of the greatest importance with regard to currency and credit had taken
place,--the resumption of cash payments at the close of the war, and the
great commercial crisis of 1825 and 1826. It was felt that the system of
the Bank required close examination, and in May 1832 a very influential
committee had been appointed to examine it preparatory to the renewal of
the charter, which came to an end in August 1833. Upon the information
gained by this committee the ministerial propositions were based. On the
whole it appeared clear that a single bank of issue was better than
several competing banks. The Bank was therefore to retain its monopoly.
The principle of the Directors, that a third of the value of their
obligations should be kept in hand in specie, was considered sound; but
that the public might in future have control of the issue of notes, the
Bank was required to publish a weekly account of its notes and deposits,
and a quarterly average showing its general condition. No other bank of
more than six partners, within sixty-five miles of London, was to be
allowed to issue paper, while notes of the Bank of England and its
branches were made legal tender, except at the bank from which they were
issued. It was hoped by this means that country banks, being able to
meet their demands with bank notes, would be saved from the necessity of
making large and rapid demands upon the Bank of England, and thus
dangerously lessening the supply of gold. The whole sum due from the
Government to the Bank, and from which that institution derived its
great credit, was fourteen millions. This was regarded as too much; it
was to be reduced to eleven millions, twenty-five per cent., being at
once repaid to the Bank, while to balance its advantages the Bank was to
receive £120,000 a year less than hitherto for the management of the
National Debt. On these terms the charter was to be renewed for
twenty-one years, but with an option allowed to Government for breaking
it off on a year's notice after eleven years. The two points which met
with the greatest opposition were the terms which the Government had
made with the Bank and the compulsory currency given to bank notes. On
the first of these points it seemed almost unanimously felt that the
Bank had made too good a bargain; on the second it was hastily urged by
many that it was a partial resumption of the inconvertible currency. It
was shown without much difficulty that this was not the case, as the
Bank of England was bound ultimately to meet its liabilities in gold;
but even Sir Robert Peel objected to the measure, avowing his fear that
it would cause a depreciation of the paper. Experience has proved that
this fear was groundless, and although the arrangements with the Bank
had subsequently to be somewhat modified, the Bill passed, and was a
distinct advantage.
[Sidenote: Settlement of the East India Company. July.]
But, if it had been thought well to continue the monopoly of the great
banking corporation in England, the whole force of the commercial
feeling of the time set directly against the perpetuation of the
monopoly of the East India Company. The necessity for corporate trading
had disappeared. The restrictions it laid upon free trade had become
only so many obstacles in the way of extended commerce. Already, in
1813, this had been so clearly felt that the merchants of the great
trading centres, Liverpool, Glasgow, Paisley, and Manchester, had
succeeded in procuring the admission of traders to the territories of
the Company, and to India generally, but the corporation still retained
the trade with China. The accounts of the Company after this renewal of
its charter rendered it plain that it could not compete with private
merchants. It seemed clear that in China, as in India, the destruction
of the monopoly would extend commerce. It was therefore determined to
destroy the Company as a commercial body, allowing it to keep its
territorial position. After April 1834 its commercial property was to be
sold. It was, however, to retain the government of India, and to receive
for forty years an annuity from the Indian revenue of £630,000, at the
close of which period Parliament might redeem it by the payment of
£12,000,000. It was further arranged that all restrictions in the way of
the settlement of Europeans in the East should be removed, that natives
and Europeans should have equal opportunities of employment and office,
and should be under one law. The Bill was vehemently opposed by Lord
Ellenborough, but was carried by large majorities, and proved to be the
means of opening, in accordance with the principles of free trade, an
enormous market for English commerce, so that in ten years the Chinese
trade had doubled, and British exports to India and Ceylon had increased
from two to six millions.
[Sidenote: Emancipation of the slaves. Aug.]
[Sidenote: Condition of trade in the West India Islands.]
