THE DECLINE OF TORYISM
The conclusion of the war closed the outlet through which the national
energies had been so long strained, and left the people free to contemplate
their own situation. Popular discontent again made itself felt, and it was
more formidable than ever. Trade was dislocated by the peace, industries
were reduced which had fattened upon the war, and the numbers of the idle
workmen were swollen by disbanded soldiers and sailors. At the same time
bad harvests diminished the supply of corn, and a new Corn Law which
prohibited imports till the home price was eighty shillings a quarter
aggravated the effects of natural deficiency. Wages in some trades were
bad, and grew worse. In 1819 ribbon and silk weavers of Coventry petitioned
Parliament to provide them with the means of emigrating to another country.
They worked sixteen hours a day, in some cases for eighteenpence or half a
crown a week. None of them earned more than ten shillings a week. A
hand-loom cotton weaver could make only five or six shillings a week. A
pound a week was a good wage for a workman in any industry.[176] The price
of corn rose higher and higher. In January, 1816, a quarter of wheat cost
fifty-two shillings and sixpence. In June, 1817, it cost a hundred and
seventeen shillings.[177] As each member of the working class consumed on
the average about one quarter a year, it {143} follows that a family of
five spent on bread at the rate of L13 a year at the first rate, and
eighteen months later at the rate of L29. The whole income of a weaver
might be swallowed up in buying bread alone, and his family be still left
in want.
To this dreadful picture a comic touch was not wanting. The Lord Advocate
once referred to it in language which shows how remotely separated were the
people and their rulers. "In many instances," he said, "the manufacturers,
who in former times were in the habit of attending church, now employed the
forenoon of the Sabbath in political discussions; and it was a common
practice for weavers to work at their looms on the same day, and till a
late hour of the night--and this too with their windows open, to the horror
and disgust of the passengers."[178] The economic necessity which deprived
the wretched artisans even of the day appointed for their rest was thus
twisted into a stain upon their character. It is not surprising that they
discussed politics. Pending their emancipation, they had only three
possible aids, starvation, parish relief, and charity; and many unhappy
workmen and their families experienced all three. Political agitation
revived on the conclusion of peace, and it was more extensive and more
determined than before. It was met by the same dull and brutal repression
and refusal of redress.
We have before us all the evidence upon which the Government proceeded, and
there can be even less doubt than in connection with the events of twenty
years before that its action was wrong and foolish. Almost every
disturbance which took place could be traced to industrial or agrarian
causes, and the ordinary law was in all cases sufficient. The Government
preferred to treat the riots as proof of a general conspiracy against the
State, and they took extraordinary steps in order to suppress them. In 1817
they suspended the Habeas Corpus Act. The suspensions of the {144} earlier
period might have been justified by the universal war, by the rapid
dispersion of Jacobin principles, by the dangerous state of Ireland. The
suspension of 1817 had no such excuse. The paroxysm of the French
Revolution had come to an end. Ireland was disaffected but subdued. There
was no war. The Government had nothing to do but to attend to the condition
of the people. But this was the last thing which it occurred to the
Government to do. Even when the original impulse had ceased to operate,
they continued to move in the line of reaction, and repeated mechanically
the watchwords of their predecessors, who had at least the excuse that they
were surprised and horrified. Sidmouth gravely described the Radicals as
"the enemy."[179] It never seems to have occurred to any one in authority
that Radicalism and riots were not cause and effect, and instead of
grappling with the economic conditions which were equally the cause of
both, Ministers discussed nothing but the means whereby the law was to be
more easily enforced.[180] Undoubtedly there were occasional disturbances
of a serious character. Between 1801 and 1811 the population increased by
21 per cent. The bulk of increase was among the North Country artisans,
whose growing numbers at once made their economic distress and their
political impotence more conspicuous than ever. There was a dangerous riot
in Spa Fields, London, in November, 1816. Another occurred at Huddersfield
in the following May, a third at Derby, and a fourth at Nottingham. Secret
societies were formed in different parts of the country, and the tongue of
Hunt and the pen of William Cobbett, rivalling the earlier popularity of
{145} the _Rights of Man_, led the Government to suppose that the whole
fabric of society was in danger. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, the
Seditious Meetings Act was revived, and Secret Committees of both Houses
were appointed to collect information.
It is clear from the reports of these Committees that there was nothing in
the state of the country to justify these unusual measures. The great mass
of the people showed no sympathy with the rioters. Education was spreading
rapidly in Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Scotland, and the artisans were
thinking for themselves. Violence was rare, but agitation was general.
