The English being at once the most persevering and the most
enterprising people, the nation which is most attached to home and
fondest of travel, the slowest to make changes and yet, in matters
political, the most broad-minded, the thinking men of the country
naturally fall into two great political groups, the one representing
the jealously conservative, the other the daringly liberal tendency.
The English parties have no resemblance to the French. It may be
exaggeration to say, with Taine, that France has only two parties--the
party of the men of twenty and the party of the men of forty; yet this
division is perhaps the essential one, which the other acknowledged
party names merely modify. The English division is determined by
the national character; and in the stirring literary period under
consideration, Wordsworth is the representative of the one set of
qualities, Byron the type of the other.
In the first years of the century there was another source of political
division in the dual nature of the chief event of the period. This
great event was the war with France. Of the German War of Liberation I
have already remarked that it was certainly revolt against a terrible
despotism, but a despotism which was an expression of the ideas of the
Revolution; that it was a fight for hearth and home, but undertaken
at the command of the old reactionary reigning houses. And if such a
remark is applicable to Germany's struggle, how much more applicable
is it to the war waged by England. The independence of England was not
assailed, but its interests were seriously threatened; and during the
lengthy war, and for long afterwards, there were not, as in Germany,
liberty-loving men at the head of affairs, but all power was given into
the hands of the most determinedly reactionary Tory government that the
country had ever known.
Hence it is that the background of this whole period of literature is
so dark. The clouds which form it are heavy and black, "sunbeam-proof"
Shelley would have called them. England itself, as the background of
the panorama which I am about to unroll, is like a night landscape.
The _great_ qualities of the nation were misguided; its extraordinary
resoluteness was applied to the suppression of another nation's desires
for liberty; its own noble love of liberty was first utilised to
overthrow the despotism of Napoleon and then misapplied in re-erecting
all the old mouldering thrones which, under cover of the gunpowder
smoke of Waterloo, were run up in as great haste as scaffolds are.
The _neutral_ qualities of the nation were educated into bad ones.
Self-esteem and firmness were nursed into that hard-heartedness of
the aristocratic, and that selfishness of the commercial classes
which always distinguish a period of reaction; loyalty was excited
into servility, and patriotism into the hatred of other nations which
is apt to develop during long wars. And the national _bad_ qualities
were over-developed. The desire for outward decorum at any price,
which is the shady side of the moral impulse, was developed into
hypocrisy in the domain of morality; and that determined adherence
to the established religion which is the least attractive outcome of
a practical and not profoundly reasoning turn of mind, was fanned
either into hypocrisy or active intolerance. No period was ever more
favourable to the development of hypocrisy and fanaticism than this,
during which the nation was actually encouraged by its leaders to boast
of its religious superiority to free-thinking France.
Those who suffered most were the country's greatest authors. It is
out of fashion now to talk of the cant which drove Byron from his
home; and many scrupulous critics are disposed to give the name of
honest, if narrow-minded, conviction to what used to be frankly
called hypocrisy. But this view of the matter is untenable. A piety
which behaves as English piety did to Byron and Shelley is not mere
stupidity, but narrow-minded, repulsive hypocrisy. The dicta upon
this subject of the keen American observer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, are
of value; for as America's most eminent critic, as England's greatest
admirer, and as judge of his own race, he has every claim to credence.
He says:--"The torpidity on the side of religion of the vigorous
English understanding shows how much wit and folly can agree in one
brain. Their religion is a quotation, their church is a doll, and any
examination is interdicted with screams of terror. In good company,
you expect them to laugh at the fanaticism of the vulgar; but they
do not; they are the vulgar.... The English, abhorring change in all
things, abhorring it most in matters of religion, cling to the last
rag of form, and are dreadfully given to cant. The English (and I wish
it were confined to them, but 'tis a taint in the Anglo-Saxon blood
in both hemispheres), the English and the Americans cant beyond all
other nations. The French relinquish all that industry to them. What is
so odious as the polite bows to God in our books and newspapers? The
popular press is flagitious in the exact measure of its sanctimony, and
the religion of the day is a theatrical Sinai, where the thunders are
supplied by the property-man.... The Church at this moment is much to
be pitied. She has nothing left but possession. If a bishop meets an
intelligent gentleman and reads fatal interrogations in his eyes, he
has no resource but to take wine with him."[1] This description is of
the England of 1830, so we can imagine what the condition of matters
must have been twenty years earlier.
