appears to have been political, it was in fact social. It was the
introduction of a wholly new class of society into the duties of
Government. The aristocratic classes, which had hitherto had the
monopoly of power, were forced to admit to an equality with themselves
the middle class, which the progress of society, and the wonderful
advance of material improvement during the last half century, had raised
to a position so important that its claims could no longer be withstood.
Its victory had been secured by a twofold alliance. On the one hand it
had taken advantage of the real wants of the classes below it, and of
the social ideas which had been called into existence by the French
Revolution; it had not scrupled to employ the modern arts of agitation,
or to bring what cannot be regarded in any other light than as an
unconstitutional pressure to bear upon Parliament. On the other hand it
had worked constitutionally by an alliance with one of the governing
classes, namely, the Whigs. Long exclusion from office had as usual made
this party alive to the existence of abuses, the defensive and
obstructive attitude of the Tories had reawakened its desire for
constitutional growth, and the philosophy and writings of the time,
especially those of Bentham and of the authors of the _Edinburgh
Review_, had taken considerable hold of its leading members. The Whig
Government therefore, with complete honesty, and in the midst of
considerable danger and difficulty, accepted the alliance which the
middle classes offered it, and honourably fulfilled its share of the
compact. Now that the great Bill was passed, it remained to be seen how
far the Whigs were willing to forego their old aristocratic prejudices,
and how far their strength would allow them to oppose the pressure of
the extreme Radicals, whose alliance they had been forced to accept
along with that of the middle class.
[Sidenote: Anxiety as to the effect of the change.]
It was with the utmost anxiety that the character of the first reformed
Parliament was watched. There was a general feeling of terror throughout
England. Timid investors began to seek securities for their money in
America or Denmark. There was a constant apprehension of a coming
revolution which might resemble that in France; a feeling which was not
appeased by occasional acts of violence throughout the country, and a
fierce and dangerous assault by the London mob upon the Duke of
Wellington himself. It is possible that in any other country such a
revolution might have resulted; but the practical character of the
English mind, which prevents it from being carried away by a passionate
desire for ideal benefits, the wide diffusion and extremely strong love
of property, the firm and dignified attitude of the nobility, the
loyalty with which the really active part of the Tory party accepted the
change and determined to make the best of it, secured tranquillity for
the country during its passage through the dangerous crisis. It may also
be reckoned as no small advantage to the cause of order, that the
English Radicals found themselves thrown into the company of O'Connell
and the Irish agitators; the clamour for repeal, the lawless violence
which showed itself in the sister island, and the unscrupulous character
of the demagogue who represented it, gave a strength and unity to the
moderate Whig party which it would otherwise have wanted. At the same
time the twofold connections and interests of the Government could not
but, sooner or later, prove a cause of weakness. Their aristocratic
tendencies, which remained unabated, prevented them from throwing
themselves heartily into the wishes of their more popular supporters,
and laid them open to the constant suspicion of an inclination towards
Toryism. Their dependence on the popular party compelled them to take in
hand many difficult questions for the solution of which the nation was
clamouring. They had therefore to be constantly steering a middle
course, and assuming an appearance of weakness which rapidly undermined
their popularity, while the two tendencies which they represented,
affecting the individual members of the Cabinet in different degrees,
speedily led to a division among themselves. It is for these reasons
that the work of the first reformed Parliament, great as it was, has an
appearance of weakness as compared with the burst of popular reform
which might have been expected after so great a change.
[Sidenote: Character of the reformed Parliament. Jan. 29, 1833.]
When Parliament assembled it appeared that the Whigs had on the whole a
very large majority; but, besides an active and important body of Tories
headed by Sir Robert Peel, there were a considerable number of Radicals,
of whom Hume may be regarded as the leader, and the Irish members, for
the most part the mere nominees and puppets of O'Connell, from whom
opposition might be expected. There were changes both in the appearance
and character of the House; the average age of the members was visibly
increased, and it was evident that there would be more individual
opinion, less distinctly party voting, and a greater necessity for
convincing argument to ensure a majority. It was plain, too, that with
much less of oratory there would be a far greater quantity of talking;
and as the Government, in the King's speech, promised to introduce a
number of very important Bills, it was found necessary greatly to
lengthen the hours of business. At the same time, as there were no less
than three hundred new members in the House, it was thought advisable to
reappoint the old Speaker, Manners-Sutton, although he was a Tory in
politics, a step which at once excited the displeasure of the more
advanced Liberals.
[Sidenote: Critical questions to be settled.]
The questions most generally occupying men's minds, and which it might
be supposed would at once become prominent, were the disturbed and
wretched condition of the poor, as evidenced by the late riots and
constant rick-burning; the position of the Church; slavery; and the
national relations to foreign countries, especially Belgium and the
Peninsula; but, before all, the condition of Ireland, and the
maintenance of the Protestant Church in that country.
