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THE STORY OF THE PEOPLE
OF ENGLAND

GEORGE III.
From a painting by Allan Ramsay, in the National Portrait Gallery.

THE STORY OF THE NATIONS

THE STORY OF THE
PEOPLE OF ENGLAND
IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

BY

JUSTIN MCCARTHY
ii»
AUTHOR OF *'A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, "LIFE OF SIR ROBERT PEEL
"the STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE," ETC.

PART I.
1 800-1 83 5

NEW YORK
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN
1899

Copyright, 1898
By G. p. PUTNAM'S SONS
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London
By T. FISHER UNWIN

4-t \

Ttbe TRtiiclsetbocSet ipicag, mew Borli

PREFACE
IN this work my purpose is to give an account of
the social and political development of England
since the opening of the century. I do not attempt
anything like a minute and detailed history of the
events that followed each other during that time ;
and indeed my intention is rather to draw something
like a picture than to give to my readers a chronicle
and a record. I have endeavoured to describe each
remarkable political and social development, and to
group the statesmen and philanthropists of every
order by whom each development was assisted in its
progress. I have, while keeping in view the order of histori
cal succession, endeavoured to make the story of
each great reform, political or social, a story com
plete in itself, and disentangled as far as possible
from the cluster and confusion of events that were
passing all around it, and exterior to it. The true
history of England during that long period of mar
vellous growth will be found to be the history of the
country's progress in education, in science, and in
the conditions that tend to make life useful, health
ful, and happy. Successive changes in administra-

IV PREFACE
tion, the rivalries of statesmen at home and abroad,
the barren wars which spring from the competing
ambitions of dynasties are, after all, but the acci
dental difficulties in the way of man's improvement ;
and while they cannot be denied, their proportion
ate representation in history is sometimes dealt
with as if they were the main events of history, and
were entitled to occupy the largest space and fore
most place in the picture drawn by the historian.
My purpose has been something different from this ;
my desire has been to describe the marvellous
changes wrought by science and literature, by states
men and philanthropists in the social life of England
during the wonderful century which is now drawing
to a close. My wish has been to make my readers
acquainted with the men who helped to bring about
those changes, as well as with the nature, extent,
and influence of the changes themselves ; and thus
to tell the story of England's nineteenth century in
such a manner as to secure it an easy way to the
understanding, and a place in the memory of even
my youngest readers.
Justin McCarthy.
London, Dec. i, 1898.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. ARMS AND THE MAN

PAGE I

II. ENGLAND S BENEVOLENT DESPOT . . ^
III. IN THE WAKE OF THE PEACE . . 23
IV. GEORGE IV. . . . .45
V. THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY ... 63
VI. GEORGE CANNING . . . 82
VII. RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES . . . II9
VIII. COMING REFORM CASTS ITS SHADOW BEFORE . 150
IX. THE GREAT REFORM BILL . ¦ 173
X. THE REFORM BILL AGAIN . 209
XI. SLAVERY — BLACK AND WHITE . . 239

ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
GEORGE III. ..... Frontispiece
From a painting by Allan Ramsay, in the National Por
trait Gallery.
NAPOLEON AT ARCOLA ... . 4
From the painting by Gros.
LORD NELSON .... . 6
After a painting by A. W. Devis.
WILLIAM PITT . . . . 8
From u painting by John Hoppner, R.A., in the Na
tional Portrait Gallery.
CHARLES JAMES FOX . . . . . IO
From a painting by Karl A nton Hickel, in the National
Portrait Gallery.
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN . . 12
From a painting by "John Russell, R.A., in the National
Portrait Gallery.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH .... 14
From Cochrane' s engraving of ihe painting by Boxall.
TRAFALGAR SQUARE . . . . 22
JOHN KEATS  3©
From a painting by William Hilton, R.A., in the
National Portrait Gallery.
LORD BROUGHAM .... . . 36
From a painting by yames Lonsdale, in the National
Portrait Gallery.

viii ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE
LORD ELDON ....... 40
From a painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., in
the National Portrait Gallery.
SIR WALTER SCOTT . . .... 42
From a painting by Sir William Allan, R.A., in the
National Portrait Gallery.
GEORGE IV  ... 46
From a painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., in
the National Portrait Gallery.
QUEEN CAROLINE  48
From a painting by yames Lonsdale, in the National
Portrait Gallery.
ST. Paul's CATHEDRAL  74
RIGHT HON. GEORGE CANNING, M.P. ... 82
From a bust by F. Chantrey, R.A., in the National
Portrait Gallery.
GEORGE GROTE . . . . 86
From a painting by Thomas Siewardson, in the National
Portrait Gallery.
LORD BYRON  . . Io8
From a painting by Richard Westall, R.A., in the
National Portrait Gallery.
DUKE OF WELLINGTON . . . . . II4
From Siborne's ' ' History of the Waterloo Campaigns. "
WESTMINSTER ABBEY . . . . . . I20
DANIEL o'cONNELL, M.P.  I30
From a painting by Bernard Mulrenin, R.H.A., in the
National Portrait Gallery.
RIGHT HON. SIR ROBERT PEEL, BART., M.P. . . 140
From a painting by yohn Linnell, in the National Por
trait Gallery.
JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER, R.A. . 148
From a painting by P. Kramer.
HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT  150

ILL US TRA TIONS IX
PAGE
JOHN CONSTABLE, R.A  154
From a drawing by himself, in the National Portrait
Gallery.
WINDSOR CASTLE  160
GENERAL SIR CHARLES JAMES NAPIER, G.C.B. . . 222
From a sketch by George yones, R.A., in the National
Portrait Gallery.
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, M.P. . ... 242
From a picture by y. Rising.
LORD MACAULAY ....... 252
From a painting by Sir Francis Grant, P.R.A., in the
National Portrait Gallery.
EARL OF SHAFTESBURY, K.G. . . . . 258
From a bust, modelled by Sir yohn Edgar Boehm, Bart. ,
R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery.

THE STORY OF
THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND IN THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER I

ARMS AND THE MAN
IN the Annual Register for the year iSoo we find
on the opening page of its preface a remarkable
prophecy. " The Temple of Janus," says the pre
face, " is shut; it is not unreasonable to hope that
it will be long before it be again opened. A dread
ful but salutary experiment in the course of the last
ten years has been made by the nations. The rulers
of states and kingdoms have been taught the danger
of tyranny ; the people that of anarchy ; the finan
cier that even commercial advantages may be too
dearly purchased ; the politician and statesman that
durable power consists not so much in extended
territory as in compacted dominion, flourishing
population, and above all in justice — justice in the
conduct of governments external as well as internal.
VOL. I. — I I

2 ARMS AND THE MAN
We are henceforth, we hope and doubt not, for
many years, to be called from the horrors and mis
eries of war to progressive improvement in all the
arts of peace ; a nobler as well as a more pleasing
and profitable career of ambition among civilised
nations than that of conquest. The energy of our
ingenious and lively neighbours will return to the
arts and sciences with an elastic force proportioned
to the misguided ardour that has too long propelled
them to the ensanguined field of battle. Their im
provements will be our gain, as ours also will be
theirs." This prophecy had not long been delivered before
it became only too evident that it was to be miser
ably falsified by the events of the times. The
settlement on which the Annual Register so confid
ently relied proved to be no settlement at all, and
England and France were soon at war again. The
fiercest days of all that long struggle were to come
between iSoo and 1815. England had as her chief
enemy then the greatest military figure that had
appeared in the world's history since the days of
Julius Caesar. Napoleon Bonaparte hurried home
from Egypt and obtained such powers as made him
practically the dictator of France. We have had,
of late years, a whole new literature devoted to the
character and career of Napoleon Bonaparte. The
secret cabinets of statesmen, the archives of ambas
sadorial offices, have poured out new masses of cor
respondence and manuscript of all kinds to throw
fresh light on Napoleon's chapters of history. Yet,
after all, the man remains much as he must have

ARMS AND THE MAN 3
seemed in the eyes of impartial observers — if there
were then any such observers — in his own days.
We have long outgrown the age of the " Corsican
ogre " theory. Caricature is itself caricatured by
the grotesque and ridiculous illustration which found
such favour with Englishmen in the days of George
III. — the sketch which represented George as hold
ing the Liliputian Bonaparte on the palm of his
hand, and trying to " size him up " — as the Ameri
can phrase might put it — by the help of a field-glass.
We know all that can be told us of Napoleon's de
fects, some monstrous, some ignoble, but we recog
nise the genius of the man, and we can hardly be
surprised if there were English statesmen who firmly
believed that there never could be peace in Europe
while Napoleon was the ruler of France. Perhaps the
illustration used at a much later period by Prevost-
Paradol to describe the antagonism between France
and Prussia thirty years ago might apply well enough
to the antagonism between England under her Gov
ernment at the opening of the nineteenth century
and France under the dictation of Napoleon Bona
parte. It was a case of the two express trains started
from opposite extremes of the same line of railway ;
the collision and the crash must come. To do Na
poleon justice, it must be said that he did make
overtures to England for the establishment of an
honourable and a lasting peace. The English Gov
ernment of the day did not believe that his word
could be trusted, or his oath, and they rejected his
approaches, or at least they stipulated for impossi
ble preliminary conditions, such as a restoration of

4 ARMS AND THE MAN
the Bourbons by the permission, and we may say
the patronage, of Napoleon. The result was that
the war broke out again with something like re
doubled passion, and until the fall of Napoleon at
Waterloo it knew no check or stay. It was alto
gether a question of opposing tendencies rather
than opposing forces. The Government were striv
ing, unconsciously, no doubt, to fight not merely
against Napoleon, but against the whole impulses,
principles, and tendencies of the French Revolution.
Napoleon himself could no more have secured a
throne in France to a Bourbon sovereign, to the
principles of Bourbon sovereignty, than George III.
could. It is idle now to speculate on what might have
happened if George III. and his advisers had given
full and fair consideration to the overtures of
Napoleon. Undoubtedly they were wrong in not
doing so, but being the men they were they could
not have done so. The war had to go on. Happily
for England she had at the head of her armies the
one man in the world who was best qualified to stand
out against Napoleon's passion of conquest. The
Duke of Wellington had nothing like the creative,
or we may call it, if we like, the aggressive, military
genius of Napoleon. But he was the embodied
genius of resistance. He had absolutely no military
ambition whatever. His strong guiding force was
simply a sense of duty to his King and to his country.
In military as in civil affairs he was dominated by
that same sense of duty. He had a patience which,
as Macaulay says of a like quality in Warren Hast-

NAPOLEON AT ARCOLA.
From the painting by Gros.

ARMS AND THE MAN 5
ings, might sometimes be mistaken for the patience
of stupidity; but those who counted on its being an
evidence of stupidity were sure to be confounded in
the end by the ever- watchful, sleepless intellect that
was always on the alert to find a weak point in the
plans, the policy, the strategy, and even the tactics
of an opponent. The fates had brought the destruct
ive and the conservative forces of command into
direct antagonism in the persons of Napoleon and
the Duke of Wellington. Wellington was nick
named " the Iron Duke," and the nickname was a
terse and admirable description of his character.
England's continental allies, as we all know now,
were at many momentous periods divided and dis
tracted in council, and they had hardly amongst
them any general who could really be said to belong
to the first order of military command. England
was no doubt divided somewhat in opinion as regards
the prosecution of the war, and many of the noblest
Englishmen were strongly of opinion that the over
tures made by Napoleon for peace should be taken
seriously and declared the subject of grave inter
national consultation. But in what may be called
the executive of the councils of England there was
no division of opinion, and when " the Iron Duke "
was told that the war must go on he asked no further
questions, but entered the field and held his own
position. So the war went on and on, until Wellington
won the battle of Waterloo, and then all was over.
Napoleon had suffered terrible losses and disasters
by his ill-fated Russian campaign and by the de-

ARMS AND THE MAN

feat which the continental allies were able to in
flict upon him at Leipsic. Wellington's stroke at
Waterloo was but as the " dagger of mercy " in the
Middle Ages, which brought about at one touch the
doom that could not by any possibility be much
longer averted. A great French writer declares that
the main difference between Caesar and Napoleon
was, that Caesar always knew what he could not do
as well as what he could do, and that Napoleon be
lieved himself capable of every triumph which he
wished to accomplish. Napoleon had attempted
the impossible, and he failed accordingly.

'^Ns.a^ /l]( f ''^i.\ \

LORD NELSON, K.B.
After a painting by A. W. Devis.

CHAPTER II
ENGLAND'S " BENEVOLENT DESPOT "
LET us see what was the condition of England at
the time when Napoleon's career was drawing
to its close. So long as the great war was going on
England kept a united front to the enemy. But of
course there were internal divisions of opinion.
There was in domestic affairs what we should call a
reform policy, and also an anti-reform or conserv
ative policy. While the war was raging men's
thoughts were turned away from anything like a
systematic prosecution of the reform cause, and it
would have been impossible to get the British Par
liament to pay any serious attention to proposals
for an improved financial system, for the equalisation
of burdens on the different tax-paying classes, or for
an improvement in the franchise and the general
representative system. But there were always some
men who did their very best to keep the reform light
burning, even through the most agitating hours of
continental war.
The great leader of the Conservative party was
William Pitt, son of the Earl of Chatham — pub
lic opinion is still divided as to which was the
greater man, the elder Pitt or the younger. Wil-
7

8 ENGLAND'S "BENEVOLENT DESPOT"
liam Pitt the younger was undoubtedly one of the
greatest statesmlen and parliamentary orators Eng
land has ever known. He must be classed with
conservative statesmen, because some of the most
momentous passages of his career were those in
which he stood forth as the opponent of all projects
of reform. Yet we know that Pitt was not by in
tellect or by nature an enemy of reform ; he had
himself foreshadowed and promised to favour some
of the best reforms which it was left to other states
men to accomplish — reforms which in his later days
he had to oppose. Those later days were cast in the
worst of all times for a reforming statesman. The
thoughts of the country were absorbed in the war,
and the war was sincerely regarded by many honest,
stolid men, like George III. himself, as a calamity
directly brought about by the crazy enthusiasm of
French reformers. It was part of the creed of every
country gentleman who followed Pitt in those days
that if the King of France had only refused to listen
to any wild talk about liberty and equality, about
the abolition of class prerogatives, and the emanci
pation of public opinion — if he had only refused to
listen to such ravings and had ordered his cannoneers
to do their duty, the Revolution would have been
destroyed in its birth, and there would have been
no occasion for a war with England. Therefore,
these same country gentlemen who followed Pitt
fully believed that every concession made to the
demands of reformers in England would be nothing
but an invitation for indulged reform to feast its
thoughts on revolution.

WILLIAM PITT.
From a painting by John Hoppner, R. A., in the National Portrait Gallery.

ENGLAND'S "BENEVOLENT DESPOT" 9
All these seem to us very absurd ideas now, but
we must remember that they were ideas which at
one time got possession of and obscured the great
est political intellect of the day, the intellect of
Edmund Burke. At all events, the King on the
throne and the gentlemen in the provinces were
of one mind on this subject, and they formed a
power too strong for even Pitt to bear up against
if he had been inclined to make the experiment.
He was not during his later years inclined to make
any such experiment. The war was too much for
him ; he died of it almost as literally as if he had
fallen upon the field of battle. He never recov
ered from the shock which was given to him by
the news of the great defeat of the Allied Powers
by Bonaparte at Austerlitz. His friends said that
from that time the " Austerlitz look " was always
on his face.
Pitt's great opponent was Charles James Fox. It
is a curious fact that in two succeeding generations
there should have been in the English Parliament a
Pitt fighting against a Fox. But though the second
Pitt might well challenge comparison with the first,
the second Fox was incomparably superior to his
father, the elder Fox. Charles Fox was probably
the greatest debater ever known to the House of
Commons. He cannot be called the greatest orator
while we remember Bolingbroke and the two Pitts
and Sheridan, and in a later day Bright and Glad
stone. But bearing all these illustrious names in
mind the present writer still adheres to the opinion
that Fox was the greatest of English debaters. His

IO ENGLAND'S "BENEVOLENT DESPOT"
mind was informed by a generous enthusiasm for
peace and for liberty. Thomas Moore, the Irish
poet, well described him as an orator
" On whose burning tongue
Truth, peace, and freedom hung."
His bold, comprehensive mind surveyed the whole
field of possible reform, and welcomed with eager
sympathies every proposal which bore with it any
practical promise of success. He was a reformer not
merely for England, but for Ireland, for India, and
for England's great colonial possessions. He, too,
like his rival, William Pitt, was removed from the
front of the political battle long before the fall of
Napoleon gave the English the chance of attending
soberly to their own domestic affairs.
One of the most brilliant speakers in the House of
Commons was Richard Brinsley Sheridan — also the
greatest dramatic author the English stage had
known since the comedies ofthe Restoration. Sher
idan's lustre as a parliamentary orator has somewhat
dimmed, perhaps, of late years. No really authentic
reports of his great speeches are preserved, and we
find it hard to believe that even his famous " Be
gum " speech, the speech attacking the administra
tion of Warren Hastings in India, can have deserved
the strong praise which was undoubtedly given to it
by all those who heard it, no matter what their politi
cal opinions — a praise which set it above any oration
delivered in Parliament before. Sheridan clung to
the reform cause even at the darkest hours of its his
tory. Burke, who through the best years of his life

CHARLES JAMES FOX.
From a painting by Karl Anton Hickel, in the Nation:il Portrait Gallery.

ENGLAND'S "BENEVOLENT DESPOT" II
had been a Whig, or what we should now call a Lib
eral, had quarrelled with Fox over the French Revo
lution, and had declared in the House of Commons
that the friendship between them was extinguished
for ever. Sheridan remained fast to his old princi
ples, but it was not given to him any more than it
was to Fox to see a marked success accomplished in
the difficult field of reform.
When the fall of Napoleon brought peace to
Europe, that peace found England in a condition
which might well have awakened despondency and
almost despair in the minds of some of the best
and wisest Englishmen. The country was almost
starved ; the want of work was felt everywhere,
manufacturing industry had collapsed, and many
of the provinces were traversed by gaunt and hun
gry patrols of workmen looking for employment,
almost as distressing and alarming to meet as were
the troops of the hungry whom Arthur Young might
have seen during some seasons of the French Revo
lution. England was, for the time, practically ex
hausted by her war expenditure. The last three
years of the struggle against Napoleon are estimated
to have cost the English Treasury no less than
;f200,ooo,ooo sterling. Then, to add to England's
troubles, a tremendous disappointment had fallen
upon the country with the close of the war.
We all know by observation and experience what
a semblance of immense prosperity is caused by a
great war in all regions which it affects, except those
alone which are made its immediate battle-field.
The prosperity is purely artificial and fictitious;

12 ENGLAND'S "BENEVOLENT DESPOT"
there is an immense and apparently inexhaustible
demand for all the appliances and the provisions of
war; an unnatural and ghastly show of trade and
prosperity is conjured up, and those who are not
capable of looking even a little way before them
are apt to think that the resources of the nation are
positively inexhaustible. The State, however, is
not creating a vast prosperity, but only pledging its
credit for an enormous debt. Thus it was with Eng
land when the wished-for peace had at last been
brought about. The common belief, not unnatur
ally, was that with peace must come prosperity, and
the disappointment was tremendous indeed when at
first nothing but calamity seemed to be brought
about. While the war was going on there was not
merely the sham prosperity to keep up the spirits of
the people, but there was the stress and ardour of the
struggle to make all other considerations seem light
when weighed in the balance with victory. The
English people suddenly woke up from their fool's
paradise to find that under certain conditions peace
had her horrors scarcely less appalling than those of
war. In truth, England found herself face to face
with a crisis hardly less portentous than that which
France had to encounter when she began her mo
mentous work of revolution.
Francis Horner, the great pohtician and economist
of that day, wrote with some despondency about the
wide and irreconcilable differences of opinion " be
tween those who, on the one hand, will hear of no
thing but to return to all that was undone by the
French Revolution, and those who, on the other

RICHARD BRINLEY SHERIDAN.
From a painting by John Russell, R. A., in the National Portrait GaUery.

ENGLAND' S "BENEVOLENT DESPOT" 1 3
hand, think that the French people have some right
to make and to mend their Government for them
selves." Francis Horner, be it remembered, was
only speaking of those who may be called the mod
erate men on both sides; he was not speaking of
those, on the one hand, who would try to impose
on the English people a system like that of the Bour
bons in France, or, on the other hand, of those who
were clamouring for liberty, equality, and fraternity,
such as the French Democrats were striving to es
tablish. In truth, the story of England's nineteenth cent
ury is the story of the choice which at one time
seemed to be imposed on England between revolu
tion and reaction, and of the trials and troubles, the
sad confusions, the many mistakes and blunders by
the way, through which at last she was guided on the
road to national prosperity. During the time of her
struggle with Napoleon she had taken one decidedly
backward step in the management of one depart
ment of her national affairs. Her ruling statesmen
had succeeded in passing the Act of Union, which
took from Ireland all control of her domestic affairs
and compelled her to enter into an unwilling com
panionship with the Parliament at Westminster.
England had also allowed herself to be drawn by a
mistaken policy into a war with the young Republic
of the United States, out of which she only emerged
by the tacit surrender of the one demand for the
sake of which the war had been undertaken. She
still adhered to the odious policy which denied the
right of religious freedom to the Roman Catholics

14 ENGLAND'S "BENEVOLENT DESPOT"
and the Dissenters of Great Britain and Ireland.
Indeed, this latter policy was the immediate impulse
to the Irish Rebellion of 1798, which was crushed
after much bloodshed and was made the excuse for
the passing of the Act of Union.
We have said that " England " did all these
things because there is no other convenient way of
describing in ordinary language the influence which
brought them about. But it is a most important
part of our story that English people in general
had no more to do with such principles or acts of
policy than the peasantry of France had to do with
the policy of Louis XIV. The vast majority of the
English people, according to a favourite phrase of
the time, had nothing to do with the laws but to
obey them — or to disobey them, if they liked that
better, at their own risk and peril. The Parliament
at Westminster was in no conceivable sense the
representative of the English people. It repre
sented the territorial aristocracy and, to a certain
extent, but only to a very limited extent, the wealth
iest of the trading and manufacturing classes. No
Roman Catholic, Dissenter, or Jew could be elected
a member of that Parliament; when all other dis
qualifications were absent there was a property
qualification which prevented any poor man from
obtaining a seat in the House of Commons.
It is curious to notice now that the reforming pro
gramme which was adopted by Charles Fox included
amongst its leading principles universal suffrage,
abolition of the property qualification for members of
the House of Commons, equal voting districts, and

WM. WORDSWORTH.
From Cochran's engraving of ,he Painting by Boxall.

ENGLAND'S "BENEVOLENT DESPOT" 15
the introduction of vote by ballot at parliamentary
elections. Fox, and those who thought with him,
held that until these reforms had been carried Parlia
ment could not possibly be regarded as the repre
sentative of the people's opinions and the guardian
of the people's- liberties. Half a century and more
after the death of Fox these demands were still re
garded by all steady-going Conservatives as the very
extravagance of Radicalism, only fit for Chartists
and Revolutionists and mob-orators and other such
dangerous and monstrous creatures.
The very names of political parties have under
gone a change since the days of Fox and Pitt. Fox
was a Whig; Pitt in his least happy days was a
Tory. The term Whig, when it is now applied at
all, has quite a different significance from that which
it bore when Fox was the Whig leader. Then it
meant what we should now call an advanced Radi
cal, a man in the front of every forward movement
for popular rights and religious emancipation. Now,
when it is used at all, it only means a lukewarm and
backward Radical, who is scarcely to be distinguished
from the more intelligent sort of Tory. Hardly any
one now avows or admits himself to be a Tory, ex
cept as a sort of half-defiant joke. The Whigs of
our time have become Liberals or Radicals; the
Tories have settled down to be respectable Conserv
atives. We have, indeed, a great Democratic party
growing up, which is perhaps destined to absorb
both sections of Liberalism into its common de
nomination. In the preface to his interesting volume. The Rise

l6 ENGLAND'S "BENEVOLENT DESPOT"
of Democracy, lately published, Mr. J. Holland
Rose, the author, makes some observations with
which this writer cordially agrees. " Throughout
my inquiry," says Mr. Rose, " I have used the
term democracy in its strict sense as government
by the people, and not in the slipshod way in
which it is now too often employed to denote the
wage-earning classes " ; and he adds that " this mis
use of the term is responsible for much slipshod
thought on political matters." There has, indeed,
been far too common a tendency of late years in
England to use the phrases " the people " and " the
democracy," as if the classes who work with their
own hands at daily labour were alone spoken of
when such words were used. The democracy to
which the whole intelligence of England is now
turning is that political condition in which the ma
jority, representing " the common sense of most,"
will finally decide the destinies of the State without
the overruling dictation of any privileged class or
order. The close of the war found England governed by
an oligarchy in the strictest sense of the word, and
not by any means an enlightened or an unselfish
oligarchy. The King, George III., was a man of
very moderate abilities and an overweening amount
of .obstinacy. Henry Erskine, the great Scottish
advocate, political orator, and wit, said, many years
ago, that what we call obstinacy in a donkey we call
firmness in a king. We have grown, however, less
courtly in our ways of late, and the tribute is so
much the greater to the really good Sovereign in

ENGLAND'S "BENEVOLENT DESPOT" If
whose praise we all unite. We may, therefore,
speak frankly of the obstinacy of a king and say
that this quality in George III. had nearly proved
more than once the ruin of the country over which
he had been appointed to rule. His was the influ
ence which led to the quarrel with the American
colonists and the war which ended in the independ
ence of the United States.
The King himself found the principle of policy,
which, to adopt Johnson's mistaken words, declares
" taxation " in that case " no tyranny," especially
dear to his heart. His, too, was the influence
which again and again prevented the concession of
religious freedom to the Roman Catholics. This
fact was made painfully evident on one memora
ble occasion. During the debates on the Act of
Union with Ireland, Pitt made an attempt to con
ciliate some of the opponents of the measure by
holding out more than once a hope that the union
of the two Parliaments would be followed by some
liberal concessions to the Catholic claims. Many
of those who were strongly inclined to oppose the
Government on this question withdrew their op
position in consequence of the promises held out
by Pitt. But when the Act of Union was passed
Pitt found it absolutely impossible to induce the
King even to listen to his arguments in favour of
the Catholic claims. The King went so far as to
declare that any further importunity from Pitt on
that subject would drive him back into one of his
fits of madness. George insisted that he could not
countenance the recognition of the Cathohc claims

1 8 ENGLAND'S "BENEVOLENT DESPOT"
without a violation of his Coronation Oath. It was
humorously said at the time that England had now
four instead of three Estates in her constitutional
realm — that whereas up to George's time she had
only King, Lords, and Commons, she had now
King, Lords, Commons, and Oath.
George, in fact, threw his influence into every
political question ; he put into operation again and
again the most momentous and seldom-used pre
rogatives of the Crown. He dissolved Parliaments
and dismissed Ministers on the slightest provocation
or pretext. If a majority of the House of Com
mons decided against the policy of his favourite
Minister, the King took not the slightest notice of
the decision, but maintained the Minister and the
policy just as if nothing had happened. It would
be hardly possible to conceive any course of royal
action more entirely out of keeping with the con
stitutional usages of our day than such a stroke of
policy as that often carried into effect by George
III. The King, on one occasion when he was dis
pleased with some public act or utterance on the
part of Charles Fox, called for the Roll of the
Privy Councillors, and with his own hand scratched
out the name of the great Whig leader from the list.
England, in fact, had in George III. a sort of
" benevolent despot," without the supreme attribute
of royal intellect which is commonly understood to
be a part of the ideal " benevolent despot's " outfit
for the enterprise of government. It would have
been well worth a revolution, could no other means
have accomplished the object, for England to get

ENGLAND'S "BENEVOLENT DESPOT" 19
rid of George III.'s cardinal principle of constitu
tional government. We shall see in the course of
this volume how it fortunately came to pass that the
English people were enabled to secure for them
selves a constitutional and representative system of
government without having recourse to revolution.
Let it be remembered that the greatest intellects of
the time were, with few exceptions, opposed to
George III.'s ideas of principle and of policy. The
course of action which led to the war with America
was condemned to the end by the elder Pitt, the
great Lord Chatham, and by Edmund Burke. The
policy of conciliating the Roman Catholics was well
known to be the policy of Pitt the younger, and it
was only Pitt's unfortunate and almost servile sub
mission to his master's dictatorship which enabled
the King to hold his own for the time.
If we ask ourselves why the conduct of King
George did not bring about a revolution, we have to
look for an answer to the conduct of his enemies as
well as of his friends. In the first place, he was bet
ter served by all political parties at home than the
unhappy Louis XVI. had ever been. Fox and Burke
and Pitt, however they may have differed in other
qualities, were all alike constitutional statesmen, and
entirely opposed to any idea of domestic revolution.
Then, again, the English people, as a whole, were
much more patient in temper than the French, and
indeed it must be owned that the English population
of the poorer order had never had their patience tried
so cruelly and so keenly as the patience of the French
working classes had been. Moreover, we have just

20 ENGLAND'S "BENEVOLENT DESPOT"
spoken of the conduct of the King's enemies, and it
must be owned that nothing could have been more
timely for the stability of George's throne than the
wars with France, so long as they lasted. While
Napoleon was still at the head of his armies, all
thought of a revolution in England was out of the
question. The heart and the nerves of the nation
were braced up to the one great purpose of victory
in that struggle, and the King was free for the time
to play what antics he pleased with the constitution.
We shall presently see that the more serious domestic
difficulties came when the war was over and the re
turn of peace gave sufferers time to ask themselves
what they had got by it all, and to feel the full and
lonely pressure of their grievances undiminished by
the enthusiasm of a struggle with the foreign foe.
George IIL, it has been said, might have made,
had he been more nobly endowed with intellect, a
fair illustration of the ideal " benevolent despot."
He was not in any sense of the word a bad man ; he
had none of the personal vices with which so many
princes, here and everywhere else, have been spoiled.
He was not a Louis XV. or a Charles II. He had
a kindly heart, and, according to his lights, he en
deavoured to do his duty as a husband and a father.
He was a brave man, — he had shown it over and
over again, — at least he had that kingly quality of
courage which never fails when summoned on some
great emergency. Over and over again his life had
been attempted, for the most part, indeed, by ma
niacs, but he had never shown the slightest failure
of nerve or of composure ; and, after all, the knife or

ENGLAND'S "BENEVOLENT DESPOT" 21
the bullet of a maniac may do work as deadly as the
weapon of the sanest assassin. George never showed
the slightest desire to deal harshly with those who
made attempts on his life. He was himself the first
on more- than one occasion to suggest that the at
tempt was but the outcome of insanity, and his in
clinations were always on the side of mercy. He
showed many times that he could act with prompt
ness and decision in cases of sudden and unforeseen
difficulty. Nobody could have had less sympathy
with the Catholic claims, and yet, when Lord George
Gordon's " No Popery " riots broke out, and carried
destruction to the homes of so many Catholics and
their friends, the King insisted on the complete
suppression of the outrages, and declared that if the
riots were not put down within a certain time, he
would himself take the command of the Life Guards,
and charge the rioters in person.
It has to be said, too, for George IIL, that he had
not been well brought up in his home life, and some
of his apologists are fond of arguing that even his very
obstinacy was encouraged in him by his mother, who
loved in his early days to impress on him that he must
always show himself to be a king and make his word
obeyed by his Ministers and by his people. He
had long been liable to attacks in the head, and his
reign was not very far advanced when the malady
began to declare itself in the form of intermittent
insanity. Soon after the outbreak of renewed hos
tilities with France, one of these fits of madness
came on, which led to long debates as to the neces
sity for appointing a Regent to take his place. The

22 ENGLAND'S "BENEVOLENT DESPOT"
obvious and natural idea was, of course, that his son
George, who afterwards succeeded him on the throne,
should be put in his father's place while the father's
malady lasted. But the hopes of many of the
Whigs, of nearly all the friends of Catholic emanci
pation, and of most of the Irish people were already
set upon George, the son, who had given promises
of liberal inclinings which his after-life did not fulfil.
A somewhat unseemly controversy was therefore
raised in Parliament as to whether George, the son,
was or was not entitled by constitutional right to
assume his father's place during his father's inca
pacity for public business. Here, it must be owned.
Fox and the Whigs made but a poor figure; they
insisted on the absolute right of George, the son,
while Pitt, on the other hand, upheld what might
be thought to be naturally the Whig doctrine, and
maintained that it was for the English Parhament
to decide as to the proper person to act in the ab
sence of the King. George, the son, was, of course,
chosen for the place, and would have been so chosen
in any case. The health of the King became worse
and worse as years went on. He lost his sight; he
lost his hearing; his madness increased, until at last
he had to be kept under almost constant restraint,
and was indeed much more thoroughly a madman
than Shakespeare has pictured his King Lear. Poor
George's death must have come as a relief to him in
the end. Even the sternest historian may afford to
be lenient with him. His end was less heroic, and
even more tragic, than that of Louis XVI.

