The introduction of the Coercion Bill on the 18th of July, without the
stringent clauses, seemed a confession that some of the ministers at all
events were acting contrary to conviction, or that they had weakly
yielded to Irish clamour. The Bill was however passed with a strong
protest in the Lords. An attempt on the 29th of July again to settle the
tithe question displayed still further the inefficiency of the ministry;
they allowed themselves to be beaten in the Lower House upon an
amendment of O'Connell, who, instead of the proposed land tax, suggested
the immediate payment of the tithes, diminished forty per cent., by the
landlord. In spite of their defeat, which so completely changed their
Bill that out of 172 clauses 111 had to be removed, they proceeded with
it, but suffered a heavy defeat on the second reading in the Lords.
Their Church policy was indeed throughout entirely ineffective. The
feeling that the Church was in danger had begun to take hold not only of
the Lords, who systematically resisted innovation, but of the people in
England. The efforts of the Dissenters, excited to demand religious
equality by the success of Irish agitation, were fruitless. Their
petitions were indeed of a character to cause some fear. They begged for
the separation of Church and State, for the exclusion of Bishops from
Parliament, for the admission of Dissenters to all the privileges of the
universities. On this last point a Bill was introduced. Largely signed
petitions were sent in against it by the universities. All the leaders
of the Conservative, or partially Conservative party, combined to oppose
it, and though it passed the Lower House it was rejected in the Lords
(Aug. 1). In the same way the efforts of Government to relieve
Dissenters from the Church rates, and from the restrictions laid upon
the right of dissenting ministers to celebrate marriage, being all
conceived from a Church point of view, and assuming the form of
concessions rather than the granting of rights, were distasteful to the
Dissenters themselves, and came to nothing. The plan for the
commutation of the English tithes met with the same fate. It was indeed
a period of general ecclesiastical excitement; the introduction of the
appropriation clause in the Irish Tithe Bill had closely touched the
feelings of English Churchmen; the nature of the Church as distinct from
an institution founded by and connected with the State began to be
examined. A party in Oxford undertook to enlighten the nation upon the
character of the Church in a series of tracts, which gained for the
authors the title of Tractarians. In these they urged with great force
all the tenets of what is now known as the High Church party--the
doctrine of apolostic succession, the sole efficiency of the sacraments,
the sacred nature of the priesthood, and the insufficiency of the Bible
as apart from the explanations of Church tradition. Their principles
rapidly spread. At the same time the Evangelical party lost several of
its chief leaders and began to decline. And though three parties could
still be traced, public opinion began to divide itself chiefly between
the two great views of those who regarded the Church as an institution
independent in itself, and beyond the reach of secular interference, and
those Liberals who, attached as they might be to the Church as a
political institution, regarded it as lying within the sphere of
politics.
[Sidenote: Reform of the Poor Law. Aug. 1834.]
But if their liberal Church policy was doomed to failure, the ministry
was able to do one great work by the reform of the Poor Law. The chief
effects of the old Poor Law have been already mentioned. Its lax
administration, the power of relief in the houses of the paupers, the
system of allowances in aid of wages, and the distribution of relief in
proportion to the number of children, had pauperized the agricultural
poor, had withdrawn the chief restraints on early and imprudent
marriages, had fostered immorality, and increased the amount of the poor
rate till it seemed as though England would sink beneath the burden. It
had become necessary to adopt some sounder principles, even although
they had the appearance of harshness. Nor was the Government without
experience by which to guide its action. Already in about a hundred
parishes an improved administration had been tried, and in every
instance it had succeeded; while, on the other hand, in certain parishes
where the old system remained in vigour cultivation had been actually
abandoned, and the neighbouring parishes having to support their poor,
there was every risk of the plague spreading throughout England. The
chief error in the old system was the complete confusion which existed
between poverty and pauperism, between the industrious poor man and the
self-pauperized idler. It was this point on which a commission issued in
1832 chiefly insisted. The Bill based on their report was in fact little
more than a recurrence to the true principles enunciated in the first
general Poor Law of the reign of Elizabeth. To separate these two
classes it was necessary that outdoor relief should be discontinued and
the allowance system put an end to. Those only who were really in want
were to receive relief, but upon conditions which should render it
certain that the want was real. In the workhouse every able-bodied man
must work; it was not fair that the industrious should be called upon to
support an increasing race of paupers raised in the workhouse, husbands
and wives must therefore be separated; for the sake of training and
education, children must be kept from the possible contamination of the
adult paupers; and as the maintenance of industry was one of the chief
objects of the reform, free circulation of labour and the removal of
most of the restrictions of the old law of settlement were
indispensable. The system no doubt had a very harsh appearance, but its
principles could scarcely be questioned. But these principles were in
