British Cabinets from 1770 to 1830--Summary of the Efforts of the
Reformers, from the War of 1793 to the Formation of the Grey
Ministry in 1830.
Before specially considering any one prominent Reform in English
history, a general summary of events may be profitable. It will be _but_
a summary, preliminary to a more general discussion, and will be mainly
confined to the period between the French Revolution and the formation
of the Grey Ministry in 1830.
From 1770 to 1830, the Government of Great Britain was, with the
exception of a few months, swayed by the enemies of Reform. In the
former year, Lord North, a name odious to Americans, who had previously
led the Tories in the House of Commons, assumed the premiership. He
retained his place, his principles, and his power, twelve years. In
1782, a _quasi_ liberal ministry supplanted him, headed by Rockingham,
Fox, and Burke, which was dissolved in three months, by the death of the
former, when Fox, Burke, and their friends, refused to unite under
Shelburne, the succeeding Tory Premier, who sought new supporters,
giving young Pitt the seals of the Exchequer and the lead in the
Commons. Stung by mortification at their exclusion from office, Fox and
Burke united with North in forming the famous "Coalition," and in April,
1783, prostrated Shelburne. Thereupon, a new ministry was made up of
those disaffected Whig and Tory chiefs, Fox, Burke, the Duke of Portland
and Lord North being its leading spirits. This Coalition, which for
years damaged the fame of Fox, struggled for its unnatural existence
till the following December, when, failing to carry Mr. Fox's India
bill, it expired, dishonored and unregretted. Pitt, "the pilot that
weathered the storm," then took the helm of State, which he held
eighteen tempestuous years, and was succeeded, not supplanted, in 1801,
by the weak but amiable Mr. Addington. Lord Hawkesbury (the subsequent
Lord Liverpool) took the pen of Foreign Secretary; Eldon (Sir John
Scott) clutched the great seal of Chancery; and Perceval put on the gown
of Solicitor General. This ministry leaned on Pitt for support, and was
his puppet, having taken office to do what he was too proud to
perform--make peace with France. The war demon smoothed his wrinkled
front only for a short period, when his visage suddenly became grim, and
the ship of State was, in 1803, again plunged in the waves of a European
contest. The helm soon slipped from the feeble hands of Addington, and
"the pilot" was recalled to his old station, where he remained till
1806, when his lofty spirit sinking under the shock of the overthrow at
Austerlitz of the Continental Coalition against Napoleon, of which he
was the animating soul, he hid his mortified heart in a premature grave.
A liberal ministry, clustering around Lord Grenville and Mr. Fox, took
up the reins of power which had dropped from the relaxed hands of Pitt,
abolished the slave trade, attempted to ameliorate the condition of the
Catholics, encountered the bigotry of George III, failed, resigned, and
were succeeded by an ultra Tory administration, of which Perceval,
Liverpool, Eldon, Castlereagh, and Canning were the chief members. For
six years they followed in the footsteps of Pitt, fighting Napoleon
abroad and Reformers at home, propping up the thrones of continental
despots, and fortifying the prerogatives of the English crown, till, in
1812, Perceval, who was then Premier, fell before the pistol of a madman
in the lobby of the House of Commons. Simultaneously with putting the
crazy assassin to death, almost without the forms of a trial,
Liverpool, as Premier, and Castlereagh, as Foreign Secretary, came into
power, and, pursuing the policy of Pitt and Perceval, the same ministry,
with occasional modifications, retained its place until the death of
Liverpool, in 1827. Castlereagh, its life and soul, and the evil genius
of England, and the truckling tool of the Holy Alliance, perished by his
own hand in 1823, and was succeeded in the Foreign Department by
Canning, who infused a more liberal spirit into the Cabinet, especially
in the attitude of England towards the Alliance.