TRAFALGAR SQUARE,

CHAPTER III
IN THE -WAKE OF THE PEACE

IT is necessary to go back for a little in order to
take a glance at the condition in which Europe
was left by the Treaty of Vienna. That treaty was
agreed upon by the representatives of the European
allies, and was already signed at the Congress of
Vienna on the 9th of June, 1815. When the fall
of Napoleon took place, the Allied Powers had there
fore little more to do than to proceed to put in ac
tion the general principles which were laid down by
the Treaty of Vienna and by some previous agree
ments, and to settle the affairs of Europe according
to their own convenience and good pleasure. There
were other treaties and agreements also, which were
found necessary to apply in various countries, in order
to carry out the general arrangement. But we may,
for the sake of clearness of expression, take it that
the Treaty of Vienna made the grand settlement of
European affairs after the fall of the French Empire.
The Continent lay then before theplenipotentiariesof
the great Powers like a corpse on the dissecting-table,
to adopt an expressive phrase, which was used much
more lately, and with regard to a different subject.
23

24 IN THE WAKE OF THE PEACE
At first it was intended that France should be
shut out from consultation or share in the new ar
rangement; but the ingenuity, the subtlety, the
persuasiveness, and the perseverance of Talleyrand,
the French statesman, succeeded in prevailing on the
representatives of the great victorious Powers to
allow France some voice in the settlement wherein
her national interests were so profoundly concerned.
The name of Talleyrand is one of the three great
names which will always belong to the history of
the French Revolution, the other two being those
of Mirabeau and Napoleon. European statesman
ship, up to that time, took no account of the feel
ings or wishes of nationalities and populations when
coming to a settlement after a victorious war.
When a party of gamesters have finished their night
of play, they simply count up the gains and losses
and allocate the coins on the table. It naturally
does not occur to them to consider whether the gold
and silver pieces themselves have any feeling in the
matter, and would prefer to remain with this player
or to be handed over to that other.
The statesmen assembled at the Congress of Vienna
concerned themselves just as Httle about the senti
ments and the predilections of the populations with
whom they had to deal. Paris was at this time oc
cupied by the soldiers of England and of Prussia.
Louis XVIII., as it was agreed that he should be
called, was put on his ancestral throne. The under
standing was that the Bourbon monarchy was estab
lished for ever, and that there was an end for all time
of any dream of a Republic in France. Napoleon sur-

IN THE WAKE OF THE PEACE 2$
rendered himself to the captain of an English ship of
war, and it is a curious fact well worth remembering
that he was received with much cheering by a crowd
of Englishmen on the quays of an English port, who
had become aware of the great captive's identity.
Napoleon was sent off to the island of St. Helena,
where he languished for a few years more, and
meantime the work of European reconstruction
went on. The Rhenish provinces were bestowed on
Prussia, a rich gift, not, it must be owned, alto
gether unwisely bestowed. The Rhenish provinces
were for the most part Catholic by religion, but the
Prussian Government has never gone out of its way
to intermeddle with the rehgious faith of its popula
tions, and the provinces soon amalgamated thor
oughly in national spirit with the general population
of Prussia. The Prussian Government had even the
good sense to leave the Code Napoleon where they
found it in territories once occupied by France.
Holland and Belgium were made into one kingdom,
the Kingdom of the Netherlands, under the rule of
the House of Orange. This arrangement only held to
gether for a very few years, and Holland and Belgium
were enabled to effect a separation, mainly by the
help of France, and each set up as a kingdom for itself.
The difficulty which had stood so much in the
way of the great Orange statesman, William the
Silent, — the difficulty of keeping Hollanders and
Belgians together, — was not likely to be got over by
the decree of a number of statesmen recasting
Europe at the Congress of Vienna. Prussia had
been stripped of a vast portion of her territories

26 IN THE WAKE OF THE PEACE
by the Napoleonic conquests, and the statesmen of
Vienna restored all the plunder to the Prussian
dynasty. It did even more than that — it handed
over to Prussia one-half of Saxony, and it gave her
also a large portion of the old Duchy of Warsaw,
the territory which we now call Prussian Poland.
The greater part of Poland was handed over to
Russia. Austria was endowed with the Kingdom of
Lombardy and Venice, and within less than half a
century Austria, after tremendous losses in war, was
compelled by the intervention of another Napoleon
to disgorge part of her ill-gotten possessions, and
thus allow Lombardy to open the way for a new
Kingdom of Italy. Genoa was annexed to Sardinia ;
the States of the Church were restored ; and Naples
and Sicily were handed back to the old Bourbon
rulers. Russia and Austria came out of the trans
action with the largest spoils, Prussia, for the most
part, recovering only what she had held before the
great war with France. England, to do her justice,
sought for little or nothing, and obtained little or
nothing by the arrangement of the Congress of
Vienna. She had borne the heaviest and costliest
part of the work; her navies on the ocean had de
feated Napoleon at the very zenith of his power,
and she had only her glory as a reward: let it be
owned that the glory of English arms was never
made more splendidly manifest than it was on the
seas under Nelson and his comrades in battle.
Few of the novelties set up by the Congress of
Vienna held very long together. Austria had to go
through a most troublous career — to surrender Lom-

IN THE WAKE OF THE PEACE 2"]
bardy to French arms and Venetia to the arms of
Prussia and of Sardinia. Prussia drove Austria, after
seven weeks' war, out of the Germanic federation
altogether. The elder branch of the Bourbons was
ejected from the throne of France; the younger
branch which succeeded held that throne for only
eighteen years ; then there was another French Re
public, followed by another French Empire, which
itself fell under the conquering hand of Prussia,
and now once more a Republic prevails in France.
The whole war against Napoleon was undertaken
avowedly with the object of restoring the principle
of legitimate monarchy to its old place in France,
and rooting out for ever the growth of democracy
and republicanism. Little more than half a century
had passed before a Republic was again set up by
the French people, and there does not now seem the
slightest chance, come what else there may, of a
Bourbon or an Orleans sovereign being thought of
again by France.
The Holy Alliance, as it was afterwards called, —
the Alliance started by the Emperor of Russia, and
joined in by the Emperor of Austria and the King
of Prussia, — proclaimed its mission. The Holy Alli
ance was a natural outcome of the principles and
purposes which led up to the agreement made at the
Congress of Vienna. It is well that the proclama
tions and the purposes of the Holy Alliance should
not be allowed to fade from public memory. Syd
ney Smith forcibly and very justly spoke of the
Sovereigns who made themselves into the Holy
Alliance as " the crowned conspirators of Verona."

28 IN THE WAKE OF THE PEACE
The declaration of the Holy Alliance was contained
in a manifesto issued by the Emperor of Russia from
St. Petersburg and bearing date on the day of the
birth of our Saviour, the 25th of December, 1815.
In this proclamation the Emperor ordered that the
Convention concluded at Paris on the 26th of Sep
tember, 181 5, should be read in all the churches
throughout his dominions.
This was the Convention of the Holy Alliance. It
was arranged between the Emperor of Russia, the
Emperor of Austria, and the King of Prussia. These
Sovereigns, to quote from the words of the Conven
tion, " solemnly declare that the present act has no
other object than to publish in the face of the whole
world their fixed resolution, both in the administra
tion of their respective States and in their political
relations with every other Government, to take for
their sole guide the precepts of the Holy Religion of
our Saviour — namely, the precepts of justice, Christ
ian charity, and peace, which, far from being ap
plicable only to private concerns, must have an
immediate influence on the Councils of Princes and
guide all their steps, as being the only means of con
solidating human institutions and remedying their
imperfections." The Sovereigns therefore pledged
themselves to " remain united by the bonds of a true
and indissoluble fraternity, and to use their arms to
protect religion, peace, and j ustice. ' ' Then the Con
vention went on to explain that it was not by any
means the intention of the Sovereigns who signed
it to limit the blessings of those counsels of perfec
tion to the uses of the Holy Allies only, and to leave

IN THE WAKE OF THE PEACE 29
all other European states out in the cold. On the
contrary, the document contained the cheering
intelligence that " all Powers which were willing
solemnly to avow the sacred principles which have
dictated the present act will be received with equal
ardour and affection into this Holy Alliance."
The world was not long left in suspense as to the
inner meaning of this agreement. The Emperor
of Russia, the Emperor of Austria, and the King of
Prussia had their own ideas as to the way in which
peace, religion, and justice were to be maintained.
Peace was, in the opinion of these Allied Powers, to
be secured by enslaving their own peoples and every
population which was to be put under their control.
Religion meant the Divine Right of Sovereigns to
govern according to their own despotic humours.
Justice consisted in the suppression of free speech
and of every other popular right or demand, in order
that subjects might be taught to know their place,
and compelled to keep in the position to which it
had pleased the Congress of Vienna to call them.
In other words, as a modern writer has described the
situation, the crowned conspirators " proclaimed
themselves the champions and ministers of religion
and justice, but reserved to themselves the right of
defining what religion and justice were."
"Show me the man, and I '11 show you the law,"
was a bitter old Scottish saying. " Show me the
Sovereigns, and I '11 show you the religion, law, and
justice, ' ' would have been a saying strictly apphcable
to the Holy Alliance. The Sovereigns bound them
selves to unite in putting down revolutionary agita-

30 IN THE WAKE OF THE PEACE
tion wherever it might upheave itself, and we all
know what they would have defined as revolutionary
agitation. Every state which should afterwards
join the Alliance would be understood to have
pledged itself to lend the aid of its arms and its
troops to put down whatever might be defined as
revolutionary agitation. The deliberate purpose of
the Holy Alliance was to restore the dethroned
Princes and Grand Dukes everywhere, to set up
again the Divine Right of Kings in France and every
where else over which their power extended, to bring
back to France the old days and the old ways of the
Bourbon, and to establish as the reign of law the
principle that one despot was bound to assist another
in maintaining a despotic authority; but that one
people was not free to help itself or any other people
to liberty.
The Holy Alliance, in fact, quite overdid its work.
The Allied Sovereigns took no account of time ; the
season was not one when an enlightened philosophy
had much influence over political action; and the
two Emperors and the King did not understand that
there was anything like a law of political develop
ment. So they went to work with their cheery faith
in their own power to stop the movement of time
and the process of growth. The influence they
afterwards obtained over the councils of reactionary
dynasties in France and Spain became the principal
means of upsetting the whole fabric on which the
Holy Alliance was founded. When the Duke of
Wellington heard of the treaty, he gave it but a
cold reception, and said something to the effect that

JOHN KEATS.
From a painting by William Hilton, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery.

IN THE WAKE OF THE PEACE 31
he thought the Sovereign and the Government of
England would ask for a somewhat more explicit
and practical statement as to-the actual purposes of
the Alliance. There can, however, be little doubt
that the feelings of those most immediately around
the English Sovereign would have led them far on
the way with the work of the Holy AUiance. In
point of fact, for a time such Ministers as Lord
Liverpool and Lord Castlereagh were very willing
indeed that England should lend herself to the con
spiracy of Verona.
It was only when Canning came into power that
a complete severance took place, once for all,
between the policy of England in foreign affairs
and the principles of the Holy Alliance. Even
if England had joined in the conspiracy, it is ut
terly impossible that it could have held its own
for any considerable length of time. The genu
ine principle of democracy was, indeed, a little out
of favour, even in England, at the day when the
two Emperors and the King signed their portentous
treaty. The excesses of the French Revolution
and the military dictatorship of Napoleon had
aroused an immense alarm all through England and
everywhere else. It cannot be questioned that even
in domestic policy the mind of Pitt was greatly
affected by the influence of this alarm. Reforms
were delayed in England because of the difficulty
which the mind of the average man had in dis
tinguishing between a demand for reform and a
clamour for a revolution. But the democratic re
form must have begun to develop before long, if all

32 IN THE WAKE OF THE PEACE
the Sovereigns of Europe had been combined against
it. Democratic reform, to apply to it the noble
language of Wordsworth's sonnet, had " great
allies," its " friends were exultations, agonies, and
love, and man's unconquerable mind."
We shall show before long how it was reserved for
the best days of Canning's foreign policy not merely
to withdraw England from any confederacy with the
Holy Alliance, but to checkmate altogether some of
its most important and most audacious enterprises.
With Canning, it may fairly be said, is to begin the
modern era of English foreign policy. It would be
idle now to enter into any speculation as to what
might have happened if the English statesmanship
of that day had been more like the English states
manship of a later day. It is still a question of
keen argument whether the war between France and
England was really forced on by England or by
France. Some enlightened English writers, who
cannot be suspected of any lack of patriotic feeling,
insist that but for the policy and obstinacy of George
III. there never might have been a war with France.
English statesmen have learned much since then.
The hero of the Iliad proclaims, at least in Pope's
version, that " no more Achilles draws his conquer
ing sword in any woman's cause." Enghsh states
manship, we may well believe, will never again draw
its sword in the cause of any foreign dynasty. So
far as that goes, at least, the principle of non-inter
vention may safely be said to be established as a
canon of British policy.
The settlement of international peace was fol-

IN THE WAKE OF THE PEACE 33
lowed in England by something very like an out
break of domestic war. When great suffering
prevails among a population, the first thought of
the sufferers is, naturally, to look to the Govern
ment for an immediate redress of the evil. Disraeh
once said that no English Government, however
popular, could stand up against a third bad harvest.
The saying, of course, like most of Disraeli's say
ings, was meant to be a sort of cynical epigram ; but
there was meaning in it for all that. Popular suffer
ing will always mean political discontent, and po
litical discontent, here, there, and everywhere, is
discontent with the existing Government. The
great Italian statesman, Count Cavour, used to
maintain that national prosperity or national advers
ity was only a question of good or bad government.
Perhaps this was giving somewhat too wide an ap
plication to a principle sound and healthy within its
limits ; but it certainly is a principle which cannot
be borne too constantly in the minds of the rulers
of men.
After the close of the great war, the English
populations found themselves oppressed by pov
erty, by want of employment, and in many re
gions by absolute starvation. Employment had,
to a great extent, collapsed ; the price of food was
enormously high, and was kept high with the
avowed purpose of enabhng the landlords to main
tain their rents. Bad weather added to the troubles ;
masses of agricultural labourers and of artisans in
cities were clamouring for a reduction in the prices
of grain and meat. These assemblages led to dis-
VOL. I. — 3

34 IN THE WAKE OF THE PEACE
turbances, and to night attacks on the houses of
landlords and magistrates. In many places the
wealthier inhabitants were compelled to abandon
their houses for a time, in order to save their families
and themselves from violence at the hand of hun
ger-maddened mobs. Many of the rioters were
captured and put to trial, and, according to the
ferocious criminal code of the time, several were
sentenced to death, and actually executed. Rioting
took another form as well. The rapid introduction
of machinery into so many manufactories seemed to
illiterate artisans but another means of lowering the
wages of the working man. Here and there manu
factories were attacked and machinery was de
stroyed, and the law did all that it could, in the
way of severity of punishment; but severity of
punishment does not feed half-starving men, or
convince the intelligence of those who, while taking
no actual part in riot, are yet in sympathy with
others who, driven by hunger, seek any means,
however desperate, of bringing about a better con
dition of things.
Under the conditions that prevailed, tumult and
riot were humanly inevitable, and at that time the
ruling authorities had no idea of deahng with dis
content except by the prison-cell, the transport-
ship, and the gallows. Then, again, there was
much rancour and bitterness occasioned at one time
by the reports, only too well founded, which went
abroad over the country, concerning the extrava
gance of the Prince Regent and his Court. George,
the Regent, was living in a style which might

IN THE WAKE OF THE PEACE 35
have served the tastes of an Eastern despot or a
Prince of the Lower Empire. The stories told
about his luxury, his reckless and wanton extrava
gance, his monstrous debts, were only too well borne
out by the nature of the incessant applications made
to the House of Commons for new grants to save
him from bankruptcy. It may easily be understood
how the bitterness of want amongst the working
populations was made more and more intense by
the increasing knowledge of the Regent's outrageous
expenditure. Byron wrote in sarcastic anger of the
one comfort still left to a patriot nation, the consol
ing thought that —
" Gaunt Famine never can approach the throne ;
Though Ireland starve, great George weighs twenty
stone."
For some time the expression of national discon
tent did not shape itself into the lineaments of a de
liberate demand for political reform. Food, work,
and wages were the first concessions for which the
popular voice cried out. It was in the beginning
but a wild cry of agony ; it soon awakened echoes
from the voices of men who knew how to give its
plaint a distinct tone and definite purpose. Prob
ably the first successful attempt to put the popular
complaint into a definite political form came from
the teachings of William Cobbett. Cobbett was
emphatically a man of the people: he was born
among the people ; he had been for several years a
soldier in the army, and had served in Canada. He
had been a bookseller in New York and Philadelphia.

36 IN THE WAKE OF THE PEACE
He was master of a style singularly telling. His
language was as clear, straightforward Anglo-Saxon
as that of Swift himself. His ideas were sometimes
wild ; he was not what would be called an educated
man ; he knew little of constitutional systems, and
political economy had not become a popular science
in his time. But he knew enough to know that
many of the evils of which Englishmen then com
plained were to be ascribed directly and almost
altogether to a bad system of government. His
mode of reform was simple and drastic. He would
have had one single legislative chamber elected by
ballot and by universal suffrage. He became what
we should now call an agitator. He threw his soul
into the movement for political reform. He started
a newspaper, which at one time was circulated all
over the country, and was read in every garret and
every cottage — those who could read declaiming his
sentences to those who could not. He soon be
came a power in the land, and, to do him justice, he
did not use his power unscrupulously or even, as far
cis his lights went, unwisely.
The great reforms which England then needed
were : the reform of the constitutional system, the
reform of the criminal code, the abolition of abuses
in the Court of Chancery, the reform of the financial
system, the reconstruction of the poor-laws, and the
removal of all the obstacles which interfered with
the spread of popular education and the free expres
sion of political opinion. There were many great
reformers, both inside and outside the House of
Commons, who had long been labouring hard in the

h\^

LORD BROUGHAM.
From a painting by James Lonsdale, in the National Portrait Gallery,

IN THE WAKE OF THE PEACE 37
best way they could for the remedy of the national
grievances. At the head of the political reformers
of this class the name of Lord Brougham must be
undoubtedly placed. The fame of Lord Brougham
has somewhat faded of late years. Perhaps Brough
am lived rather too long for his fame. Those of us
who can still remember him have a memory rather
of the eccentricities and extravagances of his later
years which sometimes put away from recollection
the thought of those brighter and more distant
days when Brougham stood forth as the foremost,
the fearless, the indomitable, and the incorruptible
champion of every great measure of reform which
the needs of the country demanded.
Brougham was undoubtedly a man of genius — no
other word could properly describe him. Despite an
almost repulsive appearance, despite his ungainly
and fantastic gestures and his exuberance of language
and of utterance, he was undoubtedly a great orator.
A vehement, passionate nature carried him away in
debate, sometimes beyond the ordinary rules of de
corum and even of decency. This kind of passion
grew and grew upon him, until at a later period of
his career his friends began to dread that it might
develop into an actual mental malady. But, what
ever his defects, it is certain that he was not sur
passed, and hardly equalled, by any man in his best
days for the services which he rendered to the cause
of reform. He was thorough-going in his denuncia
tion of the slavery system, of the existing criminal
code, of the financial abuses, and of the evils in the
Court of Chancery.

38 IN THE WAKE OF THE PEACE
Another great reformer, especially as regarded the
slave system and the criminal code, was Sir Samuel
Romilly, whose family name has since become the
synonym for the purest order of philanthropical re
former. Some of the men whose names we chiefly
associate of later years with the cause of political re
form, such men as Charles Earl Grey and Lord John
Russell, had not come yet quite to the front. Sir
Francis Burdett, a man of property and station, was
for a time a great political reformer, and was for a
time idolised by all popular reformers outside Par
liament. Nor must we omit from a list of those who
then championed political reforms the name of the
gallant Lord Cochrane, afterwards the Earl of Dun
donald, the last of England's great sea-kings, before
the days of steam and iron armour and heavy-met
alled guns. No man ever served his country more
faithfully than Cochrane, and his reward was a charge
of fraudulent conspiracy, an unsatisfactory trial, and
a cruel degradation. He had given as much trouble
to the French during the great war as any naval
commander short of Nelson himself. He sat in the
House of Commons for Westminster in companion
ship with Sir Francis Burdett, and a more staunch
and resolute popular reformer never lived. It is well
to know that the injustice of Cochrane's conviction
was recognised in the reign of William IV., by
whom he was restored to his rank in the navy. It
remained for the present Sovereign to give him
back all the honours and dignities which he had
earned so well, and of which he had been so unde
servedly deprived, partly, as the popular behef

IN THE WAKE OF THE PEACE 39
went, through the hatred of the Regent and his
Court. Among the conspicuous reformers of those early
days may be mentioned one who at the time acquired
a sort of fame as " Orator Hunt." Hunt was a dema
gogue in the genuine sense of the word, and had
the advantage, almost indispensable to a demagogue,
of a thrilling and tremendous voice. Hunt organ
ised and presided over all manner of meetings, out-
of-doors and indoors, to champion the popular doc
trines of democracy. He was elected to the House
of Commons later on, and sat there for some years ;
but he did not maintain there his reputation as an
orator. He did not, to use a familiar phrase, " go
down " with the House of Commons. That House
has a merciless way of pricking a bubble reputation ;
and it has had, for many generations, at all events,
the credit of being impartial in its estimate of the
merits of a speech. Hunt was a failure in the House ;
but he made a certain mark on the political history
of his day, and his name is even still remembered by
those who are fond of tracking out the progress of
the reform movement in England. Another man, —
a very different kind of man, — whose name well
deserves to be remembered among the best phil
anthropists and reformers of that time, was Samuel
Whitbread. Whitbread was a man thoroughly un
selfish, a man of the highest character and the noblest
aims. His descendant, another Samuel Whitbread,
well worthy of the name, has but lately retired from
parliamentary life, and will always be remembered
in the history of the House of Commons.

40 IN THE WAKE OF THE PEACE
These were the more prominent among the ad
vanced Liberals of the time. Let us now see who
were the leading opponents of reform. First of all
came George III., who, while he had sense enough
left to take any part in the rule of the State, was
an unteachable and indomitable opponent of every
movement which made for political progress. Next,
perhaps, in constitutional dignity came John Scott,
Lord Eldon, for many years Lord Chancellor of
England. Lord Eldon was a man of very high
ability, a lawyer of unsurpassed keenness and pro
fundity, a man of unselfish character where preju
dice and passion did not obtain the mastery over his
reason and over his moral nature. It is much to be
doubted whether the whole English-speaking race
could just now produce alive such a specimen of
Toryism as Lord Eldon was then. The one main
purpose of Eldon's life seemed to be to keep the
political Constitution of England exactly as it was
without the slightest change. He was actually
steeped and soaked in the belief about the wisdom
of our ancestors. To Lord Eldon's mind, it would
seem that our ancestors were a race of divinely
inspired beings who, like the Sovereign, could do
no wrong, and whose laws it was out of the power
of mortal man to improve. It probably did not oc
cur to him to think that a day might dawn when,
supposing the reformers to work their will with the
Constitution, the policy of those dreaded reformers
might come to be regarded as the wisdom of our
ancestors by some future Lord Eldon. No doubt,
if any such idea had ever intruded upon his mind.

LORD ELDON.
From a painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence, P. R. A., in the National Portrait Gallery.

IN THE WAKE OF THE PEACE 4 1
he would have driven it away as a sacrilegious and
a satanically inspired thought.
No man, it was humorously said, ever could be
so wise as Lord Thurlow, a former Tory Chancellor,
looked. Certainly no man could ever be so wise and
so virtuous as Lord Eldon believed himself to be.
So Lord Eldon went on opposing all reform, main
taining and championing every abuse in the electoral
system and in the Court of Chancery, putting every
obstacle he could in the path of any and every
movement which tended to equalise the political
position of class and class, and treating even the
most moderate efforts of Liberal reformers as if they
were the work of recognised enemies of the human
race. It was well said by a brilliant writer that it
had never been the fortune of any man to have an
opportunity of doing so much good as Eldon had
prevented. The Prime Minister during a great part of Eldon's
time was Lord Liverpool, a man whose name will
always be remembered as that of one of the most
bitter opponents of constitutional reform, even in
those bitter anti-reforming days. Liverpool seemed
to know of only one way by which a popular demand
for reform could be dealt with, and that was by the
passing of new Acts for the most stringent repression
of all popular demonstration. He was the author of
a famous series of measures known technically as the
" Six Acts," and by that title well remembered
among English readers of the present day, the six
Acts being a series of six legislative enactments
brought in with the special and avowed purpose of

IN THE WAKE OF THE PEACE 43
described him as a " wretch never named but with
curses and jeers." Byron, it is to be regretted, as
sailed him in words even more brutal than these —
words which will not now bear quotation. Even
Lord Castlereagh's sudden death by his own hand,
in a moment of temporary unsettlement, did not
silence altogether the voices of hatred. The story
of England's nineteenth century brings with it, at
all events, the cheering fact that we have learnt to
deal with our political enemies in a more tolerant
and a more Christian-like spirit than that which
found only too much favour on both sides of politics
for many years after the time at which this volume
begins. No speaker on a platform, no writer in a
newspaper, would be tolerated now who allowed
himself to indulge even once in the passion of per
sonal invective against a political opponent, which
was common, even among men of education and
position, during the earlier years of the present
century. Here, then, we have the rival forces arrayed — the
Liberals and the Conservatives, if we may transfer
to the warfare of our ancestors the phraseology of
the present day. For years we read of little or
nothing but the holding of great public meetings to
advocate the cause of reform, and the breaking up
of these meetings, and the prosecution and im
prisonment of those who took a leading part in
them. The Government of the day believed, or
affected to believe, that the meetings were organised
with the definite purpose of promoting a regular revo
lutionary movement all over the country. There

44 IN THE WAKE OF THE PEACE
can be no doubt that in some instances there was
much violence of language, and even some violence of
action, on the part of the agitators. In many places
a certain system of rough drilling was unquestion
ably going on ; but it was pleaded on the part of the
reformers that the drilling was nothing more than a
natural and convenient way of teaching untaught
and awkward men, village rustics or town artisans,
how to keep step in a procession, and how to shift
their quarters according to the orders of their leaders
from a position which was found unsuitable to one
which was better suited for the orators and the list
eners alike. Charges of the darkest kind were un
doubtedly made, and with much show of reason,
against the Government and its officials. It was
alleged that not only were the authorities in London
willing to accept the evidence of the basest wretches
who offered themselves as informers to disclose re
volutionary plots, but that emissaries of the Govern
ment itself had in many cases hired and paid such
creatures to go about among* the reformers and try
to get up insurrectionary plots in order that they
might betray them to the officers of the law. There
certainly did seem to be in many cases only too
much reason to believe that some such base system
was one of the weapons of the home Government.

CHAPTER IV
GEORGE IV
GEORGE III. died in 1820, and as a matter of
course George IV. succeeded to the throne.
The new King had ruled so long during the eclipse
of his father that his formal elevation to the sovereign
power did not make much change in the actual con
ditions. George IV. had been brought up by his
father on narrow, old-fashioned, stinted principles
of education. He had a greater amount of natural
ability than was given to George III. ; but he had
not the elder King's purity of personal character.
Something might have been made of George IV.
under a better and more liberal sort of training in
his early days ; but the effort to oppress him or to
coerce him into a pattern son proved, as under such
conditions it must have proved, a decided failure.
His instincts and inchnations were generous; and
he was at least capable of understanding a better
political system than that which seemed perfection
to the dull eyes of George III. There must have
been much charm of manner and some brilHancy of
conversation and style in George IV., seeing that he
became in his early days the close companion of men
45

GEORGE IV 47
with which appeal after appeal had been made to
the House of Commons for its liquidation. The
public in general were willing to let bygones be
bygones, so far as the doings of the past were con
cerned, if only there could be some reasonable hope
of an improved system in the future. Many men
were inclined to regard George as a sort of Prince
Hal, who might be counted on to redeem the er
rors of his youth the moment he was put into a
position of genuine responsibility. They talked of
him and of his companions as other men at a dis
tant day might have talked of the wild Prince and
Poins. Even after the Prince Regent's years had
outgrown the limit of Prince Hal's wild-oats season,
excuses were yet found for the Prince Regent,
and admirers continued to look out for a brighten
ing future. William Pitt, otherwise the most aus
tere of men, drank heavily night after night;
Charles Fox was a gambler; Sheridan was an irre
claimable spendthrift ; and after all why should the
Prince Regent be thought so much worse than they ?
There was, however, a fatal levity about George
IV. which prevented him from having any due sense
of responsibility, even when the responsibility began
to rest most heavily upon him. When he came to
the throne he had outlived most of the friends whose
influence he might, in political affairs at least, have
had to guide him along the right path. Fox was
long since dead ; Sheridan had outlived him by a
few years only, and the manner in which the Prince
Regent had neglected Sheridan in the melancholy
closing days of his ruined life became a new public

48 GEORGE IV
scandal to be added to the other scandals which had
accumulated round the progress of the Regency.
George IV. had been married, chiefly from reasons
of State, to a German Princess, Caroline of Bruns
wick, nearly connected with the Royal Family.
The marriage turned out a most unhappy alliance in
every way. George soon came to detest the wife
who had been to some extent imposed on him, partly
by supposed State advantages, and partly because it
was hoped that she might lead him into better ways.
Soon it became evident that the pair could not get
on together, and in fact were nearly irreconcilable.
The Queen went away to the continent, and spent
her time travelling about there. George was only
too well pleased to get rid of her companionship on
almost any terms, and returned to his old likings
and his old free-and-easy habits. It is not neces
sary to enter into the details of the public scandal
and the public controversy which followed. It will
be enough to say that the scandal and the contro
versy became a subject of national importance when
the new King came to be proclaimed and his Queen
announced her resolve to return to England and
present herself in order to take her part in the cere-
monies of coronation.
The whole country divided itself into two hostile
camps. The conduct of the Queen abroad had been
made a subject of serious charges, which it is only
right to say the majority of the English people did
not believe. The general tendency of public opinion
was to regard her as a calumniated and injured
woman ; but then again there were many who held

QUEEN CAROLINE.
From a painting by James Lonsdale, in the National Portrait Gallery.

