The Political History of England – Vol XI

A far keener party interest was excited by the crusade against the Orange lodges in Great Britain and Ireland which Hume and Finn, an Irish member, carried on with great energy in the sessions of 1835 and 1836. These societies then had an importance which they no longer possess, and were the more open to radical attacks because the Duke of Cumberland was grand master of the order. It was said, with some justice, that while the catholic association was nominally put down, the Orange lodges in Ireland were openly spreading, with the connivance at least of the Irish authorities. Their officials included noblemen of high position; Goulburn, when chief secretary, was an Orangeman, and special efforts had been made to enrol members in the army. Their principles were strictly loyal, but their demonstrations were naturally resented by the Roman catholics, and were not far removed from preparations for civil war. They hailed the accession of Peel's short ministry with tumultuous enthusiasm, but when the legality of their organisation and proceedings was challenged in the house of commons, during the session of 1835, their advocates felt compelled to support a committee of inquiry. The evidence taken before this committee, and the debate raised by Hume on the formation of Orange lodges in the army, damaged their cause in the eyes of the public, and seriously compromised the Duke of Cumberland. It was shown that his brother, the Duke of York, had resigned the grand mastership, and on being convinced of their illegality had forbidden Orange lodges in the army, whereas the Duke of Cumberland had accepted the grand mastership and directly promoted military lodges.

An address condemning them was carried; the king undertook to discourage them, and the commander-in-chief issued a stringent order for their suppression. The struggle, however, was continued by the pertinacity of the radicals in demanding a more extended inquiry, and the obstinacy of the Orangemen in defying both the house of commons and the horse guards. Early in the session of 1836 Finn and Hume renewed their assaults, and the latter moved for an address, to be framed in the most sweeping terms, and calling upon the crown to dismiss all persons in public employment, from the highest to the lowest, who should belong to Orange societies. Russell, who had been gradually rising in public estimation, showed the qualities of a true statesman on this occasion by a firm yet conciliatory speech which commanded assent on both sides. He exposed the extravagant and impracticable nature of Hume's demand, but condemned the Orange societies, and proposed an address urging the crown to use its influence for "the effectual discouragement of Orange lodges, and generally all political societies, excluding persons of different faith, using signs and symbols, and acting by associated branches". This resolution was adopted without opposition, the king heartily endorsed it, even the Duke of Cumberland acquiesced in it, and the Orange societies quietly dissolved themselves, for a while, throughout the United Kingdom.

If the session of 1836 had produced no other legislative fruits it could not be regarded as wasted. But several minor reforms of great social benefit also date from this year, and prove that, however checked by political blunders, the energy kindled by the reform act had not yet exhausted itself. After repeated efforts of legal philanthropists, a bill was now passed for the first time allowing prisoners on trial for felony to be defended by counsel. It was brought in by William Ewart, a private member, who sat for Liverpool, but was supported by the highest legal authorities in the house of lords, including Lyndhurst himself, who openly recanted his former opinions, and declared the old law to be a barbarous survival, inconsistent with the practice of other civilised nations. In the same house an interesting debate took place on the management of jails, which had been placed under a system of inspection by an act of the previous year. The reports of the inspectors disclosed gross abuses, not only in the smaller county jails but in Newgate itself. Lansdowne, in pledging the government to deal with the larger question, intimated that Russell, as home secretary, was considering the means of separating juvenile offenders from hardened criminals by establishing places of detention in the nature of what have since been known as reformatories.

DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS LOWERED.

A still more notable contribution to social improvement was made by Spring Rice, the chancellor of the exchequer, in consolidating the paper duties on a reduced scale, and lowering the stamp duty on newspapers from fourpence to one penny. These were the only controversial elements in a budget otherwise modest and acceptable. The battle over paper duties and "taxes upon knowledge" raised in the debates of 1836 was destined to rage many years longer, but the relief granted by Spring Rice gave a powerful impulse to journalism and periodical literature. It was opposed by all the familiar arguments against a cheap press, but that which most endangered its success was a rival proposal to apply any surplus revenue to cheapening soap. Soap, it was plausibly contended, was a necessary, reading newspapers or periodicals was only a luxury, and a luxury, too, far move capable of being abused than expenditure on soap. When the penny stamp on newspapers was at last preferred to reduced soap duties it was said that, "so far as financial arrangements were concerned, everything went to supply the essential elements of low political clubs, viz., cheap gin, cheap newspapers, filthy hands, and unwashed faces".135

