A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV

by Justin McCarthy; Justin H. McCarthy

[Sidenote: 1836—Dissolution of the Orange lodges]

One of the principal instruments of the Orange organization was a certain Colonel Fairman, who held an important position in what may be called its military hierarchy, and was undoubtedly at one time intrusted by the Duke of Cumberland with the fullest authority to act as the emissary of the Grand Master to make known his will and convey his orders. Whether the Duke of Cumberland ever really entertained the project ascribed to him of seizing the crown for himself and shutting out the Princess Victoria can, in all probability, never be known as a certainty; but there can be no question that his actions often justified such a belief, and that many of his most devoted Orange followers looked up to him as the resolute hero of such a project to save England from Whigs and Liberals, and Roman Catholics, and mob orators, and petticoat government, and all other such enemies to the good old state of things as established by the wisdom of our ancestors and the Act of Settlement. The whole question was raised in the House of Commons during the session of 1835 by Joseph Hume, the consistent and persevering advocate of sound economic doctrine, of political freedom, of peace, retrenchment, and reform. Hume obtained the appointment of a committee to inquire into the whole subject, and the committee had no great difficulty in finding out that Colonel Fairman had been carrying on, with or without the consent or authority of his Grand Master the Duke of Cumberland, what must be called a treasonable conspiracy through the Orange lodges and even through Orangemen who were actually serving in the King's Army. In 1836 Hume brought up the question once again and obtained so much support from Lord John Russell, then acting as Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, that {279} an address was unanimously voted to the King calling on him to proclaim the condemnation of the Orange conspiracy. The Duke of Cumberland disclaimed all treasonable purposes, and declared that many of the steps taken by Fairman and other Orange emissaries had been taken without his orders and even without his knowledge. Fairman disappeared from the scene when the crisis seemed to become too serious for his personal convenience, and one of the Orange emissaries, against whom a prosecution was to be instituted, was removed by a sudden death from the reach of the criminal law. The Duke of Cumberland announced that he had already, of his own inspiration, ordered the dissolution of the Orange lodges. The King, in his reply to the address in the House of Commons, declared himself entirely in accordance with the resolutions of the House, and thus the whole conspiracy came to an end, and the Government thought it well to allow the subject to pass into obscurity without further action.

This was the end of the Orange organization, as it was known in the days of William the Fourth. At a later date Orangeism was again revived, but only in the form which it still maintains, by which it is now known to us all as a political association, openly avowing legitimate opinions and purposes, and as fairly entitled to existence as any political club or other such organization recognized in the movements of modern life. The treasonable conspiracy, like many another evil, died when it was compelled to endure the light of day.

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CHAPTER LXXIX.

THE CLOSE OF A REIGN AND THE OPENING OF AN ERA.

[Sidenote: 1748-1832—Mackintosh, Malthus, and Mill]

Many lives that now belong to history had faded into history during the reign of William the Fourth. William Wilberforce, the great champion of every noble and philanthropic movement known to his times, had passed from the living world which he had done so much to improve. Wilberforce lived to see the triumph of that movement against slavery and the slave-trade which he, more than any other of his time, had inspired and promoted. He had been compelled by ill-health to give up his position in Parliament for several years before his death, but he had never withdrawn his watchful sympathy and such co-operation as it was in his power to give from any cause to which he had consecrated his life. His name will always be illustrious in English history as that of one who loved his fellow-men and who gave expression to that love in every act and effort of his public and private career. Jeremy Bentham, one of the greatest of modern thinkers, the founder of more than one school of political and economic doctrine, a man whose influence on human thought is never likely to pass altogether away, died in June, 1832. Bentham's principle, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, has often been narrowly and unfairly judged, but it may be doubted whether a sounder theory of political and social government has ever come out of the mere wisdom of man. The phrase utilitarianism, which came into use as the summary of his teaching, has often been misunderstood and misapplied, and perhaps some excuse was found for the misinterpretation of his meaning in his decision that his dead body should be given up for the purpose of anatomy and not buried in earth to be of service {281} only to the worms. Many of us have seen the skeleton of Jeremy Bentham clothed in his habit as he lived in a room of that University College which he helped to make a success.

Sir James Mackintosh brought his noble career to a close during this reign. Mackintosh had been historian, philosopher, and politician, and, like Macaulay, he had rendered great services in India as well as in England. Like Macaulay also, he had been listened to with the deepest interest whenever he addressed the House of Commons, although his gifts and his temperament seemed suited rather for the study than for Parliamentary life. Another man whose death belongs to the reign of William the Fourth, whose teachings were at one time the occasion for incessant controversy—and indeed caused most controversy where they were least understood—was Thomas Robert Malthus. In many classes of readers the name of Malthus came to be associated for a while with the idea of some strange and cruel doctrine which taught that wars and pestilences and other calamities that have the effect of sweeping redundant populations off the world are really good things in themselves, to be encouraged by beneficent legislation. It is hardly necessary to say now that nothing could be more narrow and even more perverse than this interpretation of Malthus's philosophy. Another of the teaching minds which passed from the contemplation of earthly subjects during the reign was that of James Mill, the historian of British India and the promulgator of great doctrines in political economy. James Mill, like Edmund Burke, had studied India thoroughly, and come to understand it as few men had done who had lived there for years and years, although, like Burke, he had never been within sight of the shores of Hindustan. Mill divined India as Talleyrand said that Alexander Hamilton, the American statesman and companion of George Washington, had divined Europe. Charles Greville, writing in November, 1830, speaks of meeting at breakfast "young Mill, a political economist," and adds that "young Mill is the son of Mill who wrote the 'History of British India,' {282} and said to be cleverer than his father." The elder Mill would no doubt have gladly endorsed the saying, and it may be assumed that history has given its judgment in the same way, but history will certainly maintain the fame of the father as well as the fame of the son. A man of a very different order from any of these we have just mentioned, but who has made a reputation of his own in literature as well as in politics, closed his career within the same reign. We have already spoken in this volume of William Cobbett's command of simple, strong English, which made his prose style hardly inferior to that of Swift himself. Indeed, one of the most distinguished authors of the present day, a man who has made a name in political life as well as in literature, has been heard to contend with earnestness that, as a writer of pure, strong, idiomatic English, Cobbett might be accounted the rival of Swift. The great engineer, Telford, and the really gifted and genuine, although eccentric and opinionated, physician, Dr. Abernethy, were among the celebrities whose deaths rather than their works belong to the time when William the Fourth was King.

[Sidenote: 1754-1834—Coleridge and Hannah More]