(S. R. G.)
XI. The Revolutionary Epoch, the Reaction, and the Triumph of Reform (1793-1837)
In appearance the great Whig landowners gave their support to Pitt, and in 1794 some of their leaders, the duke of Portland, Lord Fitzwilliam, and Windham, entered the cabinet to serve under him. In reality it was Pitt who hadThe government and the “revolutionary” agitation.surrendered. The ministry and the party by which it was supported might call themselves Tory still; but the great reforming policy of 1784 was at an end, and the government, unconscious of its own strength, conceived its main function to be at all costs to preserve the constitution, which it believed to be in danger of being overwhelmed by the rising tide of revolutionary feeling. That this belief was idle it is now easy enough to see; at the time this was not so obvious. Thomas Paine’sRights of Man, published in 1791, a brilliant and bitter attack on the British constitution from the Jacobin point of view, sold by tens of thousands. Revolutionary societies with high-sounding names were established, of which the most conspicuous were the Revolution Society, the Society for Constitutional Information, the London Corresponding Society, and the Friends of the People. Of these, indeed, only the two last were directly due to the example of France. The Revolution Society, founded to commemorate the revolution of 1688, had long carried on a respectable existence under the patronage of cabinet ministers; the Society for Constitutional Information, of which Pitt himself had been a member, was founded in 1780 to advocate parliamentary reform; both had, however, developed under the influence of the events in France in a revolutionary direction. The London Corresponding Society, composed mainly of working-men, was the direct outcome of the excitement caused by the developments of the French Revolution. Its leaders were obscure and usually illiterate men, who delighted to propound their theories for the universal reformation of society and the state in rhetoric of which the characteristic phrases were borrowed from the tribune of the Jacobin Club. Later generations have learned by repeated experience that the eloquence of Hyde Park orators is not the voice of England; there were some even then—among those not immediately responsible for keeping order—who urged the government “to trust the people”;6but with the object-lesson of France before them it is not altogether surprising that ministers refused to believe in the harmlessness of societies, which not only kept up a fraternal correspondence with the National Convention and the Jacobin Club, but, by attempting to establish throughout the country a network of affiliated clubs, were apparently aiming at setting up in Great Britain the Jacobin idea of popular control.
The danger, of course, was absurdly exaggerated; as indeed was proved by the very popularity of the repressive measures to which the government thought it necessary to resort, and which gave to the vapourings of a few knots of agitators the dignity of a widespread conspiracy for the overthrow of the constitution. On the 1st of December 1792 a proclamation was issued calling out the militia on the ground that a dangerous spirit of tumult and disorder had been excited by evil-disposed persons, acting in concert with persons in foreign parts, and this statement was repeated in the king’s speech at the opening of parliament on the 13th. In spite of the protests of Sheridan and other members of the opposition, a campaign of press and other prosecutions now began which threatened to extinguish the most cherished right of Englishmen—liberty of speech. The country was flooded with government spies and informers, whose efforts were seconded by such voluntary societies as the Association for preserving Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers, founded by John Reeves, the historian of English law. No one was safe from these zealous and too often credulous defenders of the established order; and a few indiscreet words spoken in a coffee house were enough to bring imprisonment and ruin, as in the case of John Frost, a respectable attorney, condemned for sedition in March 1793. In Scotland the panic, and the consequent cruelty, were worse than in England. The meeting at Edinburgh of a “convention of delegates of the associated friends of the people,” at which some foolish and exaggerated language was used, was followed by the trial of Thomas Muir, a talented young advocate whose brilliant defence did not save him from a sentence of fourteen years’ transportation (August 30, 1793), while seven years’ transportation was the punishment of the Rev. T. Fyshe Palmer for circulating an address from “a society of the friends of liberty to their fellow-citizens” in favour of a reform of the House of Commons. These sentences and the proceedings which led up to them, though attacked with bitter eloquence by Sheridan and Fox, were confirmed by a large majority in parliament.
It was not, however, till late in the session of 1794 that ministers laid before parliament any evidence of seditious practices. In May certain leaders of democratic societies were arrested and their papers seized, and on the 13th a king’s message directed the books of certain corresponding societies to be laid before both Houses. The committee of the House of Commons at once reported that there was evidence of a conspiracyto supersede the House of Commons by a national convention, and Pitt proposed and carried a bill suspending the Habeas Corpus Act. This was followed by further reports of the committees of both Houses, presenting evidence of the secret manufacture of arms and of other proceedings calculated to endanger the public peace. A series of state prosecutions followed. The trials of Robert Watt and David Downie for high treason (August and September 1794) actually revealed a treasonable plot on the part of a few obscure individuals at Edinburgh, who were found in the possession of no less than fifty-seven pikes of home manufacture, wherewith to overthrow the British government. The execution of Watt gave to this trial a note of tragedy which was absent from that of certain members of the Corresponding Society, accused of conspiring to murder the king by means of a poisoned arrow shot from an air-gun. The ridicule that greeted the revelation of the “Pop-gun Plot” marked the beginning of a reaction that found a more serious expression in the trials of Thomas Hardy, John Horne Tooke and John Thelwall (October and November 1794). The prisoners were accused of high treason, their chief offence consisting in their attempt to assemble a general convention of the people, ostensibly for the purpose of obtaining parliamentary reform, but really—as the prosecution urged—for subverting the constitution. This latter charge, though proved to the satisfaction of the committees of both Houses of Parliament, broke down under the cross-examination of the government witnesses by the counsel for the defence, and could indeed only have been substantiated by a dangerous stretching of the doctrine of constructive treason. Happily the jury refused to convict, and its verdict saved the nation from the disgrace of meting out the extreme penalty of high treason to an attempt to hold a public meeting for the redress of grievances.
The common sense of a British jury had preserved, in spite of parliament and ministry, that free right of meeting which was to be one of the strongest instruments of future reform. The government, however, saw little reason in the events of the following months for reversing their coercive policy. The year 1795 was one of great suffering and great popular unrest; for the effect of the war upon industry was now beginning to be felt, and the distress had been aggravated by two bad harvests. The sudden determination of those in power, who had hitherto advocated reform, to stereotype the existing system, closed the avenues of hope to those who had expected an improvement of their lot from constitutional changes, and the disaffected temper of the populace that resulted was taken advantage of by the London Corresponding Society, emboldened by its triumph in the courts, to organize open and really dangerous demonstrations, such as the vast mass meeting at Copenhagen House on the 26th of October. On the 29th of October the king, on his way to open parliament, was attacked by an angry mob shouting, “Give us bread,” “No Pitt,” “No war,” “No famine,”; and the glass panels of his state coach were smashed to pieces.
