, and property', which,
when 'wisely, honestly and seasonably exerted', secured social stability and harmony: T. L. Erskine,
TheDefense ofthe Whigs(London, i8i9), p. 23.
4. See W. A. Copinger, On the Authorship of the First Hundred Numbers of the Edinburgh
Review (Manchester, I 89 5). In particular see Jeffrey's articles in Edinburgh Review, x (i 807), 3 86-42 I;
Edinburgh Review, xv (i 8 Io), 504-22, and Edinburgh Review, xx (I 8 I2), 3 I 5-46. Brougham contri-
buted to the latter article and wrote the impressive essay 'State of Parties', Edinburgh Review,
xxx (i8I8), I8I-206.
S. See Jeffrey's attack on William Cobbett's Political Register for bringing the aristocracy into
disrepute, Edinburgh Review, x (i807), 386-42I. See also H. Hallam, Constitutional History of
England (3rd ed., i832). The claim by the Whigs that the English aristocracy was a more open
elite than their continental counterparts has survived as a powerful historiographical myth. Only
recently has it come under challenge in, for example, L. Stone and J. C. Fawtier Stone, An Open
Elite? England I540-i 880 (Oxford, I 984).
6. See Edinburgh Review, xx (I 8 I 2), 34 5-6.
7. Russell, History of English Government, p. 82.
8. See J. Hamburger, James Mill and the Art of Revolution (Yale, i963), p. 7; and A. D. Kriegel,
'Liberty and Whiggery in Early Nineteenth Century England', Journal of Modern History, lii (1980),
253-78.
while opposing excessive royal influence, made it clear that he opposed

a purely popular Commons. 1
Thus, during their period of prolonged opposition until I830, in
a social milieu isolated from power, Whigs sanctified a political creed
that identified party in Parliament as the legitimate source of executive
authority. Party in Parliament, primarily in the Commons, provided
the necessary constraint on royal prerogative, defined the preoccupa-
tions of Westminster as the demarcation of respectable politics, kept
down dangerous radical populism, and, by ensuring an aristocratic
party leadership in Parliament, framed the shibboleth of civil and
religious liberty within a hierarchical and deferential social order. There
survived a distinction, and a suggestion of balance, between executive
authority and parliamentary control, particularly regarding finance,
control of the civil service, and the decision to dissolve. The Whig
vision was not simply one of 'Assembly' or 'Convention' government,
where the executive merely carried out the orders of an initiating legisla-
ture. But such subtleties were premised on the conviction that ultimate
executive authority issued from party support in Parliament. In Francis
Jeffrey's words the 'Old Constitutional Whigs' stood between two 'vio-
lent and pernicious factions - the courtiers, who are almost for arbitrary
power - and the democrats who are almost for revolution and republi-
canism'. 2
In contrast to the emergent doctrine of 'parliamentary government'
of the Whig opposition prior to I830, stood the official doctrine of
successive Tory administrations. Here more traditional perceptions of
executive authority were carefully protected.3 The ministries of Spencer
Perceval and Lord Liverpool, between I809 and I827, drew upon,
among other things, a Church and King patriotism fused with a rejec-
tion of Catholic claims, radical populism and Foxite Whiggism. Citing
the defence of property and the inspiring nature of tradition, this Tory
doctrine emphasized order and the independent resources of executive
power. To some extent procedural reform could also be an assertion
i. Gunn, 'Influence, Parties and the Constitution', p. 323. Such views warn the historian against
assuming a direct causal relation between party activity in the constituencies and parties in Parliament.
Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review, xv (i 8 i o), 5?5, clearly distinguished between parties in Westminster
and those in the country. For an attempt to argue a direct causal relation between popular party
activity and parliamentary parties for the mid-Victorian period see Gary Cox, The Efficient Secret:
The Cabinet and the Development of Political Parties in Victorian England (Cambridge, I987).
2. Cited by J. Hamburger, 'The Whig Conscience', in P. Marsh (ed.), The Conscience of the
Victorian State (I979), p. 27. For other important studies of early nineteenth-century Whig thought
see J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce and History (Cambridge, i985); Biancamaria Fontana,
Rethinking the Politics of CommercialSociety: The Edinburgh Review, i80o2-832 (Cambridge, I985);
and Collini, Winch and Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics.
3. See Peter Fraser, 'Party Voting in the House of Commons, I8I2-I827', ante, xcviii (I983),
763-84; J. C. D. Clark, 'A General Theory of Party, Opposition and Government, I688-I832',
HistoricalJournal, xxiii (I980), 295-325; and O'Gorman, The Emergence of the British Two-Party
System, pp. 93-I03.
of executive authority against party in Parliament. The constitutional

inferences to be drawn from this view underscored the authority of
the ministers of the Crown and, just as importantly, were entirely
compatible with traditional notions of executive government resting
upon loyal parliamentary support for the king's chosen ministers. This
was the context for the Duke of Wellington's remark that he knew
nothing of Whig and Tory principles; only that the country must be
governed and order maintained.1 Yet it was these Whig and Tory doc-
trines of executive authority that served as political primers for the
politicians of the early and mid-Victorian period. If Whig constitutional
theory provided the education for the young Lord Melbourne, Lord
John Russell, Lord Palmerston and Lord Stanley (later the I4th Earl
of Derby), Tory notions of executive authority directed the apprentice-
ship of bright young office-holders such as Robert Peel.
It is generally believed that the two decades following the end of
the Napoleonic war in I 8I5 saw the alignment of two parties in the
House of Commons. Precisely when this occurred is a matter of con-
tinuing historical debate. Frank O'Gorman has argued for the existence
of two parties in parliament by the I820S, due to the declining power
of the monarchy, the revival of religious issues, and increasing political
awareness in the country.2 Peter Fraser has argued for the survival
of a non-party view of executive government as the King's chosen
ministers; a ministerial self-perception which denied the realization
of a two-party alignment in the Commons.3 Others look to events
immediately following the reform crisis of I829 to I832, a political
convulsion in whose wake a bi-partisan configuration of parliamentary
sentiment crystallized. Norman Gash has argued that after I834-5 poli-
tics were dominated by two parties to an extent previously unknown
in British history.4 David Close and Derek Beales have provided stat-
istical support for such a view.5 It has been argued that the founding
of the Carlton and Reform Clubs, and the activities of party agents
such as F. R. Bonham for the Conservatives and Joseph Parkes for
the Whigs, suggest an increasing bi-partisan alignment of political opin-
I. T. E. Kebbel, A History of Toryism (London, i 886), p. 320.

2. O'Gorman, The Emergence of the British Two-Party System, pp. 93-I03. On this question
see also B. W. Hill, British Parliamentary Parties, I742-i 832 (London, i985).
3. Fraser, 'Party Voting in the House of Commons, I8I2-I827', pp. 763-84. Fraser concludes
that 'on the government side, party was more a matter of confidence in a composite administration
than of membership of a dominant party'. See also Frank O'Gorman, 'Party Politics in the early
Nineteenth Century (I8I2-I832)', ante, cii (I987), 63-84, and the following comment by Peter
Fraser, ante, cii (I987), 85-8.
4. N. Gash, Reaction and Reconstruction in English Politics, i832-i852 (Oxford, i965), p. 126;
and idem, Aristocracy and People, Britain i8I5-i865 (London, I979), p. I63.
S. Derek Beales, 'Parliamentary Parties and the "Independent" Member i8io-i86o', in R. Robson
(ed.), Ideas and Institutions of Victorian Britain (London, I967), pp. I-I9; and David Close, 'The
Formation of a Two-Party Alignment in the House of Commons between I832 and I84I', ante,
lxxxiv (i 969), 2 5 7-77-
ion. Ian Newbould, however, has shown that the

