one of immense activity and earnestness in legislation. ...
The first great reform was the complete abolition of the
system of slavery in the British colonies. The slave trade had
itself been suppressed so far as we could suppress it long
before that time, but now the whole system of West Indian
slavery was brought to an end [see SLAVERY, NEGRO: A. D.
1834-1838]. ... A long agitation of the small but energetic
anti-slavery party brought about this practical result in
1833. ... Granville Sharpe, Zachary Macaulay, father of the
historian and statesman, Thomas Fowell Buxton, Wilberforce,
Brougham, and many others, had for a long time been striving
hard to rouse up public opinion to the abolition of the slave
system." The bill which passed Parliament gave immediate
freedom to all children subsequently born, and to all those
who were then under six years of age; while it determined for
all other slaves a period of apprenticeship, lasting five
years in one class and seven years in another, after which
they attained absolute freedom. It appropriated £20,000,000
for the compensation of the slave-owners. "Another reform of
no small importance was accomplished when the charter of the
East India Company came to be renewed in 1833. The clause
giving them a commercial monopoly of the trade of the East was
abolished, and the trade thrown open to the merchants of the
world [see INDIA: A. D. 1823-1833]. There were other slaves in
those days as well as the negro. There were slaves at home,
slaves to all intents and purposes, who were condemned to a
servitude as rigorous as that of the negro, and who, as far as
personal treatment went, suffered more severely than negroes in
the better class plantations. We speak now of the workers in
the great mines and factories. No law up to this time
regulated with anything like reasonable stringency the hours
of labour in factories. ... A commission was appointed to
investigate the condition of those who worked in the
factories. Lord Ashley, since everywhere known as the Earl of
Shaftesbury, ... brought forward the motion which ended in the
appointment of the commission. The commission quickly brought
together an immense amount of evidence to show the terrible
effect, moral and physical, of the over-working of women and
children, and an agitation set in for the purpose of limiting
by law the duration of the hours of labour. ... The principle
of legislative interference to protect children working in
factories was established by an Act passed in 1833, limiting
the work of children to eight hours a day, and that of young
persons under eighteen to 69 hours a week [see FACTORY
LEGISLATION]. The agitation then set on foot and led by Lord
Ashley was engaged for years after in endeavouring to give
that principle a more extended application. ... Irish tithes
were one of the grievances which came under the energetic
action of this period of reform. The people of Ireland
complained with justice of having to pay tithes for the
maintenance of the church establishment in which they did not
believe, and under whose roofs they never bent in worship." In
1832, committees of both Houses of Parliament reported in
favor of the extinction of tithes; but the Government
undertook temporarily a scheme whereby it made advances to the
Irish clergy and assumed the collection of tithes among its
own functions. It only succeeded in making matters worse, and
several years passed before the adoption (in 1838) of a bill
which "converted the tithe composition into a rent charge."
_J. McCarthy,
The Epoch of Reform,
chapters 7-8._
ALSO IN: C. Knight, Popular History of England,
volume 8, chapter 17.
_H. Martineau,
History of the Thirty Years' Peace,
book 4, chapters 6-9 (volumes 2-3)._
{957}
ENGLAND: A. D. 1833-1840.
Turko-Egyptian question and its settlement.
The capture of Acre.
Bombardment of Alexandria.
See TURKS: A. D. 1831-1840.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1833-1845.
The Oxford or Tractarian Movement.
See OXFORD OR TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1834-1837.
Resignation of Lord Grey and the Reform Ministry.
The first Melbourne Administration.
Peel's first Ministry and Melbourne's second.
Death of William IV.
Accession of Queen Victoria.
"On May 27th, Mr. Ward, member of St. Albans, brought forward
... resolutions, that the Protestant Episcopal Church of
Ireland much exceeded the spiritual wants of the Protestant
population; that it was the right of the State, and of
Parliament, to distribute church property, and that the
temporal possessions of the Irish church ought to be reduced.
