It was impossible that the position thus claimed by the British
parliament towards America should affect America alone. The habit of
obtaining money otherwise than by the consent of those who are required
to pay it would be certain to make parliament careless of the feelings
and interests of that great majority of the population at home, which
was unrepresented in parliament. The resistance of America to the
taxation imposed was therefore not without benefit to the people of the
mother country. Already there were signs of a readiness in parliament to
treat even the constituencies with contempt. In 1763, in the days of the
Grenville ministry, John Wilkes, a profligate and scurrilous writer, had
been arrested on a general warrant--that is to say, a warrant in which
the name of no individual was mentioned--as the author of an alleged
libel on the king, contained in No. 45 of _The North Briton_. He was a
member of parliament, and as such was declared by Chief Justice Pratt to
be privileged against arrest. In 1768 he was elected member for
Middlesex. The House of Commons expelled him. He was again elected, and
again expelled. The third time, the Commons gave the seat to which
Wilkes was a third time chosen to Colonel Luttrell, who was far down in
the poll. Wilkes thus became the representative of a great
constitutional principle, the principle that the electors have a right
to choose their representatives without restriction, save by the
regulations of the law.
For the present the contention of the American colonists and of the
defenders of Wilkes at home was confined within the compass of the law.
Yet in both cases it might easily pass beyond that compass, and might
rest itself upon an appeal to the duty of governments to modify the law,
and to enlarge the basis of their authority, when law and authority have
become too narrow.
Lord North's ministry.
As regards America, though Townshend died, the government persisted in
his policy. As resistance grew stronger in America, the king urged the
use of compulsion. If he had not the wisdom of the country on his side,
he had its prejudices. The arrogant spirit of Englishmen made them
contemptuous towards the colonists, and the desire to thrust taxation
upon others than themselves made the new colonial legislation popular.
In 1770 the king made Lord North prime minister. He had won the object
on which he had set his heart. A new Tory party had sprung up, not
distinguished, like the Tories of Queen Anne's reign, by a special
ecclesiastical policy, but by their acceptance of the king's claim to
nominate ministers, and so to predominate in the ministry himself.
Unhappily the opposition, united in the desire to conciliate America,
was divided on questions of home policy. Chatham would have met the new
danger by parliamentary reform, giving increased voting power to the
freeholders of the counties. Burke from principle, and his noble patrons
mainly from lower motives, were opposed to any such change. As Burke had
wished the British parliament to be supreme over the colonies, in
confidence that this supremacy would not be abused, so he wished the
great landowning connexion resting on the rotten boroughs to rule over
the unrepresented people, in confidence that this power would not be
abused. Amid these distractions the king had an easy game to play. He
had all the patronage of the government in his hands, and beyond the
circle which was influenced by gifts of patronage, he could appeal to
the ignorance and self-seeking of the nation, with which, though he knew
it not, he was himself in the closest sympathy.
The American War of Independence.
No wonder resistance grew more vigorous in America. In 1773 the
inhabitants of Boston threw ship-loads of tea into the harbour rather
than pay the obnoxious duty. In 1774 the Boston Port Bill deprived
Boston of its commercial rights, whilst the Massachusetts Government
Bill took away from that colony the ordinary political liberties of
Englishmen. The first skirmish of the inevitable war was fought at
Lexington in 1775. In 1776 the thirteen colonies united in the
continental congress issued their Declaration of Independence. England
put forth all its strength to beat down resistance; but the task, which
seemed easy at a distance, proved impossible. It might have been so even
had the war been conducted on the British side with greater military
skill and with more insight into the conditions of the struggle, which
was essentially a civil contest between men of the same race. But the
initial difficulties of the vast field of operations were greatly
increased by the want of skill of the British leaders in adapting
themselves to new conditions, while even loyalist sentiment was shocked
by the employment of German mercenaries and Red Indian savages against
men of English blood. Even so, the issue of the struggle was for long
doubtful, and there were moments when it might have ended by a policy of
wise concession; but the Americans, though reduced at times to desperate
straits, had the advantage of fighting in their own country, and above
all they found in George Washington a leader after the model of the
English country gentleman who had upheld the standard of liberty against
the Stuarts, and worthy of the great cause for which they fought. In
1777 a British army under Burgoyne capitulated at Saratoga; and early in
1778 France, eager to revenge the disasters of the Seven Years' War,
formed an alliance with the revolted colonies as free and independent
states, and was soon joined by Spain.
Chatham, who was ready to make any concession to America short of
independence, and especially of independence at the dictation of France,
died in 1778. The war was continued for some years with varying results;
but in 1781 the capitulation of a second British army under Cornwallis
at Yorktown was a decisive blow, which brought home to the minds of the
dullest the assurance that the conquest of America was an impossibility.
Before this event happened there had been a great change in public
feeling in England. The increasing weight of taxation gave rise in 1780
to a great meeting of the freeholders of Yorkshire, which in turn gave
the signal for a general agitation for the reduction of unnecessary
expense in the government. To this desire Burke gave expression in his
bill for economical reform, though he was unable to carry it in the
teeth of interested opposition. The movement in favour of economy was
necessarily also a movement in favour of peace; and when the surrender
of Yorktown was known (1782), Lord North at once resigned office.
The second Rockingham ministry.