[Sidenote: Condition of Ireland.]
It was the Irish question which became at once the most important, and
which ultimately caused the fall of the ministry. It was understood that
some measures of coercion would be necessary to restore tranquillity in
that country, but that they should go hand in hand with measures of
reform and relief. As though to render the coming Coercion Bill more
palatable, Lord Althorp, on the 12th of February, introduced a Bill for
the regulation of the Irish Church. Since the Catholic Emancipation Act
the state of Ireland had been becoming constantly worse. Instead of
accepting the Act in a conciliatory spirit, O'Connell had used it as a
stepping-stone for further demands, and had continued his course of
agitation. He had been prosecuted in 1831, had pleaded guilty to holding
illegal assemblies, but by the carelessness of the Whig Government he
had escaped without punishment. His present demand was repeal, but the
outrages which filled Ireland were either agrarian or connected with the
tithes; and O'Connell skilfully managed, while by his agitation he
continually kept up the discontent, to keep clear himself of any
participation in the violence of his countrymen. Of course the repeal of
the Union could not be for a moment thought of, but the Government could
not deny that the position of the Irish Church and the collection of
tithes for its support were real grievances.
[Sidenote: Position of the Irish Church.]
In a country of which the population was somewhat over seven millions,
there was established a dominant Protestant Church, the members of which
numbered 853,000 only. It had a staff of no less than four archbishops
and eighteen bishops, many of them with very large incomes, and a body
of clergy supported principally by tithes, exacted not only from its own
members, but from the six million and a half Catholics. To make matters
worse, the tithe was paid by the tenants, and, as the land was
infinitely subdivided, in minute sums which rendered its forcible
exaction most irksome and ridiculous. In many instances a man's tithe
was a farthing, and in some cases not more than seven parts of a
farthing. So vexatious and unjust a tax was certain to cause
exasperation. In 1831 the collection of tithes became almost impossible;
the collectors were murdered, the police who came to their rescue fired
upon, cattle driven off that the tithe might not be paid, and the clergy
were consequently reduced to such a miserable plight that some of them
were actually brought to the verge of starvation. But in spite of the
glaring anomaly of the existence of the Church at all, and of the
ill-feeling and violence excited by the exaction of the tithes, neither
Lord Grey nor Mr. Stanley, his Secretary for Ireland, could bring
themselves to think of any wide measure of reform, so great was their
dread of touching property or vested interests, or of in any way
injuring the Church. In February 1832 committees were appointed to
inquire into the system. They reported that the complete extinction of
tithes by a commutation or charge upon the land was absolutely
necessary. The Irish took this as an authorization of their proceedings;
the outrages increased, and a system of terrorism was established, which
precluded the possibility of bringing the assassins and rioters to
justice. In June the Government had adopted a plan which in fact made
matters worse. They authorized the advance of £60,000 to the Irish
clergy, who were unable to collect their tithes, and took upon
themselves the duty of collecting former arrears, at the same time
promising that the tithe commutation should be undertaken. A Bill to
this effect was passed, rendering commutation necessary for a term of
twenty-one years. Other Bills providing for the redemption of the tithe
were unfortunately allowed to stand over to the next session. But
Government had now made itself a tithe collector, and was so inefficient
in that capacity that it had subsequently to allow that of £104,000 due
£12,000 only had been levied, and that with some loss of life.
[Sidenote: Irish Tithe Composition Bill passed. Aug. 28, 1833.]
In the year 1833 a new arrangement was consequently attempted. The whole
amount of arrears for the last three years amounted to about a million.
This sum the Government proposed should be advanced by an issue of
Exchequer bills, to be repaid gradually by a general land tax. As there
seemed only too much probability that the land tax would be refused with
as great determination as the tithes, most people regarded this sum as a
mere gift to the Irish clergy. The Government was, however, able to pass
the Bill. The final settlement of the tithe question was postponed for
several years; meanwhile the violence which attended the attempts at
collecting the tithes were the chief cause of the necessity of the
Coercion Bill.
[Sidenote: Althorp's Irish Church Bill. Feb. 1833.]