The ministers determined to adopt a middle course and appoint
a commission of inquiry; they hoped thereby to induce Mr. Ward
to withdraw his motion, because the question was already in
government hands. While the negotiations were going on, news
was received of the resignation of four of the most
conservative members of the Cabinet, who regarded any
interference with church property with abhorrence; they were
Mr. Stanley, Sir James Graham, the Duke of Richmond, and the
Earl of Ripon. ... Owing to the difference of opinion in the
Cabinet on the Irish coercion bill, on July 9, 1834, Earl Grey
placed his resignation as Prime Minister in the hands of the
king. On the 10th the House of Commons adjourned for four
days. On the 14th, Viscount Melbourne stated in the House of
Lords that his Majesty had honored him with his commands for
the formation of a ministry. He had undertaken the task, but
it was not yet completed. There was very little change in the
Cabinet; Lord Melbourne's place in the Home Department was
filled by Lord Duncannon; Sir John Cam Hobhouse obtained a
seat as First Commissioner of Woods and Forests, and Lord
Carlisle surrendered the Privy Seal to Lord Mulgrave. The
Irish Church Bill was again brought forward, and although it
passed the Commons, was defeated in the Lords, August 1st. The
king much disliked the church policy of the Whigs, and dreaded
reform. He was eager to prevent the meeting of the House, and
circumstances favored him. Before the session Lord Spencer
died, and Lord Althorpe, his son, was thus removed to the
upper House. There was no reason why this should have broken
up the ministry, but the king seized the opportunity, sent for
Lord Melbourne, asserted that the ministry depended chiefly on
the personal influence of Lord Althorpe in the Commons,
declared that, deprived of it as it now was, the government
could not go on, and dismissed his ministers, instructing
Melbourne at once to send for the Duke of Wellington. The
sensation in London was great; the dismissal of the ministry
was considered unconstitutional; the act of the king was
wholly without precedent. ... The Duke of Wellington, from
November 15th to December 9th, was the First Lord of the
Treasury, and the sole Secretary of State, having only one
colleague, Lord Lyndhurst, who held the great seal, while at
the same time he sat as Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer.
This temporary government was called a dictatorship. ... On
Sir Robert Peel's return from Italy, whence he had been
called, he waited upon the king and accepted the office of
First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer.
With the king's permission, he applied to Lord Stanley and Sir
James Graham, entreating them to give him the benefit of their
co-operation as colleagues in the Cabinet. They both declined.
Prevented from forming a moderate Conservative ministry, he
was reduced to fill his places with men of more pronounced
opinions, which promised ill for any advance in reform. ...
The Foreign, Home, War, and Colonial offices were filled by
Wellington, Goulburn, Herries, and Aberdeen; Lord Lyndhurst
was Lord Chancellor; Harding, Secretary for Ireland; and Lord
Wharncliffe, Privy Seal. With this ministry Peel had to meet a
hostile House of Commons. ... The Prime Minister therefore
thought it necessary to dissolve Parliament, and took the
opportunity [in what was called 'the Tamworth manifesto'] of
declaring his policy. He declared his acceptance of the Reform
Bill as a final settlement of the question. ... The elections,
though they returned a House, as is generally the case, more
favorable to the existing government than that which had been
dissolved, still gave a considerable majority to the Liberals.
... Lord John Russell, on April 7th, proposed the resolution,
'That it is the opinion of this House that no measure upon the
subject of the tithes in Ireland can lead to satisfactory and
final adjustment which does not embody the temporalities of
the Church in Ireland.' This was adopted by a majority of 27,
and that majority was fatal to the ministry. On the following
day the Duke of Wellington, in the House of Lords, stated that
in consequence of the resolution in the House of Commons, the
ministry had tendered their resignation. Sir Robert made a
similar explanation in the Commons. Ten days later, Viscount
Melbourne, in moving the adjournment of the House of Lords,
stated that the king had been pleased to appoint him First
Lord of the Treasury. ... On June 9, 1837, a bulletin issued
from Windsor Castle informing a loyal and really affectionate
people that the king was ill. From the 12th they were
regularly issued until the 19th, when the malady, inflammation
of the lungs, had greatly increased. ... On Tuesday, June 20th,
the last of these official documents was issued. His Majesty
had expired that morning at 2 o'clock. William died in the
seventy-second year of his age and seventh year of his reign,
leaving no legitimate issue. He was succeeded by his niece,
Alexandrina Victoria."
_A. H. McCalman,
Abridged History of England,
pages 565-570._
ALSO IN:
_W. C. Taylor,
Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel,
volume 2, chapters 10-12._
_W. M. Torrens,
Memoirs of Viscount Melbourne,
volume 2, chapters 1-8._
_J. W. Croker,
Correspondence and Diaries,
chapters 18-20 (volume 2)._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1836-1839.
Beginning of the Anti-Corn-Law Agitation.
See TARIFF LEGISLATION (ENGLAND): A. D. 1836-1839.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1837.
Separation of Hanover.
See HANOVER: A. D. 1837.
{958}
ENGLAND: A. D. 1837-1839.
Opening of the reign of Queen Victoria.
End of personal rule.
Beginning of purely constitutional government.
Peel and the Bedchamber Question.
