The Political History of England – Vol XI

THE EUROPEAN ALLIANCE.

But the principal question before the conference of Aix-la-Chapelle was not one relating to any particular difficulty, but the permanent form of the European alliance. The tsar desired a general confederacy of European powers, such as had signed the treaty of Vienna and the holy alliance. This confederacy was to guard against two evils – that of revolutionary agitation and that of arbitrary administration and sectional alliances. Such a project, though doubtless proposed in good faith, practically gave Russia an interest in the domestic movements, both reactionary and constitutional, of every country, while it forbade any political combination to which Russia was not a party. Castlereagh agreed with Metternich in thinking that such an extension of Russian Influence was more to be dreaded than local disorder, and Great Britain and Austria proposed therefore that the alliance should be based on the treaty of Chaumont, as renewed at Vienna and Paris, though they were willing to have friendly discussions from time to time without extending the scope of the alliance. All parties desired to include France in their alliance, but the tsar pertinently objected that France could not be admitted to an alliance aimed solely against France. A compromise was therefore adopted. The quadruple alliance for war, in case of a revolution in France, was secretly renewed, and centres for mobilisation were fixed, while France was publicly invited to join the deliberations of the allied powers. A secret protocol was then signed providing for the meeting of congresses from time to time, and giving the minor European powers a place in these congresses when their affairs should be under discussion.

CHAPTER IX.

THE LAST YEARS OF LORD LIVERPOOL

The only important events of domestic interest in the year 1820, after the death of George III., were the Cato Street conspiracy, and the so-called trial of Queen Caroline. For the accession of the king, who had so long exercised royal functions as regent, produced no visible effect either on the personal composition or on the general policy of the government. Immediately after his proclamation he was attacked by a dangerous illness, but on his recovery he promptly raised two questions which nearly involved a change of ministry. One of these was a proposal to increase his private revenue, which he was induced to abandon for the present. The other was a demand for a divorce, which the ministers firmly resisted, though they ultimately agreed to a compromise, under which the divorce question was to be deferred, so long as the queen remained quietly abroad, but action was to be taken in case she returned to assert her rights.

THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY.

In the midst of these difficulties the lives of the ministers were threatened by a plot somewhat like those of the seventeenth century. Later writers have represented it as contemptible in its conception, and as directly provoked by the "Manchester massacre". So it may be said that Guy Fawkes was an insignificant person, and that his employers were exasperated by the severe treatment of popish recusants. The facts are that Arthur Thistlewood, the author of the Cato Street conspiracy, was a well-known confederate of the Watsons and other members of the extreme reform party, and that his plan for murdering the assembled cabinet in a private house would probably have been effectual, had it not been detected by the aid of an informer. This informer, Edwards, had warned the authorities in November, 1819, of the impending stroke, and may or may not have instigated Thistlewood's gang to execute it at a moment and place well-calculated to secure their arrest. At all events twenty-four conspirators armed themselves in Cato Street, near the Edgware Road, London, for the purpose of assassinating the ministers at a cabinet dinner in Harrowby's house in Grosvenor Square, and some of their associates were posted near the door of that house to summon them when the guests should have assembled. Harrowby's dinner was of course put off, but the watchers were deceived by the arrival of carriages for a dinner party next door, and failed to apprise the gang in Cato Street. The police rushed in upon the gang, but a body of soldiers ordered to support them reached the spot too late, a policeman was stabbed, and Thistlewood, with twelve or fourteen others, contrived to escape. He was captured the next morning, and executed with four of his accomplices, five more were transported for life, and the atrocity of the enterprise was naturally treated in the king's speech as a justification for the repressive measures in operation. In the following April a petty outbreak in Scotland was easily put down by a few troops at a place called Bonnymuir. It was, however, preceded by a treasonable proclamation, which spread terror among the citizens of Glasgow for several hours, and was sufficiently like an attempt at armed rebellion to confirm the alarm excited by the Cato Street conspiracy. In the face of such warnings, the energy of the government in stamping out disorder could hardly be censured.