The legislative record of 1836 was creditable to the government, nor was the action of the upper house in amending certain of their bills so purely mischievous as it has been described. For instance, a strange clause had found its way into the newspaper stamp bill, requiring all the proprietors of newspapers, however numerous, to be registered at the stamp office. This clause was struck out in the house of lords, at the instance of Lyndhurst, though Melbourne declared it to be a vital part of the measure, which, however, passed without it, and was the better for the loss of it. But the same cannot be said of Lyndhurst's conduct at the "open conference" between the two houses on a supplementary bill for remedying defects in the operation of the municipal corporations act. There no question of principle was involved, and the only motive for resisting every attempt to improve the new machinery already established by law was one unworthy of a statesman. At the close of the session, Lyndhurst delivered a masterly vindication of his own proceedings, but he was answered by Melbourne in a speech of great ability, and the position now occupied by the whigs appeared stronger than when they came into office in 1835.

In this year complaints of agricultural distress once more became urgent, and a committee was appointed by the house of commons, as in 1833, to inquire into its cause. Strange to say, the immediate occasion for the second inquiry was the occurrence of three magnificent harvests in succession, which brought down the average price of wheat from 58s. 8d. in 1832 to 53s. in 1833, 46s. 2d. in 1834, and 39s. 4d. in 1835, whence it rose to 48s. 6d. after the harvest of 1836. The average gazette price of 1835 was the lowest touched in the nineteenth century until 1884, and was simply due to excess of production. It was stated before the committee of 1836, by the comptroller of corn returns, that in the period between 1814 and 1834 the quantity of home-grown wheat only fell short of the consumption, on the average, by about 1,000,000 quarters a year, of which at least half was contributed by Ireland. The committee published its evidence without making a report, but this fact is highly significant as marking the later revolution in British agriculture. If the area then devoted to wheat crops almost sufficed to feed an estimated population of 14,500,000, when the yield per acre was relatively small, we may safely infer, in the absence of trustworthy statistics, that it must have been very much greater than at present.

AGITATION IN IRELAND.

At the opening of 1837 there was a marked stagnation in home politics, mainly due to an equipoise of parties and serious divisions in the ranks of the ministerialists as well as of the opposition. Not only was there a very strong conservative majority in the house of lords, with a sufficient though dwindling liberal majority in the house of commons, but neither majority was amenable to party discipline. The aggressive policy and vexatious tactics of Lyndhurst were distasteful to his nominal leader, the Duke of Wellington, and still more so to Peel, the only possible conservative premier, who eschewed the very name of tory. There was greater unity of counsels between Melbourne and Russell, but Russell, who had learned moderation, was dependent on the support of his extreme left, composed of violent radicals and Irish repealers. The king, though he did not carry his repugnance to his ministers so far as he once threatened, yet almost excluded them from social invitations, and made no secret of his preference for the opposite party. During the winter of 1836-37 O'Connell and his satellites were busy in organising monster meetings to demand the abolition of tithes and municipal reform. A national association was formed on this basis, and a certain number of protestants were induced to join it. The government dared not show vigour in checking it lest they should estrange their Irish allies, and Mulgrave, the lord-lieutenant, was openly accused of favouring sedition and discouraging loyalty by his exercise of patronage and the royal prerogative of pardon. At last, a very large and influential meeting was held in Dublin, at which the discontent of loyalists and patriots was expressed with truly Irish vehemence. Still, Ireland was less disturbed than in several previous years. About the same time, Peel, having been elected lord rector of Glasgow University, was entertained there at dinner by a company including many old reformers, and made one of his greatest speeches. Its spirit was that of his Tamworth manifesto, but he was far more outspoken in his declaration of unswerving adhesion to the protestant cause and to the independence of the upper house.

