The Political History of England - Vol XI / From Addington's Administration to the close of William IV.'s Reign (1801-1837)

by George C. Brodrick; John Knight Fotheringham

THE REFORM.

The general election which took place in the summer of 1831 was perhaps the most momentous on record. The news of the sudden dissolution, carrying with it the assurance of the king's hearty assent to reform, stirred popular enthusiasm to an intensity never equalled before or since. From John o' Groat's to the Land's End a cry was raised of The bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill. This cry signified more than appears on the surface, and was not wholly one-sided in its application. No doubt it was a passionate and defiant warning against any manipulation or dilution of the bill in a reactionary sense, but it was also a distinct protest against attempts by the extreme radicals to amend it in an opposite direction. Now, as ever, the impulse was given by the middle classes, and they were in no mood to imperil their own cause by revolutionary claims. They could not always succeed, however, in checking the fury of the populace, which had been taught to clamour for reform as the precursor of a good time coming for the suffering and toiling masses of mankind. The streets of London were illuminated, and the windows of those who omitted to illuminate or were otherwise obnoxious were tumultuously demolished by the mob, which did not even spare Apsley House, the town residence of the Duke of Wellington. But, except in Scotland, no formidable riots occurred for the present, and some good resulted from the new experience of popular opinion gained by candidates even from unreformed constituencies hitherto obedient to oligarchical influence, but animated for the moment by a certain spirit of independence.

Having sanctioned the dissolution, the king addressed an elaborate letter to Grey, in which he did not disguise his own misgivings about the perilous experiment of reform. Chiefly dreading a collision between the two houses, he never ceased to press on his ministers the expediency of making all possible sacrifices consistent with the spirit of the bill in order to conciliate opposition in the house of peers. Grey's constant reply was that no concessions would propitiate men bent on driving the government from office, and that no measure less efficacious than that already introduced would satisfy the just expectations of the people. Both of these arguments were perfectly sound, and the constitutional triumph ultimately achieved was largely due to the admirable tenacity of purpose which refused to remodel the original reform bill in any essential respect to please either the borough-mongers or the radicals. The elections were conducted on the whole in good order. Seventy-six out of eighty-two English county members (including the four Yorkshire members), and the four members for the city of London, were pledged to vote for the bill. Several notable anti-reformers were among the many county representatives who failed to obtain re-election; even some of the doomed boroughs did not venture to return anti-reformers; and the government found itself supported by an immense nominal majority. The new bill, introduced on June 24 by Lord John Russell, who had recently been admitted in company with Stanley to the cabinet, differed little from the old one. The number of boroughs to be totally disfranchised was slightly greater, that of boroughs to be partially disfranchised slightly less, but the net effect of the disfranchising and enfranchising schedules was the same, and the £10 rental suffrage was retained. The measure was allowed to pass its first reading after one night's discussion. The debates on the second reading lasted three nights, but the bill passed this stage on July 8 by a majority of 136 in a house of 598 members.

SECOND REFORM BILL.

The victory, however, though great, was far indeed from proving decisive. By adopting obstructive tactics, of a kind to be perfected in a later age, the opposition succeeded in prolonging the discussion in committee over forty nights, until September 7. Though Peel separated himself from the old tories, and steadily declined to cabal with O'Connell's faction against the government, such an unprofitable waste of time could not have taken place without his tacit sanction. Only one important alteration was made in the bill. This was the famous "Chandos clause," proposed by Lord Chandos, son of the Duke of Buckingham, whereby the county suffrage was extended to all tenants-at-will of £50 rental and upwards. A very large proportion of tenant farmers thus became county voters, and for the most part followed the politics of their landlords. It may be doubted whether Grey seriously lamented Chandos's intervention; at all events it went far to verify his own prediction that aristocratic dominion would not be undermined by reform.[104] Meanwhile, the country was naturally impatient of the vexatious delay, and a somewhat menacing conference took place between the political unions of Birmingham, Manchester, and Glasgow. Happily public attention was diverted to some extent by the coronation, which took place on the 8th. The bill was carried more rapidly through its later stages, and was finally passed in the house of commons on the 21st, though by a reduced majority of 345 to 236.