GEORGE IV 49
this opinion and who nevertheless did not think it
right or wise or becoming on her part that she
should return and endeavour to force herself into
the coronation ceremonies and create an uproar
and a tumult throughout the country. Probably
in the history of no modern state has there ever
been so curious an exhibition of domestic tumult
and scandal as was afforded by this extraordinary
conflict between the King and the Queen. The
Queen may be said to have been almost literally
ejected from Westminster Abbey. The King be
came odious to the population in the streets every
where, while many of the great municipal and public
bodies gave an enthusiastic welcome to his unfort
unate wife. Brougham championed the cause of
the Queen in Parliament and in public, as he had
already done in the legal investigations.
The importance of the whole controversy and the
whole outrageous scandal rests for our time in the
fact that it threatened for a while to throw the Eng
lish monarchical institution into utter disrepute,
and that yet the monarchical institution was able
to survive the crisis and wait for the coming of bet
ter days, which better days soon came. There were
moments during that crisis when it almost seemed as
if a common watchword, or even a common catch
word, among the enemies of the Monarchy, might
have brought about a popular revolution; but it
must be admitted that the advisers of the English
people, in all ranks and classes, except among the
very wildest of brawlers, were men who persistently
counselled patience, good order, and a trust in the
VOL. I.— 4

50 GEORGE IV
gradual development of the Constitution. The
King was well known, too, to be on bad terms
with his daughter, — it was understood that he had
made himself a domestic tyrant over her; and this
but added another to the many sources of the popu
lar odium which directed its force against him.
In the meantime the purely political troubles went
on increasing : popular demonstrations were turned
into riots; riots led to prosecutions and imprison
ments. The King's counsellors still could suggest
nothing better than repression as a means of meet
ing every popular demand. The health of the King
was not good. George had wasted much of his life
in dissipation, and people were prematurely study
ing the prospect in the event of his coming to an
untimely end. He had no son, and his natural suc
cessor would have seemed to be the Duke of York,
his next brother; and the general opinion about the
Duke of York, rightly or wrongly, was that he had
all George's bad qualities and not any of George's
redeeming characteristics. Satire began to deal
sharply with George, and those who had charge of
the law began to deal sharply with the satirists.
Despite all that law could do, the newspapers would
criticise the King — that is, the newspapers which
appealed to the instincts of the uncourtly crowd —
and the sternest measures had not been able to sup
press the newspapers. George became after a while
reluctant to face his loving subjects in pubhc. He
made of Brighton a sort of Caprea retreat for himself
as though he were a British Tiberius, and there he
hid himself away for long seasons together from the

GEORGE IV SI
sight of the London crowd. His life had been at
tempted once during his Regency — by some crazy
fanatic very likely ; but it was not personal fear which
induced George to hide himself from the sight of his
people ; he was only sick of seeing them — that was all.
The Peterloo Massacre, as it was called then and
for long afterwards, was the most momentous event
in the history of the political agitation. Massacre,
indeed, is a very strong word to use, and gives the
idea of a purposed and an indiscriminate slaughter,
which certainly could not be taken as a calm descrip
tion of what happened at Peterloo. But when the
story of the event comes to be coolly told, it will be
seen that there was by one means or another enough
of an outrage on public rights to excuse harsh
phrases in speaking of the result. There was an
idea amongst many of the Radicals of Manchester
that it would be a good thing to start Mr. Hunt
(" Orator Hunt ") as what might be termed the po
litical delegate for the district. A public meeting
was called by advertisement, inviting the inhabitants
to assemble on Monday, August 9, 1819, in the area
near St. Peter's Church, for the purpose of discuss
ing and adopting a plan of parliamentary reform
and choosing a representative. The local magis
trates issued a proclamation declaring the meeting
to be illegal, and warning the public that no one
could attend it without a breach of the law. There
upon the promoters of the meeting announced by
handbill that it was not to take place, but informed
the public that a requisition was to be addressed to
the local authorities calling upon them to summon

52 GEORGE IV
a meeting on the earliest possible day to consider
the most effectual way of bringing about a reform in
the constitution of the House of Commons. An
immense number of signatures was at once attached
to the requisition. This most reasonable prayer
was promptly and peremptorily refused by the local
authorities; and thereupon the promoters of the
meeting reverted to their original purpose, and an
nounced that the meeting would be held in St.
Peter's Field on the following Monday, the i6th.
The inhabitants of Manchester in general, even the
working classes, seemed to have taken but little part
in the preparations ; but all the surrounding districts
were active in sending in their representative men
and their crowds of followers. Orator Hunt was to
take the chair.
Early on Monday morning the crowds began to
move towards the place of meeting. The more
organised and strictly marshalled part of the crowd
was led by twelve young men, each holding in his
hand a branch of laurel, which was understood for
that occasion to represent the olive of peace. There
were two flags with the words ' ' Liberty and Frater
nity," " Annual Parliaments and Universal Suf
frage " emblazoned on them in letters of gold. The
only emblem which even the most strained con
struction could describe as a revolutionary sign was
a cap of liberty borne upon a pole. The cap of
liberty may no doubt have recalled to many uneasy
minds the direful associations of the French Revolu
tion ; but nowhere was there the slightest evidence
or even suggestion that anything more was intended

GEORGE IV 53
than the holding of an ordinary public meeting to
advocate parliamentary reform. The leaders of the
demonstration publicly admonished the meeting that
no insult to anyone was to be permitted, and that
no excuse whatever was to be given to the authori
ties for any attempted disturbance of the proceed
ings. It was distinctly enjoined that if the peace
officers should attempt to arrest any man engaged
in the demonstration no resistance must be offered
to the action of the authorities.
The committee who had charge of the meeting
had laid it down as a rule that no sticks or weapons
of any kind must be carried by any of those en
gaged in it; and this rule was very generally,
although not perhaps absolutely, obeyed. A num
ber of married women and girls took a part in the
procession, moving towards the ground where the
meeting was to be held. Seeing that the meeting
was swelled by processions of men from the various
towns and villages of the district, it is not surpris
ing that here and there some flag or emblem was
displayed which the original promoters of the de
monstration would not themselves have sanctioned.
There was a black flag, for instance, bearing in
white letters the words " Equal Representation, or
Death." This flag, however, seems to have moved
the meeting, when it was noticed, more to laughter
than to any other expression of emotion. By the
time the hour for opening the proceedings had
nearly arrived, an immense mass of people was
gathered together on the space which had been de
signed for the holding of the meeting. A more

54 GEORGE IV
orderly assemblage, up to that moment and for some
time after, could not possibly have been seen any
where, nor when disorder did afterwards break out
was it in any degree due to any action on the part
of the crowd. The disorder appears to have been
due altogether to the futile and mischievous terrors
of the local authorities, and to the ill-advised meas
ures which were taken to guard against any possible
breach of the peace.
The magistrates had sworn in a very large number
of special constables, and had called out the services
of a large body of Hussars, a troop of Horse Artil
lery with two cannons, a regiment of Infantry, and
nearly eight hundred of the Cheshire Yeomanry and
the Manchester Yeomanry. The military forces
were all disposed in streets and lanes close to the
place of meeting. At the appointed hour. Hunt,
the chairman of the meeting, accompanied by a
number of his friends and by a band, was seen
making his way towards the appointed place. The
band played the two popular national airs, " Rule,
Britannia," and " God Save the King"; and it is
stated that a large number of those attending the
meeting took off their hats in token of respect for
the sentiment to which the music gave expression.
Mr. Hunt and his friends then mounted the plat
form, and it was proposed in the most quiet and
orderly way that Mr. Hunt should take the chair.
The motion was seconded, and carried by acclama
tion. Hunt thereupon advanced to address the
meeting for the purpose of formally opening the
proceedings.

GEORGE IV 55
Miss Martineau 's history tells us what happened
then. " He had only," says the authoress, "ut
tered a few sentences when a confused murmur and
pressure, beginning at one verge of the field and
rapidly rolling onwards, brought him to a pause.
The soldiers were upon the people. The magis
trates, it appears, had taken it into their heads to
issue a warrant for the arrest of the leading promot
ers of the meeting; the warrant was given into the
hands of the local Chief Constable. The Chief
Constable declared that he could not possibly at
tempt to execute the warrant without the assistance
of the military ; and the magistrates thereupon
issued instructions to some of the commanders of
the military."
Up to this part of the proceedings there seems
no contradiction between the account given by the
promoters of the meeting and that given by the
authorities. The uncertainty is as to how and why
the active intervention of the soldiers began.
There was, no doubt, confusion of orders and con
fusion of ideas. When the Yeomanry were seen
advancing, Hunt, who began to be afraid that a
panic might break out among those who composed
the meeting, called on the people to give three
cheers. The Yeomanry possibly mistook the cheers
for shouts of defiance, and possibly in some way or
another got it into their heads that they were ordered
to advance. They did advance, at all events, wav
ing their swords, and apparently with the intention
of dispersing the meeting; but of course, as the
number of the Yeomanry was comparatively small

56 GEORGE IV
and the number of the crowd was immense, the only
immediate result was that the Yeomanry got thor
oughly swallowed up in the crowd and could neither
advance nor retreat. Just at this moment, as luck
would have it, the two squadrons of Hussars came
within sight, and soon reached the verge of the
crowd. Thereupon some of the magistrates, who
were watching the proceedings, seemed to have
thoroughly lost their heads. The impression of
some of them certainly was that the Yeomanry were
being overwhelmed and trampled down, and they
gave to the officer in command of the Hussars the
frantic order to disperse the crowd. The trumpet
was sounded, and the cavalry charged the multitude.
The multitude was in no condition whatever to offer
any effective resistance. Even if those who com
posed the meeting had been prepared or inclined to
resist, which they certainly were not, the manner in
which they were helplessly packed together would
have rendered any sort of resistance impossible.
A general stampede set in ; the Hussars, it is be
lieved, in general used only the flats of their swords
against the people, but, as may easily be imagined in
such a case, the edge of the sword was sometimes
used, both by cavalry and by Yeomanry. There is
no reason to suppose that the soldiers acted with any
deliberate and cruel purpose ; but when a collision
takes place between a small body of troops and a
vast number of civilians whose only resistance is in
the mere bulk of their crowd, the soldier striving to
make his way onwards is sometimes tempted to use
the edge of his weapon in order to clear a passage.

GEORGE IV 57
In ten minutes from the first movement of the Yeo
manry the meeting had broken up in utter confusion ;
the people had fled this way, that way, and the
other; and the field was almost completely deserted,
except for the bodies, some dead and some wounded,
which still held the ground.
Some pitiful, pathetic evidences of a struggle also
remained behind ; the ground in several places was
strewn with hats, caps, bonnets, coats, shawls, torn
skirts, torn petticoats, shoes, and slippers, which fu
gitives had left behind them in the stress and press
ure of the flight. The actual deaths were not many,
when one considers the density of the crowd and the
efforts of the cavalry to clear their way through,
although perhaps the very density of the crowd may
have been the principal reason why the deaths were
not more numerous. Only five or six persons appear
to have been killed, and of these one was a special
constable, and one belonged to the Manchester Yeo
manry, both apparently knocked off their horses and
ridden down in the confusion. About thirty wounded
persons were carried to the hospitals that day, and
about forty more had their wounds looked to and
dressed, and were then able to return to their own
homes. Others, it is believed, were wounded who
did not present themselves at any hospital or infirm
ary. This is but natural, and is just what occurs
on all similar occasions. At every great political
gathering a number of men are sure to attend whose
hearts are not particularly set on the objects of the
popular meeting, and whose first impulse, if there
be disturbance, is to endeavour to escape from being

58 GEORGE IV
identified with any of the proceedings. Such men
would be very likely, even if they had received bodily
injuries at St. Peter's Field, to make as httle noise
about the matter as possible. They would betake
themselves to their homes privately; would have
their hurts seen after in their own houses; and
would try to go about their ordinary occupations
next day as if nothing had happened in which they
had any personal concern.
It did not suit many a man in those days to give
his employer any reason for suspecting that he had
been taking a part, however passive and innocent,
in the business which ended in the massacre of
Peterloo. Looking back now at the whole story
of the day's events, it is easy enough to see that the
massacre, if massacre it may still be called, was not
premeditated on the part of the magistrates or on
the part of the troops whom they called in so mis
taken a way to their assistance. The officers in
command of the troops, and the troops themselves,
were, of course, entirely innocent of any desire to
massacre anybody. In almost every case in the
modern history of England in which the soldiers
have come into collision with the populace and a
calamity has been the result, the calamity has not
been caused by any wanton action on the part of
the soldiers or by those immediately in command
of them, but by some confusion and blundering on
the part of those who represented the civil authori
ties. In this case the magistrates undoubtedly
blundered. They blundered in their notion of
arresting the leaders of the crowd at the moment

GEORGE IV 59
and on the spot, and they blundered also in the
measures which they took to have the arrests accom
plished. But it does not appear that they had any
set desire to bring about a collision between the
military force and the peaceful citizens assembled
at the meeting. On the other hand, there can be
no doubt that the meeting was perfectly peaceful,
orderly, and legitimate.
In our days, when a portion of Hyde Park has
been specially set aside for the purpose of Sunday
meetings in the open air, no question could arise
such as that which bewildered the brains of the
Manchester magistrates; but it must be remem
bered that at that time the law was in a very
different condition. It was the opinion of some
great lawyers that the men who got up the meet
ing were liable to be tried on a charge of high
treason. Hunt and some of his comrades were in
fact put upon trial on just such a charge. Lord
Eldon, who, with all his faults, was undoubtedly a
great lawyer, was himself of opinion that the charge
of high treason could be maintained according to
law, and that also if it could be maintained according
to evidence, then, but not otherwise, the magistrates
were quite justified in acting as they did ; for Lord
Eldon distinctly laid it down that numbers consti
tuted force, and force terror, and terror illegality.
Now nothing can be more clear than this declara
tion ; and this declaration, this construction of the
law, is what makes the Peterloo meeting an epoch
in Enghsh modern history. Any large pubhc meet
ing whatever, held in the open air with the object of

6o GEORGE IV
bringing about a reform in any part of the Constitu
tion, was an act of high treason, because numbers
constituted force, and force terror, and terror illegal
ity. It is very likely that Lord Eldon was literally
correct in his application of the existing law; but
the law was never heard of in such interpretation
after the days of the Peterloo meeting.
The indictment against Hunt and his companions
for an act of high treason broke down ; the judges
would not have it, and it had to be given up. The
prisoners were then put upon their trial for a dis
turbance of the public peace, and were sentenced
to various periods of imprisonment. Hunt himself
spent some two years in jail, to atone for his offence
as a disturber of the public peace. The conduct of
the magistrates received the formal approval of the
Government, although Lord Eldon himself, in a
letter which has since been pubhshed, declared
that the magistrates would have been to blame
if the holding of the meeting could not be shown
to be an act of high treason. The important fact
for the modern reader is that, according to Lord
Eldon's reading of the law, any pubhc meeting
whatever which assembled in large numbers would
be guilty of an act of high treason ; and that even in
Lord Eldon's time that interpretation was not up
held by those who had to lay down the law. Had
Lord Eldon's declaration prevailed, the right of
public meeting might have been denied for years
and years, and any large assemblage to demand a
reform of any law would be liable to forcible disper
sion at the command of a civil magistrate. That

GEORGE IV 6l
position was not maintained — it thoroughly broke
down ; and therefore an opening was made for
peaceful popular agitation, such as it might not
have had for years if it had not been for the disturb
ance at Peterloo. Thus the poor muddle-headed
magistrates who issued the order for the bringing up
of the troops did more to help on the coming agita
tion for reform than the eloquence of Orator Hunt
could ever have accomplished. It is a somewhat
interesting historical fact, that on the scene of the
Peterloo meeting was afterwards erected the great
Free Trade Hall of Manchester, the Free Trade Hall
which Richard Cobden and John Bright used as the
theatre for so many a peaceful agitation, and from
the platform of which nothing seditious or anarchi
cal, or even revolutionary, was ever given forth.
Thus, to adopt the words of Shakespeare, did the
" whirligig of time bring about the revenges " of the
Peterloo meeting.
We have thought it well to tell this story of Peter
loo at some length, because of the fact that it marks
the close of one part of the nineteenth century's
story and the opening of another part. The calam
ity was, of course, in itself to be deeply lamented.
But many a greater calamity has happened by acci
dent at a public gathering, and has left behind it
nothing for posterity to ponder seriously over. The
fall of a platform or a gallery, the panic caused by
an alarm of fire, has often had its list of killed and
wounded far longer than that which belongs to the
massacre of Peterloo. But nothing came, or was to
come, so far as the outer public were concerned.

62 GEORGE IV
from the results of such an accident. They carried
with them no national lesson ; they marked no his
torical crisis; they made no monument to a dead
past. The Peterloo calamity was in a great measure
itself an accident. But for the confusion in the
minds of the magistrates, nothing might have come
of it, and the next public meeting, and the next and
next for many long years, might have been hable to
the same interruption, the same dispersion, and the
same shedding of blood.
The Peterloo calamity, although in itself, to a
certain extent, only an accident, yet differed from
other such accidents as those we have just men
tioned in the fact that it brought about a new read
ing of the law for practical application to the business
of life in England. Of course there have been
meetings prevented and meetings suppressed since
that time; and, as we shall find in going on with
this story, it has been left in the power of the
authorities, in certain parts of the kingdom, to
prohibit absolutely the holding of a public meeting
in a certain place and under particular circumstan
ces. But when such official acts are allowed and
authorised, it is only where the operations of the
ordinary law are supposed to be for the time sus
pended. England gained by the results of the
Peterloo meeting the certainty that where the ordin
ary law still prevails peaceful men may assemble in
any number of thousands to make peaceful demands
for constitutional reform, and no one shall gainsay
their right of public demonstration and of free
speech.

CHAPTER V
THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY
ONE of the conspiracies of that season, when the
air was alive with the rumours of conspiracy,
was a genuine plot and a murderous plot, and there
fore deserves an especial notice. This was the Cato
Street Conspiracy, as it was called, a name of fear
to many succeeding generations. For no short space
of time a mere allusion to the Cato Street Conspiracy
was believed by honest Tories to be quite enough to
damp the enthusiasm of the most innocent reformer.
The agitation in favour of important changes in the
system of government had greatly fallen off for a
while. Nothing seemed to be coming of the move
ment ; the followers grew dissatisfied, and blamed
their leaders for their supposed lack of activity ; de
spondency and disappointment were abroad among
the ranks; the funds ceased to come in; and the
whole organisation seemed for the moment likely to
collapse. It was just then — in 1819 — that the mas
sacre of Peterloo, as it was called, and the subse
quent action of the Government in reference to it,
interposed to give a new stimulus to popular agita
tion, and to fan again into a burning flame the
63

64 THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY
smouldering embers of popular passion. One of the
indirect results of the Government's ill-advised ac
tion was the Cato Street Conspiracy.
The conspiracy, with all its horrors, was a small
affair in itself, confined to a very limited number of
conspirators, and, until its actual outbreak, as com
pletely unknown to the vast majority of the reform
agitators as it was to the vast majority of the gen
eral and unconcerned public. Indeed, it is by no
means certain that there would have been any Cato
Street Conspiracy at all but for the working of the
abominable spy system, which was undoubtedly
abetted by the officials of the Home Office.
The first information of the existence of any such
conspiracy was given to the Home Office by a man
named Edwards, who kept a small shop at Eton.
Edwards professed to have discovered a desperate
plot for the assassination of the King's Ministers,
and indeed it may be assumed of the King himself.
The story was naturally told at once to Lord Sid
mouth, the Home Secretary; and Edwards was
promptly taken into the pay of the Home Office.
Whether Edwards actually started the conspiracy
itself it would now be impossible to say ; but it is
certain that he and other agents of a similar charac
ter did go about London and the country, wherever
they found discontented men, and whisper to them
of a tremendous plot to wreak a just vengeance on
the King's Ministers and to form a starting-point
for a great popular revolution. Very few men in
deed were foolish enough to be persuaded to join
this preposterous conspiracy; but it had from the

THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY 65
beginning, or at all events it had after the sedulous
efforts of the Government spies, the leadership of a
man named Thistlewood, the very sort of man whom
Fate and his own fault had marked out for such a
part. Thistlewood was just a type of the creature who
is found during the progress of all great popular
movements, who belongs to the dregs of the agita
tion, and is by the hand of Nature quoted and signed
to mix himself up in deeds of blood. Perhaps he
was rather a crazy fanatic than an ordinary assassin ;
but it is certain that a spirit of private vengeance
and hate urged him in his later days, much more
than any desire, however wild and incoherent, for
the emancipation of any downtrodden class. He
had been concerned in other agitations, and had
been put on his trial in one instance and acquitted.
Perhaps if he had not been crazy, he might have
been contented with the result ; but he instantly
blossomed forth into that most dangerous growth,
a man with a grievance. He took the extraordinary
course of sending a challenge to Lord Sidmouth.
Perhaps Lord Sidmouth might have done well if he
had taken no notice whatever of the challenge ; but
of course there are laws for the protection of the
Ministers of the Crown from invitations to single
combat, and Thistlewood's mock-heroic performance
was punished by a year's imprisonment. When his
time of incarceration was over, he came out a thor
oughly desperate man. He got a few creatures
about him, as ignorant and as desperate as himself,
and he initiated them into his plot, which was to
VOL. I.— 5

66 THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY
murder the Ministers, seize on the Bank, the Man
sion House, and the Tower of London, and forth
with set up a provisional government.
One of the wild fantasies among the discontented
desperadoes of that time was the notion that by capt
uring the Bank and the Mansion House and the
Tower of London they could establish a secure basis
for the construction of a new system of government
on the principle of " Down with everything! " It
seems hard to think now that even men like Thistle
wood and his little gang of conspirators could have
believed for a moment in the possibility of such a
scheme ; but Thistlewood and some of his associates
undoubtedly did believe in it, and they were for
going to work at once, and beginning with the as
sassination. Some delays, however, intervened,
amongst others the delay caused by the death of
the King and the Duke of Kent and the uncertainty
as to whether the accession of George IV. might
not rid the country of the old Tory Ministers whom
they hated. After a while the course of events
furnished them with an opportunity which seemed
to be sent by Fate for their very purpose. The
man Edwards, the spy in the pay of the Home
Office, obtained information for them that there was
to be a Cabinet dinner on the next day at the house
of Lord Harrowby. . There, then, was the whole
murder made easy. Some of the conspirators were
to watch round Lord Harrowby's house; one was
to knock at the door and send in a note while the
statesmen were at dinner, and then the conspirators
were to rush in a body through the open door and

THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY 6f
to massacre their enemies. So elaborate and so
comically dramatic were their preparations, that
some of the conspirators, it seems, came provided
with bags in which to carry away the heads of Lord
Sidmouth and Lord Castlereagh, the two men espe
cially hated by Thistlewood and most of his friends.
The whole scheme turned out a grotesque failure.
One of the conspiring gang gave Lord Harrowby
warning of what was in preparation. Lord Har
rowby showed prudence and judgment; he did not
seem to take any notice of the information given to
him, and the preparations for his dinner went on in
the natural way, only, perhaps, a little more osten
tatiously. When the hour for dining came, and the
guests did not come, the conspirators who were set
to watch the house took no notice of the fact. It
so chanced that the Archbishop of York, who lived
next door, happened to be giving a dinner party that
same evening, and some of the conspirators who
were set to keep watch on Lord Harrowby's house
were for a time puzzled and mystified by the rapid
and frequent arrival of carriages. It had been ar
ranged that, at a certain appointed hour, the men
who were to do the actual deeds of murder were to
be warned that the time was arriving, and were
to hasten to the spot. These men were now as
sembled in a stable and a room or two above it in
Cato Street, off the Edgeware Road, near Hyde
Park. By the time the conspirators entrusted with
the keeping of watch over Lord Harrowby's house
had come to make up their minds that there was to
be no Ministerial dinner there after all, it was quite

68 THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY
too late to give warning to their colleagues in Cato
Street. These colleagues had, indeed, been warned
already. The police had turned out and the soldiers
had been sent for ; but the soldiers were not prompt
in getting to the scene of action — there had been
some delay about the giving of proper orders; in
fact, it was a night of mistakes on the part alike of
authority and assassination. The police, without
the assistance of the soldiers, endeavoured to capt
ure the men in Cato Street ; but Thistlewood and
about a dozen others were able to make their escape
before the soldiers came on the ground ; and Thistle
wood stabbed one of the policemen through the
heart. When the soldiers came at last, they captured
the few remaining conspirators, some nine or ten in
number, with their weapons, their ammunition, and
no doubt the formidable bags in which the heads
of murdered Ministers were to be securely stowed
away. The London Gazette, the official publication, which
came out next morning, contained the proclamation
of a reward of ;^iooo for the capture of Thistlewood.
London was thrown for the time into profound con
sternation ; the general conviction was that the Cato
Street movement was but the first act of some vast
revolutionary organisation, which the very fact of
a first failure might render only the more ferocious
and desperate. But before the alarmed citizens had
time to get hold of the Gazette the principal con
spirator was already in the hands of those whom he
would himself probably have described as the min
ions of a despotic government. When Thistlewood

THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY 69
escaped from the garret in Cato Street, he quietly
went to the house of a friend at Moorfields, and
there got a night's lodging and betook himself to
bed. He was still unheroically slumbering when he
was aroused before eight o'clock in the morning by
the emissaries of the law, and there was an end of
the Cato Street Conspiracy.
That, at least, was the end of the conspiracy.
The conspirators had yet to be dealt with. While
they were lying in prison awaiting their trial, the
King, who had been in bad health at Brighton, sent
up for delivery his speech on the dissolution of Par
liament on the 1 8th of March. It was natural, of
course, that the King and his Ministers should make
the very most of what had happened ; but still the
passage from the speech which referred to the Cato
Street business was couched in such language as
might have been applied to some widely spread, vast
conspiracy, gravely imperilling all the best institu
tions of the country, and not to the insane and fan
tastic plot of a handful of men, wholly unsupported
by any following worth mentioning, in an obscure
corner of London. " Deeply as his Majesty laments
that designs and practices such as those you have
been recently called upon to repress should have
existed in this free and happy country, we cannot
sufficiently commend the prudence and firmness
with which you directed your attention to the means
of counteracting them." Then the speech goes on
to say: " If any doubt had remained as to the na
ture of those principles by which the peace and hap
piness of the nation were so seriously menaced, or

70 THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY
of the excesses to which they were likely to lead,
the flagrant and sanguinary conspiracy which has
lately been detected must open the eyes of the most
incredulous, and must vindicate to the whole world
the justice and expediency of those measures to
which you thought it necessary to resort in defence
of the Constitution and the laws of the kingdom."
The fact is that the kind of measures to which the
King's speech especially refers had been the very
means of driving senseless men on to the crimes
which the laws condemn. The manner in which the
Manchester meeting was dealt with, and the protec
tion which the law afforded to such measures, be
came the stimulating impulse to the crimes of which
this notorious gang were guilty. It may now be
taken as an axiom in the principles of government,
that over-repression of popular agitation inevitably
leads to conspiracy.
While Thistlewood was still in prison and untried,
an absurd plot suddenly exploded in Scotland, a
country where one might have thought there was the
least possible likelihood of a merely fantastic con
spiracy finding a home. This business began with
the posting of proclamations — no one knew by whom
they were posted — on the walls all over Glasgow,
inviting the people to prepare themselves for the
accomplishment of a revolution and commanding a
cessation of all labour. The very fact that nobody
knew who had posted the proclamations gave them
an additional importance ; everybody looked to
everybody else for explanation ; and as no one had
any explanation to give, the natural conclusion in

THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY 7 1
alarmist minds was that there must be some deeply
rooted, wide-spread revolutionary movement going
on. Nothing more terrible in the way of revolution
made itself seen than the appearance of a body of
armed men, who called on one of the Stirlingshire
Yeomanry to surrender his weapon. The man thus
challenged contrived to get back to Kilsyth, near
which the armed conspirators had made their appear
ance, and he gave the alarm. A small body of
troops was despatched, and they soon came upon
the conspirators, who refused to surrender, and fired
some shots, but were very soon disarmed and over
powered. Some of the conspirators were wounded,
and about nineteen arrests were made, and the colli
sion obtained the high-sounding name of the battle
of Bonnymuir.
Many of the unfortunate creatures who joined
in this armed movement had been deluded into
the belief that a great rebellion was coming on ;
that an army of rebels, several thousand strong,
was within hail; and that they had better, for
their own safety, take part at once with the forces
of revolution. Nothing came of the whole busi
ness, which even in those days of severity called
for no more than a light sentence on the few who
were convicted and whom it was thought worth
while to punish at all. After the battle of Bonny
muir, Scotland stood just where it did before. Yet
the alarm that was spread through the country was
as genuine and deep as it was vague and unfounded.
Miss Martineau, in her History of the Peace, has
given a description, at once amusing and instructive.

72 THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY
of the state of public feeling in many districts after
the Cato Street Conspiracy. " Those," she says,
" who are old enough to have a distinct recollection
of those times, are astonished now to think how
great was the panic which could exist without any
evidence at all; how prodigious were the Radical
forces, which were always heard of but never seen ;
how every shabby- and hungry-looking man met on
the road was pronounced a Radical; how country
gentlemen, well armed, scoured the fields and lanes,
and met on heaths to fight the enemy who never
came ; and how, even in the midst of towns, young
ladies carried heavy planks and ironing-boards to
barricade windows, in preparation for sieges from
thousands of rebels, whose footfall was long listened
for in vain, through the darkness of the night."
Miss Martineau winds up her description by telhng
us how this imaginary state of the times was used
by the alarmists as an argument against popular
education, among other purposes to which it was
turned, the plea being that the leaders of the Radi
cals, having circulated proclamations, must be able
to write, and that this fact sufficiently proved the
necessity of keeping the discontented dumb.
On the 20th of April, Thistlewood and four of
his accomplices were found guilty and condemned
to death. Their trial had lasted three days, and the
trial only made it more and more clear that the con
spiracy had been confined to a very limited number
of half-crazy creatures. On the ist of May, Thistle
wood and the other four were executed. The in
former Edwards, who had done so much to get up

THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY 73
the conspiracy, was never punished, and was never
even brought to trial. Some attempts were made
in the House of Commons to press the Government
into a prosecution of this man, and the subject, in
deed, was brought forward more than once; those
who pressed for the prosecution undertaking to pro
duce ample evidence to prove his connection with
the plot. The Government, however, would do
nothing in the matter, and Edwards, to use a phrase
of Carlyle's, " drops through the tissue of our his
tory." It is of importance to dwell at some length
on that story of the Cato Street Conspiracy. From
that day to the present, what a distance we have
traversed ! Not for half a century has any serious
charge been made against a Ministry of actually
having fomented seditions by the aid of hired agents
for the mere purpose of suppressing the movements
and dealing heavy punishment to their leaders, and
thus striking terror among the discontented, and
forcing them to believe that they had better bear
their sufferings in private and in silence than bring
down the vengeance of the law by any public agita
tion of their wrongs. It cannot be doubted by any
calm observer that the policy of Lord Liverpool and
Lord Sidmouth and the Six Acts were moving
agents in the creation of that force of public opinion
which carried the first great Reform Bill through the
English Parliament.
Many years after the date of Peterloo and Cato
Street and the battle of Bonnymuir, Lord John
Russell, who conducted that Reform Bill through
the House of Commons, spoke in a passage of sin-

74 THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY
gular eloquence and wisdom against the futility and
the folly of endeavouring to prevent agitation by
the force of stern legal repression. He showed
that agitation springs from grievance; that the
grievance is sometimes too strong for men to bear
in silence; and he quoted from the immortal pas
sage in Romeo and Juliet, in which the starving
apothecary is asked, ' ' Art thou so bare and full
of wretchedness, and fearest to die ? " is reminded
that " the world is not thy friend, nor the world's
law," and is therefore bidden to "be not poor,
but break it." Such, indeed, would naturally have
been the spirit of every appeal addressed by each
Thistlewood, and, lower still, by each Edwards, to
the ignorant, starving men whom they got to listen
to them. " The world's law is not thy friend ; then
be not poor, but break it." The time was fast
coming when thinking men in England would recog
nise that the cure for crime is to be found not in the
suppression, but in the extension, of popular educa
tion; and that the best strength of a good con
stitution is found in the fact that the poorest and
humblest citizen has some share in the making of
the law. The more we consider the state of the
laws at the time with which we have just been deal
ing, the greater will be our surprise, not at the
amount of discontent and disorder and even crime
which was made manifest in political hfe, but rather
at the general forbearance of the people, the integ
rity and discretion of most of their leaders, and
the comparative quietness with which the time
of trial was got over, which connected the era of

THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY 75
order and reform with the era of repression and
disorder. The popular agitation at last took the shape of a
definite movement in favour of parliamentary reform.
The subject had come up again and again, in a fitful
sort of way, both in Parliament and outside it, and
indeed it sometimes happened that leaders of the
movement appeared in Parliament at a time when
there were comparatively few followers outside.
Something, however, was always happening to turn
men's minds away from the subject. There were
foreign wars ; there were dynastic troubles ; there
were the deaths of sovereigns from whom nothing
in the direction of reform could be hoped ; and the
coming up of new sovereigns from whom something
was hoped for a time, until the hope became gradu
ally doomed to extinction.
Parliament was supposed, so far at least as the
House of Commons was concerned, to be in theory
a representative assembly. But, even in theory, it
was for a long time the representative of the sov
ereign and not of the people. The idea appeared to
be that the monarch should select the places which
he considered qualified for the right to send mem
bers to the House of Commons. The selections
were made in the most arbitrary and haphazard
fashion ; were frequently made according to the per
sonal favour of the ruler; and sometimes, even when
the concession seemed given fairly enough in the
first instance, the changing conditions made it wholly
inapplicable and unsuitable for a future generation.
The king, for example, gave the right of representa-

76 THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY
tion to some place of considerable importance at the
time. Years went on, and, owing to local circum
stances, the population dwindled and shrank, and at
length became but a mere handful of inhabitants.
Yet the right to send in representatives was left to
these places all the same. It seemed to have be
come a sort of right and title by reason of habitude,
and by reason of the fact that no one was greatly in
terested in challenging the authority of the king to
let the representation remain wherever any of his
predecessors had conferred it.
The anomalies in the counties were not so great,
because a county population often remains very
much the same from one generation to another.
But in the case of towns and villages the law of
change was incessantly asserting itself, and some
times in the most fantastic manner. A town or
large village had received the right of sending re
presentatives to the House of Commons. At the
time when the right was conferred the place had a
considerable population ; and if we concede, as no
one now would dream of conceding, the right of
the sovereign to designate suitable places for repre
sentation, the claim of this particular place may
seem to be fairly established. But for some reason
or other the trade of the town or village fell off;
the inhabitants looked for other places in which
there seemed a better chance of making a decent
living; and the region became almost as deserted
as Goldsmith's village. In many instances the con
stituency, if we may call it so, disappeared so com
pletely that only the owner of the soil remained.

THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY yy
and he calmly continued to send in his representa
tive to the House of Commons. Nobody took the
trouble to oppose him. It was difficult to get up
any impressive agitation about that one particular
anomaly, and no definite scheme of constitutional
reform had yet been put together and brought be
fore the public.
One famous illustration of this condition of things
became an effective argument in favour of reform
at a day a little later, which we shall have to deal
with more fully after a while, when a definite Re
form Bill was brought forward in the House of
Commons. During the debates on that question
the representative of a place called Ludgershall,
himself a sincere reformer, attracted much atten
tion by the brief and effective manner in which he
dealt with the question. He said: "I am the
owner of Ludgershall, I am the constituency of
Ludgershall, I am the representative of Ludgershall,
and in each capacity I demand the disfranchisement
of Ludgershall."
One of the most famous places which were made
conspicuous at that time was the borough of Old
Sarum. Every reader who has even dipped into
the history of those times must have met over and
over again with allusions to such boroughs as Gat-
ton and Old Sarum. Either case would answer
as an argument for the present purpose; but we
take the case of Old Sarum as being perhaps, on
the whole, the more picturesque of the two. Old
Sarum was a town in Wiltshire ; it stood on Salis
bury Plain, in the very shadow of the majestic

78 THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY
ruins of Stonehenge, to which travellers from all
ends of the earth make pilgrimage to-day. Old
Sarum was authorised to send representatives to
Parliament in the time of Edward I. The right of
representation was renewed in the reign of Edward
IIL, and from that time it remained until the reform
agitation took distinct and practical shape in 1830;
but in the meanwhile the town of Old Sarum itself
had gradually disappeared. A New Sarum was
arising under happier auspices a few miles away,
around the noble walls and spire of Salisbury Cathe
dral: for the New Sarum of a former day is the
thriving city of Sahsbury to-day. Old Sarum, how
ever, or at least the owner of the soil, manfully stuck
to the right of sending representatives to the House
of Commons. Travellers who go to visit Stonehenge
at the present day are often taken a little out of
their direct course in order that they may be shown
the few evidences that yet remain of the existence of
Old Sarum, the few faint traces that are left to prove
that once upon a time there was a town or village
on the spot which had the right of sending men to
represent it in Parliament. For years and for gen
erations the men who sat in Parliament for the
borough of Old Sarum represented nothing but the
bare soil and the will of a landed proprietor.
It may at first seem incredible that such a state of
things could have existed in England in the memo
ries of men who are still living; but the actual
fact is beyond dispute. In the meanwhile, new con
ditions of things were arising all over the country :
trade and manufactures were growing here, there.

THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY

79

and everywhere ; England was gradually ceasing to
be essentially an agricultural country, and was be
coming a country of commerce and of manufactured
goods ; great towns were rising up in different parts
of the island, full of life and bustle and energy,
where workmen were employed by hundreds, and
capital was invested to an immense amount ; where
crowded streets and busy shops told their story of
growing and spreading prosperity. Many of these
towns had no representation whatever in Parliament,
while the empty spaces of Ludgershall and Old
Sarum had men to speak for them in the great
national chamber of debate. The fact was, that the
whole parliamentary system had come to a deadlock ;
it was no longer practicable for the sovereign to
create constituencies wherever he thought fit ; the
time had passed for such an act of initiative on
the part of the monarch ; and on the other hand, the
time had not yet come when the reform movement
had become strong enough to set to work at undoing
the errors of the past and introducing a rational and
symmetrical system of parliamentary representation.
Thus it came about that at least two-thirds of the
numbers of men who sat in the House of Commons
were the mere nominees of peers or great landlords.
These owners of the soil, to quote the words of a
modern writer, " owned their boroughs and their
members, just as they owned their parks and their
cattle." " Have I not a right to do what I like
with my own ? " was the argument of a powerful
peer, even after Old Sarum had been extinguished ;
and in this demand he was asserting his right to

8o THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY
nominate anyone he pleased as representative of
the constituency wherein he was lord of the soil.
One duke had the right of returning eleven members
to Parliament; another had to be content with
nominating only nine. As a matter of course, par
liamentary seats were openly bought and sold.
There were some cases in which the right of repre
sentation was offered for sale by public advertise
ment. Thus, therefore, there were two gross anomalies
brought into striking contrast. On the one side of
the field there were a number of absolutely empty
spaces endowed with the right of sending mem
bers to the House of Commons; and on the other
side there were populous and thriving towns and
cities which had no legal claim whatever to parha
mentary representation. It was obviously impossi
ble that such a state of things could long continue
in a country like England, which was growing more
every day into civilisation ; but it cannot be doubted
that the French Revolution had, for a time, a
disheartening effect, even upon some most earnest
advocates of a rational scheme of reform. Be
sides these outrageous anomalies, as we may fairly
call them, the whole electoral system was full of the
grossest abuses. When a contest took place in a
borough, that is, in a borough which had any popu
lation and any voters to contest, the polling was
allowed at one time to go on for six weeks, and only
towards the close of the century was the time-limit
reduced to fifteen days. Bribery of the grossest
kind was allowed to go on without anyone thinking

THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY 8 1
of interfering. The cost of a severe contest was so
great that nobody but a rich man, or at all events a
man with rich backers, could possibly think of
undertaking to stand for a constituency, no matter
what his merits or his cause.
VOL. I.— 6

'^^M^P^

CHAPTER VI
GEORGE CANNING
AMONG the rising names of statesmen in the
early part of the century the greatest name
was undoubtedly that of George Canning. The
men who have hitherto been mentioned in these
pages were, for the most part, men who had won
their fame before the century began, such men as
Pitt and Fox and Burke. But the career of Can
ning belongs almost altogether to the story of the
nineteenth century. Canning was the son of a liter
ary man who was supposed to have gifts, or at all
events promises, as a writer ; but the highly respect
able family to which he belonged regarded literature
as a decidedly ungentlemanly, if not disreputable,
sort of occupation ; and the elder Canning was there
fore edged out of the circle with a very stinted in
come to maintain him, and had to supplement the
income by various experiments which nearly all
proved to be unsuccessful. He tried to be an
author, and did not succeed ; he was caUed to the
bar and endeavoured to get on as an advocate, but
without success ; he even tried, it is certain, to be a
wine merchant, but the public did not show any
82

RIGHT HON. GEORGE CANNING, M.P.
From a bust by F. Chantrey, R. A., in the National Portrait Gallery.

GEORGE CANNING 83
anxiety to consume his wines, and he died early, a
disappointed and broken-spirited man. His widow,
a very beautiful woman, was encouraged to believe
that she had some talent for acting, and she accord
ingly, driven by the necessity of having to make a
hving for herself and her son, took to the stage. She
played in London, but without marked success, and
after a while had to be content with theatrical tours
in the provinces, until at last she married an actor,
and dropped out of history. Her career on the stage
is chiefly to be remembered because of the obloquy
it brought upon her illustrious son, George Canning.
While Canning was slowly rising into great repu
tation as an orator and statesman, and even when
he had reached the very zenith of his fame, his
enemies had no worse accusation to make against
him than to remind the world that he was the
son of an actress. The father of Mrs. Siddons
insisted at one time that his daughter must not
marry an actor. Like Prospero's daughter, she
broke his hest. She married Mr. Siddons, who
was on the stage, and when her father remonstrated
with her she smilingly excused herself on the ground
that no one could regard Mr. Siddons as an actor.
In the same spirit Canning might, if he had thought
it fitting to notice such a taunt in any way, have
contended that his mother was not an actress, either
by profession or by vocation. Had Mrs. Canning
been really a great actress, her son would no doubt
have felt proud of her genius; but much of the sting
in the taunt levelled against him was contained in
the statement, constantly made, that his mother was

84 GEORGE CANNING
only a member of a travelling stock company.
Manners have so much altered since that time that
it seems hard now to understand how the enemies
of a great public man could stoop to make it a
charge against him, that his mother had tried to
earn a living when widowed and penniless by acting
on the stage. It is certain, however, that some of
the most distinguished and proudly placed of Can
ning's political enemies did degrade themselves by
constantly talking of him as the son of an actress.
It is certain, too, that in his heart he bitterly re
sented such whispered insults. Canning, as it has
been well said, was a man far too sensitive for his
own happiness, and his enemies knew of his sensi
tiveness and practised upon it accordingly.
George Canning was born in England, and his
education was undertaken by his father's brother, a
rich merchant, who no doubt was anxious to repair
in some measure to the son for the unkindness shown
to the father, and he was sent to Eton and to Ox
ford. He studied for the bar ; but his political gifts
and his power of speech soon drew on him the at
tention of all who came in his way. Sheridan, who
was a relative of Canning's mother, introduced him
to Fox and Burke and Charles Grey. Canning cul
tivated assiduously, meanwhile, the art of public
speaking, and he obtained a seat in Parhament in
1793. He had a singularly handsome and graceful
person, fine features, and a noble forehead, and a
voice which lent itself to high oratorical effort. It
became a sort of fashion of speech at one time to
compliment rising young men by declaring that

GEORGE CANNING 85
their appearance was like that of Mr. Canning.
Most, even of his own close associates, assumed that
when Canning went into Parliament he would at
once take the position of a Whig, and rank himself
with the opponents of the Tories. But Canning
was at this time and for long after strongly under
the influence of Pitt, to whom, indeed, he owed in
great measure his first chance of obtaining a seat in
the House of Commons; and also under the influ
ence of Lord Liverpool, by whom it is said that he
was first introduced to Pitt, and who had been a
close friend of his at Oxford.
Canning made himself conspicuous for a long
time, principally as a dashing and daring assailant of
the Opposition. He even stood up to Fox himself,
with a courage that perhaps only youth can satis
factorily explain. If Canning had any deliberate
personal purpose in the course he took, it was pos
sibly the result of a conviction that a man cannot
begin too early in striving to make an impression by
any means on the House of Commons. Without
genuine ability to back it, this sort of policy is sure
to be a failure ; but it may turn out to be a success
if it is employed as a means of challenging attention
to a capacity for public utterance which might other
wise remain unnoticed until some great opportunity
came. The sensitiveness of Canning's nature might
make it seem unlikely that such a man could adopt
such a policy for the mere sake of making himself
conspicuous in Parliament, and yet we all know that
very sensitive natures do often exist with a daring
ambition and an undismayed courage.

86 GEORGE CANNING
Canning was probably pursuing in the House of
Commons the training to which he had subjected
himself for long before in the political clubs and
debating societies. In any case, he does not seem to
have quite made up his mind in his early days as
to the precise political opinions with which he was
to identify his career. He supported Pitt, for ex
ample, in the great debates on the question of the
Parliamentary Union with Ireland ; but it was ob
served at the time that he carefully avoided com
mitting himself to any views with regard to the
Cathohc claims, although the refusal of the Cathohc
claims was the cause of the Rebelhon of 1798, and
that rebellion was made the excuse for the Act of
Union, which was carried in great measure by Pitt's
implied promises that when the Union was carried
something would be done to satisfy the Catholic
demand. In fact, for a long time. Canning acted
as the regular champion of Pitt in the House of
Commons, and outside its doors as well.
He started, in conjunction with one or two political
friends, the famous Anti-Jacobin newspaper, a paper
intended to hold up to ridicule all the doctrines of
the French Revolution and of its admirers in this
country. Canning was a master of brilliant political
sarcasm, and there can be no doubt that the Anti-
Jacobin became quite a power in its day. The
basis of the satire was easy enough. It simply as
sumed that every public man who hoped for peace
with France, and who talked even in the mildest
way of putting any possible faith in the leaders of
the French people, must be a thorough-going sym-

1

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1

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i

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GEORGE GROTE.
From a painting by Thomas Stewardson, in the National Portrait Gallery.
GEORGE CANNING 87
pathiser with the sentiments of the Jacobin Club in
Paris, the club to which Danton and Robespierre
belonged ; must be the uncompromising enemy of
the Throne, the Altar, and the aristocracy ; must be
a devotee of the supposed rights of man ; must con
sider the horny-handed mechanic as the natural lord
of creation; must regard education as the enemy of
enlightenment, and religion as the opponent of
virtue. Such were the genial assumptions on which
the Anti-Jacobin was conducted. It must be owned
that its satirical touches make bright reading, even
still, and the time has yet to come, and is probably
far distant, when the House of Commons is no longer
to be regaled by citations from the " Ballad of the
Needy Knife-Grinder. " Among those who co
operated with Canning in the production of the
Anti-Jacobin was Hookham Frere, Canning's old
associate, who was afterwards his parliamentary
colleague and worked with him and under him in
more than one Ministry.
Canning had almost avowedly entered Parliament
with the view of becoming a Minister of the Crown,
and his chance was not long postponed ; for in the
spring of 1796 he became Under-Secretary of State
for Foreign Affairs. Mr. Disraeli, in one of his
novels, has laid it down as a law that an Under-
Secretary for Foreign Affairs whose chief is in the
House of Lords is " master of the situation." This
was Canning's position, and he was undoubtedly well
qualified to be master of the situation. In 1807 he
became Secretary for Foreign Affairs. The splen
dour of his career displayed itself almost altogether

88 GEORGE CANNING
in his foreign policy. The higher his position, the
greater his influence, the more conspicuous became
his capacity for developing a foreign policy best
calculated to maintain the peace and the honour of
his own country, and to discourage war and the
policy that leads to war. In 1822 he was appointed
Viceroy of India, and was actually on the eve of
departure when the suicide of Lord Londonderry
called him back to the Foreign Office.
The artificial arrangements made by the Congress
of Vienna and by the Holy Alliance were already
beginning to break up. This was only what any
intelligent man, not to say any statesman, might
have confidently anticipated ; but it does not appear
to have been anticipated in the least by any of the
continental statesmen who were in office, and was
expected, indeed, by very few statesmen in Eng
land. The continental sovereigns went on as if
their powers were destined to endure for ever. The
faintest grumblings on the part of any of their sub
jects only provoked new measures of repression. The
immediate result was that Spain was in a state of
revolution ; that along the banks of the great Ger
man rivers the young men were forming themselves
into associations for the spread of liberty ; that even
in Vienna itself the Emperor of Austria found it
hard to keep down revolt ; and that in Poland the
Emperor of Russia's brother, the Grand Duke Con
stantine, whose memory is still execrated by all
patriotic Poles, was employing measures of the most
atrocious severity to crush the spirit of the kingdom ;
while already keen observers could see that a struggle

GEORGE CANNING 89
was in preparation for the rescue of Italy from the
bondage in which she had been cast by the Allied
Sovereigns. There was in Germany at that time a popular
dramatist named Kotzebue, some of whose plays
were once very popular in England, and in adapted
form and in English translation held their place on
our stage for a long time, although one of them was
satirised by James and Horace Smith in The Re
jected Addresses, and by Thackeray in Pendennis,
Kotzebue had held several offices under Russia, and
was suspected, and indeed was known, to be in the
habit of sending frequent letters to the Emperor of
Russia; and it was understood that the object of the
letters was to direct the Emperor's attention to the
movement going on among the students all over
Prussia in favour of national liberty and independ
ence. A young fanatic of the time, a Jena student,
named Sand, driven to frenzy by what he had heard
of Kotzebue's doings, gave with his own hand the
unhappy poet a death more tragic than any de
scribed in the poet's own gloomiest drama. Sand
was tried, found guilty, and sent to execution at
once, and his death was made the occasion for a
great popular demonstration in honour of his mem
ory. Of course, no one could attempt to justify the
murder committed by Sand; but such deeds often
come as the warning to tell despotic rulers that
people are growing impatient of their rule. No
warning, however, was taken by the sovereigns of
the Continent, whose only idea, boyond immediate
measures of repression, was to get together another

90 GEORGE CANNING
European Congress, in order to obtain sanction and
support for their despotic sway. " Quick! a con
gress," wrote the French poet B^ranger, " two —
three — congresses — four, five, six congresses," and
so he went on in some spirited verses to ridicule the
folly of those who believed that a whole continent
of peoples could be kept in order by the dictates of a
meeting of crowned conspirators. It was therefore
arranged that a Congress should be held at Verona,
and England was invited to take part in the assembly
and to send her representative to assist in guiding
its councils.
Castlereagh, Lord Londonderry, would naturally
have been the man chosen by England for such a
purpose ; but Londonderry was gone, and it was re
solved to send no less a person than the Duke of
Wellington in his place. The Duke was naturally
the man most welcome to the continental sover
eigns whom England could possibly send to take
part in such a meeting. But for his mihtary genius
a Bourbon king would not have been on the throne
of France, and the arrangements of the Congress of
Vienna could never have been undertaken. The
Duke of Wellington had no particular foreign policy
of his own, although it must be remembered that he
had wisely refrained from pledging his Government
to the principles of the Holy AUiance. The conti
nental sovereigns, however, believed that in the mere
nomination of the Duke of Welhngton they had
the best guarantee of England's sympathy, approval,
and support.
The object for which the Congress was ostenta-

GEORGE CANNING 9 1
tiously summoned was not, however, in the first in
stance, to deal with anything but the condition of
Greece, and to prevent, if possible, a war between
Russia and Turkey. The Duke of Welhngton,
meanwhile, was informed by a French statesman
that the condition of Spain would also be brought
under the notice of the Congress ; and the Duke of
Wellington, who had just arrived in Paris, wrote
home to Canning for instructions as to the course he
was to pursue. Canning had been only a few days
in office; but he soon made up his mind. He had
never had much doubt that the Congress would seek
to deal with subjects which came nearer to the
hearts of most of the sovereigns than the condition
of struggling Greece.
Canning sent a reply to the Duke of Wellington,
the important part of which deserves quotation as a
document of the greatest moment, a proclamation
of the new era which Canning was introducing into
the foreign pohcy of England. " If," wrote Can
ning, " there be a determined project to interfere by
force or by menace in the present struggle in Spain,
so convinced are his Majesty's Government of the
uselessness and danger of any such interference, so
objectionable does it appear to them in principle,
as well as impracticable in execution, that when the
necessity arises, or, I would rather say, when the
opportunity offers, I am to instruct your Grace at
once frankly and peremptorily to declare that to any
such interference, come what may, his Majesty will
not be a party." The result of these instructions
was decisive. France, through her representative.

92 GEORGE CANNING
strongly argued for an interference with the Spanish
Revolution by force of arms, and insisted that the
condition of France herself was unsafe while only
the Pyrenees divided her from the forward move
ment in Spain. But France might plead as she
would. The instructions given by Canning to the
Duke of Wellington made England's purpose too
plain to be mistaken ; and the baffled Sovereigns did
not venture to pass any resolution in favour of any
interference in Spanish affairs. Canning never had
the slightest belief in the policy of governing Europe
by means of congresses.
There were, then, two great principles in direct op
position — the principle of those who believed that a
set of European kings had only to get together, and
agree, in order to make their decrees a command to
the civilised world ; and the principle of those who
believed, with Canning, that the affairs of each
country can only in the end be settled by its inhab
itants. Here, then, was the actual parting of the
ways. Canning had laid down a policy which was
absolutely new at the time, but which became, with
some slight and fitful deviations, the settled foreign
policy of England. Canning himself would un
doubtedly have preferred, on the whole, to send no
Enghsh representative to the Congress of Verona;
but he thought so sharp a decision might be unwise
at such a moment ; and he beheved that he could
better attain his own ends by the course which he
actually adopted. His own great objects were two
in number. The first was to keep his own country,
and if possible all other countries, at peace ; and his

GEORGE CANNING 93
minor and more immediate object was the practical
dissolution of the Holy Alliance. It is not too much
to say that George Canning was the first Minister for
England's foreign affairs who ever set up that policy
of peace. His apprehensions as to the purpose of
the Congress of Verona were only too soon justified.
It was made known that the French army was to be
sent into Spain to assist the Spanish Bourbon King
in abolishing the Constitution and crushing all
Spaniards who opposed his measures. The Duke
of Wehington followed the instructions of his chief,
as, to render him only justice, he always did : he
offered his strong remonstrance ; he made known the
determination of England as set forth by Canning;
and he withdrew from the Congress. Canning clearly
saw what the course of action threatened with regard
to Spain meant as regarded other countries. It was
a menace to Portugal, which might be expected to
join with Spain in repelling the French invasion;
and it was a menace also to Spain's South American
Colonies. On the 14th of April, 1823, Canning proclaimed
his policy to the House of Commons. He insisted
that if Portugal at her own choice and at her own
risk assisted Spain in repelling the French, there
was no occasion for England's intervention; but he
declared that if Portugal should remain quiescent,
and should nevertheless be attacked by France, that
attack would bring Great Britain into the field with
all her force to support the independence of her
ancient and faithful ally. So far as the South
American Colonies were concerned. Canning made

94 GEORGE CANNING
known the policy of England in the frankest and
most explicit language. " It was clear," he said,
" that Spain, though claiming them as hers by right,
had, in fact, lost all power and influence over them.
If the expected war were to break out, and France
should, as one of the events of that war, invade and
take possession of any of them, so that it might be
come a question whether the colonies should be
ceded, and to whom ; then it was of importance for
the world to know that the British Government
considered the separation of the South American
Colonies from Spain to have been effected so com
pletely that England would not admit for an instant
any claim on the part of Spain to hand over to
another Power any of those colonies which had
ceased to be under her direct and positive influ
ence." In other words, the British Government
regarded the South American Colonies as no longer
belonging to Spain ; but England did not feel
charged with securing their independence. If, how
ever, Spain were to proceed to the cession of any of
those colonies to some foreign Power, England would
feel bound to interfere ; and to such a declaration
Canning added, " the British Government had at
last been forced." Canning carried his policy by
a triumphant majority — an overwhelming majority
— in the House of Commons.
One passage of a famous speech delivered by
Canning in Plymouth has already become classic in
our language. It has been quoted again and again,
but it will bear quotation once more, if only to show
the peculiar power and grace of Canning's eloquence.

GEORGE CANNING 95
Canning had been declaring that the ultimate object
of his Government and of himself was to maintain
the peace of the world ; but he utterly repudiated the
idea that " we cultivate peace either because we
fear or because we are unprepared for war. The re
sources created by peace are the means of war. In
cherishing these resources we but accumulate those
means. Our present repose is no more a proof of
inability to act than the state of inertness and in
activity in which I have seen those mighty masses
that float in the waters above your town is a proof
that they are devoid of strength and incapable of
being fitted for action. You well know how soon
one of these stupendous masses now reposing on
their shadows in perfect stillness, how soon upon
any call of patriotism or of necessity, it would as
sume the likeness of an animated thing, instinct
with life and motion, how soon it would ruffle, as it
were, its swelhng plumage, how quickly it would
put forth all its beauty and its bravery, collect its
scattered elements of strength, and awaken its dor
mant thunder. Such as is one of those magnificent
machines when springing from inaction into a dis
play of its might — such is England herself, while
apparently passive and motionless she silently con
centrates the power to be put forth on an adequate
occasion." The French invaded Spain, and soon entered
Madrid. The Spanish Liberal party had few re
sources; and had, as was natural, many differences
of opinion among themselves as to the extent to
which resistance might be carried, and the direction

96 GEORGE CANNING
which resistance might most effectually take. Some
of the Spanish leaders were summarily hanged ; the
Spanish King, by proclamation, abolished the Con
stitution, and reduced, so far as a royal declaration
could do it, the whole nation into a system of serf
dom to a despotic Government. Then the French
Government, flushed with such a success, actually
made it known that the next step was to be the con
quest, on behalf of Spain, of the insurgent colonies
in South America.
Then came the moment for Canning to back up
his former declaration ; and he did so with an em
phasis that could not be mistaken. " It could not,"
he declared, " be now permitted that France should
carry the war across the Atlantic, and should recon
quer for Spain and hand back to Spain those colonies
over which Spain had no longer any power of her
own." " We will not," said Canning, " interfere
with Spain in any attempt which she may make to
reconquer for herself what were once her colonies ;
but we will not permit any third Power to attack or
reconquer them for her." The announcement of
this declaration sent a chill to the hearts of all the
Ministers of the French and Spanish Bourbons. To
that policy Canning adhered, as everyone might
have known that he would ; and the first step to
make it a reality was taken when it was announced
to Spain that British Consuls would be sent to the
South American Colonies to protect the interests of
British trade and traders there. The Consuls were
appointed and despatched, and this was, in point
of fact, the recognition by Great Britain of the

GEORGE CANNING 97
independence of the South American Colonies.
Defending his policy in the House of Commons,
Canning made use of some words which are never
likely to be forgotten on this or the other side of the
Atlantic. Contemplating Spain, he said, " such as
our ancestors had known her, I resolved that if
France had Spain it should not be Spain with the
Indies. I called the New World into existence to
redress the balance of the Old."
This was exactly what Canning had done. The
famous Monroe Doctrine, which has sometimes been
criticised very flippantly and very ignorantly in this
country, was, in fact, the inspiration of George Can
ning. When Canning said that he had called the
New World into existence to redress the balance of
the Old, he was speaking not merely of the South
American Colonies; he had also in his mind the
great Republic of the United States. Canning had
represented to President Monroe that it would be of
immense advantage to the purposes of England and
to the peace of the world if the United States were
to announce a policy which repudiated the right of
any European state to set up a monarchical gov
ernment in any part of America without the consent
of the inhabitants who were to be subjected to that
government. President Monroe welcomed the idea,
and proclaimed the doctrine that America could not
look on with indifference when a foreign sovereign
endeavoured to set up a kingdom of his own on
American soil without the consent of the popula
tion. So curiously misunderstood has been this
Monroe Doctrine that writers have often asked in
VOL. I.— 7

98 GEORGE CANNING
this country why the United States do not attempt
to apply the principle to British Canada, and why
they did not apply it to the Empire of Brazil. One
might have thought the explanation obvious. When
the United States had accomplished their independ
ence, they found the population of Canada forming
a willing and loyal colony, as they long had been,
under the British Crown. When the Brazilian
Colonies were changed into an empire, the United
States saw that the change was made with the per
fect consent of the Brazilian population. These
cases had nothing to do with the Monroe Doctrine.
The United States had never had the least idea of
asserting any right to prevent independent countries
in South America, or colonies in North, from setting
up or continuing any form of government which
suited their feelings and their interests. When,
much later on, Louis Napoleon, then Emperor of
the French, went about to set up a sort of vassal
empire in Mexico with a vassal sovereign of his
own nomination, the United States, then in the
midst of their tremendous Civil War, warned him
again and again that such a policy could not be
tolerated ; and when the Civil War was over made
it known to him distinctly that he must withdraw
the French troops from Mexico or take the conse
quences. Hehad no choice; he withdrew his troops
from Mexico; the Mexican Empire instantly van
ished ; and the unhappy Maximilian, the weak,
well-meaning instrument of Napoleon's ambitious
scheme, lost his life in consequence. But no one
can suppose that the Government of the United

GEORGE CANNING 99
States would have employed forcible intervention if
it had merely occurred to the minds of the Mexican
people to convert their President into a so-called
Emperor. Canning had fulfilled his words ; he had
called in the New World to redress the balance of
the Old.
A veteran member of the House of Lords, who
was in Canning's time a member of the House of
Commons, had the good fortune to be present when
Canning made his famous declaration. Many years
ago he told a friend of the present writer that even
while the memorable words were passing through
Canning's lips there was a doubt among a consider
able portion of the members whether the words were
to be a climax or an anti-climax. There was a dis
position, at first, to think that Canning was likely to
spoil, by what seemed to be a rhetorical conceit, the
effect of his previous magnificent sentences. Some
were already almost inchned to smile ; but the elo
quence and the earnestness of the orator swept all
before them ; and the concluding words of the pass
age became a climax as thrilling as the House of
Commons had ever known, and their effect was
recorded by a burst of applause again and again
repeated. More than once it has happened with a
great parliamentary orator that there is a moment
of doubt whether one of his splendid passages is to
be a success or a failure, whether he is to lift the
House to his own level, or to find it fall away from
him and beneath him and so miss his best effect.
Something of the kind is told of a magnificent pass
age in one of John Bright's speeches against the

ICO GEORGE CANNING
policy of the Crimean War. There was a moment
when some of his audience feared that his idea and
the words that clothed it would pass over the heads
of the members and so be misprized ; and an intense
feeling of relief came when it soon was found that
the arrow had gone straight to its mark in the intel
lects and the hearts of the listeners.
France had nothing more to say to the reconquest
of the South American Colonies. Canning had pro
claimed a new foreign policy for England. The
Holy Alliance was an empty name thenceforth ; and
all that remained for the Congress of Vienna was
that the world should see its work breaking up and
disappearing fragment after fragment. Canning's
policy, in fact, closed the era of congresses like
those of Vienna and Verona. No doubt we have
had congresses since that time, like the Congress of
Paris and like the Congress of Berlin; but these
have been councils summoned together after a great
war to make some arrangement as to the results of
the war. They have sadly bungled their business
sometimes, and have gone beyond the reasonable
sphere of their duties, but they have not attempted
to reconstruct the map of Europe, or to decide in
arbitrary fashion for the population of any country
what sort of government it is to accept at their hands.
The policy of Canning gave a new direction and set up
new limits for the whole foreign policy of England.
We are far from saying that England has never
since that time deviated from the course of policy
marked out by Canning. It would be hard, for in
stance, to contend that the policy which brought

GEORGE CANNING Id
England into the Crimean War was in accordance
with Canning's great principle. But, after all, the
course of action in politics can never be as definite,
never can carry with it so obvious and so inevitable
a meaning, as an axiom in arithmetic or mathe
matics. Where political life is concerned there is
always, or almost always, an opportunity for differ
ent observers to judge from a different point of view,
and then we have to make allowance for the gusts
of national passion which sometimes drive the State
vessel from her moorings and force her at a sudden
and untimely moment to brave the ocean and the
rocks. But the policy of Canning is undoubtedly
that which on the whole has governed English
statesmanship from that time; and to which that
statesmanship, though it may drift away now and
then, is always certain to return.
Canning did not set up any doctrine of absolute
non-intervention, such as a few great Englishmen
at a later period would have desired that their
country should adopt. Canning would not have
limited the pohcy of England, even if such hmita
tion were possible at his day, to a concern simply
with her own domestic affairs. He was a lover of
peace ; and his policy was always directed towards
the maintenance of peace; but he never was in
favour of the principle which, at a later day, was
often contemptuously and often unjustly described
as " peace at any price." There was a great deal
to be said for the preaching of that doctrine, even
when preached to its fullest extent ; but it was never
pushed in this country by such men as Cobden and

I02 GEORGE CANNING
Bright, for example, to the extent of an argument
that England must submit to anything rather than
draw a sword or fire a cannon.
What men like Cobden and Bright contended for
was that the policy of England ought to concern
itself, as a rule, with the welfare of our own popula
tions, in the first instance ; and that when we inter
vened in the affairs of foreign countries we were
almost certain to do so with an imperfect knowledge
of conditions beyond our actual experience, and we
were likely to bring more harm than good, in the
end, even to those whose cause we had endeavoured
to benefit. Canning went quite as far as Cobden
or Bright could have done, in condemning wars for
mere annexation of territory or for imposing on a
foreign state the political systems which we had
found to work successfully at home. But Canning
distinctly admitted the principle that occasions
might arise when it would be necessary for England
to intervene, although in a quarrel which in nowise
concerned the interests of her own people, in order
to defend a weak ally against wanton and cruel
aggression, or to prevent a movement which we our
selves had fostered for national freedom in some
foreign state from being crushed by the wanton
intervention of some Power as foreign to the move
ment as we ourselves, and intervening on the wrong
side. This, except for one or two occasional and
lamentable infractions of the principle, has been the
policy of England since Canning's time, a policy of
general, but not absolute, non-intervention in the
struggles of the European Continent.

