earlier period might have been justified by the universal war, by the rapid dispersion of Jacobin principles, by the dangerous state of Ireland. The suspension of 1817 had no such excuse. The paroxysm of the French Revolution had come to an end. Ireland was disaffected but subdued. There was no war. The Government had nothing to do but to attend to the condition of the people. But this was the last thing which it occurred to the Government to do. Even when the original impulse had ceased to operate, they continued to move in the line of reaction, and repeated mechanically the watchwords of their predecessors, who had at least the excuse that they were surprised and horrified. Sidmouth gravely described the Radicals as "the enemy."[[179]] It never seems to have occurred to any one in authority that Radicalism and riots were not cause and effect, and instead of grappling with the economic conditions which were equally the cause of both, Ministers discussed nothing but the means whereby the law was to be more easily enforced.[[180]] Undoubtedly there were occasional disturbances of a serious character. Between 1801 and 1811 the population increased by 21 per cent. The bulk of increase was among the North Country artisans, whose growing numbers at once made their economic distress and their political impotence more conspicuous than ever. There was a dangerous riot in Spa Fields, London, in November, 1816. Another occurred at Huddersfield in the following May, a third at Derby, and a fourth at Nottingham. Secret societies were formed in different parts of the country, and the tongue of Hunt and the pen of William Cobbett, rivalling the earlier popularity of
the Rights of Man, led the Government to suppose that the whole fabric of society was in danger. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, the Seditious Meetings Act was revived, and Secret Committees of both Houses were appointed to collect information.
It is clear from the reports of these Committees that there was nothing in the state of the country to justify these unusual measures. The great mass of the people showed no sympathy with the rioters. Education was spreading rapidly in Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Scotland, and the artisans were thinking for themselves. Violence was rare, but agitation was general. Large bodies of people marched to public meetings at Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and other provincial towns. Not a shadow of proof was produced by the Committees that these had any criminal intention, and one fact is sufficient to prove the contrary. At almost every meeting women and children were present.[[181]] The discipline and order of these crowds were indeed, in the obscure reasonings of men like Liverpool, Sidmouth, and Castlereagh, an additional proof of their seditious character. A turbulent common people never puzzled a Tory. It was the nature of the beast to be disorderly. But a common people which thought, and spoke, and organized, and met and dispersed in companies at the advice of its leaders, was a thing which he could not understand. What he could not understand, he feared. Not the least significant fact in this record of dull and unimaginative mismanagement is the connection between Castlereagh and Continental statesmen of the type of Metternich. These people had formed a Holy Alliance for the express purpose of suppressing attempts to establish Liberal Constitutions in Europe. Castlereagh, representing Great Britain, had refused to join the Alliance. But in his own country he was pursuing its very policy, as the European despots well knew. The letters in which the Courts of
Vienna and Berlin congratulated him on his suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act and the right of public meeting are among the most degrading which have ever passed through the British Foreign Office.[[182]]
The worst incident of this struggle between people and Government was the affair of Peterloo. This showed, as vividly as could have been desired, how completely the working class was at the mercy of a governing class, which controlled Parliament, the Army, and the Bench. A large but peaceful meeting, containing many women and children, was held in St. Peter's Square, Manchester, to hear speeches by Hunt and other popular leaders. The crowd had gathered from all the towns in the neighbourhood, and had marched, unarmed but in military order, to the place of assembly. The magistrates thought they were faced with rebellion. They sent police and yeomen to arrest Hunt, who stood on a waggon in the middle of the crowd. The yeomen got entangled among the people, and with the assistance of some hussars proceeded to convert the meeting into a riot. Men, women, and children were cut down or trampled by the horses; a few were killed and many injured. The action of the soldiers was endorsed by the magistrates and by the Government.[[183]] Whigs in both houses protested and demanded an inquiry, and Radical meetings everywhere denounced the affair as a massacre. The Government listened neither to expostulation nor to abuse. They refused to hold an inquiry. Persons injured had a legal remedy, and it was not the business of the executive to investigate matters which might come before the judiciary. It was true that a man or woman who was cut down in the midst of a panic-stricken mob might be unable to identify the cavalryman concerned. But it was not the business of the Government to step in where the law failed. Besides, the magistracy were honourable and patriotic men, and it would cast a slur upon them and weaken
their authority if their superiors examined their conduct. The language of Ministers was in keeping with their whole policy. The people were to be kept down, and it was not necessary, seeing that they were politically powerless, to be squeamish about ways and means. All the usual arguments were thus employed to protect the official wrongdoers against the public. One official will always defend the wickedness of another against private persons who happen to be unpopular, and a Secretary of State, who can rely on the support of a resentful party, will always ignore the wrongs of political opponents upon whose votes he is not forced to depend.[[184]] It is in agitations for the franchise that we learn best to appreciate it. In no other circumstances is the tendency to abuse power greater in the governor, nor the incapacity to obtain redress more conspicuous in the governed.
