EXIGENCIES of war had given the British nobles a despotic power, which
they retained long after it ceased to be needed for the nation's safety.
The King was their puppet and Parliament their property. The laws were
framed and administered for their protection and emolument. Clergy,
army, militia, and police were all organised for keeping the people
down; and education could do nothing to raise the lowly. Pensions and
salaries, even in the Church, were reserved for members and servants of
the aristocracy, with little care for the public good. Wages were low,
food dear, illiteracy common, and paupers numerous. Even the middle
class was in great part disfranchised; taxation was needlessly severe;
the press was restricted grievously; and Ireland was shamefully
oppressed.
I. As public attention ceased to be absorbed by victorious generals,
it turned to the miseries of the poor; and there was much discussion of
plans for their relief. Early in the century it became generally known
that Robert Owen's factories were unusually profitable, on account of
what he did for the intelligence, health, and happiness of the
operatives. His pamphlet, published in 1813, and often reprinted as a
_New View of Society_ argued strongly for universal education as the
remedy for poverty and crime; public opinion was much enlightened on the
Continent, as well as in England; but a sagacious member of the British
aristocracy said to him: "Oh, I see it all! Nothing could be more
complete for the working-classes; but what will become of us?"
Owen complained in this pamphlet that Sabbatarianism denied "innocent
and cheerful recreation to the labouring man"; and he spoke in public
of the influence of religion on progress, with a hostility which sadly
injured his popularity. His life was examined with a jealousy which
brought to light only its elevation. The opposition of people who
thought themselves respectable drove him into agitation for what he was
the first to call "Socialism." He published on May 1, 1820, his plan for
forming villages, where the people were to work under the supervision of
the eldest, and "be freely permitted to receive from the general store
of the community whatever they might require." These last words contain
the characteristic principle of Socialism, that every labourer is to be
paid according to his needs, whatever the value of the work.
A dozen such experiments were made in the United States, about 1825; but
it was found impossible to unlearn the experience of the race. Progress
has consisted in bringing each man's welfare into more exact proportion
to the value of his work. This tendency has never safely been suspended,
except under such coercion as has kept up industry and economy among
monks, Rappites, Shakers, and other docile enthusiasts. The cooperative
stores which Owen was among the first to open seem to have failed
because the salaries were not high enough to secure skilful managers.
II. The proof that a reformer was before his age is the fact that later
years caught up with him; and this is by no means so true of Owen as of
Bentham, who declared Socialism impracticable. He was one of the first
to advocate woman suffrage (_Works_, vol. iii., p. 463), savings banks,
cheap postage, collection of statistics, direction of punishment towards
reformation, and repeal of usury laws. His bulky volumes are in great
part occupied with suggestions for making the courts of justice less
dilatory and uncertain, less expensive to the poor, and less partial to
the rich. His _Principles of Morals and Legislation_ declared, in
1787, that the sole end of a ruler ought to be the happiness of all
the people, and that this rule should be the basis of ethics as well as
politics. One of his publications in 1817 claimed the suffrage for every
man and woman who could read, but insisted that this would be "worse
than nothing" without that "shield to freedom," the secret ballot.
An opponent who feared that this would destroy private property was
answered thus: "Has he ever heard of Pennsylvania?" The complaint
that freedom of the press to expose corrupt officials might weaken
the government was met by showing that there can be no good government
without it. To think our ancestors wiser than us, he says, is to take
it for granted that it is not experience but inexperience that is the
"mother of wisdom."
Bentham's best work was in sowing seed that his friends might reap the
harvest. Other authors were generously assisted by his manuscripts,
purse, and library; and there has been no stronger advocate of reform
than the _Westminster Review_, which he founded in 1824. The first
number showed that the Whigs were too much like the Tories. Their
leaders were noblemen or millionaires; their favourite measure,
abolition of rotten boroughs, was mainly in the interest of the
middle class; and their policy towards the masses was a seesaw between
promising elevation and permitting oppression. This article was by James
Mill, who showed in a later number that any church which was established
must, on that account, be bigoted. His essay _On Government_ urges that
the masses cannot be protected unless fully represented. They had
not yet found out all they needed; but education would teach it; and
occasional mistakes would not be so bad as systematic oppression. Among
his ablest books is a defence of the rationalism, bequeathed by the
eighteenth century, against Transcendentalism, which eclipsed it during
the first half of the nineteenth.
The inspiration of the new philosophy was added to that of many new
reforms; and a glorious literature blossomed in the long summer of
peace. Wordsworth's fear of "too much liberty" did not prevent his
encouraging intellectual independence most impressively. Scott tried "to
revive the declining spirit of loyalty"; but the result was universal
admiration of rebels and sympathy with peasants. Many authors who
adapted themselves much more closely and intentionally to the needs of
the age ceased long ago, for this very reason, to find readers. This,
for instance, was the fate of the indefatigable Cobbett.
Landor, on the other hand, was unpopular from the first, because
devotion to Greek and Latin literature made his style as well as some of
his favourite topics uninteresting, except for scholarly people who
were soon offended by such remarks as "Law in England and in most other
countries is the crown of injustice. According to her laws and usages,
Brutus would have been hanged at Newgate; Cato buried with a stake
through his body in the highroad; Cicero transported to Botany Bay."
"Certain I am, that several of the bishops would not have patted Cain
upon the back while he was about to kill Abel." "A peerage I consider as
the park-paling of despotism." In his _Imaginary Conversations_, Hofer
and Metternich, the emperors of Russia and China, the kings of Spain
and Portugal, the Spanish priest, Merino, and many other extraordinary
personages tell how badly England was governed by "the hereditarily
wise," and what a misfortune it was for all Europe, to have her rulers
enjoy such an intimate and universal friendship as was never known among
their predecessors.