voting in the Commons itself during the I 830s can
There is not space in this article to engage in this
Yet perhaps an indirect contribution can be made b
what kind of parties we should look for, in the cont
constitutional thought, in the I830s. Certainly to search for cohesive
and tightly disciplined parties would be dangerously anachronistic.
Whigs in office dominated the politics of the I830s, and part of the
intellectual baggage that they brought with them into Downing Street
was their perception of the function of party within parliamentary
government. Thus the doctrine of opposition, prior to I830, became,
after I 830, the basis upon which an official understanding of parliamen-
tary politics developed. In I832 J. J. Park praised Jeffrey's articles
in the Edinburgh Review, of twenty years before, as an important
explanation of the actual workings of Parliament, in defiance of empty
constitutional courtesies. At the same time the experience of govern-
ment after I830 helped to refine those Whiggish axioms of 'parliamen-
tary government' which Park recognized as the new emergent
foundations of constitutional behaviour. By declining to form a coali-
tion with the Duke of Wellington and Peel, in the summer of I834,
Lord Melbourne led a purely Whig party government. William IV's
dismissal of Melbourne's Cabinet, in the autumn of I834, was seen
by some Whigs as the final protest of a tyrannical prerogative, an abuse
of executive discretion conclusively quashed by Melbourne's resump-
tion of the premiership in 1835.2 On the other hand Whigs saw reform
of Parliament in I 832, and subsequent reforms to the Church, financial
institutions, Ireland, the economy and empire as a means of constrain-
ing middle-class radicalism. Both Melbourne and Lord Holland
believed that the 1832 Reform Act would throw government into the
House of Commons and thereby avert autocracy and democracy.3
Radicals, however, often employed a political discourse deeply antago-
nistic to the premises of 'parliamentary government', and advocates
of extensive parliamentary reform evoked the doctrine of the 'separation
of powers' to attack the very foundation of parliamentary constitutional-
ism. Utilitarians and Philosophic Radicals often followed Jeremy Ben-
tham in arguing against the philosophical basis of 'mixed government',
and James Mill in arguing that representative government required
i. Ian Newbould, 'The Emergence of the Two-Party System in England from i830 to I84I:
Roll Call and Reconsideration', Parliaments, Estates and Representation, V (i985), 25-32.
2. For a discussion of this episode see Ian Newbould, 'William IV and the Dismissal of the Whigs,
I834', CanadianJournalofHistory, xi (I976), 3II-30.
3. Le Marchant diary, 2I July I833 cited A. Aspinall, Three Early Nineteenth Century Diaries
(London, I952), p. 366.
65o 'PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT' AND July
responsible government.1 The rhetoric of extra-parliamentary pres-

sure groups often referred to a popular sovereignty difficult to reconcile
with Whig doctrine. The 'remedial reforms' introduced by the Whigs
during the I83Os were designed to establish an unchallengeable status
for Parliament as the embodiment of the national intelligence, as distinct
from the prerogative or the popular will.
For Melbourne's Whig administrations the Cabinet's executive auth-
ority derived from the support of Commons' opinion. He told his
Cabinet in July I836 that, despite the opposition of the Lords and
the misgivings of the King, it was their duty not to resign because
they had the support of the Commons as elected by the people.2
This view required parties sufficiently cohesive to withstand the royal
prerogative. Yet neither could party support be seen as a direct expres-
sion of popular sentiment. At a theoretical level this might be achieved
by Burkean notions of 'virtual representation'. At a practical level it
required parliamentary parties sufficiently fluid to prevent executive
choice being the result of direct electoral mandate. Choice of the execu-
tive had to be a matter of internal dynamics within Westminster, and
rigid party alignment signalled the slippery slope towards popular
sovereignty. For the same reason prominent Whigs were noticeably
reluctant to become directly involved with the press, were very suspi-
cious of centralized electoral organization, and as a group, did not
participate in the Reform Association. Practical considerations,
especially while in office, could prevent too dogmatic an adherence
to a constitutional theory devised in opposition. In I830 Whigs had
welcomed William IV's short-lived support, while Melbourne, after
1837, was happy to gain advantage from tutoring the young Queen
Victoria in Whig ideas. But such actions were not seen, at least by
Whigs themselves, to compromise the integrity of Whig belief. Execu-
tive authority came from the conciliation of parliamentary sentiment,
with party connection adapting to shifting patterns of opinion in the
Commons. For the Whigs, party leadership was about arbitration
rather than subordination. This mirrored wider Whig perceptions of
the nature of government itself. The Commons was the essential media-
tor of the wide variety of social 'interests' which constituted the political
community. The essential purpose of government, therefore, became
i. Bentham attacked the very premises upon which the argument for 'mixed government' was
built. He believed that the association of 'pure' forms of government, i.e. democracy, aristocracy
and monarchy, with certain vices and virtues was not based upon any empirical evidence. The
only certain security in government was the influence of the will of the people on politicians. Moreover,
the theory of 'mixed government' was based upon a fallacy: that three partial interests acting together
produce government in the public interest. See J. Bentham, A Fragment on Government (I776)
and a Handbook of Political Fallacies (i824). James Mill deduced from the utilitarian model of
human psychology that the individual alone can tell what will make him or her happy. Therefore,
in order for a government to act in the interest of all it must be representative of all. See James
Mill, Essay on Government (i 8 2 I).
2. Melbourne to Mulgrave, I3 July i836: Mulgrave Castle Archives MM/93. I am grateful to
I. D. C. Newbould for this reference.
I989 VICTORIAN POLITICAL PARTIES, C.I830-C. I880 65I
the continual balance and adjustment of those 'in

stantly transformed by the force of progress. Med
of constitutional, as well as political, wisdom.
Such developments in the constitutional relationsh
tive authority and parliamentary parties had sig
for the function of the Cabinet as the increasing
of executive and legislative control. It became a
during the I83Os, for the Cabinet to be able to guid
mentary opinion. Ministers now held the power
at the pleasure of Parliament. The convention of Cabinet 'collective
responsibility', gradually though not fully realized during the I830s,
derived its desirability from this development. 'Collective responsibi-
lity' was a defence against the prerogative. It could also, in its call
for confidentiality and unanimity, be a defence against the Commons,
a duty owed by the Cabinet to itself. But it was the context of party
association that gave such notions their significance. As Lord Holland
stated, 'the necessity of a well-concerted or party government in a
limited monarchy or popular constitution has gradually established
the wholesome doctrine that each and every member of the Cabinet
is in some degree responsible for the measures adopted by the govern-
ment'.' Cabinet 'collective responsibility', when complemented by
party, was a means of controlling more effectively that crucial arena
in Westminster from whence the Cabinet's power derived. In I834
Lord Melbourne informed William IV that public knowledge of Cabinet
differences would be 'entirely subversive of the principles upon which
the government of the country was conducted'.2 It was likewise Mel-
bourne who, following a Cabinet discussion of the import duty on
corn, put his back to the door and said: 'What are we to say? Is it
to make out corn dearer, or cheaper, or to make the price steady?
I don't care which, but we had better all be in the same story'.3
It is easy to attribute such actions on the part of Melbourne to personal
weakness or indecision. But before Melbourne is dismissed as an ineffec-
tual politician, it is important to recognize that he did not see his
role as being to provide steadfast opinions for others to follow. Rather,
the broader constitutional context of Whig thought defined the prem-
ier's role as one of arbiter. As Melbourne admitted to the young Queen
Victoria in 1839: 'I don't care by whom I am supported, I consider
them all as one; I don't care by whom I am helped as long as I am
helped.'4
If the high ground of office during the I83Os was commanded by the
Whigs with their constitutional colours planted firmly on the summit,
i. Lord Holland, Memoirs of the Whig Party During My Time: by Richard Vassall, Lord Holland
(2vols., London, i852-4), ii- 85.
2. G. H. L. Le May, The Victorian Constitution (London, I979), p. I07.
3. Ibid., p. I04.
4. Queen Victoria's journal, 23 Sept. I839. I am grateful to I. D. C. Newbould for this reference.
then the forces of Conservatism, regrouping on the lower slopes,