The result of these demonstrations was the introduction in the House of Lords, on the 4th of November, of the Treasonable Practices Bill, the main principle of which was that it modified the law of treason by dispensing with the necessity for the proof of an overt act in order to secure conviction; and in the House of Commons, on the 10th, of the Seditious Meetings Bill, which seriously limited the right of public meeting, making all meetings of over fifty persons, as well as all political debates and lectures, subject to the previous consent and active supervision of the magistrates. In spite of the strenuous resistance of the opposition, led by Fox, and of numerous meetings of protest held outside the walls of parliament, both bills passed into law by enormous majorities. The inevitable result followed. The London Corresponding Society and other political clubs, deprived of the right of public meeting, became secret societies pledged to the overthrow of the existing system by any means. United Englishmen and United Scotsmen plotted with United Irishmen for a French invasion, and sedition was fomented in the army and the navy. Their baneful activities were exposed in the inquiries that followed the Irish rebellion of 1798, and the result was the Corresponding Societies Bill, introduced by Pitt on the 19th of April 1799, which completed the series of repressive measures and practically suspended the popular constitution of England. The right of public meeting, of free speech, of the free press had alike ceased for the time to exist.
The justification of the government in all this was the life and death struggle in which Great Britain was engaged with the power of republican France in Europe. Yet Pitt’s conduct of the war, so far as the continent was concerned,The Revolutionary War.had hitherto led to nothing but failure after failure. In 1794, in spite of the presence of an English army under the duke of York, the Austrian Netherlands had been finally conquered and annexed to the French republic; in 1795 the Dutch republic was affiliated to that of France, and the peace of Basel between Prussia and the French republic left Austria to continue the war alone with the aid of British subsidies. On the sea Great Britain had been more successful, Howe’s victory of the 1st of June 1794 being the first of the long series of defeats inflicted on the French navy, while in 1795 a beginning was made of the vast expansion of the British Empire by the capture of Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch (seeFrench Revolutionary Wars). The war, however, had become so expensive, and its results were evidently so small, that there was a growing feeling in England in favour of peace, especially as the Reign of Terror had come to an end in 1794, and a regular government, the Directory, had been appointed in 1795. At last Pitt was forced to yield to the popular clamour, and in 1796 Lord Malmesbury was sent to France to treat for peace. The negotiation, however, was at once broken off by his demand that France should abandon the Netherlands.
The French government, assured now of the assistance of Spain and Holland, and freed of the danger from La Vendée, now determined to attempt the invasion of Ireland. On the 16th of December a fleet of 17 battle-ships,Hoche’s expedition to Ireland.13 frigates and 15 smaller vessels set sail from Brest, carrying an expeditionary force of some 13,000 men under General Hoche. The British fleet, under Lord Bridport, was wintering at Spithead; and before it could put to sea the French had slipped past. Before it reached the coast of Ireland, however, the French fleet had already suffered serious losses, owing partly to the attacks of British frigate detachments, partly to the bad seamanship of the French crews and the rottenness of the ships. Only a part of the fleet succeeded in reaching Bantry Bay on the 20th of December, and of these a large number were scattered by a storm on the 23rd. Hoche himself, with the French admiral, had been driven far to the westward in an effort to avoid capture; the attempt of Grouchy, in his absence, to land a force was defeated by the weather, and by the end of the month the whole expedition was in full retreat for Brest. A French diversion on the coast of Pembroke was even less successful; a force of 1500 men, under Colonel Tate, an American adventurer, landed in Cardigan Bay on the 22nd of February 1797, but was at once surrounded by the local militia and surrendered without a blow.
A more serious attempt was now made to renew the enterprise by means of a junction of the French, Spanish and Dutch fleets. The victory of Jervis over the Spanish fleet at St Vincent on the 14th of February postponed theMutinies at Spithead and the Nore.imminence of the danger; but this again became acute owing to the general disaffection in the fleet, which in April and May found vent in the serious mutinies at Spithead and the Nore. The mutiny at Spithead, which was due solely to the intolerable conditions under which the seamen served at the time, was ended on the 17th of May by concessions: an increase of pay, the removal of officers who had abused their power of discipline, and the promise of a general free pardon. More serious was the outbreak at the Nore. The disaffection had spread practically to the whole of Admiral Duncan’s fleet, and by the beginning of June the mutineers were blockading the Thames with no less than 26 vessels. The demands of the seamen were more extensive than at Spithead; their resistance was better organized; and they were suspected, though withoutreason, of harbouring revolutionary designs. The return of the Channel fleet to its duty emboldened the admiralty to refuse any concessions, and the vigorous measures of repression taken proved effective. One by one the mutinous crews surrendered; and the arrest of the ringleader, Richard Parker, on board the “Sandwich,” on the 14th of June, brought the affair to an end.7Battle of Camperdown.The seamen regained their reputation, and those who had been imprisoned their liberty, by Duncan’s victory over the Dutch fleet at Camperdown (October 11), by which the immediate danger was averted. Though the French attempt at a concerted invasion had failed, however, the Directory did not abandon the enterprise, and commissioned Bonaparte to draw up fresh plans.
At the close of the year 1797 the position of Great Britain was indeed sufficiently alarming. On the 18th of April, during the very crisis of the mutiny at Spithead, Austria had signed with Bonaparte the humiliating terms of the preliminary peace of Leoben, which six months later were embodied in the treaty of Campo Formio (October 17). On the 10th of August Portugal had concluded a treaty with the French Republic; and Great Britain was left without an ally in Europe. The mutiny at the Nore, the threat of rebellion in Ireland, the alarming fall in consols, argued strongly against continuing the war single-handed, and in July Lord Malmesbury had been sent to Lille to open fresh negotiations with the plenipotentiaries of France. The negotiations broke down on the refusal of England to restore the Cape of Good Hope to the Dutch. But though forced, in spite of misgivings, to continue the struggle, the British government in one very important respect was now in a far better position to do so. For though Great Britain was now isolated and her policy in Europe advertised as a failure, the temper of the British people was less inclined to peace in 1798 than it had been three years before. The early enthusiasm of the disfranchised classes for French principles had cooled with the later developments of the Revolution; the attempted invasions had roused the national spirit; and in the public imagination the sinister figure of Bonaparte, the rapacious conqueror, was beginning to loom large to the exclusion of lesser issues. Henceforth, in spite of press prosecutions and trials for political libel, the government was supported by public opinion in its vigorous prosecution of the war.