The new ministry formed under Lord Rockingham comprised not only his own
immediate followers, of whom the most prominent was Charles Fox, but the
followers of Chatham, of whom Lord Shelburne was the acknowledged
leader. A treaty of peace acknowledging the independence of the United
States of America was at once set on foot; and the negotiation with
France was rendered easy by the defeat of a French fleet by Rodney, and
by the failure of the combined forces of France and Spain to take
Gibraltar.
The coalition.
Already the ministry on which such great hopes had been placed had
broken up. Rockingham died in July 1782. The two sections of which the
government was composed had different aims. The Rockingham section,
which now looked up to Fox, rested on aristocratic connexion and
influence; the Shelburne section was anxious to gain popular support by
active reforms, and to gain over the king to their side. Judging by past
experience, the combination might well seem hopeless, and honourable men
like Fox might easily regard it with suspicion. But Fox's allies took
good care that their name should not be associated with the idea of
improvement. They pruned Burke's Economical Reform Bill till it left as
many abuses as it suppressed; and though the bill prohibited the grant
of pensions above L300, they hastily gave away pensions of much larger
value to their own friends before the bill had received the royal
assent. They also opposed a bill for parliamentary reform brought in by
young William Pitt. When the king chose Shelburne as prime minister,
they refused to follow him, and put forward the incompetent duke of
Portland as their candidate for the office. The struggle was thus
renewed on the old ground of the king's right to select his ministers.
But while the king now put forward a minister notoriously able and
competent to the task, his opponents put forward a man whose only claim
to office was the possession of large estates. They forced their way
back to power by means as unscrupulous as their claim to it was
unjustifiable. They formed a coalition with Lord North, whose politics
and character they had denounced for years. The coalition, as soon as
the peace with America and France had been signed (1783), drove
Shelburne from office. The duke of Portland became the nominal head of
the government, Fox and North its real leaders.
The India Bill.
Such a ministry could not afford to make a single blunder. The king
detested it, and the assumption by the Whig houses of a right to
nominate the head of the government without reference to the national
interests, could never be popular. The blunder was soon committed.
Burke, hating wrong and injustice with a bitter hatred, had descried in
the government of British India by the East India Company a disgrace to
the English name. For many of the actions of that government no
honourable man can think of uttering a word of defence. The helpless
natives were oppressed and robbed by the company and its servants in
every possible way. Burke drew up a bill, which was adopted by the
coalition government, for taking all authority in India out of the hands
of the company, and even placing the company's management of its own
commercial affairs under control. The governing and controlling body was
naturally to be a council appointed at home. The question of the
nomination of this council at once drew the whole question within the
domain of party politics. The whole patronage of India would be in its
hands, and, as parliament was then constituted, the balance of parties
might be more seriously affected by the distribution of that patronage
than it would be now. When, therefore, it was understood that the
government bill meant the council to be named in the bill for four
years, or, in other words, to be named by the coalition ministry, it was
generally regarded as an unblushing attempt to turn a measure for the
good government of India into a measure for securing the ministry in
office. The bill of course passed the Commons. When it came before the
Lords, it was thrown out in consequence of a message from the king, that
he would regard any one who voted for it as his enemy.
Ministry of the younger Pitt.
The contest had thus become one between the influence of the crown and
the influence of the great houses. Constitutional historians, who treat
the question as one of merely theoretical politics, leave out of
consideration this essential element of the situation, and forget that,
if it was wrong for the king to influence the Lords by his message, it
was equally wrong for the ministry to acquire for themselves fresh
patronage with which to influence the Commons. But there was now, what
there had not been in the time of Walpole and the Pelhams, a public
opinion ready to throw its weight on one side or the other. The county
members still formed the most independent portion of the
representation, and there were many possessors of rotten boroughs, who
were ready to agree with the county members rather than with the great
landowners. In choosing Pitt, the young son of Chatham, for his prime
minister, as soon as he had dismissed the coalition, George III. gave
assurance that he wished his counsels to be directed by integrity and
ability. After a struggle of many weeks, parliament was dissolved
(1784), and the new House of Commons was prepared to support the king's
minister by a large majority.
As far as names go, the change effected placed the new Tory party in
office for an almost uninterrupted period of forty-six years. It so
happened, however, that after the first eight years of that period had
passed by, circumstances occurred which effected so great a change in
the composition and character of that party as to render any statement
to this effect entirely illusive. During eight years, however, Pitt's
ministry was not merely a Tory ministry resting on the choice of the
king, but a Liberal ministry resting on national support and upon
advanced political knowledge.
Material progress.
The nation which Pitt had behind him was very different from the
populace which had assailed Walpole's Excise Bill, or had shouted for
Wilkes and liberty. At the beginning of the century the intellect of
thoughtful Englishmen had applied itself to speculative problems of
religion and philosophy. In the middle of the century it applied itself
to practical problems affecting the employment of industry. In 1776 Adam
Smith published the _Wealth of Nations_. Already in 1762 the work of
Brindley, the Bridgewater canal, the first joint of a network of inland
water communication, was opened. In 1767 Hargreaves produced the
spinning-jenny; Arkwright's spinning machine was exhibited in 1768;
Crompton's mule was finished in 1779; Cartwright hit upon the idea of
the power-loom in 1784, though it was not brought into profitable use
till 1801. The Staffordshire potteries had been flourishing under
Wedgwood since 1763, and the improved steam-engine was brought into
shape by Watt in 1768. During these years the duke of Bedford, Coke of
Norfolk, and Robert Bakewell were busy in the improvement of stock and
agriculture.