But the tithes, though the immediate cause of the disturbances, were
only a part of the whole Church system; it was the Church itself which
was the primary cause of the evil, and in the measure for the relief
which was to accompany the Bill for the repression of disturbance, the
ministers addressed themselves to lessen the more glaring defects of
that institution; but at the same time they were as little disposed to
injure the Church as the Tories themselves, and one of the chief objects
of the proposed legislation was the improvement of the position of the
clergy. It was thought that while the lessening of the hierarchy and the
removal of some of the anomalies exhibited by the Church would be
pleasing to the Irish, the Church would itself gain strength by the
proposed changes. Besides the payment of tithes, a church cess, for the
support of the buildings and expenses of the services, was paid
indiscriminately by members of all religions, but managed by Protestant
vestries. The annates, or first-fruits of livings, had been originally
employed for these purposes, but in process of time had almost
disappeared; such benefices as were still subject to them were to be now
freed, a graduated tax to be laid upon all livings, and with the
produce the Church cess was to be extinguished. This was a direct boon
to the Catholics. Another common complaint was the disproportion between
the number of bishoprics and the Protestant population; it was now
proposed to destroy ten of these bishoprics, or rather, as the ministry
was careful to explain, not to destroy but to consolidate them with
those which remained. The incomes of some of the larger bishoprics were
also curtailed; the surplus money thus arising was to be paid into the
hands of ecclesiastical commissioners. Thus far there was not much
objectionable in the Bill, though the Tories and High Churchmen of
England disliked the destruction of so many sees. But there was a
further measure, which opened the door to grave opposition. It was
proposed to change the terms on which church lands were let so as to
improve the position of the tenant without injuring the clergy. The
tenant would be willing to pay for this advantage, and the sum thus
gained was calculated at between two and three millions. This money
would, as the mover of the Bill expressed it, be available for the
purposes of the State. This had all the appearance of an act of
confiscation, the property of the Church was to be taken and applied to
purposes not ecclesiastical. But the Irish Secretary had as strong a
view as the Tories of the sanctity of Church property, and the danger of
tampering in ever so small a way with the rights of property. It was
therefore found necessary by the supporters of the Bill to invent a
theory to secure unanimity in the Cabinet; it was argued that the sum
derived from the change of tenure did not exist before, but would be
created by the present act of the Legislature, that it was therefore not
Church property at all, and might be applied to the purposes of the
State. The Bill in this shape was introduced by Lord Althorp on the 12th
of February. It at once appeared open to objections on two sides. While
O'Connell and the Irish scoffed at the relief, which consisted only in
removing the church cess, and the English Radicals declared that instead
of twelve bishops one was amply sufficient for the needs of the Irish
Protestants, the Tories, refusing to recognize the delicate line between
Church property and money gained by the Legislature from Church
property, raised the cry that it was but a first step in confiscation,
and threatened not the security of Church property only, but that of all
other property. It appeared necessary to choose between the views of one
or the other of these sets of critics, and in spite of his own views,
Lord Althorp consented to be governed by the Conservative element in the
Cabinet and to withdraw what was called the Appropriation clause. The
removal of this clause, which contained the only important principle in
the Bill, the right, namely, of Parliament to apply Church property to
the wants of the State, rendered it so like a Tory measure, that with
the assistance of that party it passed without difficulty in both Houses
(July 30).
[Sidenote: The Coercion Bill introduced Feb. 15, 1833, carried March
29.]
But three days after the introduction of the Irish Church Bill in the
House of Commons, Lord Grey introduced into the House of Lords its
complement, the Coercion Bill. Here again the absence of broad
liberality in the ministry was apparent. It was conceived in the spirit
of the most absolute government, and implied a distinct determination to
make no attempt at pacification by liberal concessions. It was the work
of Mr. Stanley, the Irish Secretary, a man of great ability and vigour,
but without much sympathy for the Irish character, and, as his
subsequent career proved, at heart a Tory. There was no difficulty in
making out a case for the Bill. A narration of a few of the crimes which
had of late filled Ireland with horror made it evident that something
must be done. In the province of Leinster alone, in the three months
July, August, and September, there had been 1279 crimes, in the
following three months the number had risen to 1646. During the year the
catalogue of Irish crimes contained 172 homicides, 465 robberies, 568
burglaries, 454 acts of houghing cattle, 2095 illegal notices, 425
illegal meetings, 796 malicious injuries to property, 753 attacks on
houses, 280 arsons, and 3156 serious assaults: in all upwards of 9000
crimes connected with the disturbed state of the country. Well might Mr.
Macaulay say that he "solemnly declared he would rather live in the
midst of many civil wars he had read of than in some parts of Ireland at
this moment." It was not the number of crimes alone which rendered them
terrible; they were carried on upon a system by which such terror had
been excited that it was impossible to get juries to convict even after
the clearest proof, or witnesses to give evidence as to what they knew.