Large bodies of people marched to public meetings at Manchester, Leeds,
Birmingham, and other provincial towns. Not a shadow of proof was produced
by the Committees that these had any criminal intention, and one fact is
sufficient to prove the contrary. At almost every meeting women and
children were present.[181] The discipline and order of these crowds were
indeed, in the obscure reasonings of men like Liverpool, Sidmouth, and
Castlereagh, an additional proof of their seditious character. A turbulent
common people never puzzled a Tory. It was the nature of the beast to be
disorderly. But a common people which thought, and spoke, and organized,
and met and dispersed in companies at the advice of its leaders, was a
thing which he could not understand. What he could not understand, he
feared. Not the least significant fact in this record of dull and
unimaginative mismanagement is the connection between Castlereagh and
Continental statesmen of the type of Metternich. These people had formed a
Holy Alliance for the express purpose of suppressing attempts to establish
Liberal Constitutions in Europe. Castlereagh, representing Great Britain,
had refused to join the Alliance. But in his own country he was pursuing
its very policy, as the European despots well knew. The letters in which
the Courts of {146} Vienna and Berlin congratulated him on his suspension
of the Habeas Corpus Act and the right of public meeting are among the most
degrading which have ever passed through the British Foreign Office.[182]
The worst incident of this struggle between people and Government was the
affair of Peterloo. This showed, as vividly as could have been desired, how
completely the working class was at the mercy of a governing class, which
controlled Parliament, the Army, and the Bench. A large but peaceful
meeting, containing many women and children, was held in St. Peter's
Square, Manchester, to hear speeches by Hunt and other popular leaders. The
crowd had gathered from all the towns in the neighbourhood, and had
marched, unarmed but in military order, to the place of assembly. The
magistrates thought they were faced with rebellion. They sent police and
yeomen to arrest Hunt, who stood on a waggon in the middle of the crowd.
The yeomen got entangled among the people, and with the assistance of some
hussars proceeded to convert the meeting into a riot. Men, women, and
children were cut down or trampled by the horses; a few were killed and
many injured. The action of the soldiers was endorsed by the magistrates
and by the Government.[183] Whigs in both houses protested and demanded an
inquiry, and Radical meetings everywhere denounced the affair as a
massacre. The Government listened neither to expostulation nor to abuse.
They refused to hold an inquiry. Persons injured had a legal remedy, and it
was not the business of the executive to investigate matters which might
come before the judiciary. It was true that a man or woman who was cut down
in the midst of a panic-stricken mob might be unable to identify the
cavalryman concerned. But it was not the business of the Government to step
in where the law failed. Besides, the magistracy were honourable and
patriotic men, and it would cast a slur upon them and weaken {147} their
authority if their superiors examined their conduct. The language of
Ministers was in keeping with their whole policy. The people were to be
kept down, and it was not necessary, seeing that they were politically
powerless, to be squeamish about ways and means. All the usual arguments
were thus employed to protect the official wrongdoers against the public.
One official will always defend the wickedness of another against private
persons who happen to be unpopular, and a Secretary of State, who can rely
on the support of a resentful party, will always ignore the wrongs of
political opponents upon whose votes he is not forced to depend.[184] It is
in agitations for the franchise that we learn best to appreciate it. In no
other circumstances is the tendency to abuse power greater in the governor,
nor the incapacity to obtain redress more conspicuous in the governed.
The direct consequence of this wanton abuse of power was to increase the
disaffection of the common people and to stimulate the Whigs in Parliament.
Much as they hated Radicals, the Whigs were too honestly indignant to
tolerate executive outrage of this kind, and too anxious to retain their
own leadership of constitutional opposition, to leave all the work of
protest to the Radicals themselves.[185] The citizens of London, York,
Bristol, Nottingham, and other large towns sent addresses to the Prince
Regent, and a great meeting of Yorkshire voters was summoned by no less a
person than Lord Fitzwilliam, the Lord-Lieutenant of the county. The
Government was more frightened than ever, and contrived new methods of
repression. Fitzwilliam was dismissed from his office, and Sir Francis
Burdett was fined L2,000 and imprisoned for three months for publishing a
violent criticism in a newspaper. Castlereagh then introduced the notorious
Six Acts. The drilling which had preceded popular meetings was made
illegal. The trial of offenders was to be more expeditious. The magistrates
were authorized to issue warrants to search for {148} arms. Transportation
was made the punishment for a second conviction for seditious libel. Public
meetings were restricted. Pamphlets were subjected to the same stamp duties
as newspapers. A touch of comedy was lent to these proceedings by a grant
of L1,000,000 for the purposes of building new churches. This had two
objects. The first was to check the spread of Dissent. "It was their duty,"
said Lord Liverpool, "to take care that those who received the benefits of
education should not be obliged to resort to Dissenting places of worship
by finding the doors of the church shut against them." But the second
object was to prevent political agitation. "The recent increase of
population," said the same statesman, "had taken place chiefly in the
manufacturing towns; and it was impossible that great masses of human
beings should be brought together in the manner in which they were situated
in these towns without being exposed to vicious habits, and to corrupting
influences dangerous to the public security as well as to private
morality."[186] The gravity with which such remedial measures as this were
proposed shows how utterly the Tories had failed to understand their
business. It is always the habit of a Tory to suppose that popular
discontent is a matter of preaching. It is always preached up, and it can
always be preached down. The people ask for bread, and the Tories offer
them a dogma. The Government of 1819 was no wiser than its predecessors,
and it applied itself with great diligence to convert the people by words
from a disposition which arose directly out of a combination of low wages
and high prices. They were saved by the forces of nature. The Regent
ascended the throne as George IV in 1820, and his scandalous prosecution of
his wife for a short time gave the people a new cry against the Government.