The last parliament of George III. was prorogued on February 28, 1820, and dissolved on the following day. One of its last debates was on Lord John Russell's proposal to suspend the issue of writs to the boroughs of Grampound, Penryn, Barnstaple, and Camelford. This was carried in the house of commons, but lost in the house of lords. The new parliament was opened by George IV. in person on April 21. Widespread excitement occasioned by the question of the divorce prevented the business of the first session from attracting much attention. A deficit in the revenue, coinciding with growing expenditure, compelled Vansittart to fall back on a fresh manipulation of the sinking fund. One measure, however, of the highest importance was introduced by Brougham. The committee of 1814 on national education had amassed a great body of valuable evidence, and he now founded upon its report a comprehensive bill extending to the whole country. It placed the management and teaching of elementary schools entirely in the hands of Churchmen, and was dropped after the first reading, but the conscience of the nation was roused by it, and it bore fruit later. Further slight mitigations of the criminal law were carried as a result of attacks made by Sir James Mackintosh, upon whom the mantle of Romilly had fallen, and it is worthy of notice that even Eldon, the stout opponent of such mitigations, condemned the use of spring-guns, as a safeguard against poaching. The only ministerial change in this year was the final retirement in May of Lord Mulgrave, who had held high office in every ministry except that of Grenville since 1804, and had voluntarily surrendered his post at the head of the ordnance in 1818 to make room for Wellington.

QUEEN CAROLINE.

The "queen's trial," as it is erroneously called, was the last act but one in a domestic tragedy which had lasted twenty-five years. The Princess Caroline of Brunswick was a frivolous and ill-disciplined young woman when she was selected by George III. as a wife for the heir-apparent, already united and really attached to Mrs. Fitzherbert. The princess could not have been married to a man less capable of drawing out the better side of her character, nor was she one to inspire his selfish and heartless nature with a sentiment, if not of conjugal love, yet of conjugal friendship. From the first there was no pretence of affection between them. A few years after her marriage she was relegated, not unwillingly, to live independently at Blackheath, where many eminent men accepted her hospitality. During this period, as we have seen, a "delicate investigation" into her conduct was instituted in 1806. Though she emerged from it with less stain on her character than had been expected, she never enjoyed the respect of the royal family or of the nation, and there was no question of her sharing the home of her husband. Instead of being a bond of concord between them, the education of her daughter was the subject of constant discord, requiring the frequent intervention of the old king until he lost his reason. After she went abroad in 1814, she travelled widely, but her English attendants soon retired from her service, and she incurred fresh suspicion by her flighty and undignified conduct. She had no part in the rejoicing for the marriage, or in the mourning for the death, of the Princess Charlotte; and in 1818 a secret commission, afterwards known as the Milan commission, was sent out by the prince regent to collect evidence for a divorce suit. Not only Liverpool, but Eldon, who had formerly stood her friend, concurred in the appointment of this commission, promoted by Sir John Leach, and its report was the foundation of the proceedings now taken against her.

These proceedings were immediately due to her own action in returning to England in June, 1820, but this action was not wholly unprovoked. She had long and bitterly resented her official exclusion from foreign courts, and when, after the king's accession, her name was omitted from the prayer-book, she protested against it as an intolerable insult. Contrary to the advice of her wisest partisans, including Brougham, she persisted in braving the wrath of the king and throwing herself upon the people. She was received at Dover with acclamations from immense multitudes; and her journey to and through London was a continued ovation. Not that her innocence was established even in the popular mind, but that, innocent or guilty, she was regarded as a persecuted woman, and persecuted by a worthless husband. The ministry fulfilled its promise to the king by moving the house of lords to institute an inquiry into the queen's conduct. Pending this, conferences took place between Wellington and Castlereagh, on the part of the king, and Brougham and Denman on that of the queen. It was at once laid down as a preliminary basis of the negotiation that neither should the king be understood to retract, nor the queen to admit, any allegation against her. The points upon which she inflexibly insisted were, the recognition of her royal status at foreign courts, through an official introduction by the British ambassador, and the insertion of her name in the prayer-book.

