Parliament

Parliament is presented through its legislative authority and, most vividly, the House of Lords: a place where royal command can confer political standing, peers deliberate on public measures, and a speaker from the margins can be heard yet mocked. Gwynplaine’s abrupt passage from itinerant performer to peer exposes the distance between admission to Parliament and the ability to move its members to action.

Legislative Authority and Law

An early statute during the reign of William and Mary struck at the Comprachicos, prescribing severe penalties for convicted members and for those who concealed their activities. The account presents legislation as an instrument of state power reaching beyond individual offenders to chiefs, their property, and those who failed to inform. Its harsh detail sits alongside the novel’s broader picture of legal authority as plural and uneven: silent arrests, for example, continued in practice despite the Habeas Corpus Act, and could be justified as matters of state. Parliament’s formal law therefore does not, by itself, ensure that power is exercised openly or consistently.

The evidence also connects parliamentary standing to the production and recognition of law. When Gwynplaine’s identity is established, Barkilphedro describes him as a peer who will be a legislator and judge. The claim presents his restored rank as more than a change of fortune: it places him within an institution whose members participate in public rule. Yet that standing remains dependent on royal and procedural decisions, rather than arising from the force of his personal history or the justice of his cause.

The House of Lords and Royal Ceremony

Gwynplaine’s admission to the House of Lords follows the discovery that he is Lord Fermain Clancharlie, heir to his father’s titles and estates. His position is formalized through royal commands and completed procedures; the Lord Chancellor and Deputy Earl Marshal are informed of the confrontation that confirms his identity. The process is presented as both an elevation and a vulnerability: until Gwynplaine consents to become a peer, the arrangements can still be annulled, and state policy may suppress what has been discovered.

The chamber makes rank visible through its ceremonial order. Gwynplaine sits among peers dressed in ermine and purple, while black-gowned men kneel before them; opposite are the steps, dais, royal arms, and throne. The scene turns Parliament into a carefully staged display of sovereignty and hierarchy. Gwynplaine’s red velvet robe and ermine mark his newly recognized status, but the speed of his elevation leaves him caught between the powerless life he has known and the authority the ceremony assigns him.

At the time of his arrival, the Lords are considering a Crown bill to increase the Duke of Cumberland’s annual allowance by £100,000. The proposal gives the setting a concrete legislative business, while sharpening the contrast between the wealth debated within the chamber and the poverty Gwynplaine has witnessed outside it. His admission lets him take part in the debate, but the formal right to speak does not guarantee that his words will be received as argument.

Gwynplaine’s Speech and the Limits of Hearing

Gwynplaine rises to address the Lords and explains that his own interests lie elsewhere: he speaks because he believes his former life among the poor has brought him among those who have been made hungry. He recounts his entrance into society as an abandoned child, describing the law through a gibbet, riches through a woman dead from cold and hunger, the future through another child left to die, and goodness and justice through a vagabond whose companion was a wolf. His appeal draws its authority from experience rather than inherited position.

As emotion overtakes him, Gwynplaine breaks into uncontrollable laughter. The Lords respond with amusement and insults rather than sustained attention to his indictment. The reversal is pointed: the institution has recognized him as a peer and admitted him to its speaking place, but the face that made him a popular performer again turns his speech into spectacle. His presence creates a brief opening for the disadvantaged to be represented inside Parliament, while the chamber’s reaction shows how readily that opening can be converted into entertainment.

Institutional Significance

Across these episodes, Parliament stands at the intersection of legal procedure, royal power, inherited status, and public voice. Statutes can punish and regulate; royal commands and formal confrontation can restore a peerage; the House of Lords can receive a newly recognized legislator. But the recognition is conditional, and the speech made possible by it does not overcome the social distance between the peers and the poor whom Gwynplaine describes.

The contrast between the street performance and the Lords’ chamber gives this institutional role particular force. Gwynplaine’s laughter once brings a crowd into shared delight; among the peers, it helps turn a grave political appeal into ridicule. Parliament thus offers access without assuring attention, and ceremonial inclusion without equal authority over what the assembly chooses to hear.