GEORGE CANNING IO3
A man in private life adopts a certain resolution
as a guidance for his conduct: he is perhaps led
away by sudden emergency or sudden alarm to de
viate from it; but when the moment of alarm or
confusion is over, he returns to it, and makes it his
rule of life again, and faithfully adheres to it. Of
such a man it would be only fair and just to say that
he made that principle the general guidance of his
life. It is so with the foreign policy of England
since Canning's time. The country has, on the
whole, adhered to Canning's policy ; nor is it possible
for us to think of any serious reaction against that
policy being encouraged or allowed by English
statesmanship. We may take it for granted that
every succeeding generation will strengthen the
hold of Canning's policy over the intellects and
the hearts of public men in these countries and of
the populations without whose support public men
must cease to have control or influence. Therefore
it is only uttering the merest commonplace to say
that the career of Canning as Foreign Minister made
a new epoch in England's foreign policy.
Many critics at the time and many readers of a
later generation have sometimes found fault with
Canning's speeches, on the ground that they were
not inspired by any passionate enthusiasm for the
cause of popular freedom. Even when he con
demned the Holy Alliance and dictated the policy
under which the Holy Alliance soon withered and
died, he did not flame into oratorical passion over
the cause of popular freedom. But it has to be re
membered that with all his exalted eloquence Can-

I04 GEORGE CANNING
ning was essentially a practical man and thoroughly
understood what he could do and what he could not
do. He took into full account ah the difficulties
that surrounded him; and he was well aware that
what might be called " miracle " enthusiasm was
not the soundest inspiration for English statesman
ship at such a time. It would have been idle to
preach up a crusade against the despotic Govern
ments of Europe; and what Canning recommended
was always a task which could be accomplished with
out extravagant risk to the fortunes of the state
whose foreign policy was for the time in his keeping.
Then, again, we have to take into consideration
that there were tn'o forces arrayed against each other
at that epoch in Europe with neither of which Can
ning could thoroughly sj-mpathise. There was des
potism on the one side, and what has been called
" the revolution " on the other. Stuart Mill, at a
time ver\- near to our own, objected strongly to such
a vague phraseologj- as that which was in the habit
of talking of " the revolution " as some definite
movement. Xo doubt it would be much better in
all writing and speaking to avoid vague and grand
iose phraseology", and to define clearly in our expres
sions the precise idea which we mean to convey.
Still, when people in Canning's day, and in a much
later day, talked of the revolution, there can be no
doubt that the phrase carried with it a certain mean
ing intelligible enough, although not capable of
scientific or political definition. When men in Can
ning's day spoke of the revolution, they meant,
and were well understood to mean, the movement

GEORGE CANNING 105
against despotism, and, indeed, against all monarchy,
the movement which had been engendered by des
potism itself, and which threatened at one time the
foundations of all monarchy. This is, in fact, the
revolution which is hymned in the impassioned verses
of the " Marseillaise." With that sort of revolution
a man of Canning's temperament and training could
have but little sympathy. Canning saw that while
there were excesses on the one side there were ex
cesses also on the other; and the memory of the
French Revolution, led as a crusade by Napoleon
against the monarchical systems of Europe, was a
living memory in the minds of all men.
Canning knew how every word he spoke as Foreign
Secretary of England on a momentous occasion
when peace and war were in the balance would be
quoted and weighed by the advocates of the despots
and by the advocates of the revolution. He had in
his mind, first of all, the interests of England and
the interests of peace ; and he was determined not
to say a word which would give to either side the
hope of a support that it was not in his power to
make good. He was always a cautious statesman ;
and his early impulses were not in any case such as
would have led him into strong sympathy with the
popular side of any great question. He became a
supporter of Catholic emancipation ; but he was not
a supporter of popular reform. He was cautious,
even on the subject of West Indian slavery; and
he did not see his way to go any farther than the
recommendation of such measures as might tend to
mitigate the evils of such a system.

Io6 GEORGE CANNING
Canning was, indeed, guided on all political sub
jects and on most social questions by his intellect
and by his reason rather than by his sympathies and
his emotion. He was, in fact, just the man to direct
the destinies of England at a time of such terrible
risk; and if he was not exactly an enthusiast, it has
to be said that he lived through a crisis when en
thusiasm of the romantic order was a far less valu
able quality in a statesman than the judgment which
sees what can be done, and the courage which main
tains such a judgment in action. Thus his policy
had always the advantage of being practical and of
applying itself to definite ends. Others might have
preached peace in language more touching ; he
secured peace. Others might have spoken loftier
words in support of liberty; he gave liberty every
where a chance for its existence.
Canning's attitude towards the revolution cannot
be better described than in a few sentences which
we quote from an admirable monograph by Mr.
Frank H. HiU. " Canning," says Mr. Hill, " while
welcoming national uprisings against foreign or ex
ternal domination in Spain, in Greece, in South
America, objected to the propaganda by pen or by
sword of French principles or ideas in other coun
tries. In theory he did not contend for the sup
pression of French principles in France. They
might be good there, though he did not think
they were; but they were bad elsewhere, because
they were out of relation with the existing moral
and social order, and with the traditions which have
become a part, not only of the general life of the

GEORGE CANNING I07
nation, but of the individual life of everyone in
it." Canning was, in fact, the founder of modern
Greek liberty. The rule of Turkey was becoming
intolerable to the Greeks. Russia favoured and fo
mented the national uprising of the Greeks against
their Turkish oppressors. The sympathy of these
countries was given almost universally to the cause
of the Greek patriots. Lord Byron threw his whole
soul into their cause and lost his gahant life for it,
not even, as he fondly desired, dying sword in hand
for Greece on a Greek battle-field, but perishing pre
maturely of fever among the swamps of Missolonghi.
Lord Cochrane lent aU the generous ardour of his
energetic nature to support the Greeks in their
struggle. An immense wave of popular sympathy
with Greece passed over this country. Numbers of
brave and brilliant young men went over from Lon
don, from all parts of Great Britain and Ireland, to
help the Greeks in their struggle.
Lord John Russell told the House of Commons,
many years after, of the manner in which, regard
less of the strict letter of international law, he and
other sympathisers had openly helped to raise re
cruits in England for the support of the cause of
Greek independence. The nation became young
again in its generous sympathy with Greece. Every
one, it would seem, who had been inspired in his
youth by the reading of a Greek classic poem or the
sight of a Greek statue felt himself inflamed with
the passion for the Greek cause, and thousands who
had never seen the Acropolis or the waves that wash

I08 GEORGE CANNING
the shore of Salamis felt as if they could gladly die
to drive the Turks from the sacred soil. But the
struggle of the Greeks did not prosper for all that.
Despite the brilliant and daring exploits of men like
Bozzaris on the shore, or Kanaris with his fire-ships
on the sea, there seemed httle chance of driving out
what Byron cahs the Turkish hordes.
The Greeks had not a disciplined army ; they had
a poor stock of munitions of war ; and their resources
everywhere were stinted. Russia favoured their
cause ; and it seemed more than probable that Russia
in the last resource would send her armies to deal
with the Turks. It was not the purpose of Canning
that things should come to such a pass as that. His
sympathies went with the cause of Greek independ
ence ; but he dreaded the risk of a European war ;
and he could not tell where the leadership of Russia
in such a struggle might end. Therefore, he arranged
and concluded a treaty in which Russia and France
with England had a share, and the avowed object
of which was that each of these great Powers should
send some of her battle-ships into Greek waters, in
order, if we may put it so, to see fair play — in more
serious words, to take care that Turkey was not
allowed to push her successes to the utter ruin of
Greece. In the meantime, the principal fighting on the
Turkish side was done by Ibrahim Pasha, the
adopted son of Mohammed Ali, who governed
Egypt as a vassal sovereign under the Sultan of
Turkey. Ibrahim Pasha was a man of something
like genius and of great fighting power. The Turk-

LORD EYRON.
From a painting by Richard Westall, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery.

GEORGE CANNING IO9
ish and the Egyptian navies were concentrating their
forces against the Greek shores. Admiral Sir Ed
ward Codrington was in command of the English
battle-ships. Accidents are always happening in
such cases; and somehow or other it came about
that the English, French, and Russian ships of war
made a swoop on the vessels of Turkey and Egypt.
Now, there is a story told concerning this " un
toward event," as it was afterwards described in a
formal document— a story which may not be actu
ally true, but which was in wide circulation at the
time and for long after, and it is at all events too
good to be lost altogether. The story was to the
effect that the English Government drew up a de
spatch addressed to Sir Edward Codrington and
recommending, according to the formal diplomatic
fashion, that he should use extreme caution, not
allow rashness ever to prevail over prudence, and so
forth; and that this document was forwarded to
Admiral Codrington by the Duke of Clarence,
brother of George IV., and at that time Lord High
Admiral ; and that the Duke scribbled in pencil with
his own hand, at the end of the despatch, the three
words, " Go it, Ned! " Whether the story be true
or not, it is certain that " Ned," Admiral Codring
ton, that is, did go it, and that on the 20th of Oc
tober, 1827, the Turkish and Egyptian war-vessels
were swept off the seas, and the Sultan had to con
sent to the estabhshment of Greece as a separate
kingdom. Canning, however, did not live to see
this sudden triumph of his policy ; he died before
the battle of Navarino, that famous unexpected

no GEORGE CANNING
battle by which the independence of Greece was
accomplished. Canning's health had been failing of late years.
He was now the constant object of the bitterest at
tacks made by the Tories in both Houses of Parlia
ment. He began to feel the force of these attacks
more than he would have done in his younger and
more elastic years. Especially he felt the attacks
when they were made in the House of Lords, and
were made by men of intellect and influence — by
Lord Grey, for example, who was certainly not a Tory,
and who agreed in opinion with Canning on many
subjects, but who lent the weight of his eloquence
and his power to the Tory attacks for no other rea
son, apparently, than because Canning did not go so
far in the liberalism of domestic politics as Lord Grey
would have wished him to go. Canning, too, found a
difficulty in answering Lord Grey and other assailants
among the peers, because Canning, of course, was in
the House of Commons, and it was not the usage, and
is not the usage still, for a member of one House to re
ply directly to a speech made in the other. Canning,
as we have said already, was, even at the opening of his
career when he was young and strong, too sensitive
for his own happiness ; and now, when he was sinking
into years, he felt hardly able to bear up against the
attacks to which he could scarcely even offer a reply.
In companionship with his friend Huskisson, Can
ning set to work to remodel the financial system of
England. The modes in which taxation was im
posed, whether by customs duties or inland duties,
seemed to Canning and Huskisson to be utterly

GEORGE CANNING III
antiquated and unsuitable to modern days, cumbrous
in their workings and miserably barren in their re
sults. Up to Canning's time there was nothing that
might be called a scientific principle or even a scien
tific theory about the imposition of duties and the
levying of taxation. There were Financial Minis
ters, even in Canning's time, who, if on some sudden
emergency a double amount of revenue was needed,
had no other idea of how to get at it than by simply
doubling the amount of some particular tax. It did
not seem to have occurred to them that there are
limits beyond which you cannot tax any particular
class of persons, and that it is always open to a citi
zen to do without some article altogether rather
than pay too high a price for it. Either you must
levy on articles of necessity or on articles of luxury.
If you put too heavy a tax upon articles of luxury,
most people will go without them and save their
money. If you put too heavy a tax on articles of
necessity, as on food, for instance, a great many
people will starve and die, or else there will be an
uprising in the land. Many of England's greatest
troubles, after the peace that followed on the fall of
Napoleon, were caused by the struggles of men
whom the fear of starvation had driven into insur-
recrion. Such systems of taxation, if pressed too
far, would have helped to bring about a revolution
in England, as they had already done in France.
Canning and Huskisson set themselves to reduce
this hideous financial chaos into order; and to estab
lish something like a scientific principle, a sound
economic principle, in the arrangements of taxation.

112 GEORGE CANNING
Canning and Huskisson were close friends; they
had come into political life and into power about
the same time ; they both, alike, could see beyond
the economics of their age ; they were both, alike,
hated and denounced because they had made their
way into high Ministerial office by the force of in
tellect and capacity, without family influence and
without royal patronage. Huskisson, as well as
Canning, was commonly called an adventurer by his
political enemies, simply because, although he came
of a good family, he had not had aristocratic patron
age or Court favour to help him on his way. These
two men, then, worked together; and had many a
trying time of it together. Canning's mind was
made anxious, towards the close of his career, by
his strong conviction that the question of Catholic
emancipation would soon have to be dealt with in
a sense favourable to the Catholic claims. On this
point the Duke of Wellington and he parted com
pany. Wellington was then unbending in his oppo
sition to the Catholic claims, although, as we shall
see before long, his influence was destined to be final
in securing the concession of those claims. But at
the time to which we have now come, Wellington
would not give way, and Canning would not give
way. Canning pleaded powerfully in the House of
Commons for the claims of the Catholics, and Wel
lington resigned his office as Prime Minister. There
was a complete break-up of the Cabinet. Peel fol
lowed the lead of Wehington ; and a new Ministry
had to be constructed.
Canning was, under all the circumstances, what

GEORGE CANNING II3
Lord Palmerston at a later day described himself to
be, the inevitable man. Lord Eldon, of course, re
signed his place as Lord Chancellor ; he was always
resigning or threatening to resign; but now that
Canning appeared to be the inevitable Prime Minis
ter, he turned the threat into a reality. Canning
was entrusted by the King with the task of forming
an Administration. The King was not very willing
to make the offer, but there was practically no altern
ative; and therefore Canning became Prime Minis
ter. His friend Huskisson had stood by his side
in the stand he made upon the Catholic claims;
and Huskisson now stood by his side in the new
Administration. Canning's tenure of office was destined to be but
short. Canning and Huskisson were both in very
feeble health. Huskisson was ordered abroad by
his medical attendant ; Canning, also, was urged to
go abroad and take rest, and thus get some chance
of recovering his health ; but he felt that it would
be impossible for him to leave his post at the time,
and he resolutely determined to remain at home.
His physical condition had been greatly injured not
long before, by his attendance at the burial of the
Duke of York. The Duke of York was the brother
of the King, and stood nearest in the succession to
the throne. He had been consistently and persist
ently oppo6ed to all the political principles and pur
poses which had guided Canning's whole Ministerial
career. The nation felt but little regret at the re
moval of the Duke of York, whose personal defects
might be excused or explained, and therefore par-

114 GEORGE CANNING
doned, but whose obstinacy and perversity in public
affairs were a serious obstruction to every onward
and popular movement. Canning felt all the more
bound to attend the funeral. The day was cold and
damp in dismal January ; the chapel was miserably
chill and full of draughts ; and the whole lengthened
ceremonial sent a shock to Canning's nerves, and to
his general physical system. Canning never rallied
from the shock and the chill of that dreary solemn
ity. He struggled indeed against his approaching
illness as well as he could ; and even when his friend
Huskisson called to see him, in order to take leave
of him before going abroad. Canning bore up bravely
and cheerily, and tried to make his old comrade be
lieve that it was but a passing infirmity which kept
him a prisoner in his room. Two days after Huskis
son had left him. Canning removed to the Duke of
Devonshire's villa at Chiswick ; and a few days after,
his life came to an end there. He died on the 8th
of August, 1827, in the very room where Charles
James Fox had died not so many years before. The
whole nation mourned his untimely death. Canning
was but little more than fifty-seven years old when
his great career came to a close.
The Duke of Wellington was then called upon to
form an Administration. Some measures of politi
cal importance marked the course of the Duke's
tenure of office, but for the present we are chiefly
concerned with one event which might almost be
said to belong to the career of Mr. Canning. There
were differences of opinion in the Cabinet on many
questions ; and especially on those with which the

¦WELLINGTON.
(Siborne's "History o/ the Waterloo Campaign.")

GEORGE CANNING II5
name of Canning was particularly associated. Hus
kisson made a speech at Liverpool in addressing his
constituents there, which led to a serious dispute
between Wellington and himself. Huskisson told,
or was reported to have told, his constituents at
Liverpool that he never would have taken office
under the Duke of Wellington if he had not obtained
from the Duke an ample guarantee that the policy
of Canning on financial and other questions was to
be faithfully carried out. Wellington, with his usual
bluntness, repudiated any such idea; threw con
tempt upon the suggestion that any gentleman to
whom he had tendered office could think of insisting
on any such guarantee, or making a guarantee of
any kind a condition of accepting a place in the new
Administration. The Duke, however, suggested that what Mr.
Huskisson probably did say in Liverpool was that
he found in the composition of the Cabinet itself a
sufficient guarantee that its measures of policy would
be such as to promote the best interests of the
Sovereign and the country. Huskisson hastened to
explain that this was really what he did mean, and
even what he did say; and the matter might not
have seemed very important at the moment, but it
led to important consequences. Huskisson's popu
larity undoubtedly suffered by this dispute; some of
his best friends thought that he had not done well
when he consented to take office under the Duke of
Wellington, in companionship with other men who
were avowed opponents of Canning's general policy.
Huskisson himself began to fear that he had prob-

Il6 GEORGE CANNING
ably made a mistake by consenting to resume office
after Canning's death.
In any case, there was undoubted antagonism be
tween the principles of Canning, which were also the
principles of Huskisson, and those of the Duke of
Wellington and other members of the Cabinet.
The first dispute or misunderstanding led to another
dispute or misunderstanding; and Huskisson in a
moment of anger sent in what the Duke of Welling
ton understood to be a point-blank resignation of his
office. Huskisson had not, perhaps, meant so much
as this ; and some friends of his, and of Wellington,
endeavoured to bring about their reconciliation.
But the Duke held firmly or obstinately to his pur
pose. He insisted upon it that Huskisson had re
signed his office, and that there was nothing more
to be said in the matter. Therefore, there was an
end of Huskisson's connection with the Welhngton
Administration, and the impression conveyed to
many minds in the country was that he had been
rudely hustled out of office, simply because he was
a faithful friend and supporter of Canning; while
others regarded the matter in a light less favourable
to Huskisson, and insisted that he had resigned in
a fit of spleen, had then endeavoured to make his
excuses and get back into office again, and had met
with a contemptuous and insulting refusal from the
Duke of Wellington. The whole incident created
a great sensation throughout the country — satirists
and caricaturists made much capital out of it, and
even so long after the event as the publication of
Bulwer Lytton's novel, Paul Clifford, it was found

GEORGE CANNING I17
that the novelist had constructed a comic song out
of the whole controversy; turned it into a quarrel
about the possession of a glass of liquor, which
Huskisson in a hasty moment passed to one of his
comrades, thinly disguised under the name of Fight
ing Attie, and was vainly endeavouring to get back
again. Fighting Attie contemptuously advising him
to " Cease your dust," and telling him, " You have
resigned it, and you must." On the whole, the
opinion of impartial posterity always has been that
Huskisson never ought to have accepted a place in
the Administration of the Duke of Wellington. No
one could have questioned or doubted the purity of
his motive; Huskisson joined the Wellington Ad
ministration because he sincerely believed that he
might be the means of influencing the Duke and
others of his colleagues in favour of more liberal
measures of policy in finance and in various matters.
There was some reason for such a belief. Canning
had carried his point with more than one reluctant
Ministry. We shall soon see how the Duke of Wellington
himself came to abandon a long-maintained position,
and to surrender to the policy of Catholic emancipa
tion. But Huskisson had hardly an influence strong
enough to accomplish the work which might pos
sibly have been done by a man with the strength of
Canning. Much of the good work that he had done
was accomplished at Canning's impulse, and under
Canning's guidance. It would have been better if
he had held back at the time when death, withdraw
ing from office his illustrious friend and leader, had

Il8 GEORGE CANNING
given an opportunity for the formation of a Ministry
under the Duke of Wellington. Huskisson, if he
had lived long enough, must have found his place,
and have borne a helping hand in still further pro
moting the policy of his great friend and leader.
But however that may be, the names of Canning
and Huskisson will be always associated in the his
tory of these countries; and the fame of the one
man is as stainless as that of the other.

CHAPTER VII
RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES
LORD JOHN RUSSELL, on the 26th of Febru
ary, 1828, may be said to have practically
begun his great career as a reform leader by bring
ing forward a motion in the House of Commons on
the subject of what were called the Test and Corpor
ation Acts. These Acts made up a little code of
legislation, intended to exclude Dissenters from any
manner of State or public office, or from being
elected as members of any municipal corporation.
The form of exclusion was the imposition of a
clumsily jumbled sort of oath, which exacted from
the Dissenter, as a condition precedent to his ac
ceptance of office, or his election to a municipal
board, that he should renounce all the religious
principles in which he believed, and certain religious
principles, also, in which he did not believe, be
cause the oath was a kind of double-barrelled weapon,
which aimed at once at the Dissenters and the Roman
Catholics. RusseU's was the first serious and im
portant attack on the whole barrier of religious test
as a qualification for admission to public employment
or occupation. "9

I20 RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES
We have to throw our minds a long way back in
time if we would endeavour to understand the con
dition of things under which it was seriously thought
necessary for the safety of the State that a Dissenter
should be cut off from some of the most important
rights of citizenship. Indeed, it is very doubtful
whether the average mind of the present day could
be got, without some curious process of transforma
tion, to comprehend the meaning and the motives of
such a policy. There, however, the policy was down
to the year 1828, — a year which many living men can
still remember, — and Lord John Russell was thought
by most avery bold man, and by some a very wicked
man, because he had set his heart on the abohtion
of so antiquated, so uncivilised, and so unchristian
a principle. Lord John Russell pointed out in his
speech that the legislation which he condemned
had, whether it were bad or good, nothing whatever
to do with the actual conditions of the times at
which he and his contemporaries had arrived.
One can understand how the kings of a former
dynasty might fancy that their thrones were made
more secure by excluding Dissenters from all prac
tical share in public affairs. That might be a very
sound idea ; it might be the root of a policy which
deserved to be condemned by rational persons, but
at least its object could be understood. The House
of Commons, however, had found in the Dissenters
some of its most loyal subjects, and one might have
thought it would be the business even of a selfish
legislature to encourage and support them as much
as possible.

—SiC.

RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES 121
Lord John RusseU's speech made an undoubted
effect upon the House, and was an admirable prelude
to other great reform speeches of his, which we
shall have to take account of later on. The Govern
ment opposed the motion, and the Opposition was
led by Mr. Peel, afterwards famous as Sir Robert
Peel, and, strange to say, by Mr. Huskisson. Mr.
Peel in those days was still an unbending opponent
of reform in most directions ; but the only explana
tion of Mr. Huskisson's position is probably to be
found in the fact that he was strongly in favour of
relieving the Catholics from their disqualifications ;
and he feared lest the Dissenters, if separately re
lieved and in the first instance, might become less
earnest and less energetic on the general subject of
restrictions imposed on all who did not belong to
the Established Church. Despite all opposition,
RusseU's motion was carried by a majority of forty-
four, in a House where four hundred and thirty
members went into the division lobbies. Many
efforts were made to amend the bill brought in by
Lord John Russell as the result of the passing of his
resolution ; but they did not make any serious differ
ence in the proposed reform, and the measure was
carried through the Commons, and sent up to the
House of Lords.
Some of the archbishops and the bishops in that
House were so liberal in the construction of their
duties as actually to support the bill, much to the
horror of Lord Eldon, who must surely have thought
at the time that the world was coming to an end.
Lord Eldon bemoaned the national calamity that

122 RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES
such a bill should have been introduced by the
Government; but he added, " what is most calami
tous of all, is that the Archbishops and several of
the Bishops are also against us. What they can
mean," he declared, " they best know, for nobody
else can tell; and sooner or later, perhaps in this
very year, almost certainly in the next, the conces
sions to the Dissenters must be followed by the like
concessions to the Roman Catholics."
Lord Eldon was quite right. To do him justice,
his worst bigotry never utterly dimmed his clearness
of vision, and he knew well, what some, even of the
supporters of the bill, did not quite know, that it
would be impossible to strike the shackles off the
limbs of the Dissenters and composedly leave them
for ever on the limbs of the Roman Catholics. There
is always something interesting to the living student
of history in the spoken and written utterances of
Lord Eldon on such a subject. First it is interest
ing, as a mere matter of curiosity, for a reader of the
present day to be brought into contact with so com
plete and all-round a bigot as Lord Eldon ; and next
it is interesting to see how Lord Eldon never failed
to understand the uselessness and the futility of his
own bigotry. He never lulled himself for a moment,
as so many of his contemporary bigots did, into the
fond belief that he could stem the tide of liberal re
form in religious and political affairs. He performed
his duty with the full conviction that the perform
ance would not have the slightest effect in keeping
back the movement which he strove to resist.
If it were not something too whimsical to compare

RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES 1 23
the tough old Tory with a pretty and winsome
maiden, it might be said that Lord Eldon was now
performing a part like that of the high-born Scottish
damsel, renowned in the history of Scotland, who
made of her slender arm a bolt to hold the King's
door against the fierce conspirators who were batter
ing from the outside, well knowing that the frail
barricade must be splintered and smashed without
delaying for half a moment the entrance of the
traitors. Yet Lord Eldon might have been com
forted if he could only have known that, although
the bill was destined to pass, it would, at all events,
be made in itself an instrument to maintain for a
little longer a system of intolerance, which was
probably not in Lord Eldon's mind when he was
denouncing the admission of Dissenters to civil
office, and foretelling, as a consequence, the admis
sion of Roman Catholics.
One of the bishops proposed to add to the new
form of oath certain words proclaiming a belief in
our common Christianity. Accordingly, after much
debate, the words were inserted, " on the true faith
of a Christian." One of the peers who bore an
honoured name, Lord Holland, entered his protest
on the books of the House against this so-called
amendment. It should be explained that, by ancient
usage, a member of the House of Peers has the
right of recording on the books of that House his
protest against any particular decision, and his
reasons for protesting; while no such custom pre
vails, or right exists, in the House of Commons.
The protests of the Lords, therefore, form an in-

124 RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES
teresting and important part of our parliamentary
history ; they note the growth, very slow growth
indeed, of sound political principles, even in the
House of Lords. A member of the House of Com
mons, now some years dead, Mr. Thorold Rogers,
compiled a little work on the subject, which is well
worth the consideration of all students of our his
tory. We may quote here the words in which Lord
Holland explains and justifies his protest. " Be
cause the introduction of the words, ' upon the true
faith of a Christian,' implies an opinion in which I
cannot conscientiously concur — namely, that a par
ticular faith in matters of religion is necessary to the
proper discharge of duties purely political or tem
poral." The amendment adopted by the Lords
was accepted by the Commons, and in the begin
ning of May the whole measure received the Royal
Assent. It will be remembered that the words, " on the
true faith of a Christian," were used until a com
paratively recent date as the means of shutting out
the whole of our Jewish fellow-citizens from the
right of representation in the House of Commons.
Had Lord John RusseU's measure been carried as it
was designed by him, England would have been
spared session after session of an ignoble and futile
struggle against the admission of Jews to Parlia
ment. Until the final struggle within the memories
of most of us, a Jew might exercise, and could not
be kept from exercising, the highest influence in
public affairs ; but he could not become a member
of the House of Commons. He might advance

RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES 12$
money to princes and kings; he might finance a
foreign policy, and raise loans to supply the muni
tions of war — he was always welcome to perform
services like these ; but he could not pass the Bar of
the Representative Chamber; he could not open his
mouth in that Chamber or go into the lobby, either
with the Ayes or with the Noes. Lord John Rus
sell, however, had struck his first blow against the
policy of sectarian exclusion, and the portals were,
as a result, to be thrown open in the end to all duly
elected comers, without distinction of creed or class.
The agitation for the emancipation of Roman
Catholics in Great Britain and Ireland began with
renewed force towards the end of the reign of
George III. It has been already shown in these
pages that George III. had resisted every effort
made by William Pitt to introduce any measure for
the relief of Roman Catholics from the unjust,
ignoble, and absurd penalties imposed on them by
English legislation. With the coming of George
IV. to the throne, new hopes were excited in the
minds of the Catholics, especially of the Irish Catho
lics, because of the liberal tendencies which George
had shown at one time, and because of his associa
tion with Fox and Sheridan and other friends of
religious liberty all over the world.
It seems extraordinary, now, to think that at a
period so near to our own, a Roman Catholic was
still prevented from sitting in Parliament, and that
great statesmen were found who approved of such
an exclusion. When George IV. came to the
throne, the feehng of Ireland was strongly in his

126 RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES
favour, because Irishmen fully believed that he had
come to do justice to them and to their hopes.
When George went over to Ireland, he was received,
wherever he presented himself, with impassioned
outbursts of popular welcome. An obelisk still
marks the spot, on the shore of Dubhn Bay, where
George put his foot for the first time on Irish soil.
The village where he landed was then called Dun-
leary, but the local authorities in a transport of
gratitude — that gratitude, no doubt, which was once
humourously described as " a lively expectation of
favours to come " — declared that the old name
should be known no more, and that the place should
thenceforward be called Kingstown ; and Kingstown
it is to the present day.
George IV., however, soon disappointed all the
hopes which had been formed by O'Connell, by
Thomas Moore, and by the leaders of the Catholics
all over the country. At length it became quite ap
parent that the King had not the least intention of
encouraging any proposal for the relief of the Roman
Catholics; and an agitation set in which became
before long too powerful for any combination of
official statesmen to resist. The Catholic Associa
tions formed a body called into existence for the
purpose of stirring up and guiding the agitation,
and Daniel O'Connell became the recognised head
of the movement.
O'Connell knew that many of the leading intel
lects of England were on the side of Catholic eman
cipation. Canning was well known to have been in
its favour; and indeed it was the only Liberal meas-

RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES 127
ure in domestic policy with which Canning's sympa
thies entirely went. Peel was too great a statesman
to be set down by anyone as having a mind imperv
ious to the obvious justice and inevitable claims of
the policy of religious liberty. Those who have
studied the published letters of Sir Robert Peel
must have followed with much interest the revela
tions they contain of the gradual working of Peel's
mind towards the enlightened policy which he
afterwards adopted. There are not many passages
in English history which enable one thus to see into
the mind and heart of a great statesman, at a
supreme crisis in national policy ; which allow us to
observe how day after day, and by event after event,
a mind like that of Peel is won from all early preju
dices and traditions, and is brought to recognise the
truth of a great principle in political affairs.
O'Connell soon became a commanding power in
Ireland. Between him and Sir Robert Peel there
was not then, or at any other time, anything like
personal or political sympathy ; but Peel could not
help recognising the force of the new and great
power which was arising in political life. O'Con
nell was peculiarly adapted by nature for the part
he had to play. He was a born agitator and leader
of agitations ; he was a popular orator of the highest
order. Nature had given him a commanding pre
sence ; he was a man of colossal stature and colossal
energy ; and he had a voice which enraptured every
hstener. Long after O'ConneU's death, Mr. Dis
raeli, who had no personal or political sympathy
with the great Irish leader, wrote of Sir Robert

128 RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES
Peel, that Peel's was the finest voice to which the
House of Commons in his time had ever listened,
" except, indeed, the thrilling tones of O'ConneU."
The first Lord Lytton in his poem, "St. Stephen's, ' '
breaks into positive raptures over the power and the
music of O'ConneU's voice, and over O'ConneU's
eloquence in addressing a vast out-of-door meeting.
Even in the House of Commons, which he entered
after he had accomplished his greatest triumph, and
where he found an audience for the most part bit
terly hostile, O'Connell conquered that audience,
and compelled those to admire the orator who most
cordially disliked the political leader.
O'ConneU was for a long time hated in England,
at least by the Anti-Reformers of England, more
bitterly than any other man of his day. Some of
the great London papers seemed to have lost all
sense of justice and even of decency when they
came to criticise him. He had been a foremost ad
vocate at the Irish Bar, and was making a positive
fortune by his practice. In order to devote himself
to the Catholic agitation he had given up his work
at the Law Courts, and reduced himself from the
position of a man earning a large annual income to
the position of a man earning no income at all. Yet
these newspapers denounced him and calumniated
him as if he had been an impostor who got up the
whole Catholic agitation as a means of putting
money in his own pocket. The Irish people raised
a fund to enable him to live, and to enable him also
to carry on the agitation ; and the leading London
journal forthwith designated him, ' ' the big beggar-

RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES 1 29
man. ' ' The Irish people had before that time raised
a national fund for Grattan, and no Englishman
ever founded on that fact any question as to Grat
tan's unselfishness and sincerity. The English Free
Trade party, in days nearer to our own, raised a very
large fund to enable Richard Cobden to maintain
himself while carrying on the Anti-Corn Law move
ment ; and even Cobden's most bitter enemies never
described him as a beggar-man.
O'Connell soon raised himself into a position of
something like dictatorship over the vast majority
of the Irish people. His genius was peculiarly Celtic
— he had the imagination, the suffusion of the poetic,
the rich humour, and the fitful changes of expression
which belong to the temperament of the Celt. He
could move his audiences to tears or laughter, to
passion or to good humour, just as he willed. Then
he had all the astuteness of the lawyer, all the inex
haustible resources of the born politician to aid him
in carrying on the work to which he had devoted
his heart and soul. He soon entered into an alli
ance, more or less avowed, with the leaders of the
Democratic party in England and in Scotland. His
sympathies went with every movement for religious
equality and for political reform ; and we shall have
occasion to see, a little later on, how thoroughly he
was in tone and in harmony with the most advanced
of the English Liberals. The English Liberals soon
found that he was a man who had to be reckoned
with; and they soon found, too, that he was a man
who could be trusted to co-operate faithfully with
them in the advocacy of every great reform. He

I30 RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES
had been one of those who cordially welcomed
George IV. on the occasion of that memorable visit
to Ireland, and it was some time before he could
thoroughly rouse himself to face the fact that George
cared nothing about Catholic emancipation, and
just as little about Ireland.
A sudden chance, almost an accident, gave O'Con
neU an opportunity of testing his power in his own
country. One of the members of the Government
resigned his position as head of the Board of Trade,
and another man was appointed to the office. The
newcomer, Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, who represented
an Irish constituency, had to go back to Clare and
be re-elected, before he could enter on the duties
of his new position. O'Connell seized the oppor
tunity and boldly came forward as a rival for the
suffrages of the electors of Clare, such electors as
there were then under the old-fashioned system of
restrictions. O'Connell, as a Roman Catholic, was excluded by
law from taking a seat in the House of Commons.
His bold step in coming forward as candidate created
the wildest excitement all over the country. Many,
even of those who thoroughly sympathised with his
cause, were convinced that the step he had taken
was too daring an outrage upon existing law to do
anything but harm to the movement for Catholic
emancipation. From all sides, except alone from
the side of his ardent followers, he received warnings;
but the warnings were happily unheeded. O'Con
nell went to the poll, and was elected member for
Clare by an overwhelming majority of votes. It

DANIEL O CONNELL, M.P.
From a painting by Bernard Mulrenin, R. H. A., in the National Portrait Gallery.

RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES 131
was one thing, however, to be elected for Clare, and
quite another thing to take his seat in the House of
Commons. The oath which was then administered
to all new members who came to take their seats
was one which no Roman Catholic could possibly
have accepted, and one which was framed expressly
with the purpose of excluding Roman Catholics
from any part in the deliberations of Parliament.
The oath was tendered to O'Connell, and of course
he could not accept it; he stated his reasons, and
was ordered to withdraw. He did withdraw; and
he left the House knowing full well that the time
could not be far distant when he and other Catho
lics, legally elected as he had been, would find
a seat in that House unchallenged by any pro
hibitory test. O'Connell went back to Clare, and
was re-elected without opposition.
Perhaps the most interesting study for the reader
of the history of those days is the manner in
which the development of the whole controversy
worked upon the mind of Sir Robert Peel. As
everyone knows. Peel had been for long years a
steady opponent of the Catholic claims. He was
born and brought up in an atmosphere of the most
dense and rigid Toryism. He was always too en
lightened a man to persuade himself into the belief
that the Catholics ought to be kept in a position
of political inequality and degradation, merely be
cause he and his friends did not approve of the
Roman Catholic religion.
Peel, however, had succeeded in persuading him
self that to admit the Cathohcs to political equality

132 RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES
would only open the way for them to damage or
destroy the State Church in England and in Ireland.
Now as regarded the State Church in Ireland, Peel
was unquestionably a man of foresight. The mo
ment the Catholics were admitted to full political
equality, the moment they could send represent
atives to speak up for their cause in the House of
Commons, that moment the State Church in Ire
land was foredoomed. Peel could not see that the
doom of the State Church in Ireland was no reason
for the doom of the State Church in England; in
fact, that every reasonable argument in favour of
the English Establishment was an argument against
the Irish State Church. The Irish Church was a
Church of a miserably small minority ; a Church of
which the threshold was never crossed, never would
be crossed, by any of the vast majority of the Irish
people. Five-sixths, at least, of the Irish popula
tion were Catholics, whom the whole system of the
penal laws had utterly failed to compel to any recog
nition of the Irish State Church. It would have
been obvious, therefore, to a man of less foresight
than Peel, that to give the Catholics in Ireland the
full right of vote and representation would be to
speak the doom of the Irish Church. The doom
might be delayed, as it was in fact delayed until our
own times; but it was certain to come.
What Peel failed to understand was that the Eng
lish Church system rested on a totally different
basis ; and that it was so far acknowledged and sup
ported as a Church by the great majority of the
English people. Therefore, for many years, Peel

RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES I33
persuaded himself that he could not in conscience,
as a Protestant, yield to the Catholic claims. Such,
as we have seen, was the position taken up by
George IIL, and for a time taken up and stubbornly
maintained by George IV. But then Peel's was a
very different intellect from that of George III. or
George IV. Peel was a thorough statesman, and he
could not shut his eyes to facts, or disguise from
himself the meaning of those facts, as it showed
itself to all intelligent and enlightened minds.
It began to be gradually borne in upon him that
the concession of the Catholic claims was inevitable.
The Marquis of WeUesley, elder brother of the Duke
of Wellington, had been appointed Lord-Lieutenant
of Ireland, partly because he was supposed to be
the sort of man who could make head against the
Catholic claims ; and the Marquis of Wellesley had
not been long in Dublin before he became convinced
that the claims of the Catholics would have to be
conceded. He resigned his post as Irish Viceroy
when the Duke of Wellington, on taking the office
of Prime Minister, announced that Catholic eman
cipation was not to be a Cabinet measure. He was
succeeded in the Irish Viceroyalty by the Marquis
of Anglesey, who had been a distinguished soldier
in the wars against Napoleon, and rendered brilliant
services on the field of Waterloo. Lord Anglesey
was known to be opposed to Catholic emancipation,
and had actually spoken vehemently against that
and all other Irish claims when he was a Member of
Parliament. But Lord Anglesey had not been long
in office before he, too, recognised the absolute

134 RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES
necessity of conceding political equality to the Irish
Catholics. The question came up in a manner which com
pelled the Government to give immediate attention
to it. In the vehemence of the popular commotion
caused by O'Connell and the Catholic Association,
an Act had been passed for a limited number of
years, for the suppression of the Catholic Association
and all other unlawful associations in Ireland, thus
putting on a show of fair play by including the
operations of Orange societies within its scope, but
really directed, and with the knowledge of everyone,
against O'Connell and the Catholics. This Act was
shortly about to expire, and the question was
whether it could be renewed, and what was to hap
pen if it were not renewed. Lord Anglesey pressed
these questions on the notice of the Government,
announcing his conviction that the Catholics could
not much longer be kept in subjection without civil
disturbance, and declaring himself to be an advocate
of peace, not indeed at any price, but certainly at
the price of Catholic emancipation. All this must
have profoundly impressed the mind of Peel.
In the early part of 1828 an important resolution
was brought forward in the House of Commons by
Sir Francis Burdett, then in the front of the reform
movement, caUing on the House to consider the
state of the laws affecting the King's Roman Catho
lic subjects in Great Britain and Ireland " with a
view to such a final and conciliatory settlement as
may be conducive to the peace and strength of the
United Kingdom, to the stabUity of the Protestant

RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES 1 35
Establishment, and to the general satisfaction and
concord of all classes of his Majesty's subjects."
This resolution was actually carried by two hundred
and seventy-two votes againsst two hundred and
sixty-six. Peel was particularly impressed by one passage in
the speech of Brougham in support of the resolution.
Brougham's observation was that no single member
of those who had opposed the motion of Sir Francis
Burdett had affirmed the proposition that things
could remain as they were, and that it was impos
sible to conceal or deny the great progress which
this question had made in Parliament and the much
greater progress which it had made out-of-doors.
One can easily understand how a statement like this,
the truth of which could not be challenged for a mo
ment, must have helped to bring conviction to the
mind of Peel. Of course a mere fanatic or a mere
dreamer would not have been moved from a previous
opinion by any such consideration. What would it
be to him if the majority of the House of Commons,
if the majority of the public out-of-doors, were op
posed to his own personal opinions on the subject ?
" So much the worse," our fanatic or dreamer would
say, " for the House of Commons and for the pub
lic, in the end ; they will find out that I am in the
right and that they are in the wrong ; and they will
have to put up with the results of their obstinacy."
But of course Peel was neither a fanatic nor a
dreamer; he was above all things a clear-headed,
practical statesman, and had no inclination whatever
to fight against the stars in their courses, especially

136 RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES
when he began to have the conviction brought home
to him that the stars in their courses were fighting
on the right side. Peel not merely counted but
weighed the votes in that debate. He observes in
one of his letters that " without depreciating the
abilities or authority of those who concurred with
me in resisring the motion "—for it has to be ob
served that Peel as yet had not seen his way to vote
for the motion — anyone acquainted with the House
of Commons at that time would readily admit that
the great preponderance of talent and of influence
on the future decisions of the House of Commons
was ranged on the other side. The Government at
all events went so far, instructed by events, as to
give up the idea of asking Parliament for a renewal
of the Act against the Catholic Association.
Of course, Peel followed closely the events preced
ing the Clare election and the result of the vote.
He knew that Vesey Fitzgerald, the defeated candi
date for Clare, was one of the most popular men in
Ireland. Fitzgerald had represented Clare for many
years, and had always supported by his speeches
and his votes the claim of the Catholics for political
emancipation. He was a son of the man who fought
stoutly against the Act of Union by the side of
Henry Grattan and Sir John Parnell. Certainly a
better man could not have been found to contest on
the Government side the candidature of O'Connell;
yet he was hopelessly defeated. In fact a great con
stitutional crisis had arisen, and even Lord Eldon
unbent so far as to admit that the result of the Clare
election must be to bring the Cathohc question to a

RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES 1 37
conclusion before long, a conclusion of which he
highly disapproved, as was only natural for him, but
which he felt that it was not in the power of himself
or any other man or set of men to prevent. When
a man like Lord Eldon could thus far stifle his most
inveterate prejudices and passions and could see the
results which were destined to come, it is not likely
indeed that a man of Peel's intellect and clear
sightedness could close his eyes against the lessons
of the crisis.
In the meanwhile Peel was continually pressed
by Lord Anglesey to come to some decision on the
subject. There was a tremendous difficulty in front,
and Anglesey saw but one way out of it. What he
felt is well expressed in a letter which he wrote in
order that it might be formally submitted to the
Duke of Wellington and to Sir Robert Peel. In
speaking of the Catholics he said: " I believe their
success inevitable, and that no power under heaven
can arrest its progress. There may be rebellion,
you may put to death thousands, you may suppress
it, but it will only be to put off the day of com
promise." Lord Anglesey over and over again, in
reply to the arguments of those who were accus
tomed to ask, as Lord Melbourne later on used to
ask, " Can't you let things stay as they are ?"
points out that so far as the Catholic claims are
concerned things will not stay as they are, that
no power of horse, foot, and artUlery can compel
them to stay as they are.
In Lord Anglesey's opinion rebellion was certain
to come if the Catholic claims were thrust aside, and

138 RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES
he further believed that if even one rebellion were
put down another and another would come on till
Catholic emancipation had been granted. At one
crisis of the movement we find Peel, from his pub
lished correspondence, asking himself the question
which we record here at full length because of its
momentous nature, and because also of the hght it
throws on the statesmanlike and practical manner in
which the mind of Peel grasped the whole situation,
and the kind of dramatic instinct which belonged to
him, and without which there can be no genuine
statesmanship — the dramatic instinct which enables
a man to enter into the feelings of his opponents,
and to realise the meaning of their cause as it presents
itself to them.
Peel asks himself " whether it may not be possible
that the fever of political and religious excitement
which was quickening the pulse and fluttering the
bosom of the whole Catholic population, — which had
inspired the serf of Clare with the resolution and
the energy of a free man, — which had in the twink
ling of an eye made all considerations of personal
gratitude, ancient family connection, local prefer
ences, the fear of worldly injury, the hope of
worldly advantage subordinate to the one absorb
ing sense of religious obligation and public duty —
whether, I say, it might not be possible that the
contagion of that feverish excitement might spread
beyond the barriers which under ordinary circum
stances the habits of military obedience and the
strictness of military discipline oppose to all such
external influences ? "

RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES I 39
It need hardly be said that the British Army was
at that time, as it is now, largely recruited from the
Irish Catholic population ; and was it absolutely cer
tain that the Irish Catholics in uniform could be
relied upon at such a crisis to shoot down their
fellow-Irishmen and fellow-Catholics, who were en
gaged in the defence of the Irish and the Catholic
cause ? Peel shook his head over this difficulty, and
felt satisfied that only a man in a fool's paradise
could feel quite sure that Irishmen in the army
could all be relied upon for such a sacrifice of their
religion and their country. Peel, of course, was not
a soldier, but Lord Anglesey, who was a brilliant
soldier of long experience, was even more doubtful
than Peel as to the possibility of keeping the Irish
Catholic soldiers under the British flag if an insur
rection, caused by the rejection of the Catholic
claims, were to break out in Ireland. At a time
much later than that of Peel we have seen how, in
the war between France and Austria, large numbers
of Venetian soldiers in the Austrian service crossed
over on the very battle-field to the ranks of France
rather than fight for those who held them in subjec
tion, against those who promised to set them free ;
and in that case there was no rehgious question to
intensify the patriotic fervour of theVenetian soldier.
When we read the words in which Peel speaks of
O'ConneU's candidature for Clare as having inspired
the serf of Clare with the resolution and the energy
of a free man, we must remember, in order to ap
preciate the firm composure of Peel's judgment, that
it was the fashion of nearly all Tory politicians at

140 RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES
the time to treat O'Connell and his agitation with
utter contempt. The theory even of many enlight
ened Englishmen just then was that O'Connell was
simply a self-seeking and noisy impostor who had
succeeded somehow in setting the whole Catholic
population in Ireland mad.
This sort of idea is indeed a favourite theory
amongst men of strong prejudice and weak intellect
when any great constitutional crisis arises which is
distasteful to them and to their friends. It had been
applied to the French Revolution until the Revolu
tion became too strong to be disposed of any longer
by the theory of an insane population and half a
dozen self-seeking and crafty demagogues. Peel's
intellect was not one which could be long deluded
by the demagogue and the Bedlamite theory. What
was it, he asked himself, which had inspired the serf
of Clare with the resolution and the energy of a free
man ? Was it not the serf's conviction that he had
a great national and religious cause to fight for, and,
if needs were, to die for ? Peel's mind was gradually
and rapidly coming round to Lord Anglesey's view
of the crisis; and it was not long before he had
reached the settled conviction that Parliament must
grant Catholic emancipation. Here, again, we have
to observe how different was the character of Peel
from that of other statesmen who had at other times
anything like a similar crisis to encounter.
It has happened more than once in English history
since the days of the Catholic question, that a states
man having combated successfully a certain pohtical
movement for session after session has at last been

RIGHT HON. SIR ROBERT PEEL, BART, M.P.
From a painting by John Linnell, in the National Portrait Gallery.

RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES I4I
forced to the conclusion that the movement was too
strong to be resisted much longer, and that as it was
destined to be successful he might as well have the
honour of its success as any other. There is an in
stance in modern English history of a statesman
who having thus been forced to make up his mind
to the inevitable success of a movement which he
had hitherto opposed with all his might and main,
came to think that after all he might as well take
advantage of the crisis by putting himself at the
head of the movement, and carrying it to a parlia
mentary success.
Peel never could be a statesman of this light-
minded order; he now felt convinced that Catholic
emancipation must be carried, and his one great
concern was in the question. Who is the best man to
carry it ? He decided that for many reasons he
himself was not that man. He was strongly of
opinion that the difficulties in the way of passing
such a measure through the House of Commons
and through the House of Lords would be enorm
ously increased if the measure were to be introduced
by one on whom the Tories of both Houses had long
relied as the strongest bulwark against the Catholic
agitation. He had many personal objections to the
undertaking of a task which would of necessity com
pel him to enter into negotiations with the Catholic
leaders and to discuss possible compromises; but
these personal objections would have counted for
little with him if he could persuade himself that he
was the most suitable person to conduct such nego
tiations, and to consider suggested compromises.

142 RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES
He took it for granted that he must, during his long
career as a Tory statesman, have aroused a hostile
feeling against himself in the minds of the Irish
Catholic leaders, and he firmly believed that a
measure brought in by some Minister more popular
in Ireland would be welcomed with more grateful
ness and more cordiality by O'ConneU and his
associates in the Catholic movement.
Peel's intention was, therefore, to resign his office,
and leave some statesman who might be considered
better fitted for the task to bring in the measure for
Catholic emancipation. Peel's own idea was that
Earl Grey, who had always been an advocate of
civil and religious liberty, would be the best man
whom the King could invite to form a Government
and to deal with the Catholic claims. But before
this stage of the arrangements could be reached
Peel had to gain over the Duke of Wellington to
his side and persuade the Duke to conquer the
King's opposition. It was difficult enough to per
suade the Duke of Wellington, who had so lately
announced that nothing was to be done for the
Catholic claims; but Peel succeeded in bringing
Wellington to hsten to reason. The difficulty he
had was all the greater because Lord Anglesey had
lately been dismissed from his office as Lord-Lieu
tenant of Ireland, on the ground that he had shown
a want of discretion in talking too freely in Ireland
about differences in the Cabinet on the subject of
the Catholic claims.
We may safely assume that Lord Anglesey was
dismissed from office because the King could not

RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES I43
put up any longer with his strenuous recommenda
tions that those claims should be taken into con
sideration. In any case. Lord Anglesey's dismissal
must have seemed to Peel to make the task of
winning over the Duke of Wellington much more
difficult. But the Duke was won over before long.
The truth was that the Duke had an absolute faith
in Peel's judgment and statesmanship, and when Peel
made up his mind the Duke felt himself bound to
make up his mind in the same way. The Duke's posi
tion then and on other occasions was perfectly simple.
If he had been commanding an army in a foreign
and a difficult country, he would have accepted the
services of a guide who knew the place, and would
have followed the teachings of the guide when in
order to reach a certain spot he was advised to go
this way rather than that. In the same spirit he
accepted the guidance of Peel. " Peel," he said to
himself, " knows all about this political question; I
do not, and I am quite certain that the King does
not ; therefore I am bound to follow Peel's guidance
and to do all that I can to get the King to follow it
as well." One thing the Duke certainly did know
all about, and was satisfied that he did know all
about it : he knew perfectly well that he could not
possibly get on without Peel, and therefore he im
plored and he insisted that Peel must give up all
idea of resigning his office, and must not leave him,
the Duke, all alone to face in bewilderment the
difficulties of the crisis. He made it a question of
old comradeship, and put it to Peel not to desert
his comrade at a moment of such peril. Thus ad-

144 RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES
jured, Peel could not possibly press his resolve, and
he therefore consented to stand by the Duke so long
as the Duke would stand by him.
The difficulty at all events was over. Indeed it
became apparent that the idea of prevaUing on the
King to invoke the services of Lord Grey was abso
lutely out of the question. The King detested Lord
Grey. George IV. had been accustomed to Minis
ters and to followers who yielded to him and flat
tered him and nourished his self-love and his absurd
pride in his own judgment. Lord Grey was a cold,
stern, unbending man, who acted only on the dictates
of his reason and his conscience, and into whose
mind it never entered that he was bound to cajole
his Sovereign by any sort of flattery or semblance
of intellectual deference. Indeed it was strongly
believed by many at the time that one of the King's
chief objections to Catholic emancipation was found
in the fact that Grey was in favour of the principle,
and that Grey had again and again proved unyield
ing on questions of policy. George believed that
the judgment of the Sovereign was entitled to exact,
implicit obedience from any Minister. Therefore
Peel consented to hold his place in the Duke of
Wellington's Ministry, and the Duke agreed to ap
proach the King and endeavour to make him listen
to reason.
The Duke soon found that the task was even
more difficult than he had supposed it to be. George
III. had resisted Pitt, but, to do him justice, out of
conscientious motives, however perverted the prin
ciple of conscience might have been, simply because

RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES I45
he believed that it was an offence against the religion
of the State for an English Sovereign to allow re
ligious equality to those who professed the faith of
Rome. If George III. could have been persuaded
by the tongues of men or of angels that to approve
of Catholic emancipation would not have been to
break his Coronation Oath, he might have consented
to the policy of Pitt and of Canning. But with
George IV. there were mixed motives. He pro
fessed to feel the conscientious objection, but there
can be no doubt that he felt still more strongly the
blow to his foolish self-conceit and his absurd idea
of his own personal dignity which would have to be
borne if he were to consent to give way to anyone
on such a question.
George had lately said, on more than one occa
sion, that if his subjects did not like a Protestant
king they could find a Catholic king in the Duke of
Clarence, whom, for some reason or other, George
chose to regard as a devoted advocate of the Catho
lic claims. George met the Duke of Wellington in
the same spirit, and after many ineffectual disputa
tions Wellington and Peel were forced to the con
clusion that it would be impossible to obtain the
King's consent, point-blank, to any measure of
Catholic emancipation. They therefore devised a
little plan by which to get round their obstinate
Sovereign. They obtained leave to draw up and
submit to the King for his consideration a memor
andum containing their views of a policy to be
adopted with regard to the consideration of the
whole Irish question, without any special reference

146 RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES
to Catholic emancipation. This scheme did indeed
include Catholic emancipation, but that was only
one subject among others, and it was fondly hoped
that the King might be thus cajoled into allowing
the whole scheme to pass without objection, seeing
that it no longer rested on Catholic emancipation
alone. The King yielded so far as to consent to
have the scheme submitted to him, but distinctly
declared that he would not pledge himself to give it
a favourable consideration.
Time was pressing ; Peel had already given formal
notice in the House of Commons that on a certain
day near at hand he would call attention to the
whole subject of the disabilities imposed on Roman
Catholics. On the day just before that which Peel
had appointed for his statement in the House, he
was summoned, with the Duke of WeUington and
the Lord ChanceUor, to attend the Sovereign. Then
the King bluntly declared that he would not tolerate
any alteration in the Oath of Supremacy. There
was a long argument on the subject. The Duke
and Peel and the Lord ChanceUor, Lord Lyndhurst,
endeavoured to get the King to understand that
without some alteration in the Oath of Supremacy
it would be perfectly impossible to do anything for
the Catholics, because the Oath of Supremacy as
then framed was one that no Catholic elected to the
House of Commons could possibly consent to take.
The King was not moved by the argument, prob
ably he did not hsten to much of it, very likely was
thinking of something else for most of the time, and
he could only go back to his former declaration, that

RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES 147
he would not allow the slightest alteration in the
Oath of Supremacy, and would, therefore, refuse
his consent to the whole scheme which the memor
andum had set forth. The Ministers took the an
nouncement with composure, but firmly maintained
their advice. Then the King blandly asked them
what course they proposed to take; the three Min
isters answered that they proposed to ask his Majesty
for permission to announce to the House of Lords
and to the House of Commons that they had ceased
to hold office, and were no longer responsible for
the policy of the country. George did not seem to
have expected quite so prompt and decisive a reply ;
but he retained his outward composure, — it must be
remembered that he was in his own estimation and
by his own professions the first gentleman in Europe,
— and he graciously said that he supposed he had no
right to blame them for the course they felt bound
to take. He carried his graciousness still further,
for, in the words of one of the Ministers, " the King
took leave of us with great composure and great
kindness, gave to each of us a salute on each cheek,
and accepted our resignation of office." Satire
itself could hardly burlesque that scene. Thackeray
has made delicious fun of it in one of his lectures.
Fancy the worn-out old Royal rake pressing a kiss
on each cheek of the Duke and the Lord Chancellor
and Sir Robert Peel and dismissing them as it were
with his paternal blessing !
As soon as the dismissed Ministers had gone, the
King found that the difficulties of the crisis had only
begun for him. It was absolutely impossible for

148 RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES
him to get any responsible statesman to form a
Ministry. He was at all events relieved of all
trouble so far as Lord Grey was concerned, for even
if he could so far have controlled his personal feel
ings as to overcome his dishke to Lord Grey, it
would be utterly out of the question to think of in
viting Lord Grey to form a Government which was
not to admit the claims of the Cathohcs. Even
George IV. with all his self-conceit and all his lack
of sense could not think of facing the country with
the announcement that he had no longer any Minis
ters, and that he proposed to govern the country by
despotic right. Even George knew that things had
not yet come to such a pass with the people of Eng
land that they would stand an announcement of that
kind. There was nothing for it but to give in, and
the King gave in. He wrote to the Duke of Well
ington telling him of his submission, and asking the
Duke to urge Peel and Peel's colleagues to remain
in office and bring in their scheme of Irish policy.
The Constitution had conquered and the Sovereign
was down.
Peel brought in his measure of Catholic emancipa
tion and it was carried through both Houses of Par
hament without much of a struggle. The Clare
election had in fact proved a peaceful revolution.
It has to be added that the measure when carried
into law proved to be stinting and ungenerous in its
concessions. It was constructed, to a large extent,
on that principle of " checks and balances " about
which so much was heard at a later period of Eng
Ush political hfe. The ' ' checks and balances ' ' idea

J. M. W. TURNER.
From a painting by P. Kramer.

RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES I49
was to take away a good deal with one hand, while
giving something considerable with the other. The
bill abolished some old existing franchises in Ireland
which, in the coming condition of things, might have
proved too favourable to the Irish Catholics. The
object to be gained was no doubt to put difficulties
in the way of any triumph for the Catholics like that
of the Clare election at any future day.
Peel, we may be sure, would have made the meas
ure more simple and complete if he had had his way ;
but he had to take into consideration the Tories
and the House of Lords, and he did not think it
wise to venture upon anything which might seem
like an absolute surrender, even to the claims of
justice, when those claims were put forward by Irish
Roman Catholics. O'Connell in especial was un
generously dealt with. After the passing of the
Act he had to go back to Clare and to be elected all
over again, just as if his previous elections had not
been the moving occasion of the whole political
crisis. Of course O'Connell had no trouble in get
ting re-elected ; but there was something lamentable
in the policy which only allowed him to come into
Parliament when it was no longer humanly possible
to keep him out. O'Connell took his seat in the
House of Commons unchallenged, and with his en
trance into Parliament a new chapter in history
opened.

CHAPTER VIII
COMING REFORM CASTS ITS SHADO-W BEFORE
THE first impulse to the reform cause in England
was undoubtedly given by the great French
Revolution. Another impulse in the same way
was given during the closing years of George IV.
by a much smaller, swifter, and less blood-stained
revolution — the revolution which overthrew Charles
X., the last Legitimist Sovereign of France that
modern times have seen or are likely to see. Charles
X. succeeded Louis XVIII., who had been reseated
on the French throne by the armies of England,
Austria, Prussia, and Russia, and who represented
the elder branch of the Bourbon family.
It was well said — the words, indeed, have passed
into a proverb — that the Bourbons learnt nothing
and forgot nothing. Charles X. had learnt nothing
from all the evidences of the growth of popular sen
timent, and forgotten nothing of the ancestral claims
of the Bourbons. He and his Ministers, among
whom the most influential was the Prince de Poli
gnac, found themselves confronted by a great crisis
in France, and they set to work to deal with it after
the characteristic Bourbonian fashion. De Pohgnac
150

COMING REFORM CASTS ITS SHADO W BEFORE I 5 I
was a man of great ability, of inexorable stubborn
ness, into whose mind it was impossible for any ray
of a new political idea to enter. The King and he
alike took alarm at the freedom, to them intoler
able, which the newspapers of France and especially
of Paris began to exhibit in their criticisms of Min
isters and of Ministerial policy. There was nothing
in the writings of the French Press which could
seem surprising to an experienced English states
man, or which, indeed, such a statesman would not
have taken for granted. But to Polignac and Po
lignac 's master it seemed unbearable that the news
paper writers should arrogate to themselves the
right of objecting to the policy of Ministers, the
right of ridiculing it and denouncing it and holding
it up to pubhc scorn and anger.
The King and his Ministers had for a while con
trived to get the assent of the two Chambers — the
Senate and the House of Representatives — to sanc
tion their narrow and reactionary policy. But it
might have been plain to any intelligent mind that
the feeling of the country was rising against the
conduct of the majority in both Houses, and that a
general election would send a very different major
ity into the Representative Chamber. The French
people were then, as they are now, a newspaper-
reading people ; every journal published in Paris was
eagerly read, except, indeed, the one or two official
papers which merely registered the views of the
King and his Ministers and admonished the people
to be taught by them. The people as a whole re
sponded to the admonition by declining to read the

152 COMING REFORM CA STS ITS SHADO W BEFORE
Ministerial journals. There was a further cause of
hostile feeling to the King's Ministers found in the
fact that they were supposed to be in secret alliance
with the King of England and his great Minister,
the Duke of Wellington.
The very name of Wellington was at that time a
sound of horror in the ears of the French pubhc.
It was much too soon to forget that he had been the
leading instrument in the policy which crushed the
great Revolution, so far as that Revolution was re
presented by Napoleon, and put back the heir of the
Bourbons on the throne of France. Now there is
not the least reason to suppose that the Duke of
Wellington encouraged, or would have encouraged,
the King of France and his admirers in the repress
ive measures which they intended to adopt. The
Duke of Wellington as an English statesman had
always shown himself obstinate enough in opposing
every reform, but he proved through his whole
career in office that he knew when a popular move
ment could no longer be resisted without bloodshed,
and that he knew, in fact, when to give way. But
the French public only saw in him the man who had
compelled France to take back her Bourbon Sover
eigns, and his supposed friendship with Polignac
was a new crime of Pohgnac's in the eyes of the
great majority of Frenchmen.
The King and his Ministers at last made up their
minds to coerce the French Press into silence. The
Government issued a series of ordinances which, if
they could have been carried out, would have actu
ally exringuished the liberty of the Press in France.

COMING REFORM CA STS ITS SHADO W BEFORE 1 5 3
One of the ordinances was that no newspaper should
be offered for sale, or be allowed in any portion to
leave the place in which it was printed, until five
complete days had elapsed from the period of its
preparation, and during the five days each journal
was to be submitted to a Government censorship,
and was not to be offered to the public until every
omission and alteration had been raade which the
censor thought necessary to the dignity of the Crown.
The penalties for disobedience were to be found in
heavy fines and in confiscation of the whole edition.
A heavy fine was ordained for any comment on the
private life of any living Frenchman without the ex
press permission of the person to whom the criticism
referred, and if that particular person happened to
be too indifferent or too magnanimous to make any
quarrel about the matter, it was provided that the
public prosecutor should take up the case whether
the aggrieved person liked it or not.
The most intense excitement broke out all over
France. The purpose of the new policy was at once
understood everywhere. The Courts of Law, which
had judges faithful to the honourable traditions of
the Bench, declined to pass sentences on journalists
who had refused to regard the ordinances of the
King, and declared that the ordinances themselves
were a breach of the Constitution. The King lost
his head under these conditions, and showed his
temper on more than one occasion to the judges who
had preferred the Constitution and the law to the
favour of the Sovereign. When the King appeared
in public he was received in absolute silence. There

1 54 COMING REFORM CASTS ITS SHADO W BEFORE
was a certain amount of rioting here and there in
Paris and in the provinces, but nothing to alarm a
stubborn Minister; and the King firmly beheved
that like Macbeth he could make his will avouch
any course of action he thought fit to adopt. But
even the King must have been profoundly impressed
by the conspiracy of silence which seemed to sur
round him whenever he made his appearance in
public. Furthermore, there were close observers in
the higher ranks of the army itself who began to be
more and more convinced from day to day that the
troops could not be rehed upon to act against the
citizens of Paris.
The King still complacently hoped for the best,
according to his interpretation of the word. There
had been an expedition to Algiers in consequence
of a quarrel between the French Government and
the Dey of Algiers, and the latest military exploit
of the Bourbons had been the conquest of the terri
tory which we now know as Algeria. The King
was possessed by the hope that the glory of this
conquest would be enough to turn away public con
tention from any minor questions at home, such as
that of liberty of the Press, and the right of pubhc
speech ; but the conquest of Algiers was not quite
like one of Napoleon's victories, and the pubhc of
France kept on clamouring for reform without seem
ing to concern themselves about the new annexation
of territory.
Then again, to make matters worse for the King,
there had been a bad winter and spring, the supphes
of food were stinted, and the mere throwing out of

JOHN CONSTABLE, R. A.
From a drawing by himself, in the National Portrait Gallery.