faced a daunting task. In I832 the Tory Sir John Walsh conceded,
in his pamphlet On the Present Balance of Parties in the State, that
the debate whether party was desirable was now a dead issue.1 Yet
the figure around whom Conservatives gathered themselves, Sir Robert
Peel, was, in terms of the constitutional context of the I83os, a man
shrouded in ambivalence. What did much to disguise this was the politi-
cal effectiveness of the new rhetorical livery with which Peel decked
out the Conservative party after i835, in contrast to a Whiggism that
was beginning to appear rather tawdry. Norman Gash, in his later
writings, has characterized Peel as the founder of modern Conserva-
tism.' In fact, Peel was a much more equivocal figure than such an
accolade would suggest. Peel never accepted the tenet, central to 'parlia-
mentary government', that organized party opinion in Parliament con-
stituted the legitimate source of executive authority. As the product
of that pre-I83o administrative Toryism which emphasized order,
ministerial resources and opposition to Foxite Whiggism, Peel remained
true to the values of his apprenticeship served under Lord Liverpool.
In 1830 Peel told Henry Goulburn: 'I feel a want of many essential
qualifications which are requisite in party leaders, among the rest per-
sonal gratification in the name of politics, and patience to listen to
the sentiments of individuals whom it is equally imprudent to neglect
and an intolerable bore to consult'.3 The challenge Peel faced after
1830 was to adapt his executive beliefs to the changed circumstances
of an increasingly party-oriented politics.
Peel opposed parliamentary reform during 1830-32 as a threat to
the existing constitution, the logic of reform pointing to an increasingly
democratic House of Commons and a transferring of sovereignty to
the people. In concurrence with the Whigs he emphasized the fallacy
of looking to a separation of powers, which would characterize the
Commons as simply the representative chamber of the popular element
in the constitution. 'We are here', Peel instructed the Commons in
1831, 'to consult the interests of the people, and not to obey the will
of the people'.4 Executive and legislature came together in the Com-
mons, but executive authority, Peel was to insist, did not, as Whigs
claimed, derive from party support in the Commons. A general confi-
dence in the executive amongst MPs was necessary, but this should
not impose upon an executive an obligation to partisan support, deflect-
ing it from its perception of the public need. Within the Peelite scheme
I. Sir John Walsh, On the Present Balance of Parties in the State (2nd ed., London, I832), p. S.
2. Gash's article on Peel for Solon (1970) was titled 'The Founder of Modern Conservatism',
published in N. Gash, Pillars of Government (London, i986), pp. I 53-6i.
3. Peel to Goulburn, Nov. i830, cited N. Gash, Mr. Secretary Peel: The Life of Sir Robert
Peel to i 83 o (London, I 96 I), p. 668.
4. Speeches of the late Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Peel deJivered in the House of Commons (4 vols.,
London, i853), ii. 394, cited N. Gash, Sir Robert Peel: The Life of Sir Robert Peel after I830
(London, I972), p. 7I8.
1989 VICTORIAN POLITICAL PARTIES, C.1830-C.1880 653
of things it was the obligation of parliamentary fol

and the constraints of executive action were defined
gency. Descriptions of national opinion or need were
reached beyond, or could by implication pass around, party opinion
in Westminster. In a significant sense Peel never was a parliamentarian;
there was a disdain for the sensibilities of the Commons that could
at times give a rarefied administrative instinct the illusory appearance
of populism. 1
Peel, the inspiration for the reconstituted Conservatism of the 1830s,
gave the Conservative party an executive ethic, not a party doctrine.2
The Tamworth Manifesto of I834 was addressed to that 'great and
intelligent class of society . . . which is much less interested in the con-
tentions of party, than in the maintenance of order and the course
of good government'.3 The word Conservative never appears in the
Manifesto. A strong executive upholding order was seen to be the
essential need in the turbulent age in which Peel found himself after
1832. This need for strong government required 'public spirited men
to give all reasonable aid to the government of the day not from inter-
ested motives, but because they were "ministers of the crown" who
want it'.4 From this, not party support, sprang the authority of execu-
tive decision. Peel played little part in the organization of the Conserva-
tive party during the I 830s. It was sufficient that he supplied an execu-
tive ethic around which others, notably F. R. Bonham, might assemble
a party structure. Temperament, outlook and doctrinal belief isolated
the unclubbable Peel from such activity.
It was fitting that Peel's position as Conservative leader was con-
firmed by the actions of William IV in the autumn of I834, rather
than by Conservative backbench opinion. It is also significant that
Peel resigned as Prime Minister in 1835, not because he was in a minor-
ity in the Commons, but because to retain office without some certainty
of carrying his measures would weaken an already vulnerable executive
power.5 Finally, it is no accident that Peel, in 1839, was the last
Prime Minister to demand an overt sign of confidence from the monarch
as a precondition to taking office.6 It has been argued that in the
late I 830s Peel, although leader of the Conservative opposition, cooper-
ated on legislation with the Whig government of the day because the
I. In his speeches Peel liked to evoke the popular support of respectable opinion bestowed with
commonsense and non-partisan views. Such pleas, however, were not democratic in nature, but
rather a means of by-passing Commons opinion. The evocation of such a 'public opinion' legitimized
an executive independent of party support.
2. See N. Gash, 'Peel and the Party System, i830-i85o', Transactions of the Royal Historical
Society, sth ser., i (x9 I), 56.
3. Lord Mahon and E. Cardwell (eds.), The Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel (2 vols., i856-7), ii.
58.
4. Gash, 'Peel and the Party System', p. 54
S. Le May, Victorian Constitution, p. 39.
6. Ibid., p. I 7.
Conservative party was a body he could not control. A strategy of

'governing in opposition' allowed him to work with the 'moderates'
and ignore the 'ultra-Tory' faction, while helping to pass legislation
on difficult issues (particularly concerning Irish affairs), which meant
that any future Peelite government would not be required to do so.1
At a tactical level this is true. At a deeper doctrinal level it is also
true that Peel was anxious to avoid enmeshing any executive in the
trammels of rigid party alignment.
Herein lies the paradox of the Conservative victory of I84I. It was
a great party triumph for an anti-party view of executive authority.2
The events of I84I to I846 played out the implications of this paradox.
As Prime Minister Peel declared that he would 'not hold office by
servile tenure which would compel me to be the instrument of carrying
other men's opinions into effect.... I tell everyone who hears me,
that he confers on me no personal obligation in having placed me in
this office'.3 Peel's message to those sitting behind him was clear.
The contrast in style, compounded by temperament, with Melbourne
was striking. For Melbourne the premiership was a matter of arbi-
tration, for Peel authority. After i 84I Conservative backbenchers found
that a triumph for Peelism meant scant regard for their religious, econ-
omic or social sensibilities, while Peel found the demands of party
obligation irreconcilable with his own elevated view of the national
interest. Thus the violent Conservative schism of I846 was much more
than a split between Protectionists and Free Trade converts. It was,
at its root, a confrontation between two differing views of constitutional
authority. As Disraeli observed in December i845: Peel 'is so vain
that he wants to figure in history as the settler of all the great questions;
but a parliamentary constitution is not favourable to such ambitions:
things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools'.4
The basis of Disraeli's famous and damaging attacks upon Peel during
I846 was that it was unbecoming in a politician to decry party who
had risen by party; 'for it is only by maintaining the independence
of party that you can maintain the integrity of public men, and the
power and influence of Parliament itself'.5 This was the Protectionists
using the Whig constitutional stick to beat their erstwhile leader. The
anguished outcry of the Quarterly Review, in September I846, was
i. Ian Newbould, 'Sir Robert Peel and the Conservative Party I832-I84I: A Study in Failure?',
ante, xcviii (I983), 529-57.
2. Further levels of irony exist in that, despite Peel's constitutional views, as