But the most important measure of the session was the Bill which was
passed on the 30th of August for the emancipation of the slaves. The
abolitionists had been successful in 1807 in putting an end to the
traffic in slaves, but though raised in value and lessened in number, by
means of smuggling and of the natural increase of the race the supply
of human cattle had been kept up and slavery had continued. The
Resolutions of 1823 had aimed at the gradual extinction of slavery, at
alleviating its worst horrors, and raising the slaves to a fitting
condition to receive freedom; but they had practically been inoperative:
not only had they been continually thwarted by the planters, but the
discovery that they had rights, and that those rights were acknowledged,
caused a very natural uneasiness among the slaves, and had added greatly
to the difficulties under which the planters laboured. Their position
was constantly becoming worse. Injudicious protection had been afforded
to sugar, their chief production. Enormous duties had been laid on it,
with a preference always to the West Indian and slave-grown article.
During the war the monopoly of production had fallen chiefly into their
hands. They had been able to make enormous profits. As a consequence,
just as in the case of corn in England, the cultivation of the
sugar-cane had been carried on in the most reckless fashion. Plantations
were temporarily occupied only to be exhausted or sold at a heavy loss,
and fresh land taken in. In the midst of this false prosperity, a
wasteful expenditure and a total want of economy, the natural
consequences of easily-gotten wealth, had become prevalent; the planters
as a body had become deeply involved. The cessation of the war had
admitted other competitors to the market. The commercial crisis in
England had seriously affected the planters' credit, and just as the
greatest efforts would have been necessary to restore them at all to
their old state of prosperity, their supply of slaves was diminished, it
became more difficult to work their exhausted land, and the Resolutions
of 1823, and subsequent orders in Council, made the employment of slave
labour, which economists had long known to be really an extravagant form
of labour, more and more difficult. These evils were naturally
attributed to the abolitionists in England and to the Government which
had even partially listened to them. As long as the unreformed
Parliament existed, the West Indian interest was very strong in the
House, and the planters, who believed that with some help from England,
and with the management of the slaves left in their own hands, they
might yet retrieve their position, were not without hopes. The accession
of the Grey ministry was a heavy blow to them, for a large section of
the supporters of the Government were almost as anxious for the
abolition of slavery as for the passage of the Reform Bill, and it was
impossible that a ministry of which Lord Brougham was the Chancellor,
who had owed his last election chiefly to the abolitionists' votes,
should postpone the settlement of the question long.
[Sidenote: Opposition of the planters to the orders in Council. 1831.]
The conduct of the planters forced on the crisis. A new series of orders
in Council was issued in 1831 for the better and more merciful
management of the slaves, for the limitation of the hours of labour, and
for the establishment of official slave-overseers. All the colonies
except the Crown colonies, where but little difficulty was met with,
resented highly this interference with what they considered their rights
and property. The language of their assemblies became disrespectful and
almost rebellious. In Trinidad it was determined to stop the payment of
taxes till the order was repealed, while on the other side the slaves in
Jamaica burst into open rebellion, producing a loss estimated at
£1,000,000. In April 1831, a great meeting in London declared that
Government was liable for these losses, and claims were sent in to the
Colonial Secretary for damages caused by the measures pursued by his
Majesty's ministers. It was a sort of declaration of war, which was
brought to a point when, on the 17th of April, Lord Harewood presented a
petition from the West India interest begging for a full inquiry into
the laws, usages, and condition of the West Indian colonies, and the
possible future improvements, with due regard always to the rights of
private property. This was in the very heat of the discussions on the
Reform Bill. Bent upon his great measure, Lord Grey could not afford to
risk anything at the moment. He therefore not only at once granted the
committee, but allowed a sum of £100,000, which had been voted for the
relief of the colonies, to be raised to £1,000,000 on account of a late
destructive hurricane. On the 24th of May Sir Fowell Buxton, the leader
of the abolitionists, brought the matter before the Lower House, while
the Chancellor presented a gigantic petition, followed by many others,
in favour of emancipation; for the great crisis was now over,
Wellington's efforts to form a Government had proved futile, and the
hope of the abolitionists were consequently high. But, somewhat
strangely, Lord Althorp could not be induced in the Lower House to give
up Canning's idea of gradual emancipation, and moved and carried
amendments upon Buxton's motion in favour of the continuance of the
policy of 1823. It must be remembered that the House of Commons was
still unreformed, and that the great Bill was not yet carried.