If the danger of French invasion was a reality, it was so mainly owing to the deplorable condition of Ireland, where the natural disaffection of the Roman Catholic majority of the population—deprived of political and manyThe Act of Union with Ireland.social rights, and exposed to the insults and oppression of a Protestant minority corrupted by centuries of ascendancy—invited the intervention of a foreign enemy. The full measure of the intolerable conditions prevailing in the country was revealed by the horrors of the rebellion of 1798, and after this had been suppressed Pitt decided that the only way to deal with the situation was to establish a union between Great Britain and Ireland, similar to that which had proved so successful in the case of England and Scotland. He saw that to establish peace in Ireland the Roman Catholics would have to be enfranchised; he realized that to enfranchise them in a separated Ireland would be to subject the proud Protestant minority to an impossible domination, and to establish not peace but war. The Union, then, was in his view the necessary preliminary to Catholic emancipation, which was at the same time the reward held out to the majority of the Irish people for the surrender of their national quasi-independence. It was a bribe little likely to appeal to the Protestant minority which constituted the Irish parliament, and to them other inducements had to be offered if the scheme was to be carried through. These inducements were not all corrupt. Those members who stood out were, indeed, bought by a lavish distribution of money and coronets; but the advantages to Ireland which might reasonably be expected from the Union were many and obvious; and if all the promises held out by the promoters of the measure have even now not been realized, the fault is not theirs. The Act of Union was placed on the statute-book in 1800; Catholic emancipation was to have been accomplished in the following session, the first of the united parliament. But Pitt’s policy broke on the stubborn obstinacy of George III., who believed himself bound by his coronation oath to resist any concession to the enemies of the Established Church. The disadvantage of the possession of too strait a conscience in politics was neverResignation of Pitt.more dismally illustrated. To the Irish people it was the first breach of faith in connexion with the Union, and threw them into opposition to a settlement into which they believed themselves to have been drawn under false pretences. Pitt, realizing this, had no option but to resign.
The resignation of the great minister who had so long held the reins of power coincided with a critical situation in Europe. The isolation of Bonaparte in Egypt, as the result of Nelson’s victory of the Nile (1798), had enabledBonaparte breaks up the coalition.the allies to recover some of the ground lost to France. But this had merely increased Bonaparte’s prestige, and on his return in 1799 he found no difficulty in making himself master of France by thecoup d’étatof the 18th Brumaire. The campaign of Marengo followed (1800) and the peace of Lunéville, which not only once more isolated Great Britain, but raised up against her new enemies, to the list of whom she added by using her command of the sea to enforce the right of search in order to seize enemies’ goods in neutral vessels. Russia joined with Sweden and Denmark, all hitherto friendly powers, in resistance to this claim.
Such was the position when Addington became prime minister. He was a man of weak character and narrow intellect, whose main claim to succeed Pitt was that he shared toAddington ministry.the full the Protestant prejudices of king and people. His tenure of power was, indeed, marked by British successes abroad; by Nelson’s victory at Copenhagen, which broke up the northern alliance, and by Abercromby’s victory at Alexandria, which forced the French to evacuate Egypt; but these had been prepared by the previous administration. Addington’s real work was the peace of Amiens (1802),The peace of Amiens.an experimental peace, as the king called it, to see if the First Consul could be contented to restrain himself within the very wide limits by which his authority in Europe was still circumscribed.
In a few months Great Britain was made aware that the experiment would not succeed. Interference and annexation became the standing policy of the new French government; and Britain, discovering how little intentionRenewal of the war.Bonaparte had of carrying out the spirit of the treaty, refused to abandon Malta, as she had engaged to do by the terms of peace. The war began again, no longer a war against revolutionary principles and their propaganda, but against the boundless ambitions of a military conqueror. This time the British nation was all but unanimous in resistance. This time its resistance would be sooner or later supported by all that was healthy in Europe. The news that Bonaparte was making preparations on a vast scale for the invasion of England roused a stubborn spirit of resistance in the country. Volunteers were enrolled, and the coast was dotted with Martello towers, many of which yet remain as monuments of the time when the “army of England” was encamped on the heights near Boulogne within sight of the English cliffs. To meet so great a crisis Addington was not the man. He had been ceaselessly assailed, in and out of parliament, by the trenchant criticism, and often unmannerly wit, of “Pitt’s friends,” among whom George Canning was now conspicuous. Pitt himself had remained silent; but in view of the seriousness of the crisis and of a threatened illness of the king, which would have necessitated a regency and—in view of the prince of Wales’s dislike for him—his own permanent exclusion from office, he now put himself forward once more. The government majorities in the House now rapidly dwindled; on the 26th of April 1804, Addington resigned; and Pitt, after his attempt to form a national coalition ministry had brokendown on the king’s refusal to admit Fox, became head of a government constructed on a narrow Tory basis. Of thePitt returns to office.members of the late government Lord Eldon, the duke of Portland, Lord Westmorland, Lord Castlereagh and Lord Hawkesbury retained office, the latter surrendering the foreign office to Lord Harrowby and going to the home office. Dundas, now Lord Melville, became first lord of the admiralty, and the cabinet further included Lord Camden, Lord Mulgrave and the duke of Montrose. Canning, Huskisson and Perceval were given subordinate offices.
