The shortsightedness and illiberality of the Eldon and Sidmouth type of statesmanship was constantly displayed in this way. Let there be a Reform petition offered to Parliament, and they would refuse to receive it, if, by any means, some technical objection could be raised. Given a civic state dinner, and the ministers would absent themselves if they disagreed with the Lord Mayor’s politics. Let a Sunday paper advocate the correction of financial abuses, and the suspicion is at once raised that the grievance really lies in not having a share of the spoil. Genuine men like Whitbread and Romilly, Roebuck and Cobden, have not always escaped similar imputation, from which their known characters should yet have shielded them.
The ministers of the Regent might, however, have done better justice to themselves, and to their opportunities, but for their contemptible master. The difficulty of conciliating that man was immensely enhanced by his disreputable domestic circumstances, and the daily need of avoiding exposure, by keeping watch[1] upon the Examiners and the Registers of the day. Animadversions upon the conduct of the Irreclaimable are pretty generally wasted; and when the Irreclaimable is in sovereign power, discussion on his personal demerits is apt to be mixed up, somehow or other, with such meaner questions as the welfare of his subjects, and the stability of the Throne. At this stage, “I told you so” becomes sedition; and the next thought is of sabres, and bayonets, and dungeons.
So the Liverpool ministry had their hands full, between this selfish prince and starving people. Throughout the year 1816, there was a determined outcry for Parliamentary Reform and reduction of public expenditure. And being demanded as rights, the end of granting these things was looked upon as something too awful to contemplate.
One leading difficulty with the Reformers was as to the mode: Reformers of that day must be divided into classes and sub-classes, when their history comes to be written. There were avowed Republicans at one end of the scale, and advocates of a purified Constitution at the other. Their common opponents, however, not only refused to make distinction, but took hold of minor differences and threw them in the Reformers’ teeth; thus discrediting the entire principle.
For example: Mr. Watson, surgeon, is found to have a number of prepared pike-heads in his house. He is ready to employ force, if it comes to the point. Mr. William Cobbett, editor, takes the liberty of telling the nation that it will never be itself again without a reform. He abhors violence of any sort or kind. Yet both of these persons, along with all those of intermediate shades of opinion, are decried as subverters of the Constitution.
This trick had been kept up for twenty-five years past. And now that “the most powerful and effective public writer that ever appeared,” the “closest political reasoner of his time” (as described by cotemporaries), was the leading writer and reasoner upon Reform in Parliament: the best thing to do was to impute unworthy and wicked motives, and to follow that up by an endeavour to curtail his liberty.
Accordingly, the principal London newspapers were full of Cobbett, from the middle of November, 1816, until the opening of Parliament; the Courier,[2] the Times, and the Morning Post, making it their special business to misrepresent him.[3] And, as the popular ferment had reached a high point, nothing could be easier. Henry Hunt was holding forth to eager multitudes, whose conduct (partly by incitement of Government spies) led to measures being taken for preserving the peace. When the Regent went to open Parliament, a stone was thrown, which broke the window of his carriage. Then the Government tried a raid upon the Hampden Clubs, by hauling up their leading members before a Secret Committee. But, beyond a few scatter-brained individuals who really hoped there was going to be a revolution, there was nothing to fear. As the Times (Feb. 5th) said, “Of anything like plot or conspiracy, in the general and national sense of those words, no symptoms have yet appeared.”
Yet, because people were clamouring for Reform and remission of public burdens, the Home Secretary and his friends were frightened out of their lives. And, because Mr. Cobbett was the leader and guider, upon these topics, he was charged with exciting the labourers and journeymen to “burnings, and plunderings, and devastations, and shedding of blood.” The law officers of the Crown were forthwith instructed to examine the “blasphemous and seditious” pamphlets of the day; but, as Lord Sidmouth was “sorry to say,” they were “unable to find out anything which they could prosecute with any chance of success!”