London - Edward Rutherfurd [509]
The present ministry showed every sign of wanting to impose the firm stamp of authority. The Home Secretary, Robert Peel, not satisfied with the old Bow Street Runners of the previous century, was even proposing to enforce law and order on the country with a uniformed police force under central authority – a frightening idea indeed. While the City of London had already declared it would have no police force that was not subject to the Lord Mayor, decent people elsewhere were muttering: “The duke and Peel want to return us to the stern old days of Cromwell and the generals.” As far as Carpenter could see, the cause of reform was further off than ever.
So as the crowd was leaving the hall Carpenter was greatly astonished to see, of all people, the bottle-green figure of Lord Bocton approaching him, not with a frown but a smile. Holding out his hand, that die-hard Tory remarked: “Mr Carpenter, I agree with every word you say!”
Carpenter looked at him with suspicion. Penny-pinching Lord Bocton might well agree about the absurd cost of Buckingham Palace, but surely not about anything else.
Seeing his surprise, Bocton coolly continued: “You and I, Mr Carpenter, may be closer than you think. Indeed” – and now he moved closer – “I have come here to ask for your help.”
“My help?” What the devil was he up to?
“Yes. You see, Mr Carpenter, I am standing for Parliament.” He smiled again. “I am standing for Reform.”
As Lord Bocton watched Zachary Carpenter, he was pleased to see that he had judged human nature correctly. The proposals he put to the radical had been very carefully calculated. Bocton meant to get what he wanted.
The system of representation about which Carpenter complained was certainly hard to defend. Great commercial cities had no member of Parliament; many rural seats were under the effective patronage of great landowners; and last and most scandalous of all were the pocket boroughs – the rotten boroughs as they were often called – where a handful of electors had the right to return a member. Most of these were not independent men, but placemen who could be bought.
Some radicals even favoured a secret ballot.
“To me,” Bocton confessed, “that seems a cowardly underhand sort of method which no honest man should support. But perhaps, Mr Carpenter, you can convince me otherwise.”
But the real test came over the question of who was to vote. “Is it really your belief, Mr Carpenter,” he asked, “that every man – the journeyman you have to dismiss for drunkenness, the apprentice, the beggar in the workhouse even – should have the same right to elect the country’s governors as you?”
And just as he suspected, Carpenter hesitated. It was a question that had been haunting the reform movement for years. The purists believed that all men, no matter what their condition, should vote. Ten years ago, Carpenter would have agreed; but as he grew older, he had started having doubts. Were the twenty people he employed really ready for so much responsibility?
“Men who pay taxes should vote.” Solid citizens. Men like him.
“Precisely,” said Lord Bocton
That women also might vote had never occurred to either of them.
“My title,” Bocton reminded Carpenter, “as the heir to the Earl of St James, is only a courtesy title. My father sits in the House of Lords but I may sit in the Commons.” It was a route that politically minded aristocrats often liked to follow. “At the next election I intend to stand for the St Pancras seat,” he continued. “Though I am of course a Tory, I give you my word that I will vote for reform. I want you to support me.