But with the defeat of the Bill of Pains and Penalties the popular feeling
subsided. Ministers had imagined themselves to be faced with a conspiracy
between the Queen and the populace like that which had placed Catherine II
on the throne of Russia. But the death of the Queen removed the {149}
leader, and good harvests, by bringing down the cost of living, reduced the
sufferings of the people. The Tories remained in office for another ten
years.
An attempt at economic reform was made at this time of crisis which
deserves some notice. On the 16th December, 1819, Sir William de Crespigny
moved that a Select Committee of the Commons be appointed to inquire into
Robert Owen's scheme of co-operative production in New Lanark. Owen's
experiment eventually failed. But as an experiment it was immensely
valuable, and afforded abundant proof of the value of education, of the
reduction of child labour, of a short working day, and of good conditions
of housing and factory administration. Parliament could not have failed to
profit by the study of such an excellent model. During the debate on
Crespigny's motion, many professions of sympathy with distressed workmen
were made, and not a few compliments were paid to the owner of the New
Lanark mills. But Owen had made two dangerous blunders. As a Socialist he
had spoken against private property, and his religious opinions were
unorthodox. His scheme was therefore "subversive of the religion and
government of the country," and Tories like Castlereagh, Pietists like
Wilberforce, and individualist economists like Ricardo joined in denouncing
it. The argument of Wilberforce shows with what conscientious frivolity
these governors studied the condition of their subjects. If Owen's plan, he
said, "proceeded upon a system of morals founded upon no religion whatever,
but rather upon considerations of moral rectitude of conduct only, he was
of opinion that it behoved the House to be cautious how it gave its
sanction to an institution which did not acknowledge as one of its
essential features that doctrine on whose truth and piety it was not for
him now to enlarge."[187] Upon such barriers the motion was shipwrecked. It
was lost by 141 votes to 16, and the working classes were left to the
tender mercies of competition.
Everything at home seemed hopeless for the cause of {150} Liberalism. But
while the demand for reform seemed to have grown weaker and its concession
more remote, the aspect of foreign affairs was much more favourable. During
this last period of Tory domination, which extended from the accession of
George IV in 1820 to his death in 1830, the principle of nationality was
steadily and courageously maintained. In capacity the members of these Tory
Governments, with the exceptions of George Canning and Sir Robert Peel,
were inferior to all who had held office before them since 1791.
Castlereagh, the strongest of the older men, killed himself in 1822.
Liverpool, who was Prime Minister from 1812 to 1827, was a respectable
mediocrity. Sidmouth was rather less. Eldon, as Lord Chancellor, reigned
supreme in the Lords, and nearly every measure of reform which was pushed
through the Commons was overwhelmed in the Lords by his single argument.
"The change now proposed was in direct contradiction to what their
ancestors had supposed to be the constitution; whether they were right or
not in that supposition was a matter which he would not take it upon him to
decide."[188] But foreign affairs were happily outside the control of the
House of Lords, and Canning, who joined the Government after Castlereagh's
death, managed them in the temper of pure Liberalism. Except on the
Catholic question, Canning was in domestic politics a Tory. But his zeal
for the rights of nationalities was as warm as that of Fox himself, and he
never failed to encourage the growth of that spirit which had finally
overcome Napoleon. He became the acknowledged leader of European
Liberalism. Even Castlereagh, after the great partition of Europe had been
completed, had declined to interfere in foreign civil wars, or to assist in
the coercion of rebellious nationalities. Canning turned the cold negations
of his predecessor into warm encouragement and remonstrance.
The first difficulties arose in Spain. The expulsion of the French had been
followed by the restoration of the Spanish dynasty, and the promises of
free institutions which had been used to stir up popular feeling were soon
forgotten. Once {151} secure upon his throne, King Ferdinand proceeded with
great vigour to suppress what elements of liberty he could discover in his
dominions, and by 1822 the whole of Northern Spain was in a state of civil
war and the South American Colonies were in revolt. The Holy Alliance had
been contrived for just such circumstances as these. The French King sent
an army into Spain to help King Ferdinand. That this was an outrage not
even Castlereagh and Liverpool could deny, though it merely imitated the
policy of the English Tories of 1793. They declined to join the Holy
Alliance, and they addressed a strong protest to the guilty Powers. They
declined, on the other hand, to go to war on behalf of one half of the
Spanish people against the other. The system of Spanish government was for
the Spanish people to decide. But the revolt of the Colonies gave Canning
an opportunity of which he was glad to avail himself. At the earliest
opportunity he formally recognized the revolutionary Governments. The
establishment of a reactionary monarchy in Spain, where the issue of the
civil war was in doubt, was one thing, the extension of the reaction to
colonies which had set themselves completely free from their former rulers
was another. There was no question here of appearing as a partisan in a
domestic dispute. The Colonies were in fact independent. Was England to
remain passive while they were reduced once more into subjection? Canning
was resolved that if despotism were to be the rule on the Continent of
Europe it should not be extended beyond those limits. He "called the New
World into existence to redress the balance of the Old,"[189] and no one
who compares the present condition of South America with that of Spain will
question the wisdom any more than the expediency of his act.