On the following day the bill reached the house of lords and was set down for its second reading on October 3. Thenceforth all the hopes and fears of its friends and enemies were concentrated on the proceedings in that house, whose ascendency in the state was at stake. The question: "What will the lords do?" was asked all over the country with the deepest anxiety. The debate lasted five nights, and is admitted to have been among the finest reported in our parliamentary history. All the leading peers took part in it, and several of them were roused by the occasion to unwonted eloquence, but the palm was generally awarded to the speeches of Grey, Harrowby, Brougham, and Lyndhurst. The first of these occupied a position which gave increased weight to his counsels, since he was the veteran advocate of reform and yet known to be a most loyal member of the nobility which now stood on its trial. In his opening speech he appealed earnestly to the bench of bishops, as disinterested parties and as ministers of peace, not to set themselves against the almost unanimous will of the people. Brougham's great oration on the last night of the debate contained a masterly review of the whole question, and, in spite of its theatrical conclusion, when he sank upon his knees, extorted the admiration of his bitterest critics as a consummate exhibition of his marvellous powers.

But very few of the peers were open to persuasion; the votes of anti-reformers were mainly guided by a shortsighted conception of their own interests, and Eldon did not shrink from contending that nomination boroughs were in the nature of property rather than of trusts. A memorable division ended in the rejection of the second reform bill on the 8th by 199 votes to 158. Twenty-one bishops voted against it. The king lost no time in reminding Grey of his own warning against submitting the bill, without serious modifications, to the judgment of the house of lords. He also intimated beforehand that he could not consent to any such creation of peers as would convert the minority into a majority. Grey at once admitted that he could not ask for so high-handed an exercise of the royal prerogative, and undertook to remain at his post, on condition of being allowed to introduce a third reform bill as comprehensive as its predecessor. Thereupon the king abandoned his intention of proroguing parliament by commission, and came down in person to do so on the 20th when he delivered a speech clearly indicating legislation on reform as the work of the next session.

REFORM BILL RIOTS.

During the interval between the 8th and the 20th it became evident that the reform movement, quickened by the action of the upper house, would rise to a dangerous height. A vote of confidence in the government, brought forward by Lord Ebrington, eldest son of Earl Fortescue, was carried by a majority of 131, and speeches were made in support of it which encouraged, in the form of prediction, every kind of popular agitation short of open violence. In the course of this debate Macaulay, the future historian of the English revolution, delivered one of those highly wrought orations which adorn the political literature of reform. The excitement in London was great, but kept for the most part within reasonable bounds, partly by the firm and sensible attitude of Melbourne as home secretary. The mob, however, vented its rage in window breaking and personal assaults on some prominent anti-reformers, one of whom, Lord Londonderry, was knocked off his horse by a volley of stones. In the provinces more serious disturbances broke out. At Derby the rioters actually stormed the city jail, releasing the prisoners, and were only repelled in their attack on the county jail by the fire of a military force. At Nottingham they wreaked their vengeance on the Duke of Newcastle by burning down Nottingham Castle, which belonged to him, and were proceeding to further outrages when they were overawed by a regiment of hussars. A great open-air meeting of the political union was held at Birmingham, while the bill was still before the house of lords, at which a refusal to pay taxes was openly recommended in the last resort, and votes of thanks were passed to Althorp and Russell. The former, in acknowledging it, wisely condemned such lawless proceedings; the latter unwisely made use of a phrase which gravely displeased the king: "It is impossible that the whisper of faction should prevail against the voice of a nation". Both were called to account in the house of commons for holding correspondence with an illegal association, but disclaimed any recognition of the Birmingham union as a body, and fully admitted the responsibility of the government for the maintenance of order.