"The Duke of Wellington thought the accession of a woman to
the sovereign's place would be fatal to the present hopes of
the Tories [who were then expecting a turn of events in their
favor, as against the Whig administration of Lord Melbourne].
'Peel,' he said, 'has no manners, and I have no small talk.'
He seemed to take it for granted that the new sovereign would
choose her Ministers as a school-girl chooses her companions.
He did not know, did not foresee, that with the accession of
Queen Victoria the real reign of constitutional government in
these islands was to begin. The late King had advanced
somewhat on the ways of his predecessors, but his rule was
still, to all intents and purposes, a personal rule. With the
accession of Victoria the system of personal rule came to an
end. The elections which at that time were necessary on the
coming of a new sovereign went slightly in favour of the
Tories. The Whigs had many troubles. They were not reformers
enough for the great body of their supporters. ... The
Radicals had split off from them. They could not manage
O'Connell. The Chartist fire was already burning. There was
many a serious crisis in foreign policy--in China and in
Egypt, for example. The Canadian Rebellion and the mission of
Lord Durham involved the Whigs in fresh anxieties, and laid
them open to new attacks from their enemies. On the top of all
came some disturbances, of a legislative rather than an
insurrectionary kind, in Jamaica, and the Government felt
called upon to bring in a Bill to suspend for five years the
Constitution of the island. A Liberal and reforming Ministry
bringing in a Bill to suspend a Constitution is in a highly
awkward and dangerous position. Peel saw his opportunity, and
opposed the Bill. The Government won by a majority of only 5.
Lord Melbourne accepted the situation, and resigned [May 7,
1839]. The Queen sent for the Duke of Wellington, and he, of
course, advised her to send for Peel. When Peel came, the
young Queen told him with all the frankness of a girl that she
was sorry to part with her late Ministers, and that she did
not disapprove of their conduct, but that she felt bound to
act in accordance with constitutional usages; Peel accepted
the task of forming an Administration. And then came the
famous dispute known as the 'Bedchamber Question'--the
'question de jupons.' The Queen wished to retain her
ladies-in-waiting; Peel insisted that there must be some
change. Two of these ladies were closely related to Whig
statesmen whose policy was diametrically opposed to that of
Peel on no less important a question than the Government of
Ireland. Peel insisted that he could not undertake to govern
under such conditions. The Queen, acting on the advice of her
late Ministers, would not give way. The whole dispute created
immense excitement at the time. There was a good deal of
misunderstanding on both sides. It was quietly settled, soon
after, by a compromise which the late Prince Consort
suggested, and which admitted that Peel had been in the right.
... Its importance to us now is that, as Peel would not give
way, the Whigs had to come back again, and they came back
discredited and damaged, having, as Mr. Molesworth puts it,
got back 'behind the petticoats of the ladies-in-waiting.'"
_J. McCarthy,
Sir Robert Peel,
chapter 12._
ALSO IN:
_W. N. Molesworth,
History of England, 1830-1874,
volume 2, chapter 1._
H_. Dunckley,
Lord Melbourne,
chapter 11._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1837.
The Victorian Age in Literature.
"It may perhaps be assumed without any undue amount of
speculative venturesomeness that the age of Queen Victoria
will stand out in history as the period of a literature as
distinct from others as the age of Elizabeth or Anne, although
not perhaps equal in greatness to the latter, and far indeed
below the former. At the opening of Queen Victoria's reign a
great race of literary men had come to a close. It is curious
to note how sharply and completely the literature of Victoria
separates itself from that of the era whose heroes were Scott,
Byron, and Wordsworth: Before Queen Victoria came to the
throne, Scott, Byron, Coleridge, and Keats were dead.
Wordsworth lived, indeed, for many years after; so did Southey
and Moore; and Savage Landor died much later still. But
Wordsworth, Southey, Moore, and Landor had completed their
literary work before Victoria came to the throne. Not one of
them added a cubit or an inch to his intellectual stature from
that time; some of them even did work which distinctly proved
that their day was done. A new and fresh breath was soon after
breathed into literature. Nothing, perhaps, is more remarkable
about the better literature of the age of Queen Victoria than
its complete severance from the leadership of that which had
gone before it, and its evidence of a fresh and genuine
inspiration. It is a somewhat curious fact, too, very
convenient for the purposes of this history, that the
literature of Queen Victoria's time thus far divides itself
clearly enough into two parts. The poets, novelists, and
historians who were making their fame with the beginning of
the reign had done all their best work and made their mark
before these later years, and were followed by a new and
different school, drawing inspiration from wholly different
sources, and challenging comparison as antagonists rather than
disciples. We speak now only of literature. In science the
most remarkable developments were reserved for the later years
of the reign."
