REFORM MOVEMENTS
I. POLITICAL CHANGE
The last years of Mill's life correspond to the period in which
Utilitarianism reached, in certain respects, its highest pitch of
influence. The little band who acknowledged him as their chief leader,
and as the authorised lieutenant of Bentham, considered themselves to
be in the van of progress. Though differing on many points from each
other, and regarded with aversion or distrust by the recognised party
leaders, they were in their most militant and confident state of mind.
They were systematically reticent as to their religious views: they
left to popular orators the public advocacy of their favourite
political measures; and the credit of finally passing such of those
measures as were adopted fell chiefly to the hands of the great
political leaders. The Utilitarians are ignored in the orthodox Whig
legend. In the preface to his collected works, Sydney Smith runs over
the usual list of changes which had followed, and, as he seems to
think, had in great part resulted from, the establishment of the
_Edinburgh Review_. Smith himself, and Jeffrey and Horner and, above
all, 'the gigantic Brougham,' had blown the blast which brought down
the towers of Jericho. Sir G. O. Trevelyan, in his _Life of Macaulay_,
describes the advent of the Whigs to office in a similar sense.
'Agitators and incendiaries,' he says, 'retired into the background,
as will always be the case when the country is in earnest: and
statesmen who had much to lose, and were not afraid to risk it,
stepped quietly and firmly to the front. The men and the sons of the
men who had so long endured exclusion from office, embittered by
unpopularity, at length reaped their reward.'[32] The Radical version
of the history is different. The great men, it said, who had left the
cause to be supported by agitators so long as the defence was
dangerous and profitless, stepped forward now that it was clearly
winning, and received both the reward and the credit. Mill and Place
could not find words to express their contempt for the trimming,
shuffling Whigs. They were probably unjust enough in detail; but they
had a strong case in some respects. The Utilitarians represented that
part of the reforming party which had a definite and a reasoned creed.
They tried to give logic where the popular agitators were content with
declamation, and represented absolute convictions when the Whig
reformers were content with tentative and hesitating compromises. They
had some grounds for considering themselves to be the 'steel of the
lance'; the men who formulated and deliberately defended the
principles which were beginning to conquer the world.
The Utilitarians, I have said, became a political force in the
concluding years of the great war struggle. The catastrophe of the
revolution had unchained a whole whirlwind of antagonisms. The
original issues had passed out of sight; and great social,
industrial, and political changes were in progress which made the
nation that emerged from the war a very different body from the nation
that had entered it nearly a generation before. It is not surprising
that at first very erroneous estimates were made of the new position
when peace at last returned.
The Radicals, who had watched on one side the growth of debt and
pauperism, and, on the other hand, the profits made by stockjobbers,
landlords, and manufacturers, ascribed all the terrible sufferings to
the selfish designs of the upper classes. When the war ended they
hoped that the evils would diminish, while the pretext for
misgovernment would be removed. A bitter disappointment followed. The
war was followed by widespread misery. Plenty meant ruin to
agriculturists, and commercial 'gluts' resulting in manufacturers'
warehouses crammed with unsaleable goods. The discontent caused by
misery had been encountered during the war by patriotic fervour. It
was not a time for redressing evils, when the existence of the nation
was at stake. Now that the misery continued, and the excuse for
delaying redress had been removed, a demand arose for parliamentary
reform. Unfortunately discontent led also to sporadic riotings, to
breaking of machinery and burning of ricks. The Tory government saw in
these disturbances a renewal of the old Jacobin spirit, and had
visions--apparently quite groundless--of widespread conspiracies and
secret societies ready to produce a ruin of all social order. It had
recourse to the old repressive measures, the suspension of the Habeas
Corpus Act, the passage of the 'Six Acts,' and the prosecution of
popular agitators. Many observers fancied that the choice lay between
a servile insurrection and the establishment of arbitrary power.
By degrees, however, peace brought back prosperity. Things settled
down; commerce revived; and the acute distress passed away. The whole
nation went mad over the wrongs of Queen Caroline; and the demand for
political reform became for the time less intense. But it soon
appeared that, although this crisis had been surmounted, the temper of
the nation had profoundly changed. The supreme power still belonged
constitutionally to the landed interest. But it had a profoundly
modified social order behind it. The war had at least made it
necessary to take into account the opinions of larger classes. An
appeal to patriotism means that some regard must be paid to the
prejudices and passions of people at large. When enormous sums were to
be raised, the moneyed classes would have their say as to modes of
taxation. Commerce and manufactures went through crises of terrible
difficulty due to the various changes of the war; but, on the whole,
the industrial classes were steadily and rapidly developing in wealth,
and becoming relatively more important. The war itself was, in one
aspect at least, a war for the maintenance of the British supremacy in
trade. The struggle marked by the policy of the 'Orders in Council' on
one side, and Napoleon's decrees on the other, involved a constant
reference to Manchester and Liverpool and the rapidly growing
manufacturing and commercial interests. The growth, again, of the
press, at a time when every one who could read was keenly interested
in news of most exciting and important events, implied the rapid
development of a great organ of public opinion.
The effects of these changes soon became palpable. The political
atmosphere was altogether different; and an entirely new set of
influences was governing the policy of statesmen. The change affected
the Tory as much as the Whig. However strongly he might believe that
he was carrying on the old methods, he was affected by the new ideas
which had been almost unconsciously incorporated in his creed. How
great was the change, and how much it took the shape of accepting
Utilitarian theories, may be briefly shown by considering a few
characteristic facts.