The direct consequence of this wanton abuse of power was to increase the disaffection of the common people and to stimulate the Whigs in Parliament. Much as they hated Radicals, the Whigs were too honestly indignant to tolerate executive outrage of this kind, and too anxious to retain their own leadership of constitutional opposition, to leave all the work of protest to the Radicals themselves.[[185]] The citizens of London, York, Bristol, Nottingham, and other large towns sent addresses to the Prince Regent, and a great meeting of Yorkshire voters was summoned by no less a person than Lord Fitzwilliam, the Lord-Lieutenant of the county. The Government was more frightened than ever, and contrived new methods of repression. Fitzwilliam was dismissed from his office, and Sir Francis Burdett was fined £2,000 and imprisoned for three months for publishing a violent criticism in a newspaper. Castlereagh then introduced the notorious Six Acts. The drilling which had preceded popular meetings was made illegal. The trial of offenders was to be more expeditious. The magistrates were authorized to issue warrants to search for
arms. Transportation was made the punishment for a second conviction for seditious libel. Public meetings were restricted. Pamphlets were subjected to the same stamp duties as newspapers. A touch of comedy was lent to these proceedings by a grant of £1,000,000 for the purposes of building new churches. This had two objects. The first was to check the spread of Dissent. "It was their duty," said Lord Liverpool, "to take care that those who received the benefits of education should not be obliged to resort to Dissenting places of worship by finding the doors of the church shut against them." But the second object was to prevent political agitation. "The recent increase of population," said the same statesman, "had taken place chiefly in the manufacturing towns; and it was impossible that great masses of human beings should be brought together in the manner in which they were situated in these towns without being exposed to vicious habits, and to corrupting influences dangerous to the public security as well as to private morality."[[186]] The gravity with which such remedial measures as this were proposed shows how utterly the Tories had failed to understand their business. It is always the habit of a Tory to suppose that popular discontent is a matter of preaching. It is always preached up, and it can always be preached down. The people ask for bread, and the Tories offer them a dogma. The Government of 1819 was no wiser than its predecessors, and it applied itself with great diligence to convert the people by words from a disposition which arose directly out of a combination of low wages and high prices. They were saved by the forces of nature. The Regent ascended the throne as George IV in 1820, and his scandalous prosecution of his wife for a short time gave the people a new cry against the Government. But with the defeat of the Bill of Pains and Penalties the popular feeling subsided. Ministers had imagined themselves to be faced with a conspiracy between the Queen and the populace like that which had placed Catherine II on the throne of Russia. But the death of the Queen removed the
leader, and good harvests, by bringing down the cost of living, reduced the sufferings of the people. The Tories remained in office for another ten years.
An attempt at economic reform was made at this time of crisis which deserves some notice. On the 16th December, 1819, Sir William de Crespigny moved that a Select Committee of the Commons be appointed to inquire into Robert Owen's scheme of co-operative production in New Lanark. Owen's experiment eventually failed. But as an experiment it was immensely valuable, and afforded abundant proof of the value of education, of the reduction of child labour, of a short working day, and of good conditions of housing and factory administration. Parliament could not have failed to profit by the study of such an excellent model. During the debate on Crespigny's motion, many professions of sympathy with distressed workmen were made, and not a few compliments were paid to the owner of the New Lanark mills. But Owen had made two dangerous blunders. As a Socialist he had spoken against private property, and his religious opinions were unorthodox. His scheme was therefore "subversive of the religion and government of the country," and Tories like Castlereagh, Pietists like Wilberforce, and individualist economists like Ricardo joined in denouncing it. The argument of Wilberforce shows with what conscientious frivolity these governors studied the condition of their subjects. If Owen's plan, he said, "proceeded upon a system of morals founded upon no religion whatever, but rather upon considerations of moral rectitude of conduct only, he was of opinion that it behoved the House to be cautious how it gave its sanction to an institution which did not acknowledge as one of its essential features that doctrine on whose truth and piety it was not for him now to enlarge."[[187]] Upon such barriers the motion was shipwrecked. It was lost by 141 votes to 16, and the working classes were left to the tender mercies of competition.