_J. McCarthy,
The Literature of the Victorian Reign
(Appletons' Journal, January, 1879, page 498)._
"The age of Queen Victoria is as justly entitled to give name
to a literary epoch as any of those periods on which this
distinction has been conferred by posterity. A new tone of
thought and a new colour of style are discernible from about
the date of the Queen's accession, and, even should these
characteristics continue for generations without apparent
break, it will be remembered that the Elizabethan age did not
terminate with Elizabeth. In one important respect, however,
it differs from most of those epochs which derive their
appellation from a sovereign. The names of Augustus, Lorenzo,
Louis XIV., Anne, are associated with a literary advance, a
claim to have bequeathed models for imitation to succeeding
ages. This claim is not preferred on behalf of the age of
Victoria. It represents the fusion of two currents which had
alternately prevailed in successive periods. Delight and
Utility met, Truth and Imagination kissed each other.
Practical reform awoke the enthusiasm of genius, and genius
put poetry to new use, or made a new path for itself in prose.
The result has been much gain, some loss, and an originality
of aspect which would alone render our Queen's reign
intellectually memorable.
{959}
Looking back to the 18th century in England, we see the spirit
of utility entirely in the ascendant. Intellectual power is as
great as ever, immortal books are written as of old, but there
is a general incapacity not only for the production, but for
the comprehension of works of the imagination. Minds as robust
as Johnson's, as acute as Hume's, display neither strength nor
intelligence in their criticism of the Elizabethan writers,
and their professed regard for even the masterpieces of
antiquity is evidently in the main conventional. Conversely,
when the spell is broken and the capacity for imaginative
composition returns, the half-century immediately preceding
her Majesty's accession does not, outside the domain of the
ideal, produce a single work of the first class. Hallam, the
elder Mill, and others compose, indeed, books of great value,
but not great books. In poetry and romantic fiction, on the
other hand, the genius of that age reaches a height unattained
since Milton, and probably not destined to be rivalled for
many generations. In the age of Victoria we witness the fusion
of its predecessors."
_R. Garnett,
Literature (The Reign of Queen Victoria,
edited by T. H. Ward, volume 2, pages 445-446)._
"The most conspicuous of the substantial distinctions between
the literature of the present day and that of the first
quarter or third of the century may be described as consisting
in the different relative positions at the two dates of Prose
and Verse. In the Georgian era verse was in the ascendant; in
the Victorian era the supremacy has passed to prose. It is not
easy for anyone who has grown up in the latter to estimate
aright the universal excitement which used to be produced in
the former by a new poem of Scott's, or Byron's, or Moore's,
or Campbell's, or Crabbe's, or the equally fervid interest
that was taken throughout a more limited circle in one by
Wordsworth, or Southey, or Shelley. There may have been a
power in the spirit of poetry which that of prose would in
vain aspire to. Probably all the verse ages would be found to
have been of higher glow than the prose ones. The age in
question, at any rate, will hardly be denied by anyone who
remembers it to have been in these centuries, perhaps from the
mightier character of the events and circumstances in the
midst of which we were then placed, an age in which the
national heart beat more strongly than it does at present in
regard to other things as well as this. Its reception of the
great poems that succeeded one another so rapidly from the
first appearance of Scott till the death of Byron was like its
reception of the succession of great victories that, ever
thickening, and almost unbroken by a single defeat, filled up
the greater part of the ten years from Trafalgar to
Waterloo--from the last fight of Nelson to the last of
Wellington. No such huzzas, making the welkin ring with the
one voice of a whole people, and ascending alike from every
city and town and humblest village in the land, have been
heard since then. ... Of course, there was plenty of prose
also written throughout the verse era; but no book in prose
that was then produced greatly excited the public mind, or
drew any considerable amount of attention, till the Waverley
novels began to appear; and even that remarkable series of
works did not succeed in at once reducing poetry to the second
place, however chief a share it may have had in hastening that
result. Of the other prose writing that then went on what was
most effective was that of the periodical press,--of the
Edinburgh Review and Cobbett's Register, and, at a later date,
of Blackwood's Magazine and the London Magazine (the latter
with Charles Lamb and De Quincey among its
contributors),--much of it owing more or less of its power to
its vehement political partisanship. A descent from poetry to
prose is the most familiar of all phenomena in the history of
literature. Call it natural decay or degeneracy, or only a
relaxation which the spirit of a people requires after having
been for a certain time on the wing or on the stretch, it is
what a period of more than ordinary poetical productiveness
always ends in."
_G. L. Craik,
Compendious History of English Literature,
volume 2, pages 553-555._