CHARTISM AND THE CORN LAWS.
1832-52.
[Sidenote: =Fears excited by the Reform Bill.=]
The struggle over the Reform Bill had been so fierce, and the change
in the House of Commons caused by it had been so sweeping, that it was
generally supposed at the time that the immediate consequences of the
triumph of the Whigs would be very marked and startling. The Tories
prophesied the introduction, at no very distant date, of legislation
on behalf of all the Radical cries which the more extreme followers of
Lord Grey had adopted--such as manhood suffrage, vote by ballot, the
abolition of the standing army, the disestablishment of the Church of
England. Some even whispered that Great Britain would have ceased to be
a monarchy within ten years.
[Sidenote: =Its actual results.=]
All these suspicions were unfounded. By the action of the Reform Bill,
the power to make and unmake cabinets had passed, not into the hands
of the masses, but into those of the middle classes--the shopkeepers
of the towns and the farmers of the countryside. These were a very
different body from the excited mobs who had rioted in the streets and
threatened civil war in the years 1830-32. As a matter of fact, the
bill had done comparatively little for those who supported it most
violently, and caused grave disappointment to the wilder spirits among
the followers of Lord Grey. It had put an end to borough-mongering;
no ministry could henceforth hope to keep in office unless it had
the support of the majority of the constituencies. It had placed the
individual member much more under the control of the electors than had
been the case in earlier years, so that the power of public opinion
was greatly increased. It had modified the composition of the House of
Commons, by bringing in a large number of new members of a different
type from the old; for the great industrial centres in the North and
Midlands, which now obtained representatives for the first time, had
mostly returned wealthy local manufacturers and merchants to speak in
their behalf.
But neither the newly enfranchised classes nor their members in
Parliament were likely to be in favour of sudden and violent changes
in the constitution or the social condition of the realm, such as had
sometimes appeared imminent in the turbulent years between 1816 and
1832. The Whigs were no Radicals; it was more than thirty years before
they began seriously to think of enfranchising the labouring classes,
and facing all the problems of democracy. A sufficient indication of
the character of Lord Grey's ministry is to be found in the fact that
some of its most important members were recruited from the ranks of
the moderate Tories; Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, and Lord
Melbourne, the Home Secretary, had both been followers of Canning, and
had joined the ranks of the Whigs only when they saw the Tories under
Wellington finally committed to reactionary views. Perhaps Huskisson,
Canning's minister of commerce, would have gone with them, but he had
been killed--just before Lord Grey came into office--in the first
railway accident that ever occurred in England.
[Sidenote: =The new Poor Law.=]
The Grey ministry held office for four years only, but did much for the
country in that time. Its best piece of work was the new Poor Law of
1834, which put an end to the ruinous and degrading system of outdoor
relief,[59] which had been crushing the agricultural labourer and
loading the parishes with debt ever since the unwise legislation of
1795. The new law reimposed the old test of the workhouse on applicants
for charity. Only aged and impotent persons were to receive doles
of money and food at their own homes; able-bodied men were forced
to enter the workhouse--which they naturally detested on account of
its restraint--or to give up their weekly allowance. The result was
to force the farmers to pay the whole of their labourers' wages,
and to cease to expect the parish to find half of the amount. This
was perfectly just and rational; the parish finances were at once
lightened of their crushing burden, while the labourers ceased to be
pauperized, and did not lose anything by the change of the method
of payment. But if they lost nothing, they gained nothing, and the
condition of the rural classes of England still remained much inferior
to what it had been in the old days, before enclosure acts and high
rents came into vogue in the second half of the eighteenth century.
The new Poor Law compelled small neighbouring parishes to combine into
"unions" to keep a common workhouse, and it was found that one large
institution was worked both more efficiently and less expensively than
several small ones. In seven years the total cost of the poor relief of
England fell from nearly £8,000,000 to £4,700,000, an immense relief to
the country.
[Sidenote: =Abolition of slavery.=]
Another splendid piece of work done by the ministry of Lord Grey
was the final abolition of slavery in the English colonies. Though
the slave-trade had long been prohibited, yet slavery itself still
subsisted, and the West Indian planters were a body strong and wealthy
enough to offer a vigorous opposition to the enfranchisement of their
negroes. Many of the old Tories were narrow and misguided enough to
lend them aid in Parliament, but the bill was carried. Twenty million
pounds were set aside to compensate the owners, and on August 1,
1834, all the slaves became free, though they were bound to work as
apprentices to their late masters for seven years--a period afterwards
shortened to three.
[Sidenote: =The Municipal Corporations Act.=]
A third useful measure was the reform of the municipal corporations
of England, of which many had hitherto been wholly unrepresentative
bodies, not chosen by the people, but co-opting each other, and
often worked by small and corrupt party or family rings. For this
absurd arrangement the Act of 1835 substituted a popular and
elective constitution, to the enormous improvement of the purity and
respectability of the municipal bodies.