At the same time, the leaders of the people were teaching them, in
public meetings and in assemblies of the so-called Association of
Volunteers, to regard themselves as the victims of every form of
oppression. To meet such a state of things it was proposed to place in
the hands of the Lord Lieutenant, in accordance with the Proclamation
Act of the 8th of George IV., 1828, power to suppress every meeting or
association which he regarded as dangerous to the preservation of peace,
under whatever name it might call itself, and further to declare any
district to be in a disturbed state, which was then to be regarded as a
proclaimed district; its inhabitants were to be confined to their
houses from an hour after sunset till sunrise, the right of meeting and
petitioning was withdrawn from them without leave of the Lord
Lieutenant, and they were placed under martial law. The Bill further
gave power to enter houses in search of arms, forbade the distribution
of seditious papers, and suspended the Habeas Corpus in the proclaimed
districts. The Bill passed without difficulty in the House of Lords,
where it was in harmony with the general feeling. In the Lower House it
was introduced on the 27th of February by Lord Althorp, who, while
corroborating the accounts of the outrages in Ireland, could not help
showing his dissatisfaction at the extreme severity of the Bill. Not so
Mr. Stanley, who, with the fiery vehemence which characterized him,
turned upon O'Connell, and overwhelmed him with a flood of bitter
invective, carrying the House completely with him, and securing the
passage of the Bill, which was also most ably supported by Sir Robert
Peel and his friends. Its effect was immediate and most satisfactory.
Within a week of its passage the Marquis of Anglesey, who had returned
to his office on Grey's accession to the ministry, had suppressed the
Association of Irish Volunteers, the town and county of Kilkenny were
then proclaimed, but so effective was the mere dread of the measure,
that it was never found necessary to hold a single court-martial in the
district, and within two months there was a decrease of two-thirds in
the general list of crimes. A rapid rise in the funds showed that the
moneyed public at least were pleased with the vigorous measure.
[Sidenote: Changes in the ministry. March 1833.]
Mr. Stanley's share in the Bill, the severity of his views with regard
to Ireland, and the personal bitterness between himself and O'Connell,
rendered his further tenure of the office of Secretary undesirable. He
was moved to the Colonial Office, from which Lord Goderich, now become
Earl of Ripon, withdrew to accept the Privy Seal, while Lord Durham, who
had hitherto held that office, retired from the ministry (March 12). Mr.
Stanley was succeeded by Sir John Cam Hobhouse, who however only held
the office for two months, and was in turn succeeded by Mr. Littleton
(May). The withdrawal of Lord Durham, although attributed and partly due
to ill-health, was probably caused principally by the growing divisions
in the Cabinet. The Conservative tendencies of the Prime Minister and
the severity of the Irish Act were not in accordance with Lord Durham's
advanced liberalism. The shortness of Hobhouse's tenure of office may be
traced to somewhat similar causes, or at least to the decrease of the
popularity of Government. In company with several others he had at the
late elections pledged himself to vote for the repeal of the house and
window tax. In April the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Althorp,
brought in his budget. By careful economy, the abolition of sinecures,
and the reduction of the public expenses, he was able to show a surplus
of about a million and a half after replacing the deficit of the former
year. This surplus he intended to employ in reducing some taxes which he
regarded as particularly heavy, such as those on soap, on marine
insurances, and some of the assessed taxes. But he impartially refused
to listen either to the outcry of the towns for the abolition of the
house and window tax, or to the clamours of the agriculturists against
the malt tax; he regarded them both as necessary sources of revenue. The
carelessness of Government subjected it to a temporary defeat on a
subsequent motion for the reduction of the malt tax to one half. Though
the defeat caused great irritation to the ministers it was speedily
retrieved. A motion against the house and window tax was also brought
in, and Lord Althorp, in opposing it, argued that the removal of either
tax alone would be an unfair advantage to one or other of the rival
interests, and that the removal of both was impossible; he introduced an
amendment to the effect that the reduction of the malt tax and the
repeal of the house tax would necessitate a general property and income
tax, and a change in our financial system. As this amendment was
carried, both the taxes were retained; but the ministers could not but
feel that they owed their success to the support of their enemies, and
the popular indignation was great. Hobhouse, unable to vote against
Government, and thus to redeem his pledge, felt it incumbent on him to
resign both his place and seat. On appealing again to his constituents
at Westminster he was rejected for Colonel de Lacy Evans, a more
advanced Liberal. The same thing happened in the cases of Dr. Lushington
and Mr. William Brown in the Tower Hamlets and Southwark. A great
indignation meeting, attended with some violence, was held near Coldbath
Fields, and several great towns passed resolutions to the effect, that
the ministers, by violating the constitution of Ireland, refusing to
inquire into the public distress, continuing the house and window tax,
and by forcing the whole malt tax, already once repealed, upon the
nation, had betrayed the confidence of the people.
[Sidenote: Weakness of the ministry.]
Thus in all directions the power of the Government was decreasing; they
were divided among themselves, and gradually losing the popularity of
the country. Yet they were still able to carry out successfully some of
the duties they had set themselves to perform; before the close of the
session they had renewed the Bank charter, settled the affairs of the
East India Company, and completed the emancipation of the slaves.
[Sidenote: Renewal of the Bank charter. June.]