The increase of wealth and prosperity caused by these changes went far
to produce a large class of the population entirely outside the
associations of the landowning class, but with sufficient intelligence
to appreciate the advantages of a government carried on without regard
to the personal interests and rivalries of the aristocracy. The mode in
which that increase of wealth was effected was even more decisive on the
ultimate destinies of the country. The substitution of the organization
of hereditary monarchy for the organization of wealth and station would
ultimately have led to evils as great as those which it superseded. It
was only tolerable as a stepping-stone to the organization of
intelligence. The larger the numbers admitted to influence the affairs
of state, the more necessary is it that they respect the powers of
intellect. It would be foolish to institute a comparison between an
Arkwright or a Crompton and a Locke or a Newton. But it is certain that
for one man who could appreciate the importance of the treatise _On the
Human Understanding_ or the theory of gravitation, there were thousands
who could understand the value of the water-frame, or the power-loom.
The habit of looking with reverence upon mental power was fostered in no
slight measure by the industrial development of the second half of the
18th century.
Pitt's India Bill.
The supremacy of intelligence in the political world was, for the time,
represented in Pitt. In 1784 he passed an India Bill, which left the
commerce and all except the highest patronage of India in the hands of
the East India Company, but which erected a department of the home
government, named the board of control, to compel the company to carry
out such political measures as the government saw fit. A bill for
parliamentary reform was, however, thrown out by the opposition of his
own supporters in parliament, whilst outside parliament there was no
general desire for a change in a system which for the present produced
such excellent fruits. Still more excellent was his plan of legislation
for Ireland. Irishmen had taken advantage of the weakness of England
during the American War to enforce upon the ministry of the day, in 1780
and 1782, an abandonment of all claim on the part of the English
government and the English judges to interfere in any way with Irish
affairs. From 1782, therefore, there were two independent legislatures
within the British Isles--the one sitting at Westminster and the other
sitting in Dublin. With these political changes Fox professed himself to
be content. Pitt, whose mind was open to wider considerations, proposed
to throw open commerce to both nations by removing all the restrictions
placed on the trade of Ireland with England and with the rest of the
world. The opposition of the English parliament was only removed by
concessions continuing some important restrictions upon Irish exports,
and by giving the English parliament the right of initiation in all
measures relating to the regulation of the trade which was to be common
to both nations. The Irish parliament took umbrage at the superiority
claimed by England, and threw out the measure as an insult, though, even
as it stood, it was undeniably in favour of Ireland. The lesson of the
incompatibility of two coordinate legislatures was not thrown away upon
Pitt.
In 1786 the commercial treaty with France opened that country to English
trade, and was the first result of the theories laid down by Adam Smith
ten years previously. The first attack upon the horrors of the
slave-trade was made in 1788; and in the same year, in the debates on
the Regency Bill caused by the king's insanity, Pitt defended against
Fox the right of parliament to make provision for the exercise of the
powers of the crown when the wearer was permanently or temporarily
disabled from exercising his authority.
When the king recovered, he went to St Paul's to return thanks on the
23rd of April 1789. The enthusiasm with which he was greeted showed how
completely he had the nation on his side. All the hopes of liberal
reformers were now with him. All the hopes of moral and religious men
were on his side as well. The seed sown by Wesley had grown to be a
great tree. A spirit of thoughtfulness in religious matters and of moral
energy was growing in the nation, and the king was endeared to his
subjects, as much by his domestic virtues as by his support of the great
minister who acted in his name. The happy prospect was soon to be
overclouded. On the 4th of May, eleven days after the appearance of
George III. at St Paul's, the French states-general met at Versailles.
The French Revolution; English feeling.
By the great mass of intelligent Englishmen the change was greeted with
enthusiasm. It is seldom that one nation understands the tendencies and
difficulties of another; and the mere fact that power was being
transferred from an absolute monarch to a representative assembly led
superficial observers to imagine that they were witnessing a mere
repetition of the victory of the English parliament over the Stuart
kings. In fact, that which was passing in France was of a totally
different nature from the English struggle of the 17th century. In
England, the conflict had been carried on for the purpose of limiting
the power of the king. In France, it was begun in order to sweep away an
aristocracy in church and state which had become barbarously oppressive.
The French Revolution was not, therefore, a conflict for the reform of
the political organization of the state, but one for the reorganization
of the whole structure of society; and in proportion as it turned away
from the path which English ignorance had marked out for it, Englishmen
turned away from it in disgust. As they did not understand the aims of
the French Revolutionists, they were unable to make that excuse for even
so much of their conduct as admits of excuse. Three men, Fox, Burke and
Pitt, however, represented three varieties of opinion into which the
nation was very unequally divided.
Fox, generous and trustful towards the movements of large masses of men,
had very little intellectual grasp of the questions at issue in France.
He treated the struggle as one simply for the establishment of free
institutions; and when at last the crimes of the leaders became patent
to the world, he contented himself with lamenting the unfortunate fact,
and fell back on the argument that though England could not sympathize
with the French tyrants, there was no reason why she should go to war
with them.