Such were the political conditions when parliament met on January 31. The king's speech, delivered by commission, though singularly colourless, indicated the importance of legislating on Irish tithes, Irish corporations, and Irish poor relief. The debate on the address was enlivened by a furious attack of Roebuck on the whigs, but was otherwise devoid of importance. On February 7, however, Russell introduced a new Irish corporations bill, invoking the authority of Fox for the doctrine that "Irish government should be regulated by Irish notions and Irish prejudices," and avowing a faith in the efficacy of unlimited concession which has not been justified by later experience. He further intimated the resolution of the government to stand or fall by this measure. No serious resistance was offered by the opposition to its first or second reading, but Peel took occasion to protest against a transparent inconsistency which seems to beset the advocacy of Irish claims. It is generally assumed, and with too much justice, that Ireland is so backward and helpless a country as to require exceptional treatment; in short, that it must be governed by Irish ideas, with little regard to English principles of sound policy or economy. Such was, in effect, Fox's contention, adopted by Russell; and yet, like future supporters of "Ireland for the Irish," he argued in the same breath that every liberal institution suitable to Englishmen, with their long training in self-government and instinctive reverence for law, must needs be extended to Irishmen, with their long training in anarchy and instinctive propensity to lawlessness. He prevailed, however, in the house of commons, where a hostile amendment was decisively rejected, and the bill, having passed rapidly through committee, was read a third time by a large though reduced majority.

Had it been possible to isolate the Irish municipal bill, and to compel the house of lords to deal with it singly, the peers might possibly have shrunk from another collision with the commons. But it had been coupled in the king's speech with two other projects of Irish legislation, a new tithe bill, and an Irish poor law. Both of these were, in fact, introduced, the former by Russell in February, the latter by Morpeth early in May. The course to be taken by the conservative party was the subject of anxious consultation between Peel and Wellington, and that ultimately adopted had the full sanction of both. They regarded the separate presentation of the municipal bill as a "manœuvre," and, while they overruled the wish of Lyndhurst to defeat it by an adverse vote on the second reading, they resolved to meet it by a counter-manœuvre. Accordingly Wellington induced the house of lords to postpone the committee on the municipal bill until they should have the other two bills before them, and Peel not only approved of his action but stated reasons for regarding them as essentially connected with each other. June 9 was originally fixed as the date for going into committee, but this stage was afterwards deferred until July 3, before which unforeseen events arrested all further progress.

CHURCH RATES.

In the meantime, the prestige of the government had been weakened by the failure of their scheme for abolishing Church rates. The dissenters, no longer content with religious liberty, were beginning to demand religious equality. In the forefront of their grievances was that of paying rates for the repair of parish churches which they did not attend, except as members of the annual "vestry," where they could object to a rate but might be out-voted by a majority of their fellow-parishioners. Althorp had proposed a scheme for the removal of this grievance in 1834, involving a parliamentary grant of £250,000. Setting aside this alternative, as well as that of a special contribution, voluntary or otherwise, from members of the Church, Spring Rice now proposed a solution of his own. It consisted in vesting the property of bishops and chapters in a commission which, by improved management, might raise the necessary sum for church repairs, without impairing the incomes of these ecclesiastical dignitaries. Before the government plan was discussed in the house of commons, Howley, archbishop of Canterbury, entered a strong protest against it in the house of lords on the ground that it would reduce the bishops and chapters from the position of landowners to that of "mere annuitants". Melbourne complained of his protest somewhat angrily as premature, and provoked a vehement reply from Blomfield, bishop of London, who, though a member of the ecclesiastical commission, denounced any such diversion of revenues as "a sacrilegious act of spoliation". In the elaborate debates on the resolutions moved by Spring Rice in the house of commons Peel took his stand partly on financial objections and partly on the injustice of taking away from the Church a fund belonging to it by immemorial usage, and in the main willingly contributed. Amendment after amendment was proposed by members of the opposition, and, though each was defeated, the government resolutions were ultimately carried by so narrow a majority in May that no further action was taken.