The ablest men who held office at the time were Canning, Huskisson,
and Peel. They represented the conservatism which sought to
distinguish itself from mere obstructiveness. Their influence was felt
in many directions. The Holy Alliance had the sympathy of men who
could believe that the war had brought back the pre-revolutionary
order, and that its main result had been to put the Jacobin spirit in
chains. Canning's accession to office in 1822 meant that the foreign
policy of England was to be definitely opposed to the policy of the
'Holy Alliance.' A pithy statement of his view is given in a
remarkable letter, dated 1st February 1823, to the prince who was soon
to become Charles X.[33] The French government had declared that a
people could only receive a free constitution as a gift from their
legitimate kings. Should the English ministry, says Canning, after
this declaration, support the French in their attack upon the
constitutional government of Spain, it would be driven from office
amid 'the execration of Tories and Whigs alike.' He thought that the
doctrine of the sovereignty of the people was less alien to the
spirit of the British Constitution than the opposite doctrine of the
legitimists. In the early days, when Canning sat at the feet of Pitt,
the war, if not in their eyes an Anti-Jacobin crusade, had to be
supported by stimulating the Anti-Jacobin sentiment. In later days,
the war had come to be a struggle against the oppression of nations by
foreign despots. Canning could now accept the version of Pitt's policy
which corresponded to the later phase. Englishmen in general had no
more sympathy for despots who claimed a divine right than for despots
who acted in the name of democracy--especially when the despots
threatened to interfere with British trade. When Canning called 'the
new world into existence to redress the balance of the old,'[34] he
declared that English policy should resist threats from the Holy
Alliance directed against some of our best customers. The general
approval had special force among the Utilitarians. In the South
American States Bentham had found eager proselytes, and had hoped to
become a Solon. He had been consulted by the constitutionalists in
Spain and Portugal; and he and his disciples, Joseph Hume in
particular, had joined the Greek Committee, and tried to regenerate
Athens by sound Utilitarian tracts. All English Liberals sympathised
with the various movements which were more or less favoured by
Canning's policy; but the Utilitarians could also see in them the
opening of new fields already white for the harvest.
The foreign policy was significant. It proved that the war, whatever
else it had done, had not brought back the old order; and the old
British traditions in favour of liberty of speech and action would
revive now that they were no longer trammelled by the fears of a
destructive revolution. The days of July in 1830 gave fresh importance
to the reaction of foreign upon English politics.
II. LAW REFORM
Meanwhile, however, the Utilitarians had a far stronger interest in
domestic problems. In the first place, in Bentham's especial province
a complete change of feeling had taken place. Romilly was Bentham's
earliest disciple (so Bentham said), and looked up to him with 'filial
reverence.' Every 'reformatiuncle' introduced by Romilly in parliament
had been first brought to Bentham, to be conned over by the two.[35]
With great difficulty Romilly had got two or three measures through
the House of Commons, generally to be thrown out by Eldon's influence
in the Lords.[36] After Romilly's death in 1818, the cause was taken
up by the Whig philosopher, Sir James Mackintosh, and made a distinct
step in advance. Though there were still obstacles in the upper
regions, a committee was obtained to consider the frequency of capital
punishment, and measures were passed to abolish it in particular
cases. Finally, in 1823, the reform was adopted by Peel. Peel was
destined to represent in the most striking way the process by which
new ideas were gradually infiltrating the upper sphere. Though still a
strong Tory and a representative of the university of Oxford, he was
closely connected with the manufacturing classes, and had become
aware, as he wrote to Croker (23rd March 1820), that public opinion
had grown to be too large for its accustomed channels. As Home
Secretary, he took up the whole subject of the criminal law, and
passed in the next years a series of acts consolidating and mitigating
the law, and repealing many old statutes. A measure of equal
importance was his establishment in 1829 of the metropolitan police
force, which at last put an end to the old chaotic muddle described by
Colquhoun of parish officers and constables. Other significant legal
changes marked the opening of a new era. Eldon was the very
incarnation of the spirit of obstruction; and the Court of Chancery,
over which he presided for a quarter of a century, was thought to be
the typical stronghold of the evil principles denounced by Bentham. An
attack in 1823 upon Eldon was made in the House of Commons by John
Williams (1777-1846), afterwards a judge. Eldon, though profoundly
irritated by the personal imputations involved, consented to the
appointment of a commission, which reported in 1825, and recommended
measures of reform. In 1828, Brougham made a great display upon which
he had consulted Bentham.[37] In a speech of six hours' length he gave
a summary of existing abuses, which may still be read with
interest.[38] Commissions were appointed to investigate the procedure
of the Common Law Court and the law of real property. Another
commission, intended to codify the criminal law, was appointed in
1833. Brougham says that of 'sixty capital defects' described in his
speech, fifty-five had been removed, or were in course of removal,
when his speeches were collected (_i.e._ 1838). Another speech of
Brougham's in 1828 dealt with the carrying into execution of a
favourite plan of Bentham's--the formation of local courts, which
ultimately became the modern county courts.[39] The facts are
significant of a startling change--no less than an abrupt transition
from the reign of entire apathy to a reign of continuous reform
extending over the whole range of law. The Reform Bill accelerated the
movement, but it had been started before Bentham's death. The great
stone, so long immovable, was fairly set rolling.
Bentham's influence, again, in bringing about the change is
undeniable. He was greatly dissatisfied with Brougham's speech, and,
indeed, would have been dissatisfied with anything short of a complete
logical application of his whole system. He held Brougham to be
'insincere,'[40] a trimmer and popularity-hunter, but a useful
instrument. Brougham's astonishing vanity and self-seeking prompted
and perverted his amazing activity. He represents the process, perhaps
necessary, by which a philosopher's ideas have to be modified before
they can be applied to practical application. Brougham, however, could
speak generously of men no longer in a position to excite his
jealousy. He says in the preface to his first speech that 'the age of
law reform and the age of Jeremy Bentham' were the same thing, and
declares Bentham to be the 'first legal philosopher' who had appeared
in the world. As the Chief advocates of Bentham he reckons Romilly,
his parliamentary representative; Dumont, his literary interpreter;
and James Mill, who, in his article upon 'jurisprudence,' had
popularised the essential principles of the doctrine.
