happiness were at stake, and their campaign on behalf of the children was only part of a general campaign for shorter hours and better conditions of labour. The Tory Evangelicals acted as Tory theorists. Robert Southey, Richard Oastler, Michael Sadler, whom Macaulay beat at Leeds in 1832, and Lord Shaftesbury, who succeeded Oastler as the Parliamentary leader of the movement, were Tories of a pronounced type. But they were philanthropists, they had no personal interest as manufacturers, and their Toryism left them logically free to employ the power of the State on behalf of their philanthropy. Their general readiness to dispose of the affairs of others was in this case wholly beneficial. Shaftesbury hated Catholic Emancipation, Free Trade, life peerages, the higher criticism, the Oxford movement, everything which during his lifetime tended to free the individual from the control of selfish interests and monopolies. But as he refused to allow a Catholic or a Tractarian religious freedom, or the common people political freedom, so he refused to allow a cotton-spinner economic freedom. To his narrow mind, no less than to his large heart, the legal protection of working people against economic tyranny is due. It must not be supposed that he found more favour with the ordinary Tory than with the ordinary Whig or Benthamite. It was only where philosophic Toryism was combined with the philanthropic instincts of Evangelical Christianity that there was any marked superiority in one party over another. Shaftesbury had to fight every step of his way, and he encountered indifference, if not opposition, wherever he turned.[[218]]
Apart from this lamentable neglect of economic reforms the Whigs of the Reform Bill made valuable contributions to the work of Liberalism. Something was done to abolish the cumbrous devices which made legal procedure unintelligible and costly, and the method of conveying land was simplified and
cheapened.[[219]] A Bill to establish local courts for the recovery of small debts was introduced by Brougham, but abandoned. The reform of Parliament was followed by the reform of municipal corporations. The old close corporations were of the same type as the old close House of Commons. All were founded on monopoly, most were corrupt, and hardly any were responsible to the ratepayers whose affairs they administered. By an Act of 1835 the old system was destroyed, and the control of local government in towns was vested in bodies elected by the ratepayers.[[220]] The representative principle was thus asserted in local as in national affairs. The domination of the landed interest was further reduced. The old Game Laws had made the killing of game the exclusive privilege of landowners. No one else could kill game legally, and the law, sparing offenders of higher rank, was ruthlessly enforced by landowning magistrates against the poor. Between 1827 and 1830 more than 8,000 persons had been sentenced, some of them to transportation for life, for offences against this law. In 1831, before the passing of the Reform Bill, the Whigs altered the savage and partial Game Laws by permitting any one to kill game who obtained a licence from the Inland Revenue authorities.[[221]] After the election of the first reformed Parliament, a second attack on land was made. In 1807 the land of traders only had been made liable to the payment of his simple contract debts. Romilly had in vain attempted to
make this provision impartial. But in 1833 the liability was extended to all classes, and the country gentleman was no longer allowed to evade the obligations which were imposed by law upon his social rivals.[[222]]
In the same year slavery was abolished in the West Indies. The trade had been stopped in 1807. But it was still legal for the planters to own slaves, though they could no longer import them. In 1821 Wilberforce had solemnly confided the leadership of his cause to Thomas Fowell Buxton. Mackintosh, Brougham, and Lushington had supported him steadily in the Commons, and they had always had the help of Canning. But the planters had succeeded, partly by threats of secession, partly by promises of amendment, in maintaining their abominable system. The decline of the West Indian trade since the peace had reduced their influence, and Parliament, free from unrest at home, could turn its attention more easily to the Colonies. The planters were presented with twenty millions of public money. The slaves were to be treated as apprentices for seven years and afterwards were to be free labourers. Thus the last trace of acknowledged slavery was removed from the British Empire. It is melancholy to reflect that the men who expended so much honest sympathy and indignation over slavery in the West Indies should have so carefully refrained from using it to abolish the slavery which oppressed their fellow-countrymen. Slavery is not always a matter of buying and selling, of chaining and whipping; and in the sweated labour and prostitution which were rife in England there were things no less horrible than the worst barbarities of the colonial planters.
A Liberal reform no less important than the Factory Act was the establishment of a State department of education. In 1833 Radicals like Roebuck and Grote and Whigs like Brougham persuaded Parliament to grant £20,000 to supplement the private donations which were being administered by the different societies for education. Whitbread had introduced a Bill to establish schools in all poor parishes in 1807. Brougham had obtained
returns showing the existing provision for popular education in 1818. But nothing was done by the State to remedy the deficiencies of private enterprise until 1833, and even what was done then was so unscientific that, the private societies being all Protestant, Roman Catholic children got no benefit from it at all. After further efforts by Brougham and other enthusiasts, the Government in 1839 proposed to appoint a committee of the Privy Council as a central education authority. A training school for teachers was to be established under its supervision, and the State grant was to be increased to £30,000.
These proposals were slight enough in themselves. But they produced one of those ugly conflicts which are inevitable in English politics so long as one religious sect holds a privileged position. Some of the clergy of the Established Church claimed the control of all popular education, religious and secular. The more responsible claimed to control the religious education only. The Archbishop of Canterbury used language which was none the less insolent because it fell from the lips of an amiable and benevolent man. "The moral and religious instruction of the great mass of the people of this country was a subject peculiarly belonging to the clergy of the Established Church.... In the distribution of the public money for the encouragement of religion, their first object ought to be to maintain and extend the religion of the State."[[223]] "The State," said the Bishop of London, "has established a great National Church, a great instrument of education, which ought to conduct the whole process as far as religion is concerned. The Church is the only recognized medium of communicating religious knowledge to the people at large; and where there is an Established Church the Legislature ought to embrace every fit opportunity of maintaining and extending the just influence of the clergy, due regard being had to complete toleration."[[224]] In other words, these ecclesiastics regarded it as perfectly fair that money should be taken from Dissenters to pay for the teaching of doctrines of which they disapproved, while none was expended on the teaching of doctrines of which they
did approve. They were answered firmly by Ministers, more bitterly and more effectively by Brougham. "In what does the tolerance consist?" asked Brougham. "Is it in permitting the Dissenting children to be instructed in those schools in which the Church doctrines alone are taught?"[[225]] The meaning of religious liberty was extended. "Men who value religious liberty do not, in these days, dread anything that can be called persecution, but they do dread privileges and oppressive exclusions, preferences to one sect over another;... they are resolved never to pay to man any tax to support education, if the fruit of the tax does not go to maintain education to which all shall have an equal access."[[226]] The issue was thus again joined between those who would dispose of the consciences of others and those who would allow every man an equal right with every other for the propagation of his own opinions.
On this point the Whigs were successful. Their proposals for distribution between the sects were in the direct line of their removal of ancient political disabilities, and they stood their ground. One concession was made. The inspectors of schools were to present their reports to the Bishop of the diocese as well as to the Committee of Council. But after several close divisions in the Commons and several defeats in the Lords the scheme was established. It must not be supposed that the majority of the Whigs supported these novel proposals in a very Liberal spirit. Brougham was passionately Liberal. The Radicals made State education part of their practical philosophy of equality. To men of this type education was a means of increasing the individual's power to develop and express himself. But to very many of the supporters of Government the measure was rather a measure of police than of emancipation. Ignorance meant discontent and danger to society and property. In answering the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Lansdowne said: "In the 80,000 uninstructed children now growing out of infancy your Lordships may see the rising Chartists of the next age."[[227]] Eight years later Macaulay