Queen Victoria before the election: 'I am afraid that for the first time the Crow
Opposition returned smack against it'. Queen Victoria's journal, iS May I84I, cite
and Viscount Esher (eds.), The Letters of Queen Victoria, I837-I86I (3 vols.,
348-
3. Peel, Speeches, iii. 8 Io-I i. See also Gash, Sir Robert Peel, pp. 283-4.
4. Disraeli to Lord John Manners, I7 Dec. I845, cited R. Blake, Disraeli (London, I966), p. 223.
S. Disraeli, 22 Jan. I846, cited Blake, Disraeli, p. 227. For an extended Disraelian portrait of
Peel see B. Disraeli, Lord George Bentinck: A political biography (London, i852), pp. 303-6.
I989 VICTORIAN POLITICAL PARTIES, C.I830-C.1880 65
that a minister owed at least equal gratitude and fidelity to hi
as to his sovereign, for the former was the earlier and greater be
tor.1 That same month Peel wrote: 'I will take care too not
to burn my fingers by organizing a party. There is too much
in the saying, "The head of a party must be directed by the ta
As heads see and tails are blind, I think heads are the better
as to the course to be taken'.2 Peel's embarrassing disdain for
party organization after I 846 was entirely consistent.
This understanding of Peel suggests a certain recasting of his p
career. Orthodoxy identifies two momentous conversions, I82
I 846, as the great divides of Peel's life, with fundamental shifts o
as the theme. Between these dramatic episodes he created a po
and disciplined Conservative party, only to see his handiwor
culmination of his career, destroyed by the Corn Law crisis o
The subsequent four years, until his death, remain an untidy and
ward afterthought. This view emphasizes, erroneously, both the m
bility and party-political nature of Peel's thought. Boyd Hilto
shown persuasively the consistency of Peel's economic think
Peel's constitutional beliefs were equally consistent. This sugg
alternative perspective of Peel's career, emphasizing continuity ra
than change, characterizing the years i 835 to I 845 as a period of i
ing difficulty rather than success, and I 846 as the triumphant rea
of his freedom from the shackles of party. Peel's death in i8
unexpected and accidental. He had no reason to regard I846 as
dramatic conclusion of his career. Rather, he was looking to st
ward as the personification of supra-party executive expertise, em
pated from the restrictions of party support.
The most important ally for Peel's view of executive author
the I840s was the Court or, more specifically, Prince Albert. D
remembered well Whig fear of the Prince Consort who, if he had
longer, might have brought on a collision between Crown and
ment.4 In August I847 Peel assured Prince Albert that 'the q
good sense of the people of this country will be a powerful instr
on which an Executive Government may rely for neutralizing th
chievous energies of the House of Commons'.5 The prospect o
and Prince Albert acting together to establish an independent exe
legitimized by royal authority and acting in the name of an amor
non-partisan popular common sense, was enough to strike terr
I. Quarterly Review, lxxviii (Sept. I 846), 567.

2. Peel to Hardinge, 24 Sept. I846, cited C. S. Parker, Sir Robert Peel from his Priva
(3 vols., London, I899), iii. 474.
3. Boyd Hilton, 'Peel: A Reappraisal', HistoricalJournal, xxii 979), 585-6I4.
4. T. E. Kebbel, Lord Beaconsfield and Other Tory Memories (London, I907), p. 43.
S. Peel to Prince Albert, i i Aug. I847, cited D. Read, Peel and the Victorians (Oxfor
p. 256.
any Whig heart. Clearly the Prince Consort hoped to reinstate the
Court as the senior partner in the formulation of public policy:
'Nowhere does the constitution demand an indifference on the part
of the sovereign to the march of political events, and nowhere would
such indifference be more condemned and justly despised than in Eng-
land'.1 Prince Albert's ambivalence about the convention of Cabinet
'collective responsibility' was a recognition that it was not only a means
of controlling Parliament, but also a protection against the Crown.
Peel's accidental death in i85o proved of profound importance. It
removed the opportunity to establish an effective executive independent
of party. Even more importantly, Peel's death made possible the near-
unanimous acceptance within Westminster of parliamentary parties as
the necessary and desirable source of executive authority. In Parliament
after i85o the Whig vision of party and 'parliamentary government'
was dominant. By i856 younger Peelites, such as William Gladstone
through the pages of the Quarterly Review, were decrying the disorgan-
ization of parties as an impairment to the strength of the executive,
while senior Peelites, like Sir James Graham, were pronouncing by
i859 that if 'parliamentary government' were to be maintained it must
rest on the basis of party.2 Young Conservatives such as Lord Robert
Cecil believed that party supported 'the rule of the few and the wise'
as opposed to that 'of the many and foolish,' while the Edinburgh
Review, in i8 5, preserved the Whig line that 'parliamentary govern-
ment is a government of political parties'.3 Yet Peel's death removed
the pre-eminent politician best qualified, by virtue of personal prestige,
to impose a distinct alignment of parties upon threatening parliamentary
disarray.
The fundamental political problem of the i85os became the trans-
lation of a common faith in parties as the requirement for effective
government into a sufficiently stable alignment of parliamentary senti-
ment. The political complexity of the i85os was not the result of dis-
illusionment with the principle of party. Rather, it was the pursuit
of clear party alignment, in a variety of antagonistic forms by a number
of parliamentary politicians, that caused confusion. Moreover, a surfeit
of leadership amongst non-Conservatives (Whigs, Peelites, Liberals and
radicals), and Conservative opposition strategy and ministerial policy
i. Le May, Victorian Constitution, p. 64. A major political crisis was building during i85o in
the conflict between the Court and Palmerston. Palmerston's resignation in December i85o barely
forestalled the Queen taking upon herself the dismissal of the Foreign Secretary. This would have
produced a direct confrontation between the Whig party and Peelite/Court views of executive auth-
ority.
2. Gladstone to Aberdeen, I3 Mar. i856: Aberdeen papers, BL Add. Mss 44089, and Gladstone's
anonymous article, 'The Declining Efficiency of Parliament', QuarterlyReview, xcix (i856), 52I-70.
Graham to Ellice, 7 J an. I 8 5 9: Ellice papers, National Library of Scotland, 1 50 I 9, fo. 46.
3. Lord Robert Cecil, 'Independent Voting and Parliamentary Government', Saturday Review,
xxviii (Feb. i857), and 'Opposition Government', Edinburgh Review, ccxii (Jan. i855), 3.
i989 VICTORIAN POLITICAL PARTIES, C.I830-C. I880 657
exacerbated difficulties.1 The first factor focused on the rivalry
between Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston. Between i85o and
i859 the antagonism between Palmerston and Russell was a constant
high political theme, further complicated by the question of the Peelites'
destiny after i85o. The second factor focused on Peel's successor as
Conservative leader, the I4th Earl of Derby. A Whig by birth and
education, Derby did what Peel declined to do. He defined the Con-
servative leadership in terms of party circumstances in Parliament, while
affirming that party support constituted the basis of executive authority.
This determined Derby's policy of moderate progressivism while in
office, and his opposition strategy of 'masterly inactivity' intended to
splinter the Peelite, Whig, Liberal and radical forces facing him.2 This
emphasized the broader dilemma of realizing a prevalent faith in party,
as the precondition for effective government, in a stable party alignment
in the House of Commons. This dilemma was not resolved until i859
when, in the Willis's Rooms meeting of June and Palmerston's second
ministry, Whigs, Liberals, Peelites and radicals merged the parliamen-
tary elements which came to constitute the Victorian Liberal party.3
What the events of the summer of I859 also celebrated was the legiti-
macy of parties in Westminster as the basis of 'parliamentary govern-
ment'.
In i858 the 3rd Earl Grey (I802-I894) published his essay Parlia-
mentary Government Considered with Reference to Reform of Parlia-
ment.4 It was intended to define the operation of 'parliamentary
government' in Britain as a foundation for the debate about further
parliamentary reform. Son of the Prime Minister who passed the i832
Reform Act, in his own political career Grey had marred impeccable
Whig credentials with an irascible personality that denied him the pre-
eminence he sought. Yet his essay remains an important commentary
on the workings of the British constitution written by an experienced
politician who was a member of every Whig government of the I830s,
and Colonial Secretary in Russell's Cabinet from i846 to i852. Grey
was intimately involved with Whig-Liberal politics throughout his life.
Sir George Grey was his first cousin, Lord Halifax his brother-in-law,
the Hon Charles Grey (for many years private secretary to the Prince
Consort and Queen Victoria) his younger brother, and Edward 'Bear'
Ellice MP an uncle by marriage. Grey's essay was based upon extensive
personal experience of the actual operation of the constitution. His
analysis, moreover, was devoid of the behavioural and pseudo-scientific
I. See Angus Hawkins, Parliament, Party and the Art of Politics in Britain, I855-59 (London,
I987).
2. See Angus Hawkins, 'Lord Derby and Victorian Conservatism: A Reappraisal', Parlia
History, vi (I987), 280-301.
3. Hawkins, Parliament, Party and the Art of Politics, pp. 240-65.
4. Third Earl Grey, Parliamentary Government Considered with Reference to Reform of Parlia-
ment (London, i858). Lord Grey brought out a second edition in I864, with a preface added and
discussion of the I 8 59 and I 86o reform bills included.
buttressing that Walter Bagehot felt to be necessary to his more cele-