The most lamentable national failing, the inclination to oppression,
was positively reduced to a system, and was more conspicuous during
this period of the country's history than any other. England, Scotland,
and Ireland combine to oppress the distant colonies; England and
Scotland, making common cause, oppress Ireland--keep down the Irish
Church and repress Irish industry and commerce; England does what she
can to repress Scotland; and in England itself the rich man oppresses
the poor man, and the ruling class all the others. Of the thirty
million inhabitants of the country only one million possessed the
franchise. And any one who cares to read the attack on the English
landed proprietors in Byron's _Age of Bronze_ will see how shamelessly
the landowners enriched themselves at the expense of the other classes
during the war, and how their whole political aim was to insure the
continuance of their power to do so.
Such are the conditions which exercise a partly pernicious, partly
inspiring and stimulating influence on the country's authors. In those
of them in whose breasts the sacred fire burns feebly it is soon
extinguished, and they become reactionary supporters of the existing
conditions. But those of them whose lightning-charged spirits were
fitted to defy the direction of the wind, develop under the oppression
of these conditions an emancipatory literary force which communicates
a shock to the political atmosphere. To these latter England seems a
very "Gibraltar of custom" and they leave their native land that they
may attack and bombard their home with all the artillery of satire and
indignation.
In order to arrive at a proper understanding of the soil from which the
Naturalistic literature springs, and to understand the principles (not
artistic, but political, social, and religious principles) which divide
the authors into antagonistic groups, we must enter a little more into
detail with regard to the political conditions prevailing in this home.
At the beginning of the century there sat on the throne of England the
king who had reigned since 1760, George the Third. From his earliest
childhood George's mother had endeavoured to inoculate him with the
exaggerated and un-English notions of sovereignty which prevailed on
the Continent, and she had succeeded so well that one after another
of the eminent noblemen who were chosen to be governors to the Prince
resigned the office because their influence was counteracted. One of
these, Lord Waldegrave, who was not merely a shrewd observer, but
also a devoted adherent of the House of Hanover, has drawn a portrait
of his royal pupil which is anything but attractive. He is described
as not altogether deficient in ability, but wholly without power of
application; as honest, but without the frank and open behaviour which
makes honesty amiable; as sincerely pious, but rather too attentive
to the sins of his neighbours; resolute, but obstinate and strong in
prejudices. The tutor tells how, when his pupil is displeased, his
anger does not break out with heat and violence, but produces a fit
of sullenness and silence. And, "when the fit is ended, unfavourable
symptoms very frequently return, which indicate on certain occasions
that his Royal Highness has too correct a memory." And this same King,
who had such a lively recollection of injuries, had a more than royal
forgetfulness of services. But perhaps his greatest fault as a public
personage and a ruler was his absolute petrifaction in prejudices. In
private life he was honest, respectable, and reliable, and inspired his
subjects with great esteem, though the defects in his education were
never supplied. When he began to reign he had little or no knowledge of
either books or men, and to the end of his life he remained perfectly
ignorant as regarded literature and art. But in his selfish court he
was not long in acquiring a considerable knowledge of human nature; the
man to whom all, great and small, held out their hands whenever they
saw him, soon learned to ascertain every man's price and to calculate
his value. His naturally sound understanding was enlarged neither by
study, nor travel, nor conversation; but on matters the discussion of
which does not require much cultivation of mind he generally went to
the point, and acquitted himself with as much ability as was necessary
in a ruler who was very unwilling to be a king only in name.[2]
George III. was England's Frederick VI. He was a true patriarchal
ruler, who felt himself to be the father of his people. During his
reign England lost the North American colonies, as Denmark under
Frederick VI. lost Norway, without this loss, or the foolish policy
which had led to it, damaging the personal popularity of the sovereign.
King George's household was a model of an English gentleman's
household. Early rising was its first rule. Simplicity, order,
frugality, a real bourgeois spirit, reigned. It was boring to a degree
which its historian Thackeray "shuddered to contemplate."
Often, we are told, the King rose before any one else was up, ran
upstairs and awoke all the equerries, and then went for an early walk,
and had a talk with every one he met. He was in the habit of poking his
nose into every cottage; now he would give a child a silver coin, now
present an old woman with a hen. One day, when the King and Queen were
walking together, they met a little boy and talked to him. At last the
King said, "This is the Queen; kneel down, and kiss her hand." But this
the little fellow obstinately declined to do, out of consideration for
his new breeches; and the thrifty King was so delighted with such a
sign of youthful prudence that he pressed the child to his heart.