The Utilitarians had at last broken up the barriers of obstruction and
set the stream flowing. Whigs and Tories were taking up their
theories. They naturally exaggerated in some respects the completeness
of the triumph. The English law has not yet been codified, and it was
characteristic of the Benthamite school to exaggerate the facility of
that process. In their hatred of 'judge-made law' they assumed too
easily that all things would be arranged into convenient pigeon-holes
as soon as 'Judge and Co.' were abolished. It was a characteristic
error to exaggerate the simplicity of their problem, and to fail to
see that 'judge-made' law corresponds to a necessary inductive process
by which the complex and subtle differences have to be gradually
ascertained and fitted into a systematic statement. One other remark
suggests itself. The Utilitarians saw in the dogged obstructiveness of
Eldon and his like the one great obstacle to reform. It did not occur
to them that the clumsiness of parliamentary legislation might be
another difficulty. They failed to notice distinctly one tendency of
their reforms. To make a code you require a sovereign strong enough to
dominate the lawyers, not a system in which lawyers are an essential
part of a small governing class. Codification, in short, means
centralisation in one department. Blindness to similar results
elsewhere was a characteristic of the Utilitarian thinkers.
III. ECONOMIC REFORM
In another department the Utilitarians boasted, and also with good
reason, of the triumph of their tenets. Political economy was in the
ascendant. Professorships were being founded in Oxford, Cambridge,[41]
London, and Edinburgh. Mrs. Marcet's _Conversations_ (1818) were
spreading the doctrine among babes and sucklings. The Utilitarians
were the sacred band who defended the strictest orthodoxy against all
opponents. They spoke as recognised authorities upon some of the most
vital questions of the day, of which I need here only notice Free
Trade, the doctrine most closely associated with the teaching of their
revered Adam Smith. In 1816 Ricardo remarks with satisfaction that the
principle 'is daily obtaining converts' even among the most prejudiced
classes; and he refers especially to a petition in which the clothiers
of Gloucestershire[42] expressed their willingness to give up all
restrictions. There was, indeed, an important set-off against this
gain. The landowners were being pledged to protection. They had
decided that in spite of the peace, the price of wheat must be kept up
to 80s. a quarter. They would no longer be complimented as Adam Smith
had complimented them on their superior liberality, and were now
creating a barrier only to be stormed after a long struggle.
Meanwhile the principle was making rapid way among their rivals. One
symptom was the adoption by the London merchants in 1820 of a famous
petition on behalf of free trade.[43] It was drawn up by Thomas Tooke
(1774-1858), who had long been actively engaged in the Russian trade,
and whose _History of Prices_ is in some respects the most valuable
economic treatise of the time. Tooke gives a curious account of his
action on this occasion.[44] He collected a few friends engaged in
commerce, who were opposed to the corn laws. He found that several of
them had 'crude and confused' notions upon the subject, and that each
held that his own special interests should be exempted on some pretext
from the general rule. After various dexterous pieces of diplomacy,
however, he succeeded in obtaining the signature of Samuel Thornton, a
governor of the bank of England, and ultimately procured a sufficient
number of signatures by private solicitation. He was favourably
received by the Prime Minister Lord Liverpool, and Vansittart (then
Chancellor of the Exchequer), and finally got the petition presented
to the House of Commons by Alexander Baring (afterwards Lord
Ashburton). Tooke remarks that the Liverpool administration was in
advance, not only of the public generally, but of the 'mercantile
community,' Glasgow and Manchester, however, followed in the same
steps, and the petition became a kind of official manifesto of the
orthodox doctrine. The Political Economy Club formed next year at
Tooke's instigation (April 18, 1821) was intended to hasten the
process of dispersing crude and confused ideas. It was essentially an
organ of the Utilitarian propaganda.
The influence of the economists upon public policy was shown by the
important measures carried through chiefly by Huskisson. Huskisson
(1770-1830) was a type of the most intelligent official of his time.
Like his more brilliant friend Canning, he had been introduced into
office under Pitt, and retained a profound reverence for his early
leader. Huskisson was a thorough man of business, capable of wrestling
with blue-books, of understanding the sinking-fund, and having
theories about the currency; a master of figures and statistics and
the whole machinery of commerce. Though eminently useful, he might at
any moment be applying some awkward doctrine from Adam Smith.
Huskisson began the series of economic reforms which were brought to
their full development by Peel and Gladstone. The collection of his
speeches[45] incidentally brings out very clearly his relation to the
Utilitarians. The most remarkable is a great speech of April 24,
1826[46] (upon the state of the silk manufacture), of which Canning
declared that he had never heard one abler, or which made a deeper
impression upon the House. In this he reviews his policy, going over
the most important financial measures of the preceding period. They
made a new era, and he dates the beginning of the movement from the
London petition, and the 'luminous speech' made by Baring when
presenting it. We followed public opinion, he says, and did not create
it.[47] Adopting the essential principles of the petition, the
government had in the first place set free the great woollen trade.
The silk trade had been emancipated by abolishing the Spitalfield Acts
passed in the previous century, which enabled magistrates to fix the
rates of wages. The principle of prohibition had been abandoned,
though protective duties remained. The navigation laws had been
materially relaxed, and steps taken towards removing restrictions of
different kinds upon trade with France and with India. One symptom of
the change was the consolidation of the custom law effected by James
Deacon Hume (1774-1842), an official patronised by Huskisson, and an
original member of the Political Economy Club. By a law passed in
1825, five hundred statutes dating from the time of Edward I. were
repealed, and the essence of the law given in a volume of moderate
size. Finally, the removal of prohibitions was undermining the
smugglers.
