A history of England

by Charles Oman

England, therefore, had become the manufacturer of the goods of the whole world, not merely owing to her monopoly of trade, but owing to the improved machinery, and methods of transit which she adopted long before the rest of Europe. She obtained such a start in the use of the means of industrial production, that no state has yet been able to catch her up in the race of commerce. Hence England was at the end of the war able to bear a weight of taxation and debt which must have ruined her in its earlier years. Nine hundred millions of National Debt, though a tremendous burden, turned out not to be, as many had feared, a ruinously heavy infliction. The forced paper currency, whose introduction in 1797 had appeared to mark a step on the downward road to national bankruptcy, was successfully taken off a few years after the war ended. The great army and navy which had been draining our exchequer were disbanded, when they had finished their duty of protecting us against the threatened invasions of the Revolution and the Empire, and had afterwards played the decisive part in exhausting Napoleon's resources, by that long struggle in the Spanish peninsula, which encouraged the rest of Europe to throw off the French yoke.

Poverty and discontent of the labouring classes.

But there were other aspects in which the results of the war had been less happy for England. If the increase of wealth had been enormous, the method of that wealth's distribution was not satisfactory. The new masses of population, which had been called into existence by the development of manufactures, were poor with a poverty which had been unknown in the days when England was still mainly an agricultural country. The introduction of improved machinery, great as was its ultimate benefit, caused during the years of transition much misery to the classes whose industry was superseded by it. While English manufactures were driving out foreign competition all over the world, English mobs were often wrecking the machinery which made these manufactures possible, in their rage at the ruin of the old handicrafts. Actual famine seemed several times during the war to be staring the lower classes in the face, for the largely increased population could no longer be supported on the food supply of England. Nevertheless, in their zeal to encourage English agriculture, the Tory governments of the early years of the century refused to allow the free introduction of the foreign corn which was really necessary for the increased consumption of the population. And while wheat was dear, because limited in quantity, owing to Protection, the agricultural classes were not being enriched in the manner which might have been expected. The enhanced profit passed entirely to the farmer and the landlord, not to the labouring population; and at the same moment at which the artisan was breaking machinery, the agricultural labourer was burning his employer's ricks. This unfortunate state of things, however, was due rather to misguided legislation than to any actual danger in the economic conditions of England, and could therefore be relieved by methods which cannot come into play when a real and not a fictitious crisis in the internal state of a country is at hand.

Poor Law administration.

The main cause of the degradation of the agricultural labourer in the early years of the nineteenth century was a series of unwise Poor-Laws, which had been passed at intervals since 1795. There had been much local distress in the early years of the revolutionary war, and to alleviate it many parishes had commenced a system of indiscriminate doles of money to poor residents, without much inquiry whether the recipients were deserving or idle, able-bodied or impotent. The old test of compelling paupers to enter the workhouse was entirely forgotten, and money was given to every one who chose to ask for it. Moreover, the rule was laid down that the larger the family, the more was it to draw from the rates in its weekly subsidy. This unwise scheme at once led to the evil of reckless marriages and enormous families, for the labourers saw that the more their children increased, the larger would be their dole from the parish.

The farmers and the Poor Law.

But not the labourer only was to draw profit from the new Poor Laws. The farmers began to see that if they kept down the wages of their men, the parish could be trusted to make up the deficiency. It thus became easy for them to pay starvation-wages to the labourers, and then force the local rates to support them with a subsidy just sufficient to keep each family out of the workhouse. Thus the agricultural classes began to live, not on their natural wages, but on a pittance from their employer, supplemented by a weekly-grant from the parish. This suited the farmers well enough, but was ruinous to every one else, for well-nigh every labourer was forced to ask for local aid, and thereby to become a pauper. At the same time the rapid growth of population caused the burden on the parish to advance by leaps and bounds. At last the poor-rate became an intolerable drain on the resources of the less wealthy districts. A well-known case is quoted in Buckinghamshire, where the annual dole to the paupers grew till it actually exceeded the annual rating of the parish. And as long as every one who chose was able to demand outdoor relief, it was impossible to see where the trouble would end. In the years after the great war had ended actual bankruptcy seemed to be threatening scores of parishes, yet corn was high in price, and the profits of farming, if fairly distributed, ought to have sufficed to keep both landowner, farmer, and labourer in comfort.

In considering the political history of England in the years after 1815, this abject distress of the working class, both in town and in countryside, must be continually borne in mind. It was the discontent of the ignorant multitude, feeling its poverty but not understanding its cause, and ready to seek any scheme of redress, wise or unwise, that was at the bottom of the political trouble of the time. The discontent was really social, the result of unwise laws, and wrong conceptions of political economy. But it often took shape in political forms, and the government of the day thought that it heralded the approach of a catastrophe like the French Revolution.

Reactionary policy of the Tories.

Unfortunately for the prosperity of England, its rulers were at this moment committed to a stern and reactionary policy, and would listen to no proposals for change or reform of any kind. The generation of Tories who had grown up during the great French war, had forgotten the old liberal doctrines of their great leader Pitt. Of all the ministers, George Canning was almost the only one who remembered his old master's teaching, and was ready to think of introducing reforms, now that peace had once more been obtained. The majority of his colleagues, especially the premier, the narrow-minded Earl of Liverpool, and the harsh and unbending Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh, set their faces against any change in the constitution, however small.