The Political History of England – Vol XI

The king, as we have seen, had never been able to understand the real force of the reform movement, and his leading idea was that the demand for reform might be satisfied by a moderate reform bill, which the house of lords would not reject or reduce to nullity. Wellington shared this impression, and, though an implacable opponent of reform, was willing to undertake office for the purpose of carrying, not merely a mild substitute for the whig reform bill, but the whig reform bill itself with little modification. Such an act might appear immoral in a statesman whose integrity was more open to question, but the duke's political moral appears to have been of a less delicate type than that which is commonly expected in party politicians. As a general, he considered, first of all and above all, what manœuvres would best advance his plan of campaign. As a political leader, he regarded himself not as the chief of a party, still less as the exponent of a creed, but rather as a public servant to whom his followers owed allegiance, whether in office or in opposition. As a public servant he felt bound to obey the king's summons, and conduct the administration, honestly and efficiently, but without much concern for personal convictions. He was also anxious to preserve the house of lords from being swamped and so rendered ridiculous by an extensive creation of peers.105

ATTEMPTS TO FORM A TORY MINISTRY.

But Wellington knew that he was powerless to manage the house of commons without the aid of Peel, and Peel, though pliable in the case of catholic emancipation, was inflexible in the case of reform. He drew a distinction between these cases, and absolutely rejected the advice of Croker that he should grasp the helm of state to avert the worse evil of the whigs being recalled. "I look," he wrote, "beyond the exigency and the peril of the present moment, and I do believe that one of the greatest calamities that could befall the country would be the utter want of confidence in the declarations of public men which must follow the adoption of the bill of reform by me as a minister of the crown."106 This language, repeated under reserve in the house of commons, after a direct appeal from the king, strongly contrasts with that of the duke who roundly asserted that he should have been ashamed to show his face in the streets if he had refused to serve his sovereign in an emergency. The marked divergence of views and conduct between the two leaders of the conservative party led to a temporary estrangement which materially weakened their counsels, and was not finally removed until a fresh crisis arose two years later.

While Lyndhurst and the duke were vainly endeavouring to patch up a government without Peel or his personal adherents, Goulburn and Croker, the house of commons and the country gave decisive proofs of their resolution. A vote of confidence in Grey's ministry, proposed by Ebrington, was carried on May 10 by a majority of eighty. Petitions came in from the city of London and Manchester, calling upon the commons to stop the supplies, and the reckless populace clamoured for a run upon the Bank of England. A mass meeting convened by the Birmingham political union had already hoisted the standard of revolt against the legislature, unless it would comply with the will of the people; the example was spreading rapidly, and events seemed to be hurrying on towards a fulfilment of Russell's prediction that, in the event of a political deadlock, the British constitution would perish in the conflict. The duke was credited, of course unjustly, with the intention of establishing military rule, and doubts were freely expressed whether he could rely either on the army or on the police to put down insurgent mobs. The excitement in the house of commons itself was scarcely less formidable, and it soon became evident that high tories were almost as much incensed by the prospect of a tory reform bill as radicals and whigs by the vote on Lyndhurst's amendment.

On the 14th Manners Sutton and Alexander Baring, Lyndhurst's trusted confidants, plainly informed the duke that his self-imposed task was hopeless, and on the next day the duke advised the king to recall Grey. The king, who had apparently grasped the position earlier, acquiesced in this solution of the question. He agreed to recall Grey and his colleagues, and to use his own personal influence in persuading tory peers to abstain from voting. He attempted to impose upon his old ministers the condition of modifying the bill considerably, but they continued to insist on maintaining its integrity, and on swamping the upper house, unless its opposition should be withdrawn. It was, happily, unnecessary to resort to such extreme measures. A letter from the king, dated the 17th, informed Wellington that all difficulties would be removed by "a declaration in the house of lords from a sufficient number of peers that they have come to the resolution of dropping their further opposition to the reform bill". On that night, after stating what had passed, the duke retired from the house, followed by about 100 peers, and absented himself from the discussion of the bill in committee. A stalwart minority remained, and took issue on a few clauses, but their numbers constantly dwindled, and when the report was received on June 1 only eighteen peers recorded their dissent in a protest. Grey himself, though suffering from illness, moved the third reading on the 4th, when it was carried by 106 to 22. His last words did not lack the dignity which had marked his bearing throughout, and expressed the earnest hope that, in spite of sinister forebodings, "the measure would be found to be, in the best sense, conservative of the constitution".

ROYAL ASSENT TO THE BILL.