brated commentary on the constitution. Grey's essay was a clear, auth-
oritative description of a constitutional system that, at the moment
of writing, enjoyed a greater degree of acceptance than at any earlier
time.
Grey began with a concise definition of 'parliamentary government'.
Eighteenth-century descriptions of the constitution, with executive
power belonging to the Crown and the power of legislation being vested
jointly in the monarch and two Houses of Parliament, remained true
only in the narrow legal and technical sense. The distinguishing charac-
teristic of 'parliamentary government' was that the former power of
the Crown now belonged to ministers held responsible to Parliament,
specifically the House of Commons, whose proceedings they must
be able generally to guide.1 Two important consequences sprang from
this. The executive and legislative powers were virtually united, and
party organization in the Commons was necessary for the executive
to govern. Both of these consequences focused on the Cabinet. Thus
the Cabinet represented that crucial convergence of authority directing
and facilitating the workings of the constitution.
For Grey the main advantages of 'parliamentary government' were
three-fold. First, it provided for the harmonious interaction of different
powers of the state. The executive was able to act with vigour and
with the assurance of support in the legislature. Moreover, the executive
had the duty of recommending to the legislature the measures it should
adopt. This ministerial responsibility had a corrective tendency.2 A
second advantage Grey discerned in 'parliamentary government' was
that Parliament controlled the executive without directly interfering
with it.3 The Cabinet's actions were all open to censure in Parliament,
where the executive was called upon to defend its conduct. A third
advantage was that it checked the injurious effects of contests for
power.4 If in despotic systems the selection of an executive was domi-
nated by force or favour, in democratic systems flattery and indulgence
I. Ibid., p. 4.
2. Ibid., p. I 6. Grey saw this, by the I 8 5os, as being particularly important with regard to financial
matters. Both Disraeli and Gladstone saw finance as the foremost political issue of the decade,
and sought to transform the budget into a major political statement. Gladstone succeeded in this
intention, whereas Disraeli did not. Thus, after I86o, Gladstone was able to project finance as
central to the legislative intentions of the government, and to establish the office of Chancellor
of the Exchequer as second only to the Prime Minister in executive politics. See H. C. G. Matthew,
'Disraeli, Gladstone and the Politics of Mid-Victorian Budgets', Historical Journal, xxii (1979),
6 I5-44.
3. Ibid., p. 20. In i8 8 Grey regarded the scrutiny of the executive by Parliament as especially
useful with regard to foreign policy. If the growing importance of finance during the i 8 os signalled
Gladstone's success, the importance of foreign policy was Palmerston's achievement. If this was
inevitable during the Crimean War, Palmerston ensured that every subsequent political crisis, China
in i857, Orsini in i858 and Italy in i859, had some reference to foreign affairs. As an outspoken
opponent of Palmerstonianism Grey placed great emphasis on Parliament's responsibility to scrutinize
the executive's foreign policy.
4. Ibid., p. 22.
I989 VICTORIAN POLITICAL PARTIES, C.I830-C. I880 659
in the passions and prejudices of the people we

to power. Under 'parliamentary government' contests for power,
though ultimately contests for the favour of the people, narrowly
limited the notion of popular sovereignty. There existed a vast difference
between giving the people the power of nominating their rulers by
direct election, and an indirect control, through their returned MPs
to Westminster, over the selection of ministers. The essential point
was this: 'Parliament, and especially the House of Commons, has
become, not only the authority which virtually decides the contest
for power among different candidates for it, but also the arena in which
the contest is mainly carried on'.1 That arena, moreover, required
in a minister particular personal qualities for success, such as sound
judgement. 'Parliamentary government' was, therefore, favourable to
the selection of those men best fitted to govern the nation. In addition,
parliamentary debate helped to raise the standard of public morality.
And the value of Westminster as an instrument for the instruction
of the nation was hardly less than its significance as an organ expressing
the popular will, that will having been formed, with calm deliberation,
through parliamentary debate.
Against these advantages Grey recognized two dangers, or common
criticisms, of 'parliamentary government'. These were the tendency
to encourage corruption, and the convention of Cabinet 'collective
responsibility'.2 Both related to the central status of party. Corrup-
tion, it was argued, could take the form of party connection based
upon favour, and the biasing of individual conscience by appeals to
selfish interest or party loyalty. Of necessity, however, Grey insisted,
'parliamentary government' must rest upon party, and was a necessary
condition, or some might claim evil, for the enjoyment of the system's
advantages. It was parliamentary parties, deriving direct authority from
neither the monarch nor the populace, which protected parliamentary
sovereignty from both despotism and democracy. By the same token,
Grey argued, Cabinet 'collective responsibility' was also required by
the necessity of party. 'Party connection must cease to be the main-
spring of its movements, if every member of the Administration could
no longer depend upon the support of his colleagues, and if they did
not all continue to act in union'.3 The dangers of 'parliamentary
government', Grey claimed, were the inevitable faults of any system
of government, but were suffered to a lesser extent than in a despotic
or democratic system. Party might not be pure, but it was both neces-
sary and preferable.
The reasons for the success of 'parliamentary government' were clear
in Grey's mind. The House of Lords enjoyed authority derived from
I. Ibid., p. 26.
2. Ibid., pp. 36-57.
3- Ibid., p. 53.
66o 'PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT' AND July
long prescription,' while the anomalies,

elements in the composition of the Hous
lower House from being a mere organ of
Commons was simply a representative in
fusion of executive and legislative power
democratic tyranny. The irregularity of th
safeguarded against populist tyranny, pr
mons' deliberations, and guaranteed a hearin
lar opinions; it thereby raised the level o
value of debate in Parliament, while prov
the Commons of which, in the past, ma
politicians had taken advantage. All of th
the Commons as an autonomous deliberat
gathering of delegates. Arguments for a
chise, by undercutting the particular con
importance of the Commons, threatened to
racy.
Grey acknowledged the emergence of certain problems in the consti-
tution since I832.3 The excessive instability of party connection in
the i85os had weakened executive influence in the Commons. He
saw a need for facilities to introduce that class of MPs formerly returned
by closed boroughs. A preponderance of large or popular constituencies
created difficulties in securing the representation of special interests,
narrowed the choice of candidates for executive office (particularly
regarding law officers of the Crown), and might hinder or bias the
independent judgement of ministers. Electoral corruption continued
to be a physical, social and constitutional threat. And the progress
of the nation since i832 made it desirable to extend the franchise so
as to include the respectable working class. Notwithstanding these diffi-
culties, hlowever, Grey saw the I 832 Reform Act as a great and beneficial
change which had firmly established 'parliamentary government' in
Britain.
Grey's analysis of 'parliamentary government' stands as an authorita-
tive description of the mid-Victorian polity. Its centrepiece was the
House of Commons, fusing executive and legislative power via the
collective action of the Cabinet, and bestowing authority on the execu-
tive through parliamentary parties. The need to preserve the auton-
omous sovereignty of Parliament required these parties to be cohesive
enough to withstand the prerogative, and fluid enough to ensure that
the Commons, not the electorate, chose the executive. Between i835
and i868 eight of the nine governments formed came to an end as
the consequence of a defeat in the House of Commons, the one excep-
I. Ibid., p. 5 8.
2. Ibid., p. 6o.
3. Ibid., pp. 82-I12.
I989 VICTORIAN POLITICAL PARTIES, C.I830-C.I880 66I
tion being Palmerston's second ministry which ended with the prem-
ier's death in October i 865. At the same time all six of the Parliaments
elected between I84I and i865 brought down at least one ministry,
and sometimes two, before its dissolution. The Parliament of I84I,
the product of a Conservative electoral triumph, brought down a Con-
servative government in i846. The Parliament of I847 brought down
a Whig administration in i852. The Parliament of i852 engaged in
the downfall of a Conservative government and the Aberdeen coalition.
The Parliament of i857, seen as an electoral victory for Palmerston,
brought down a Palmerston government in i858. The Parliament of
i859 forced a Conservative government to resign, and the Parliament
of i865, a Whig-Liberal success, brought down a Whig-Liberal govern-
ment in i866. These events might seem to be a symptom of party
instability. The mid-Victorian period has been labelled one of party
decline.1 It has also been referred to as the 'golden age of the back-
bencher', a label suggesting the rejection of party constraint in prefer-
ence to the freedom of individual conscience.2 But, in fact, events
of this period signified the healthy workings of parliamentary parties
of a necessarily limited cohesion, preserving the sovereignty of the
Commons as the autonomous arena for the choice of the executive.
That a modern 'two-party system' clearly did not operate should not
induce the anachronistic denial that parties of a certain alternative type
were essential to the workings of the political system. The mid-Victor-
ian period did not see the decline of party politics, but the ascendance
of a kind of party politics intrinsic to 'parliamentary government'.
Grey's analysis of 'parliamentary government' was echoed in both
the major constitutional studies that shortly followed - Sir Thomas
Erskine May's Constitutional History of England (I86I-I863) and
Walter Bagehot's English Constitution (I867). Erskine May confirmed
that Parliament indirectly, but not the less effectively, controlled the
executive, and that in this the House of Commons was the dominant
body.3 Moreover, that 'a form of government so composite, and com-
bining so many conflicting forces, has generally been maintained in
harmonious action, is mainly due to the organization of parties'.4
Parliamentary parties were both indispensable and desirable for the
working of the constitution. Peel's crime in I 846 had been his violation
of the relations of mutual confidence that should exist between leader
and followers. Without their concurrence, a leader cannot use for one
purpose that power which his followers have entrusted to him for
I . By Gash, in Aristocracy and People, ch. 9.
2. The phrase 'the golden age of the backbencher', with reference to the mid-Victorian period,
was originally coined by Ostrogorski, in order to criticize the restrictions of party discipline by
the late nineteenth century; see M. Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties
(London, 1902). Richard Crossman used this interpretation in his introduction to Walter Bagehot's
English Constitution (London, I963).
3. Thomas Erskine May, The Constitutional History of England Since the Accession of George
III, I760-I860 (5th ed., 3 vols., London, I875), ii. 8 .
4. Ibid., ii.- I 3I .
another.1 Erskine May concluded his discussion of party with a pane-