No writer has spoken more mightily than Byron against the "blasphemy"
of ascribing divine authority to these "royal vampires." He knew that
Napoleon had been "the scourge of the world"; but he was indignant to
see the men who had struck down the lion kneeling before wolves; and yet
he looked forward to the reign everywhere of "equal rights and laws." He
spoke freely of the "sacerdotal gain but general loss" in superstition;
and his own highest faith was that "they who die in a great cause" would
"Augment the deep and sweeping thoughts
Which overpower all others and conduct
The world at last to freedom."
His poems revealed the grandeur of scenery, as well as history, and made
delight in mountains and thunderstorms felt as an ennobling influence.
His speeches in the House of Lords were pleas for parliamentary reform,
Catholic emancipation, and mercy to rioters infuriated by famine. In
1820, he was one of the leading Carbonari in Italy; he gave his life
to help the Greeks become free; and his name is still a watchword of
revolution.
His friend, Shelley, went so far in the same direction as to call
himself a republican, as well as an atheist. His life was pure in his
own eyes; but his opinions about divorce were punished by a decision in
Chancery that he was unfit to be trusted with his own children. He had
consecrated himself in boyhood to war against all oppressors; and
his position to the last was that of his own Prometheus, suffering
continually with the enslaved, but consoled by faith that his sympathy
will hasten the glorious day when every man shall be "king over
himself," when women, free "from custom's evil taint," shall make earth
like heaven, when "thrones, altars, judgment-seats, and prisons" shall
seem as antiquated as the pyramids, and when human nature shall be "its
own divine control." He took the side of the poor against the rich in
a drama which was suppressed on account of its severity against George
IV., and which ends with a portentous scene, where
"Freedom calls Famine, her eternal foe,
To brief alliance."
He spoke as well as wrote for the independence of Ireland; and he
would have done much for that of Greece, if he had not died soon
after publishing a magnificent tragedy, in which he showed what cruel
massacres were perpetrated while the rulers of Christendom refused to
help Christian patriots against the Turks. Byron is called the poet of
revolution; but Shelley was the poet of liberty. One was like a painter
who captivated the multitude, sometimes by his brilliancy of colour,
sometimes by his tragic pathos, and sometimes by his amorous warmth. The
other was like a sculptor who left a few statues and tablets, fanciful
in design and majestic in execution, for the delight of connoisseurs.
Fortunately the marble is likely to outlast the canvas.
III. These poets and philanthropists helped the people of England
contrast the wrongs they were suffering with the rights they ought
to have. That love of liberty which drove out the Stuarts revived, as
despotism was seen to increase pauperism and excite more crime than it
suppressed. The conflict between republicanism and monarchy in Europe
had changed to one between despotism and constitutionalism; and peace
made England free to resume the advanced position she had held in the
eighteenth century. The declaration of President Monroe, in December,
1823, that the United States would not permit the South American
republics to be overthrown by any despot in Europe, gained much
authority from the concurrence of the British Ministry; and the latter
was induced by Canning to form that alliance with France and Russia
which gave independence to Greece.
The attack on the slave-trade, which began while England was at peace
with her neighbours, had slackened in the shadow of the long war. The
wicked traffic was prohibited in 1807; but little more could be done
before 1823. Then an appeal for emancipation in the West Indies was made
to Parliament by Wilberforce and other organised abolitionists; and the
agitation went on until victory was made possible by the rescue of the
House of Commons from the aristocrats. The acts forbidding workingmen
to combine for higher wages, or to emigrate were repealed in 1824. The
criminal laws had already been mitigated, and some protection given
to children in factories; and the duties on wool and raw silk were now
reduced, to the common benefit of consumer, manufacturer, and operative.
The Whigs were strong enough in 1828 to repeal the Test Act, which had
been passed in 1673, for the purpose of enabling the Episcopalians to
hold all the offices, but had become a dead letter so far as regarded
Protestants. The House of Lords gave way unwillingly; and one of the
bishops secured such a compromise as kept Jews out of Parliament for
the next thirty years. Conscientious scruples against taking oaths
were treated at this time with due respect; and all British Protestants
became equals before the law. Canning had already made the House of
Commons willing to emancipate Catholics; but neither this reform nor
that of abolishing rotten boroughs could pass the bench of bishops; and
the Church stood in the way of a plan for free public schools. It was
the organised resistance of all Ireland to disfranchisement of Catholics
which won toleration from a Tory Ministry. Its leader, Wellington, cared
nothing for public opinion or the people's rights; but he was too good
a general to risk a war with a united nation. Even the minister whose
sympathy with Orangemen had won the nickname of "Orange Peel" declared
that it was time to yield. Popular prejudice against Romanism had
been much diminished by gratitude for the aid given by Catholic allies
against Napoleon. The bishops rallied around the King, who had never
before been influenced by what he called religion; but he was forced to
sign, on April 13, 1829, the bill which ended a strife that had cursed
Europe for three hundred years. Two-thirds of the bishops resisted to
the last; and the Tory party was so badly divided as to be unable to
prevent England from following the example set next year by France.
IV. By the Constitution of 1814, the power belonged mainly to the
Parisian bankers, merchants, and manufacturers. These men preferred
constitutional monarchy to either democracy or military despotism; but
they meant to maintain their own rights; and they were much offended
at the attempts of Charles X. to check mental progress and revive
superstition. His plans for fettering the press were voted down in the
Chamber of Nobles; journalists prosecuted by his orders were acquitted
by the courts; and he could not enforce a law under which burglars who
robbed a Catholic church would have mounted the guillotine.