Such had been the advance of free principles amongst the body of the
people during the fifteen years of Liverpool's administration, that
George IV had great difficulty in forming a new ministry. Wellington and
Peel refused to become members if the friends of Catholic Emancipation
were admitted, and Canning refused to join if they were excluded. After
a long train of negotiations, the anger of the King exploded at the
stubbornness of the Iron Duke, and he gave Canning his royal hand to
kiss, with a _carte blanche_ for the enrolment of a ministry. He formed
a mixed Government, whose average quality was mollified Toryism. He
brought into the compound Robinson and Huskisson, his recent associates
in the Liverpool cabinet, whose liberal course on trade and finance,
during the last four years, foreshadowed the repeal of the corn laws and
the dawning of better days. Wellington and Peel spurned the
amalgamation, whilst Eldon, with the shedding of many tears and the
tearing of much hair, surrendered the great seal, which his strong hand
had grasped for twenty-six years, to the great detriment of suitors with
short purses, and the great profit of barristers with long wind. The
country expected much from the new administration. But whether well or
ill founded, its anticipations were extinguished in a few brief months
by the death of the brilliant genius who had inspired its hopes. When
the grave closed over Canning, Lord Gooderich (Mr. Robinson) organized
a piebald ministry, of such incongruous materials that it broke in
pieces almost in the very act of being set up. Wellington was then
summoned to the King's closet, and in January, 1828, became Premier,
giving the lead of the Commons to his favorite, Peel, he himself
undertaking to control the House of Peers, much according to the tactics
of the field of Waterloo. The Iron Duke, who was always adroit at a
retreat, and the supple commoner, both of whom had refused to join
Canning because he favored Catholic amelioration, now reluctantly
granted, because they dared not withhold, the repeal of the Corporation
and Test Acts, and the emancipation of the Catholics! The
Wellington-Peel Government struggled bravely till late in 1830, when the
tide of Parliamentary Reform, rising to a resistless hight, overwhelmed
them, and the first liberal ministry (excepting a few distracted months)
which England had witnessed for sixty-five years, was organized by Earl
Grey. Fortunate man! He now saw the seeds of that reform, which, forty
years before, in the fervor of youth, he sowed in Parliament, and had
steadily cultivated under contumely and reproach from that day till
this, about to yield an abundance which his matured and ennobled hand
was to garner in, whilst the people "shouted the Harvest Home."
Begging the reader's pardon for introducing this dry detail of names and
dates, it may be further noted, that in glancing over the dreary wastes
which stretch between the elevation of North and the downfall of
Wellington, but few verdant spots rise to relieve the reformer's eye.
From the commencement of the French war, in 1793, till the repeal of the
Corporation and Test Acts, in 1828, not a solitary important reform was
carried, except the abolition of the slave trade, and the British empire
exhibited a broad sea of rank Conservatism. But, though nothing was
_perfected_ in these thirty-five years, no period of British history
teems with events more gratifying to a hopeful and progressive humanity.
Foul and fetid as were the waters of the Dead Sea, they were constantly
lashed by a healthful and purifying agitation. These fruitless years
were the seed-time of a harvest to be reaped in better days; and all the
reforms which from 1828 till now have blessed and are blessing England
were never forgotten, but continually pressed upon the attention of
Parliament and the country, by a resolute band of men illustrious for
their talents and their services. In proof of this, a few rude
landmarks, before entering upon a more minute survey of this period, may
be worth the erecting.
The trials, at the Old Bailey, in 1794, of Tooke, Hardy, and their
associates, prosecuted for high treason for their words and acts as
members of a Society for Parliamentary Reform, were the first outbreak
of the wide-spread alarm at the prevalence of the political opinions
introduced into the kingdom by the French Revolution. The Government was
foiled; the prisoners were acquitted; Erskine, their advocate, won
unfading laurels; and the doctrine of "constructive treason" was forever
exploded in England.
The foreign policy of Pitt and his successors, which sent England on a
twenty-five years' crusade to fight the battles of Absolutism on the
continent, encountered the fiery logic of Fox, the dazzling declamation
of Sheridan, the analytical reasoning of Tierney, the dignified rebukes
of Grey, the sturdy sense of Whitbread, the scholastic arguments of
Horner, and the bold assaults of Burdett. And at a later period, when
Castlereagh humbled the power of England at the footstool of the Holy
Alliance, Brougham made the land echo with appeals to the Anglo-Saxon
love of liberty, till Canning, in 1823, protested against the acts of
the Allied Sovereigns, and in the following year declared in the House
of Commons, while the old chamber rung with plaudits, that ministers had
refused to become a party to a new Congress of the Allies.
In 1806-7, the slave trade fell under the united attacks of Wilberforce,
Fox, and Pitt; Clarkson, Sharpe, and other worthies, supplying the
ammunition for the assault. And the West India slave, long forgotten,
was remembered when Canning, in 1823, introduced resolutions that
immediate measures ought to be adopted by the planters to secure such a
gradual improvement in the slave's condition as might render safe his
ultimate admission to participation in the civil rights and privileges
of other classes of His Majesty's subjects; and addressed a
corresponding ministerial circular to the colonies.
In 1809, Romilly brought his eminent legal knowledge and graceful
eloquence to bear against the sanguinary criminal code which a dark age
had obtruded on the noonday of civilization. He subsequently exposed the
abuses of the Court of Chancery, which, under the tardy administration
of "that everlasting doubter," Lord Eldon, pressed heavily on the
country. He laid bare the absurd technicalities and verbosities which
blocked the avenues to the common law courts. Having removed some of
this rubbish, and softened a few of the asperities of the criminal code,
his benevolent heart sunk in the grave, when the philosophic and
classical Mackintosh resumed the work, and carrying a radical motion for
inquiry over the heads of ministers in 1819, pressed it nearer that
tolerable consummation which Brougham, Williams, and Denman reached at a
later day. The cause of law reform was powerfully aided by the closet
labors of that singular person, Jeremy Bentham, whose world-wide
researches and world-filling books, written in a style as consecutive
and tedious as the story of The House that Jack Built, discussed
everything pertaining to government, from the constitution of a kingdom
to the construction of a work-house.