The days passed at this court with a dreary monotony which drove the
young princes from home, and was in part responsible for their turning
out so badly. In the evening the King either played his game of
backgammon or had his evening concert, during which he always nodded,
while the gentlemen-in-waiting almost yawned themselves to death in the
ante-room.
The family took their daily walk in Windsor Park; the people crowded
round quite familiarly, and the Eton boys thrust their chubby cheeks
under the crowd's elbows. The open-air music over, the King never
failed to take his cocked hat off and salute his band, and say, "Thank
you, gentlemen."
What Dane can fail to be reminded by these scenes of Frederick VI.'s
walks and sails as Chief Admiral in the grounds of Frederiksberg! Like
our Danish monarch, George III. won the affections of the people by
the simplicity of his habits and his shabby coat. Equally applicable
to King George is Orla Lehmann's remark about Frederick VI., "that his
simplicity, both of mind and behaviour, and his kindly interest in
the well-being of individuals were regarded as compensations for his
failings as a statesman and ruler." But indeed there were not many who
detected these last. To the great majority of his subjects old George
seemed a very wise statesman and very powerful sovereign. There is a
famous print of him (by Gillray) which represents him--in the old wig,
in the stout old hideous Windsor uniform--as the King of Brobdingnag,
peering at a little Gulliver, whom he holds up in one hand, whilst in
the other he has an opera-glass, through which he surveys the pigmy.
And who, think you, is the little Gulliver? He wears a cocked-hat and
the little grey Marengo coat.
Danish readers will remember an old picture, a photographic
reproduction of which was very popular some years ago. It was called
"The Well-beloved Family," and represented Frederick VI. taking a walk
with his whole family, from eldest to youngest. Is not the following
picture (from the pages of Miss Burney) of one of the afternoon walks
at Windsor its exact counterpart? "It was really a mighty pretty
procession. The little Princess Amelia, just turned of three years
old, in a robe-coat covered with fine muslin, a dressed close cap,
white gloves, and fan, walked on alone and first, highly delighted
with the parade, and turning from side to side to see everybody as
she passed; for all the terracers stand up against the walls, to make
a clear passage for the royal family the moment they come in sight.
Then followed the King and Queen, no less delighted with the joy of
their little darling. The Princess Royal leaning on Lady Elizabeth
Waldegrave, the Princess Augusta holding by the Duchess of Ancaster,
the Princess Elizabeth led by Lady Charlotte Bertie, followed. General
Bude and the Duke of Montague, and Major Price as equerry, brought
up the rear of the procession." What a charming picture! exclaims
Thackeray. Whilst the procession passes, the band plays its old music,
the sun lights up the ancient battlements, the rich elms, the royal
standard drooping from the great tower, and the loyal crowd, whom the
charming infant caresses with her innocent smiles.
This is the domestic idyll which in public life has its counterpart in
the King's passionate determination to oppress North America, oppose
the French Revolution, annihilate the Irish Church, and maintain
negro slavery with all its horrors. But the idyllic family life was
at an end before the century was out. In 1788 the King had his first
attack of insanity, and even then the question of the Regency of the
Prince of Wales, which was not finally determined until 1810, was
discussed with an extraordinary display of passion. The Opposition
believed that if they could procure the appointment of the Prince of
Wales as Regent, they would be able to keep the Tories out of power
for a lengthy period. But the character and morals of the Prince were
so repugnant to the great majority of the nation that his accession
to power was regarded with dread. However, before the Regency Bill
was actually proceeded with, Pitt was in a position to lay before
Parliament a medical bulletin informing his subjects of the probable
speedy and complete restoration of their King's health. The Prince's
disappointment was great, and his having displayed anything but proper
filial feeling during the King's illness made it difficult for him to
disguise it. He had a talent for mimicry, and had amused the witty and
profligate men and women who were his constant companions by _taking
off_, as the saying was, the gestures and actions of his insane father.
This alone is sufficient to show his character--the character of the
man who, on account of a certain outward polish, went by the name of
"the first gentleman in Europe."