[Sidenote: =Palmerston's foreign policy,--France.=]
The European policy of the Whigs was in the hands of the brisk and
self-reliant Lord Palmerston, who directed the foreign relations of
England for nearly thirty years, with a few intervals of retirement
from office. He had left the Tories because he disliked their policy of
non-intervention in continental affairs, and because he nourished an
active dislike for the despotic monarchies of the Holy Alliance. His
end was to raise up a league in Western Europe which should support
national liberties and constitutional government in each country,
against the autocratic and reactionary powers of Central and Eastern
Europe. He therefore allied himself with Louis Philippe of Orleans, the
new King of France, who had been set up by the Liberal party in that
country as a constitutional king after the expulsion of Charles X.
[Sidenote: =Spain and Portugal.=]
He actively assisted the parties in Spain and Portugal who were
fighting for limited monarchy and the nation's right to choose its
own sovereign. In each of those countries there was a civil war in
progress between the Liberal party, backing a young queen with a
parliamentary title to the crown, and the reactionary party, supported
by the priesthood, and upholding a prince who claimed the throne under
the Salic law, and appealed to the divine hereditary right of kings.
Palmerston supported both Donna Maria in Portugal and Donna Isabella in
Spain against their uncles Don Miguel and Don Carlos, by every means
short of the actual sending of British troops to the Peninsula. But
many officers were allowed to volunteer into the Portuguese and Spanish
service, and the struggle was largely settled by their aid. The designs
of Don Miguel in Portugal were finally frustrated by the defeat of his
fleet by Admiral Napier, who commanded the young queen's ships (1831).
In Spain the fighting lasted much longer, and the efforts of Sir De
Lacy Evans' "British Legion" against the Carlists were not altogether
successful (1835-38), but the war ultimately came to an end in the
favour of Queen Isabella in 1840.
[Sidenote: =Holland and Belgium.=]
Palmerston also lent his support to the national party in a struggle
nearer home. Holland and Belgium had been united into a single kingdom
by the treaty of Vienna, and placed under the House of Orange, the old
Stadtholders of the United Provinces. But the Belgians much disliked
the arrangement; they were divided by religion from their northern
kinsfolk, and had no national sympathy with them, or loyalty to their
Dutch king. In 1830 they rose in arms and declared their independence;
William I. of Holland endeavoured to subdue them, and perhaps might
have succeeded but for the interference of England and of Louis
Philippe, the new King of France. When the Dutch refused to come to
terms, a French army entered Belgium and expelled the garrison of
Antwerp, while an English fleet blockaded the Scheldt. On this pressure
being applied, the Dutch yielded, and the kingdom of Belgium was
established, its first sovereign being a prince well known in England,
Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, the widower of the much-lamented Princess
Charlotte.[60]
Thus when France, Spain, Portugal, and Belgium were in the hands of
governments professing liberal principles and opposed to despotism,
the reactionary monarchs of the Holy Alliance ceased to appear such a
danger to the existence of constitutional monarchy in Europe.
[Sidenote: =Peel and the "Conservative" party.=]
While fairly successful alike in its foreign policy and its English
legislation, the Grey cabinet was never so strong as might have been
expected from its triumphant commencement of office. The Tory party,
which had seemed shattered for ever by the Reform Bill, and had
remained for some years in a broken and helpless condition, began
gradually to reorganize itself under the wise and cautious leadership
of Sir Robert Peel. Though Palmerston Melbourne, and the other
Canningites who had quitted it in 1828, did not return to its ranks,
and remained moderate Whigs, yet there were many others who gradually
rallied themselves to the old "Church and State" party. The new voters
whom the Reform Bill had created did not prove so universally devoted
to Radical principles as had been expected. There was always much
attachment to the old ideals in the middle classes. When Peel appeared
as leader, in place of narrow old Tories of the type of Castlereagh
and Addington, he was gradually enabled to collect a large body of
followers, and to form an opposition commanding a respectable number of
votes. About this time he wisely dropped the name of Tory, and called
himself and his followers "Conservatives," in order to get rid of the
unfortunate associations of the older party appellation.
[Sidenote: =The Tithe War.--Lord Grey resigns.=]
But the time was still far off when the Conservatives were to obtain
a preponderance in the House of Commons. Lord Grey resigned in 1834,
but only to give place to another Whig prime minister, who continued
the policy and work of his predecessor with the aid of most of his
cabinet. The change of premiers was due to a division among the Whigs
caused by Irish affairs. The grant of Catholic Emancipation in 1829
had completely failed to quiet Ireland. It only caused the Irish to
substitute new demands for the old ones. O'Connell, flushed with his
victory on the Emancipation question, had started two new agitations,
combined with each other much as Home Rule and the Land Question
are combined by modern Irish politicians. The first of them was the
demand for "Repeal," that is, the abolition of the Union of 1800,
and the establishment of a local Parliament in Dublin--the cry that
is called Home Rule in our own day. The second was the Tithe War, a
crusade against the payment by the Romanist peasantry of tithes for
the support of the Established Church of Ireland, a body which they
naturally detested. The Tithe War lasted for six or seven years, and
was accompanied by much rioting and outrage; the peasantry withheld the
tithe, and the Protestant clergy were in many cases absolutely ruined
and reduced to starvation by being deprived of their sustenance. A
coercion bill for the suppression of riots and violence was passed in
1833, and had some effect in restoring order.