This assurance was about to be tested by the most atrocious outbreak which disgraced the cause of reform. On Saturday, the 29th, Wetherell, as recorder of Bristol, entered the city to open the commission on the following Monday. Of all the anti-reformers, he was perhaps the most vehement and unpopular, but his visit to Bristol was in discharge of an official duty, and had been sanctioned expressly by the government. Nevertheless, the cavalcade which escorted him was assailed by a furious rabble on its way to the guildhall, and from the guildhall to the mansion house, where he was to dine. For a while, they were kept back or driven back by a large force of constables, but, on some of these being withdrawn, their ferocity increased, and threatened a general assault on the mansion house. In vain did the mayor address them and read the riot act; they overpowered the constables, and carried the mansion house by storm, the mayor and the magistrates escaping by the back premises, while the recorder prudently left the city. At last the military were called upon to act, and two troops of cavalry were ordered out. But the military as well as the civil authorities showed a strange weakness and vacillation in presence of an emergency only to be compared with the Lord George Gordon riots of a by-gone generation. After making one charge and dispersing the populace for the moment, the cavalry were sent back to their barracks, and when one troop was recalled on the following (Sunday) morning, the rioters were all but masters of the city. Many of them, having plundered the cellars of the mansion house, were infuriated by drink; they broke into the Bridewell, the new city jail, and the county jail, set free the prisoners, and fired the buildings. They next proceeded to burn down the mansion house, the bishop's palace, the custom-house, and the excise-office. The cathedral is said to have been saved by the resolute stand of a few volunteers hastily rallied by one of the officials. In the midst of all this havoc, the cavalry were almost passive, Colonel Brereton, the commanding officer, waiting for orders from the magistrates, and actually withdrawing a part of his small force when it was most needed, because it had incurred the special hatred of the criminals.

On the morning of Monday, the guardians of law and order seemed to have recovered their courage; at all events, the cavalry, no longer forbidden to charge, and headed by Major Mackworth, soon cleared the streets, fresh troops poured in, and the police made a number of arrests. The reign of anarchy was at an end, having lasted three days. When a return of casualties was made up, it showed that only twelve were known to have lost their lives, besides ninety-four disabled, most of whom were the victims of excessive drunkenness or of the flames kindled by themselves. But, though the riot was quelled, it was some proof of its deliberate promotion, and of the aims which its ringleaders had in view, that parties of them issuing out from Bristol attempted to propagate sedition in Somersetshire. A special commission sent down to Bristol condemned to death several of the worst malefactors; four were hanged and eighty-eight sentenced either to transportation or to lighter punishments; and Colonel Brereton destroyed himself rather than face the verdict of a court-martial.

On the same Monday, the 31st, Burdett took the chair at a meeting in Lincoln's Inn Fields, called for the purpose of forming a "National Political Union" in London. Soon afterwards, however, he retired from the organisation, on the nominal ground that half of the seats on its council were allotted to the working classes, but more probably because he was beginning to be alarmed by the violence of his associates. His fears were justified by a manifesto summoning a mass meeting of the working-classes to assemble at White Conduit House on November 7, for the purpose of ratifying a new and revolutionary bill of rights. This time the government was on its guard, and Melbourne plainly informed a working-class deputation that such a meeting would certainly be seditious, and perhaps treasonable, in law. The plan was therefore abandoned, and soon afterwards a royal proclamation was issued, declaring organised political associations, assuming powers independent of the civil magistrates, to be "unconstitutional and illegal". The political unions proposed to consider themselves outside the scope of the proclamation, which had little visible effect, though it was not without its value as proving that the government was a champion of order as well as of liberty.

NEGOTIATIONS WITH WAVERERS.