Early in 1830, he dissolved the Legislature for declaring that he was
not governing according to the wish of the people. The candidates next
elected were two to one against him. On Monday, July 26, appeared his
ordinances forbidding publication of newspapers without his permission,
unseating all the deputies just chosen, and threatening that subsequent
elections would be empty formalities. The plan was like that of 1797;
but this time the soldiers in Paris were few in number and ill-supplied
with provisions, while their general was not even notified of his
appointment. The police allowed the journalists to spread the news
throughout Paris and publish a protest declaring that they would not
obey the ordinances and appealing to the people for support. The leader,
Thiers, had already called for a king who would reign but not govern.
Lawyers and magistrates pronounced the ordinances illegal. Printers and
other employers told their men that the next day would be a holiday.
On Tuesday, the crowds of operatives, clerks, students, ragged men and
boys could not be dispersed by the police. Marmont took command of the
troops that afternoon, and shot a few insurgents. That night all the
street-lamps were put out; thousands of barricades went up, after plans
but recently invented; and gun-shops, powder-magazines, arsenals,
and even museums were broken open. On Wednesday, there was a new city
government in the Hotel de Ville; everywhere hung the tri-coloured
banner of Napoleon and the Republic; and the tocsin called out a hundred
thousand rebels in arms. The weapons of Crusaders were seen side by side
with the bayonets and uniforms of the National Guard, which had been
revived by Napoleon but disbanded by Charles X.
Marmont's orders were to clear the streets that afternoon; but the
soldiers were met everywhere by a heavy fire and a shower of paving
stones and furniture. One patriotic girl was said to have sacrificed her
piano. All the detachments were finally hemmed in between barricades
and crowds of rebels with pikes, muskets, and bayonets. During the night
they were concentrated around the Tuileries, where they suffered
greatly from hunger and thirst, as they had done during the day. Their
ammunition was almost exhausted; and new barricades were put up around
them. Marmont ordered that there should be no more firing, except in
self-defence, and tried in vain to make truce with the rebels. The
latter were joined on Thursday by the regiments in the Place Vendome.
This position was entrusted to part of the Swiss who had defended the
Louvre; but the others were soon driven out by men and boys who swarmed
in at unguarded doors and windows. All the soldiers took flight that
noon from Paris.
All this time the King was amusing himself at St. Cloud, and boasting
that there would be no concessions. He now offered to dismiss his
Ministry and revoke the ordinances; but more than a thousand lives had
been lost. The Parisians marched against him: he abdicated and fled: the
Bourbons had ceased to reign. The men who had fought against him called
for a republic with universal suffrage and no State church; but the
wealthier citizens were afraid of war with Russia and Austria. A
descendant of Louis XIII. and a friend of Thiers was made King by the
Legislature. He called himself Louis Philippe, and promised cordially
to carry out the Constitution, which now meant freedom of the press, and
equal privileges for all Christian churches. The supremacy of Rome
in France was at an end. Seats in the Upper House could no longer be
inherited; and the right to vote for deputies was given to twice as many
Frenchmen as before. Patriots in all nations were encouraged; and the
Swiss cantons became more democratic; but Hegel was frightened to death.
Among other results were unsuccessful revolts in Rome and Warsaw, with
successful ones in Brussels, Cassell, and Dresden. The subjection to
Holland, which had been imposed by the Congress of Vienna, was hated
by the Belgians, partly because it made education secular, and partly
because it gave them only half the Legislature, and very few offices
elsewhere, although they formed three-fifths of the population. Priests
were active in stirring up the revolt which began at Brussels on August
25, 1830, after the performance of an opera telling how Masaniello had
set Naples free. The Dutch were driven out; Belgium was made a separate
constitutional monarchy by the vote of a convention of deputies; France
and England helped her maintain political independence; but it was to
the loss of intellectual liberty.
V. The success of rebellion with the pressure of hard times enabled the
Whigs to carry England for parliamentary reform. Peel and Wellington
hastened their fall by boasting that there could be no improvement of a
Legislature which accepted members for places without any inhabitants,
but not for Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, or some parts of London,
and which actually enabled one Scotchman to elect himself as sole
representative of fourteen thousand people, in a district where he was
the only voter.
The people were so discontented with the whole system of Church and
State, that thousands of sympathisers gathered around Cobbett in July,
1831, when he was tried for printing a statement that riots of farm
hands were doing good in forcing the clergy to reduce their tithes. Lord
Brougham, who had been made Chancellor, was among the witnesses to
the generally pacific tendency of Cobbett's writings. The jury did not
agree; and the Government gave up the case. There was but little more
political persecution of British authors.
Reform triumphed that autumn in the House of Commons. The House of Lords
would then have been conquered, if the bishops had acted like successors
of the apostles; but twenty-one out of twenty-three voted for prolonging
their own dominion. Their conduct made it unsafe for them to wear their
peculiar costume in the streets. Bells tolled, and newspapers put on
mourning. There were riots in all the cathedral towns. A duke's castle
was burned, because he insisted that the votes of his tenants were
his private property, and attempts to punish the incendiaries brought
Bristol, one Sunday, into the hands of a mob which burned the bishop's
palace, the custom-house, and many other buildings. It was agreed by a
meeting of a hundred thousand people at Birmingham, that no more taxes
should be paid until Parliament was reformed; and on very many houses,
especially in London, there was the following notice: "To save the
Collector unnecessary trouble, he is informed that No Taxes on this
house will be paid, until the Reform Bill pass into a Law." It was at
a meeting to encourage this course that Sydney Smith, who had done good
service for Catholic emancipation, told how vainly Mrs. Partington tried
to sweep back the Atlantic, during a great storm, and added: "Be quiet
and steady. You will beat Mrs. Partington."
The episcopal Partingtons continued to be even more hostile than the
lay members of the House of Lords; but all finally yielded to the
threat that there would be new peers enough created to vote them down. A
popular song made the Reform Bill boast that, "Twenty peers shall carry
me, If twenty won't, then forty will; For I 'm his Majesty's bouncing
Bill."