gyric on the theme:2
'We acknowledge, with gratitude, that we owe to party most of our rights
and liberties. We recognise in the fierce contentions of our ancestors, the
conflict of great principles, and the final triumph of freedom. We glory
in the eloquence and noble sentiment which the rivalry of contending states-
men has inspired. We admire the courage with which power has been
resisted; and the manly resolution and persistence by which popular rights
have been established. We observe that, while the undue influence of the
crown has been restrained, democracy has been also held in check'.
By steering the constitution between the Charybdis of the prerogative

and the multi-headed Scylla of the populace, parliamentary parties
were, for Erskine May, the essential guides to freedom. In his English
Constitution Bagehot affirmed Grey's analysis of the crucial role of
the Cabinet as the focus of executive and legislative power, the pre-
eminence of the House of Commons, the necessity of party and the
advantage of an irregular representative system. In confronting the cen-
tral problem of protecting parliamentary sovereignty from electoral
dictate, however, Bagehot buttressed Grey's constitutional structure
with behavioural notions of 'deference', middle-class common sense,
and the distraction of the 'dignified' parts of the constitution. This
pointed the way to subsequent defences of 'parliamentary government'
by E. A. Freeman, F. W. Maitland and Sir Frederick Pollock as the
embodiment of deeply-rooted cultural values.3
Yet, even as Erskine May and Bagehot finished writing, the system
of 'parliamentary government' they described was facing its demise.
The i86os proved the climacteric of Whig constitutional thought. The
I867 democratic manifesto of young university liberals, Essays on
Reform, dismissed many Whig axioms as merely anachronistic fallacies.
Following the I 86os a series of developments, altering both the structure
and character of national politics, undermined the foundations of 'par-
liamentary government' and laid out the groundwork for a 'two-party
system'. The assimilation of radicalism into the Liberal party, the revival
of religious issues, the style of Gladstonian politics, the I867 Reform
Act, party organization outside Parliament, Disraelian Conservatism,
and the constitutional theories of Lord Salisbury, all helped, in different
degrees, to dismantle Grey's constitutional framework.
I. Ibid., ii. 21 4.
2. Ibid., ii. 236-7.
3. On the echoes of Jeffrey in Bagehot see Vile, Constitutionalism and the Separation of Powers,
p. 2I6. See E. A. Freeman, The Growth of the English Constitution (1872); F. W. Maitland, The
Constitutional History of England (I908); and Sir Frederick Pollock, The Expansion of the Common
Law (I904), in which the concept of Common Law is presented as the clearest expression of common
cultural values, and the liberal spirit which Freeman, Maitland and Pollock took to be moving
them. For early nineteenth-century precedents for seeing the English constitution in cultural terms
see B. Disraeli, A Vindication of the English Constitution (i835); and S. T. Coleridge, On the
Constitution of Church and State (i 8 3 8).
The parliamentary Liberal party that came

a rich blend of Peelite earnestness, cautious Whig progressivism and
radical enthusiasm. During the i8 os radicals such as Richard Cobden
and John Bright had suffered in the political wilderness. During the
i86os a moral radicalism, in contrast to the mechanistic or utilitarian
radicalism of the I830S, became a means to office, as well as an emotive
cause. Thomas Milner Gibson, C. P. Villiers, T. Headlam, C. Gilpin,
G. Clive and A. H. Layard held office under Palmerston after i859,
and affirmed that mid-Victorian radicalism had become politically res-
pectable.1 As a result a strong dose of radical populism was injected
into the Liberal party which frightened Whigs, seduced Gladstone,
and built bridges between Westminster and organized labour, provin-
cial journalism and militant nonconformity. This broke down the ele-
vated autonomy of the Commons and brought the clamour of the
populace much closer to the benches of the lower House.
The i 86os, like the i 820S, saw religious issues acquire a new political
prominence. During the i 8 Os Palmerston and Derby had assiduously
avoided defining party differences in religious terms. Both sought to
present religious issues in a non-partisan guise, like social policy, fully
aware of the intense and unmanageable passion religious debate
excited.2 But Nonconformity provided an important part of the popu-
lar impetus behind the resurgence of radicalism, and assumed the form
of pressure groups such as the Liberation Society and the United King-
dom Alliance. By the late i 86os Liberalism, under the new leadership
of Gladstone, defined itself, in significant part, with reference to
religious issues, such as the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland.
Indeed, part of Gladstone's contribution to Liberalism was to infuse
a previously existing administrative progressivism with an intense moral
zeal. It was religious controversy, Disraeli noted in March I868, that
was going 'to give a colour to the character, and a form to the action,
of the newly enfranchised constituencies'.3 Religion became central
to the politics of Gladstone's first ministry.4 In an age of religious
revival this also injected a powerful populist element into parliamentary
politics. Gladstone's ministry, from i868 to I874, struggled with the
intractable sectarian difficulties raised by education, Irish land, non-
conformity and an Irish university scheme. The government's other
legislation, however, also contributed to the demise of 'parliamentary
government'. In particular, the Ballot Act of I 872 was a dramatic change
in the mechanism of voting which, Lord Grey and Lord Shaftesbury
i. See Hawkins, Parliament, Party and the Art of Politics; and P. M. Gurowich, 'The Continuation
of War by Other Means: Party and Politics, i855-i865', HistoricalJournal, xxvii (i984), 603-3I.
2. See Hawkins, Parliament, Party and the Art of Politics, pp. I 7-i8.
3. Disraeli to the Queen, 23 Mar. i868: G. E. Buckle (ed.), Letters of Queen Victoria (2nd
series, 3 vols., London, I926-8), i. 5i8.
4. See Parry, Democracy and Religion; and J. P. Parry, 'Religion and the Collapse of Gladstone's
First Government, i870-i874', Histori calJournal, xxv (i982), 7I-Io2.
argued, would have a corrupting influence on public life.1 Part of

