"He grew old in an age he condemned;
He looked on the rushing decay
Of the times which had sheltered his youth;
Felt the dissolving throes
Of a social order he loved."
It seems odd that Matthew Arnold should have spoken thus about
Wordsworth; for one would have expected that the man who wrote so
gloriously of the French Revolution, "as it appeared to enthusiasts
at its commencement," would have rejoiced in the new order which it
established for all Europe. But the younger poet knew the elder
with an intimacy which defies contradiction; and one must, I suppose,
number Wordsworth among those who, in each succeeding age, have
shed tears of useless regret over the unreturning past. Talleyrand
said that, to know what an enjoyable thing life was capable of
being, one must have been a member of the _ancienne noblesse_ before
the Revolution. It was the cynical and characteristic utterance
of a nature singularly base; but even the divine Burke (though he
had no personal or selfish interests in the matter) was convinced
that the Revolution had not only destroyed political freedom, but
also social welfare, and had "crushed everything respectable and
virtuous in the nation." What, in the view of Burke and Talleyrand,
the Revolution did for France, that, by a curious irony of fate,
our attempt to defeat the Revolution did for England. Burke forced
us into the Revolutionary War, and that war (as Gladstone once said
in a letter to the present writer) "almost unmade the liberties,
the Constitution, even the material interests and prosperity, of our
country." Patriots like William Cobbett and Sydney Smith, though
absolutely convinced that the war was just and necessary, doubted
if England could ever rally from the immense strain which it had
imposed on her resources, or regain the freedom which, in order
to beat France, she had so lightly surrendered.
At a time when Manchester was unrepresented and Gatton sent two
Members to Parliament, it was steadily maintained by lovers of the
established order that the proposed enlargement of the electorate
was "incompatible with a just equality of civil rights, or with the
necessary restraints of social obligation." If it were carried,
religion, morality, and property would perish together, and our
venerable Constitution would topple down in ruins. "A thousand
years have scarce sufficed to make England what she is: one hour
may lay her in the dust." In 1861 J. W. Croker wrote to his patron,
the great borough-monger Lord Hertford: "There can be no doubt
that the Reform Bill is a stepping-stone in England to a republic,
and in Ireland to separation. Both _may_ happen without the Bill,
but with it they are inevitable." Next year the Bill became law.
Lord Bathurst cut off his pigtail, exclaiming: "Ichabod, for the
glory is departed"--an exquisitely significant combination of act
and word--and the Duke of Wellington announced that England had
accomplished "a revolution by due course of law." In some sense the
words were true. Political power had passed from the aristocracy
to the middle class. The English equivalents of Talleyrand--the
men who directly or in their ancestors had ruled England since
1688, had enjoyed power without responsibility, and privilege which
alike Kings and mobs had questioned in vain--were filled with the
wildest alarms. Emotional orators saw visions of the guillotine;
calmer spirits anticipated the ballot-box; and the one implement
of anarchy was scarcely more dreaded than the other.
Sixteen years passed. Property and freedom seemed pretty secure. Even
privilege, though shaken, had not been overthrown; and a generation
had grown up to which the fears of revolution seemed fantastic. Then
suddenly came the uprising of the nations in '48; and once again
"dissolving throes" were felt, with pain or joy according to the
temperament of those who felt them. "We have seen," said Charles
Greville, "such a stirring-up of all the elements of society as
nobody ever dreamt of; we have seen a general saturnalia--ignorance,
vanity, insolence, poverty, ambition, escaping from every kind
of restraint, ranging over the world, and turning it topsy-turvy
as it pleased. All Europe exhibits the result--a mass of ruin,
terror, and despair." Matthew Arnold, young and ardent, and in
some ways democratic, wrote in a different vein: "The hour of the
hereditary peerage, and eldest sonship, and immense properties,
has, I am convinced, as Lamartine would say, struck." Seventy years
ago! And that "hour" has not struck yet!
The "dissolving throes" were lulled again, and I scarcely made
themselves felt till 1866, when a mild attempt to admit the pick
of the artisans to the electoral privileges of the middle class
woke the panic-stricken vehemence of Robert Lowe. "If," he asked,
"you want venality, ignorance, drunkenness, and the means of
intimidation; if you want impulsive, unreflecting, and violent
people, where will you go to look for them--to the top or to the
bottom?" Well might Bishop Wilberforce report to a friend, "It was
enough to make the flesh creep to hear Bob Lowe's prognostications
for the future of England."
Next year the artisans got the vote, though the great Lord Shaftesbury,
who knew more than most of his peers about working-men, plainly
told the House of Lords that "a large proportion of the working
classes have a deep and solemn conviction that property is not
distributed as property ought to be; that some checks ought to
be kept upon the accumulation of property in single hands; and
that to take away by legislation that which is in excess with a
view to bestowing it on those who have less, is not a breach of
any law, human or Divine."
Yet once more. When in 1885 the agricultural labourers (of whom a
Tory M.P. said that they were no fitter for a vote than the beasts
they tended), were admitted to the franchise, the same terrors
shook the squirearchy. We were warned that the land would soon be
broken up into small holdings; that sport would become impossible;
and that "the stately homes of England" must all be closed, for
lack of money to keep them open. The country, we were told, had
seen its best days, and "Merry England" had vanished for ever.
I only recall these "dissolving throes," real or imaginary, because
I fancy that just now they are again making themselves felt, and
perhaps with better reason than ever before in our history. People
who venture to look ahead are asking themselves this question: If
this war goes on much longer, what sort of England will emerge?
Some are looking forward with rapture to a new heaven and a new
earth; others dread the impending destruction "of a social order
they loved." Can we not trace something of this dread in Lord
Lansdowne's much-canvassed letter? He is one of the most patriotic
and most experienced men in public life; he "looks on the rushing
decay of the times which sheltered his youth"; and it may well be
that he is striving to avert what seems to him a social catastrophe.