The house of commons, on the motion of Wilberforce, offered to protect her honour (whatever that might import) on condition of her waiving this last point, but she courteously declined its conciliatory proposals on June 22. On July 4 a secret committee of the house of lords recommended a solemn investigation, to be carried out "in the course of a legislative proceeding," and on the 8th Liverpool introduced a bill of pains and penalties, to deprive her of her title, and to dissolve her marriage. The second reading of this bill was formally set down for August 17, and for several weeks afterwards the house of lords was occupied in hearing evidence in support of the charges against her. The whole country was deluged with the squalid details of this evidence, the ministers were insulted, and the sympathy of the populace with her cause was obtrusively displayed in every part of the kingdom. On October 3, after an adjournment of the lords, Brougham opened the defence in the most celebrated of his speeches. On November 2 the lord chancellor, Eldon, moved the second reading of the bill, and on the 8th it was carried by a majority of twenty-eight. Four days later, on the third reading, the majority had dwindled to nine only. Knowing the temper of the house of commons, Liverpool treated such a victory as almost equivalent to a defeat, and announced that the government would not proceed further with the measure.

Had the queen possessed the virtue of self-respect or dignity, she would have been satisfied with this legislative, though not morally decisive, acquittal. But she was intoxicated with popular applause, largely due to her royal consort's vices, and, after London had been illuminated for three nights in her honour, she declined overtures from the government, and appealed for a maintenance to the house of commons, which granted her an annuity of £50,000 in the next session. But she never lived to enjoy it After going in procession to St. Paul's, to return thanks for her deliverance, on the 29th, and vainly attempting, once more, to procure the mention of her name in the prayer-book, she concentrated her efforts on a claim of right to be crowned with the king. No government could have conceded this claim, and, when it had been refused by the privy council, her solemn protests were inevitably vain. Even her least prudent counsellors would assuredly have dissuaded her from the attempt which she made to force an entrance into Westminster Abbey on the coronation day, July 19, 1821. It was a painful scene when she, who had so lately been the idol of the fickle populace, was turned away from the doors amidst conflicting exclamations of derision and pity. A fortnight later, on August 2, she was officially reported to be seriously ill; on the 7th she was no more. In accordance with her own direction her body was buried at Brunswick. Her ill-founded popularity was shown for the last time, when a riotous multitude succeeded in diverting her funeral procession, and forcing it to pass through the city on its way to Harwich. But it did not survive her long; the people were becoming tired of her, and the king, who had forfeited the respect of the middle and upper classes, was less hated by the lower classes after her death.

GEORGE IV. IN IRELAND.

The personal character and opinions of George IV. seem to have influenced politics less during the early years of his reign than during his long regency. His coronation was celebrated with unprecedented magnificence, and amidst external demonstrations of loyalty, hard to reconcile with the unbounded enthusiasm which the queen had so lately inspired. Soon afterwards, he sailed in his yacht from Portsmouth on a voyage to Ireland, but put into Holyhead and there awaited news of the queen's expected death. This reached him at last, and probably impressed him, no less than his ministers, as "the greatest of all possible deliverances, both to his majesty and the country".68 He proceeded to Dublin in one of the earliest steam-packets, and secluded himself until "the corpse of his wife was supposed to have left England".69 He then plunged into a round of festivities, and pleased all classes of Irishmen by his affable and condescending manners. He was, indeed, the first sovereign of England who had appeared in Ireland on a mission of peace. John William Ward, afterwards fourth Viscount Dudley in his letters, describes him as having behaved like a popular candidate on an electioneering trip, and surmises that "if the day before he left Ireland, he had stood for Dublin, he might have turned out Shaw or Grattan ".70 Certain it is that his visit to Ireland was regarded as an important political event. The same kind of success attended his visit to Scotland in August of the following year, 1822. Thenceforth, he scarcely figures in political life until the resignation of Lord Liverpool in 1827, and though he consented with reluctance to Canning's tenure of the foreign office, he did not attempt to interfere with the change in foreign policy consequent upon it. He was, in fact, sinking more and more into an apathetic voluptuary; but he could rouse himself, and exhibit some proofs of ability, under the impulse of his brothers, the honest Duke of York and the arch-intriguer, the Duke of Cumberland.