The throne was then filled by William IV., who reigned from 1830 to
1837, and who gave his consent, though sometimes unwillingly, to several
of the greatest reforms ever passed in England. The bill which he signed
on June 7, 1832, enabled 141 members of Parliament to be elected by
populous districts hitherto unrepresented, instead of by little
boroughs where the voters were so few as to be bought up easily, or else
intimidated constantly; and the franchise was also much extended,
though not outside of the middle class. Thus Great Britain ceased to be
governed by a league of irresponsible nobles, bishops, and other lords
of vast estates.
VI. They had kept the lower classes ignorant, in order to secure
obedience; and their methods were not given up at once. Newspapers had
already become the chief teachers of politics; and therefore they were
under a triple tax. A duty on paper added one-fourth to the cost
of publication. There was also a tax of three-and-sixpence on each
advertisement; and more of this lucrative business was done by the
publishers in New York City than by all those in Great Britain. A third
exaction was that of fourpence for a stamp on every copy; and prices
were thus prevented from falling below seven-pence, except in case of
violation of the laws. These threatened fine or imprisonment to whoever
should publish or sell any periodical costing less than sixpence,
and containing "news, intelligence, occurrences, and remarks and
observations thereon, tending to excite hatred and contempt of the
government and constitution of this country as by law established, and
also to vilify religion." This purpose was avowed explicitly, in so
many words, by _The Poor Man's Guardian_, which announced that it
was published "contrary to law" and would be sold for one penny. The
circulation was twice that of _The Times_, and the language often
violent. The publisher, Hetherington, was sent twice to prison for six
months; and could not go about except disguised as a Quaker. His papers
were packed in chests of tea, by an agent who was afterwards mayor
of Manchester. Another publisher, who devoted himself to reports of
criminal trials, used to send them out in coffins. Many unstamped
periodicals were in circulation. Some dealers carried them about in
their hats and pockets. Others hawked them in the streets, and declared,
when sentenced to prison, that they should resume the business on the
same spot as soon as they were released. Paid informers and spies helped
the Whig Government carry on more than two hundred prosecutions in 1835,
and more than five hundred previously. Subscription boxes for the relief
of the martyrs could be seen everywhere. Remonstrances were signed and
indignation meetings held in London and Manchester. "The Society for the
Repeal of All Taxes on Knowledge" kept up a vigorous agitation, which
was aided by Bulwer in Parliament. At last the publishers who bought
stamps found they could not compete with men who bought none. This duty,
and also that on advertisements, were reduced in 1836; and the result
was so gratifying, even to publishers of the best periodicals, that all
these taxes have been abolished.
Protestant bigotry had not prevented unsectarian public schools from
being opened in Ireland in 1833; and that year is also memorable for
the abolition of slavery in the West Indies, the extension of universal
suffrage in Scotland, the beginning of free trade with India and China,
the removal of disability for office from Hindoo subjects of Great
Britain, the protection of children from being overworked in factories,
and the suppression of supernumerary bishops and rectors in Ireland.
During the next three years, the local government of most English towns
and cities, though not yet of London, was taken from corrupt oligarchies
and given to all inhabitants who paid even a moderate rent; seamen
ceased to be impressed; Irish Catholics and English dissenters were
enabled to marry without apostasy; vexatious methods of collecting
tithes were abolished in England; the poor-laws were made less
favourable to the increase of pauperism; and the growth of prosperity
and independence among the poor was assisted by the introduction of a
system of unsectarian education, in 1839, though the bishops would
have preferred that one-third of the people of England should remain
illiterate. Penny postage was established in 1840, the last year when
Great Britain was governed by the Whigs.
Parliament was so philanthropic and tolerant as to reject repeatedly a
proposal to impose heavy fines for attending secular meetings, visiting
eating-houses, travelling, fishing, or hiring horses on Sunday. Labour,
too, was to be forbidden, but not that of "menial servants." This bill
would have prevented the poor from enjoying their only holiday; but
there was to be no interference with the pleasures of the rich; and the
fact was pointed out by a young man, whose _Pickwick Papers_ had just
begun to appear in monthly parts. His illustrated pamphlet is entitled:
_Sunday as it Is; as Sabbath Bills would Make it; as it might be Made_.
It has been reprinted with his plays and poems. He tells how much was
done for the health and happiness of London by those privileges which
the Sabbatarians were trying to abolish; and he shows what gain there
would be in knowledge and virtue from opening all the museums and
galleries Sunday afternoons.
The pamphlet shows that delight in the bright side of life, and that
sympathy with the pleasures of the poor, which won popularity for _The
Pickwick Papers_ in 1836, and afterwards for _The Old Curiosity Shop_
and the _Christmas Carol_. The novels most like _Sunday as it Is_,
however, are such protests against bigotry and cruelty as _Oliver Twist,
Nicholas Nickleby, and Barnaby Rudge_. Powerful pictures of the gloom
of that British Sabbath which locked up everything "that could by any
possibility afford relief to an overworked people," may be found in
_Little Dorrit_; and the plot turns on the Sabbatarianism of a cruel
fanatic who had made felony part of her religion. Much was done by this
novel, as well as by _Pickwick_ and _Nicholas Nickleby_ towards the
abolition of imprisonment for debt in 1869. His tone was very mild,
compared with that of the popular orators. Resistance to bad laws was
urged by Richard Carlile; and a clergyman named Taylor, who held the
Gospel to be a solar myth, was imprisoned on October 24, 1827, for
saying that the first martyrs for Jesus Christ were the Gadarene pigs.