The condition of Ireland and the relief of the Catholics occupied much
of the public attention during the period under review. The rebellion of
1798 turned all eyes towards that devoted island. The next year, Pitt
proposed the Legislative Union. It encountered the fierce epigrams of
Sheridan; and though it passed both Houses, it met with such vehement
opposition from the Irish Parliament, that it was abandoned till the
next year, when Pitt renewed the proposal. Grattan, the very soul of
Irish chivalry, rained down upon it a shower of invective from the West
side of the channel, and was seconded by the glittering oratory of
Sheridan and the calmer reasoning of Grey and Lord Holland on the East.
But Britain extended to Ireland the right hand of a Judas fellowship,
whilst with the left she bribed her to accept the proffered alliance. In
1807, Lord Grenville, who was ever a firm friend of religious liberty
and of Ireland, and Grey, in behalf of the Cabinet, proposed an
amelioration of the bigoted code which made the worship of God by the
Catholic a crime. They failed, and ministers resigned. The question of
Catholic relief was pressed to a division, in various forms, fourteen
times, without success, from 1805 to 1819. In the latter year, Grattan
moved that the House take into consideration the matter of Catholic
Emancipation, and failed by only two majority. In 1821, Plunkett,
distinguished for his attainments and virtues, and a model of eloquence,
whether standing at the Irish bar or in the British Senate, carried the
motion which Grattan lost, Peel strenuously resisting, by a majority of
six. He followed up his victory by pushing the Consolidation Bill (a
measure of amelioration only) through the Commons; but it was thrown out
by the Lords. Sparing further details for the present, suffice it to
say, that at intervals during this period, Sydney Smith, with his Peter
Plymley Letters, laughed to scorn the fears of high churchmen; a host of
pamphleteers of all sizes sifted the question to its very chaff, and
O'Connell and his "Associations" and "Unions," in spite of the
suspension of the _habeas corpus_ and the enactment of coercion bills,
agitated from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear, and ultimately wrung
from the fears of the oppressor what his sense of justice would not
give.
The Protestant dissenters, with a less rude hand, knocked at the doors
of Parliament, demanding the purification of the Established Church, and
the opening of its gates to Toleration. The rich clergy were compelled
by law to pay higher salaries to their poor curates--Hume's clumsy
abuse fell on the heads of the lazy prelates who made godliness
gain--and the "pickings and stealings," which the Establishment
tolerated in a long train of sanctimonious supernumeraries, were exposed
to the gaze of the uninitiated when Brougham carried his bill against
ministers, in 1819, for a board of commissioners to investigate the
abuses of public charities. The Corporation and Test Acts, which
enslaved the consciences of dissenters, were denounced by Fox and
Burdett, preparatory to their ultimate repeal (of which more anon) by
Lord John Russell's bill in 1828.
Nor was the importance of educating the masses forgotten. Not content
with aiding Romilly, Smith, Horner, Mackintosh, and Jeffrey, in
instructing the higher circles by frequent contributions to the
Edinburgh Review on domestic and European politics, Brougham wrote
rudimental tracts for the lower orders--lectured to Mechanics'
Institutes--contributed to Penny Magazines--and in 1820, after a speech
which exhibited perfect familiarity with the educational condition of
the unlettered masses, launched in Parliament his comprehensive scheme
for the instruction of the poor in England and Wales; thus proving that
_he_ was entitled to the eulogy he bestowed on another, as "the patron
of all the arts that humanize and elevate mankind."
Having seen this favorite scheme fairly afloat, this wonderful man
turned to far different employments. The misguided but injured Queen
Caroline landed in England in 1820, amidst the shoutings of the
populace. Ministers immediately brought in their bill of pains and
penalties; _i. e._, a bill to degrade and divorce the Queen, without
giving her the benefit of those ordinary forms of law which protect even
the confessed adulteress. She appointed Brougham her Attorney General.
In the midst of such a popular ferment as England has rarely seen, he
promptly seized the royal libertine in his harem, and while giving one
hand to the regulation of his new educational machine, with the other
dragged him into the open field of shame, and concentrated upon him the
scorn of Virtue and Humanity.
The corn laws were the subject of frequent debates and divisions.