Save for the commanding personality of Pitt, the new government was scarcely stronger than that which it had replaced. It had to face the same Whig opposition, led by Fox, who scoffed at the French peril, and reinforced by Addington and his friends; and the whole burden of meeting this opposition fell upon Pitt; for Castlereagh, the only other member of the cabinet in the House of Commons, was of little use in debate. Nevertheless, fresh vigour was infused into the conduct of the war. The Additional Forces Act, passed in the teeth of a strenuous opposition, introduced the principle of a modified system of compulsion to supplement the deficiencies of the army and reserve, while the navy was largely increased. Abroad, Pitt’s whole energies were directed to forming a fresh coalition against Bonaparte, who, on the 14th of May 1804, had proclaimed himself emperor of the French; but it was a year before Russia signed with Great Britain the treaty of St Petersburg (April 11, 1805), and the accession to the coalition of Austria, Sweden andBattle of Trafalgar.Naples was not obtained till the following September. In the following month (October 21) Nelson’s crowning victory at Trafalgar over the allied fleets of France and Spain relieved England of the dread of invasion. It served, however, to precipitate the crisis on the continent of Europe; the great army assembled at Boulogne was turned eastwards; by the capitulation of Ulm (October 19) Austria lost a large part of her forces; and the last news that reached Pitt on hisAusterlitz.death-bed was that of the ruin of all his hopes by the crushing victory of Napoleon over the Russians and Austrians at Austerlitz (December 2).
Pitt died on the 23rd of January, and the refusal of Lord Hawkesbury to assume the premiership forced the king to summon Lord Grenville, and to agree to the inclusion of Fox in the cabinet as secretary for foreign affairs.Death of Pitt. “Ministry of all the Talents.”Several members of Pitt’s administration were admitted to this “Ministry of all the Talents,” including Addington (now Lord Sidmouth), who had rejoined the ministry in December 1804 and again resigned, owing to a disagreement with Pitt as to the charges against Lord Melville (q.v.) in July 1805. The new ministry remained in office for a year, a disastrous year which saw the culmination of Napoleon’s power: the crushing of Prussia in the campaign of Jena, the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine and the end of the Holy Roman Empire. In the conduct of the war the British government had displayed little skill, frittering away its forcesAbolition of the slave-trade.on distant expeditions, instead of concentrating them in support of Prussia or Russia, and the chief title to fame of the Ministry of all the Talents is that it secured the passing of the bill for the abolition of the slave-trade (March 25, 1807).
The death of Fox (September 13, 1806) deprived the ministry of its strongest member, and in the following March it fell on the old question of concessions to the Roman Catholics. True to his principles, Fox had done his best to negotiateCatholic question.terms of peace with Napoleon; but the breakdown of the attempt had persuaded even the Whigs that an arrangement was impossible, and in view of this fact Grenville thought it his duty to advise the king that the disabilities of Roman Catholics and dissenters in the matter of serving in the army and navy should be removed, in order that all sections of the nation might be united in face of the enemy. The situation, moreover, was in the highest degree anomalous; for by an act passed in 1793 Roman Catholics might hold commissions in the army in Ireland up to the rank of colonel, and this right had not been extended to England, though by the Act of Union the armies had become one. The king, however, was not to be moved from his position; and he was supported in this attitude not only by public opinion, but by a section of the ministry itself, of which Sidmouth made himself the mouthpiece. The demand of George III. that ministers should undertake never again to approach him on the subject of concessions to the Catholics was rejected by Grenville, rightly, as unconstitutional, and on the 18th of March 1807 he resigned.
The new ministry, under the nominal headship of the valetudinarian duke of Portland, included Perceval as chancellor of the exchequer, Canning as foreign secretary and Castlereagh as secretary for war and the colonies.Portland ministry.It had given the undertaking demanded by the king; those of its members who, like Canning, were in favour of Catholic emancipation, arguing that, in view of greater and more pressing questions, it was useless to insist in a matter which could never be settled so long as the old king lived. Of more importance to Great Britain, for the time being, than any constitutional issues, was the life-and-death struggle with Napoleon, which had now entered on a new phase. Defeated at sea, but master now of the greater part of the continent of Europe, the French emperor planned to bring Great BritainThe continental system.to terms by ruining her commerce with the vast territories under his influence. In November 1806 he issued from Berlin the famous decree prohibiting the importation of British goods and excluding from the harbours under his control even neutral ships that had touched at British ports. The British government replied by the famous Orders in Council of 1807, which declaredThe Orders in Council.all vessels trading with France liable to seizure, and that all such vessels clearing from France must touch at a British port to pay customs duties. To this Napoleon responded with the Milan decree (December 17), forbidding neutrals to trade in any articles imported from the British dominions. The effects of these measures were destined to be far-reaching. The Revolution had made war on princes and privilege, and the common people had in general gained wherever the Napoleonic régime had been substituted for their effete despotisms; but the “Continental System” was felt as an oppression in every humble household, suddenly deprived of the little imported luxuries, such as sugar and coffee, which custom had made necessaries; and from this time date the beginnings of that popular revolt against Napoleon that was to culminate in the War of Liberation. Great Britain, too, was to suffer from her own retaliatory policy. The AmericansWar with America.had taken advantage of the war to draw into their own hands a large part of the British carrying trade, a process greatly encouraged by the establishment of the Continental System. This brought them into conflict with the British acting under the Orders in Council, and the consequent ill-feeling culminated in the war of 1812.
It was not only the completion of the Continental System, however, that made the year 1807 a fateful one for Great Britain. On the 7th of July the young emperor Alexander I. of Russia, fascinated by Napoleon’s genius and bribedTreaty of Tilsit.by the offer of a partition of the world, concluded the treaty of Tilsit, which not only brought Russia into the Continental System, but substituted for a coalition against France a formidable coalition against England. A scheme for wresting from the British the command of the sea was only defeated by Canning’s action in ordering the English fleet to capture the Danish navy, though Denmark was still nominally a friendly power (seeCanning, George). Meanwhile, in order to complete the ring fence round Europe against British commerce,French Invasion of Spain and Portugal.Napoleon had ordered Junot to invade Portugal; Lisbon was occupied by the French, and the Portuguese royal family migrated to Brazil. In the following year Napoleon seized the royal family of Spain, and gave the crown, which Charles VI. resigned on behalf of himself and his heir, to his brother Joseph, king of Naples. The revolt of the Spanish people that followed was the first ofthe national uprisings against his rule by which Napoleon was destined to be overthrown. In England it was greeted with immense popular enthusiasm, and the government, without realizing the full import of the step it was taking, sent an expedition to the Peninsula. It disembarked, under the commandPeninsular War.of Sir Arthur Wellesley, at Figueras on the 1st of August. It was the beginning of the Peninsular War, which was destined not to end until, in 1814, the British troops crossed the Pyrenees into France, while the Allies were pressing over the Rhine. The political and military events on the continent of Europe do not, however, belong strictly to English history, though they profoundly affected its development, and they are dealt with elsewhere (seeEurope:History;Napoleon;Napoleonic Campaigns;Peninsular War;Waterloo Campaign).
