Liberty in the Nineteenth Century

by Frederic May Holland

Among other results were unsuccessful revolts in Rome and Warsaw, with successful ones in Brussels, Cassell, and Dresden. The subjection to Holland, which had been imposed by the Congress of Vienna, was hated by the Belgians, partly because it made education secular, and partly because it gave them only half the Legislature, and very few offices elsewhere, although they formed three-fifths of the population. Priests were active in stirring up the revolt which began at Brussels on August 25, 1830, after the performance of an opera telling how Masaniello had set Naples free. The Dutch were driven out; Belgium was made a separate constitutional monarchy by the vote of a convention of deputies; France and England helped her maintain political independence; but it was to the loss of intellectual liberty.

V. The success of rebellion with the pressure of hard times enabled the Whigs to carry England for parliamentary reform. Peel and Wellington hastened their fall by boasting that there could be no improvement of a Legislature which accepted members for places without any inhabitants, but not for Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, or some parts of London, and which actually enabled one Scotchman to elect himself as sole representative of fourteen thousand people, in a district where he was the only voter.

The people were so discontented with the whole system of Church and State, that thousands of sympathisers gathered around Cobbett in July, 1831, when he was tried for printing a statement that riots of farm hands were doing good in forcing the clergy to reduce their tithes. Lord Brougham, who had been made Chancellor, was among the witnesses to the generally pacific tendency of Cobbett's writings. The jury did not agree; and the Government gave up the case. There was but little more political persecution of British authors.

Reform triumphed that autumn in the House of Commons. The House of Lords would then have been conquered, if the bishops had acted like successors of the apostles; but twenty-one out of twenty-three voted for prolonging their own dominion. Their conduct made it unsafe for them to wear their peculiar costume in the streets. Bells tolled, and newspapers put on mourning. There were riots in all the cathedral towns. A duke's castle was burned, because he insisted that the votes of his tenants were his private property, and attempts to punish the incendiaries brought Bristol, one Sunday, into the hands of a mob which burned the bishop's palace, the custom-house, and many other buildings. It was agreed by a meeting of a hundred thousand people at Birmingham, that no more taxes should be paid until Parliament was reformed; and on very many houses, especially in London, there was the following notice: "To save the Collector unnecessary trouble, he is informed that No Taxes on this house will be paid, until the Reform Bill pass into a Law." It was at a meeting to encourage this course that Sydney Smith, who had done good service for Catholic emancipation, told how vainly Mrs. Partington tried to sweep back the Atlantic, during a great storm, and added: "Be quiet and steady. You will beat Mrs. Partington."

The episcopal Partingtons continued to be even more hostile than the lay members of the House of Lords; but all finally yielded to the threat that there would be new peers enough created to vote them down. A popular song made the Reform Bill boast that, "Twenty peers shall carry me, If twenty won't, then forty will; For I 'm his Majesty's bouncing Bill."

The throne was then filled by William IV., who reigned from 1830 to 1837, and who gave his consent, though sometimes unwillingly, to several of the greatest reforms ever passed in England. The bill which he signed on June 7, 1832, enabled 141 members of Parliament to be elected by populous districts hitherto unrepresented, instead of by little boroughs where the voters were so few as to be bought up easily, or else intimidated constantly; and the franchise was also much extended, though not outside of the middle class. Thus Great Britain ceased to be governed by a league of irresponsible nobles, bishops, and other lords of vast estates.

VI. They had kept the lower classes ignorant, in order to secure obedience; and their methods were not given up at once. Newspapers had already become the chief teachers of politics; and therefore they were under a triple tax. A duty on paper added one-fourth to the cost of publication. There was also a tax of three-and-sixpence on each advertisement; and more of this lucrative business was done by the publishers in New York City than by all those in Great Britain. A third exaction was that of fourpence for a stamp on every copy; and prices were thus prevented from falling below seven-pence, except in case of violation of the laws. These threatened fine or imprisonment to whoever should publish or sell any periodical costing less than sixpence, and containing "news, intelligence, occurrences, and remarks and observations thereon, tending to excite hatred and contempt of the government and constitution of this country as by law established, and also to vilify religion." This purpose was avowed explicitly, in so many words, by The Poor Man's Guardian, which announced that it was published "contrary to law" and would be sold for one penny. The circulation was twice that of The Times, and the language often violent. The publisher, Hetherington, was sent twice to prison for six months; and could not go about except disguised as a Quaker. His papers were packed in chests of tea, by an agent who was afterwards mayor of Manchester. Another publisher, who devoted himself to reports of criminal trials, used to send them out in coffins. Many unstamped periodicals were in circulation. Some dealers carried them about in their hats and pockets. Others hawked them in the streets, and declared, when sentenced to prison, that they should resume the business on the same spot as soon as they were released. Paid informers and spies helped the Whig Government carry on more than two hundred prosecutions in 1835, and more than five hundred previously. Subscription boxes for the relief of the martyrs could be seen everywhere. Remonstrances were signed and indignation meetings held in London and Manchester. "The Society for the Repeal of All Taxes on Knowledge" kept up a vigorous agitation, which was aided by Bulwer in Parliament. At last the publishers who bought stamps found they could not compete with men who bought none. This duty, and also that on advertisements, were reduced in 1836; and the result was so gratifying, even to publishers of the best periodicals, that all these taxes have been abolished.

Protestant bigotry had not prevented unsectarian public schools from being opened in Ireland in 1833; and that year is also memorable for the abolition of slavery in the West Indies, the extension of universal suffrage in Scotland, the beginning of free trade with India and China, the removal of disability for office from Hindoo subjects of Great Britain, the protection of children from being overworked in factories, and the suppression of supernumerary bishops and rectors in Ireland.

During the next three years, the local government of most English towns and cities, though not yet of London, was taken from corrupt oligarchies and given to all inhabitants who paid even a moderate rent; seamen ceased to be impressed; Irish Catholics and English dissenters were enabled to marry without apostasy; vexatious methods of collecting tithes were abolished in England; the poor-laws were made less favourable to the increase of pauperism; and the growth of prosperity and independence among the poor was assisted by the introduction of a system of unsectarian education, in 1839, though the bishops would have preferred that one-third of the people of England should remain illiterate. Penny postage was established in 1840, the last year when Great Britain was governed by the Whigs.

Parliament was so philanthropic and tolerant as to reject repeatedly a proposal to impose heavy fines for attending secular meetings, visiting eating-houses, travelling, fishing, or hiring horses on Sunday. Labour, too, was to be forbidden, but not that of "menial servants." This bill would have prevented the poor from enjoying their only holiday; but there was to be no interference with the pleasures of the rich; and the fact was pointed out by a young man, whose Pickwick Papers had just begun to appear in monthly parts. His illustrated pamphlet is entitled: Sunday as it Is; as Sabbath Bills would Make it; as it might be Made. It has been reprinted with his plays and poems. He tells how much was done for the health and happiness of London by those privileges which the Sabbatarians were trying to abolish; and he shows what gain there would be in knowledge and virtue from opening all the museums and galleries Sunday afternoons.