Another London lecturer declared on Sunday evening, December 2, 1832,
that "The elective franchise should belong to women, as a part of the
people," and again that "Women are qualified to elect and to be elected
to all public offices." "Any argument for exclusion is of that kind
which has justified every tyranny," says this discourse, which was
printed for the first time, on May 11, 1833, in an American newspaper,
_The Free Enquirer_. Its columns show that a young lady had already
presented very advanced ideas as a lecturer at the Rotunda in London;
but the general opinion of the sex was expressed by the wife of the
Rev. John Sandford, whose popular book declared that "There is something
unfeminine in independence. A really sensible woman... is conscious of
inferiority." The Irish have supported themselves so successfully in
America, and obeyed the laws so generally, as to prove that failure to
do either in Ireland should not be attributed to their race or their
religion, but wholly to their oppression. Memory of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries was all the more bitter in the nineteenth, because
the destitution of the peasantry was increasing hopelessly. Removal of
religious disabilities and reform of Parliament did not prevent bands of
armed peasants from fighting against attempts to take away their cattle
in payment of the tithes exacted by well-paid dignitaries of the hated
Church. It sometimes happened that a dozen of the combatants were
killed. Sydney Smith estimated that this way of keeping up a state
church cost a million lives, from first to last, and Ireland had to
be as heavily garrisoned as India, until a less vexatious system was
established in 1838. Municipal government was wholly in the hands of
little corporations, which had the sole power of electing new members
and seldom admitted a Catholic. The ruling oligarchy was to the
population as one to two hundred in Limerick, and only as one
to twenty-five hundred in Protestant Belfast. The right of local
self-government was given to the people of these cities and a few others
in 1840; but even this small and tardy justice provoked an English
bishop to threaten that it would call down vengeance from God. Full
municipal suffrage throughout the island and a domestic Parliament
were demanded by all Ireland, under the guidance of the mighty orator
O'Connell; but the prejudice against his cause in Great Britain was made
invincible by his denouncing "the Saxons," as he called the English, for
the crimes of their ancestors.
VII. All reforms stopped in 1841, when the Whigs lost the supremacy.
It was not their fault that excess in speculation on both sides of the
Atlantic had brought on a panic which threw thousands of people out of
work in the factory towns, and reduced other thousands to earning only
twopence a day. A succession of bad harvests, just before 1841, made
wages very low on the farms, and food too dear everywhere. Bread was
sold in halfpenny slices; labourers robbed pigs of swill; children
fought with dogs for bones in the streets; one person in every eleven
was a pauper; and England seemed to Dickens like one vast poorhouse. The
old ways of giving charity had been so lavish and indiscriminate as to
encourage pauperism; the new system of relief proved really kinder;
but at first it was administered too slowly and cautiously for the
emergency; and there was some ground for the complaints in _Oliver
Twist_. Knowledge that paupers were neglected strengthened the belief of
the working-men, that all they needed to make them as well off as their
brethren in America was the ballot. Paine, Cobbett, and Hetherington
were widely read; manhood suffrage and a secret ballot were called "the
People's Charter"; and there were more than a million signatures to
the Chartist petition in 1839. These demands were just; but about one
Englishman in three was unable to write his name at this time; and
many who had acquired this accomplishment knew dangerously little about
politics. When we think how much mischief has recently been done in the
United States by illiterate and venal votes, we cannot blame Englishmen
of the upper and middle classes for delaying to grant universal
suffrage. They ought to have made rapid preparation for it, by liberal
encouragement of popular education through free schools and a cheap
press; but even the Whigs were too indignant at the violence of the
Chartists, who made bloody riots in 1841. How ignorant these men
were was shown by their doing their worst that year to help carry the
elections against the Whigs, who were much less hostile to Chartism than
the Conservatives, as those Tories were called who still condescended to
politics.
The most culpable blunder of the Whigs had been that of allowing the
revenue to fall below the expenses; and the policy they had proposed for
making up the deficit was too much like that halfhearted way of dealing
with slavery which brought ruin upon the party of the same name in
America. The British tariff was raised by the war against Napoleon, as
the American was under similar pressure afterwards, so high as in some
cases to prohibit imports and actually check revenue. Either tariff
could have been used as an almost complete list of the world's products;
and both were framed on the principle of protecting everybody, except
consumers, against competition. Great Britain unfortunately could
produce only part of the food needed by the people; and the tariff was
so much in the interest of owners of land as to make bread and meat
dearer than if the island had been barren. Importation of cattle was
prohibited; and that of wheat and other grain was not permitted until
prices were high enough to cause famine. Then importation would begin
slowly, and keep increasing until the supply of both foreign- and
home-grown wheat would become large enough to glut the market and make
farmers bankrupt. These duties on grain, which were known as the corn
laws, acted with similar taxes on all other necessaries of life in
impoverishing factory hands and other members of the working class. They
were told that the laws which kept living dear kept wages high; but we
shall see that this turned out not to be the fact. The only real gainers
by the corn laws were those wealthy owners of great estates of whom
Parliament was composed entirely, with the exception of a few members of
the House of Commons.
That body allowed Manchester and other factory towns to send
representatives who had found out the tendency of protectionism from
their own business experience, as well as from study of political
economy. Among these men was Cobden, who had already planted himself in
the road to wealth, but who preferred to remain poor that he might make
England rich. He and his associates knew that imports are paid for by
exporting what can be produced most profitably; that nothing is imported
which could be produced as cheaply at home; that large imports make
large exports; that the average Englishman knows how to carry on his
own business; and that the Government could not encourage any otherwise
unprofitable industry without checking the really profitable ones. On
these facts were based the following predictions. In the first place,
free trade in grain and cattle would lower the average price of food
in England, and make the supply so regular that there would be no more
famines. Second, those countries which were allowed to send grain and
cattle, cotton and other raw materials, etc., to England would buy
British manufactures in return. Third, removal of duties from raw
materials would enable factories to produce goods more cheaply, and
sell larger quantities at home as well as abroad. Then, fourth, this
increased activity in manufacturing would raise wages, while remission
of duties would make all the necessaries of life cheaper, so that
pauperism would diminish and prosperity become more general in the
working class. And finally, the commerce of England with other countries
would grow rapidly to their mutual benefit; and thus international
relations would be kept friendly by free trade.