The cry for retrenchment, now taken up by the country gentlemen, and not unmingled with suggestions for a partial repudiation of the national debt, compelled the government to adopt a policy of strict economy. Accordingly, in 1822, Vansittart introduced a scheme for the conversion of the so-called "Navy 5 per cents.," which resulted in a saving of above £1,000,000 annually. He also carried a more questionable scheme for the payment of military, naval, and civil pensions, which then amounted to £4,900,000 a year, but were falling in rapidly; the money required for this purpose was to be borrowed by trustees, and was to be repaid in the course of forty-five years at the rate of £2,800,000 a year; in this way an immediate saving of about £2,000,000 annually was effected at the cost, however, of the next generation. By means of these expedients, with a considerable reduction of official salaries, the government was enabled to repeal the additional duty on malt, to diminish the duties on salt and leather, and, on the whole to remit about £3,500,000 of taxes. When the entire credit of financial reform is given to Huskisson, Joseph Hume, and other economists of the new school, it should not be forgotten that a beginning was made by economists of the old school, before Huskisson joined the government in 1823, or Robinson took Vansittart's place as chancellor of the exchequer.

From the beginning of this reign a more enlightened spirit may be traced in parliamentary debates. This was aided by the growth of a constitutional movement in favour of reform in parliament as the first step towards a redress of grievances. The movement left its first trace on the statute-book in a measure carried by Lord John Russell in the session of 1821 for the disfranchisement of Grampound, though the vacant seats were transferred to the county of York, instead of to the "village" of Leeds or some other of the great unrepresented cities. This was the first instance of the actual disfranchisement of a constituency, though it was not without precedent that the franchise of a corrupt borough should be extended to the freeholders of the surrounding district. A notable sign of the progressive change was the reconstruction of the cabinet in 1822. Liverpool, who always possessed the gift of working harmoniously with colleagues of different views and felt the weakness of his present ministry, once more attempted to bring about a coalition with the Grenville party in the opposition. Grenville had long been drifting away from his alliance with Grey, and had been a stout advocate of repressive legislation which the more advanced whigs opposed. Though he declined office for himself, several of his relatives and adherents were rewarded with minor appointments, his cousin, Charles Wynn, became president of the board of control, in succession to Bragge-Bathurst, who had himself succeeded Canning in the previous year, and his nephew, the Marquis of Buckingham, obtained a dukedom. Such recruits added little strength to the Liverpool government, and Holland well said that "all articles are now to be had at low prices, except Grenvilles".

THE DEATH OF CASTLEREAGH.

But Liverpool gained far more powerful coadjutors in the Marquis Wellesley, Peel, and Canning. In December, 1821, Wellesley undertook the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, which had relapsed into so disturbed a state that it had been proposed to make Wellington both viceroy and commander-in-chief. The significance of this selection was increased by the appointment of Plunket as attorney-general. Sidmouth, while retaining his seat in the cabinet, retired, by his own wish, from the office of home secretary, with a sense of having pacified the country, and was succeeded by Peel. Castlereagh, now Marquis of Londonderry, remained foreign secretary, but on August 12, 1822, as he was on the point of setting out for the congress of Verona, he died, like Whitbread and Romilly, by his own hand. His suicidal act was clearly due to a morbid fit of depression, under the stress of anxieties protracted over more than twenty years; and the disordered state of his mind had been observed, not only by Wellington, but also by the king. His successor was Canning, who also became leader of the house of commons.

