Political disability may have nothing, it cannot have much, to do directly with economic distresses. But no people in a state of bodily misery was ever yet persuaded by the most logical argument that the one is not connected indissolubly with the other. They are wretched. They cannot control their circumstances. Does it not follow that if they could control their own circumstances they would cease to be wretched? Economic discontent invariably produces political discontent, and that whether the sufferer has a voice in his government or not. It is always to the advantage of society that he should have such a voice. If he has a vote he may overturn a Government. But he will not overturn all government. He may expel a party. He will not subvert the State. Whether a trade depression will produce a
revolution or only a General Election depends on whether the bulk of the working people are enfranchised or not. In the one case the party system provides discontent with an alternative. In the other there is no hope of constitutional change. Probably only the excitement of the war with France saved England from violent internal disturbances at the end of the eighteenth century. The sense of national power is a good anodyne for personal misery, as governing classes have always been aware. But if there was no great disaster, there was grave unrest. All circumstances combined to make the preaching of new social principles popular and their application to the existing state of society fierce.
It was not merely a vague and general suffering which stimulated political discussion among the working classes at this time. They had definite grievances, which were obviously produced by their disfranchisement and could only be removed by their admission to political power. When the Industrial Revolution began, there was still on the Statute Book the Act of Elizabeth, which allowed the magistrates to fix wages in proportion to the prevailing local price of corn. It is doubtful whether this method of establishing a minimum wage based on the standard of bare subsistence could have been used successfully in the new conditions. Country gentlemen might have been able to make an accurate guess at a fair wage when industry was stable and competition not acute. They would certainly be incompetent in the age of machinery, of violent fluctuations of trade, and of intense competition between employers. The only people who can ever fix minimum wages are the employers and workmen themselves, acting through representatives. But the Act offered at least the opportunity of experiment, and any attempt to preserve a decent standard of life among the workpeople would have been better than the alternative of leaving the standard to the discretion of the employer, who would naturally be disposed to make it low. The agricultural labourers made several attempts to get their wages fixed in this way.[[83]] For
various reasons the Act was not enforced, and in 1795 the magistrates began to adopt the alternative of granting poor relief regulated by the price of corn. This was the fatal Speenhamland policy, which, by securing a subsistence to all labourers, irrespective of their work, degraded their character by making up wages to the subsistence level, whatever their amount, induced employers to reduce wages for pauper labourers and independent labourers alike, and, by enormously increasing the burden of rates, seriously injured the whole agricultural industry.
A similar experience befell many of the artisans, especially the cotton weavers. In 1795 Whitbread introduced a Bill, which proposed to apply the principles of the Elizabethan Act to the workers in towns. It was read a second time without opposition, but got no farther. Thirteen years later a second Bill was defeated by the Economists and laissez faire. It was honestly believed by theorists and by the few practical politicians who, like Pitt, were beginning to study political economy, that wages could only be fixed by bargaining between employers and employed, and depended upon the extent of the wages fund, the amount left after the employers had paid the rent of their land, the interest on their capital, and their own profits. This fund was always assumed to be fixed. Any attempt to increase it meant a reduction of profits, and a reduction of profits meant a less inducement to employers to establish industries, and consequently a reduction of employment. To some extent the argument was sound. During the rapid transition from hand labour to machinery, it might have been worth an employer's while to employ large numbers of men at low wages rather than a small number of men with expensive machinery. A slight increase of the average wage might have turned the balance in favour of the machinery. But the argument as a whole ignored two facts. The first was that the inducement offered to the employers was excessive, and that they might still have established as many factories, even if their profits had been somewhat less. The second was that an increase in wages
would have been followed by increased efficiency and an increased production of wealth, leaving larger sums to be given to employers and employed alike. These considerations did not weigh with the early economists. Wages were left to what was called free bargaining, in which the comparatively wealthy employer got the better of his comparatively poor workmen.
This refusal of redress by legislation was the more exasperating because it was accompanied by a prohibition of redress by combination. Parliament would neither help the workmen nor allow them to help themselves. Attempts to organize Trade Unions were discouraged or actively suppressed. In 1799 and 1800 two Combination Acts were passed, which made illegal all contracts between workmen for obtaining an advance in wages, for reducing hours of employment, for preventing employers from employing any particular workman, or for controlling any person in the management of his business. Breach of the Acts was made a criminal offence, punishable by fine and imprisonment.[[84]] Combinations of employers were nominally prohibited in precisely the same way, but in the political circumstances of the time the law was enforced only against the men. Trade Unions, in fact, continued to exist, and in many trades they succeeded in arranging wages with the masters. So long as the relations of employers and employed were friendly, the Acts were left alone. But when a strike began they were brought into operation, and the workpeople were forcibly reminded of the consequences of political impotence. Large numbers of them were thus reduced to the same state as the agricultural labourers, and lived on scanty wages, eked out by charity and the Poor Law.
The Industrial Revolution thus gradually transformed society, and created what were substantially two new classes of people, of which the first was by nature averse to Conservatism, and the second was by circumstances made restless and eager for change. The successive events of the American Rebellion and the French Revolution fell upon this changing society like flame upon
stubble. But a few years before the dispute with the Colonies came to a head, there took place a sort of preliminary demonstration of the principles which that controversy forced into prominence. Speculation had brought a small body of Englishmen to definite support of manhood suffrage, annual Parliaments, and the substitution of pledged delegates for representatives with freedom of action. These principles were simply the logical extreme of Liberalism. If every man is to be regarded as equal with every other, then every man must have a vote. If every man ought to have a vote, he must be allowed to exercise it as soon as he becomes entitled to it, and therefore Parliament must be dissolved every year in order to permit the new voters to express their wishes. If every man ought to have a vote, he must be allowed to vote not merely on general principles of policy, but on details, and his representative must be instructed to vote for or against without using his own discretion. This abstract reasoning had not affected any large proportion of the population. The Duke of Richmond was the most distinguished of these speculators; John Cartwright, a naval officer, who afterwards became a major in the militia, was the most voluminous of their writers; their most effective workers were men like the clerical Horne Tooke and Wyvil; and their largest following was in the county of Yorkshire. As a political force they counted for nothing at all. But the affair of Wilkes and the Middlesex election brought the whole subject of representative government vividly into the public eye, and the political philosophers found their doctrines for a short time popular.
Between 1768 and 1770 there was a distinct tendency in politics towards the reform of Parliament, the reduction of the number of rotten boroughs, and the restriction of the influence of the Crown. This was produced by bad harvests and industrial depression. The expulsion of John Wilkes from the House of Commons in 1770 brought this discontent to a head, and provoked not only dangerous riots in London, but also violent discussion of political principles. Wilkes was a disreputable person, though not more disreputable than some men who enjoyed