In this faith the reformers at Manchester and Birmingham asserted the
right of all men to buy and sell freely, and demanded the removal of
all duties except those best adapted to bring in necessary revenue. They
were wise enough to attack the monstrous tariff at its weakest point,
the tax on bread. The Anti-Corn-Law League was organised in 1839; the
spot where the Peterloo massacre had been perpetrated, twenty years
before, was soon used for a free trade banquet in which five thousand
working-men took part; and appeals to the people were made in all parts
of England. The Conservatives were all protectionists; and so many Whigs
were on that side that those leaders who were opposed to the bread tax
did not dare to come out against it. They did propose in 1841 to meet
the deficit in the revenue by reducing some duties which were so high as
to prevent importation, for instance, the tax on all sugar not grown in
British colonies. The protectionist Whigs voted with the Conservatives
against the Ministry; and it had to go out of office without having
done enough against the corn laws to secure the support of the League.
Protectionists, Chartists, and opponents of the new poor-law helped
to give the Conservatives control of the next Parliament, where the
free-traders were one to four.
Such was the state of things in October, 1841, when the League went to
work more vigorously than before in educating the people, and especially
voters of the poorer class. During the next twelve months, half a
million dollars was spent in this work. In 1843, there were fourteen
regular lecturers in the field, besides countless volunteers, and five
hundred distributors of tracts. The annual number of publications was
about ten million copies; and the annual weight exceeded a hundred tons.
The dissenting ministers did good work for reform; but the Episcopalian
clergy were too friendly to a tax which kept up the value of tithes. The
League soon had the support of John Bright, who was one of the greatest
of British orators. Prominent among opponents was the Chartist leader,
Feargus O'Connor; and those Chartists who were not protectionists held
that their cause ought to take the lead. Public opinion was so strongly
for free trade in 1845 that Parliament took off the duties from cotton
and other raw materials, in hope of conciliating the manufacturers;
but these latter redoubled their efforts to abolish the tax on food.
Subscriptions were larger than ever; and much land was bought by
free-traders who wished to qualify themselves as voters for members of
the next Parliament, which would have to be elected in or before 1848.
Reform seemed still distant, when Shelley's prophecy was fulfilled.
Freedom's eternal foe, Famine, came suddenly to her help. Dearness of
wheat and meat had obliged half of the Irish and many of the
English to live entirely on potatoes. Wages were often paid in Ireland
by loan of land for raising this crop. The rot which began in August,
1845, soon became so destructive that Peel, who was then Prime Minister,
proposed in October that grain should be made free of duty. Wellington
and other members of the Cabinet demurred; and the question had to be
submitted to Parliament. Disraeli insisted to the last on keeping up the
tariff; but famine was increasing; and both Houses finally agreed, after
long debate, to accept Peel's proposal, that not only the duties on food
and raw materials, but most of the others, should be either reduced or
abolished. His conservatism did not keep him from seeing that the
whole system of protecting home industries must stand or fall together.
Prominent among obstructionists were the bishops. The House of Lords did
not agree before June 25, 1846, to the reform which had been accepted on
May 15th by the House of Commons, and which was publicly acknowledged
by Wellington to be inevitable. Such was the exasperation of the
protectionists that they helped the opponents, of coercion in Ireland
to drive Peel out of office, by a vote which was taken in the House
of Commons on the very day when his plan of tariff reform gained that
victory in the House of Lords which made free trade for ever the system
of Great Britain.
About one-half of the import duties are now levied on tobacco,
one-fourth more on wine and strong drink; and most of the rest on tea
and other groceries. Duties on articles which could be produced in Great
Britain are offset by internal-revenue taxes. No monopoly is given to
farm or factory; no necessary article is made too dear for the poor; and
there are no needless violations of the right of the labourer to spend
his wages in the best market.
This reform made the relief of Ireland possible, though the loss of life
was terrible. Never again has England been so near to a famine as in
1841. Food is now so plenty that five times as much sugar is used in
proportion to population as in 1842, and more than twice as much butter
and eggs. This does not mean that the millionaire eats five times as
much sugar, or twice as many eggs, as before, but that poor people can
now buy freely what formerly were almost unattainable luxuries. The
proportion of money in savings banks in England and Wales has doubled;
and that of paupers sank from 1 in 11 in 1842 to 1 in 37 in 1895. Wages
have risen fifty per cent., while other prices have fallen; and British
workmen are better off than any others in Europe. The annual value of
English exports declined steadily from 1815 to 1842; but it is now four
times as great as in the latter year; and it is more than twice as large
in proportion to population as in those highly protected countries,
the United States and France. Low tariffs also enable Belgium to export
nearly three times as much for each inhabitant as France, and New South
Wales to export five times as much as the United States. Large exports
do not depend on density of population but on ability to import freely.
Readiness of any country to buy freely of her neighbours keeps them able
and willing to buy whatever she has to sell. Free trade has given
Great Britain, New South Wales, and Belgium their choice of the world's
markets. Great Britain has also been enabled to keep up much more
friendly relations with the rest of Europe than would otherwise have
been the case. Liberty of commerce has helped her enjoy peace; and peace
has preserved free institutions.
The reforms which culminated in free trade showed Englishmen that they
could right any wrong without resort to violence. The attempt of the
Chartists to overawe Parliament in 1848 was seen to be inexcusable; and
it failed ridiculously. Never since then has insurrection in England
been even possible. The atmosphere of thought has been so quiet that
suffrage was greatly extended in 1867, and made practically universal
in 1894. Voters gained the protection of a secret ballot in 1872; and
municipal self-government was given in 1894 to every part of England
where it had not already been established.