The affairs of Portugal produced a similar problem, and in 1826 Canning
went so far as to send troops to Lisbon to protect the Portuguese Liberal
Regency from Spanish invasion. In 1828 Don Miguel usurped the Portuguese
throne and violated the constitution which as Regent he had sworn to
protect. The {152} Tory Government, which had lost Canning in 1827, and was
now in the hands of Wellington, adopted the strict Liberal attitude of not
dictating to the Portuguese people how they should be governed. If they
prevented France from supporting despotism, they could not, with any
consistency, themselves support democracy. "Don Miguel," said Peel, "was
the person administering _de facto_ the government of Portugal, and he
could not think it prudent on the part of England to undertake to displace
him and to dictate to the Portuguese who should be their ruler."[190] But
the Government went farther than inaction. An expedition was fitted out in
England by Portuguese refugees, and made a descent upon the Azores. A
British ship fired on them and turned them back. It was the manner of the
act rather than the act itself which was at fault. If the Government were
bound not to assist the Constitutionalists in Portugal, they were bound to
prevent their own territory from being made a base for their operations.
The expedition should never have been allowed to sail. The use of armed
force on the high seas was very unpopular, and Wellington was severely
criticized by the Whigs. Their instinct was right, if their conduct was
wrong. Wellington was in fact not so much refraining from interference in
the domestic affairs of Portugal as suppressing a democratic movement. "We
are determined," he wrote, "that there shall be no revolutionary movement
from England on any part of the world."[191] He was equally determined, as
subsequent events showed, that there should be no revolutionary movement in
England itself. He would have drilled the English people as he allowed
Miguel to drill the Portuguese, and if his policy was Liberal, his temper
was Tory.
The debates on these Portuguese incidents are significant, not only because
they reveal an almost universal acceptance of the principle of
non-interference, but because they contain the ominous expressions of
dissent from that principle which fell from the lips of Palmerston.
Palmerston had succeeded Canning at the Foreign Office, and he always
claimed to be Canning's {153} disciple as well as his successor. He
formally joined the Whig party in 1830, and with the brief interval
occupied by Peel's administration of 1841, dominated the foreign policy of
England until his death in 1865. He had all Canning's hatred of foreign
tyranny, but, in his case, generosity was mixed with an arrogance and
vanity which increased his difficulties and often defeated his objects. "If
by interference," he said in the Miguel debates, "is meant interference by
force of arms, such interference, the Government are right in saying,
general principles and our own practice forbade us to exert. But if by
interference is meant intermeddling, and intermeddling in every way, and to
every extent, short of military force, then I must affirm that there is
nothing in such interference which the laws of nations may not in certain
cases permit.... In like manner as in a particular community any bystander
is at liberty to interfere to prevent a breach of the law of that
community; so also, and upon the same principle, may any nation interpose
to prevent a flagrant violation of the laws of the community of
nations."[192] The bystander in a street row is an exact description of
Palmerston in his foreign politics. It is in these passages that we find
the explanation of a foreign policy which for a whole generation afterwards
disturbed, irritated, and demoralized the whole civilized world. For the
time being he continued Canning's policy with success. In spite of
Wellington, he assisted to liberate the Greeks from the Turks in 1829, and
it was largely owing to his bold opposition to France that Belgium burst
the fetters imposed upon her by the Treaty of Vienna, and wrested her
independence from Holland in 1830. In foreign affairs Liberalism had thus
made a great advance since 1820. The interference in French domestic policy
which was involved in the war of 1793 had never been repeated, and England,
while herself respecting the rights of other nations, had actively assisted
at the emancipation of Portugal, South America, Greece, and Belgium.
Even in domestic affairs the Tory barriers were being slowly {154} borne
down by the rising tide. A humanitarian treatment of the lower classes had
already become apparent in legislation. The punishment of the pillory was
abolished in 1816. The whipping of women was stopped in 1820. In 1823 Peel
succeeded Sidmouth at the Home Office, and the temper of that department
changed as conspicuously as that of the Foreign Office changed when Canning
took the place of Castlereagh. Romilly had fought in vain for mitigations
of the criminal law from 1808 to 1818. Sir James Mackintosh, after him, had
met with slight success. Peel introduced Government Bills, and overcame
even Eldon and the Bishops in the House of Lords. One hundred capital
offences were abolished by a single one of these Bills. In 1827 it was made
illegal for any one to use man-traps or spring-guns for the capture of
housebreakers or poachers. In 1802 Peel had passed a Bill for the
protection and education of parish apprentices who were employed in
manufactures. In 1819, 1825, and 1829 he applied similar regulations to the
case of all children, whether paupers or not, who were employed in
factories. The sum total of these restrictions was little enough, and they
still permitted a child of ten to be worked for sixty-nine hours a week.
But they laid the foundation of our system of Factory Law. In 1824 the
Combination Acts were repealed, and an instrument which had been frequently
used for the disablement of workmen agitating for better terms of
employment was thus taken from the employers. Even before the great Whig
victory of 1831 there was thus strong evidence of a change in the temper of
government. Political power was retained as jealously as ever. But the
ruling class was obviously losing its blind and obstinate reverence for
antiquity and establishments. This change was due partly to the influence
of Evangelical Christianity, which at this time guided a large section of
the English middle class, including Tories as solid as Wilberforce and
Hannah More. This philanthropic Christianity had played a great part in the
abolition of the Slave Trade, and it now operated to humanize in some
measure the state of England. But the most powerful {155} influence of the
time was a philosophy which was identified with revolution and free thought
rather than with Toryism and religion. This was the philosophy of Bentham,
or Utilitarianism.