COMING REFORM CASTS ITS SHADO W BEFORE 1 5 5
employment of the vast number of workers who de
pended on the printing-offices for their wages was
of itself enough to strengthen and embitter the pop
ular discontent. The troops themselves were but
ill provided for, and soldiers called out for special
duty were sometimes left with hardly anything to
eat or drink. Yet the King and his Ministers went
their way as if the road lay smooth before them.
There were prosecutions after prosecutions, which
only made matters worse, and the King had now the
majority of the Representative Chamber against
him. He endeavoured to strengthen himself in the
Senate by creating a large number of new peers;
but the struggle had gone too far to be seriously
affected by any such measure, and the new peers
had little inclination to set themselves against the
whole public of France. The King had now the
best of the judges against him — it is to the honour
of the Bench of Justice in almost every country
that it has so often stood out against the despotic
decrees of a sovereign who chose to set aside the
Constitution. The King went on from bad to worse; he dis
solved the Chamber of Deputies on the ground that
during the recent elections means had been used in
various parts of the country to deceive the electors
and prevail on them to disregard the wishes of the
Sovereign. He went so far as even to set aside the
provisions of the charter itself, to reduce the num
ber of deputies in the Representative Chamber, and
to alter their qualifications and the methods by
which they were elected. Sometimes, indeed, he

156 COMING REFORM CASTS ITS SHADOW BEFORE
seemed to waver in his purpose, and to be wiUing to
come to terms with the people ; but whenever he did
thus waver he wavered at the wrong time, and found
that it was too late, and then fell back on his rigid
original determination. The officer in command of
the troops at that time was Marshal Marmont, one
of Napoleon's old generals, who had taken service
under the King after Napoleon's fall, and had done
his duty loyally, but who had little heart for the
sort of work that now seemed to be set before him.
In Paris the Republican tricolour was flying every
where ; the people had begun to erect barricades in
the streets. Miss Martineau, in \\ex History of the
Peace, says that in relation to these events there first
appeared in the London Annual Register the words,
then new in such sense to the British public, " bar
ricade " and " omnibus." Marshal Marmont sent
to St. Cloud, where the King was staying, an aide-
de-camp with a letter describing all that was going
on in the capital. The messenger delivered the
letter to the King himself, urging that an instant
reply should be given ; and then followed a memor
able question and answer. " Is it a revolt ? " asked
the King. " No, sire," was the answer, " it is not
a revolt — it is a revolution." Then the King in de
spair offered to abdicate the Crown in favour of his
grandson, the child of the Due de Berri, who, he
believed, would have a better chance than the
King's own son. But the time had gone too far for
any such arrangement as that. There had been
fighting in the streets of Paris, and the fact that the
revolution was not more deeply soaked in blood —

COMING REFORM CA STS ITS SHADO W BEFORE 1 57
the numbers killed on both sides being somewhere
about a thousand, and the wounded in proportion —
was due only to the conduct of most of the troops,
who positively refused to fire on the people, or to
take any part in the suppression of the popular
movement. In fact, the revolution was accom
plished. The King and his family escaped and found a re
fuge in England. Prince Polignac and others of the
Ministry were arrested, tried, and sentenced to life
long terms of imprisonment. The son of PhUippe
Egalit6 was proclaimed King, not of France, but of
the French ; and mounted the throne as King Louis
Philippe, whom Carlyle afterwards described as
" struggling under sad circumstances to be called
King of the French for a season," and it should be
added in justice to Carlyle's power of prophetic
vision that he used the words long before Louis
Philippe's reign seemed likely to come to an abrupt
end. Louis Philippe was set up as King of the
Barricades, and Charles X. had by this time found
a refuge in Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, where he
had been sheltered during his former exile from
France. There was the end of the elder branch of
the Bourbons.
Before this end had quite arrived, the career of
George IV. had come to a close. George had been
sinking in health for some time, and at last it be
came evident to all observers that his life could not
long endure. His latest acts as a Sovereign had
been in keeping with the policy of his reign and of
his Regency. He set his face rigidly against all re-

158 COMING REFORM CASTS ITS SHADO W BEFORE
forms, and, indeed, unconsciously did what he could
to make his death seem a rehef to the great major
ity of his people. The rising generation could
remember nothing of the hopes with which he had
once inspired the public mind. They knew of him
only as a man cursed with indolence and dandyism
and dissipation. The nation had grieved, indeed,
when his only daughter died, because it was felt
everywhere that, should she succeed to the Crown,
the Empire would be blessed with the rule of an
enlightened, a virtuous, and a noble-hearted Sover
eign. But the fates ruled it otherwise; and per
haps in losing his daughter, George lost the only
human being whom he really loved, and who would
have loved him if she could, if his selfishness, his
worthlessness, and his occasional bursts of harshness
would have allowed her.
George IV. was succeeded by his brother, William
IV., Duke of Clarence, who had been trained for
the sea, and had proved a most unmanageable and
unruly officer. William IV. was accepted as King
with composure by most of his subjects, and with a
certain renewed hopefulness by a few on both sides.
There were those on the Tory side who still thought
it not impossible that the new King might be able
to hold his own against the rising movement in
favour of constitutional reform. There were a few
on the Liberal side who thought that William IV.,
coming to royal power for the first time at an ad
vanced age, would have acquired experience enough
to teach him that the day had gone by when a king
could make himself an effective barrier against the

COMING REFORM CA STS ITS SHADO W BEFORE I 59
movement of the times. The English public, on
the whole, even including the most advanced re
formers, were well inclined to give the new King a
fair chance. Some of the reformers, indeed, were
comforted by the conviction that their movement
had now gone too far to be long delayed by any
influence. All sorts of stories had long been in circulation
about William IV., about his unmanageable char
acter as a naval officer, about his fluctuations in
opinion, his love affairs, and his occasional eccentric
ity of conduct ; but the more philosophical observers
consoled themselves with the thought that he was
probably less obstinate than George IIL, and was
certainly less immoral than George IV. He had, at
all events, one great recommendation to the bulk of
his subjects, and that was found in the fact that he
was the Sailor King. Therefore, it is only fair to
say that the new King started with every prospect
of a reasonable chance to succeed in the work of
government. But the impulse towards reform had
been immensely accelerated by the Three Days of
July, as they were called, the three days which made
a second revolution in France. When the news of
that revolution was brought to Sir Robert Peel, who
was then sitting in the House of Commons, his com
ment on it was that that was just what must come
of an attempt to govern on too narrow a constitu
tional basis. The English people saw this distinctly ;
they saw that Paris had gone into revolt because
Charles X. endeavoured to govern -the country by
himself, and by his Ministers, without any regard

1 60 COMING REFORM CA STS ITS SHADO W BEFORE
for the sentiments and the wishes of the vast ma
jority of his people. They knew that he had en
deavoured to maintain his rule by the suppression of
political criticism and the freedom of speech ; they
knew, too, that one of his offences in the eyes of
the French people had been his supposed defer
ence to the views of George IV. and the Duke of
Wellington. The English people looked at home, and they saw
that in their country also the King had been en
deavouring to govern by his own will, and through
the action of his favourite Ministers, and they had
learned by the proceedings- in many Courts of Law
that the dearest wish of the Sovereign was to pre
vent aU freedom of political criticism, whether in
speech or in writing, and that the English King,
like the French King, was striving to maintain his
policy without the slightest regard for the wishes,
the feelings, the aspirations, and the convictions of
the vast majority of the people. It would be im
possible that the patriotic intelhgence of England
should not learn a lesson from the overthrow of
Charles X. There was no desire whatever outside
the ranks of a few very extreme thinkers and de-
claimers for the establishment of a repubhcan system
in these countries. Many years later a great Eng
lish orator said that among the population of these
countries the question of a republic had not come
up. It certainly had not come up, had not even
dawned, at the time when William IV. ascended the
throne ; but there was at least a hope that the new
King might do better than either George III. or

COMING REFORM CASTS ITS SHADO W BEFORE l6l
George IV. had done ; and a confident behef that in
any case the reform movement could not be long
delayed. Therefore the change from one sovereign
to another passed off quietly, and people in general
awaited the coming of new events without unreason
able expectation, but also without marked distrust,
and certainly without any dismay.
The new Kings of England and France seemed
alike disposed to seek for popularity among the hum
bler of their subjects. William IV. walked about the
London streets with his umbrella tucked under his
arm, and talked familiarly with everyone he knew,
and even when on great State occasions he had to
wear his royal robes, he wore his naval uniform
under them. Louis Philippe, too, walked about the
streets of Paris just as he thought fit, became identi
fied with his umbrella, and was known throughout his
reign as the " Bourgeois King." Lord Eldon took
alarm at what he considered King William's over-
familiarity with people in general, and laid it down
as an axiom that a king, in order to maintain his
throne, must show in his ordinary demeanour that
he considered himself the superior of everybody else
in the world. When William came to the throne
he found the Duke of Wellington in office as Prime
Minister, with Sir Robert Peel as Home Secretary,
and he announced in the most offhand and informal
way that he had no ill-feeling whatever towards his
good friend the Duke of Wellington, in whom, and
in Sir Robert Peel, he placed the highest confidence.
The existing Parliament would, of course, have to
be dissolved. It was the rule then, and continued
VOL. I. — II

l62 COMING REFORM CASTS ITS SHADO W BEFORE
to be so down to a comparatively recent period, that
a dissolution of Parliament must follow the death
of a sovereign.
The King sent a formal message to Parliament
almost immediately after his accession, in which he
dwelt, according to the usual ceremonial fashion, on
the loss the nation had sustained by the death of the
late Sovereign, and then went on to say that the
sooner the new elections took place the better. This
was not exactly what the public had expected. The
King was at this time sixty-five years of age, and
was not in particularly robust health ; and the heir
to the throne was the Princess Victoria, a child then
only eleven years old. People asked themselves
what was to happen in the meantime, supposing the
King were to die suddenly, were to meet with some
fatal accident, since no one had been appointed re
gent, to carry on the Government until the young
Princess should come to the age when, according to
constitutional law, it would be possible for her to
perform the duties of a queen.
Parliament has to give its consent to the nomina
tion of a regent, and everybody naturally expected
that the King would make some intimation to both
Houses on the subject. Nothing about the Regency
was said in the King's Message, and the public dis
appointment was very wide-spread and deeply felt.
There were gloomy forebodings in many a mind.
One grim and darksome figure stood in the shadow
of the throne, the figure of the Duke of Cumber
land, the King's eldest surviving brother. It would
be hard now to bring home to the ordinary reader

COMING REFORM CA STS ITS SHADO W BEFORE 163
any adequate idea of the hatred which was felt by
the mass of the English people for the Duke of
Cumberland. If that Prince were guilty of half the
offences laid to his charge, he would have been bet
ter suited for a contemporary of the days of Caligula,
or of Caesar Borgia, than for a member of the Royal
Family of England in 1830. Moreover, the Duke of
Cumberland would at once become, in the event
of the King's death, the successor to the Crown of
Hanover. The Georges were all Kings of Great
Britain and of Hanover, and the Hanoverian Crown
descended in the male line only. What might not
happen, it was asked, if the guardianship of the
young Princess were suddenly to be left, in the event
of the King's death, to the care of her eldest uncle,
the Duke of Cumberland ? Men believed the Duke
of Cumberland capable of anything. We shall see
later on how there spread through England a strong
conviction that the Duke of Cumberland was putting
himself at the head of an organised conspiracy to
alter the succession, and assume the crown himself.
This fear had not, at that time, taken a shape so
definite, even in the minds of alarmists, as it after
wards came to bear. But even then popular opinion
was ready to believe in the possibility of any dark
deed being sanctioned by the Duke of Cumberland.
Even those who were not alarmists, and were not
disposed to exaggerate the demerits of the Duke of
Cumberland, kept asking what was to happen if on
the King's death he were to betake himself to his
Kingdom of Hanover and try to organise conspira
cies there. Everyone knows how hated in England

164 COMING REFORM CASTS ITS SHADO W BEFORE
became the very name of Hanover during the reigns
of George I. and II. ; how the people believed that
every English interest was sacrificed by the Sover
eign's love for his Hanoverian crown, and how jeal
ous and impatient public opinion had become in
these countries. There were, indeed, not a few
who would have been well contented if the Duke
of Cumberland, on succeeding to the Hanoverian
throne, were to go to Hanover and stay there, and
never bestow a thought upon England any more.
This, however, was exactly what most people be
lieved that the Duke of Cumberland would never
do. The common belief was that he would make
of Hanover a convenient retreat for the organisation
of conspiracy against the child-sovereign of England.
People looked forward, therefore, with gloomy fore
bodings to the dangers that might be threatened if
the King were to die, and the Duke of Cumberland,
no regent being named, were to succeed at once to
the crown of Hanover and the guardianship of the
Princess Victoria. The first disappointment which
King William gave to his people was by the omis
sion in his Royal Message of any allusion to the
appointment of a regent.
On the 30th of July, Lord Grey in the House of
Lords, and Lord Althorp in the House of Com
mons, moved for the delay of a day in replying to
the Royal Message. The motive of the delay was
perfectly weU understood; it was simply in order
to give time for the consideration of the course
which ought to be taken with regard to the Royal
Message if the King should not in the meantime

COMING REFORM CASTS ITS SHADO W BEFORE 165
make any suggestion as to the appointment of a re
gent. The Duke of Welhngton, on behalf of the
Government, refused to agree to any proposal for
delay, and although several Tory peers, including
the indomitable Lord Eldon himself, voted in favour
of Lord Grey's motion, the Ministers carried with
them a majority of forty-four in the House of Lords,
and of forty-six in the House of Commons.
The debate in the House of Commons deserves
notice, if only for the passion which Henry Brougham
threw into it, and the extraordinary demeanour of
the House itself. Brougham, of course, supported
the Liberal policy in the House of Commons, and
his language was certainly well calculated to pro
voke a scene in an excitable assembly. Somebody
interrupted Brougham with a peculiar cry which
was undoubtedly meant for an imitation of the
utterance of one of the lower animals, on which,
Brougham observed that by a wonderful disposition
of Nature every animal had its peculiar mode of ex
pressing itself, and he was too much of a philosopher
to quarrel with any of those modes. Under the cir
cumstances. Brougham may be said to have dealt
good-humouredly enough with the interruption.
O'Connell, at a day a little later, met with some
peculiarly clamorous interruptions from a great
number of voices, whereupon, in tones of thunder,
he called upon the owners of the voices to " silence
their beastly bellowing." The Speaker ruled that
O'Connell was out of order in using the word
" beastly," whereupon O'Connell blandly declared
that in deference to the Speaker he withdrew the

l66 COMING REFORM CASTS ITS SHADO W BEFORE
adjective, but he added, " I never heard or read of
any bellowing which was not beastly."
Brougham's speech on the occasion to which we
are particularly referring was met by many such in
terruptions, and in that debate, as in most debates
in the House of Commons, when passion is at all
aroused, men indulged themselves in any form of
interruption which suited their tastes or their lungs.
One honourable member, perhaps, had the gift of
imitating the bellowing of a bull; another preferred
to bleat like a sheep ; a third reproduced with full
artistic effect the noise of a crowing cock ; a fourth
mewed like a cat ; and so on, with imitations of the
whole animal kingdom, among which even the mel
lifluous, and probably in certain instances most
appropriate, voice of the donkey sounded in the
ears, of those who cared to listen. Some of the de
scriptions given to us by men who were present
during certain of these noisy scenes would seem
hardly credible to many who even now think the
House of Commons a rather uproarious and dis-
orderiy assembly. AU this, it should be observed,
took place at a time when Parhament was stiU un-
reformed, when the vulgar herd had no power to
vote for the election of a member of the House of
Commons, and when one of the great arguments
against reform was that it would flood that House
with uneducated and noisy persons. Brougham
certainly, sometimes, gave an excuse for angry in
terruptions. In the course of his speech, to which
we have been referring, he made a vehement attack
upon Sir Robert Peel and the other Ministers pre-

COMING REFORM CASTS ITS SHADO W BEFORE l6j
sent. He had been complaining of the policy of
the Duke of Wellington, and he suddenly said,
looking fixedly at Peel: " Him I accuse not. It is
you I accuse — his flatterers — his mean, fawning
parasites." The House of Commons in our day is
noisy enough sometimes, and rude enough in its
personal attacks, but such words as these would be
impossible there now.
England lost about this time a remarkable man
on a most remarkable occasion. The death of such
a man must always have a deep personal and his
torical interest; but the occasion which indirectly
led to that death was an event of the highest im
portance to England and to civilisation. It was the
opening of the first railway of any length completed
in this country. There was a great ceremonial on
the 15th of September, 1830, in honour of the open
ing of the line from Liverpool to Manchester. The
Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, and many
other men took part in the ceremony, which was to
have been followed by a great public dinner at
Manchester. Mr. Huskisson was one of those who
attended. He had been paying a visit to his con
stituents in Liverpool, and, although in very feeble
health, he had made up his mind to be present on
the memorable occasion of the opening of this first
completed railway.
Before the train left Liverpool, the railway author
ities requested the company to keep their places in
the carriages until the train reached its destination,
and a printed handbill, setting forth the request, was
passed along among the travellers. It seems almost

1 68 COMING REFORM CA STS ITS SHA DOW BEFORE
unnecessary to say that the request and caution
were of no avail. The train stopped at a wayside
station a few miles down the line, and several of the
company immediately got out and indulged their
curiosity by walking up and down and inspecting
the outside of the carriages. Unluckily, a friend of
the Duke of Wellington and of Huskisson was
seized with the idea that this would be a propitious
moment to bring the two men together and get
them to shake hands. The idea spread abroad, and
both the Duke and Huskisson were quite willing to
take this opportunity of renewing their former
friendship. The Duke advanced along the platform
to meet Mr. Huskisson, who was approaching him,
and held out his hand in cordial greeting. Before
Huskisson had well time to take the proffered hand,
some alarm was caused by the reported approach of
a locomotive, and a cry was raised to those who
were standing outside, admonishing them to get into
the carriages again. Huskisson was standing by the
open door of one of the carriages, and was not quick
in getting in, probably because of his physical weak
ness. The open door at which he stood was struck
by the locomotive, and Huskisson received injuries
so severe that he died almost immediately after be
ing removed to a neighbouring parsonage.
The fatal event, of course, cast the deepest gloom
over the whole party; the Ministers were only in
duced not to break up the ceremonial at once by the
fear that some terrible alarm might be spread over
Manchester. This was again a season of alarms,
and no one could tell what exaggerated form be-

COMING REFORM CA STS ITS SHA DOW BEFORE 1 69
wildered rumour might not take if none of the
members were to arrive at the place of their destina
tion. Nothing seemed more probable than that an
affrighted tale might be spread about the assassina
tion of the Ministers of the Crown in a body, and
might lead to the widest disturbances. In any case
it was earnestly urged upon the Ministers that the
death of Mr. Huskisson might be set down as one
of the inevitable consequences of venturing on a
railway journey, and that the prospects of the whole
railway system might be severely damaged for some
time to come. The Ministers, therefore, went to
Manchester, but the public celebration of the event
was put off. In Huskisson England lost one who
might almost be called a great statesman. The
stranger who visits Liverpool to-day will find Hus
kisson's name maintained in streets and squares
and docks and public institutions.
We have said that this particular time was a sea
son of alarm once again. There was great distress
and, of course, consequent discontent throughout
many parts of the country. The fierce passion for
destruction which had formerly broken out in and
around the towns, and had led to the breaking of
machinery, now showed itself in the country places
and in the destruction of corn-ricks and farmhouses.
One of the favourite arguments of Tories and Re
actionaries when the Revolution of 1830 broke out
in France was founded on the actions of some of
the agricultural populations of that country. A
sudden mania had set in there for the destruction of
farmhouses and stores of corn. " What could you

170 COMING REFORM CASTS ITS SHADO W BEFORE
do with such a people," it was indignantly asked,
" but to keep them down by force, to shoot them
down, to crush them by any and every means ?
What was the wrong-doing of Charles X. but that
he had been too slow to use the weapons in his
possession for the wholesale putting down of such
acts of crime ? "
And now, behold, the very same phenomenon
was visible in many parts of England. The passion
spread from county to county. The cant name of
" Swing" was used as typical of the rick-burning
outlaw; and swing, indeed, a great many men did
for their share or their supposed share in the busi
ness. At that time there was no idea of putting
down violence but by greater violence. The gal
lows was in full use almost everywhere, and even
boys were remorselessly hanged for their share or
their supposed share in the doings of " Swing."
No one, of course, could possibly justify or excuse
this rage for wanton destruction. Such a rage,
however, is a common outcome of popular and social
discontent, and when it does break out it ought to
be regarded as a subject to be discussed as well as a
crime to be punished.
As usually happens in such cases, an impression
got abroad that many of the acts of destruction
were prepared and instigated by paid emissaries of
the authorities, who were glad to commend them
selves to their masters by promoting outrages which
might tend to cast discredit upon aU popular move
ments in favour of reform. The Funds went down,
and alarmists began to predict that if the Govern-

COMING REFORM CA STS ITS SHADO W BEFORE 1 7 1
ment did not show a firm front the revolution in
France would be followed by a revolution in Eng
land. Even in the minds of many who did not
carry their feelings of alarm quite so far as this, an
impression began to prevail that a serious crisis was
again approaching, that the Sailor King or Patriot
King was already losing his popularity, and that a
great division was again taking place between the
Sovereign and his people. Some even of the strong
est Tories began to think that the Duke of Well
ington would have to go out of office before long.
According to their ideas, he had not been explicit
enough and decided enough in his condemnation of
the reform movement, and the disturbed state of
the country was mainly owing to his lack of firm
ness in dealing with the whole crisis.
In the meantime the new Parliament met, and
the King's Speech was made public. The speech
disappointed all popular expectation. The King
recommended, indeed, that steps should be taken
to provide for a Regency in case of his death, but
otherwise there was nothing said which could tend
to conciliate the people. The Royal Speech ex
pressed the determination of the King to maintain
all the treaties by which the political systems of
the continent had been forcibly reconstructed, con
demned with stern emphasis and frequent repetition
the disturbances in Great Britain and Ireland,
pledged all the powers of the State to put down
and properly punish such disturbances, and, in
directly at least, associated these disturbances with
the popular movement in favour of constitutional

1 72 COMING REFORM CASTS ITS SHADO W BEFORE
reform by an inflated passage about the inestimable
blessings of living amid such political institutions
as those which then existed in these countries. In
the midst of all the prevailing commotion Mr.
Brougham gave notice in the House of Commons
that it was his intention to bring forward on a day
which he named — a day then only a fortnight off
— the whole question of parliamentary reform.
Brougham was then probably the most popular man
in England, the recognised leader of the reform
movement.

CHAPTER IX
THE GREAT REFORM BILL
ANEW Parhament met on October 26, 1830.
The opening debate was as usual on the Ad
dress in reply to the Speech from the Throne, and
it proved to be a debate of the greatest importance.
The Government were challenged by Lord Grey and
others to make known their views on the subject
of parliamentary reform ; and the Government,
through the mouth of the Prime Minister, the Duke
of Wellington, did make known their views with a
vengeance. All that the Duke of Wellington could
accord to any proposal of parliamentary reform
was, if we may adopt certain famous words then
still ringing in the ears of Europe, " La Mort sans
phrase." The Duke declared himself utterly opposed to any
and every measure which called for an alteration in
the existing parliamentary system. He declared
that he had never read or even heard of any scheme
which satisfied his mind that the parliamentary
system could be rendered any better than it was at
the moment. The country, he declared, was happy
enough to possess a legislature which answered all
173

174 THE GREAT REFORM BILL
the good purposes of legislation, and that to a de
gree never before known in any other country. The
whole system of representation and of voting pos
sessed, he insisted, the absolute confidence of the
public. He flung into the face of Lord Grey the
announcement that he did not intend to propose
any scheme which involved any alteration of the
Constitution. But he was not even content with
that proclamation ; he went a little further and an
nounced that so long as he held a position in any
Government he should always feel it his duty to
resist any such proposal when brought forward by
others. The delivery of such a speech clearly settled the
question as to the Duke's possessing any faculty of
statesmanship, supposing such a question possible.
Almost anybody else in such a position as this
would have thought it enough to say that he him
self did not believe the existing Constitution could
be improved upon, and that he therefore did not
propose to bring forward any measure for its im
provement. But it would not be like the Duke to
content himself with such a reply. He felt himself
bound to go much further, and to declare that it
was absolutely beyond the wit of man to devise or
suggest any possible improvement, and that there
fore he should feel it his bounden duty to oppose
any proposition, brought forward by no matter
whom, which began with the daring and impious
suggestion that there could be any room for im
provement in the Constitution which the wisdom of
our ancestors had bequeathed to us.

THE GREAT REFORM BILL 1 75
The Duke's speech certainly did not sound the
death knell of reform ; but it did sound the death
knell of the Wellington Administration. The
country had quite outgrown the time when it could
take the doctrine from anyone, that no improve
ment could ever again be made in our best of all
possible constitutions. The Duke's colleagues saw
already that the end of their time had come.
The country blazed into a fury of passion when
the words of the Duke of Wellington were known ;
and the Ministry became more unpopular probably
than even a Tory Ministry ever was before or since
in England. On the other hand, the popularity of
the King went up at this crisis. There was a gen
eral idea abroad that William was not likely to en
courage or stand by such declarations as that of the
Duke of Wellington. He had been popular at one
time, chiefly by contrast with the more recent
policy of his predecessor, and there was a general
hope that the Patriot King, as he was called, would
turn back to the path of his former popularity. It
is not, perhaps, quite easy to understand just now
why such high expectations were formed of William
IV. ; but at all events, those who believed that he
would not press his general likings and dislikings to
the verge of revolution had reason afterwards to
congratulate themselves on their optimism.
The question with most of the Ministers was now
not how to keep in office, but how to get decently
out of office. Everyone, with perhaps the single
exception of the Duke of Wellington, must have
seen that the public feeling against the Tory Gov-

176 THE GREAT REFORM BILL
ernment was too strong to be long resisted ; and the
Duke of Wellington, to do him justice, did not care
whether he was in office or out of office so long as
he believed that he had done what he considered his
duty. The end came about by what might almost
be called a matter of accident. Sir Henry ParneU
brought forward a motion in the House of Commons
asking for the appointment of a Select Committee
to take into consideration the estimates and amounts
proposed by his Majesty regarding the Civil List.
Sir Henry Parnell, who afterwards became Lord
Congleton, was one of the family of the poet who
was popular in the days of Swift and Addison, and
was an ancestor of the Charles Stewart Parnell
whose name was afterwards famous in the debates
of the House of Commons.
Sir Henry Parnell's motion was carried by a ma
jority of twenty-nine, although the Government
had thrown all the strength they had into opposing
it. The motion was in itself hardly one of first-
class importance. A Ministry anxious to cling to
office might easily have taken the sting out of it
by promising some sort of concession, or might
have allowed it to pass without any further notice,
as is done with so many a resolution brought for
ward by a private member, and not directly con
cerning any Ministerial scheme actually before the
House. But the circumstances were peculiar, and
the Government thought it best to accept the pass
ing of the resolution as a vote of censure ; they took
advantage of the opportunity, fearing that if they
were to hold office they might be defeated a little

THE GREAT REFORM BILL 1 77
later on some subject more serious and critical in
the eyes of the country. It is quite possible, too,
that they may have thought it a good stroke of
policy to accept defeat in a controversy which left
to them the appearance of having forfeited office
while defending the prerogative of the Sovereign
against Whigs, Radicals, and Revolutionists.
Whatever the deciding reason, their course was
promptly taken. Next morning they tendered
their resignation to the King, and the resignation
was promptly accepted. Later that same day the
House of Commons was informed that the Duke of
Wellington's Administration had ceased to exist,
and the conviction was borne in upon every mind,
that Lord Grey, with his reform scheme, must be
come the head of the next Government. The an
ticipation was, of course, fulfilled ; Lord Grey was
at once sent for by the King and invited to form
an Administration.
The main interest as to the members of the new
Administration attached to Henry Brougham and to
Lord John Russell, the Earl Russell of a later day.
Brougham was to be the Lord Chancellor, and the
news of his appointment created a wild display of
anger among his opponents. Brougham had made
many enemies; in his outbursts of overwhelming
and reckless eloquence he had spared no opposing
force, man or institution, that came in his way. In
the House of Commons he had sometimes denounced
his antagonists with epithets such as no Speaker
would now allow to be uttered in that assembly.
The position of Lord Chancellor is one of the very
VOL. I. — 12

178 THE GREAT REFORM BILL
gravest and the most dignified that a British subject
can be called upon to occupy. It is not, indeed, a
position of great political influence, for the Lord
Chancellor is not expected to take frequent part in
the debates of the House of Lords; and, of course,
it is assumed that he will not there display himself
as apolitical partisan. Nor is he in actual fact what
he is very often caUed, the Speaker of the House of
Lords, for he has nothing like the control over the
Lords which every Speaker has over the House of
Commons. If a number of members rise together,
the Speaker calls on one of them, and in the ordi
nary course of life his decision is accepted without
dispute. But if a number of peers rise together,
each claiming to be heard, the Lord Chancellor has
no power to decide who is to address the assembly.
The Lords decide that for themselves by a vote of
their own, if necessary. Nor has the Lord Chancel
lor any right, such as the Speaker of the House of
Commons has, to decide upon all points of order;
that right, too, the peers retain for themselves.
Still the position of Lord Chancellor is very high
and is very dignified. The Lord Chancellor is de
clared to be the keeper of the Sovereign's conscience,
and all the Tories were furious with anger at the
thought of Henry Brougham being exalted to such
a place. The King, indeed, himself objected to
Brougham's being made Lord Chancellor; but he
was prevailed upon by Lord Grey to withdraw his
opposition and consent to the appointment.
Lord Grey, at one moment of the controversy,
suggested a possible compromise. He advised that

THE GREAT REFORM BILL 1 79
Brougham should be made Master of the Rolls — a
position next in rank to that of Lord Chancellor;
but that as a sop to Brougham's well-known love of
political debate, he should be allowed to retain his
seat in the House of Commons. King William
made to this the very shrewd and sensible objection,
that to make Brougham Master of the Rolls, and
allow him still to sit in the House of Commons,
would be to give him very high office and full free
dom of debate as well ; and the King added that
there was no knowing whom Brougham might not
attack if he were allowed the chance. Lord Grey
pointed out that it would be utterly impossible for
any Ministry to carry any reform bill if the co
operation of Henry Brougham were not secured in
some way. These may not seem very exalted con
siderations to govern a Prime Minister or a Sovereign
in the Ministerial appointments, but Lord Grey knew
well what a force he had to deal with when he was
dealing with Brougham; and although he believed
Lord Brougham to be a thoroughly sincere reformer,
yet he had to recognise the extraordinary degree of
vanity that was in Brougham's nature, and it was
clear to him that Brougham was not a man to be
offended. Of course if Brougham had been left out of the
Cabinet altogether he would not, and could not,
have turned round and proclaimed himself hostile to
the principle of political reform ; but it would have
been very easy for him while still retaining his
character of advanced reformer, and even in sus
tenance of that very character, to keep on criticising

l8o THE GREAT REFORM BILL
every clause of the bill, insisting that the Govern
ment did not go far enough here, and were proving
false to past promises there, and thus appealing at
the most convenient moments from half-hearted re
formers in the House of Commons to whole-hearted
reformers outside it. The bill could in any case
only be carried by the most judicious steersmanship
and by the most extraordinary blending of courage
and caution ; and Lord Grey knew very well that
with Brougham as an ungracious critic the measure
could not be carried at all. Even as it was, some
intimation seems to have got to Brougham that
there was a delay over his appointment, and at first
he seemed disposed to take offence and decline to
hold any manner of office in the new Adminis
tration. But Lord Grey contrived to get over Lord
Brougham's objections, as he had previously got over
the objections raised by the King, and it was soon
made known to the world that Henry Brougham,
Harry Brougham as he was more usually called, was
to be the new Lord Chancellor of England.
The other appointment in which great public in
terest was felt, although of a very different kind,
was that of Lord John Russell, afterwards Earl Rus
sell. Lord John Russell was regarded as a man of
the most brUliant promise. He belonged to one of
the great historic famUies of England, a family
which had during successive centuries written its
name in the English annals. As a boy he had sat
at the feet of Fox ; and he was always a close friend
of the Irish national poet, Thomas Moore. The
writer of this book has often seen Moore's portrait