Burke, on the other hand, while he failed to understand the full
tendency of the Revolution for good as well as for evil, understood it
far better than any Englishman of that day understood it. He saw that
its main aim was equality, not liberty, and that not only would the
French nation be ready, in pursuit of equality, to welcome any tyranny
which would serve its purpose, but would be the more prone to acts of
tyranny over individuals. This would arise from the remodelling of
institutions, with the object of giving immediate effect to the will of
the masses, which was especially liable to be counterfeited by designing
and unscrupulous agitators. There is no doubt that in all this Burke was
in the right, as he was in his denunciation of the mischief certain to
follow when a nation tries to start afresh, and to blot out all past
progress in the light of simple reason, which is often most fallible
when it believes itself to be most infallible. Where he went wrong was
in his ignorance of the special circumstances of the French nation, and
his consequent blindness to the fact that the historical method of
gradual progress was impossible where institutions had become so utterly
bad as they were in France, and that consequently the system of starting
afresh, to which he reasonably objected, was to the French a matter not
of choice but of necessity. Nor did he see that the passion for
equality, like every great passion, justified itself, and that the
problem was, not how to obtain liberty in defiance of it, but how so to
guide it as to obtain liberty by it and through it.
Burke did not content himself with pointing out speculatively the evils
which he foreboded for the French. He perceived clearly that the effect
of the new French principles could no more be confined to French
territory than the principles of Protestantism in the 16th century could
be confined to Saxony. He knew well that the appeal to abstract reason
and the hatred of aristocracy would spread over Europe like a flood,
and, as he was in the habit of considering whatever was most opposed to
the object of his dislike to be wholly excellent, he called for a
crusade of all established governments against the anarchical principles
of dissolution which had broken loose in France.
Pitt occupied ground apart from either Fox or Burke. He had neither
Fox's sympathy for popular movements, nor Burke's intellectual
appreciation of the immediate tendencies of the Revolution. Hence,
whilst he pronounced against any active interference with France, he was
an advocate of peace, not because he saw more than Fox or Burke, but
because he saw less. He fancied that France would be so totally occupied
with its own troubles that it would cease for a long time to be
dangerous to other nations.
Beginning of the revolutionary wars.
This view was soon to be stultified by the effect of the coalition
against France in 1792 of Prussia and Austria. The proclamation of the
allies calling on the French to restore the royal authority was answered
by a passionate outburst of defiance. The king himself was suspected of
complicity with the invaders of his country, and the rising of the 10th
of August was followed by the proclamation of the republic and by the
awful "September massacres" of helpless prisoners, guilty of no crime
but noble birth, and therefore presumably of attachment to the old
regime, and treason towards the new. This passionate attachment to the
Revolution, which in France displayed itself in a carnival of insane
suspicion and cruelty, inspired on the frontiers an astonishing
patriotic resistance. Before the end of the year the invasion was
repulsed, and the ragged armies of the Revolution had overrun Savoy and
the Austrian Netherlands, and were threatening the aristocratic Dutch
republic.
Change of feeling in England.
Very few governments in Europe were so rooted in the affections of their
people as to be able to look without terror on the challenge thus thrown
out to them. The English government was one of those very few. No mere
despotism was here exercised by the king. No broad impassable line here
divided the aristocracy from the people. The work of former generations
of Englishmen had been too well done to call for that breach of
historical continuity which was a dire necessity in France. There was
much need of reform. There was no need of a revolution. The whole of the
upper and middle classes, with few exceptions, clung together in a
fierce spirit of resistance; and the mass of the lower classes,
especially in the country, were too well off to wish for change. The
spirit of resistance to revolution quickly developed into a spirit of
resistance to reform, and those who continued to advocate changes, more
or less after the French model, were treated as the enemies of mankind.
A fierce hatred of France and of all that attached itself to France
became the predominating spirit of the nation.
Division of the Whig party.
Such a change in the national mind could not but affect the constitution
of the Whig party. The reasoning of Burke would, in itself, have done
little to effect its disruption. But the great landowners, who
contributed so strong an element in it, composed the very class which
had most to fear from the principles of the Revolution. The old
questions which had divided them from the king and Pitt in 1783 had
dwindled into nothing before the appalling question of the immediate
present. They made themselves the leaders of the war party, and they
knew that that party comprised almost the whole of the parliamentary
classes.
What could Pitt do but surrender? The whole of the intellectual basis of
his foreign policy was swept away when it became evident that the
continental war would bring with it an accession of French territory. He
did not abandon his opinions. His opinions rather abandoned him. A wider
intelligence might have held that, let France gain what territorial
aggrandizement it might upon the continent of Europe, it was impossible
to resist such changes until the opponents of France had so purified
themselves as to obtain a hold upon the moral feelings of mankind. Pitt
could not take this view; perhaps no man in his day could be fairly
expected to take it. He did not indeed declare war against France; but
he sought to set a limit to her conquests in the winter, though he had
not sought to set a limit to the conquests of the allied sovereigns in
the preceding summer. He treated with supercilious contempt the National
Convention, which had dethroned the king and proclaimed a republic.