The war, while it lasted, was of course the main preoccupation of British ministers and of the British people. It entailed enormous sacrifices, which led to corresponding discontents; and differences as to its conduct producedWalcheren expedition. Cabinet crisis.frequent friction within the government itself. A cabinet crisis was the result of the outcome of the unfortunate Walcheren expedition of 1809. It had been Castlereagh’s conception and, had it been as well executed as it was conceived, it might have dealt a fatal blow at Napoleon’s hopes of recovering his power at sea, by destroying his great naval establishments at Antwerp. It failed, and it became the subject of angry dispute between Canning and Castlereagh, a dispute embittered by personal rivalry and the friction due to the ill-defined relations of the foreign secretary to the secretary for war; the quarrel culminated in a duel, and in the resignation of both ministers (seeLondonderry, 2nd Marquess of, andCanning, George). The duke of Portland resigned at the same time, and in the reconstruction of the ministry, under PercevalPerceval ministry.as premier, Lord Wellesley became foreign secretary, while Lord Liverpool, with Palmerston as his under-secretary, succeeded Castlereagh at the war office. The most conspicuous member of this government was Wellesley, whose main object in taking office was to second his brother’s efforts in the Peninsula. In this he was, however, only partially successful, owing to the incapacity of his colleagues to realize the unique importance of the operations in Spain. In November 1810 the old king’s mind gave way, and on the 11th of February 1811, an act of parliament bestowed the regency, under certainThe regency.restrictions, upon the prince of Wales. The prince had been on intimate terms with the Whig leaders, and it was assumed that his accession to power would mean a change of government. He had, however, been offended by their attitude on the question of the restriction of his authority as regent, and he continued Perceval in office. A year later, the king’s insanity being proved incurable, the regency was definitively established (February 1812). Lord Wellesley took advantage of the reconstruction of the cabinet to resign a position in which he had not been given a free hand, and his post of foreign secretary was offered to Canning. Canning, however, refused to serve with Castlereagh as minister of war, and the latter received the foreign office, which he was to hold till his death in 1822. A month later, on the 11th of May, Perceval was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons, and Lord Liverpool became the head of a government that was to last till 1827.
The period covered by the Liverpool administration was a fateful one in the history of Europe. The year 1812 saw Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, and the disastrous retreat from Moscow. In the following year Wellington’sLiverpool ministry.victory at Vitoria signalled the ruin of the French cause in Spain; while Prussia threw off the yoke of France, and Austria, realizing after cautious delay her chance of retrieving the humiliations of 1809, joined the alliance, and in concert with Russia and the other German powers overthrew Napoleon at Leipzig. The invasion of France followed in 1814, the abdication of Napoleon, the restoration of the Bourbons and the assembling of the congress of Vienna. The following year saw the return of Napoleon from Elba, the close of the congress of Vienna, and the campaign that ended with the battle of Waterloo. The succeeding period, after so much storm and stress, might seem dull and unprofitable; but it witnessed the instructive experiment of the government of Europe by a concert of the great powers, and the first victory of the new principle of nationality in the insurrection of the Greeks. The share taken by Great Britain in all this, for which Castlereagh pre-eminently must take the praise or blame, is outlined in the article on the historyForeign policy of Castlereagh.of Europe (q.v.). Here it must suffice to point out how closely the development of foreign affairs was interwoven with that of home politics. The great war, so long as it lasted, was the supreme affair of moment; the supreme interest when it was over was to prevent its recurrence. For above all the world needed peace, in order to recover from the exhaustion of the revolutionary epoch; and this peace, bought at so great a cost, could be preserved only by the honest co-operation of Great Britain in the great international alliance based on “the treaties.” This explains Castlereagh’s policy at home and abroad. He was grossly attacked by the Opposition in parliament and by irresponsible critics, of the type of Byron, outside; historians, bred in the atmosphere of mid-Victorian Liberalism, have re-echoed the cry against him and the government of which he was the most distinguished member; but history has largely justified his attitude. He was no friend of arbitrary government; but he judged it better that “oppressed nationalities” and “persecuted Liberals” should suffer than that Europe should be again plunged into war. He was hated in his day as the arch-opponent of reform, yet the triumph of the reform movement would have been impossible but for the peace his policy secured.
To say this is not to say that the attitude of the Tory government towards the great issues of home politics was wholly, or even mainly, inspired by a far-sighted wisdom. It had departed widely from the Toryism of Pitt’sCharacter of the Tory party.younger years, which had sought to base itself on popular support, as opposed to the aristocratic exclusiveness of the Whigs. It conceived itself as the trustee of a system of government which, however theoretically imperfect, alone of the governments of Europe had survived the storms of the Revolution intact. To tamper with a constitution that had so proved its quality seemed not so much a sacrilege as a folly. The rigid conservatism that resulted from this attitude served, indeed, a useful purpose in giving weight to Castlereagh’s counsels in the European concert; for Metternich at least, wholly occupied with “propping up mouldering institutions,” could not have worked harmoniously with a minister suspected of an itch for reform. At home, however, it undoubtedly tended to provoke that very revolution which it was intended to prevent. This was due not so much to the notorious corruption of the representative system as to the fact that it represented social and economic conditions that were rapidly passing away.