The characters and political aims of these rival statesmen have often been contrasted by historians of a later age, who have seldom done justice to Castlereagh. It is remembered that he was the author of the Walcheren expedition; it is forgotten that he was the advocate of sending a powerful force to the Baltic coast at the critical moment between Jena and Eylau, that he was not altogether responsible for the delays which rendered the Walcheren expedition abortive or for the choice of its incompetent commander, that his prime object was to strike a crushing blow at Napoleon's naval power, and that, if his instructions had been obeyed, this would have been effected by a rapid advance upon Antwerp when nearly all the French troops had been withdrawn from the Netherlands. It is remembered that he was at the war office when the operations of Wellington in the Peninsula were crippled for want of supplies; it is forgotten that it was he who selected Wellington, and that he loyally strained every nerve to keep him supplied with troops, provisions, and specie, when few but himself believed in the policy of the Peninsular war, and Sir John Moore had assured him that if the French dominated Spain, they could not be resisted in Portugal. It is remembered – or rather it is assumed – that he was the eager promoter of coercive and reactionary legislation at home; it is forgotten, or ignored, that he was among the earliest and staunchest advocates of catholic emancipation, and that a despotic temper is belied by the whole tone of his speeches. Above all, he is unjustly credited, in the face of direct evidence to the contrary, with being the champion of absolutism in the councils of Europe, the fact being not only that his voice was always on the side of moderation and conciliation, but that Canning himself, on succeeding him, dissociated Great Britain from the holy alliance by taking his stand upon an admirable despatch of Castlereagh and adopting it as his own. When he met with his tragical end, the brutal shouts of exultation raised by a portion of the crowd at his funeral were the expression of sheer ignorance and not of intelligent public opinion. He was a tory, in days when most patriots were tories, but he was a tory of the best type; and we of a later generation can see that few statesmen of George III.'s reign have left a purer reputation or rendered greater services to their country.

CANNING AND PEEL.

George Canning, his successor, has been far more favourably judged by posterity, and not without reason, if intellectual brilliancy is a supreme test of political merit. A firm adherent of Pitt, and a somewhat unscrupulous critic of Addington, he was probably the first parliamentary orator of the nineteenth century, with the possible exception of Sheridan. Pitt's eloquence was of a loftier and simpler type, Fox's was more impetuous and spontaneous; Peel's range of political knowledge was far wider; Gladstone excelled all, not only in length of experience but in readiness and dialectical resource. Canning's rhetoric was of a finer quality and was combined with great debating power, but he was a man to inspire admiration rather than confidence, and had not held one of the higher political offices since his resignation in 1809, after his quarrel with Castlereagh. He accepted a mission to Portugal, however, and was in Lisbon when Napoleon returned from Elba. In 1816, as has been seen, he became president of the board of control, but, having been formerly one of the queen's advisers, he declined to have anything to do with her trial and remained abroad during its continuance. In December, 1820, he returned, but persisted in resigning his place at the board of control on the supposed ground that further parliamentary discussion of the queen's case was inevitable. On this occasion he received a special vote of thanks from the directors of the East India Company for his services on the board. The king objected to his readmission after the queen's death, and he was a private member of parliament when he was offered and undertook the governor-generalship of India in March, 1822. But his departure was delayed until August, and he was on his way to bid farewell to his constituents at Liverpool when Castlereagh destroyed himself. It was generally felt that no other man was so well qualified as Canning to succeed him. But the king declared his "final and unalterable decision" to sanction no such change. Though he afterwards relented, on the remonstrances of Wellington, he did so with a bad grace; but there was no delay on Canning's part in accepting the foreign secretaryship thus offered. From his acceptance may be dated the most remarkable part of his career.

The accession of Peel to the Liverpool ministry, in the capacity of home secretary; was only less important than that of Canning. Hitherto, Peel had mostly been known to the British public as chief secretary for Ireland, and as chairman of the committee which, in 1819, recommended the early resumption of cash payments. In both these posts he displayed a certain moderation and independence of mind, combined with a rare capacity for business, which marked him out as a great administrator. This promise he amply fulfilled as home secretary. He was the first minister of the crown who took up the philanthropic work of Romilly and Mackintosh, largely reducing the number of offences for which capital punishment could be inflicted. He was also the first to reform the police system of London, and to substitute for a multitude of decrepit watchmen, incapable of dealing with gangs of active criminals, a disciplined body of stalwart constables, which has since been copied in every county and large town of Great Britain. Above all, while he cannot be said to have shown a statesmanlike insight or foresight of the highest order, he could read the signs of the times and the temper of his countrymen with a sagacity far beyond that of his predecessor, Sidmouth, or of such politicians as Eldon and Castlereagh. In him was represented the domestic policy of Pitt in his earlier days, as Pitt's financial views were represented in Huskisson, who had actually served under him.