But the ministry was divided on the question of the justice of
continuing to extract money from the Romanist peasantry to support an
alien Church. The premier proposed that the government should take over
the collection of the tithe, but use it for such purposes, secular or
otherwise, as might be deemed fit. But many of his colleagues objected
to diverting Church money from its original uses, and the cabinet fell
to pieces after a stormy scene in the House over a renewal of the
Coercion Act. Grey retired, and the king sent for Sir Robert Peel,
who at once dissolved Parliament, but the Whigs had a majority in the
new House, and Peel fell, after holding office for four months only.
Grey's colleague, Lord Melbourne, took over the conduct of affairs and
rearranged the cabinet, excluding only the late premier, and his clever
but eccentric Chancellor, Lord Brougham.
[Sidenote: =The Melbourne ministry.--=]
This ministry struggled on for six years, confronted always by the
strong Conservative following and the master mind of Peel, and
dependent on the uncertain support of O'Connell and his "Tail." Its
chief achievement was the final passing of the Irish Tithe Act, which
relieved the peasantry of the duty of paying that contribution to the
Established Church, and transferred it to their landlords, so that the
tithe was for the future a charge on rent. O'Connell accepted this
compromise, and the Tithe War ended, but the Repeal agitation went on
vigorously, and monster meetings all over Ireland were continually
demanding Home Rule. O'Connell had the priests on his side to a man,
and, using them as his instruments, could dictate orders to the
countryside, and return all the members for the Catholic districts of
Ireland. To his great credit, he kept the agitation clear of outrages,
as he had already done in the case of Emancipation ten years before.
Without having recourse to any such expedients, he was able to keep
the government in continual hot water, and more than once to wrest
concessions of importance from it.
[Sidenote: =Death of William IV.=]
The Melbourne cabinet was still wandering on its feeble way when on
June 20, 1837, the worthy old king, William IV., died. His decease had
no great effect on the politics of the realm, for when the election
for a new Parliament took place--as was necessary on the sovereign's
death--the ministry was found to have in the new House a small
majority, of much the same numbers as that which they had enjoyed in
the old.
[Sidenote: =Accession of Queen Victoria.--Hanover separated from
England.=]
The successor of King William was his niece Victoria, daughter of
Edward Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George III. She was a young girl
of eighteen, who had been brought up very quietly at Kensington Palace
by her widowed mother, Victoria of Saxe-Coburg. Little was known of her
by the nation at large, and some of the baser spirits among the Tories
whispered at first that she would prove a party-sovereign and a mere
tool of the Whigs. But it was not long before the world discovered that
the young queen was likely to be a model for constitutional monarchs.
She was simple, straightforward, filled with a deep consciousness of
the responsibility of her position, and anxious to discharge her duties
with all possible regard for the well-being of her subjects. The more
she was known, the more was she liked and respected, and there was
accordingly a general feeling of relief that the throne had not gone to
the next heir, the queen's unpopular uncle, Ernest Duke of Cumberland.
That prince, moreover, now became ruler of Hanover, where the Salic
law prevailed, and the kingdom was finally separated from England after
a hundred and twenty-three years of union. Thus England was freed from
all necessity for interfering in the internal politics of Germany.
[Sidenote: =The Queen and Lord Melbourne.=]
Lord Melbourne, behind an air of studied levity, possessed a strong
will and a conscientious desire to do well by his country. He
determined to place his experience at the disposal of the young queen,
and to teach her the ways of constitutional monarchy. Until her
marriage he acted as her private secretary, using his position for no
party purpose. In the language of the Duke of Wellington, he "taught
her to preside over the destinies of this great country."
[Sidenote: =The Government and the Radicals.=]
The Melbourne cabinet lasted till September, 1841, much vexed in its
later years by social troubles in England, the result of the growing
discontent among the working classes at the failure of the Reform Bill
to bring about a golden age. They had thought that the creation of a
representative House of Commons would be followed by all manner of
Radical reforms, and were now complaining that the new government was
little better than the old. "The Tories scourged us with whips, but
the Whigs use scorpions," complained Cobbett, the Radical pamphleteer,
while Lord Grey was still in power. There was this amount of truth
in the complaint, that the Tories were always trying to interfere in
social matters, and believed in "paternal government" and the duty of
the State to care for the individual citizen; but the Whigs, under the
influence of the rules of strict political economy, held that the State
must not meddle with private men, that the rule of _laissez faire_,
or non-intervention, was right, and that free competition between
man and man was the true order of life. Now, Tory interference with
social matters had generally been wrong-headed and disastrous, but Whig
indifference and abstention was quite as exasperating to the masses.