The measures upon which Huskisson justly prided himself might have
been dictated by the Political Economy Club itself. So far as they
went they were an application of the doctrines of its thoroughgoing
members, of Mill, Ricardo, and the orthodox school. They indeed
supported him in the press. The _Morning Chronicle_, which expressed
their views, declared him to be the most virtuous minister, that is
(in true Utilitarian phrase), the most desirous of national welfare
who had ever lived. The praise of Radicals would be not altogether
welcome. Canning, in supporting his friend, maintained that sound
commercial policy belonged no more to the Whigs than to the Tories.
Huskisson and he were faithful disciples of Pitt, whose treaty with
France in 1786, assailed by Fox and the Whigs, had been the first
practical application of the Wealth of Nations. Neither party,
perhaps, could claim a special connection with good or bad political
economy; and certainly neither was prepared to incur political
martyrdom in zeal for scientific truth. A question was beginning to
come to the front which would make party lines dependent upon economic
theories, and Huskisson's view of this was characteristic.
The speech from which I have quoted begins with an indignant retort
upon a member who had applied to him Burke's phrase about a
perfect-bred metaphysician exceeding the devil in malignity and
contempt for mankind. Huskisson frequently protested even against the
milder epithet of theorist. He asserted most emphatically that he
appealed to 'experience' and not to 'theory,' a slippery distinction
which finds a good exposure in Bentham's _Book of Fallacies_.[48] The
doctrine, however, was a convenient one for Huskisson. He could appeal
to experience to show that commercial restrictions had injured the
woollen trade, and their absence benefited the cotton trade,[49] and
when he was not being taunted with theories, he would state with
perfect clearness the general free trade argument.[50] But he had to
keep an eye to the uncomfortable tricks which theories sometimes play.
He argued emphatically in 1825[51] that analogy between manufactures
and agriculture is 'illogical.' He does not wish to depress the price
of corn, but to keep it at such a level that our manufactures may not
be hampered by dear food. Here he was forced by stress of politics to
differ from his economical friends. The country gentleman did not wish
to pay duties on his silk or his brandy, but he had a direct and
obvious interest in keeping up the price of corn. Huskisson had
himself supported the Corn Bill of 1815, but it was becoming more and
more obvious that a revision would be necessary. In 1828 he declared
that he 'lamented from the bottom of his soul the mass of evil and
misery and destruction of capital which that law in the course of
twelve years had produced.'[52] Ricardo, meanwhile, and the economists
had from the first applied to agriculture the principles which
Huskisson applied to manufactures.[53] Huskisson's melancholy death
has left us unable to say whether upon this matter he would have been
as convertible as Peel. In any case the general principle of free
trade was as fully adopted by Huskisson and Canning as by the
Utilitarians themselves. The Utilitarians could again claim to be both
the inspirers of the first principles, and the most consistent in
carrying out the deductions. They, it is true, were not generally
biassed by having any interest in rents. They were to be the allies or
teachers of the manufacturing class which began to be decidedly
opposed to the squires and the old order.
In one very important economic question, the Utilitarians not only
approved a change of the law, but were the main agents in bringing it
about. Francis Place was the wire-puller, to whose energy was due the
abolition of the Conspiracy Laws in 1824. Joseph Hume in the House of
Commons, and M'Culloch, then editor of the _Scotsman_, had the most
conspicuous part in the agitation, but Place worked the machinery of
agitation. The bill passed in 1824 was modified by an act of 1825; but
the modification, owing to Place's efforts, was not serious, and the
act, as we are told on good authority, 'effected a real emancipation,'
and for the first time established the right of 'collective
bargaining.'[54] The remarkable thing is that this act, carried on the
principles of 'Radical individualism' and by the efforts of Radical
individualists, was thus a first step towards the application to
practice of socialist doctrine. Place thought that the result of the
act would be not the encouragement, but the decline, of trades-unions.
The unions had been due to the necessity of combining against
oppressive laws, and would cease when those laws were abolished.[55]
This marks a very significant stage in the development of economic
opinion.
IV. CHURCH REFORM
The movement which at this period was most conspicuous politically was
that which resulted in Roman Catholic emancipation, and here, too, the
Utilitarians might be anticipating a complete triumph of their
principles. The existing disqualifications, indeed, were upheld by
little but the purely obstructive sentiment. When the duke of York
swore that 'so help him God!' he would oppose the change to the last,
he summed up the whole 'argument' against it. Canning and Huskisson
here represented the policy not only of Pitt, but of Castlereagh. The
Whigs, indeed, might claim to be the natural representatives of
toleration. The church of England was thoroughly subjugated by the
state, and neither Whig nor Tory wished for a fundamental change. But
the most obvious differentia of Whiggism was a dislike to the
ecclesiastical spirit. The Whig noble was generally more or less of a
freethinker; and upon such topics Holland House differed little from
Queen's Square Place, or differed only in a rather stricter reticence.
Both Whig and Tory might accept Warburton's doctrine of an 'alliance'
between church and state. The Tory inferred that the church should be
supported. His prescription for meeting discontent was 'more yeomanry'
and a handsome sum for church-building. The Whig thought that the
church got a sufficient return in being allowed to keep its revenues.
On the Tory view, the relation might be compared to that of man and
wife in Christian countries where, though the two are one, the husband
is bound to fidelity. On the Whig view it was like a polygamous
system, where the wife is in complete subjection, and the husband may
take any number of concubines. The Whig noble regarded the church as
socially useful, but he was by no means inclined to support its
interests when they conflicted with other political considerations. He
had been steadily in favour of diminishing the privileges of the
establishment, and had taken part in removing the grievances of the
old penal laws. He was not prepared to uphold privileges which
involved a palpable danger to his order.