The conservative reaction, now in visible progress, was typified by the open secession of Burdett from the ranks of the reformers. This sincere but indiscreet radical, who had once enjoyed a popularity similar to that of Wilkes as a political martyr, became estranged from his party when it accepted O'Connell as an auxiliary, if not as an ally. Having failed in procuring the exclusion of the great Irish demagogue from Brooks's club, in 1835, he withdrew his own name. Soon afterwards he became irregular in his parliamentary attendance, and more than lukewarm in his allegiance. Early in 1837 he was, like Stanley and Graham, so much suspected of gravitating towards conservatism, that some of his Westminster constituents publicly called upon him to resign. He took up the challenge, and was re-elected against a radical opponent by a substantial majority. It was his last re-election for a borough which he had represented for thirty years. In the Church-rate debate he rose from the opposition side of the house, and lamenting his separation from his old associates, did not spare them either reproaches or hostile criticism.

Another desertion from the whig camp took place during this session, but in an opposite direction. Roebuck, originally one of the philosophical radicals, had become more and more violent in his attacks on his own leaders, whom he accused of having deceived the people. According to him, they were "aristocratic in principle, democratic in pretence," and all the resources of his incisive rhetoric were exhausted in exposing their incapacity, in a motion for a committee to consider the state of the nation. This motion, so advocated, met with no support, and gave Russell the opportunity of once more vindicating the wisdom of moderation in statesmanship. But there were many besides Roebuck who were eager to complete the work of the reform act by further organic changes, and the notice book of the house of commons in 1837 embodied several proposals of this kind. One was Grote's annual motion for the ballot, on which an interesting debate took place. Among the others were two motions of Sir William Molesworth for a reform of the upper house and for the abolition of a property qualification for the lower house, a motion of Tennyson, who had taken the additional name of D'Eyncourt, for the repeal of the septennial act, and another of Hume for household suffrage, overshadowing that of Duncombe for repealing the rate-paying clauses of the reform act itself. Nearly all of these contained the germs of future legislation, but they formed no part of the whig programme, nor could any whig government have carried them against so powerful an opposition, with an invincible reserve in the house of lords, during the last session of William IV. Only seventeen public acts were actually passed in this session.

THE DEATH OF WILLIAM IV.

There were, indeed, other reasons for declining to provoke a grave contest at this juncture. The king's health was known to be failing, his death under the law then in force would involve a general election, and no one could desire his successor, a girl of eighteen, to begin her reign in the midst of a political crisis. In May his illness assumed an alarming aspect, early in June the medical reports satisfied the country that his case was hopeless, on June 19 he received the last sacrament, and on the 20th he died at Windsor Castle. Something more than justice was done to his character by the leaders of both parties in parliament, but something less than justice has been done to it by later historians. He was inferior in strength of will to his father, in ability to his eldest brother, and in the higher virtues of a constitutional sovereign to his niece, who succeeded him. But he was not only a kindly and well-meaning man, a good husband to Queen Adelaide and a good father to his natural children, faithful to his old friends, and bountiful in his charities; he was also a loyal servant of the state, with a genuine sense of public duty, a natural love of justice, an independent judgment, and a noble indifference to personal or selfish objects. His lot was cast in almost revolutionary times, and he was called upon to reign at an age when few men are capable of shaking off old prejudices, yet he deserved well of his people in supporting the ministry of Grey through all the stages of the reform movement, in spite of his own declared sympathies, but in deference to his own conviction of paramount obligation under the laws of the land. He was quite as liberal in opinions as Peel, whose hearty interest in the poorer classes he fully shared, and far more liberal than the tory majority in the house of lords. Great he certainly was not, and he never affected the royal dignity which partially concealed the littleness of his predecessor. But in honesty and simplicity he was no unworthy son of George III., and the greater pliability of his nature contributed, at least, to make the seven years of his reign more fruitful in reforms than all the sixty years during which the old king occupied the throne of England.

CHAPTER XVIII.