The amendments made in the house of lords were slight, and the house of commons adopted them without any argument on their merits. Peel, who had made a convincing defence of his recent conduct, and who afterwards took a statesmanlike course in the reformed parliament, declared, with some petulance, that he would have nothing to do with the consideration of provisions or amendments passed under compulsion, and that he was prepared to accept them, en bloc, whatever their nature or consequences. The bill, therefore, received the royal assent on the 7th, but the king could not be induced to perform this ceremony in person. Though his scruples had been respected in framing the scheme of reform, though he was consulted at every turn and clearly recognised the necessity to which he bowed, and though he was spared the resort to a coup d'état which he abhorred, he could not but feel humiliated by the ill-disguised subjection of the crown and the nobility to a single chamber of the people. It is greatly to his honour that, with limited intelligence, and strong prejudices, he should have played a straightforward and strictly constitutional part in so perilous a crisis.

By the great reform bill, as it was still called even after it became an act, the whole representative system of England and Wales was reconstructed. Fifty-six nomination boroughs, as we have seen, lost their members altogether; thirty more were reduced to one member, and Weymouth which, coupled with Melcombe Regis, had returned four members, now lost two. Twenty-two large towns, including metropolitan districts, were allotted two members each; twenty smaller but considerable towns received one member each; the number of English and Welsh county members was increased from ninety-four to one hundred and fifty-nine, and the larger counties were parcelled out into divisions. All the fanciful and antiquated franchises which had prevailed in the older boroughs were swept away to make room for a levelling £10 household suffrage, the privileges of freemen being alone preserved. The rights of 40s. freeholders were retained in counties, but they found themselves associated with a large body of copyholders, leaseholders, and tenants-at-will paying £50 in rent. The general result was to place the borough representation mainly in the hands of shopkeepers, and the county representation mainly in those of landlords and farmers. The former change had a far greater effect on the balance of parties than the latter. The shopkeepers, of whom many were nonconformists, long continued to cherish advanced radical traditions, partly derived from the reform agitation, and constantly rebelled against dictation from their rich customers. The farmers, dependent on their landlords and closely allied with them in defending the corn laws, proved more submissive to influence, and constituted the backbone of the great agricultural interest.

The enactment of the English reform bill carried with it as its necessary sequel the success of similar bills for Scotland and Ireland. In Scotland electoral abuses were so gross that reform was comparatively simple, and that proposed, as Jeffrey, the lord advocate, frankly said, "left not a shred of the former system". The nation, as a whole, gained eight members, since its total representation was raised from forty-five to fifty-three seats, thirty for counties and twenty-three for cities and burghs. Two members were allotted to Edinburgh and Glasgow respectively; one each to Paisley, Aberdeen, Perth, Dundee, and Greenock, as well as to certain groups of boroughs. Both the county and burgh electorates were entirely transformed. The "old parchment freeholders" in counties, many of whom owned not a foot of land, were superseded by a mixed body of freeholders and leaseholders with real though various qualifications. The electoral monopoly of town councils was replaced by the enfranchisement of householders with a uniform qualification of £10. A claim to representation on behalf of the Scottish universities was negatived in the house of lords. The number of representatives for Ireland was raised from 100 to 105. The disfranchisement of the 40s. freeholders was maintained against the strenuous attacks of O'Connell and Sheil, but the introduction of the £10 borough franchise amply balanced the loss of democratic influence in counties. On the whole the transfer of power from class to class was greater in Scotland and Ireland than in England itself, and in Ireland this signified a corresponding transfer of power from protestants to catholics. The rule of the priests was almost as absolute as ever until it was checked for a while by a purely democratic movement, and the Irish vote in the house of commons was generally cast on the radical side.

RETROSPECT OF THE REFORM MOVEMENT.

A calm retrospect of the reform movement, culminating in the acts of 1832, compels us to see how little the course of politics is guided by reason, and how much by circumstances. Every argument employed in that and the preceding year possessed equal force at the end of the eighteenth century, and the benefits of reform might have been obtained at a much smaller cost of domestic strife; nor can we doubt that, but for the French revolution, these arguments would have prevailed. Whether or not the sanguinary disruption of French society furthered the cause of progress on the continent, it assuredly threw back that cause in Great Britain for more than a generation. Not only did its horrors and enormities produce a reaction which paralysed the efforts of liberals in this country, but the wars arising out of it engrossed for twenty years the whole energy of the nation. Had it been possible for Pitt to pass a reform bill after carrying the Irish union, the current of English history would have been strangely diverted. The sublime tenacity of that proud aristocracy which defied the French empire in arms, and nerved all the rest of Europe by its example and its subsidies, would never have been exhibited by a democratic or middle class parliament, and it is more than probable that Great Britain would have stood neutral while the continent was enslaved or worked out its own salvation. On the other hand, in such a case, Great Britain might have been spared a great part of the misery and discontent which, following the peace, but indirectly caused by the war, actually paved the way for the reform movement. It remained for a second French revolution, combined with the infatuation of English tories, to supply the motive power which converted a party cry into a national demand for justice. The reform act was, in truth, a completion of the earlier English revolution provoked by the Stuarts. Considering the condition of the people before its introduction, and the obstinacy of the resistance to be overborne, we may well marvel that it was carried, after all, so peacefully, and must ever remember it as a signal triumph of whig statesmanship.