Above all, he took up a declaration by the Convention, that they would
give help to all peoples struggling for liberty against their respective
governments, as a challenge to England. The horror caused in England by
the trial and execution of Louis XVI. completed the estrangement between
the two countries, and though the declaration of war came from France
(1793), it had been in great part brought about by the bearing of
England and its government. (S. R. G.)
XI. THE REVOLUTIONARY EPOCH, THE REACTION, AND THE TRIUMPH OF REFORM
(1793-1837)
The government and the "revolutionary" agitation.
In appearance the great Whig landowners gave their support to Pitt, and
in 1794 some of their leaders, the duke of Portland, Lord Fitzwilliam,
and Windham, entered the cabinet to serve under him. In reality it was
Pitt who had surrendered. The ministry and the party by which it was
supported might call themselves Tory still; but the great reforming
policy of 1784 was at an end, and the government, unconscious of its own
strength, conceived its main function to be at all costs to preserve the
constitution, which it believed to be in danger of being overwhelmed by
the rising tide of revolutionary feeling. That this belief was idle it
is now easy enough to see; at the time this was not so obvious. Thomas
Paine's _Rights of Man_, published in 1791, a brilliant and bitter
attack on the British constitution from the Jacobin point of view, sold
by tens of thousands. Revolutionary societies with high-sounding names
were established, of which the most conspicuous were the Revolution
Society, the Society for Constitutional Information, the London
Corresponding Society, and the Friends of the People. Of these, indeed,
only the two last were directly due to the example of France. The
Revolution Society, founded to commemorate the revolution of 1688, had
long carried on a respectable existence under the patronage of cabinet
ministers; the Society for Constitutional Information, of which Pitt
himself had been a member, was founded in 1780 to advocate parliamentary
reform; both had, however, developed under the influence of the events
in France in a revolutionary direction. The London Corresponding
Society, composed mainly of working-men, was the direct outcome of the
excitement caused by the developments of the French Revolution. Its
leaders were obscure and usually illiterate men, who delighted to
propound their theories for the universal reformation of society and the
state in rhetoric of which the characteristic phrases were borrowed from
the tribune of the Jacobin Club. Later generations have learned by
repeated experience that the eloquence of Hyde Park orators is not the
voice of England; there were some even then--among those not immediately
responsible for keeping order--who urged the government "to trust the
people";[6] but with the object-lesson of France before them it is not
altogether surprising that ministers refused to believe in the
harmlessness of societies, which not only kept up a fraternal
correspondence with the National Convention and the Jacobin Club, but,
by attempting to establish throughout the country a network of
affiliated clubs, were apparently aiming at setting up in Great Britain
the Jacobin idea of popular control.
The danger, of course, was absurdly exaggerated; as indeed was proved by
the very popularity of the repressive measures to which the government
thought it necessary to resort, and which gave to the vapourings of a
few knots of agitators the dignity of a widespread conspiracy for the
overthrow of the constitution. On the 1st of December 1792 a
proclamation was issued calling out the militia on the ground that a
dangerous spirit of tumult and disorder had been excited by
evil-disposed persons, acting in concert with persons in foreign parts,
and this statement was repeated in the king's speech at the opening of
parliament on the 13th. In spite of the protests of Sheridan and other
members of the opposition, a campaign of press and other prosecutions
now began which threatened to extinguish the most cherished right of
Englishmen--liberty of speech. The country was flooded with government
spies and informers, whose efforts were seconded by such voluntary
societies as the Association for preserving Liberty and Property against
Republicans and Levellers, founded by John Reeves, the historian of
English law. No one was safe from these zealous and too often credulous
defenders of the established order; and a few indiscreet words spoken in
a coffee house were enough to bring imprisonment and ruin, as in the
case of John Frost, a respectable attorney, condemned for sedition in
March 1793. In Scotland the panic, and the consequent cruelty, were
worse than in England. The meeting at Edinburgh of a "convention of
delegates of the associated friends of the people," at which some
foolish and exaggerated language was used, was followed by the trial of
Thomas Muir, a talented young advocate whose brilliant defence did not
save him from a sentence of fourteen years' transportation (August 30,
1793), while seven years' transportation was the punishment of the Rev.
T. Fyshe Palmer for circulating an address from "a society of the
friends of liberty to their fellow-citizens" in favour of a reform of
the House of Commons. These sentences and the proceedings which led up
to them, though attacked with bitter eloquence by Sheridan and Fox, were
confirmed by a large majority in parliament.
It was not, however, till late in the session of 1794 that ministers
laid before parliament any evidence of seditious practices. In May
certain leaders of democratic societies were arrested and their papers
seized, and on the 13th a king's message directed the books of certain
corresponding societies to be laid before both Houses. The committee of
the House of Commons at once reported that there was evidence of a
conspiracy to supersede the House of Commons by a national convention,
and Pitt proposed and carried a bill suspending the Habeas Corpus Act.