No wonder that there is little of the revolutionary ardor of Shelley and
Byron in Tennyson, Browning, and other recent poets. They have delighted
in progress; but they have seen that it must come through such peaceable
changes in public opinion, and then in legislation, as are caused by
free discussion. The benign influence of peace has enabled them to
display such brilliancy as had not been seen in England for more than
two hundred years. No other writers ever paid so much attention to
public health and the general happiness. The ablest thought of the
century has been devoted to enriching human life, and not to destroying
it. This has enabled science to make unprecedented progress. A new
period of intellectual history has been opened by Spencer and Darwin.
VIII. Prominent among reformers who had no wish for revolution, and no
respect for science, were Dickens and Carlyle. The latter's ("former's"
Ed.) aversion to political economy as "the dismal science" was echoed in
the pages of _Hard Times_; and the absence of any reference in _Dombey
and Son_ to the great movement against the corn laws is characteristic
of a novelist whose _Pickwick Papers_ made fun of scientific
investigation. What was there called the "tittlebat" is really that
nest-building fish, the stickleback. Passages ridiculing the use of
statistics might be quoted at great length from both authors. Dickens
had too much sympathy with paupers, especially those who suffered under
the poor-law of 1834; and Carlyle had much too little. They agreed in
opposition to model prisons and other new forms of philanthropy. Perhaps
it was mainly the habit of indiscriminate ridicule which suggested such
caricatures as Mrs. Jellaby and Mrs. Pardiggle. Carlyle's belief that
abolitionism was "an alarming Devil's Gospel" and his denunciation of
"the sugary, disastrous jargon of philanthropy" were legitimate results
of idolatry of what he called "early, earnest times," namely the Dark
Ages. His sympathy with mediaeval methods was so narrow that he spoke
of a poet of weak health and high culture, whom he saw suffering under
a sentence of two years in a pestilential prison, forbidden books or
writing materials, kept most of the time alone and on bread and water,
but guilty of nothing worse than a Chartist speech, as "master of his
own time and spiritual resources to, as I supposed, a really enviable
extent." Dickens shows much more appreciation of the real superiority
of modern times, though personal disappointments, during his visit
to America, prevented him from acknowledging the merits of democracy.
Carlyle's reverence for the early Hebrews and other primitive barbarians
made him present hero-worship as the only secure corner-stone of
politics. His receipt for a perfect government is this: "Find in any
country the ablest man that exists there; raise him to the supreme
place; and loyally reverence him." "Such a government is not to be
improved by voting or debating." "Neither except in obedience to the
Heaven-chosen is freedom so much as conceivable." This theory showed its
own absurdity in prompting eulogies on Francia and other despots; but
Carlyle's apologies for Cromwell were of some service to the cause
of liberty fifty years ago, when England had forgotten to honour
the champions of the Long Parliament. Dickens thought more about the
asceticism than the independence of the Puritans. He and Carlyle
have dispelled some of the prejudices against the heroes of the First
Republic; but they perpetuated others. Carlyle's best work was in
encouraging the readers of his first books to think for themselves. The
power of Dickens to call out sympathy with the unfortunate will never
cease to bless mankind.
As much pity for the outcast has been shown by his great rival, Victor
Hugo, and even more fellow-feeling with the oppressed. The spirit which
has made France free animates all his writings, especially those
grand poems which were called out by the usurpation of Louis Napoleon
Bonaparte. His early dramas dealt so vigorously with royal weakness and
vice that _Marion de Lorme_ was suppressed by Charles X. and _Le Roi
s'amuse_ by Louis Philippe. The work which has made him best known,
and which appeared in 1862 in nine languages, is a plea for mercy to
criminals, or in his own words, to "the miserable." The chief aim is to
show "the oppression of laws," and the mistake of aiding the tyranny
of the police by thinking too severely of the fallen. He finds an
opportunity to introduce an enthusiastic panegyric on the victories of
Napoleon, closing with the question: "What could be more grand?" "To be
free," is the reply. Full justice to the French Revolution is done by
that most dramatic of novels, _Ninety-Three_. Here he says: "The agony
of the nations ended with the fall of the Bastile." "Perhaps the
Convention is the culmination of history." "It declared poverty and
disability sacred." "It branded the slave-trade, and freed the blacks."
"It decreed gratuitous education." "The object of two-thirds of its
decrees was philanthropic." Such facts are all the more worthy of
mention, because they were omitted by Carlyle.
SUPPLEMENT TO CHAPTER II
I. Thomas Carlyle's prejudice against democracy was strengthened by
the failure of the revolutions of 1848. Constitutional monarchy was as
hostile to reform in France as it was friendly in England.
Only one Frenchman in thirty could vote; and the legislature cared
nothing for public opinion. Louis Philippe was hated for habitual
dishonesty. There had been several attempts at regicide and some bloody
revolts. One of the latter gave a basis from history for Victor Hugo's
_Miserables_. Restrictions on the press and on public meetings increased
the unwillingness of the working-men at Paris to be governed by
the rich. Socialism was popular, and employment insufficient. The
prohibition of a reform banquet caused barricades to be thrown up on
February 22d in Paris. The militia took sides with the populace; the
King fled to England; and all France accepted the Republic, which was
proclaimed on February 24th. Slavery had been reestablished in the
colonies by Napoleon; but it was now abolished; and so was capital
punishment for political offences.
The example of Paris was followed in March by successful insurrections
at Berlin, Vienna, and other German cities, as well as in Lombardy
and Venice. Home rule was demanded by Hungary and Bohemia, and
constitutional governments were soon established there as well as in
Austria, Prussia, and other German states, and in every part of Italy.
The King of Sardinia took the lead in a war for driving back the
Austrians across the Alps. Co-operation of French, German, Hungarian,
and Italian patriots might have made all these countries permanently
free.