This position is illustrated by Sydney Smith, the ideal divine of
Holland House. The _Plymley Letters_[56] give his views most pithily.
Smith, a man as full of sound sense as of genuine humour, appeals to
the principles of toleration, and is keenly alive to the absurdity of
a persecution which only irritates without conversion. But he also
appeals to the danger of the situation. 'If Bonaparte lives,'[57] he
says, 'and something is not done to conciliate the Catholics, it seems
to me absolutely impossible but that we must perish.' We are like the
captain of a ship attacked by a pirate, who should begin by examining
his men in the church catechism, and forbid any one to sponge or ram
who had not taken the sacrament according to the forms of the church
of England. He confesses frankly that the strength of the Irish is
with him a strong motive for listening to their claims. To talk of
'not acting from fear is mere parliamentary cant.'[58] Although the
danger which frightened Smith was evaded, this was the argument which
really brought conviction even to Tories in 1829. In any case the
Whigs, whose great boast was their support of toleration, would not be
prompted by any Quixotic love of the church to encounter tremendous
perils in defence of its privileges.
Smith's zeal had its limits. He observes humorously in his preface
that he had found himself after the Reform Bill engaged in the defence
of the National Church against the archbishop of Canterbury and the
bishop of London. The letters to Archdeacon Singleton, written when
the Whigs were flirting with the Radicals, show how much good an old
Whig could find in the establishment. This marks the difference
between the true Whig and the Utilitarian. The Whig would not risk the
country for the sake of church; he would keep the clerical power
strictly subordinate to the power of the state, but then, when
considered from the political side, it was part of a government system
providing him with patronage, and to be guarded from the rude assaults
of the Radical reformer. The Utilitarian, though for the moment he was
in alliance with the Whig, regarded the common victory as a step to
something far more sweeping. He objected to intolerance as decidedly
as the Whig, for absolute freedom of opinion was his most cherished
doctrine. He objected still more emphatically to persecution on behalf
of the church, because he entirely repudiated its doctrines. The
objection to spreading true doctrine by force is a strong one, but
hardly so strong as the objection to a forcible spread of false
doctrine. But, besides this, the church represented to the Utilitarian
precisely the very worst specimen of the corruptions of the time. The
Court of Chancery was bad enough, but the whole ecclesiastical system
with its vast prizes,[59] its opportunities for corrupt patronage, its
pluralism and non-residence was an evil on a larger scale. The
Radical, therefore, unlike the Whig, was an internecine enemy of the
whole system. The 'church of England system,' as Bentham calmly
remarks, is 'ripe for dissolution.'[60] I have already noticed his
quaint proposal for giving effect to his views. Mill, in the
_Westminster Review_, denounced the church of England as the worst of
all churches.[61] To the Utilitarian, in short, the removal of the
disqualification of dissenters and Catholics was thus one step to the
consummation which their logic demanded--the absolute disestablishment
and disendowment of the church. Conservatives in general anticipated
the confiscation of church revenues as a necessary result of reform;
and so far as the spirit of reformers was represented by the
Utilitarians and their Radical allies, they had good grounds for the
fear. James Mill's theory is best indicated by a later article
published in the _London Review_ of July 1835. After pointing out that
the church of England retains all the machinery desired for supporting
priests and preventing the growth of intellect and morality, he
proceeds to ask what the clergy do for their money. They read prayers,
which is a palpable absurdity; they preach sermons to spread
superstitious notions of the Supreme Being, and perform
ceremonies--baptism, and so forth--which are obviously silly. The
church is a mere state machine worked in subservience to the sinister
interest of the governing classes. The way to reform it would be to
equalise the pay: let the clergy be appointed by a 'Minister of Public
Instruction' or the county authorities; abolish the articles, and
constitute a church 'without dogmas or ceremonies'; and employ the
clergy to give lectures on ethics, botany, political economy, and so
forth, besides holding Sunday meetings, dances (decent dances are to
be specially invented for the purpose), and social meals, which would
be a revival of the 'agapai' of the early Christians. For this
purpose, however, it might be necessary to substitute tea and coffee
for wine. In other words, the church is to be made into a popular
London University. The plan illustrates the incapacity of an isolated
clique to understand the real tone of public opinion. I need not
pronounce upon Mill's scheme, which seems to have some sense in it,
but one would like to know whether Newman read his article.
V. SINISTER INTERESTS
In questions of foreign policy, of law reform, of political economy,
and of religious tests, the Utilitarians thus saw the gradual
approximation to their most characteristic views on the part of the
Whigs, and a strong infiltration of the same views among the less
obstructive Tories. They held the logical creed, to which others were
slowly approximating, either from the force of argument or from the
great social changes which were bringing new classes into political
power. The movement for parliamentary reform which for a time
overshadowed all other questions might be regarded as a corollary from
the position already won. Briefly, it was clear that a new social
stratum was exercising a vast influence; the doctrines popular with it
had to be more or less accepted; and the only problem worth
consideration by practical men was whether or not such a change should
be made in the political machinery as would enable the influence to be
exercised by direct and constitutional means. To the purely
obstructive Tory parliamentary reform was a step to the general
cataclysm. The proprietor of a borough, like the proprietor of a
church patronage or commission in the army, had a right to his votes,
and to attack his right was simply confiscation of private property.
The next step might be to confiscate his estate. But even the more
intelligent Conservative drew the line at such a measure. Canning,
Huskisson, and even Peel might accept the views of the Utilitarians in
regard to foreign policy, to law reform, to free trade, or the removal
of religious tests, declaring only that they were obeying 'experience'
instead of logic, and might therefore go just as far as they pleased.