[Sidenote: =The People's Charter.=]
The old delusion that men can be made happy by legislation and
grants of political rights, was still universally prevalent, and the
discontent of the labouring classes took shape--now, as in the last
generation--in a demand for Parliamentary Reform. The new agitation
got its name from the document called "the People's Charter," which
was put forward as the programme of the movement. It contained five
claims--(1) for manhood suffrage, (2) for the vote by ballot at
elections, (3) for annual Parliaments, (4) for the payment of members,
(5) for the throwing open of seats in the House of Commons to all
men by the abolition of the property qualification, which was still
required, in theory, to be possessed by members. It is curious to
reflect how entirely useless all these five demands would have been to
cure the social discontents of the day. The second and fifth clauses of
the charter have long been granted, the first is practically conceded,
and the fourth may be so ere long, yet the ills against which the
Chartists were protesting are still with us. For the real end of the
agitation was in truth purely social; it was much the same as the
cry for the so-called "living wage" that is heard among us to-day.
"The principle of the People's Charter," said one of its advocates in
1838, "is the right of every man to have his home, his hearth, and his
happiness. It means that every working man in the land has a right
to a good coat, a good hat, a good dinner, no more work than will
keep him in health, and as much wages as will keep him in plenty."
The demagogues--honest or dishonest--who led the Chartist movement
insisted that the golden age would follow the introduction of universal
suffrage and their other demands, though it is difficult to see how
they can have been so simple as to hold such a view. But they were,
for the most part, mere windy orators, with no grasp of the means or
ends that they needed; the most prominent man of the whole band being
Feargus O'Connor, an Irishman with an enormous flow of words and an
ill-balanced brain, who ended his days in a lunatic asylum. Riotous
public meetings, where threats of physical force were freely used,
were rife all through the years 1838-42, and gave the Whig ministry
no small trouble. But the movement was never so dangerous to law and
order as the troubles of the years 1816-32 had been, for the Chartists
were backed by neither of the great political parties, had no competent
leaders, and were detested for their noisy turbulence by the whole of
the middle classes, Whig and Tory alike. Parliament refused to take
them seriously, even when they kept sending up monster petitions to
the House of Commons, purporting to contain a million and a half or
even three million signatures. One of these documents, as large in
circumference as a cart-wheel, had to be carried by sixteen men, and
stuck in the door of the House, so that it had to be cut up in order
to allow it to enter. But petitions, riots, and wild talk had none of
them any practical effect.
[Sidenote: =The Opium War.=]
There was little that was eventful in the foreign policy of the later
years of the Melbourne cabinet. The only events of importance were our
first war with China, and our interference in the Levant to prevent the
break-up of the Turkish empire. The Chinese quarrel--the Opium War,
as it was often called--arose from the destruction of a quantity of
that drug belonging to English merchants by the mandarins of Canton,
who had resolved not to allow it to be imported into their country.
In consequence, an army was sent out to the far East, which, after
some desultory fighting, compelled the Chinese to sue for peace, pay
an indemnity of 21,000,000 dollars, and cede the island of Hong-Kong,
which, in British hands, has since become one of the greatest ports of
the world (1839-41).
[Sidenote: =England and Mehemet Ali.=]
The war in Syria was caused by the attempt of Mehemet Ali, the Pasha
of Egypt, to assert his independence, and to tear Syria and Asia Minor
from his suzerain the Sultan. Thinking that the maintenance of Turkey
was essential to British interests in the East, Lord Palmerston bade
the rebel pasha retire within his own borders, and, on his refusal,
bombarded and took Acre and Sidon. This brought Mehemet Ali to reason,
and he acquiesced in an agreement which left him the position of a
quasi-independent ruler in Egypt, but stripped him of his conquests
beyond the Syrian desert (January, 1841).
[Sidenote: =The Prince Consort.=]
In the year which preceded this last war, England had been rejoiced to
see her queen happily married. The young sovereign's choice had been
her own first cousin, Albert of Saxe-Coburg, whom the country knew so
well first as "Prince Albert," then as the "Prince Consort." He was
very young at the time of the marriage, being only in his twenty-first
year, but from his earliest days in England showed a remarkable wisdom
and power of adapting himself to his new surroundings. While carefully
refraining from taking any ostensible part in politics, he was able
in many ways to act as a useful counsellor both for his wife and his
wife's ministers, for he had a large knowledge of foreign politics, and
a sound and cautious judgment. His blameless private life and many
amiable qualities endeared him to all who came into personal contact
with him; but for many years he was not properly appreciated by the
English people, who were vaguely suspicious of a foreign prince placed
in such a difficult position as that of husband to a constitutional
queen. All their suspicions of him and his influence were ungrounded,
but it was not till after his death in 1861 that most men realized what
a thoroughly wise and unselfish friend of England he had been.
[Sidenote: =The Conservatives in office.=]
The Melbourne ministry went out of power a few months after the queen's
marriage. A general election took place in June-July, 1841, and a
Conservative majority was returned to the House of Commons, whereupon
Sir Robert Peel was called upon to take office in the due course of
constitutional etiquette.