fact nothing new; all the evils to be rectified had arisen from the bad
way in which such principles had been carried out. The machinery then by
which relief was to be administered was of almost more importance than
the principles on which it was to be granted. For economy, parishes were
formed into unions, with one workhouse instead of several. The method of
collecting the rates was left unchanged, the distribution was still left
to guardians and select vestries; but this local management was placed
under a central board, consisting of three commissioners, with
assistants, at first twenty-one, diminished subsequently to nine. There
was one other point which bore an appearance of extreme harshness, was
much objected to at the time, and was subsequently changed; this was an
attempt to check immorality by throwing the charge of the maintenance of
illegitimate children upon the mother. This appeared completely to
shield the guilty father, and to punish only the weak and misguided
mother, but in fact, as many wise people saw at the time, it roused a
feeling of self-dependence and respect among women, and produced the
very best effects; the decrease of illegitimate births was
extraordinary. The decrease in England was nearly 10,000, or thirteen
per cent. in two years. In one point only did it appear that party
interests could interfere with the passage of the Bill. It almost
necessarily implied the subsequent repeal of the Corn Laws. Freedom of
labour, the abolition of the Act of Settlement, rendered such a change
indispensable; but this the ministry, very anxious to avoid the
appearance of touching laws which were very dear to the hearts of the
agricultural interest, still refused to believe, and denied in the most
absolute terms. Nevertheless, between the second reading on the 9th of
May and the third reading of the Bill on the 1st of July, a very
powerful opposition had been aroused. It was spoken of as a Bill cruel
against the poor. From a radical point of view the centralization of the
system was decried. The commissioners were spoken of as three-tailed
Bashaws. It was however carried by 157 to 50 votes. This was on the 2nd
of July, when Lord Grey was still in office. Under the new ministry the
management of the Bill in the Upper House passed into the hands of Lord
Brougham; he supported it in one of his ablest speeches, and it was
carried on the second reading by a very considerable majority, and
became law on the 14th of August. Although some subsequent amendments
were necessary, it has on the whole proved highly successful. The poor
rate, which at the end of the American War, when the population of
England was about 8,000,000, amounted to £2,132,487, which during the
subsequent forty years of mismanagement had risen till in 1833, when the
population was 14,000,000, it had reached £8,606,501, was in the course
of three years reduced by upwards of £3,000,000.
[Sidenote: Discontent and misery of the poor.]
But though its character was so free from taint of party, though its
action was on the whole so beneficial, the new Poor Law was used, and
used with effect, to excite the deep-felt discontent which was prevalent
in the lower classes, and which continued to increase and to acquire
form and organization during the next four years, till it assumed the
definite form of Chartism, and produced the very dangerous outbreak in
the year 1839. It was scarcely possible but that such discontent should
exist; the hopes of the poor man, raised to an exaggerated height by the
excitement of the Reform Bill, had been cruelly disappointed. While no
doubt some good and useful measures of reform had been carried, it was
impossible to deny that the reform ministry had on the whole proved
itself unwilling and unable to handle the great social questions of the
time, that disputes in Parliament had fallen back into their old
grooves, and had assumed the form of party contests rather than of
efforts for the improvement of the great mass of the people. Hitherto
trade had been fairly prosperous, but in 1835 symptoms were evident that
this prosperity was disappearing; and when want was added to the
justly-felt disappointment of the workmen, when agitators were exciting
them with dismal stories of the cruelty of the Poor Law, of the tyranny
of the manufacturing masters, and when every good and popular measure
seemed to be first stripped of half its value by the ministry which
introduced it, and then totally rejected by an obstructive House of
Lords, it is not to be wondered at that the unrepresented masses
believed that they had been used merely as an instrument, and that if
increased representation was so good for their betters, it would prove
the cure for them also, and began to clamour for a wide extension of the
franchise, and more efficient security that the particular wants of
their class should receive attention.
[Sidenote: Increase of trades unions.]
Many signs of the growing discontent were visible. The most formidable
in the course of the year 1834 was the great extension and changed
character of the trades unions. For some time trade societies had
existed, and from time to time individual trades had combined to strike
for advance of wages or other trade purposes, but in this year a
combination of many trades began to make itself seen, which by mutual
support should enable those on strike to hold out against their masters,
and though the system broke down through the natural inefficiency of an
uneducated body for such a combination, the danger became great when it
was extended to the agricultural poor. To repress this symptom, so
threatening to the landowners and farmers, six labourers were indicted
at Dorchester under an obsolete statute against the administering of
oaths. Amidst much popular sympathy, they were sentenced to seven years'
transportation. The whole body of unionists, in their indignation,
summoned a general meeting in Copenhagen Fields on the 21st of April.