During the short recess of less than six weeks political discontent, constantly growing, was aggravated by industrial distress and gloomy forebodings of a mysterious pestilence, already known as cholera. A voluminous correspondence was carried on between the king and Grey on the means of silencing the political unions and smoothing the passage of a new reform bill. It was not in the king's nature to conceal his own conservative leanings, especially on the imaginary danger of increasing the metropolitan constituencies, and Grey complained more than once of these sentiments being confided, or at least becoming known, to opponents of the government. At the same time attempts were being made not only by the king himself, but also by peers of moderate views to arrange a compromise which might save the honour of the government, and yet mitigate the hostility of the tory majority in the upper house. In these negotiations behind the scenes, Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Carr, Bishop of Worcester, took part, as representing the episcopal bench, while Lords Harrowby and Wharncliffe, in temporary concert with Chandos, professed to speak for the "waverers" among peers. As little of importance resulted from their well-meant efforts, and as nearly all the supposed "waverers," including the bishops, drifted into open opposition, it is the less necessary to dwell at length on a very tedious chapter in the history of parliamentary reform. Suffice it to say that when parliament reassembled on December 6, 1831, the prospects of the forthcoming bill were no brighter than in October, except so far as the danger of rejecting it had become more apparent.

The final reform bill introduced by Lord John Russell on the 12th was identical in its principle and its essential features with the former ones. The chief alteration was the maintenance of the house of commons at its full strength of 658 members. This enabled its framers not only to reduce the number of wholly disfranchised boroughs (schedule A) from sixty to fifty-six, and that of semi-disfranchised boroughs (schedule B) from forty-six to thirty, but to assign a larger number of members to the prosperous towns enfranchised. The bill was at once read a first time and passed its second reading after two nights' debate on the 16th by a majority of 324 to 162, or exactly two to one. But, after a short adjournment for the Christmas holidays, a debate of twenty-two nights took place in committee, and the opposition made skilful use of the many vulnerable points in the new scheme. Every variation from the original bill, even by way of concession, was subjected to minute criticism, and especially the fact that the schedules were now framed, not on a scale of population only, but on a mixed basis, partly resting on population, partly on the number of inhabited houses, and partly on the local contribution to assessed taxes.

It was easy to pick such a compound scale to pieces, to uphold the claims of one venal borough against another equally venal, and even to reproach the government with inconsistency in relying on the census of 1831, instead of on that of 1821—a course which the opposition had specially urged upon them. But it was not so easy to combat the irresistible arguments in favour of the bill on its general merits, to ignore the reasonable concessions on points of detail which it embodied, or to explain away the patent fact that no measure less stringent would satisfy the people. There was therefore an air of unreality about this debate, spirited as it was, nor is it easy to understand what practical object enlightened men like Peel could have sought in prolonging it. He well knew, and admitted in private correspondence, that reform was inevitable; he must have known that a sham reform would be a stimulus to revolutionary agitation; yet he strove to mutilate the bill so that it might pass its second reading in the house of lords, and there undergo such further mutilation as would destroy its efficacy as a settlement of the question. For the present he yielded. No attempt was made to obstruct the bill on its third reading, when the division showed 355 votes to 239, and it passed the commons on March 23 without any division.

THE THIRD REFORM BILL.

Such a result would have been conclusive in any parliament during the second half of the nineteenth century. A house of commons elected by the old constituencies, and under the old franchises, had declared in favour of a well-considered reform bill. The same constituencies voting under the same franchises had returned an increased majority in support of the same, or very nearly the same measure; this measure, with slight variations, had been adopted by an immense preponderance of votes in the new house of commons: yet its fate in the house of lords was very doubtful. Ever since the autumn of 1831, the expedient of swamping the house of lords had been seriously contemplated. It was supremely distasteful to the king, and Grey himself, in common with a majority of the cabinet, was strongly averse from it. Then came the intervention of Harrowby and Wharncliffe, the failure of which strengthened the hands of the more determined reformers in the cabinet, and induced the king to give way. Having already created a few peers on the coronation, he consented to a limited addition in the last resort, but with the reservation that eldest sons of existing peers should be called up in the first instance, and upon the assurance that, reform once carried, all further encroachments of the democracy should be resisted by the government. He even authorised Grey to inform Harrowby that he had given the prime minister this power, in the hope that it would never be needed, and that at least the second reading of the bill would be carried in the house of lords without it. His objection to a permanent augmentation of the peerage remained unshaken, and Grey promised to propose no augmentation at all before the second reading.