FOREIGN RELATIONS UNDER WILLIAM IV

In 1830 the closing months of Wellington's administration were disturbed by the French and Belgian revolutions. The former of these was occasioned by the publication on July 25 of three ordinances, restricting the liberty of the press, dissolving the chambers, and amending the law of elections. The Parisian populace rose against this infringement of the constitution. In the course of a three days' street-fight (the 27th to the 29th) the troops were driven out of Paris. On the 30th a few members of the chambers, who had continued in session, invited Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans, to assume the office of lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and he was proclaimed on the following day. On August 7 the chamber of deputies offered him the crown, which he accepted, and on the 9th he was proclaimed "King of the French". On the 2nd Charles X. and the dauphin had renounced their rights in favour of the young Duke of Bordeaux, and on the 16th they sailed from Cherbourg to England. The change of dynasty was accompanied by a transference to the bourgeoisie of such political influence as had hitherto belonged to the clergy and noblesse. It remained to be seen whether it would also be accompanied by a change of foreign policy.

RECOGNITION OF LOUIS PHILIPPE.

The new French revolution occasioned no slight perturbation in the European courts. To say nothing of the fear of the precedent being followed in other lands, there was no longer any guarantee that France would respect the arrangements effected by the treaties of Vienna and Paris. Austria, Prussia, and Russia agreed not to recognise Louis Philippe, and entered into a convention for mutual aid in the event of French aggression. Aberdeen, the British foreign secretary, declared that the time had come for applying the treaty of Chaumont, which, as extended at Paris, pledged Great Britain and the three eastern powers to act together in case fresh revolution and usurpation in France should endanger the repose of other states. Wellington, however, saw that the cause of the elder Bourbon line was hopeless, and held now, as in 1815, that if France was not to menace the peace of Europe, her political position must be one with which she could be contented. He considered that the arguments which justified the admission of France to the councils of the powers at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818 applied with no less cogency to the government of Louis Philippe than to that of Louis XVIII. He therefore determined to acknowledge the new French government at an early date after the notification of its assumption of power. Nor were the other powers slow in taking the same course. It is true that Metternich suggested a closer bond between Austria, Prussia, and Russia, partly to restore amicable relations between Austria and Russia, partly to oppose any possible designs of France on Italy. Prussia, fearing war, resisted the proposal, and preferred to draw France into a guarantee of the status quo by recognising Louis Philippe. Russia was last of the great powers to acknowledge the new régime in France, and she only did so on condition that the powers should hold the French king responsible for the execution of the international engagements of the fallen dynasty. Louis Philippe was certainly not the man wilfully to embroil France in a war with her neighbours, and, had he been independent of French public opinion, there would have been no reason to fear French aggression.

The state which had most to fear from an aggressive France was the new kingdom of the Netherlands. Trusting for protection to the great powers rather than to its own forces, the Netherlands government had adopted a system which left it almost entirely without troops except during the military exercises of September and October. Wellington, who knew the pacific character of the new French government, advised the garrisoning of certain isolated points on the frontier, but thought no further preparation necessary. A few weeks were however to prove that the new French revolution had aroused a more implacable enemy, against whom the house of Orange would have needed all the troops it could summon to its aid. The union of Holland and Belgium had been resolved on by the powers at Paris in 1814, mainly for military reasons. Austria had been unwilling to resume the heavy burden of guarding the Belgian Netherlands and southern Germany against French aggression, and the powers had consequently resolved on strengthening those smaller states on whom the duty of resistance would fall. In these days, accustomed as we are to the distinction between the Teutonic and Latin races, it might seem reasonable that two countries in which the prevailing languages are low German should be subject to the same government. But it was not yet customary to turn the principles of comparative philology into arguments for the rearrangement of political boundaries. The French language and culture had moreover made considerable progress among the upper and middle classes of Belgium, while religious differences alienated the clergy from the house of Orange. In the states-general of the Netherlands the Dutch had half the votes, and, as the Orange party was strong in Antwerp and Ghent, commanded a majority. The fiscal system adopted by the government favoured the Dutch rather than the Belgian population. Dutchmen were generally preferred for state offices, and an attempt to control the education of the clergy was deeply resented as an attack on the Roman catholic religion. Belgium in consequence presented the curious spectacle of the liberal and clerical parties working on the same side, united against the Dutch government.