Even though he retained it only for a short time, one cannot but admire
the cleverness with which this Prince managed to win the friendship
of many of the most gifted men of the day. Burke and Fox and Sheridan
were his associates. Certainly, as Thackeray says, it was not his
opinions about the constitution, or about the condition of Ireland,
which they cared to hear--_that_ man's opinions, indeed! But he talked
with Sheridan of dice, and with Fox of wine; those were interests which
the fool and the geniuses had in common; and Beau Brummell's friend and
rival was an authority among the fashionable men of the day on such
questions as the suitable button for a waistcoat and the best sauce
for a partridge. He even attached Moore to himself for a short time.
From the tone of a letter which Moore writes to his mother in June 1811
(_Memoirs_, i. 225), we understand plainly that he feels flattered by
the Prince Regent's "cordial familiarity." And the same is true for a
moment of Byron; his letter of reconciliation to Sir Walter Scott shows
how susceptible he was to the Regent's flatteries on the subject of
_Childe Harold_. And Scott himself! Good, honourable gentleman though
he was, in his capacity of obstinate Tory he was always the Regent's
faithful liegeman. And when the latter, as King George the Fourth, came
to Scotland (where he figured in the dress of a Highland chief, with
his fat legs bared and a kilt round his enormous body, as satirically
described by Byron at the end of _The Age of Bronze_), Scott went on
board the royal yacht to welcome him, seized a glass from which his
Majesty had just drunk, begged to be allowed to keep it, vowed that it
should remain for ever as an heirloom in his family, clapped it in his
pocket, and, finding an unexpected guest when he went home, sat down
upon it, and was quickly and painfully reminded of the royal keepsake.
Scott continued faithful to George IV. long after Moore had riddled
him with the darts of his wit, and Byron lashed him with his savage
epigrams, and after even Brummell, walking in Hyde Park, had looked at
him through his eye-glass and asked the Prince's companion, "Who is
_your fat friend_?"
For the insinuating heir-apparent in time became extremely corpulent.
The life he led, the perpetual feasting and drinking bouts, produced
such a habit of body that at last he could not walk. When he was to
drive out, a board was put out at the window, and down it he was slid
into his carriage. While the starving weavers in Glasgow and Lancashire
were crying aloud to Heaven, he was arranging magnificent festivities,
and receiving the exiled Bourbon as Louis XVIII. "The child is father
of the man," says Wordsworth. George IV. signalised his entrance
into society by a feat worthy of his future life. He invented a new
shoe-buckle. It was an inch long and five inches broad. "It covered the
whole instep, reaching down to the ground on either side of the foot."
At his first appearance at a court ball his coat was, we read, of pink
silk, with white cuffs; his waistcoat, white silk, embroidered with
various-coloured foil, and adorned with a profusion of French paste.
His hat was ornamented with a profusion of steel beads, five thousand
in number, with a button and loop of the same metal, and cocked in a
new military style.
A military style, indeed! It exactly suited the head that wore it.
This head was full, at the time its owner began housekeeping in his
splendid new palace of Carlton House, of vague projects of encouraging
literature, science, and the arts; and for a moment it seemed as if
they were really to be carried out--when at the Prince Regent's table
Sir Walter Scott, the best _raconteur_ of his time, with loyal devotion
and real generosity poured forth humorous, whimsical stories from his
inexhaustible store, or Moore sang some of his sweet Anacreontic songs,
or Grattan, Ireland's proud leader, contributed to the entertainment
his wondrous eloquence, fancy, and feeling. But how soon did these men
make way for a company much better suited to the Prince--French cooks,
French ballet-dancers, horse-jockeys, buffoons, procurers, tailors,
boxers, jewellers, and fencing-masters! With such people he spent the
time left him by his mistresses and his bacchanalian orgies. He showed
his love for art and his taste by purchasing at extravagant prices
whole cart-loads of Chinese monstrosities. It was but natural that this
royal _bel esprit_, when he came into power, should quarrel with the
clever Whigs whose society he had sought. He suddenly wheeled round and
became a Tory.