But they were all pledged to resist parliamentary reform to the
utmost. Men thoroughly steeped in official life, and versed in the
actual working of the machinery, were naturally alive to the magnitude
of the change to be introduced. They saw with perfect clearness that
it would amount to a revolution. The old system in which the ruling
classes carried on business by family alliances and bargains between
ministers and great men would be impracticable. The fact that so much
had been done in the way of concession to the ideas of the new classes
was for them an argument against the change. If the governing classes
were ready to reform abuses, why should they be made unable to govern?
A gradual enfranchisement of the great towns on the old system might
be desirable. Such a man as Huskisson, representing great commercial
interests, could not be blind to the necessity. But a thorough
reconstruction was more alarming. As Canning had urged in a great
speech at Liverpool, a House of Commons, thoroughly democratised,
would be incompatible with the existence of the monarchy and the
House of Lords. So tremendously powerful a body would reduce the other
parts of the constitution to mere excrescences, feeble drags upon the
new driving-wheel in which the whole real force would be concentrated.
That this expressed, in point of fact, a serious truth, was, I take
it, undeniable. The sufficient practical answer was, that change was
inevitable. To refuse to adapt the constitutional machinery to the
altered political forces was not to hinder their growth, but to make a
revolution necessary. When, accordingly, the excluded classes began
seriously to demand admission, the only question came to lie between
violent and peaceable methods. The alarm with which our fathers
watched the progress of the measure may seem to us exaggerated, but
they scarcely overestimated the magnitude of the change. The old
rulers were taking a new partner of such power, that whatever
authority was left to them might seem to be left on sufferance. As
soon as he became conscious of his strength, they would be reduced to
nonentities. The Utilitarians took some part in the struggle, and
welcomed the victory with anticipations destined to be, for the time
at least, cruelly disappointed. But they were still a small minority,
whose views rather scandalised the leaders of the party with which
they were in temporary alliance. The principles upon which they based
their demands, as formulated by James Mill, looked, as we shall see,
far beyond the concessions of the moment.
One other political change is significant, though I am unable to give
an adequate account of it. Bentham's denunciation of 'sinister
interests'--one of his leading topics--corresponds to the question of
sinecures, which was among the most effective topics of Radical
declamation. The necessity of limiting the influence of the crown and
excluding 'placemen' from the House of Commons had been one of the
traditional Whig commonplaces, and a little had been done by Burke's
act of 1782 towards limiting pensions and abolishing obsolete offices.
When English Radicalism revived, the assault was renewed in parliament
and the press. During the war little was achieved, though a revival of
the old complaints about placemen in parliament was among the first
symptoms of the rising sentiment. In 1812 an attack was made upon the
'tellers of the Exchequer.' Romilly[62] says that the value of one of
these offices had risen to L26,000 or L27,000 a year. The income came
chiefly from fees, and the actual work, whatever it was, was done by
deputy. The scandal was enormous at a time when the stress upon the
nation was almost unbearable. One of the tellerships was held by a
member of the great Grenville family, who announced that they regarded
the demand for reform as a personal attack upon them. The opposition,
therefore, could not muster even its usual strength, and the motion
for inquiry was rejected. When the war was over, even the government
began to feel that something must be done. In 1817 some acts were
passed[63] abolishing a variety of sinecure offices and 'regulating
certain offices in the Court of Exchequer.' The Radicals considered
this as a mere delusion, because it was provided at the same time that
pensions might be given to persons who had held certain great offices.
The change, however, was apparently of importance as removing the
chief apology for sinecures, and the system with modifications still
remains. The marquis of Camden, one of the tellers of the Exchequer,
voluntarily resigned the fees and accepted only the regular salary of
L2500. His action is commended in the _Black Book_,[64] which
expresses a regret that the example had not been followed by other
great sinecurists. Public opinion was beginning to be felt. During the
subsequent period the cry against sinecures became more emphatic. The
_Black Book_, published originally in 1820 and 1823, and afterwards
reissued, gave a list, so far as it could be ascertained, of all
pensions, and supplied a mass of information for Radical orators. The
amount of pensions is stated at over L1,000,000, including sinecure
offices with over L350,000 annually;[65] and the list of offices
(probably very inaccurate in detail) gives a singular impression of
the strange ramifications of the system. Besides the direct pensions,
every new department of administration seems to have suggested the
foundation of offices which tended to become sinecures. The cry for
'retrenchment' was joined to the cry for reform.[66] Joseph Hume, who
first entered parliament in 1818, became a representative of the
Utilitarian Radicalism, and began a long career of minute criticism
which won for him the reputation of a stupendous bore, but helped to
keep a steady pressure upon ministers.[67] Sir James Graham
(1792-1861) was at this time of Radical tendencies, and first made
himself conspicuous by demanding returns of pensions.[68] The
settlements of the civil lists of George IV., William IV., and
Victoria, gave opportunities for imposing new restrictions upon the
pension system. Although no single sweeping measure was passed, the
whole position was changed. By the time of the Reform Bill, a sinecure
had become an anachronism. The presumption was that whenever an
opportunity offered, it would be suppressed. Some of the sinecure
offices in the Court of Chancery, the 'Keeper of the Hanaper,' the
'Chaffwax,' and so forth, were abolished by an act passed by the
parliament which had just carried the Reform Bill.[69] In 1833 a
reform of the system of naval administration by Sir James Graham got
rid of some cumbrous machinery; and Graham again was intrusted in 1834
with an act under which the Court of Exchequer was finally reformed,
and the 'Clerk of the Pells' and the 'Tellers of the Exchequer' ceased
to exist.[70] Other offices seem to have melted away by degrees,
whenever a chance offered.