Such a union would have been difficult on account of international
jealousies; and it was made impossible by the Socialists at Paris.
Scarcely had a provisional government been set up, when recognition of
"the right of employment" was demanded by a workman, who came musket in
hand, and was supported by a multitude of armed artisans. They extorted
a decree which promised every citizen work enough for his support. A
ten-hour law was passed. Co-operative factories were started with
aid from the city authorities, and had some success. Opening national
workshops was not advised by leading Socialists; but it was considered
necessary by some of the Ministry in order to keep the unemployed from
revolt. Every applicant drew money constantly, even if not at work. What
little labour was actually performed was done so lazily, and paid so
highly, that the number of men soon rose to 120,000. The expenses became
enormous; and the tax-payers insisted that they too had rights. In order
to be able to employ all the labourers a government would have to own
all the property; and it would also have to be strong enough to enforce
industry. Even Victor Hugo admitted that the experiment had failed. The
National Assembly, of which he was a member, notified the men in
the shops that they must enlist in the army, or go to work at a safe
distance from Paris on state pay, or look out for themselves. They rose
in arms against the Republic, and took possession of nearly one-half of
the city on June 23, 1848. "Bread or Lead" was the motto on their
red flags; and two of their terrible barricades are described at the
beginning of the last Part of _Les Miserables_. They held out against
regular troops and cannon during four days of such fighting as had never
been seen before in Paris. More Frenchmen are supposed to have fallen
than in any of Napoleon's battles. Two thousand of the soldiers were
slain; but no one knows how many times that number of insurgents
perished in the fight or in penal colonies.
Thenceforth the French Government was much more desirous to repress
insurrection at home than to sustain it abroad. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte
was elected President that same year, partly on account of his name,
and partly on account of his promise that he would defend the right of
private property against Socialism. Austrian generals of the rough and
reckless type which Carlyle loved forced Lombardy and Bohemia back into
the Empire, and restored absolute monarchy at Vienna, while the King of
Sardinia was obliged to abdicate after such a defeat in March, 1849, as
almost extinguished liberty in Italy. Venice alone held out against them
under that purest of patriots, Manin, and suffered terribly during a
siege of twenty-one weeks. Hungary was subdued that summer with the aid
of Russia. France did nothing except to revive the papal despotism at
Rome. Mazzini's republic was crushed by that which had a Bonaparte
for President. His power had been increased by the disfranchisement
of several million French voters of the poorer class. His promise to
restore universal suffrage joined with memory of the massacres of June,
1848, in preventing much resistance to his usurpation of absolute power
on December 2, 1851. There was a monstrous vote, next November, for an
empire, where the centralisation of administration was complete, and
the legislature merely ornamental. Thus the liberation of Europe was
prevented, partly by race prejudices, but mainly by attempts to benefit
the poor by overtaxing the rich. France and Hungary were left with less
political liberty than before; and Italy gained very little; but some of
the constitutional freedom acquired in 1848 was retained in Prussia and
other parts of Western Germany.
II. It was contrary to the general tendency of wars, that those of the
latter half of the century aided the growth of free institutions in
Italy. An honoured place among nations was given by the Crimean war to
Sardinia. Then her patriotic statesman, Cavour, persuaded Napoleon III.
to help him rescue Lombardy from Austria. Garibaldi took the opportunity
to liberate Naples; and Victor Emanuel made himself King over all
Italy except Rome and Venice. The latter city also was brought under a
constitutional and friendly government by a third great war, which
made the King of Prussia and his successors Emperors of Germany, while
Austria was compelled to grant home rule to Hungary. The liberation and
secularisation of Italy were completed in 1870 by the expulsion from
Rome of the French garrison. The Emperor had lost his throne by waging
war wantonly against a united Germany.
III. The Third Republic was soon obliged to fight for her life against
the same enemy which had wounded her sister mortally. Socialism was
still the religion of the working-men of Paris, who now formed the
majority of the National Guard. Indignation at the failure of the new
Government to repulse the Prussians led, on March 18, 1871, to the
capture of all Paris by what was avowedly the revolution of the workmen
against the shopkeepers, "in the name of the rights of labour," for
"the suppression of all monopolies," "the reign of labour instead of
capital," and "the emancipation of the worker by himself." This was
in harmony with the teaching of the International Working-men's
Association, which endorsed the insurrection fully and formally, and
which held with Karl Marx that wealth is produced entirely by labour
and belongs only to the working class. Socialists were active in the
rebellion; but property-holders in Paris took no part; and all the
rest of France took sides with the Government. What professed to be
the rising of the many against the few turned out to be that of the few
against the many. Impressment was necessary for manning the barricades,
and pillage for raising money. The general closing of stores, factories,
and offices showed that capital had been frightened away by the red
flag. One of the last decrees of its defenders was, "Destroy all
factories employing more than fifteen workers. This monopoly crushes the
artisan." This spirit would have caused the confiscation of the funds
of the National Bank, if the managers had not said: "If you do that,
you will turn the money your own comrades have in their pockets to waste
paper." The priceless pictures and statues in the Louvre were condemned
to destruction because they represented "gods, kings, and priests."
Millions of dollars worth of works of art perished in company with
docks, libraries, and public buildings; but this vandalism, like the
massacre of prisoners, was largely the work of professional criminals.
The capture of Paris, late in May, was accompanied with pitiless
slaughter of the rebels, though many lives were saved by Victor Hugo.
Since then the French Republic has been able to keep down not only the
Socialists but the Bonapartists and Royalists. It has also succeeded,
with the help of writers like Renan, in checking the ambition of the
clergy. Continuance of peace in Europe has assisted the growth of local
self-government in France, and also in Germany. The famous Prussian
victories seem, however, to have increased the power of the German
Emperor; and there is still danger that the growth of standing armies
may check that of free institutions.