their fear lay in the fact that the ballot would characterize the Commons
as the instrument of an anonymous popular sovereignty.
The career of William Gladstone, and the transition from Peelite
to 'People's William', further eroded the basis of 'parliamentary govern-
ment'. During the i 86os Gladstone discovered his oratorical power
over popular audiences which, by the i 870s, inspired mass 'moral
crusades' such as the Bulgarian and Midlothian campaigns.2 This
was another profoundly disturbing development for the Whigs.
Impassioned 'moral crusades' undercut calm deliberation in Parliament,
placed reasoned debate under the subversive pressure of popular fer-
vour, and encouraged the belief that parliamentary action was a direct
response to extra-parliamentary demands. Here also lay the path to
popular sovereignty. Yet Gladstone's complex mind also retained ele-
ments of his Peelite apprenticeship. H. C. G. Matthew and John Vin-
cent have remarked upon traces of etatisme in Gladstone's thought.3
But rather than anticipating later notions of state intervention in the
economic or social system, such thoughts were remnants of Peelite
doctrine emphasizing order and the resources of executive authority.
Gladstone opposed state intervention, but did endorse the notion of
an impartial executive ensuring efficient administration and control of
expenditure. In pursuing this task he expected the party not to interfere
with him. Thus an emphasis upon authority and order, a certain innate
conservatism, remained evident in Gladstone's domestic and foreign
policies.4 In I867 Gladstone attacked Derby for presenting to Con-
servative backbenchers, in a private meeting prior to the parliamentary
debate, the government's reform bill.5 The episode at once shows
Derby's sensitivity to the importance of party support, and the vestiges
of Peelism in Gladstone's mind that saw this as demeaning to the execu-
tive.
The i867 Reform Act dealt a number of blows to the doctrine of
'parliamentary government'. The expansion of the electorate and the
move towards greater equality of electoral distribution removed some
i. See Bruce L. Kinzer, The Ballot Question in Nineteenth Century English Politics (New York,
1982).
2. See Vincent, Formation of the Liberal Party and R. Shannon, Gladstone and the Bulgarian
Agitation, I876 (London, I963).
3. H. C. G. Matthew's introductions to The Gladstone Diaries, v (Oxford, I978), pp. xxxiii-xxxvii,
and Gladstone Diaries, vii (Oxford, i982), p. xxvi; and the comparison of Gladstone to Turgot
in Vincent, Formation of the Liberal Party, p. 22 I.
4. For discussion of Gladstone's striving for authority and order both abroad and at home, and
the view that his adherence to the principle of self-determination in Europe and the white colonies,
and to political and institutional reform in Britain, were inseparable from an innate conservatism,
see the essays by K. A. P. Sandiford and D. M. Schreuder in Bruce L. Kinzer (ed.), The Gladstonian
Turn of Mind: Essays Presented toJ. B. Conacher (Toronto, i98 5). See also J. P. Parry, 'The Unmuz-
zling of Gladstone', Parliamentary History, iii (i984), i87-i98.
S. Gladstone, i8 Mar. i867, Hansard 3rd series clxxxvi, 27, cited Hanham, Elections and Party
Management, p. 203.
i989 VICTORIAN POLITICAL PARTIES, C.I830-C. I880 665
of those anomalies cherished by Grey. Equally important, the wider

suffrage prompted extra-parliamentary party organization, such as the
National Union of Conservative and Constitution Associations and
the National Liberal Federation. Parliamentary parties became national
parties. The greater intensity of electoral activity after i 867 emphasizes
the point. In general elections between I832 and i865 nearly half, on
average, of all constituencies were uncontested. After I867 less than
a quarter, and after i 885 less than a fifth, of constituencies were uncon-
tested at any general election. The change is even more marked when
considering the number of candidates standing for election. Before I 867
at only one general election, in I832, did more than a thousand candi-
dates stand. After I 867 there were never less than a thousand candidates
standing at any general election. Appropriately, it was the parliamen-
tary tactics of Derby and Disraeli in i 867 that also undermined the
idea of an impartial executive as envisaged by Peel. As Lord Cranborne
observed, Conservative strategy in I867 was the denial of the notion
of an independent executive. 1
Disraeli's leadership of the Conservative party put further pressure
on the doctrine of 'parliamentary government'. His decision to resign
as Prime Minister, following the i868 election but before the meeting
of Parliament, was a momentous departure from convention.2 It set
a precedent which, in I874, Gladstone reluctantly followed. Disraeli,
as Lord Beaconsfield, followed his own precedent in i88o. Disraeli's
redefining of Conservative policy, in the early I 870s, in terms of social
legislation and imperial prestige injected a populist strain into Con-
servative politics which fostered that elusive entity, 'Tory Democracy'.
At the same time the constitutional views of Lord Salisbury suggested
that the nation was the source of authority, and that when the House
of Commons went against the will of the nation the Lords must arbitrate
between them.3 After i88o Salisbury used this doctrine to argue that
Gladstone was leading the nation in a direction to which it was opposed.
In Salisbury's mind such a doctrine was one of resistance. He believed
it could win popular support for the Conservative party, while superior
organization, deference, self-interest, emphasis on the unity of the
nation, and the follies and divisions of radical opponents would, in
practice, allow executive authority to be exercised unimpaired. But
with its distinction between the will of the nation and the deliberation
of the Commons such a doctrine had hostile implications for notions
of parliamentary sovereignty.
By the 880os 'parliamentary government' was largely dismantled.
A 'two-party system' was being built in its stead. Disraeli's declaration
i. Lord Cranborne, 'The Conservative Surrender', Quarterly Review, cxxvii (October, I867),
549-
2. Le May, Victorian Constitution, p. 57.

3. See Paul Smith, Lord Salisbury on Politics: A Selection from his Articles in the Quarterly Review
I860-i883 (Cambridge, I972).
that, without party, 'parliamentary g

in I872 ironic and ambiguous, as the c
mentary government' were, at that m
the i 86os the Conservative and Liber
institutions enjoying mass membership, centralized bureaucracies and
an aspiration to ideological homogeneity. By competing for the votes
of a mass electorate (after I884 based upon household suffrage), they
legitimized their power by representing the plebiscitary verdict of the
majority of the adult male population on the existing executive.1 From
this function came the authority of political parties to determine the
identity of the executive. The virtues claimed for this 'two-party system'
were that it provided strong and stable government by principle or
programme, and electoral supremacy. This was a political world very
different from, and espousing very different values to, that familiar to
early and mid-Victorian politicians.
Historical interpretation of Victorian political parties is exposed to
two subtle, yet invidious, influences. First, the comforting lure of period-
ization encourages the historian to attempt to look at parties between
the I83os and I89os, the 'Victorian period', in one consistent manner.
This suggests that, chameleon-like, the outward appearance of political
parties may change, but the essential nature of the animal remains the
same. Teleological distortions, the second danger, spring from the artifi-
ciality of periodization. If the late nineteenth century demonstrates
the mature character of Victorian political parties, then it represents
a benchmark which early and mid-Victorian parties may move towards,
or from which they may fall away. The party system of the I88os
and I89os offers a paradigm allowing one to talk, for earlier decades,
in relative normative terms of decline and confusion, or for later
decades, of a classic age.
The development of Victorian parliamentary parties is conventionally
seen in terms of three periods, demarcated by the first Reform Act
of I832, the Corn Law crisis of I846, and the second Reform Act
of I867. The pattern of development through these three periods is
also clearly established. The I 832 Reform Act redrew the lines of politi-
cal configuration and, to that extent, was a watershed. In response,
between i 832 and i 846, a disciplined two-party alignment emerged.
The Corn Law crisis of I846 shattered this clear configuration, and
inaugurated a period of retrogression for parties. Between i 846 and
I867 confusion prompted a decline in party politics, the symptoms
i. See Patricia Kelvin, 'The Development and Use of the Concept of the Electoral Mandate in
British Politics, I867-I9II' (Unpublished London Ph.D., I977). Sir Henry Maine and W. E. H.
Lecky are examples of those expressing acute anxiety at such developments. In his Popular Govern-
ment of s885, Maine abandoned the notion of an autonomous parliamentary sovereignty, if it had
to be based upon a democratic franchise, and attempted the rehabilitation of the doctrine of a separation
of powers. Lecky, in his Democracy and Liberty (I896), became nostalgic for the constitutional
arrangements established in I 8 3 2, which had since been lost to democracy.
of which were unstable or minority governments, coalitions and fre-