Unlike the philosophies of men like Cartwright and Paine, Utilitarianism
extended far beyond the boundaries of politics. It was a system of ethics
from which political principles were deduced, and it was directed not only
to political institutions, but to social institutions of every kind,
including property and marriage. Burke's _French Revolution_, though
primarily political, had in fact expressed a whole intellectual system, and
its almost mystical Conservatism, believing in the irrational working of
human instincts through illogical and hardly comprehended instruments, had
been developed and extended by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Benthamism was a
rationalistic and criticizing system, which referred everything to reason
and experience, and would accept nothing merely because it had become by
age the centre of human confidence. The intellectual Conservative tended to
identify truth with antiquity. That an institution had existed, that an
idea had been generally accepted for a long period, was sufficient proof of
its rightness; it should be criticized with reverence and modified, if at
all, without substantial change. The Benthamite respected nothing and
criticized everything. Armed with his own practical philosophy, he summoned
every institution and every idea to stand and give an account of itself,
and if it failed to satisfy him, no degree of antiquity could save it from
condemnation. Benthamism was thus a profoundly modifying force in other
fields than that of politics. But for the purposes of this book it is not
necessary to undertake a general examination of it.
Bentham began to preach his philosophy before the end of the eighteenth
century. But its influence was not great until the French War had exhausted
practical Toryism. Largely under the direction of James Mill the new
thinking then began to make headway, and it had produced considerable
political results even before the enfranchisement of the middle class in
1832. {156} In the turmoil of warring theories Bentham laid about him with
great impartiality. He had no sympathy with antiquity and prescription.
These were but "the infantile foolishness of the cradle of the race."[193]
But his contempt for historical Conservatism was equalled by his contempt
for the conception of natural rights. "Rights, properly so called, are the
creatures of law, properly so called; real laws give birth to real
rights."[194] He had no patience either with appeals to history or with
abstract reasoning. He was as ready as Paine to cut off society and begin
it afresh, and as little ready as Burke to construct a theory in the air
and apply it without regard to its practical effects. He had one guiding
principle--that of utility, by which he meant a tendency to promote human
happiness. Burke and Coleridge asked, "How has it grown?" Cartwright and
Paine asked, "How does it conform to reason?" Bentham asked, "How does it
work?" Every institution--the monarchy, the Established Church, the law,
property, marriage--was to be examined. If it promoted the general
happiness, it might remain, however little it realized an abstract ideal.
If it did not, it must go, whatever its antiquity and splendour. Cumbrous
legal forms and savage punishments which did not prevent crime must be
abolished, even if they dated from the reign of Richard I. The House of
Commons must be reformed, root and branch, because it was corrupt and
selfish. Property was essential to the stability of society, and it must be
preserved, whatever advantages it gave to one class over another. Marriage
must be made dissoluble, because, while divorce was impossible,
indissoluble unions meant misery for many men and women.
It is easy to find fallacies in the philosophy of Benthamism. It is untrue
to say that morality consists in the pursuit of pleasure. There are logical
fallacies in the expression "the greatest happiness of the greatest
number." Men do not habitually pursue their own interests, and if they are
left free to pursue them it is not true that each of them will secure the
greatest happiness for {157} himself. But whatever difficulties reasoners
may find in the philosophy, there is no question that the practice of the
Utilitarians was of immense value to society. The abstraction at which they
aimed was not a mere abstraction. Cartwright wanted liberty as an end in
itself. Bentham wanted happiness, which involved an indefinite number of
tangible benefits. A Benthamite might reason absurdly about "self-interest"
and "happiness," but in effect he was seeking to improve conditions of life
and to redress grievances. An assertion that it is the duty of Government
to produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number might confuse a
logician. To the ordinary Englishman, incapable of deep reasoning, it meant
that it was his business, whenever he saw an abuse which could be remedied
by legislation, to promote legislation to remove it. Utilitarianism
provided a working formula for practical philanthropy.
Its direct influence upon politics was distinctly of a Liberal kind. Every
man was to count for one, and no man for more than one. No man could know
the interest of another better than the other himself, and each must be
left free to pursue his own. A restricted franchise and government by a
class could not stand. Where each man's conduct was directed solely to the
pursuit of his own interest this could only mean the abuse of the majority
for the benefit of the minority. "Whatsoever evil it is possible for man to
do for the advancement of his own private and personal interest that evil
sooner or later he will do, unless by some means or other, intentional or
otherwise, he be prevented from doing it.... If it be true, according to
the homely proverb, that the eye of the master makes the ox fat, it is no
less so that the eye of the public makes the statesman virtuous."[195] The
argument is, of course, only partly true, and if it were entirely true it
would be a poor argument for a wide franchise. If every man will, sooner or
later, subject the public interest to his own, are we likely to be any more
happy under a democracy than under an oligarchy? If all are corrupt, does
it matter very much whether all or only a few have power? Democratic {158}
government has its peculiar dangers, and it may be corrupted by absolute
power no less than despotism or aristocracy. But it at least diffuses power
among an infinitely greater variety of people, who are less likely to be
animated by a single interest than a closely knit and homogeneous class.