Both Houses of Parliament were in the main assemblies of aristocrats and landowners; but agriculture was ceasing to be the characteristic industry of the country and the old semi-feudal relations of life were in process ofParliament and the industrial revolution.rapid dissolution. The invention of machinery and the concentration of the working population in manufacturing centres had all but destroyed the old village industries, and great populations were growing up outside the traditional restraints of the old system of class dependence. The distress inevitable in connexion with such an industrial revolution was increased by the immense burden of the war and by the high protective policy of the parliament, which restricted trade and deliberately increased the price of food in the interests of the agricultural classes. Between 1811 and 1814 bands of so-called “Luddites,” starving operatives out of work, scoured the country, smashing machinery—the immediate cause of their misfortunes—and committing every sort of outrage. The fault of the government lay, not in taking vigorous measures for the suppression of these disorders, but in remaining obstinately blind to the true causes that had produced them.Ministers saw in the Luddite organization only another conspiracy against the state; and, so far from seeking means for removing the grievances that underlay popular disaffection, the activity of parliament, inspired by the narrowest class interests, only tended to increase them. The price of food, already raised by the war, was still further increased by successiveCorn Laws and Enclosure Acts.Corn Laws, and the artificial value thus given to arable land led to the passing of Enclosure Bills, under which the country people were deprived of their common rights with very inadequate compensation, and life in the village communities was made more and more difficult. In the circumstances it is not surprising that the spirit of unrest grew apace. In 1815 the passing of a new Corn Law, forbidding the importation of corn so long as the price for home-grown wheat was under 80s. the quarter, led to riots in London. An attack made on the prince regent at the opening of parliament on the 28th of January 1817 led to an inquiry, which revealed the existence of an elaborate organization for the overthrow of the existing order. The repressive measuresRepressive legislation.of 1795 and 1799 were now revived and extended, and a bill suspending the Habeas Corpus Act for a year was passed through both Houses by a large majority. On the 27th of March Lord Sidmouth opened the government campaign against the press by issuing a circular to the lords-lieutenants, directing them to instruct the justices of the peace to issue warrants for the arrest of any person charged on oath with publishing blasphemous or seditious libels. The legality of this suggestion was more than doubtful, but it was none the less acted on, and a series of press prosecutions followed, some—as in the case of the bookseller William Hone—on grounds so trivial that juries refused to convict. William Cobbett, the most influential of the reform leaders, in order to avoid arbitrary imprisonment, “deprived of pen, ink and paper,” suspended thePolitical Registerand sailed for America. A disturbance that was almost an armed insurrection, which broke out in Derbyshire in June of this year, seemed to justify the severity of the government; it was suppressed without great difficulty, and three of the ringleaders were executed.
It was, however, in 1819 that the conflict between the government and the new popular forces culminated. Distress was acute; and in the manufacturing towns mass meetings were held to discuss a remedy, which, under the guidanceAgitation for reform.of political agitators, was discovered in universal suffrage and annual parliaments. The right to return members to parliament was claimed for all communities; and since this right was unconstitutionally withheld, unrepresented towns were invited to exercise it in anticipation of its formal concession. At Birmingham, accordingly, Sir Charles Wolseley was duly elected “legislatorial attorney and representative” of the town. Manchester followed suit; but the meeting arranged for the 9th of August was declared illegal by the magistrates, on the strength of a royal proclamation against seditious meetings issued on the 30th of July. Another meeting was accordingly summoned for the undoubtedly legal purpose of petitioning parliament in favour of reform. On the appointed day (August 16) thousands poured in from the surrounding districts. These men had been previously drilled, for the purpose, as their own leaders asserted, of enabling the vast assemblage to be conducted in an orderly manner; for the purpose, as the magistrates suspected, of preparing them for an armed insurrection. An attempt was made by a party of yeomanryThe “Manchester Massacre.”to arrest a popular agitator, Henry Hunt; the angry mob surged round the horsemen, who found themselves powerless; the Riot Act was read, and the 15th Hussars charged the crowd with drawn swords. The meeting rapidly broke up, but not before six had been killed and many injured. The “Manchester Massacre” gave an immense impetus to the movement in favour of reform. The employment of soldiers to suppress liberty of speech stirred up the resentment of Englishmen as nothing else could have done, and this resentment was increased by the conviction that the government was engaged with the “Holy Alliance” in an unholy conspiracy against liberty everywhere. The true tendency of Castlereagh’s foreign policy was not understood, nor had he any of the popular arts which would have enabled Canning to carry public opinion with him in cases where a frank explanation was impossible. The Liberals could see no more than that he appeared to be committed to international engagements, the logical outcome of which might be—as an orator of the Opposition put it—that Cossacks would be encamped in Hyde Park for the purpose of overawing the House of Commons.
The dangerous agitation that gave expression to this state of feeling was met by the government in the session of November 1819 by the passing of the famous Six Acts. The first of these deprived the defendant of the right of traversing,The “Six Acts.”but directed that he should be brought to trial within a year; the second increased the penalties for seditious libel; the third imposed the newspaper stamp duty on all pamphlets and the like containing news; the fourth (Seditious Meetings Act) once more greatly curtailed the liberty of public meetings; the fifth forbade the training of persons in the use of arms; the sixth empowered magistrates to search for and seize arms.
The apparent necessity for the passing of these exceptional measures was increased by the imminent death of the old king, the tragic close of whose long reign had won for him a measure of popular sympathy which was whollyAccession of George IV.lacking in the case of the prince regent. On the 23rd of February 1820 George III. died, and the regent became king as George IV. This was the signal for an outburst of popular discontent with the existing order of a far more ominous character than any that had preceded it. The king was generally loathed, not so much for his vices—which would have been, in this case as in others, condoned in a more popular monarch—but for the notorious meanness and selfishness of his character. Of these qualities he took the occasion of his accession to make a fresh display. He had long been separated from his wife, Caroline of Brunswick; he now refused her the title of queen consort, forbade the mention of her name in the liturgy, and persuaded the government to promote an inquiry in parliament into her conduct, with a view to a divorce. Whatever grounds there may have been for this action, popular sympathy was wholly with Queen Caroline, who became the centre round which all the forces of discontent rallied. The failure of the Bill of Pains and Penalties against the queen, which was dropped after it had passed its third reading in the Lords by a majority of only seven, was greeted as a great popular triumph. The part played by the government in this unsavoury affair had discredited them even in the eyes of the classes whose fear of revolution had hitherto made them supporters of the established system; and the movement for reform received a new stimulus.