[Sidenote: The Emancipation Bill passed. Aug. 30, 1833.]
With the change in the character of the House all prudential reasons for
opposition on the part of the ministry disappeared, and the pressure
brought to bear upon them had become much stronger. They therefore now
undertook the question, and the appointment of Mr. Stanley to the
Colonial Office insured the success of the measure. It was not wholly
satisfactory to the abolitionists. It still bore traces of the lingering
wish for gradual emancipation. All children of slaves born after the
passing of the Act, and all children of six years of age and under, were
declared free, but the rest of the slaves were to serve a sort of
apprenticeship; three-fourths of their time was for a certain number of
years to remain at the disposal of the masters, the other fourth was
their own, to be paid for at a fixed rate of wages. The complete failure
of the Resolutions of 1823 should have taught the Government the
impossibility of this scheme. The period of apprenticeship was shortened
from twelve to seven years, and subsequently, after a four years' trial,
the plan was given up. The second part of the Government scheme was the
remuneration of the planters by a loan of £15,000,000; but as Parliament
regarded this as much too small a boon, it was subsequently changed for
the enormous gift of £20,000,000. The vastness of the sum was held by
many as totally disproportionate to the loss of the planters; by others
it was thought that, as slavery was in itself contrary to all right, the
planters deserved no compensation for the loss of what they should never
have possessed. On the whole, however, it was thought better that so
great an act of justice should be generously completed, and the great
sacrifice was willingly made. Wilberforce, the father of the movement,
lived just long enough to bless God that the object of his life had been
reached; he heard the success of the second reading of the Bill, and
died a few days afterwards, on the 29th of July.
[Sidenote: Weakness of the ministry shown in the Parliament. Feb. 4,
1834.]
Of the great questions of the day there still remained the all-important
one, the condition of the labouring classes, but it was to another Prime
Minister and to a modified Cabinet that the honour of the introduction
of the new Poor Law was to belong. In spite of their large majorities,
no single measure of the Government had been passed without important
modifications, no scheme had been introduced that did not bear upon it
the marks of compromise, and afford a distinct proof of the inherent
weakness of a Cabinet divided against itself. The speech from the throne
in the opening of the year 1834 did not give any hope of a firmer and
more united Government. The Duke of Wellington was not wrong in
complaining that there was no definite promise of a single Government
Bill, that the foreign policy of the Cabinet had not produced European
peace, that in spite of its majorities the Church policy of the
Government had failed, and that it had carefully avoided, even while
vaunting the success which had attended it, to state whether it intended
the Coercion Bill to be renewed in Ireland or not. Nor was it doubted
that he was uttering the opinions of some at least of the Cabinet itself
when he warned the Lords against the tendency visible in several of the
late proceedings of the Government towards tampering with property and
the introduction of the beginnings of the policy of confiscation.
[Sidenote: Rejection of repeal, a Government victory.]
[Sidenote: Ministerial difficulty on Mr. Ward's motion on the Irish
Church.]
[Sidenote: Resignation of the most conservative ministers.]
In the Lower House both the strength and weakness of the Government were
shortly to be displayed. O'Connell, who had talked so long about the
repeal of the Union, and had thus kept up the agitation which was so
lucrative to himself, was compelled at length to make good his promises
and to introduce a substantive motion for repeal. A lengthened debate
followed, but terminated in a most complete victory for the Government;
the division showing a majority of 485 in favour of an amendment exactly
contradicting O'Connell's motion. The central position occupied by the
Government enabled it, when it occasionally joined heartily with one
side or the other, still to command the House of Commons, but when
questions arose of a more doubtful sort its weakness became visible.
Measures for the relief of Ireland had been promised, and Mr. Ward, a
private member, determined to bring these promises to a test, by
introducing a motion (May 27) with regard to the difficult question of
the Irish Church, which the ministers would gladly have left quiet. Mr.