For the practical purposes of the time, where the privileges were all in
the hands of the minority and the deprivations were all suffered by the
impotent majority, the argument was good enough. It led to universal
suffrage no less directly than reasoning from the abstract rights of man.
In practice some of the Benthamites stopped short at a middle-class
franchise. This class was so large and so varied in character that it might
be trusted to legislate for the nation as a whole. But the Benthamite
reasoning went beyond this. It involved, as Bentham himself admitted, the
enfranchisement of women. James Mill and many of his friends would not go
so far, and drew from William Thompson, in 1825, his _Appeal of One-Half of
the Human Race_, which is the second of the great marks in the progress of
English women.
Disputes about subjects of this sort, which were not yet practically
important, did not weaken the general influence of the Utilitarians. Even
where their philosophy was rejected, their sustained and general attack
upon abuses produced its effect. They were allied with Tories like
Wilberforce in abolishing the Slave Trade. Romilly, Mackintosh, and Peel
reformed the criminal law in the very spirit of Bentham. Sydney Smith,
Jeffrey, Macaulay, Brougham, and the other Whigs, who since 1802 had
written in the _Edinburgh Review_, habitually spoke with contempt of
Utilitarians. But their practical politics were hardly different from those
of James Mill and George Grote.[196] Restrictions on trade, excessive
punishments for crime, costly and incomprehensible legal procedure,
religious inequalities, anomalies {159} of the franchise, sinecures, jobs,
all the fetters which hampered the individual in the pursuit of his own
interest, were attacked by Whigs and Utilitarians together, and with the
irregular assistance of Tories like Peel, the two contrived, between 1820
and 1850, to transform English politics.
The work of the Utilitarians was Liberal, so far as it went. Their
insistence upon the equal value of all individuals led to the removal of
restrictions upon liberty. No man could know the interest of another.
Therefore every man must be left, as far as possible, to himself. Each must
control his own government. Each must be permitted to hold and to publish
his own opinions. Trade and manufacture must be left to the unfettered
discretion of traders and manufacturers. The Government must stand away
from the individual, except when, as for national defence, some central
control was inevitable. This course of reasoning led the Benthamites into
the neglect of economic problems which was the great blemish of their
practical politics. The economists had arrived at the theory of _laissez
faire_ by a different route. Both schools now gave a scientific expression
to the old English dislike of Government interference, which the Whigs
cherished as part of their inheritance from the past, and the new middle
class as the result of their methods of industry. All four groups agreed in
this claim for individual freedom, and the humanitarian tendencies of
Benthamism were sacrificed to its pedantry. Enterprise was allowed full
play. Protective duties were reduced and finally abolished. Competition
stimulated and encouraged the production of wealth. But while the masters
profited, the workpeople suffered.
There is a very precise indication of the way in which the political
economy of the day and the Utilitarian theorizing combined to neglect the
peculiar miseries of the common people, in a speech of Joseph Hume. He was
speaking against the Framework Knitters' Bill of 1812, which proposed to
fix maximum and minimum rates of wages, and to prohibit the payment of
workmen otherwise than in cash. Hume declared that the function of the
State in economic matters was "to protect both {160} masters and workmen,
and allow every individual to exert himself in employing his capital and
labour in such an honourable manner as he may think best; every one in
general being the best judge of his own abilities how to employ his stock
in trade.... Viewing capitalists and artisans equally as traders, I
consider an uncontrolled competition as beneficial to both, and the
strongest spur to ingenuity and industry.... If it should be more
convenient or profitable for a workman to receive payment for his labour
partly or wholly in goods, why should he be prevented from doing so? For if
such a practice is inconvenient or injurious to any man, he will not work a
second time for the master who pays him in that manner."[197] In the same
speech Hume declared that he would put masters and men on an equal footing
by the repeal of the Combination Acts, and the Acts were repealed, on
Hume's motion, in 1824. This speech and the repeal of the Acts were
Benthamite in essence. But equal treatment by the State was not equality,
and to leave masters and men free to fight out their disputes was not to
make each count for one and no one for more than one. Of what use was it to
tell a workman that his uncontrolled competition with his fellows was a
spur to his ingenuity and industry, when it meant that a crowd of men,
under pressure of starvation, undersold each other for a bare subsistence?
Of what use was it to put capitalists and workmen into a comparison as
traders, when for the one holding out of the market meant merely a
temporary loss of income, and for the other it meant destitution? Of what
use was it to say that a workman who was deprived of part of his earnings
by the truck system could refuse to work a second time for the master who
paid him in that manner, when he had perhaps no means of travelling to find
another, and when in any case there were so many men willing to fill his
place on any terms that the master had no reason to fear his refusal? For
all its philanthropy, Benthamism did not settle the problem of the
conditions of life among the working classes. Wages, hours of labour,
ventilation, sanitary appliances, housing and the planning of towns, were
all {161} left by the Utilitarians to this desperate system of individual
bargaining. On this side their philosophy was as conspicuously deficient as
that of Cartwright himself. But its results were positive, and it gave to
the scattered impulses of Liberalism a coherence and a philosophic unity
which they had hitherto lacked.