The Tory government itself realized the necessity for some concessions to the growing public sentiment. In 1821 a small advance was made. The reform bill (equal electoral districts) introduced by Lambton (afterwards LordBeginnings of reform.Durham) was thrown out; but the corrupt borough of Grampound in Cornwall was disfranchised and the seats transferred to the county of York. Even more significant was the change in the cabinet, which was strengthened by the admission of some of the more conservative section of the Opposition, Lord Sidmouth retiring and Robert Peel becoming home secretary. A bill for the removal of Catholic disabilities, too, was carried in the Commons, though rejected in the Lords; and the appointment of Lord Wellesley, an advocate of the Catholic claims, to the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland marked yet another stage in the settlement of a question which, more than anything else at that time, kept Ireland and Irishmen in a state of chronic discontent and agitation.
It is not without significance that this modification of the policy of the Tory government at home coincided with a modification of its relations with the European powers. The tendency of Metternich’s system had long been growing distasteful to Castlereagh, who had consistently protested against the attempt to constitute the Grand Alliance general police of Europe andhad specially protested against the Carlsbad Decrees (q.v.). The first steps towards the inevitable breach with the reactionary powers had already been taken before Castlereagh’s tragic death on the eve of the congress of Verona brought George Canning into office as the executor of his policy. WithGeorge Canning.Canning, foe of the Revolution and all its works though he was, the old liberal Toryism of Pitt’s younger days seemed once more to emerge. It might have emerged in any case; but Canning, with his brilliant popular gifts and his frank appeal to popular support, gave it a revivifying stimulus which it would never have received from an aristocrat of the type of Castlereagh.
The new spirit was most conspicuous in foreign affairs; in the protest of Great Britain against the action of the continental powers at Verona (seeVerona, Congress of), in the recognition of the South American republics, andChanged tendency of British policy.later in the sympathetic attitude of the government towards the insurrection in Greece. This policy had been foreshadowed in the instructions drawn up by Castlereagh for his own guidance at Verona; but Canning succeeded in giving it a popular and national colour and thus removing from the government all suspicion of sympathy with the reactionary spirit of the “Holy Alliance.” In home affairs, too, the government made tentative advances in a Liberal direction. In January 1823 Vansittart was succeeded as chancellor of the exchequer by Robinson (afterwards Lord Goderich), and Huskisson became president of the Board of Trade. The term of office of the latter was marked by the first tentative efforts to modify the high protective system by which British trade was hampered, especially by the Reciprocity of Duties Act (1823), a modification of the Navigation Acts, by which British and foreign shipping were placed on an equal footing, while the right to impose restrictive duties on ships of powers refusing to reciprocate was retained. In spite, however, of the improvement in trade that ultimately resulted from these measures, there was great depression; in 1825 there was a financial crisis that caused widespread ruin, and in 1826 the misery of the labouring poor led to renewed riots and machinery smashing. It became increasingly clear that a drastic alteration in the existing system was absolutely inevitable. As to this necessity, however, the ministry was in fact hopelessly divided. The government was one of compromise, in which even so burning a question as Catholic emancipation had been left open. Among its members were some—like the lord chancellor Eldon, the duke of Wellington, and the premier, Lord Liverpool, himself—whose Toryism was of the type crystallized under the influence of the Revolution, adamant against change. Such progressive measures as it had passed had been passed in the teeth of its own nominal supporters, even of its own members. In 1826 Lord Palmerston, himself a member of the government, wrote: “On the Catholic question, on the principles of commerce, on the corn laws, on the settlement of the currency, on the laws relating to trade in money, on colonial slavery, on the game laws...; on all these questions, and everything like them, the government will find support from the Whigs and resistance from their self-denominated friends.” It was, in fact, only the personal influence of Liverpool that held the ministry together, and when, on the 17th of February 1827, he was seized with an apoplectic fit, a crisis was inevitable.
The crisis, indeed, arose before the nominal expiration of the Liverpool administration. Two questions were, in the view of Canning and his supporters, of supreme importance—Catholic emancipation and the reform of the Corn Laws.Catholic Emancipation and Corn Laws.The first of these had assumed a new urgency since the formation in 1823 of the Catholic Association, which under the brilliant leadership of Daniel O’Connell established in Ireland a national organization that threatened the very basis of the government. In March 1826 Sir Francis Burdett had brought in a Catholic Relief Bill, which, passed in the Commons, was thrown out by the Lords. A year later Burdett’s motion that the affairs of Ireland required immediate attention, though supported by Canning, was rejected in the Commons. A bill modifying the Corn Laws, introduced by Canning and Huskisson, passed the House of Commons on the 12th of April 1827, but was rejected by the Lords.
Meanwhile (April 10) Canning had become prime minister, his appointment being followed by the resignation of all the most conspicuous members of the Liverpool administration:Canning ministry.Wellington, Eldon, Melville, Bathurst, Westmorland and Peel, the latter of whom resigned on account of his opposition to Catholic emancipation. The new government had perforce to rely on the Whigs, who took their seats on the government side of the House, Lord Lansdowne being included in the cabinet. Before this coalition could be completed, however, Canning died (August 8). The short-lived Goderich administration followed; and in January 1828 the king,Wellington ministry.weary of the effort to arrange a coalition, summoned the duke of Wellington to office as head of a purely Tory cabinet. Yet the logic of facts was too strong even for the stubborn spirit of the Iron Duke. In May 1828, on the initiative of Lord John Russell, the Test and Corporation Acts were repealed; in the same session a Corn Bill, differing but little from those that Wellington had hitherto opposed, was passed; and finally, after a strenuous agitation which culminated in the election of O’Connell for Clare, and inCatholic emancipation passed. Revolution of 1830.spite of the obstinate resistance of King George IV., the Catholic Emancipation Bill was passed (April 10, 1829) by a large majority. On the 26th of June 1830 the king died, exactly a month before the outbreak of the revolution in Paris that hurled Charles X. from the throne and led to the establishment of the Liberal Monarchy under Louis Philippe; a revolution that was to exert a strong influence on the movement for reform in England.