Waiving till another occasion their more particular consideration, it
may here be stated, that the frequent recurrence of extreme agricultural
and commercial distress always brought with it into Parliament the
subject of the corn trade, provoking a discussion of the antagonistic
theories of protection and free trade, and challenging to the arena the
learning and experience of Burdett, Horner, Ricardo, Baring, Hume,
Huskisson, and Brougham. It was on these occasions that the latter used
to exhibit that close familiarity with the statistics of political
economy and of domestic and foreign trade, and of the laws of demand and
supply, which surprised even those acquainted with his exhaustless
versatility. His only match in this department was Huskisson, to whose
enlightened and steady advocacy of unrestricted commerce its friends are
greatly indebted. As early as 1823, this generally conservative
gentleman moved a set of resolutions providing for an annual and rapid
reduction of the duties on foreign corn, till the point of free trade
was attained.
Closely allied to this subject was that of budgets, sinking funds,
loans, civil lists, and army and navy expenditures, all summed up in the
word _taxes_. The means of paying the interest on the L600,000,000 debt
Pitt had run up in reenthroning the pauper Bourbons (not to speak of the
240 000,000 pounds before existing) was to be provided for. The current,
expenses of the Government clamored for large sums. Under this annual
load of taxation, a nation of Astors might have staggered. The liberal
party plead for economy and retrenchment in the army and the navy, in
the church and the state. Brougham, Ricardo, and other smaller
cipherers, applied the pruning knife to the prolific tree of taxation
and expenditure. But the chief annoyance of Ministers was Mr. Hume.
After he entered Parliament, all schemes for raising or appropriating
money encountered his scrutinizing eye and merciless _figurings_. With
no more eloquence than the multiplication table, he as rarely made
mistakes in his calculations. And whenever Mr. Vansittart, the
foggy-headed Chancellor of the Exchequer, appeared on the floor with his
money bills, his tormentor was sure to pin him to the wall by his
skillful use of the nine digits, which he followed up by crushing that
unfortunate gentleman between huge columns of statistics.
Parliamentary Reform, the enginery by which the people of England must
work out a bloodless revolution, was repeatedly agitated, and with
various results. Stormy debates, followed by divisions and defeats, did
not discourage Grey, Mackintosh, Brougham, Lambton, and Russell, within
doors, nor Tooke, Cartwright, Cobbett, Hunt, and a host of other good,
bad, and indifferent men without, from seeking enlarged suffrage and
equal representation. Nor did laws enacted to stop the circulation
amongst the working classes of cheap publications, by laying a tax on
them; and to put down reformatory societies, under the pretext of
prohibiting seditious meetings; and to seize arms found in the hands of
the lower orders, so that their assemblies might be dispersed at the
bayonet's point without fear of retaliation; nor the occasional
searching of a library and demolishing a press, and sending a writer or
lecturer to Botany Bay, deter the masses from demanding that "the
People's _House_ should be open to the People's _Representatives_."
Passing by many noteworthy occurrences, we find Birmingham, in 1819,
without a representative for its teeming thousands, while rotten
Grampound, with scarce an inhabitant, had two, adopting the bold measure
of electing "a Legislatorial Attorney" to represent it in the House of
Commons! The next year, a large and peaceable meeting of reformers at
Manchester is dispersed by cavalry, with loss of much precious blood.
The common people throughout the kingdom are deeply moved at this
spectacle--riots follow--troops shed more blood--Ministers denounce the
agitators--Burdett defends them--Brougham defies Ministers, and Lord
John Russell numbers the days of Grampound. The next session he moves to
disfranchise that rotten borough, which had been convicted of bribery,
and transfer its members to Leeds. He fails. The next session, Lambton
(Earl Durham) brings in a bill for a radical reform, and is defeated by
a scurvy trick of Ministers. Lord John renews the conflict with another
bill--the People's petitions press the tables of the House--Ministers
begin to give way--Grampound is disfranchised, and its members
transferred to York county, and the first nail is driven! In 1823, Lord
John leads on the attack by explaining a well-digested scheme of reform
in a luminous speech. Canning makes a conciliatory reply, and, in his
brilliant peroration, tells Russell he will yet succeed, but on his head
be the responsibility. Russell is beaten, but the minority is swelled by
the accession for the first time of several young members of the ancient
nobility. The same year, Castlereagh cuts his throat, and falls into a
grave which Englishmen will execrate till the crack of doom. The
"radicals" (a name which the reformers received when Birmingham elected
her attorney) take courage--Lord John beats ministers on an incidental
question--Old Sarum trembles for her ancient privileges--the French
monarchy is temporarily overthrown, and Earl Grey rises to power.
In this summary, which sets chronological order and historical symmetry
at defiance, I have only aimed to show that, from 1793 to 1830, the
fires on Freedom's Altar were kept burning by a band of worshipers, many
of whose names find few parallels in English history, whether we
consider the vigor of their understandings, the extent of their
knowledge, the splendor of their genius, the luster of their services,
and the fidelity and courage with which they followed the fortunes of
the liberal cause through thirty-seven years of opposition to Court
favor and Ministerial patronage.
A more particular notice of these events and persons will be pursued in
future chapters.