It was the crowning merit of the reform act, from a whig point of view, that it stayed the rising tide of democracy, and raised a barrier against household suffrage and the ballot which was not broken down for a generation more. It put an end to an oligarchy of borough-owners and borough-mongers; it was a charter of political rights for the manufacturing interest and the great middle class. But it did nothing for the working classes in town or country; indeed, by the abolition of potwallopers and scot-and-lot voters in a few boroughs, they forfeited such fragmentary representation as they had possessed. Hence the seeds of chartism, already sown, were quickened in 1832; but socialism was not yet a force in politics, and it was still hoped that, under the new electoral system, the sufferings of the poor might be mostly remedied by act of parliament. The effect of the reform act on the balance of the constitution was not, at first, fully appreciated. The grievance of nomination-boroughs had been all but completely redressed, and that of political corruption greatly diminished, but the hereditary peerage remained, and the right of the lords to override the will of the commons had ostensibly survived the conflict of 1831-32. But far-sighted men could not fail to perceive that, in fact, the upper house was no longer a co-ordinate estate of the realm. The peers retained an indefinite power of delaying a measure, but it soon came to be a received maxim that on a measure of primary importance such a power could only be exercised in order to give the commons an opportunity of reconsideration or to force an appeal to the country at a general election, and that a new house of commons, armed with a mandate to carry that measure, though once rejected by the peers, could not be resisted except at the risk of revolution.

The best safeguard against collision, however, was to be found in the latent conservatism of the house of commons itself. Reformed as it was, it had not ceased to be mainly a house of country gentlemen, and the non-payment of members was a security for its being composed, almost exclusively, of men with independent means and a stake in the country. A very large proportion of these had been educated at the great public schools, or the old English universities. They might accept on the hustings the doctrine, against which Burke so eloquently protested, that a representative is above all a delegate, and must go to parliament as the pledged mouthpiece of his constituency. But in the house itself they could not divest themselves of the sentiments derived from their birth, their education, and their own personal interests; nor was it found impossible, without a direct violation of pledges, to act upon their own opinions in many a critical division. Still, it has been well pointed out that, with the flowing tide of reform there arose a new and one-sided conception of statesmanship as consisting in progressive amendment of the laws rather than in efficient administration, so that it is now popularly regarded as a mark of weakness on the part of any government to allow a session to pass without effecting some important legislative change.107

CORONATION OF WILLIAM IV.

The supreme interest of the reform bill and its incidents naturally dwarfed all other political questions, and the legislative annals of 1831-32 are otherwise singularly devoid of historical importance. The coronation of William IV., which, as has been seen, took place on September 8, 1831, was hardly more than an interlude in the great struggle, yet it served for the moment to assuage the animosities of party warfare. The king himself, who disliked solemn ceremonials, and the ministers, deeply pledged to economy, were inclined to dispense with the pageant altogether. It was found, however, that not only peers and court officials but the public would be grievously disappointed by the omission of what, after all, is a solemn public celebration of the compact between the sovereign and the nation. The coronation was, therefore, carried out with due pomp and all the time-honoured formalities, but without the profuse extravagance which attended the enthronement of George IV. There was no public banquet, and the public celebration ceased with the ceremony in Westminster Abbey. The Duke of Wellington and other leading members of the opposition had been duly consulted by the government; there was a welcome respite from parliamentary warfare; the king's returning popularity was confirmed; and all classes of the people were satisfied.

THE CHOLERA EPIDEMIC.

Two months later, the appearance of the cholera at Sunderland added another grave cause of anxiety to all the difficulties created by the defeat of the reform bill in the house of lords, and the ominous riots at Bristol. A similar but distinct and infinitely milder disease had long been known under the name of cholera morbus, or more correctly cholera nostras. Asiatic cholera, as the new disease was called, had no affinity with any other known disease, and excited all the greater terror by its novelty, as well as by the suddenness of its fatal effect. It was first observed by English physicians in 1817, when 10,000 persons fell victims to it in the district of Jessor in Bengal. About the same time it attacked and decimated the central division of the army of Lord Hastings, advancing against Gwalior. Before long it spread over the whole province of Bengal, and eastward along the coasts of Asia as far as China and Timur in the East Indies, crossed the great wall, and penetrated into Mongolia. In 1818 it broke out at Bombay, and during the next twelve years continued to haunt, at intervals, the cities of Persia and Asiatic Turkey, with the coasts of the Caspian Sea. It was not until 1829 that it reached the Russian province of Orenburg, by way of the river Volga, visiting St. Petersburg and Archangel in June, 1830. Thence it travelled slowly but steadily westward through Northern Europe, as well as southward into the valleys of the Danube and its tributaries, until it made its appearance at Berlin and Hamburg in the summer of 1831. Long before this, and while the reform crisis was in its acutest stage, the probability of its advent was fully realised in England, and orders in council were issued in June, 1831, placing in quarantine all ships coming from the Baltic. Notwithstanding the outcry against meddling with trade, men of war were appointed to enforce these orders, and when the news came that Marshal Diebitsch had died of the disease in Poland, the alarm increased and all regulations against plague were made applicable to cholera. Whether or not these precautions were ineffective, it swooped upon Sunderland on October 26, and prevailed there for two months, though its true character was very unwillingly recognised.108