This was followed by further reports of the committees of both Houses,
presenting evidence of the secret manufacture of arms and of other
proceedings calculated to endanger the public peace. A series of state
prosecutions followed. The trials of Robert Watt and David Downie for
high treason (August and September 1794) actually revealed a treasonable
plot on the part of a few obscure individuals at Edinburgh, who were
found in the possession of no less than fifty-seven pikes of home
manufacture, wherewith to overthrow the British government. The
execution of Watt gave to this trial a note of tragedy which was absent
from that of certain members of the Corresponding Society, accused of
conspiring to murder the king by means of a poisoned arrow shot from an
air-gun. The ridicule that greeted the revelation of the "Pop-gun Plot"
marked the beginning of a reaction that found a more serious expression
in the trials of Thomas Hardy, John Horne Tooke and John Thelwall
(October and November 1794). The prisoners were accused of high treason,
their chief offence consisting in their attempt to assemble a general
convention of the people, ostensibly for the purpose of obtaining
parliamentary reform, but really--as the prosecution urged--for
subverting the constitution. This latter charge, though proved to the
satisfaction of the committees of both Houses of Parliament, broke down
under the cross-examination of the government witnesses by the counsel
for the defence, and could indeed only have been substantiated by a
dangerous stretching of the doctrine of constructive treason. Happily
the jury refused to convict, and its verdict saved the nation from the
disgrace of meting out the extreme penalty of high treason to an attempt
to hold a public meeting for the redress of grievances.
The common sense of a British jury had preserved, in spite of parliament
and ministry, that free right of meeting which was to be one of the
strongest instruments of future reform. The government, however, saw
little reason in the events of the following months for reversing their
coercive policy. The year 1795 was one of great suffering and great
popular unrest; for the effect of the war upon industry was now
beginning to be felt, and the distress had been aggravated by two bad
harvests. The sudden determination of those in power, who had hitherto
advocated reform, to stereotype the existing system, closed the avenues
of hope to those who had expected an improvement of their lot from
constitutional changes, and the disaffected temper of the populace that
resulted was taken advantage of by the London Corresponding Society,
emboldened by its triumph in the courts, to organize open and really
dangerous demonstrations, such as the vast mass meeting at Copenhagen
House on the 26th of October. On the 29th of October the king, on his
way to open parliament, was attacked by an angry mob shouting, "Give us
bread," "No Pitt," "No war," "No famine,"; and the glass panels of his
state coach were smashed to pieces.
The result of these demonstrations was the introduction in the House of
Lords, on the 4th of November, of the Treasonable Practices Bill, the
main principle of which was that it modified the law of treason by
dispensing with the necessity for the proof of an overt act in order to
secure conviction; and in the House of Commons, on the 10th, of the
Seditious Meetings Bill, which seriously limited the right of public
meeting, making all meetings of over fifty persons, as well as all
political debates and lectures, subject to the previous consent and
active supervision of the magistrates. In spite of the strenuous
resistance of the opposition, led by Fox, and of numerous meetings of
protest held outside the walls of parliament, both bills passed into law
by enormous majorities. The inevitable result followed. The London
Corresponding Society and other political clubs, deprived of the right
of public meeting, became secret societies pledged to the overthrow of
the existing system by any means. United Englishmen and United Scotsmen
plotted with United Irishmen for a French invasion, and sedition was
fomented in the army and the navy. Their baneful activities were exposed
in the inquiries that followed the Irish rebellion of 1798, and the
result was the Corresponding Societies Bill, introduced by Pitt on the
19th of April 1799, which completed the series of repressive measures
and practically suspended the popular constitution of England. The right
of public meeting, of free speech, of the free press had alike ceased
for the time to exist.
The Revolutionary War.
The justification of the government in all this was the life and death
struggle in which Great Britain was engaged with the power of republican
France in Europe. Yet Pitt's conduct of the war, so far as the continent
was concerned, had hitherto led to nothing but failure after failure. In
1794, in spite of the presence of an English army under the duke of
York, the Austrian Netherlands had been finally conquered and annexed to
the French republic; in 1795 the Dutch republic was affiliated to that
of France, and the peace of Basel between Prussia and the French
republic left Austria to continue the war alone with the aid of British
subsidies. On the sea Great Britain had been more successful, Howe's
victory of the 1st of June 1794 being the first of the long series of
defeats inflicted on the French navy, while in 1795 a beginning was made
of the vast expansion of the British Empire by the capture of Ceylon and
the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch (see FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS).
The war, however, had become so expensive, and its results were
evidently so small, that there was a growing feeling in England in
favour of peace, especially as the Reign of Terror had come to an end in
1794, and a regular government, the Directory, had been appointed in
1795. At last Pitt was forced to yield to the popular clamour, and in
1796 Lord Malmesbury was sent to France to treat for peace. The
negotiation, however, was at once broken off by his demand that France
should abandon the Netherlands.
Hoche's expedition to Ireland.
The French government, assured now of the assistance of Spain and
Holland, and freed of the danger from La Vendee, now determined to
attempt the invasion of Ireland. On the 16th of December a fleet of 17
battle-ships, 13 frigates and 15 smaller vessels set sail from Brest,
carrying an expeditionary force of some 13,000 men under General Hoche.