Besides a general intention to overawe the ministry, there seems to have
been among a knot of their leaders a distinct plan of somehow or other
securing the Government by violent means. It was intended that the
deputation of the trades should lay hands upon Lord Melbourne, who was
then minister for home affairs, and proceed to further acts of violence.
Warned in time, Melbourne kept himself out of sight, and sent his under
secretary to receive the deputation, while silently troops were held in
readiness, the public offices defended with artillery, and 5000
householders sworn in as special constables. The under secretary
declared that a petition accompanied by 60,000 men could not be
received, and seeing the preparations made for their reception, the
crowd withdrew in quiet, and the day passed over safely, but the
incident shows both the power and temper of the unionists. Even more
formidable was the general feeling against the House of Lords which
exhibited itself at the close of the next year. By that time the House
had shown itself still more obstinate, and facts had been brought to
light which rendered it particularly odious to the people.
[Sidenote: Dispute between Durham and Brougham.]
[Sidenote: Dismissal of the Melbourne ministry. Nov. 1834.]
In the autumn of 1834 the possession of office by the Whigs was regarded
as secure, and while O'Connell returned to continue the agitation in
Ireland, the ministers withdrew as usual to refresh themselves after the
labours of the session. Among others, Lord Brougham travelled in
Scotland, everywhere bringing both himself and the ministry into
ridicule by his inconsistent and egotistical speeches. On the 15th of
September the late Prime Minister attended a banquet held in his honour
at Edinburgh, where he met Lord Durham, his son-in-law, Lord Brougham,
and several of the other ministers. In returning thanks for the health
of the ministry, the Chancellor appeared to rebuke the reformers for
their impatience and for endangering all progress by their haste. These
words by no means suited the views of Lord Durham, one of the chief
authors of the Reform Bill, and a man of very popular tendencies. He
replied that he entirely disagreed with his noble and learned friend,
and frankly confessed that he was one of those persons who saw with
regret every hour that passed over the existence of recognized and
unreformed abuses. Brougham took this rebuke in the highest dudgeon, and
in a very few days, at Salisbury, he replied severely upon Lord Durham,
and uttered a sort of challenge to him to meet him in the House of
Lords, and shortly after in the _Edinburgh Review_ charged him with
revealing the secrets of the Cabinet. Lord Durham's words at Edinburgh
were eagerly accepted as proofs of a more frank acceptance of the
principles of reform than they had hitherto met with from Government,
and all minds were eagerly set upon the approaching duel in the House.
But the King, who, as has been already mentioned, much disliked the
Church policy of the Whigs, dreaded what must have given rise to a new
assertion of the duty of rapid reform. He was eager to prevent the
meeting in the House, and circumstances favoured him. Before the session
Lord Spencer died, and Lord Althorp, his son, was thus removed to the
Upper House. There was no reason why this should have broken up the
ministry, but the King seized his opportunity, sent for Lord Melbourne,
asserted that the ministry rested chiefly on the personal influence of
Lord Althorp in the Commons, declared that, deprived of it as it now
was, the Government could not go on, and dismissed his ministers,
instructing Melbourne at once to send for the Duke of Wellington.
[Sidenote: The Peel-Wellington ministry.]
Ever since the passing of the Reform Bill the conduct of Sir Robert Peel
had been extremely judicious. In his hands the Tory party had been
entirely remodelled; there were indeed remnants of it unchanged,
especially in the House of Lords, but gradually most of the party had
separated themselves from this remnant, and had taken the name of
Conservatives, declaring themselves as willing as the Whigs to foster
reforms, although only in a Conservative manner. It was in vain that the
old Tories had sought to keep the Duke of Wellington with them; he had
wisdom enough to see that the hope of the party lay with Peel, and to
keep up the closest connection with him. His first step therefore, when
summoned by the King, was to send to Peel, who, believing that the time
for a Conservative ministry had not yet arrived, had gone abroad, and
was now in Rome. While waiting for his arrival, the Duke took upon
himself the discharge of no less than five offices, conduct which,
though in fact perfectly wise and reasonable, was foolishly complained
of at the time as unconstitutional. Peel, although he was as yet by no
means anxious for office, could not but obey the summons, and hurried
home with extreme rapidity. He had hoped to obtain the support of Sir
James Graham and Mr. Stanley, the late deserters from the Whig ministry,
and it was a grave disappointment when they refused to act with him.
Thus prevented from forming the moderate Conservative ministry he
intended, Peel was reduced to fill his places with men of more
pronounced opinions, which promised ill for any advance in reform. He
himself became Chancellor of the Exchequer and First Lord of the
Treasury. The Foreign, Home, War, and Colonial Offices were filled
respectively by Wellington, Goulburn, Herries, and Aberdeen. Lord
Lyndhurst became Lord Chancellor, Hardinge Irish Secretary, and Lord
Wharncliffe Privy Seal.