Four of the European monarchs of the first half of this century--Ludwig
I. of Bavaria, Frederick William IV. of Prussia, Christian VIII. of
Denmark, and this English Prince Regent--bear a strong resemblance
to each other. They are the four reigning reactionary dilettanti. In
England, as in Denmark, literary dilettantism succeeds patriarchal
simplicity. In the case we are at present considering, it was combined
with shocking morals and an almost incredible indolence. In March
1816, fifty-eight prisoners under sentence of death were lying in
Newgate prison waiting until the Prince Regent's amusements and
distractions should allow him time to sign their death-warrants or
their pardons, and many of them had lain there since December. In
vain did Brougham make his terrible attack in Parliament upon those
"who, when the gaols were filled with wretches, could not suspend for
a moment their thoughtless amusements to end the sad suspense between
life and death." In connection with this subject, Moore's satires in
_The Twopenny Post-Bag_ are well worth reading. They show plainly that
the sweet Irish song-bird had beak and claws. In _The Life of Sir
Walter Scott_ we read with what a good-humoured smile the Regent, in
1815, could refer to and quote the verses by Moore which describe his
table as loaded with fashion-journals on the one side and unsigned
death-warrants on the other. The satire of the verses was only too well
deserved, but was of little avail. As early as 1812 Castlereagh had
said, in a speech in Parliament: "It would be impossible for his Royal
Highness to disengage his person from the accumulating pile of papers
that encompass it." In "The Insurrection of the Papers," Moore puts it
thus:--
"On one side lay unread Petitions,
On t'other hints from five Physicians;
_Here_ tradesmen's bills,--official papers,
Notes from my Lady, drams for vapours--
_There_ plans of saddles, tea and toast,
Death-warrants, and the _Morning Post_."
Four years later, the Regent had actually allowed fifty-eight
death-warrants to accumulate.
As already mentioned, he was hardly invested with the signs of power
before he quarrelled with his Whig friends and became a Tory. The
great, long-lasting Tory Government was formed. At its head was the
Earl of Liverpool, an obstinate, but lazy and good-natured reactionary;
the displeasure of the public never fell upon him, but always on his
colleagues; he was, as Prime Minister, a kind of monarch with limited
power, honest intentions, and modest abilities. He and his colleague,
Lord Sidmouth, the Home Secretary, enjoyed the privilege of not being
envied and feared for the force of their characters or the splendour of
their talents. The most notable and most fiercely criticised member of
the ministry was Lord Castlereagh, a moderately gifted man of energetic
character, whom Wilberforce once declared to be as cold-blooded as a
fish. He had a handsome face and a commanding voice, and to these added
the outward show of honours which had not been bestowed on a commoner
since the days of Sir Robert Walpole. He was "the noble lord in the
blue ribbon." He had a natural leaning towards arbitrary principles,
and his intercourse with the irresponsible rulers of the continent
tended to strengthen him in ideas which were extremely dangerous for
a constitutional minister. No consciousness of the narrowness of his
intellect and the defects of his education prevented him from pouring
out torrents of unformed sentences and disjointed arguments. These
often aroused the laughter of the House; but he withstood all attacks
with unflinching determination; none of the hostility or suspicions
expressed moved him a hair's-breadth from his path; in his intercourse
with Parliament, he again and again adopted the standpoint of
absolutism: "We alone know." Byron, Shelley, and Moore all flagellate
him in their poetry. There remains to be named Lord Chancellor Eldon,
the personification of Toryism, whose thought by day and dream by
night was the maintenance of what he called the constitution. In his
opinion the man who attempted to do away with any ancient privilege,
any antiquated restriction of the liberty of the subject, and still
more the man who attempted to repeal any cruel penal law, was laying
his hand on the constitution. Yet no one was more ready than he himself
to suspend the laws of the country whenever they stood in his way.
The suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, the gagging of the press,
&c.--such amputations as these were life to the constitution; to infuse
new blood was death.
This was the ministry which, in 1814, astonished Alexander of Russia
by its ardour in re-asserting and re-establishing the principles which
had been shaken by the Revolution. He slighted it by expressing pity
for its reactionary tendencies and cultivating the acquaintance of the
leaders of the Opposition in London. The first tidings of the French
Revolution had been received with approval by the English Government
and nation. The antagonists Pitt and Fox united in hailing it as one
of the greatest and most beneficent events in the history of humanity.
But hardly had blood been shed on the other side of the Channel, before
the mass of the people, including even the majority of the Opposition,
saw their whole national inheritance--monarchy, religion, the rights of
property--endangered, and formed an enormous party of order. Amongst
the Whigs, Burke was the first to condemn the Revolution violently,
and as violently to condemn his friend and political ally, Fox, for
defending its spirit. The old Whigs sided with Burke. Pitt, who had
planned a whole series of necessary reforms, took alarm, dared not even
make any alterations in the disgraceful election system, and, on being
challenged, confessed that, though fully persuaded of the necessity
of Parliamentary reform, the time was not a favourable one for such
a daring attempt. Jacobinism was scented in every liberal movement,
however innocent and justifiable. When Wilberforce began his agitation
against the negro slave-trade, he was supported both by the Government
and the Opposition. He had against him only the King, the shipowners,
and the House of Peers. But when, in 1791, he tried the temper of the
nation for the second time, the revulsion had been so great that the
champions of the abolition of the slave-trade were almost regarded as
Jacobins, and Wilberforce's bill was rejected by a majority of 163 to
88.