The British fleet, under Lord Bridport, was wintering at Spithead; and
before it could put to sea the French had slipped past. Before it
reached the coast of Ireland, however, the French fleet had already
suffered serious losses, owing partly to the attacks of British frigate
detachments, partly to the bad seamanship of the French crews and the
rottenness of the ships. Only a part of the fleet succeeded in reaching
Bantry Bay on the 20th of December, and of these a large number were
scattered by a storm on the 23rd. Hoche himself, with the French
admiral, had been driven far to the westward in an effort to avoid
capture; the attempt of Grouchy, in his absence, to land a force was
defeated by the weather, and by the end of the month the whole
expedition was in full retreat for Brest. A French diversion on the
coast of Pembroke was even less successful; a force of 1500 men, under
Colonel Tate, an American adventurer, landed in Cardigan Bay on the 22nd
of February 1797, but was at once surrounded by the local militia and
surrendered without a blow.
Mutinies at Spithead and the Nore.
Battle of Camperdown.
A more serious attempt was now made to renew the enterprise by means of
a junction of the French, Spanish and Dutch fleets. The victory of
Jervis over the Spanish fleet at St Vincent on the 14th of February
postponed the imminence of the danger; but this again became acute owing
to the general disaffection in the fleet, which in April and May found
vent in the serious mutinies at Spithead and the Nore. The mutiny at
Spithead, which was due solely to the intolerable conditions under which
the seamen served at the time, was ended on the 17th of May by
concessions: an increase of pay, the removal of officers who had abused
their power of discipline, and the promise of a general free pardon.
More serious was the outbreak at the Nore. The disaffection had spread
practically to the whole of Admiral Duncan's fleet, and by the beginning
of June the mutineers were blockading the Thames with no less than 26
vessels. The demands of the seamen were more extensive than at Spithead;
their resistance was better organized; and they were suspected, though
without reason, of harbouring revolutionary designs. The return of the
Channel fleet to its duty emboldened the admiralty to refuse any
concessions, and the vigorous measures of repression taken proved
effective. One by one the mutinous crews surrendered; and the arrest of
the ringleader, Richard Parker, on board the "Sandwich," on the 14th of
June, brought the affair to an end.[7] The seamen regained their
reputation, and those who had been imprisoned their liberty, by Duncan's
victory over the Dutch fleet at Camperdown (October 11), by which the
immediate danger was averted. Though the French attempt at a concerted
invasion had failed, however, the Directory did not abandon the
enterprise, and commissioned Bonaparte to draw up fresh plans.
At the close of the year 1797 the position of Great Britain was indeed
sufficiently alarming. On the 18th of April, during the very crisis of
the mutiny at Spithead, Austria had signed with Bonaparte the
humiliating terms of the preliminary peace of Leoben, which six months
later were embodied in the treaty of Campo Formio (October 17). On the
10th of August Portugal had concluded a treaty with the French Republic;
and Great Britain was left without an ally in Europe. The mutiny at the
Nore, the threat of rebellion in Ireland, the alarming fall in consols,
argued strongly against continuing the war single-handed, and in July
Lord Malmesbury had been sent to Lille to open fresh negotiations with
the plenipotentiaries of France. The negotiations broke down on the
refusal of England to restore the Cape of Good Hope to the Dutch. But
though forced, in spite of misgivings, to continue the struggle, the
British government in one very important respect was now in a far better
position to do so. For though Great Britain was now isolated and her
policy in Europe advertised as a failure, the temper of the British
people was less inclined to peace in 1798 than it had been three years
before. The early enthusiasm of the disfranchised classes for French
principles had cooled with the later developments of the Revolution; the
attempted invasions had roused the national spirit; and in the public
imagination the sinister figure of Bonaparte, the rapacious conqueror,
was beginning to loom large to the exclusion of lesser issues.
Henceforth, in spite of press prosecutions and trials for political
libel, the government was supported by public opinion in its vigorous
prosecution of the war.
The Act of Union with Ireland.
Resignation of Pitt.
If the danger of French invasion was a reality, it was so mainly owing
to the deplorable condition of Ireland, where the natural disaffection
of the Roman Catholic majority of the population--deprived of political
and many social rights, and exposed to the insults and oppression of a
Protestant minority corrupted by centuries of ascendancy--invited the
intervention of a foreign enemy. The full measure of the intolerable
conditions prevailing in the country was revealed by the horrors of the
rebellion of 1798, and after this had been suppressed Pitt decided that
the only way to deal with the situation was to establish a union between
Great Britain and Ireland, similar to that which had proved so
successful in the case of England and Scotland. He saw that to establish
peace in Ireland the Roman Catholics would have to be enfranchised; he
realized that to enfranchise them in a separated Ireland would be to
subject the proud Protestant minority to an impossible domination, and
to establish not peace but war. The Union, then, was in his view the
necessary preliminary to Catholic emancipation, which was at the same
time the reward held out to the majority of the Irish people for the
surrender of their national quasi-independence. It was a bribe little
likely to appeal to the Protestant minority which constituted the Irish
parliament, and to them other inducements had to be offered if the
scheme was to be carried through. These inducements were not all
corrupt. Those members who stood out were, indeed, bought by a lavish
distribution of money and coronets; but the advantages to Ireland which
might reasonably be expected from the Union were many and obvious; and
if all the promises held out by the promoters of the measure have even
now not been realized, the fault is not theirs. The Act of Union was
placed on the statute-book in 1800; Catholic emancipation was to have
been accomplished in the following session, the first of the united
parliament. But Pitt's policy broke on the stubborn obstinacy of George
III., who believed himself bound by his coronation oath to resist any
concession to the enemies of the Established Church. The disadvantage of
the possession of too strait a conscience in politics was never more
dismally illustrated. To the Irish people it was the first breach of
faith in connexion with the Union, and threw them into opposition to a
settlement into which they believed themselves to have been drawn under
false pretences. Pitt, realizing this, had no option but to resign.