[Sidenote: =Peel as premier.=]
The Tories, now again in power after an interval of twelve years, were
a very different party from what they had been in the old days before
1830. The whole body of them had moved slowly forward, but there were
still, as always, a more and a less progressive section among them,
as in the days of Canning and Castlereagh. Peel himself had generally
been considered to belong to the former body, though he had been one of
those who opposed Parliamentary Reform to the last. His own breeding
and character account for his position; he was not a member of one of
the old aristocratic Tory families, but the son of a wealthy Lancashire
millowner, a representative of the Conservatism of the middle classes,
not of the old landed interest. He was a firm, able, conscientious
man, rather too masterful in dealing with his followers, and prone
to command rather than to persuade. But in 1841 his authority over
them seemed so firmly established, that men prophesied that he would
rule for as many years as the younger Pitt. As a matter of fact, his
ministry was only to last from September, 1841, to July, 1846, and,
instead of establishing the Conservative party firmly in power, he was
fated to break it up, and to condemn it to almost continuous exile from
office for nearly thirty years.[61]
[Sidenote: =Peel's finance.--The income tax.=]
But Peel's early years of power promised well. His first achievement
was to restore the national finances, which had been left in a most
unsatisfactory condition by the Melbourne ministry. His budget of 1842
was long remembered as being the first important step in the direction
of Free Trade that had been taken for many years. He reduced the
import duties on nearly 750 articles of consumption, reasoning that
the advantage to the consumer far outweighed the loss to the English
manufacturer, whose interests were served by the protective duties
which he removed. To make up the deficit in the revenue caused by
these remissions of import duties, he imposed the income tax, under a
pledge that it was to be an exceptional impost; five years, he said,
would suffice to restore the revenue to its old amount, and it should
then be dropped. Unfortunately for all persons with fixed incomes,
Peel was out of office long before the five years were over, and none
of his successors has ever redeemed his pledge. The income tax still
remains with us, the easy and obvious method by which any impecunious
Chancellor of the Exchequer can wring more money from the middle
classes, by adding an extra "penny in the pound." It must, however, be
granted that at its first imposition it tided England very successfully
over a dangerous financial crisis.
[Sidenote: =The Chartist agitation.=]
The Melbourne cabinet had left the task of dealing with two troublesome
agitations as a legacy to their successors. The Chartists were still
thundering away at monster meetings, and bombarding Parliament with
gigantic petitions. One sent to the House of Commons in 1842 purported
to be signed by 3,000,000 persons, and was actually signed by, perhaps,
a third of that number. It was couched in such seditious terms that
the government refused to receive it, and were supported by a majority
of 238, when certain Radical members pressed them to a division. But
Peel's hand was known to be firm, and it was obvious that there was
no chance of intimidating him; so the Chartist agitation, though it
continued to simmer all through his time, never boiled up into any
dangerous effervescence.
[Sidenote: =The "Young Ireland Party."=]
In Ireland matters seemed for a time more serious. Daniel O'Connell
was still pressing on his campaign for Repeal. He was the master of
the greater part of the Irish people, and had his well-disciplined
"Tail" to follow him in the Commons. But as long as both Conservatives
and Whigs refused to buy his aid at the price of granting his demands
for Home Rule, he could do no more than bluster and declaim at public
meetings. But O'Connell was joined, in the year 1842, by a body of
recruits who refused to be fettered by his command to refrain from
the use of physical force. A band of ardent young politicians, the
political heirs of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Robert Emmet, bound
themselves together to strive for Repeal by the old method of armed
rebellion--when "England's extremity should be Ireland's opportunity."
They called themselves the "Young Ireland Party," revived the old
watchwords of the United Irishmen, and gloried in the principles of
'98. The chiefs of this faction were Smith O'Brien, Meagher, and Gavan
Duffy. O'Connell was afraid of their rashness, and the priesthood,
who acted as O'Connell's agents all over Ireland, viewed them with
suspicion as possible republicans and atheists; but they gained
considerable influence in the land.
[Sidenote: =O'Connell's influence declines.=]
The Repeal agitation came to a head in 1843, when O'Connell gathered
several hundred thousand people together at a meeting at Tara, the old
seat of the Kings of Ireland, and addressed them in an excited strain,
promising them "a Parliament of their own on College Green within
the year." But Peel had him and his chief lieutenants arrested, and
tried for sedition. The whole agitation seemed to collapse when the
government made a show of force, and, though O'Connell was ultimately
acquitted, his hold on the Irish people was much shaken by the obvious
uselessness for any practical end of all his meetings and harangues.
The majority of his followers fell back into apathy, the minority
resolved to join the "Young Irelanders," and to plot armed treason at
some convenient date in the future. Meanwhile Repeal was dead, and
O'Connell died a few years later, just before the miserable years
1846-7 revived the troubles of Ireland.