This compact, if it can be so called, was fulfilled in the letter, for the bill was read a first time without a division, and it passed the second reading on April 14 by a majority of 184 to 175. To all appearance a notable process of conversion had been wrought among the peers, seventeen of whom actually changed sides, while ten opponents of the former bill absented themselves, and twelve new adherents were gained. However encouraging these figures might be, the ministers were under no illusion. They had the best reason for expecting the worst from the struggle in committee, and they were conscious of gradually losing the king's confidence. The very demonstrations of popular enthusiasm for reform which impressed others with a sense of its necessity impressed him with a sense of its danger; the political unions and the Bristol riots alarmed him extremely; and the foreign policy of the government elicited from him so outspoken a protest that Grey tendered his resignation. The difficulty was overcome for the moment, but recurred in a more serious form when parliament reassembled on May 7. Lyndhurst at once proposed in committee to postpone the consideration of schedule A; in other words, to shelve the most vital provisions of the bill until the rest should have been dissected in a hostile spirit. This proposal is supposed to have been concerted with Harrowby and Wharncliffe, if not to have received the sanction of the Duke of Wellington. It was adopted by 151 votes to 116, and the cabinet, on May 8, courageously determined to make a decisive stand. They firmly advised the king to confer peerages on "such a number of persons as might ensure the success of the bill". The principle thus expressed had, as has been seen, been reluctantly approved by the king himself, but he recoiled from the application of it when he learned that it would involve at least fifty new creations. After a day's thought, he closed with the only alternative, and accepted the resignation of his ministry. He then sent for Lyndhurst, who of course at once communicated with the duke.

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.

ANGLESEY LORD LIEUTENANT OF IRELAND.

Had O'Connell been a true patriot, or even an honest politician, he would have devoted his vast powers and influence to practical schemes for the good of Ireland, and specially to a solution of the agrarian question. Unhappily, smarting under a not unfounded sense of injustice, when he was disabled from taking his seat for Clare, he threw his whole energy into a new campaign for the repeal of the union, which occupied the rest of his life. So far from acknowledging any gratitude to the whigs, through whose support emancipation had been carried, he exhausted all the resources of his scurrilous rhetoric upon them, lavishing the epithets "base, brutal, and bloody," with something like Homeric iteration. In December, 1830, Anglesey had returned to succeed the Duke of Northumberland, and Stanley occupied the post of chief secretary, in place of Hardinge. The ministers were privately advised to buy O'Connell at any price, and it was intimated that he would not object to become a law officer of the crown, or at least would not refuse a judicial appointment. It may well be doubted whether the offer of such a bargain to such a man could have been justified by success; it is more than probable that it would have failed, and it is quite certain that failure would have brought infinite discredit upon the government. At all events the attempt was not made, and other catholic aspirants to legal promotion were passed over with less excuse.

Lord Anglesey proved a resolute viceroy, and proclaimed the various associations, meetings, and processions organised by O'Connell, with little regard for his own popularity. O'Connell's policy, carried out with the cunning of a skilful lawyer, was to obey the law in the letter, but to break it almost defiantly in the spirit. At last, however, he went a step too far by advising the people who had come for a prohibited meeting to reassemble and hold it elsewhere. He was arrested on January 18, 1831, and pleaded "Not guilty," but on February 17, when his trial came on, he allowed judgment to go by default against him on those counts of the indictment which charged him with a statutable offence, provided that other counts, which charged him with a conspiracy at common law, should be withdrawn. The attorney-general assented, and the case was adjourned until the first day in Easter term. Before that day arrived, however, the reform bill had been introduced, and O'Connell had made a powerful speech in support of it. In the desperate struggle which ensued, the ministers shrunk from estranging so formidable an ally, a further adjournment of the case was allowed, a sudden dissolution of parliament took place, the act under which O'Connell was to be sentenced expired with the parliament, and no further action was taken.