Bonaparte breaks up the coalition.
The resignation of the great minister who had so long held the reins of
power coincided with a critical situation in Europe. The isolation of
Bonaparte in Egypt, as the result of Nelson's victory of the Nile
(1798), had enabled the allies to recover some of the ground lost to
France. But this had merely increased Bonaparte's prestige, and on his
return in 1799 he found no difficulty in making himself master of France
by the _coup d'etat_ of the 18th Brumaire. The campaign of Marengo
followed (1800) and the peace of Luneville, which not only once more
isolated Great Britain, but raised up against her new enemies, to the
list of whom she added by using her command of the sea to enforce the
right of search in order to seize enemies' goods in neutral vessels.
Russia joined with Sweden and Denmark, all hitherto friendly powers, in
resistance to this claim.
Addington ministry.
The peace of Amiens.
Such was the position when Addington became prime minister. He was a man
of weak character and narrow intellect, whose main claim to succeed Pitt
was that he shared to the full the Protestant prejudices of king and
people. His tenure of power was, indeed, marked by British successes
abroad; by Nelson's victory at Copenhagen, which broke up the northern
alliance, and by Abercromby's victory at Alexandria, which forced the
French to evacuate Egypt; but these had been prepared by the previous
administration. Addington's real work was the peace of Amiens (1802), an
experimental peace, as the king called it, to see if the First Consul
could be contented to restrain himself within the very wide limits by
which his authority in Europe was still circumscribed.
Renewal of the war.
Pitt returns to office.
In a few months Great Britain was made aware that the experiment would
not succeed. Interference and annexation became the standing policy of
the new French government; and Britain, discovering how little intention
Bonaparte had of carrying out the spirit of the treaty, refused to
abandon Malta, as she had engaged to do by the terms of peace. The war
began again, no longer a war against revolutionary principles and their
propaganda, but against the boundless ambitions of a military conqueror.
This time the British nation was all but unanimous in resistance. This
time its resistance would be sooner or later supported by all that was
healthy in Europe. The news that Bonaparte was making preparations on a
vast scale for the invasion of England roused a stubborn spirit of
resistance in the country. Volunteers were enrolled, and the coast was
dotted with Martello towers, many of which yet remain as monuments of
the time when the "army of England" was encamped on the heights near
Boulogne within sight of the English cliffs. To meet so great a crisis
Addington was not the man. He had been ceaselessly assailed, in and out
of parliament, by the trenchant criticism, and often unmannerly wit, of
"Pitt's friends," among whom George Canning was now conspicuous. Pitt
himself had remained silent; but in view of the seriousness of the
crisis and of a threatened illness of the king, which would have
necessitated a regency and--in view of the prince of Wales's dislike for
him--his own permanent exclusion from office, he now put himself forward
once more. The government majorities in the House now rapidly dwindled;
on the 26th of April 1804, Addington resigned; and Pitt, after his
attempt to form a national coalition ministry had broken down on the
king's refusal to admit Fox, became head of a government constructed on
a narrow Tory basis. Of the members of the late government Lord Eldon,
the duke of Portland, Lord Westmorland, Lord Castlereagh and Lord
Hawkesbury retained office, the latter surrendering the foreign office
to Lord Harrowby and going to the home office. Dundas, now Lord
Melville, became first lord of the admiralty, and the cabinet further
included Lord Camden, Lord Mulgrave and the duke of Montrose. Canning,
Huskisson and Perceval were given subordinate offices.
Battle of Trafalgar.
Austerlitz.
Save for the commanding personality of Pitt, the new government was
scarcely stronger than that which it had replaced. It had to face the
same Whig opposition, led by Fox, who scoffed at the French peril, and
reinforced by Addington and his friends; and the whole burden of meeting
this opposition fell upon Pitt; for Castlereagh, the only other member
of the cabinet in the House of Commons, was of little use in debate.
Nevertheless, fresh vigour was infused into the conduct of the war. The
Additional Forces Act, passed in the teeth of a strenuous opposition,
introduced the principle of a modified system of compulsion to
supplement the deficiencies of the army and reserve, while the navy was
largely increased. Abroad, Pitt's whole energies were directed to
forming a fresh coalition against Bonaparte, who, on the 14th of May
1804, had proclaimed himself emperor of the French; but it was a year
before Russia signed with Great Britain the treaty of St Petersburg
(April 11, 1805), and the accession to the coalition of Austria, Sweden
and Naples was not obtained till the following September. In the
following month (October 21) Nelson's crowning victory at Trafalgar over
the allied fleets of France and Spain relieved England of the dread of
invasion. It served, however, to precipitate the crisis on the continent
of Europe; the great army assembled at Boulogne was turned eastwards; by
the capitulation of Ulm (October 19) Austria lost a large part of her
forces; and the last news that reached Pitt on his death-bed was that of
the ruin of all his hopes by the crushing victory of Napoleon over the
Russians and Austrians at Austerlitz (December 2).