quent ministerial crises. The period after i867 saw the restoration of
a clear two-party alignment, witnessing a better definition and tighter
discipline of parliamentary parties. This classic age of Victorian two-
party politics after i868 became symbolised in the gladiatorial contests
between Gladstone and Disraeli. Thus a system of two-party politics
that had begun to emerge after i 832, only to be retarded by the confu-
sion of the i85Os, was after i 868, restored and refined. 1
The argument put forward here suggests a redefining of such ortho-
doxy. First of all, the basic pattern of a seeding, withering and final
blossoming of parliamentary parties, following the watershed of I832,
suggests a continuity concealing a fundamental divide apparent in the
years immediately after i868. The I870s were not the full realization
of a party politics suggested in the I830s. Rather, the I870s saw the
formation of parties different in nature, because different in their essen-
tial constitutional function, from the parties of the I830s. What we
see is the operation of two types of constitutional system, with parlia-
mentary parties functioning in different ways, prior to and following
the late i86os. Between i832 and i867 ten governments resigned as
a result of sustaining defeats in the House of Commons. From I868
to I9I8 only three governments chose to resign after losing the confi-
dence of the Commons. All other governments chose to dissolve Parlia-
ment and appeal to the judgement of the electorate.
Looking at the period I832 to I867 as a whole, not bifurcated, and
bearing in mind the constitutional function of parties prescribed by
'parliamentary government', not a later constitutional context, an inter-
esting picture emerges. Between i832 and i867 a number of political
groups existed in Parliament of longer or shorter duration - Whigs,
Conservatives, different radical groups of various persuasions, Ultra-
Tories, Peelites, O'Connell's Irish, the 'Derby Dilly', the Irish Brigade,
and the Adullamites. To speak of a two-party alignment in the late
I830S is a shorthand for, on the one side, an often very fragile alliance
of Whigs, radicals and Irish, and on the other side, Conservatives com-
mitted to a ministerial ethic, not a party doctrine. Moreover, between
i835 and I839, the Whig government relied upon the support of Peel
to free them from dependence upon radicals. Such support also released
Peel from depending upon the Ultra-Tories. Furthermore, after I838,
the differences between frontbench Whigs and backbench Liberals and
radicals became greater. To speak of a disciplined two-party alignment
in the late I830s obscures the vital dynamics of parties operating in
i. For a summary of this orthodoxy see D. E. D. Beales, The Political Parties of Nineteenth
Century Britain (London, I97I), p. I3. 'From i845 to i859 the [party] system appeared to break
down, and it was not fully restored until I 868. ... It was plainly a time of retrogression for parties.'
See O'Gorman, The Emergence of the British Two-Party System, p. I2I, for the argument that
the 'essential ingredients of the British two-party system had ... not only appeared but had been
largely accepted both by politicians and by public opinion by I 832'.
the context of 'parliamentary govern

the period between I832 and I867 was, less the imputed confusion
of the i850s, than the deceptive appearance of two distinct bodies of
opinion dividing the Commons between them by I84I. This was an
appearance which even Peel, the immediate beneficiary of such a con-
figuration, was anxious never to have consolidated into a permanent
reality. By I846, at Peel's own hand, the illusory nature of such appear-
ances was conclusively demonstrated. What followed was not a break-
down of the party system, but the normal functioning of a fluid internal
parliamentary party system, of necessity of limited cohesion. The dyna-
mic of shifting relations between different parliamentary groups defined
the context for the selection of the executive. As Bagehot noted: 'The
whole life of English politics is the action and reaction between the
ministry and the Parliament'. This was the Whig vision of 'parlia-
mentary government' triumphant.
Such a triumph was a defeat for the Peelite vision of executive auth-
ority, with its stress on order, continuity, administrative expertise and
a concept of duty elevated above partisanship. The timing of the demise
of Peelism in Westminster in the i850s, however, was right for its
resurrection elsewhere. The i854 Northcote-Trevelyan report and the
administrative reforms that belatedly followed, as well as the edu-
cational ethic that dominated Benjamin Jowett's Balliol, shaped during
the second half of the nineteenth century a professionalized civil service
dedicated to Peelite axioms.1 In the end Peelism secured a longer-lived
triumph in Whitehall than its Whig vanquisher gained in Westminster.
The model civil servant gave new administrative life to a discarded
political ideal.
In the years after i 868 the fabric of 'parliamentary government' was
demolished, and a 'two-party system' constructed. The politics of the
I870s, therefore, were not a return to an earlier, if further defined,
status quo. They were a politics expressive of new constitutional reali-
ties, with new pressures, demands and duties required of MPs, parties
and extra-parliamentary organization. After I868 many more MPs
voted in more divisions during a session under a party whip, while
party discipline within Westminster found itself amplified in the
country. Acting on an electoral mandate, parties became the auton-
omous institutions within the constitution, rather than Parliament
itself. Parties of this kind are attuned to our modern sensibilities. To
understand early and mid-Victorian parliamentary parties requires the
adjustment of our historical sensibilities to the very different demands
of 'parliamentary government'. In commenting on 'the confused party
politics' of the i85os George Kitson Clark declared: 'If it is the function
i. See C. H. Sisson, The Spirit of British Administration and some European Comparisons (London,
ig9g); and G. Kitson Clark, "'Statesmen in'Disguise": reflections on the history of the neutrality
of the civil service', HistoricalJournal, ii (is95), I9-39.
of parties to give force and meaning to Parliamentary government,

then this party system was a failure; if it is the function of a party
system to represent accurately the realities of national life, it largely
failed in that also'.1 This article argues that, in terms of the function
ascribed by contemporary constitutional wisdom, the mid-nineteenth-
century party system was not so confused, and decidedly not a failure.
Loyola Marymount University ANGUS HAWKINS
i. G. Kitson Clark, The Making of Victorian England (London, i965), p. 209.

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'Parliamentary Government' and Victorian Political Parties, c. 1830-c.

'Parliamentary Government' and Victorian

as an electoral norm until the i8 80s.1 A third s

parliamentary parties. It attempts to un

as in the fact that for a quarter of a century Parliamentary Government

The implications of this celebrated system of 'parliamentary govern-

interests of the community to popula

i. Park, Dogmas of the Constitution, p. 59-

There exists a crucial distinction between a 'two-party system' and

government' that assumed a canonical status. 1 'Mixed government'

and founding government upon good faith, shared

all Stewart's students at Edinburgh Univ

while opposing excessive royal influence, made it clear that he opposed

of executive authority against party in Parliament. The constitutional

I. T. E. Kebbel, A History of Toryism (London, i 886), p. 320.

ion. Ian Newbould, however, has shown that the

responsible government.1 The rhetoric of extra-parliamentary pres-

the continual balance and adjustment of those 'in

then the forces of Conservatism, regrouping on the lower slopes,

of things it was the obligation of parliamentary fol

Conservative party was a body he could not control. A strategy of

2. Further levels of irony exist in that, despite Peel's constitutional views, as

I. Quarterly Review, lxxviii (Sept. I 846), 567.

buttressing that Walter Bagehot felt to be necessary to his more cele-

in the passions and prejudices of the people we

long prescription,' while the anomalies,

another.1 Erskine May concluded his discussion of party with a pane-

By steering the constitution between the Charybdis of the prerogative

The parliamentary Liberal party that came

argued, would have a corrupting influence on public life.1 Part of

of those anomalies cherished by Grey. Equally important, the wider

2. Le May, Victorian Constitution, p. 57.

that, without party, 'parliamentary g

of which were unstable or minority governments, coalitions and fre-

the context of 'parliamentary govern

of parties to give force and meaning to Parliamentary government,

Loyola Marymount University ANGUS HAWKINS

i. G. Kitson Clark, The Making of Victorian England (London, i965), p. 209.

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