"TITHE-WAR" IN IRELAND.

During the year 1831, the agitation for repeal which O'Connell had set on foot, as soon as the emancipation act had been passed, was for a while thrust into the shade by the fiercer agitation against tithes. This agitation was connected, in theory, with the demand for the abolition or reduction of the Irish Church establishment, but was, in fact, entirely independent of that or any other constitutional movement. It may seem inexplicable to political students of a later age that Irish questions of secondary importance, and eminently capable of equitable treatment, should have convulsed the whole island and disturbed the whole course of imperial politics, during the reign of William IV. The rebellion against tithes or "tithe-war," as it was called, had not the semblance of justification in law or reason. Every tenant who took part in it had inherited or acquired his farm, subject to payment of tithes, and might have been charged a higher rent if he could have obtained it tithe-free. The tithe was the property of the parson as much as the land was the property of the landlord, and the wilful refusal of it was from a legal point of view sheer robbery. On the other hand, the mode of collection was extremely vexatious, perhaps involving the seizure of a pig, a bag of meal, or a sack of potatoes; and a starving cottier, paying fees to his own priest, was easily persuaded by demagogues that it was an arbitrary tribute extorted by clerical tyrants of an alien faith.

Thus it came to pass that the history of the Irish "tithe-war" exhibits the Irish peasantry in their very worst moods, and it is stained with atrocities never surpassed in later records of Irish agrarian conspiracy. It is among the strange and sad anomalies of national character that a people so kindly in their domestic relations, so little prone to ordinary crime, and so amenable to better influences, should have shown, in all ages, down to the very latest, a capacity for dastardly inhumanity, under vindictive and gregarious impulses, only to be matched by Spanish and Italian brigands among the races of modern Europe. Yet so it is, and no "coercion" (so-called) ultimately enforced by legal authority was comparable in severity with the coercion which bloodthirsty miscreants ruthlessly applied to honest and peaceable neighbours, only guilty of paying their lawful debts. It is not too much to say that anarchy prevailed over a great part of Ireland, especially of Leinster, during the years 1831 and 1832. The collection of tithes became almost impossible. The tithe-proctors were tortured or murdered; the few willing tithe-payers were cruelly maltreated or intimidated; the police, unless mustered in large bodies, were held at bay; cattle were driven, or, if seized and offered for sale, could find no purchasers; and the protestant clergy, who had acted on the whole with great forbearance, were reduced to extremities of privations. Five of the police were shot dead on one occasion; on another, twelve who were escorting a tithe-proctor were massacred in cold blood. A large number of rioters were killed in encounters with the police, which sometimes assumed the form of pitched battles and closely resembled civil war. Special commissions were sent down into certain districts, and a few executions took place, but in most cases Irish juries proved as regardless of their oaths as they ever have on trials of prisoners for popular crimes. O'Connell, and even Sheil, tacitly countenanced these lawless proceedings, and openly palliated them in the house of commons.