The impression produced in Ireland by the Revolution was another
cause of affright in England. The Irish hailed the tidings of the
Revolution as slaves and serfs hail the news of emancipation.
Although the Irish nation, under the leadership of the noble Henry
Grattan (so enthusiastically eulogised by Byron), had succeeded in
1782 in obtaining the absolute independence and supremacy of its own
Parliament, both the commerce and the religion of the country were
still oppressed. Thomas Moore, a very moderate man, writes that, as the
child of Catholic parents, he came into the world with the yoke of the
slave round his neck. He tells how, when a boy, he was taken, in 1792,
by his father to a public dinner in Dublin, at which one of the toasts
was: "May the breezes of France blow our Irish oak into verdure!" In
his _Memoirs_ we have a description of the movement amongst the youth
of the country. He knew and admired its leader, Robert Emmet. When,
in the Dublin Debating Society, of which he was the moving spirit and
chief ornament, Emmet gave an eloquent description of the doings of the
French Republic--when, with an allusion to the story of Cæsar swimming
across the river with his sword in one hand and his _Commentaries_
in the other, he said: "Thus France at this time swims through a sea
of blood, but, while in one hand she wields the sword against her
aggressors, with the other she upholds the interests of literature
uncontaminated by the bloody tide through which she struggles"--his
young countryman listened not only to the literal meaning of the
speech, but for every little allusion or remark which he might apply to
Ireland. And such allusions were forthcoming. "When a people," cried
Emmet one day, "advancing rapidly in civilisation and the knowledge of
their rights, look back after a long lapse of time, and perceive how
far the spirit of their Government has lagged behind them, what then,
I ask, is to be done by them in such a case? What, but to pull the
Government up to the people."
The day was not far off when Robert Emmet was to pay dearly for all his
bold words. In 1798 the long-prepared-for explosion took place; and,
as Byron puts it, Castlereagh "dabbled his sleek young hands in Erin's
gore." The fury with which the Government set to work to crush the
rebellion and the rebels was so animal and ferocious, that the horrors
accompanying the proceeding are almost unequalled in the history of
rebellion-suppressing in modern times.
The hatred of the Revolution prolonged itself into hatred of Napoleon.
This last went beyond all reasonable bounds. Thackeray tells an
anecdote which gives an idea of its character. "I came," he writes,
"from India as a child, and our ship touched at an island on the way
home, where my black servant took me a long walk over rocks and hills
until we reached a garden, where we saw a man walking. 'That is he',
said the black man: 'That is Bonaparte! He eats three sheep every
day, and all the little children he can lay hands on.'" And Thackeray
adds: "There were people in the British dominions, besides that poor
Calcutta servingman, with an equal horror of the Corsican ogre." We
have it strong in Wordsworth's sonnets, Southey's poems, and in Scott's
notorious "Life of Napoleon." The wars with France inaugurated the
great British reaction--repeated suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act,
extension of the definitions of treason contained in the old statutes
of Edward III., encroachments on the right of public discussion and
petition, and also on the virtual liberty of the press. In Scotland,
more particularly, barbarous old statutes were revived, and highly
cultured men were banished as common convicts to the Australian penal
settlements. Those in power were not afraid, in addressing the English
republicans and advocates of equality, to talk of the absolute power of
the sovereign, and of the comparative insignificance of Parliament and
the representatives of the people. An all-powerful party was formed,
with the watchword: The King and the Church!
The King himself was insane, the Prince Regent worse than insane, and
the Church hypocritical. In 1812 came floods, a failure of the harvest,
and famine. Starvation drove crowds of the poor classes from their
homes, to wander aimlessly about the country. Expression is given to
their mood in Shelley's _Masque of Anarchy_. The workmen of Nottingham,
in their despair, broke into the lace-factories and destroyed the
frames. It was in defence of these men that Byron made his well-turned
maiden speech in Parliament.