[Sidenote: =England and the United States.=]
English foreign policy in Peel's day continued on the good lines on
which Palmerston had placed it, for the new Conservative party were
vigilant to defend our interests abroad, and to resent the aggression
of our neighbours. A very threatening dispute with the United States
about the south-western boundaries of British America was settled in
1842, by a satisfactory treaty which gave England Vancouver's Island
and all the coast north of the Straits of Juan da Fuca, taking the
forty-ninth degree of latitude as the dividing-line from the Pacific
to the end of Lake Superior. The Americans had claimed, but had to
give up, the whole western shore of North America, up to the Russian
province of Alaska.
[Sidenote: =England and France.=]
Twice England appeared likely to engage in war with France--in 1844
and 1846--while Peel was in power. The first quarrel was about the
annexation of the island of Tahiti, in the Pacific, where a French
admiral arrested the English consul, and seized the island in the most
arbitrary way from its queen. But Louis Philippe did not wish for war
with the only power in Europe that looked kindly on a constitutional
monarchy in France, and forced his ministers to apologize to England
and abandon Tahiti. In the second quarrel, the crafty and intriguing
old king was himself to blame. He had formed a design for securing
Spain for his younger son Anthony, Duke of Montpensier, by means of a
marriage. The crown of that country was now worn by the young Queen
Isabella, whose heiress was her still younger sister Louisa. Louis
Philippe secured the marriage of the younger princess with his own
son. At the same time, by disreputable intrigues with the Spanish
queen-mother, Christina of Naples, and the factious parties in the
Cortes, he got the unfortunate queen married to her cousin, Don
Francisco, Duke of Cadiz, a wretched weakling, who--as he thought--was
certain to die without heirs, so that the crown must ultimately fall to
the Montpensiers (1846). This scheme reproduced the old danger that had
brought about the war of the Spanish succession in the days of William
III. and Anne,--the chance that the crowns of Spain and France might be
united. The English government and people were bitterly provoked, high
words passed between London and Paris, and there appeared for some time
a danger that a rupture might ensue. But external events intervened to
prevent such a misfortune. Peel's government lost office in 1846, and
Louis Philippe was dethroned in 1848, after which the Spanish marriages
ceased to have any importance.
[Sidenote: =Peel and the Free Trade movement.=]
While that question was at its height, England had been going through
an unexpected political crisis, caused by Peel's sudden conversion
to complete Free Trade. His budget of 1842 had shown that all his
tendencies lay in that direction; but he had not yet touched the one
point which was certain to bring him into collision with the majority
of his own party--the question of Free Trade in corn. Since England had
become a great manufacturing country, with a population that advanced
by leaps and bounds, it was daily growing more impossible to feed the
new mouths with English corn alone. But the heavy duties on imported
grain, which survived from the last century, only allowed the foreign
wheat to come in at an exorbitant price. Hence the poor man's loaf
was always dear. Farmers and landlords profited by this protection of
English agriculture, but, since the landed interest had ceased to be
the most important element in the state, the Corn Laws injured many
more persons than they benefited. For the last five or six years a
vigorous agitation in favour of their abolition had been in progress,
whose guiding spirit was Richard Cobden, "the prophet of Free Trade."
It seemed more likely that the Whigs would be converted by him than
the Conservatives, for the backbone of Peel's majority in the House of
Commons was composed of the county members, who represented the farmers
and landlords of England.
[Sidenote: =The Protectionists.--Disraeli and Lord G. Bentinck.=]
But in 1845, a famine in Ireland, caused by the failure of the
potato-crop, called for a large importation of corn to feed the
starving Irish cottiers. Peel proposed to suspend the Corn Laws as a
temporary measure, to allow of the introduction of the needed supply
of food at the cheapest possible rate. His colleagues in the ministry
resolved to support the proposal, but they proved unable to persuade
the whole of their party to follow them. About a hundred members of the
House of Commons--the representatives of the corn-growing shires and
the old Tory families--refused to be convinced by Peel's arguments.
They were headed by two men of mark, neither of whom had as yet been
taken very seriously by the House. The first was Lord George Bentinck,
a younger son of the great ducal house of Portland, who had hitherto
been seen more frequently on the racecourse than at St. Stephen's, but
who showed an unexpected ability when he proceeded to attack his chief.
The second was Benjamin Disraeli, the son of a Jewish man of letters,
then known as a young and volatile member of the House, who combined
high Tory notions on Church and State with extreme Radical views on
certain social questions. But he had been hitherto more notorious
for his eccentric and gorgeous dress, and his curious high-flown and
bombastic novels, than for any serious political doings.
[Sidenote: =The Corn Laws repealed.=]
When Peel brought forward his bill for abolishing the Corn Laws, he
found himself bitterly opposed by Bentinck and Disraeli and their
protectionist followers, who scouted him as a turncoat and a traitor
to the Tory cause. He carried the abolition of the obnoxious duties by
the aid of the votes of his enemies, the Whigs (May 15, 1846). A month
later the angry Protectionists took their revenge; on the question of
an Irish coercion bill, Bentinck and Disraeli led some scores of Tory
members into the opposition lobby, and left the prime minister in a
minority of seventy-three (June 25, 1846).