Ward's resolution stated that the Protestant Episcopal Establishment of
Ireland much exceeded the spiritual wants of the Protestant population,
that it was the right of the State and of Parliament to distribute
Church property, and that the temporal possessions of the Irish Church
ought to be reduced. This motion put the Government into the greatest
perplexity; to uphold the direct negative was to resign its pretensions
to be the party of progress; to accept it was to shock some of its most
important members. The ministers determined to adopt a middle course,
and appoint a commission of inquiry. They hoped thereby to induce Mr.
Ward to withdraw his motion, because the question was already in
Government hands, but they seemed at the same time to pledge themselves
to act in accordance with the recommendations of the commission. Armed
with this compromise, Lord Althorp went to the House to meet Mr. Ward's
motion. But the seconder, Mr. Grote, had advanced but a short way in the
speech when the Chancellor of the Exchequer rose and said, that since
the beginning of the debate information had been brought to him which
induced him to beg for a postponement. His personal influence was so
great that the House at once granted his request. The news he had
received was the resignation of Mr. Stanley, the Colonial minister, and
of Sir James Graham, First Lord of the Admiralty, who regarded any
interference with Church property with great abhorrence. They were
followed by the Duke of Richmond, Postmaster-General, and by Lord Ripon,
Privy Seal. The more conservative members of the Cabinet had thus openly
retired from it. It might have been expected that Lord Durham, who had
previously left it upon opposite grounds, would have now returned to
office, and the Government have assumed a more distinctly radical
character. He was, however, personally obnoxious to such members of the
party of Canning as still remained in office, and his influence was
dreaded by Lord Grey, who, though he continued as yet to hold the
Premiership in accordance with the generally expressed desire of the
Liberal party, sympathized at heart more with the Tories than with the
Radicals. He expressed his feelings in his answer to an address which
Lord Ebrington got up intreating him to retain his place. "In pursuing,"
he said, "a course of salutary improvement I feel it indispensable that
we shall be allowed to proceed with deliberation and caution; and, above
all, that we should not be urged by a constant and active pressure from
without to the adoption of any measures the necessity of which has not
been fully proved, and which are not strictly regulated by a careful
attention to the settled institutions of the country both in Church and
State. On no other principle can this or any other administration be
conducted with advantage or safety." No difficulty was found in filling
the vacant places; Mr. Spring Rice, who had distinguished himself in the
debate on the Union, became Secretary for the Colonies, and Lord
Auckland succeeded Sir James Graham.
[Sidenote: Difficulties of Grey's position.]
Under Lord Grey's leadership the Government was enabled to continue its
course, because it was recognized at the time as the only possible
Government; the Conservative feeling in England was far too strong to
allow the success of a Radical Government with Durham at its head. On
the other hand, on the great questions of the day it was impossible to
go back. Sir Robert Peel clearly understood this position of affairs. He
saw that a Tory Government would have no hope of permanence if it
rested only on the support of the extreme members of the party. If the
party was ever to be reconstituted it must loyally accept the
changes which had been made, admit within its limits the more
conservative-minded of the reformers, and take its stand on the great
Conservative instincts of the nation--the love of the State Church, and
the dread of any attack upon property. For the formation of a Liberal
Conservative Government the time had not yet arrived, and the present
Government of compromise was therefore allowed to continue. But the
difficulties of the Premier, from the divergence of his opinions from
those of his colleagues, soon became overwhelming. It was necessary to
determine whether the Coercion Bill should be renewed or not. But it was
possible to renew it in a softened form, and to omit the most
objectionable parts--the suppression of the right of petition and the
establishment of military courts. Such a course seemed advisable to Mr.