The conflict between the newly created board of health and the merchants importing goods caused the government no little perplexity. The protests of the latter were strengthened by the somewhat remarkable fact that, once established at Sunderland, the cholera seemed to be arrested in its course and for a while spread no further. There seemed to be some ground for the belief that it was partly due to extreme overcrowding and neglect of all sanitary rules in that town, but this belief was soon dissipated by its appearance at Newcastle and progress over the north-eastern counties even during the winter months. Seven cases of it occurred on the banks of the Thames just below London early in February, 1832, and though its virulence in England was alleged to be less than on the continent, further experience hardly justified that opinion. The appalling violence of its first onslaught on some vulnerable districts may be illustrated by the example of Manchester, where a whole family just arrived from an infected locality was swept away within twenty-four hours. The government did its duty by disseminating instructions for its prevention and treatment among the local authorities, but the prejudices of the lower orders were against all interference for their benefit, and scenes of brutality were sometimes enacted such as may still be witnessed in oriental cities scourged by the plague. After a temporary decline, the visitation recurred in all its severity, and in July the deaths of a few persons in the highest circles occasioned a panic in the west end of London. Still the declared number of deaths in the metropolitan area was only 5,275, showing a far lower rate of mortality in London than in Paris at the same time, and much lower than in London itself during the epidemic of 1849, when statistics were more trustworthy. None of the cholera epidemics, however, approached in deadliness the plagues of 1625 and 1665. In the latter year the number of deaths in London from plague alone represented about one-fifth of the entire resident population – a proportion equivalent to a mortality of above 200,000 in the London of 1831-32. This comparative immunity was partly due to improved sanitation, the vigorous development of which may be said to date from the first visitation of cholera.

The census taken in 1831 revealed an increase of population, which, though not equal to that of the preceding decade, indicated a most satisfactory growth of wealth and employment. It was found that Great Britain contained about 16,500,000 inhabitants, but of these, as might be expected, a smaller percentage was employed in agriculture and a larger percentage in manufacturing industry than in 1821. It has been calculated that since the end of the great war the accumulation of capital had been twice as rapid as the multiplication of the people, but, in spite of this, pauperism, as measured by poor law expenditure, had increased almost continuously since 1823, and emigration received a startling impulse in 1831-32. Rick burning and frame breaking were the joint result of childish ignorance, miserable wages, mistaken taxes on the staple of food, and poor laws administered as if for the very purpose of encouraging improvidence and vice. All these causes were capable of being removed or mitigated by legislation, for even the rate of wages was kept down by the ruinous system of out-door relief. But it was only a few thoughtful persons who then appreciated either the extent or the real sources of the mischief, and the disputes which soon arose about the proper remedies to be applied have been handed on to a later age.

Next to parliamentary reform the state of Ireland was by far the most important subject which engaged the attention of the legislature in 1831-32. The population had increased from 6,801,827 in 1821 to 7,767,401 in 1831, and the increase, unlike that in England, had been almost exclusively in the agricultural districts. While the political motive for multiplying small freeholds had ceased, the motives for multiplying small tenancies were as strong as ever, and were felt by landlords no less than by cottiers. This class, often inhabiting huts like those of savage tribes and living in a squalor hardly to be seen elsewhere in western Europe, chiefly depended for their subsistence on potatoes – the most uncertain and the least nutritious of the crops used for human food. Many hundred thousands of them had no employment in their own country and no means of livelihood except the produce of the scanty patches around their own turf cabins. Tens of thousands flocked to England annually seeking harvest work, and a small number emigrated to Canada or the United States, the passage money for an emigrant being then almost prohibitive. Those who could not pay rent were liable to eviction, and eviction was a more cruel fate then than now, since there was no poor law in Ireland. Fever was rife in their miserable abodes, following in the steps of hunger, and for relief of any kind they could rely only on the mercy of their landlords or the charity of their neighbours. Under such conditions of life crime and disaffection could not but flourish, and the Irish peasant could hardly be blamed if he listened eagerly to the counsels of O'Connell. For him catholic emancipation had no meaning except so far as it gave him a hope that parliament, swayed by the great Irish demagogue, would abolish tithes, if not rent, and find some means of making Irishmen happy in their own country.