[Sidenote: =Break up of the Conservative party.=]
Peel immediately resigned. He had carried his bill, but broken up his
party, and the Whigs were now to have a fresh lease of office that
lasted thirty years, for the two sections into which the Conservatives
had broken up--the Peelites and the Protectionists--would never join
again, so bitterly did they dislike each other. In the course of time
most of the Peelites drifted over to the Whig camp, among them two who
were destined to be prime ministers of England--Lord Aberdeen, who had
been Peel's Foreign Secretary, and William Ewart Gladstone, then a
rising young member, who had held the Presidency of the Board of Trade
from 1843 to 1846.
[Sidenote: =Lord John Russell's ministry.=]
The Whigs, or the Liberal party, as they were now beginning to call
themselves, came back to power with every advantage, as the opposition
was divided into two irreconcilable sections, who would never join
on account of their old grudge. Yet the new cabinet was never a very
strong one, because the Whigs refused to put Lord Palmerston, their
strongest and ablest man, at the head of affairs. Some of the party
could never forget that he had once been a Canningite, and thought that
he was not Liberal enough for them; others were afraid of his firm
and incisive way of dealing with foreign powers, and prophesied that
he would some day land England, unexpectedly, in the midst of a great
war. Instead of Palmerston, Lord John Russell, the promoter of the
great Reform Bill of 1832, was made premier. He was a much less notable
personage than Palmerston, and not strong enough for his place, being
nothing more than an adroit party tactician with no touch of genius
about him. Yet he held power for six years, and made no great mistakes
if he performed no great achievements at home; while, as the foreign
policy of England was handed over to Palmerston, there was no lack of
strong guidance in things abroad.
[Sidenote: =The famine in Ireland.=]
The chief problem which the Liberal cabinet found to trouble them when
they took office was an Irish one. In 1845 there had been a partial
failure of the potato-crop, the staple food of the Irish peasantry;
this was followed in 1846, just after Lord John Russell came into
power, by a far more dreadful disaster of the same kind. In August the
whole potato harvest of Southern and Western Ireland was struck down
by a sudden blight, such as had never been seen before or since, and
4,000,000 persons were suddenly brought to the verge of starvation.
The disaster was aggravated by the hopeless state of the rural
population. For the last half-century the population of Ireland had
been advancing with disastrous rapidity; it had swelled from 5,000,000
to 8,000,000, yet there had been no corresponding increase either of
improved cultivation, or of land taken under tillage. The improvident
landlords had allowed the still more improvident tenantry to divide
their farms into smaller and smaller fractions, till the land only
fed its population in years of exceptional fertility. The greater
part of Ireland was cut up into miserable slips of a few acres, where
the cottier paid intermittently as much as he could of a rent which
was rated at a higher amount than the wretched little farm could ever
produce. The unexampled disaster of two successive years of blight
brought the whole of the miserable peasantry to the edge of the grave.
The workhouses were soon crammed, all local funds used up, and yet the
people were dying by thousands from famine, or from the fevers which
were bred by insufficient nourishment. The government paltered with the
evil by establishing relief works, and refused for some time to face
the fact that nothing but wholesale distribution of food would keep
the wretched peasantry alive. It was not till 1847 that they faced the
full horror of the problem, and established soup-kitchens and depôts
for free food all over the land. By this time scores of thousands had
died, and the bitterest feelings of wrath had been bred in the Irish
mind at the neglect or incompetence of the cabinet.
[Sidenote: =Evictions and emigration.=]
When the famine was over, it was generally recognized that the
worst of the disaster had been owing to the congested state of the
population, who were trying to live on smaller farms than could really
support them. This led to wholesale evictions by the landlords, who,
half ruined by the famine themselves, wished to avoid another such
experience by thinning off the pauperized cottiers, and throwing
several farms into one. In many cases these evictions were carried out
with ruthless haste and cruelty, for the proprietors--often absentees
who did not know their tenants by sight--had no sympathy for the
wretched peasants, and only wanted to be rid of them. The unwilling
emigrants were driven out of Ireland by the hundred thousand, and
retired for the most part to America, carrying away a fanatical hatred
for the Anglo-Irish landholding classes who had evicted them, and for
the English government which had sanctioned their expulsion.
[Sidenote: =Smith O'Brien's insurrection.=]
With such class rancour in the air, it was no wonder that troubles
broke out in Ireland in 1848, the year after the famine was over. The
chiefs of the "Young Ireland" party[62] thought that the times were
ripe for open insurrection, and, seeing revolutions rife all over
Europe, and the Chartist riots stirring again in England, resolved to
strike at once. Their leader, Smith O'Brien, after using threatening
language in the House of Commons, went over to Ireland and called
the discontented to arms. But he proved a very incapable chief when
he essayed the part of Catiline. Gathering together some hundreds of
armed followers, he attacked fifty constables on Bonlagh common, in
Tipperary. His men scattered after a few volleys, and he and his chief
adherents fled to the hills, where they were soon caught (July, 1848).