Apart from the new humanitarianism, there were other signs that the old
Tory structure was breaking to pieces. Two of its main supports were
destroyed before the Tory party left office in 1830. The Church of England
was at last deprived of its political monopoly. Papists, Dissenters, and
Jacobins had long enjoyed a common abhorrence, and all the progress which
the two depreciated religious classes had won before the French Revolution
had been lost. In 1819 the Tory Government had actually spent L1,000,000,
raised indiscriminately by taxing them as well as Churchmen, on building
new churches to prevent the spread of their opinions. Ten years later each
had won a signal victory over its hereditary enemy.
The state of Ireland since the Union had been such as to make all lovers of
order and good government despair. A population of 7,000,000 was crowded on
to land which was not extensive enough to support it. One-seventh of the
people, it was said, lived by begging or robbery.[198] The rest farmed
little patches of land for which many of them paid rent at the amazing rate
of ten guineas an acre a year.[199] The average rate of wages was fourpence
a day.[200] Squalor and disease were the lot of the majority of the
inhabitants of a rich and fertile land. Their economic distress, which was
due, at least in part, to the vicious, unsympathetic system of absentee
landlordism, was aggravated by religious disabilities. Under the Tithe Law
a Protestant clergyman was entitled to one-tenth of the produce which a
Catholic farmer could scrape out of his potato-patch. Poverty and ignorance
combined with religious bitterness to make the {162} government of Ireland
impossible. In every year since the Union the ordinary law had been
suspended, and the English ruled Ireland only in the way of foreign
conquerors. In 1822 they governed under the Insurrection Act, which
empowered the Lord-Lieutenant to proclaim a whole county to be in a
disturbed state, to compel all residents to keep in their houses between
sunset and sunrise, to instruct magistrates to enter houses at night to see
if the inmates were at home. Constitutional government was at an end.
In 1821 Plunket, who was a Tory Irishman, introduced a Bill to relieve the
Catholics from their disabilities. It was carried through the Commons by a
majority which included such rigid Tories as Castlereagh, Wilberforce, and
Croker, as well as Canning and Palmerston and the Whigs. The Lords, led by
Liverpool, Eldon, Wellington, and Sidmouth, threw out the Bill. Canning
introduced another Bill in 1822, which met the same fate. But a measure of
a different kind was passed into law in the same year, and did much to
allay the bitterness, if it did little to improve the economic conditions
of the Irish. This was an Act which extended the Tithe Law to grazing land
as well as to agricultural land, and at the same time enabled the
tithe-owners to accept a money payment instead of a part of the actual
produce. This relieved the peasantry of the obnoxious liability to hand
over the actual produce of their labour to the representative of an alien
Church.
The main grievance remained, and the struggle for complete emancipation now
entered upon its final stage. In 1823 Daniel O'Connell founded the Catholic
Association, a gigantic league, which included Catholics of every rank, and
levied a rent or annual contribution on all its members. In 1825 this had
become such a formidable engine that an Act was passed to suppress it. The
law was evaded. It was directed against societies formed for political
objects. The Association was dissolved, and a new Association was formed
ostensibly for educational and charitable purposes. The Act suppressed
societies which renewed their meetings for more than fourteen days. The new
Association sat for {163} fourteen days at a time, and described the
meetings as "convened pursuant to Act of Parliament." The rent was paid as
before, but was stated to be paid "for the relief of the forty-shilling
freeholders," or "for all purposes allowable by law." The Act, in short,
achieved nothing except to irritate the Catholics, and to show them that
they could defy the English Government.
Under these circumstances, there was nothing for wise Protestants to do but
to give way. A Bill was introduced relieving the Catholics of their
political disabilities. It was accompanied by two other Bills, which were
intended to mitigate the dangers of the first. One of these additional
Bills, or "wings," was intended to take political power from the poorest,
most ignorant, and least independent of the peasantry, by disfranchising
the forty-shilling freeholders. The other was intended to conciliate and
improve the character of the leaders of opinion, by endowing the Catholic
clergy. The Emancipation Bill passed the Commons by a majority of 21. The
bigotry and stupidity of the Lords had not diminished since 1812, and they
threw it out by 178 votes to 130. For four years more the Catholic
Association remained the dominant force in Irish politics, and every bitter
and violent man in the country had a just ground for denouncing the English
Government. The House of Lords made one more attempt to reduce Ireland to
anarchy. Liverpool died in 1827, and was succeeded by Canning as Prime
Minister. This substitution of a friend of the Catholics for an enemy meant
the beginning of the end. Eldon, Wellington, Peel, and four other Ministers
resigned, some of the Whigs joined the Cabinet, and the English Ministry
was at last united in a policy of justice and wisdom. But the death of
Canning a few months after he became Premier again shattered the hopes of
Liberalism. The old party came back, with Wellington at their head, pledged
to resist the Catholic claims. Within twelve months they had cut their own
throats, and a trifling controversy in the Cabinet led not only to Catholic
Emancipation, but to the entire destruction of the Tory system. {164}
Two boroughs, Penryn and East Retford, had been disfranchised for bribery
and corruption. The question arose whether their members should be
transferred to the counties in which they were situated or given to some of
the large towns like Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham, which had no
members at all. Huskisson, the President of the Board of Trade, took the
Liberal view, and in an important division voted against the Government.