King William IV. ascended the throne at a critical moment in the history of the English constitution. Everywhere misery and discontent were apparent, manifesting themselves in riots against machinery, in rick-burning on a largeWilliam IV.scale, and in the formation of trades unions which tended to develop into organized armies of sedition. All the elements of violent revolution were present. Nor was there anything in the character of the new king greatly calculated to restore the damaged prestige of the crown; for, if he lacked the evil qualities that had caused George IV. to be loathed as well as despised, he lacked also the sense of personal dignity that had been the saving grace of George, while he shared the conservative and Protestant prejudices of his predecessors. Reform was now inevitable. The Wellington ministry, hated by the Liberals, denounced even by the Tories as traitorous for the few concessions made, resigned on the 16th of November;Whig ministry under Lord Grey.and the Whigs at last came into office under Lord Grey, the ministry also including a few of the more Liberal Tories. Lord Durham, perhaps the most influential leader of the reform movement, became privy seal, Althorp chancellor of the exchequer, Palmerston foreign secretary, Melbourne home secretary, Goderich colonial secretary. Lord John Russell, as paymaster-general, and Stanley (afterwards Lord Derby), as secretary for Ireland, held office outside the cabinet. With the actual House of Commons, however, the government was powerless to effect its purpose. Though it succeeded in carrying the second readingThe great Reform Bill.of the Reform Bill (March 21, 1831), it was defeated in committee, and appealed to the country. The result was a great governmental majority, and the bill passed the Commons in September. Its rejection by the Lords on the 8th of October was the signal for dangerous rioting; and in spite of the opposition of the king, the bill was once more passed by the Commons (December 12). A violent agitation marked the recess. On the 14th of April 1832 the bill was read a second time in the Lords, but on the 7th of May was again rejected, whereupon the government resigned. The attempt of Wellington, at the king’s instance, to form a ministry failed; of all the Tory obstructionists he alone had the courage to face the popular rage. On the 15th Lord Grey was in office again; the demand was made for a sufficient creation of peers to swampthe House of Lords; the king, now thoroughly alarmed, used his influence to persuade the peers to yield, and on the 4th of June the great Reform Bill became law. Thus was England spared the crisis of a bloody revolution, and proof given to the world that her ancient constitution was sufficiently elastic to expand with the needs of the times.
The effect of the Reform Bill, which abolished fifty-six “rotten” boroughs, and by reducing the representation of others set free 143 seats, which were in part conferred on the new industrial centres, was to transfer a large share of political power from the landed aristocracy to the middle classes. Yet the opposition of the Tories had not been wholly inspired by the desire to maintain the political predominance of a class. Canning, who had the best reason for knowing, defended the unreformed system on the ground that its very anomalies opened a variety of paths by which talent could make its way into parliament, and thus produced an assembly far more widely representative than could be expected from a more uniform and logical system. This argument, which the effect of progressive extensions of the franchise on the intellectual level of parliament has certainly not tended to weaken, was however far outweighed—as Canning himself would have come to see—by the advantage of reconciling with the old constitution the new forces which were destined during the century to transform the social organization of the country. Nor, in spite of the drastic character of the Reform Bill, did it in effect constitute a revolution. The 143 seats set free were divided equally between the towns and the counties; and in the counties the landowning aristocracy was still supreme. In the towns the new £10 household franchise secured a democratic constituency; in the counties the inclusion of tenants at will (of £50 annual rent), as well as of copyholders and lease-holders, only tended to increase the influence of the landlords. There was as yet no secret ballot to set the voter free.
The result was apparent in the course of the next few years. The first reformed parliament, which met on the 29th of January 1833, consisted in the main of Whigs, with a sprinkling of Radicals and a compact body of Liberal Tories under Sir Robert Peel. Its great work was the act emancipating the slaves in the British colonies (August 30). Other burning questions were the condition of Ireland, the scandal of the established church there, the misery of the poor in England. In all these matters the House showed little enough of the revolutionary temper; so little, indeed, that in March Lord Durham resigned. To the Whig leaders the church was all but as sacrosanct as to the Tories, the very foundation of the constitution, not to be touched save at imminent risk to the state; the most they would adventure was to remedy a few of the more glaring abuses of an establishment imposed on an unwilling population. As for O’Connell’s agitation for the repeal of the Union, that met with but scant sympathy in parliament; on the 27th of May 1834 his repeal motion was rejected by a large majority.
In July the Grey ministry resigned, and on the 16th Lord Melbourne became prime minister. His short tenure of office is memorable for the passing of the bill for the reform of the Poor Law (August). The reckless system ofMelbourne ministry.outdoor relief, which had pauperized whole neighbourhoods, was abolished, and the system of unions and workhouses established (seePoor Law). An attempt to divert some of the revenues of the Irish Church led in the autumn to serious differences of opinion in the cabinet; the king, as tenacious as his father of the exact obligations of his coronation oath, dismissed the ministry, and called the Tories to office under Sir Robert Peel and the duke of Wellington. Thus, within three years of the passing of the Reform Bill, the party which had most strenuously opposed it was again in office. Scarcely less striking testimony to the constitutional temper of the English was given by the new attitude of the party under the new conditions. In the “TamworthThe “Conservative” party.manifesto” of January 1835 Peel proclaimed the principles which were henceforth to guide the party, no longer Tory, but “Conservative.” The Reform Bill and its consequences were frankly accepted; further reforms were promised, especially in the matter of the municipal corporations and of the disabilities of the dissenters. The new parliament, however, which met on the 19th of February, was not favourable to the ministry, which fell on the 8th of April. Lord Melbourne once more came into office, and the Municipal Corporations Act of the 7th of September was the work of a Liberal government. This was the last measure of first-rate importance passed before the death of King William, which occurred on the 20th of June 1837.
It is impossible to exaggerate the importance, not only for England but for the world at large, of the epoch which culminated in the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832. All Europe, whether Liberal or reactionary, was watching the constitutional struggle with strained attention; the principles of monarchy and of constitutional liberty were alike at stake. To foreign observers it seemed impossible that the British monarchy could survive. Baron Brunnow, the Russian ambassador in London, sent home to the emperor Nicholas I. the most pessimistic reports. According to Brunnow, King William, by using his influence to secure the passage of the Reform Bill, had “cast his crown into the gutter”; the throne might endure for his lifetime, but the next heir was a young and inexperienced girl, and, even were the princess Victoria ever to mount the throne—which was unlikely—she would be speedily swept off it again by the rising tide of republicanism. The course of the next reign was destined speedily to convince even Nicholas I. of the baselessness of these fears, and to present to all Europe the exemplar of a progressive state, in which the principles of traditional authority and democratic liberty combined for the common good.