Many other of the old abuses had ceased to require any special
denunciations from political theorists. The general principle was
established, and what remained was to apply it in detail. The prison
system was no longer in want of a Howard or a Bentham. Abuses remained
which occupied the admirable Mrs. Fry; and many serious difficulties
had to be solved by a long course of experiment. But it was no longer
a question whether anything should be doing, but of the most
efficient means of bringing about an admittedly desirable end. The
agitation for the suppression of the slave-trade again had been
succeeded by the attack upon slavery. The system was evidently doomed,
although not finally abolished till after the Reform Bill; and
ministers were only considering the question whether the abolition
should be summary or gradual, or what compensation might be made to
vested interests. The old agitation had been remarkable, as I have
said, not only for its end but for the new kind of machinery to which
it had applied. Popular agitation[71] had taken a new shape. The
county associations formed in the last days of the American war of
independence, and the societies due to the French revolution had set a
precedent. The revolutionary societies had been suppressed or had died
out, as opposed to the general spirit of the nation, although they had
done a good deal to arouse political speculation. In the period of
distress which followed the war the Radical reformers had again held
public meetings, and had again been met by repressive measures. The
acts of 1817 and 1819[72] imposed severe restrictions upon the right
of public meeting. The old 'county meeting,' which continued to be
common until the reform period, and was summoned by the
lord-lieutenant or the sheriff on a requisition from the freeholders,
had a kind of constitutional character, though I do not know its
history in detail.[73] The extravagantly repressive measures were an
anachronism, or could only be enforced during the pressure of an
intense excitement. In one way or other, public meetings were soon
being held as frequently as ever. The trial of Queen Caroline gave
opportunity for numerous gatherings, and statesmen began to find that
they must use instead of suppressing them. Canning[74] appears to have
been the first minister to make frequent use of speeches addressed to
public meetings; and meetings to which such appeals were addressed
soon began to use their authority to demand pledges from the
speakers.[75] Representation was to be understood more and more as
delegation. Meanwhile the effect of public meetings was enormously
increased when a general organisation was introduced. The great
precedent was the Catholic Association, founded in 1823 by O'Connell
and Sheil. The peculiar circumstances of the Irish people and their
priests gave a ready-made machinery for the agitation which triumphed
in 1829. The Political Union founded by Attwood at Birmingham in the
same year adopted the method, and led to the triumph of 1832.
Political combination henceforth took a different shape, and in the
ordinary phrase, 'public opinion' became definitely the ultimate and
supreme authority. This enormous change and the corresponding
development of the power of the press, which affected to mould and, at
any rate, expressed public opinion, entirely fell in with Utilitarian
principles. Their part in bringing about the change was of no special
importance except in so far as they more or less inspired the popular
orators. They were, however, ready to take advantage of it. They had
the _Westminster Review_ to take a place beside the _Edinburgh_ and
_Quarterly Reviews_, which had raised periodical writing to a far
higher position than it had ever occupied, and to which leading
politicians and leading authors on both sides had become regular
contributors. The old contempt for journalism was rapidly vanishing.
In 1825 Canning expresses his regret for having given some information
to a paper of which an ill use had been made. He had previously
abstained from all communication with 'these gentry,' and was now
resolved to have done with _hoc genus omne_ for good and all.[76] In
1839 we find his former colleague, Lord Lyndhurst, seeking an alliance
with Barnes, the editor of the _Times_, as eagerly as though Barnes
had been the head of a parliamentary party.[77]
The newspapers had probably done more than the schools to spread
habits of reading through the country. Yet the strong interest which
was growing up in educational matters was characteristic. Brougham's
phrase, 'the schoolmaster is abroad' (29th January 1821), became a
popular proverb, and rejoiced the worthy Bentham.[78] I have already
described the share taken by the Utilitarians in the great Bell and
Lancaster controversy. Parliament had as yet done little. A bill
brought in by Whitbread had been passed in 1807 by the House of
Commons, enabling parishes to form schools on the Scottish model, but
according to Romilly,[79] it was passed in the well-grounded
confidence that it would be thrown out by the peers. A committee upon
education was obtained by Brougham after the peace, which reported in
1818, and which led to a commission upon school endowments. Brougham
introduced an education bill in 1820, but nothing came of it. The
beginning of any participation by government in national education was
not to take place till after the Reform Bill. Meanwhile, however, the
foundation of the London University upon unsectarian principles was
encouraging the Utilitarians; and there were other symptoms of the
growth of enlightenment. George Birkbeck (1776-1841) had started some
popular lectures upon science at Glasgow about 1800, and having
settled as a physician in London, started the 'Mechanics' Institution'
in 1824. Brougham was one of the first trustees; and the institution,
though exposed to a good deal of ridicule, managed to take root and
become the parent of others. In 1827 was started the Society for the
Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, of which Brougham was president, and
the committee of which included James Mill. In the course of its
twenty years' existence it published or sanctioned the publication by
Charles Knight of a great mass of popular literature. The _Penny
Magazine_ (1832-1845) is said to have had two hundred thousand
subscribers at the end of its first year of existence. Crude and
superficial as were some of these enterprises, they clearly marked a
very important change. Cobbett and the Radical orators found enormous
audiences ready to listen to their doctrine. Churchmen and Dissenters,
Tories and Radicals were finding it necessary both to educate and to
disseminate their principles by writing; and as new social strata were
becoming accessible to such influences, their opinions began to
exercise in turn a more distinct reaction upon political and
ecclesiastical affairs.
No party felt more confidence at the tendency of this new
intellectual fermentation than the Utilitarians. They had a definite,
coherent, logical creed. Every step which increased the freedom of
discussion increased the influence of the truth. Their doctrines were
the truth, if not the whole truth. Once allow them to get a fulcrum
and they would move the world. Bit by bit their principles of
legislation, of economy, of politics were being accepted in the most
different quarters; and even the more intelligent of their opponents
were applying them, though the application might be piecemeal and
imperfect. It was in vain that an adversary protested that he was not
bound by logic, and appealed to experience instead of theory. Let him
justify his action upon what grounds he pleased, he was, in point of
fact, introducing the leaven of true doctrine, and it might be trusted
to work out the desirable results.