They were tried for treason and condemned, but the government commuted
their punishment to exile, and a few years later they were given a free
pardon.
[Sidenote: =Revolutionary agitation abroad.=]
This abortive revolt in Ireland was one of the least noteworthy events
of 1848, the most turbulent year of the nineteenth century. The whole
continent was ablaze with insurrections in favour of liberal ideas
and national rights. The French drove out Louis Philippe, because he
had grown reactionary in his old age, and refused to grant universal
suffrage; on his expulsion they established a republic. Another great
insurrection arose in Hungary, when the people tried to wrest a
constitution by force of arms from their king Ferdinand, the Austrian
Emperor. In the same year a great rising in Italy strove to win
national unity by expelling the Austrians from Lombardy and Venetia,
and making an end of the petty dukes and kings of Central and Southern
Italy. Germany was at the same time convulsed by popular agitation,
which demanded constitutional liberty from its many rulers, while
the diet at Frankfort declared in favour of unifying the land on a
republican basis.
[Sidenote: =End of the Chartist agitation.=]
All these troubles could not pass unnoticed in England, and the
Chartists, whose movements had been small and unimportant for the last
five years, once more began to stir up trouble. The last of their
"monster petitions" was sent in to the House of Commons, and the "Five
points" demanded more noisily than ever. Things came to a head when
their chief, Feargus O'Connor, summoned a great meeting on Kennington
Common, and threatened to march on Westminster with 500,000 men at his
back. But the government refused to be cowed, and the middle classes,
in fierce anger at the noisy agitation, took arms against the rioters.
Two hundred thousand "special constables" were enrolled to face the
rioters, the bridges leading to Westminster were manned with troops,
and the great meeting was awaited with resolution. These preparations
overawed the rioters; only a few thousand Chartists assembled, and
Feargus O'Connor, frightened at the display of military force and the
steady attitude of the special constables, bade his followers go home,
and disappeared. This was the last outbreak of the Chartists, who
proved to be a mere bugbear when they were once met and faced (April,
1848).
[Sidenote: =The continental insurrection.--Louis Napoleon.=]
For the future England was undisturbed, and, secure at home herself,
could watch all the turmoil on the continent with composure. Palmerston
did his best to favour the liberal and national parties abroad by all
peaceful means, but would not commit England to war on their behalf.
To his regret, Italy and Hungary were at last reconquered by their
old masters, and the German liberals were also put down, so that the
unification of their land was delayed for twenty years (1849). The
French Republic proved weak and ill-governed; after several anarchist
risings in Paris had frightened the French _bourgeoisie_, they took
refuge under a military dictatorship, electing as president Louis
Napoleon, the nephew of Napoleon I., and the son of his younger brother
Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland. The new president's record was not
encouraging; twice during the reign of Louis Philippe he had made
hairbrained attempts to raise military revolts in France, trading on
the great name of his uncle. On each occasion he had failed lamentably,
his preparations having been entirely inadequate to carry out his
purpose. He had acquired the reputation of a rash and wild adventurer,
ready to embark in any scheme, yet the French, dazzled by the name of
Bonaparte, and over-persuaded by his promises to give them peace and
prosperity, were unwise enough to elect him as president.
[Sidenote:=The Second Empire.=]
Louis Napoleon soon strengthened himself by placing in office, both in
the army and the ministry, a band of unscrupulous men whom he could
trust to follow him in any dark scheme, if only they were well enough
paid. When he had made his preparations, he seized and imprisoned most
of the members of the Chamber of Deputies, shot down all who took
arms to defend the Republic, and assumed despotic power (December 2,
1851). Soon afterwards he assumed the title of Emperor and the name of
Napoleon III.
[Sidenote: =Palmerston's dismissal.=]
The French president's treacherous usurpation brought about
Palmerston's dismissal from office, and ultimately the fall of the
Russell cabinet. Immediately after Louis Bonaparte had perpetrated
his _coup d'état_, the great foreign minister expressed to the French
ambassador his acquiescence in the revolution. He had so much disliked
the turbulent and anarchic Republic which the usurper had destroyed,
that he was quite ready to acknowledge the new government, which was
at any rate settled and strong for the moment. Palmerston took this
action before he had consulted with his colleagues in the ministry, or
obtained the formal permission of the queen to recognize the legality
of Bonaparte's position. Both the sovereign and the cabinet were vexed
at his acting without any consultation, and Lord John Russell dismissed
him from office (January, 1852).
[Sidenote: =Fall of Lord John Russell's ministry.=]
But Palmerston had many friends and admirers, and was soon able to
revenge himself. Less than a month after his dismissal, he led a
section of the Whigs into the opposition lobby on a division concerning
a bill to strengthen the militia, and put Russell in a minority. The
ministry was therefore obliged to resign (February, 1852).
FOOTNOTES:
[59] See p. 635-6.
[60] See p. 639.
[61] Between 1846 and 1874 the Conservatives were only in power for
four years in all.
[62] See p. 664.