The letter in which he explained his action was accepted by Wellington as a
resignation. His post was given to Vesey Fitzgerald, the member for Clare,
who submitted himself for re-election in the ordinary way. To the
consternation of the Tories, O'Connell himself came forward as a Catholic
candidate. The Catholic Association and the priests led or drove the voters
to the poll, Fitzgerald was beaten out of the field, and O'Connell,
disqualified by his religion, but with three-fourths of the Irish people at
his back, claimed a seat in the House of Commons. The Government had the
choice of two courses, neither of which promised them any credit. They
might give way to organized illegality and emancipate the Catholics. They
might exclude O'Connell and undertake a new civil war in Ireland.
Wellington was as good as a soldier as he was bad as a statesman, and he
knew when a position had become untenable. He was now ready to retreat in
good order. Peel supported him, and the two together controlled the
Cabinet. The Relief Bill and the Bill disfranchising the freeholders were
both law by the end of April, 1829.[201] The endowment of the clergy was
abandoned. Two facts of vital importance were involved in this defeat of
the Government. The first was that, for the first time in English history,
a political association had compelled Parliament against its will to pass a
measure into law. The people were beginning to control their Government.
The second fact was that the Irish had been forced into the belief that
patience and endurance were less likely to succeed in obtaining redress
than violence and {165} intimidation. The stupid resistance of the House of
Lords had planted this idea ineradicably in the Irish mind, and the events
of the next fifty years watered it and made it flourish to excess. The
reaction of these events upon English politics resembled that of the
success of the American Rebellion. The people were no longer at the
disposition of the governing class. What Ireland had done, England could
do. All over the country Political Unions for Reform came into existence,
and imitated the success of the Catholic Association. In two years the old
system came to an end.
Before the final breakdown of the Tory party the Dissenters had won for
themselves the abolition of their disabilities. On February 26, 1828, Lord
John Russell moved for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. There
was nothing new to be said on either side of this controversy. Was or was
not a Dissenter to count for as much in the State as a Churchman? Two
quotations from the debate will set the two schools of thought in their
places. Sir Robert Inglis, a Tory Churchman, said: "The question whether
any man ought to be eligible to power is a question of pure expediency, not
of justice; and such power may be regulated by sex, by age, by property, or
by opinions, without any wrong to any one's natural claims."[202] In other
words, a disposing class is to decide the social value of another class in
the interests of any institution with which it is itself associated.
Brougham replied in the language of pure Liberalism: "Assuming that no
practical grievance exists, is the stigma nothing? Is it nothing that a
Dissenter, wherever he goes, is looked on and treated as an inferior person
to a Churchman?... Is it nothing even that the honourable baronet should
say, as he has said this night, 'We will allow you to do so and so'? What
is it that gives the honourable baronet the title to use this language ...
but that the law encourages him to use it?"[203] On this occasion
Liberalism won an unexpected victory. The motion for repeal was carried by
237 votes to 193, and Peel, accepting the decision of the {166} Commons,
was able, after much labour, to overcome the resistance of the Lords.[204]
Two great breaches had thus been made in the edifice of Toryism, and the
Liberal tide was now very high above the point at which it had been left by
the French War. But events were moving more rapidly outside Parliament than
within it. The large provincial towns were still growing larger and their
demand for representation louder. A financial crisis in 1825 had injured
industry. Bad harvests in 1829 and 1830 combined with the import duties on
corn to increase the sufferings of the artisans and labourers. The latter
were already much demoralized by the administration of the Poor Law, and
the riots and disturbances in agricultural districts and factory towns
alike were more serious than they had ever been. The demand for Reform was
renewed with great vigour, and this time with success. The details of the
final struggle are not important for this work. Several circumstances
combined with the economic condition of the people to make agitation
effective. Continental Liberalism won two great victories in 1830. Belgium
shook off the yoke of Holland, and Charles X of France, expelled by a new
revolution, took refuge in England. Both these events gave encouragement to
English reformers. At the same time the Parliamentary Whigs, who had never
before recovered the cohesion which they lost in 1793, were united under
the leadership of Lord Althorp in the Commons and Lord Grey in the Lords.
The Tories, on the other hand, were broken up by the surrender to the
Dissenters and the Catholics. The Whigs, with a few exceptions like Lord
Durham and Lord John Russell, had no liking for drastic changes. But the
pressure in the country was too strong. A motion on some trivial matter
connected with the Civil List overthrew the Ministry. The Whigs came in
under Lord Grey, and introduced a Reform Bill which made a clean sweep of
the {167} rotten boroughs, gave seats to all the large provincial towns,
and enfranchised every townsman who occupied a house worth L10 a year. A
defeat in Committee produced a dissolution and a great Whig victory at the
polls. The Lords, indifferent alike to the trend of history and to the
state of contemporary opinion, threw out a second Bill. A great clamour
broke out all over the country, and at Bristol, Nottingham, and other
places the scum of the populace destroyed an enormous amount of public and
private property in riots. A third Bill was introduced in 1832, Wellington
again led his forces in retreat, and the Bill received Royal Assent on the
7th June, 1832. The people were at last the masters in their own house.
* * * * *
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