The whig government, engaged in a life-and-death contest with the English borough-mongers, hesitated to crush the Irish insurgents by military force, or to initiate a sweeping reform of the Irish Church. Early in 1832, however, committees of both houses reported in favour of giving the clergy temporary relief out of public funds, and of ultimately commuting tithes into a charge upon the land. A preliminary bill for the former purpose was promptly carried by Stanley, and made the government responsible for recovering the arrears. The committee, pursuing their inquiries, produced fuller reports, and again recommended a complete extinction of tithes in Ireland. But the method proposed and embodied in three bills introduced by Stanley in the same year, was too complicated to serve as a permanent settlement, and was denounced as illusory by the Irish members. The first bill was, in fact, a compulsory extension of acts already passed in 1822 and 1823, the former of which had permitted the tithe-owner to lease the tithe to the landlord, while the latter permitted the tithe-owner and tithe-payers of each parish to arrange a composition. Unfortunately, the act of 1823 had provided that the payment in commutation of tithe should be distributed over grass-lands hitherto tithe-free in Ireland as well as over land hitherto liable to tithe. The act was in consequence unpopular with a section of farmers, while at the same time the bishops resented the commutation, as likely to diminish the value of beneficies. But in spite of this opposition the act of 1823 had been widely adopted. Stanley's bill to render such commutations compulsory passed, but his other two bills, providing a new ecclesiastical machinery for buying up tithes, were abandoned at the end of the session. Of course the substitution of the government for the clergyman as creditor in respect of arrears had no soothing effect on the debtors. The reign of terror continued unabated, and O'Connell contented himself with pointing out that without repeal there could be no peace in Ireland. We may so far anticipate the legislation of 1833 as to notice the inevitable failure of the experiment which converted the government into a tithe-proctor. It was then replaced by a new plan, under which the government abandoned all processes under the existing law, advanced £1,000,000 to clear off all arrears of tithe, and sought reimbursement by a land tax payable for a period of five years.

EDUCATION IN IRELAND.

It reflects credit on the unreformed house of commons that in its very last session, harassed by the irreconcilable attitude of the catholic population in Ireland, it should have found time and patience not only for the pressing question of Irish tithes, but for the consideration of a resolution introductory to an Irish poor law, of a bill (which became law) for checking the abuses of Irish party processions, and of a grant for a board to superintend the mixed education of Irish catholic and protestant children. The discussion of Sadler's motion in favour of an Irish poor law was somewhat academic, and produced a division among the Irish members, O'Connell, with gross inconsistency, declaring himself vehemently opposed to any such measure. The ministers professed sympathy with its principle, but would not pledge themselves to deal immediately with so difficult and complicated a subject, perhaps foreseeing the necessity of radical change in the English poor law system. The processions bill was vigorously resisted on behalf of the Orangemen, as specially aimed at their annual demonstrations on July 12, but it was so manifestly wise to remove every wanton aggravation of party spirit in Ireland, that it was passed just before the prorogation.

The experiment of mixed education in Ireland had already been made with partial success, first by individuals, and afterwards by an association known as the Kildare Place Society. On the appointment of Dr. Whately to the archbishopric of Dublin, it received a fresh impulse, and Stanley, as chief secretary, definitely adopted the principle, recommended by two commissions and two committees, of "a combined moral and literary and separate religious instruction". A board of national education was established in Dublin, composed of eminent Roman catholics as well as protestants, to superintend all state-aided schools in which selections from the Bible, approved by the board, were to be read on two days in the week. Though provision was made for unrestricted biblical teaching, out of school hours, on the other four days, protestant bigotry was roused against the very idea of compromise. A shrewd observer remarked, "While the whole system is crumbling to dust under their feet, while the Church is prostrate, property of all kind threatened, and robbery, murder, starvation, and agitation rioting over the land, these wise legislators are debating whether the brats at school shall read the whole Bible or only parts of it".[109] The opponents of the national board failed to defeat the scheme in parliament, and it was justly mentioned with satisfaction by the king in his prorogation speech of August 16. But its benefits, though lasting, were seriously curtailed by sectarian jealousy. Most of the protestant clergy frowned upon the national schools, as the Roman catholic priesthood had frowned upon the schools of the Kildare Place Society, and a noble opportunity of mitigating religious strife in Ireland was to a great extent wasted. Thus ended the eventful session of 1832.