We see from Romilly's Journal how impossible it was for the few
liberally inclined politicians to pass even the smallest measure of a
reformatory nature. Romilly was universally revered as the reformer of
the barbarous English penal code, but is best known nowadays as the
legal adviser of the Princess of Wales and of Lady Byron. In 1808 he
writes: "If any person be desirous of having an adequate idea of the
mischievous effects which have been produced in this country by the
French Revolution and all its attendant horrors, he should attempt some
legislative reform on humane and liberal principles. He will then find,
not only what a stupid dread of innovation, but what a savage spirit
it has infused into the minds of many of his countrymen." When Romilly
brought in a bill to repeal the Act of William III. which made death
the punishment for shop-lifting, Lord Ellenborough, actively supported
by Lord Eldon, opposed the bill, along with two others of a similar
nature, declaring that "they went to alter those laws which a century
had proved to be necessary, and which were now to be overturned by
speculation and modern philosophy." And it was not the Government alone
which appeared to be, as it were, possessed by the lust of hanging;
it was widely spread among the members of Parliament. Romilly tells
how one of the young members answered all his arguments and objections
with the one monotonous retort: "I am for hanging all." And yet one
would have imagined that in the nineteenth century the time had come
to put an end to that partiality for hanging which in England still
bore lamentable witness to the amount of savagery existing in the
national character. In the reign of Henry VIII, 72,000 thieves were
hanged, and under George III. they were still hanged by the dozen.
In 1817, a regular system of suppression of free-thought and liberty
of publication was evolved during the different prosecutions of the
old bookseller, William Hone, who, with a rare combination of honesty
and shrewdness, time after time defeated every attempt to convict him
of blasphemy. In 1819 occurred the Manchester riots, when a cavalry
charge was ordered, and the poor unarmed rioters were maltreated by
the soldiers. The impression produced by the events of the immediately
preceding years is preserved in Shelley's poems of the year 1819.
The political background of the intellectual life of this period is,
thus, undoubtedly a dark one--dark with the terror produced in the
middle classes by the excesses of the liberty movement in France, dark
with the tyrannic lusts of proud Tories and the Church's oppressions,
dark with the spilt blood of Irish Catholics and English artisans.
And on the pinnacle of society the crown is set on the insanity in
George the Third's head, and the sceptre is placed in the hands of the
careless lewdness which, in the person of the Prince Regent, occupies
the throne as proxy for the narrow-mindedness which had occupied it
in the person of his father. And it is this throne which Lord Eldon
supports with the six "gagging bills" into which he has transformed
England's ancient constitution--this throne which is lauded and
glorified in Castlereagh's ungrammatical, anti-liberal speeches, and
in Southey's unmelodious, highly-paid adulatory verse--until the
horrible, incredible scandals of George IV.'s divorce suit, spreading
like a great sewer from the tribunal of the Upper House, drown the
glory of the throne and the dignity of the court in a flood of mire,
and the revolutions of Spain, Greece, and South America, following on
each other without intermission, clear the air, and Castlereagh cuts
his throat ("slits a goose-quill," as Byron says), and England, under
Canning, recognises the South American republics, and paves the way for
the battle of Navarino.
The writings of Shelley, Landor, Byron, and Campbell, have political
equivalents in Canning's actions as minister. Indeed, Canning's
speeches complement these authors' works. Castlereagh's invertebrate
speeches and his dull, meagre official letters (the more meagre
because, as a good business man of the school of Metternich, he
preferred verbal communications) were at once succeeded by Canning's
frank and glowing eloquence. Castlereagh, like his surviving colleagues
of the ignominious Congress of Vienna, endeavoured, under the guise of
evangelic peace, to maintain silence and darkness in Europe; Canning's
speeches shone through the dark night of the Holy Alliance like a
forest conflagration. The great idea that inspired him was the belief
in the right of a people to free action. He died on the 8th of August
1827; but on the 10th of October of the same year was fought the battle
of Navarino, which was, as it were, the last will of the dead man, and
which to our generation is the political symbol of the awakening of the
new spirit in Europe.[3]
[1] Emerson: _English Traits_, chap. xiii.
[2] Massey: _History of England_, i 59, &c.
[3] Miss Martineau: _The History of England during the Thirty Years'
Peace_, I., II. Massey: _History of England during the Reign of George
III_, I-IV. Thackeray: _The Four Georges_. Reinhold Pauli: _Geschichte
Englands seit den Friedensschlüssen 1814 and 1815_. Emerson: _English
Traits_.