[Sidenote: The Tamworth Manifesto. Jan. 1835.]
[Sidenote: New Parliament. Feb. 19, 1835.]
With this ministry Peel had to meet a hostile House of Commons, for the
approach of the Conservatives to power had combined Whigs and Radicals
in opposition. The Prime Minister therefore thought it necessary to
dissolve Parliament, and took the opportunity of declaring his policy in
what is known as the Tamworth Manifesto. He declared his acceptance of
the Reform Bill as a final settlement of the question, and promised to
carry out its intentions as far as they consisted in a wise and careful
improvement of old institutions. As to the other questions then at issue
he would support the inquiry into the state of corporations which the
late ministry had set on foot, and wished, as his predecessors had done,
to relieve Dissenters from the Church rates and from all restrictions on
their marriages; but upon the Irish Church, and upon admission of
Dissenters to the universities, his mind was unchanged. He continued to
object to the appropriation of Church revenues to secular purposes and
to granting degrees to Dissenters. As to whether any reform was required
in the organization of the English Church, his mind, he said, was not
yet made up. The tone of this Manifesto was very different from that of
the old Tory party, and shows that the Reform Bill had really done its
work, that the country had entered upon a new era, when the lines
between parties would be less coarsely drawn, when obstinate obstruction
to all reform would be impossible, and the points at issue confined
chiefly to the time, manner, and degree, in which reforms should be
carried out. But it is impossible in a country where party government
has once taken root that unprejudiced discussion of measures should
become prevalent. The general principles of the men by whom the measures
are suggested are, and must be, invariably taken into consideration, and
the one party will not fail to feel mistrust of the other even though
the plans suggested are as good, or better, than their own, and the
contest between the rival parties for the Government of the country will
not cease. Thus, in spite of Peel's moderation, the whole body of the
Liberals were determined to oppose the new Government to the utmost, and
not to trust the administration in the hands of one who had always
represented the Tories, and who still received the support even of the
extreme members of that party. The elections, though they returned a
House, as is generally the case, more favourable to the existing
Government than that which had been dissolved, still gave a considerable
majority to the Liberals.
[Sidenote: Overthrow of Peel's ministry. April 8, 1835.]
From the very first Peel held office upon suffrance; the only question
was how to bring matters to a point, as the minister refused to accept
as his dismissal anything but a direct vote of want of confidence.
Meanwhile his temper and judgment daily increased the admiration which
the public began to feel for him. He took up several of the late
ministers' measures, and carried them through where they themselves had
failed. A more complete liberty granted to the Dissenters with regard to
their marriages won their approbation; and though he could not complete
this measure, he was able on going out of office to leave it in the
hands of Lord John Russell, by whom it was settled upon the principle
that the State was only interested in the civil contract, while churches
and sects were at liberty to add what religious ceremonies they liked.
He introduced a measure for the voluntary commutation of tithes, which
seemed to be successful, re-appointed all the committees of the
preceding session for examining abuses, and continued with good effect
the ecclesiastical commission for the organization of the arrangements
of the Church. The common charge against him was that he was purloining
the measures of his adversaries. However, although he had to stand
constantly on the defensive, there appeared no sufficient grounds for a
vote of want of confidence. At last, on the 30th of March, Lord John
Russell brought the matter to a crisis by proposing as a sort of test
question that the House should resolve itself into committee to consider
the state of the Irish Church, with the intention of applying any
surplus revenues which might be found to general education, without
distinction of religion. In other words, he reintroduced the old
appropriation clause. It is to be borne in mind that the Whigs
themselves had abandoned that clause, that they had voted against it in
the case of Mr. Ward's measure, and that they afterwards entirely
rejected it. But for the time it served the party purpose. Although Peel
declared, and declared rightly, that the feeling of England was against
it, the votes of the Scotch and Irish members carried the day, and the
ministry was beaten on the 3rd of April by a majority of thirty-three.
On the 8th Sir Robert Peel announced his resignation.
The Whigs were thus again triumphant. The history of their weakness and
their difficulties belong to a period of history which lies beyond the
limits of this work. But one measure which they brought to a
satisfactory conclusion requires mention as completing in one very
important point the work of the Reform Bill. This was the reform of
corporations. With this exception it would be impossible to describe the
course of their measures without following them so far that they become
a part rather of present politics than of past history. But this reform
to which they at once pledged themselves was scarcely less important for
the purification of local government than the Reform Bill itself had
been with regard to the central Legislature.
[Sidenote: Condition of municipal corporations.]