I must now deal more in detail with the Utilitarian theories. I will
only observe in general terms that their triumph was not likely to be
accepted without a struggle. Large classes regarded them with absolute
abhorrence. Their success, if they did succeed, would mean the
destruction of religious belief, of sound philosophy, of the great
important ecclesiastical and political institutions, and probably
general confiscation of property and the ruin of the foundations of
society. And, meanwhile, in spite of the progress upon which I have
dwelt, there were two problems, at least, of enormous importance, upon
which it could scarcely be said that any progress had been made. The
church, in the first place, was still where it had been. No change had
been made in its constitution; it was still the typical example of
corrupt patronage; and the object of the hatred of all thoroughgoing
Radicals. And, in the second place, pauperism had grown to appalling
dimensions during the war; and no effectual attempt had been made to
deal with it. Behind pauperism there were great social questions, the
discontent and misery of great masses of the labouring population.
Whatever reforms might be made in other parts of the natural order,
here were difficulties enough to task the wisdom of legislators and
speculators upon legislative principles.
FOOTNOTES:
[32] _Life of Macaulay_, p. 114. (Popular Edition).
[33] Canning's _Political Correspondence_, i. 71-76.
[34] 12th December 1826.
[35] Bentham's _Works_, v. p. 370.
[36] Romilly's attempts to improve the criminal law began in 1808. For
various notices of his efforts, see his _Life_ (3 vols. 1860),
especially vol. ii. 243-54, 309, 321, 331, 369, 371, 389-91. Romilly
was deeply interested in Dumont's _Theorie des Peines Legales_ (1811),
which he read in MS. and tried to get reviewed in the _Quarterly_ (ii.
258, 391; iii. 136). The remarks (ii. 2-3) on the 'stupid dread of
innovation' and the savage spirit infused into Englishmen by the
horrors of the French revolution are worth notice in this connection.
[37] Bentham's _Works_, x. p. 574.
[38] Brougham's _Speeches_ (1838), ii. 287-486.
[39] An interesting summary of the progress of law reforms and of
Bentham's share in them is given in Sir R. K. Wilson's _History of
Modern English Law_ (1875).
[40] Bentham's _Works_, x. 571.
[41] In Cambridge Pryme was the first professor in 1828, but had only
the title without endowment. The professorship was only salaried in
1863.
[42] Ricardo's _Works_ (1888), p. 407.
[43] Printed in Porter's _Progress of the Nation_ and elsewhere.
[44] See sixth volume of _History of Prices_ by Tooke and Newmarch,
and privately printed _Minutes of Political Economy Club_ (1882).
[45] _Speeches_, 3 vols. 8vo, 1831.
[46] _Ibid._ ii. 465-530.
[47] _Ibid._ ii. 477.
[48] Bentham's _Works_, ii. 459. We may remember how J. S. Mill in his
boyhood was abashed because he could not explain to his father the
force of the distinction.
[49] _Speeches_, ii. 246, 332.
[50] _Ibid._ i. 102-108 (Currency Pamphlet of 1810).
[51] _Ibid._ ii. 397.
[52] _Speeches_, iii. 257.
[53] Ricardo indeed made a reservation as to the necessity of
counterbalancing by a moderate duty the special burthens upon
agriculture.
[54] In the _History of Trades-Unionism_ by Sidney and Beatrice Webb
(1894), pp. 88-98. The history of Place's agitation is fully given in
Mr. Graham Wallas's _Life_, chap. viii.
[55] Wallas's Francis _Place_, p. 217.
[56] First published in 1807-8.
[57] _Letter_ iii.
[58] _Ibid._ vi.
[59] Sydney Smith put very ingeniously the advantages of what he
called the 'lottery' system: of giving, that is, a few great prizes,
instead of equalising the incomes of the clergy. Things look so
different from opposite points of views.
[60] _Church of Englandism_, ii. 199.
[61] See especially his review of Southey's _Book of the Church_.
[62] Romilly's _Memoirs_, iii. 33.
[63] 57 George III. caps. 60-67.
[64] Edition of 1828, p. 24.
[65] _Ibid._ p. 10.
[66] A Mr. Gray proposed at a county meeting in 1816 that the cry of
'retrenchment and reform' should be raised in every corner of the
island (Henry Jephson's _Platform_, p. 378). I do not know whether
this was the first appearance of the formula.
[67] Hume had been introduced to Place by James Mill, who thought him
worth 'nursing.' Place found him at first 'dull and selfish,' but
'nursed him' so well that by 1836 he had become the 'man of
men,'--Wallas's _Francis Place_, p. 181, 182.
[68] Torrens's _Life of Graham_, i. 250-72, where his great speech of
14th May 1830 is given.
[69] 2 and 3 William IV. cap. 111 (passed 15 August 1832).
[70] 4 and 5 William IV. cap. 15.
[71] _The Platform, its Origin and Progress_, by Henry Jephson (1892),
gives a very interesting historical account of the process.
[72] 57 George III. cap. 19, and 60 George III. cap. 6.
[73] See Jephson's _Platform_, pp. 167-70.
[74] See Jephson's _Platform_, i. 348, 455, 517.
[75] See _Ibid._ ii. 129-40 for some interesting passages as to this.
[76] _Official Correspondence_ (1887), 308.
[77] Greville's _George IV. and William IV._, iii. 155, 167-69, 171.
[78] Bentham's _Works_, x. 571.
[79] Romilly's _Memoirs_, ii. 67, 222.