Littleton, the Chief Secretary, and recommended itself also to the more
liberal members of the Government, Lord Brougham and Lord Althorp. The
mischievous activity of Lord Brougham led him to suggest to the Lord
Lieutenant, Lord Wellesley, who had succeeded Anglesey, the advisability
of officially informing the Government that he could do without these
stringent clauses. Wellesley had already expressed himself privately to
the contrary effect, but was overpersuaded, and followed the advice of
Littleton and Brougham in his official despatches. These contradictory
opinions from the chief of the Government were naturally very
embarrassing to Lord Grey. To make matters worse, Littleton had
attempted a personal reconciliation with O'Connell. Lord Althorp had
known and approved of this step, but had warned Littleton against making
any pledges. The Secretary unluckily allowed himself to be drawn into an
admission that neither himself nor the Lord Lieutenant nor Lord Althorp
approved of the renewal of the obnoxious clauses. To complete his
blunder, he did not inform Lord Althorp what he had done, and trusted to
a promise of secresy on the part of O'Connell, the most untrustworthy of
men. So strong was Lord Althorp's opinion on the subject, backed as he
believed it to be by that of Wellesley and of Littleton, that after
being outvoted in the Cabinet, he in fact tendered his resignation, but
was overruled by Lord Grey.
[Sidenote: Resignation of Grey's ministry. July 1834.]
On the 1st of July the Premier introduced the Bill in its full form,
asserting, as from Wellesley's private letters to him he had a right to
assert, that it was considered necessary by the Irish Government. On
this, O'Connell, forgetful of his promise, disclosed in the Lower House
his conversation with Littleton, which was in fact a direct
contradiction of Lord Grey's assertion, at the same time implicating
Lord Althorp in the deception played upon him. The Government seemed
convicted not only of internal division, but of duplicity. Lord Grey
reiterated his assertion in the Upper House with regard to the feelings
of the Irish Government as expressed to him, while Lord Althorp admitted
that he disliked the clause, and that Mr. Littleton was justified in
telling O'Connell that the question was unsettled at the time of their
conversation. The divergence of opinion in the Cabinet was thus fully
brought out, and Lord Althorp was made to appear as guilty at once of
having held out false hopes to O'Connell, and of having waived his own
opinions for the sake of retaining office. Nothing could have been more
alien to his nature than this charge, especially as, far from having
really pledged himself to O'Connell, he had particularly warned
Littleton against committing himself. But there seemed no way of escape
without rendering still more glaring the weakness of the administration.
On this ground, Littleton's offer to resign, which he felt in honour
bound to make, was rejected; but, when in their eagerness to embarrass
Government the Opposition moved for the production of the private
letters of the Cabinet, Lord Althorp, in disgust at his equivocal
position and at the attempted introduction into Parliament of matters
which he held to be wholly beyond its jurisdiction, determined to
resign. Lord Grey, by no means wedded to office, and feeling that
Althorp's personal influence was the main security of the Government, at
once declared the administration at an end. The King had already shown,
when giving an answer to an address from the Bishops, a strong feeling
against any attack upon the property of the Church. This known division
between the sovereign and his advisers, and the evident weakness of the
Cabinet itself, rendered the resignation of the ministry less surprising
than it otherwise would have been.
[Sidenote: Lord Melbourne's ministry. July 16.]
Seeing the impossibility of forming a distinctly Tory ministry, the King
was persuaded by Lord Brougham to send for Lord Melbourne, whom he
instructed to give effect as far as possible to his previously expressed
wishes, and to form a combined ministry, admitting to office some Tories
and some of those who had left office on Conservative grounds. The
attempt was fruitless. Peel did not yet see his desired opportunity, and
foreseeing the gradual reaction which must arise from the unsatisfactory
character of the Whig administration, determined to await his time. The
King was therefore compelled to consent to the reconstruction under
Melbourne of the old ministry. There was very little change in the
construction of the Cabinet. Lord Melbourne's own place in the Home
Department was filled by Lord Duncannon (Ponsonby), Sir John Cam
Hobhouse obtained a seat in the Cabinet as First Commissioner of the
Woods and Forests, and Lord Carlisle surrendered the Privy Seal to Lord
Mulgrave.
[Sidenote: Church policy of Melbourne's ministry.]