THE GREAT REFORM BILL l8l
in its place of honour in the house of the late
Countess Russell, Lord John's widow. Russell
had a genuine love for literature as well as for
politics, and every literary man of his time was
made welcome to his house. He had acted as
private secretary to the Duke of Wellington during
the Peninsular War, and had visited the great
Napoleon at Elba, and had done his best to per
suade Napoleon that there was not the slightest
likelihood of Wellington attempting to seize the
Crown of England. Napoleon smiled and blandly
submitted as to the judgment of an expert; but he
did not seem absolutely convinced — -what, after all,
could be more natural than that a great military
conqueror should cast a longing eye upon the crown
of his master ?
Lord John Russell was a sincere and ardent
champion of the claims of Catholic emancipation,
as he was indeed a champion of civil and religious
liberty all over the world. He was a friend to
Greece, and did all that came within his reach to
forward the cause of Greek independence. His
career, so far, in the House of Commons, had been
full of promise. He never, perhaps, rose to the
height of great parliamentary oratory ; his presence
was not commanding; and his voice, though clear
and telling, was not strong or resonant. He was
not a great orator as Robert Peel was, and as Glad
stone and Bright afterwards were. But he was a
perfect master of parliamentary fence ; a most quick
and dangerous antagonist. No one was happier
with a bland incisive repartee, with an epigram

1 82 THE GREAT REFORM BILL
which left something like a vitriolic burn behind it.
Some of us can well remember Lord John Russell
during his later years in the House of Commons and
his years later still in the House of Lords. Some
of us have often thought it deeply interesting to
listen to RusseU's words, if it were only for the
reason that they were the words of a man who had
talked with the great Napoleon at Elba. But Rus
seU's speeches never failed to be interesting in them
selves ; and they had the not common advantage of
being as good to read as they were good to hear.
The new Ministry has to be remembered for the
fact, among other and greater facts, that Lord
¦ Palmerston entered into office under Whig auspices
for the first time. Lord Palmerston became Foreign
Secretary, and with that office all the best days of
his parhamentary life were afterwards associated.
Lord Grey at once entrusted to Lord John Rus
sell the principal conduct of the Reform Bill through
the House of Commons; and Lord John Russell
went into communication with Grey's son-in-law.
Lord Durham, the Durham who, as John George
Lambton, had rendered great public service to the
reform cause already, and who was to become cele
brated afterwards as the man who composed the
momentous strife between Canada and the mother
country, and rendered Canada one of the most
prosperous and loyal of all the British colonies.
Lord John Russell sketched a plan of reform, which
he submitted to Lord Durham. On the whole,
Lord Durham approved of it with, however, certain
amendments of his own, some of which Lord John

THE GREAT REFORM BILL 1 83
RusseU readily accepted. The plan was approved
by Earl Grey, and was then submitted to the King
himself, by whom it was, to adopt Lord John Rus
seU's own words, readily and cheerfully sanctioned.
But the scheme was kept a profound secret from the
outer world. All Ministerial schemes are supposed
to be profound secrets until the moment comes for
expounding them in Parliament ; but in the ordinary
course of things the purport of most Ministerial
schemes does happen to get known in political so
ciety somehow, and gives a subject of discussion to
the clubs and the dinner tables for days and days
before the authoritative exposition is made. In
this case, however, the secret, although in the keep
ing of more than thirty men, was not allowed to get
out to the public anywhere, and conjecture was
busy as to what the new measure was to be even in
the House of Commons itself on the very day when
Lord John Russell was to make his statement.
It was thought of the utmost importance by Grey
and Russell and their colleagues that the opponents
of reform should not have an opportunity of tearing
the bill in pieces, or rather rending it by pieces, be
fore the full Ministerial statement could be brought
under the attention of the public. It must be re
membered that in the House of Commons there
were a good many anti-reformers not to be found
on the benches of the Tory Opposition. Many a
professed Liberal, who, if once the public outside
showed a determination to accept the bill, would
not have ventured to say a word against it, might
yet have grasped at any chance of decrying certain

1 84 THE GREAT REFORM BILL
of its details and turning attention away from its
main purpose if he could have known beforehand
what the precise contents of the measure were to
be. Some particular clause, weak or positively de-
fective in itself, some clause which in the course of
the parliamentary proceedings could easily have
been amended as the bill passed through committee,
might have been made the means of creating a
premature, irrelevant, and yet dangerous discussion,
filling the mind of reformers out-of-doors with the
idea that the measure would never do.
On the 1st of March, 1831, Lord John RusseU
made his opening statement of the Government's
proposals on the subject of parliamentary reform.
Nothing could be more clear, more comprehensive,
and in its way more eloquent than RusseU's speech
on that great occasion. The speech is even now a
most interesting and a most important historical
document. There is not, perhaps, anywhere to be
found in our parliamentary records an exposition so
complete and yet so concise of the reforms which it
proposed to introduce and of the anomalies and the
evils which it proposed to abolish.
It seems hard now to understand how a state
which at one time possessed a full understanding of
the principle of a representative government and a
system which very fairly corresponded with that
principle, should have come in the process of gener
ations to lose all the reality of constitutional govern
ment, and to sink into a condition of things which
was but the burlesque of a representative system.
RusseU's speech made it clear that this was the fact,

THE GREAT REFORM BILL 1 85
and made it clear also how the fact had come to be
in existence. " The ancient Constitution of our
country," said Lord John Russell in his opening
sentences, " declares that no man should be taxed
for the support of the state who has not consented
by himself or by his representative to the imposition
of those taxes." This, of course, is the keynote of
the whole principle of representative government.
It is not meant to be understood, as some of Rus
seU's quibbling and feeble-minded opponents tried
to make out in the course of the debate, that Lord
John was laying down a principle which amounted
to the absurdity that, if a man voted against a tax,
he therefore ought not to be called upon to pay it.
The meaning of RusseU's words, which these right
honourable and honourable members affected not to
understand, could not have puzzled for one moment
the mind even of a schoolboy far inferior in native
understanding to the intelligent pupil who appears
so often in Lord Macaulay's Essays.
RusseU's meaning was quite clear; and his ex
position of the representative principle could not be
disputed. The principle of representative govern
ment means that no man should be compelled to
pay a tax who has not had an opportunity, by him
self or by his representative, of expressing his
opinion as to whether the tax was or was not one
that ought to be imposed. Of course a majority
must decide in the end, or there could be no repre
sentative government at all ; for representative gov
ernment is in its very essence government by
majority. Lord John Russell showed that at one time

1 86 THE GREAT REFORM BILL
this principle of representation did exist in England ;
and that it was provided by English law that each
county should send to the House of Commons
two knights — a county member is still called in
formal phrase a knight of the shire ; each city, two
burgesses; and each borough, two members.
" Thus, no doubt," said RusseU, " at that early
period the House of Commons did represent the
people of England. There is no doubt, likewise,
that the House of Commons does not now represent
the people of England." How the change came
about has already been shown in these pages. The
whole condition of the country had meanwhile been
changing ; some of the boroughs had dwindled away
until they were left with no inhabitants at all, but
the owner of the soil still continued to return him
self as representative of the little desert to the
House of Commons. Great towns and cities were
springing up everywhere over the country, but these
had come into existence too late to have the benefit
of the old Constitution ; and the people of England
had not yet exerted themselves to create a new Con
stitution suited to the new times.
There is one passage in Lord John RusseU's
speech which has indeed been often quoted already,
but which cannot be quoted too often, cannot be
read too often by students of Enghsh history, and
should certainly not be omitted from this page.
" A stranger who was told that this country is un-
paraUeled in wealth and industry, and more civilised
and more enlightened than any country was before
it, that it is a country that prides itself on its free-

THE GREAT REFORM BILL 1 87
dom, and that once in every seven years it elects
representatives from its population to act as the
guardians and preservers of that freedom, would be
anxious and curious to see how that representation
is formed and how the people choose their repre
sentatives, to whose fate and guardianship they en
trust their free and liberal Constitution. Such a
person would be very much astonished if he were
taken to a ruined mound, and told that that mound
sent two representatives to Parliament ; if he were
taken to a stone wall and told that three niches in
it sent two representatives to Parliament ; if he were
taken to a park where no houses were to be seen
and told that that park sent two representatives to
Parliament. But if he were told all this and were
astonished at hearing it, he would be still more
astonished if he were to see large and opulent
towns, full of enterprise and industry and intelli
gence, containing vast magazines of every species
of manufacture, and were then told that these
towns sent no representatives to Parliament."
Then Lord John went a step farther, but in a
different direction, for the purpose of giving his in
telligent stranger a new chance of surprise. " Such
a person," he said, " would be still more astonished
if he were taken to Liverpool, where there is a large
constituency, and told, here is a fine specimen of a
popular election. He would see bribery employed
to the greatest extent and in the most unblushing
manner; he would see every voter receiving a num
ber of guineas in a box as the price of his corruption ;
and after such a spectacle he would, no doubt, be

1 88 THE GREAT REFORM BILL
much astonished that a nation whose representatives
are thus chosen could perform the functions of legis
lation at all, and enjoy respect in any degree. The
confidence of the country," Lord John went on to
declare, " in the construction and constitution of
the House of Commons is gone. It would be easier
to transfer the flourishing manufactures of Leeds
and Manchester to Gatton and Old Sarum than to
re-establish confidence and sympathy between this
House and those whom it calls its constituents."
Nothing could be more complete and correct as a
picture than this vigorous outline which Lord John
Russell drew of the majestic fabric of the British
Constitution. Had he had time, or were it neces
sary to elaborate every detail, it is quite certain that
the more he worked into the picture the more ap
palling would its fidelity become. The House of
Commons listened with intense interest to this mas
terly exposition ; and if votes were to be governed
merely by philosophical conclusions or considera
tions of unselfish patriotism, there can be no doubt
that the House must then and there have decided
to accept the principle that reform of some kind was
needed for such a Constitution. But then came the
question. What kind of reform had the Government
to propose ; and what sort of reform would the House
of Commons be likely to accept ?
In judging of the merits of the whole measure, it
is necessary to bear in mind that the House was
divided on this subject into three classes of opinion.
There was the opinion of those who in their hearts
were opposed to aU manner of reform; there was

THE GREAT REFORM BILL 1 89
the opinion of those who would have liked what
they considered a moderate and gradual change;
and there was the opinion of those, strengthened by
a great popular influence out-of-doors, who were not
likely to be thoroughly satisfied with any measure
which the Government might see their way to offer.
It is not possible to appreciate the difficulty of Lord
John RusseU's task if we do not give due account to
these considerations.
Lord John Russell went on to explain that there
were three principal grievances which the Govern
ment proposed to abolish. The first was the nomi
nation of members by individual patrons ; the second
was the election of members by close corporations ;
and the third was the expense of elections, including
the vast sums squandered on bribery and corruption.
Now, to begin with. Lord John proposed to deprive
all the really extinguished boroughs of any right of
nomination whatever. The Gattons and Old Sa-
rums, the green mounds and the park walls, were no
longer to be able at the command of the lord of the
soil to send up a so-called representative to the
House of Commons. Further, the Government
proposed that no borough which had less than one
thousand inhabitants should any longer be allowed
to send a member to Parliament; and that no
borough which had not more than four thousand in
habitants should be allowed to return more than
one representative. By this process of reduction
the number of members would become less than it
was by one hundred and sixty-eight ; and Lord John
Russell explained that the Government did not mean

190 THE GREAT REFORM BILL
to fill up the whole of these vacancies, believing, as
they did, that the House of Commons had too many
members already. Many years, more than a quar
ter of a century, indeed, after this announcement
John Bright complained that the House of Com
mons had still far too many members; and as he
put it in his blunt way, the House was sometimes
an orderly and sometimes a disorderly mob, but that
orderly or disorderly, it was always a mob.
Lord John Russell went on to say that the neces
sity for some reduction in the number of members
in the House was all the more necessary, seeing that
he hoped the attendance in future would be that of
really working members ; and that the parliamentary
roll would not contain the names of a great num
ber of gentlemen who, when once they had obliged
themselves or their patron by accepting an election
to Parliament, took care to live their lives pleasantly
abroad, and never troubled themselves to attend the
debates and divisions in the House of Commons.
Lord John Russell announced that it was intended
to give two members each to seven large towns
which had not had previously any manner of repre
sentation. It is something positively amusing now
to read the names of the seven towns on which it
was proposed to confer the right of representation
for the first time. These towns were Manchester,
Birmingham, Leeds, Greenwich, Wolverhampton,
Sheffield, and Sunderland. Six at least of these
towns may be said to represent — might even then
be said to represent — the growing commercial pro
sperity and energy of England, as no other towns

THE GREAT REFORM BILL I9I
could possibly do. Twenty other towns of smaller
size were to be represented each by one member.
The metropolis itself was to have eight new mem
bers, two members each being given to the Tower
Hamlets, Holborn, Finsbury, and Lambeth. Each
of these metropolitan constituencies is now, and was
even then, a big town in itself.
The Government proposed to sweep away nearly
all the complex franchises — the " fancy franchises,"
as they would have been called at a later day ; fran
chises conferred in many instances by close corpora
tions, often from selfish and corrupt motives, and
some of which did not even carry with them as a
qualification for the right to vote the condition that
the voter must reside in the borough whose repre
sentative he was privileged to join in electing. Lord
John Russell proposed as far as possible to simplify
the voting system, and to make it at least similar
in principle for boroughs and for counties. In the
boroughs a resident householder paying rates for a
house of the yearly value of ;^io and upwards was
to be entitled to vote; in counties a copyholder to
the value of ;^io a year, who was also qualified
to serve on juries, and a leaseholder for not less than
twenty-one years, whose annual rent was not less
than £%o, were to become voters at once.
Lord John Russell attempted to deal with the
expenses of elections by an arrangement that the poll
should be taken in separate districts, so that no voter
should have to travel more than fifteen miles to
record his vote; and also by limiting the duration
of the poll to a period of not more than two days.

192 THE GREA T REFORM BILL
It may be said at once that this part of the measure
proved utterly inadequate to its purpose. Again
and again have subsequent Governments been com
pelled to introduce new measures for the suppression
and for the punishment of bribery.
For more than forty years after the introduction
of the first Reform Bill the question of bribery re
mained an open scandal, against which earnest
reformers were never tired of declaiming. All that
can be said of the Government of Earl Grey on this
score is that they had an extraordinary piece of
complicated work to undertake ; and that to carry a
really effective measure for the extinction of bribery
at such a time would have been an utter impossibil
ity. Hogarth's sketches of English electioneering
days were hardly in the slightest degree caricatures
of the system which prevailed in the time of the
first Reform Bill, and indeed for many long years
after its introduction. It is weU worthy of notice,
is indeed a very interesting fact, that in the speech
which Russell made when moving for leave to bring
in the bill he spoke for the first time of his own
friends and sympathisers as the Reform party, and
he awarded to his opponents the title of Conserva
tives. Lord John Russell, as has been said, merely
moved for leave to bring in the bill. That is one of
the parliamentary forms of the House of Commons
which is dispensed with in the House of Lords.
Every bill in both Houses must have three readings;
but in the House of Lords the first reading is ac
corded as a matter of right to the member who in-

THE GREA T REFORM BILL 1 93
troduces any measure. In the House of Commons
the first reading is represented by a motion that
leave be given to bring in the bill; and although
that motion is not much opposed or much debated,
still it can be discussed and can be opposed.
The moment Lord John Russell had closed his
speech, the Opposition flamed out at once. Sir
Robert Harry Inglis was the first man to rise on the
part of the Tory Opposition. Now Sir Robert
Harry Inglis was a curious sort of politician, whose
peculiarities deserve notice all the more because he
was the type and specimen of a class which is fast
disappearing from the civilised countries of the
world. Inglis represented in the House of Com
mons the great University of Oxford. He was a
man of the highest personal and political integrity
and honour; he was a man of education, a man of
intellect, an effective speaker ; but he was the very
bond-slave of Tory prejudice, and the bitter enemy
of every measure large or small which made for
political progress. His name is still well remem
bered in the House of Commons; some of us can
even recall a recollection of the man himself, for his
political career lasted a long time, and he was a
living, walking, speech-making embodiment of an
tique Toryism. His speech in reply to Lord John
Russell was one which ought to have been preserved,
if only as a specimen of the kind of argument which
could still be employed in the House of Commons
by an educated English gentleman who was not
supposed to have any tendency to insanity. In
deed, the speech was exactly such a discourse as
VOL. I. — II

194 THE GREAT REFORM BILL
Sydney Smith might have prepared for the purpose
of throwing ridicule on the arguments of the whole
Tory party.
Reform Sir Robert Inghs declared to be only
revolution under a feigned name. A measure like
that introduced by Lord John RusseU would root
out all the benignant influences of education, prop
erty, and rank. Pass such a measure and there
would be no more gentlemen and no more scholars
in England, and everything in future would be gov
erned there by the caprice of an ignorant and howling
mob. He abandoned himself to the spirit of his
argument so far as to deny in the most solemn man
ner that any English law or English custom had ever
connected taxation and representation. He went
even further than this ; for he insisted that the whole
principle of representation was something utterly
foreign and unknown to the British Constitution.
He scoffed at the idea that a place merely because
it happened to be a large and prosperous town, with
a great population, was any the better entitled to be
represented in Parliament than the smallest country
village ; and he maintained that the principle of re
presentation was that the Sovereign should invite
whomsoever he pleased to represent any place,
peopled or unpeopled, which the Sovereign gra
ciously chose to designate; and that the man desig
nated should thereupon have the right of going to
Parliament, to confer with the Sovereign on the
affairs of the country. He went even further than
this ; he exceeded even the limits of anything like
artistic caricature ; for he openly defended and glori-

THE GREAT REFORM BILL 195
fied the purchase of small boroughs, and triumph
antly pointed out, that if such boroughs were not
to be bought and sold then the noblemen of the
country, the persons naturally fitted to govern the
country, would have no representation whatever in
the House of Commons. This was, perhaps, the
extreme high-water mark of the most antique
Toryism. Sir Robert Inglis naturally defended the system
of small boroughs — the rotten boroughs as they
came to be called — which were the property of some
owner or patron, and were disposed of to anybody
whom the patron's good fancy was pleased to
favour. He hammered away at this argument with
a certain clap-trap effect, when he pointed out that
a number of the greatest public men who had
adorned the House of Commons could never have
had seats there but for the intelligence and generos
ity of the patrons who discovered their merits, and
endowed them with a constituency. We shall pre
sently see that Sir Robert Inglis was not the only
man who made use of this argument; that it was
used again and again by men far better entitled to a
hearing than he ; and that it was heard of more than
a quarter of a century after the introduction of the
first Reform Bill.
Sir Robert Inglis then went on to enunciate the
proposition dear to the heart of good old Toryism in
every country, that everything would be peaceful
and happy, if only a flood of mob oratory were not
allowed to pour itself all over the land. Mob ora
tory, with men like Sir Robert Inglis, meant any

196 THE GREAT REFORM BILL
kind of eloquence which appealed to the hearts and
the brains of large numbers of men ; and it was an
article of faith with him that no human being would
ever fancy he had a grievance that ought to be
remedied by law, if some mob orator did not get
upon an inverted tub and bellow into his ears a
story of imaginary wrong. Robert Inglis is dead
and gone long ago; but the theory that popular
commotion never springs from real grievance, but
always comes from the wicked inspirings of irre
sponsible agitators, is a favourite conviction still
with the reactionary party in every country of the
world where men form parties at aU, and where
the patrons of old abuses find their sole enemies in
the workings of popular agitation.
Not long after Sir Robert Inglis had finished his
speech, a man of a very different order of mind and
of eloquence rose to oppose the Ministerial measure
of reform. This was Sir Robert Peel, the second of
the name, the great Sir Robert Peel as we may fairly
caU him. Peel was a Lancashire man ; and it is a
curious fact, that Lancashire has contributed to
Parliament the four greatest orators of the present
reign: Peel himself, Stanley, afterwards Earl of
Derby, Gladstone, and John Bright. Peel's speech
against the Reform BiU is said to have been, and we
can well believe it, a masterpiece of parliamentary
argument. We have to consider what must have
been the effect of the noble delivery, the exquisitely
chosen language, the appeals skilfully addressed to
ingrained prejudice and old-established ideas, in
order to understand with what teUing force such a

THE GREAT REFORM BILL 1 97
speech must have fallen upon the ears of the House
of Commons. We have to bear in mind, too, that
a distinct majority of those who listened to him
were in their secret hearts only too ready to admit
the justice of his arguments. But let any reader
take up the speech and study it to-day, and the
chances are many to one that the first feeling it will
arouse in him is one of wonder that a man of Peel's
intellect and education could possibly have indulged
in such chimeras and believed them to be guiding
spirits. Peel began by denouncing all those who had in
cited the people to a pitch of frenzy, and spurred
their lazy indifference until it broke into a revolu
tionary charge. Peel, one of the greatest and most
far-seeing members of an Enghsh Parliament, was
in this kind of argument putting himself on an
intellectual level with Sir Robert Inglis. According
to his contention, the most intelligent Englishman,
Irishman, or Scotchman would never have cared
whether boroughs were bought or sold, or not;
would never have seen any objection to a deserted
plain returning members to Parliament; or to the
Lord of the Manor nominating members to please
himself or some of his friends, to reward a parasite,
or to please a pretty woman ; would never have had
the least idea that there was anything wrong, or un
constitutional, or dangerous, or degrading in all this,
if only the wicked popular agitators would let him
alone, and not try to excite him to delirium.
Then came the appeal, which some of my readers
have been no doubt already anticipating, the de-

198 THE GREA T REFORM BILL
mand how even the wickedest of agitators could be
wicked enough to raise such questions at a time
when our foreign relations were passing through so
profound and grave a crisis. This, of course, is the
sort of appeal that is always introduced when any
measure of reform is proposed. What ! while France
is in the throes of a new revolution, is that the time
to unsettle our minds by tormenting us about rotten
boroughs and unenfranchised milhons ? " Better a
rotten borough or two," sang Tennyson many years
later, " than a rotten fleet and towns in flames."
Tennyson, however, was a singer, and did not pre
tend to any knowledge of political affairs, and was
not called upon by anybody to explain how the
maintenance of the rotten boroughs was to keep a
fleet from rotting and a town from foreign bombard
ment. Even if the condition of things had been
quite different from that which Peel fairly described
it to be. Peel might have used his argument just as
effectively in another way. He might have asked,
is it at a moment like this, when peace prevails at
home and abroad, that you are going to allow your
wicked agitators to disturb a nation and a world at
rest ?
Nobody could have known better than Peel did,
that the revolution in France was brought about by
the dogged determination of the rulers of that
country not to allow any measure of even the most
moderate reform. He went over again, although
with greater dexterity and effect, the argument of
Sir Robert Inglis in favour of the close-borough
system. " Consider," he urged, " the number of

THE GREAT REFORM BILL 1 99
men who had guided and illumined the House of
Commons, and who might never have had a chance
of finding a seat there if it were not for the exist
ence of those small close boroughs which the present
measure proposed altogether to disfranchise." He
ran, indeed, over a glittering bead-roll of names —
Burke, Pitt, Fox, Plunket, Canning, Brougham, and
many other great men were all returned in the first
instance for close boroughs at the nomination of a
patron. This same kind of argument was used
many years later by Peel's greatest parliamentary
successor, Mr. Gladstone. The argument, of course,
leaves out of all account the infinite anomalies and
abominations which the old system brought with it ;
the patronage, the bribery, the corruption, the sub
jection of the nation's best interests to the caprice
or the selfish purposes of a few owners of the soil.
The fact could not be disputed that there were
owners of boroughs, here and there, generous and
enlightened enough to see the merits of men like
Burke and Plunket and Canning, and to hand over
to them constituencies which they could not possibly
have purchased for themselves. But has it ever been
shown that a great and populous borough would be
in the least degree less likely than a patron or a close
corporation to appreciate the gifts of such men, and
to give them a chance in the House of Commons ?
In the England of our time, a new man of great
abilities and without money would find a much
better chance of a seat in Parliament by addressing
himself to some large and populous borough, where
the spread of education was telling on the electors,

200 THE GREAT REFORM BILL
than he would have in some much smaller constitu
ency, where mere local influence and local patronage
would be only too likely to carry the day against
the stranger.
During the course of the debate, a very remark
able speech was made by the Irish leader, Daniel
O'ConneU. O'ConneU seems to have seen farther
and more distinctly into the future than any other
of the great orators who took part in the discussion.
He declared that he would give the bill his full sup
port ; but that it was not the sort of measure that he as
a Radical reformer would have wished to introduce.
The main defect of the bill, he said, was to be found
in the fact that it was not a measure of radical re
form. No such measure, he insisted, could ever
give abiding satisfaction to the country which did
not recognise the principle of universal suffrage ; and
he contended that the durations of Parliament ought
to be made shorter, and that the votes of the elect
ors ought to be taken by ballot. Already, it has to
be observed, we have in Great Britain something
nearly approaching to manhood suffrage, and we
have vote by ballot, and there is not a reactionary
in his senses who believes that the people of these
countries could ever be induced to return to the old
franchise and the old system of the open vote.
The debate on the first reading was carried on for
seven nights. As we have already said, there is very
seldom a division taken on the first reading of any
measure. The second reading, when it comes on,
brings up a debate on the actual principle of the
bill • and a man who votes against the second read-

THE GREAT REFORM BILL 20I
ing thereby declares that he disapproves of the
whole purpose which the promoters of the bill have
in view. But he may vote for the second reading
while firm in the intention to make every alteration
he can in the provisions of the bill as it passes
through what is called committee stage, after second
reading ; that being the stage at which the bill comes
up for the consideration of all its separate clauses
and details. Many a Member of Parliament votes
for the second reading of a bill in the hope that he
may so damage it in committee as to leave it worth
nothing to its promoters.
Many observers, themselves hostile to reform,
were of opinion then, and many historical writers
have been of opinion since, that the Tories made an
entire mistake in their way of dealing with the meas
ure. The great difficulty of the bill, according to
these observers and writers, lay not so much in the
House of Commons as outside the House of Com
mons. Even within the House, as we have already
shown, there were many sincere reformers who put
up with the bill rather than welcomed it ; who were
willing to take it because they were afraid that they
could get nothing better just at that time ; but who
fully shared the opinions of Mr. O'Connell as to the
impossibility of its proving adequate to the work of
a lasting settlement. Outside the House of Com
mons the feeling of the Reform party was much
stronger still. It would have required all the influ
ence of Lord Grey and Lord John Russell and Lord
Durham and other such men to induce the country
to be satisfied with the measure. The opinion,

202 THE GREAT REFORM BILL
therefore, of the critics, to whom allusion has been
made, was that the policy of the Tory Opposition
would have been to show no inveterate and determ
ined hostility to the bill, to criticise it and censure
it, but not to make too much of it ; and let the at
tention of reformers outside Parliament be turned
rather to the unsatisfactory character of the measure
itself, than to the impassioned and wholesale oppo
sition of the Tories.
It is hardly probable that in any case the Tory
Opposition of that day, with men like Sir Robert
Inglis and his friends to urge them on, could have
been capable of any such subtle policy as that which
was recommended to them. But there can be little
doubt that the fury of the Tories went a good way
to make the bill more popular than it otherwise
might have been. It was almost enough for many
of the reformers in the country, and especially in
the great towns, to know that the Duke of Welling
ton and Lord Sidmouth and Sir Robert Inglis and
others were set against the biU, in order to make aU
true reformers throw up their caps for it. The
measure had, undoubtedly, two or three splendid
merits. It abolished the principle of nomination to
Pariiament by owners or by close corporations ; it
established something like a symmetrical system of
voting all over the country ; it restored the principle
of representarion ; and it added about half a million
to the voters of the United Kingdom. But in
almost every other of its objects the Reform BUl
fell far short of the necessities of the country ; and
the proof of this is to be found in the number of

THE GREA T REFORM BILL 203
other Reform Bills that had to be introduced in order
to supplement and amend and reconstruct it.
The extension of the suffrage was still miserably
inadequate ; and practically the whole working
population of Great Britain and Ireland was left
without the chance of a vote — that is, without any
direct share whatever in the government of the
country with which its own dearest interests were
bound up. Some of the closing sentences in Lord
John RusseU's speech were full of an earnest and
generous hope as to the result which the measure
might have, by stimulating the working classes gen
erally to steady conduct, praiseworthy frugality, and
honourable ambition, in order that they might be
come legally possessed of the quality of citizenship.
But the ;^io franchise in boroughs and the £i^o
franchise in counties left hundreds of thousands of
honest men without the slightest chance of gratify
ing their honourable ambitions. Ten pounds a year
rent in boroughs, and fifty pounds a year in coun
ties, meant much more money at that time than the
same figures would mean now. But even the more
advanced reformers were willing to put up with a
good deal of deficiency in order to get a reform bill
of some kind, which at least established the principle
of direct representation. The reformers out-of-doors,
therefore, welcomed with general enthusiasm the first
reading of the bUl ; and that first reading was fol
lowed at once by the first reading of measures of
the same kind for Scotland and for Ireland.
On the 2ist of March, 1831, Lord John Russell
moved the second reading of the English Reform

204 THE GREA T REFORM BILL
Bill. The second reading was strongly resisted,
and the Tory speakers who had argued against the
first reading, declaimed their arguments all over
again. Three hundred and two members voted for
the second reading, and three hundred and one
against it. The second reading, therefore, embody
ing the whole purpose of the bill, was carried only
by a majority of one. The wildest exultation broke
out along the ranks of Opposition. Every Tory in
the House felt satisfied that a bill which passed its
second reading in the House of Commons by only
a majority of one would not have the slightest
chance of dragging itself through committee with
out some mutilation of its principal clauses which
would leave it an object of pity to its friends and of
ridicule to its enemies. The end of that particular
struggle came even sooner than was expected. An
amendment proposed by a Tory member, which
declared that the number of knights, citizens, and
burgesses ought not to be diminished, was opposed
by Lord Althorp as fatal to the value of the bill ;
and there were two hundred and ninety-nine votes
for the amendment and two hundred and ninety-
one against it. The Government were, therefore,
defeated by a majority of eight votes. There was
an end of that particular measure, at aU events.
Lord Grey and his colleagues were not in the least
dismayed. They determined at once to dissolve
Pariiament and appeal to the country by a general
election, for a reversal of the decision given by the
majority of the House of Commons. The first
trouble the Ministry had was with the Patriot King.

THE GREA T REFORM BILL 205
William IV. seemed to think it a monstrous thing
that he should be asked to dissolve a Parliament
which had just been gathered together, after the
cost and turmoil of a general election, only to put
the country to the cost and turmoil of another gen
eral election ; and all for the sake of carrying a Re
form BiU, about which the Sovereign himself felt no
manner of personal enthusiasm. On Lord Grey and
Lord Brougham fell the conduct of the negotiations,
and Lord Brougham as keeper of the King's con
science had to bear the brunt of the more intimate
struggle. All sorts of stories were told about the
King's efforts at resistance and Lord Brougham's
efforts at persuasion; and it had never been sup
posed by anybody that bland persuasiveness was
one of Brougham's endowments. One legend is to
the effect that Brougham might never have prevailed
over his Sovereign, if it had not been astutely con
veyed to the Sovereign's ears, that certain leading
Tory peers had denied to his Majesty any constitu
tional right of dissolving a Parliament under such
conditions. Thereupon, so ran the story, the King
declared that if the peers dared to dispute his pre
rogative he would show them that he was determined
to exercise it. The story probably is not true, al
though it found many believers at the time.
However, the one thing certain is that the King
showed his good sense by allowing himself to be
prevailed upon, and he consented to go down to the
House of Lords and declare the dissolution of the
Parliament. Now this, at all events, was recognised
by everyone as a step in advance of any that would

2o6 THE GREAT REFORM BILL
probably have been taken by William's recent pre
decessors, under similar circumstances ; and it gained
new credit for the King among the reformers of the
country. Without William's assent the dissolution,
of course, could not take place; and therefore the
mere announcement that Parliament was to be dis
solved was enough to convince all the reformers of
the country that the Sovereign had accepted the
views of his constitutional advisers and that WiUiam
had justified by his action the title of a Patriot King.
So far as can be guessed, the King was pleased by
the title ; and was hopeful of continuing to deserve
it, although he probably could not help wishing
every now and then to have a little more of his own
way than was permitted to him by the stately and
unbending Earl Grey, and the passionate and some
times blusterous Lord Brougham. The King then
gave his consent, and went down to the House of
Lords and dissolved the Parliament.
The event was received with tumultuous delight
in London, and in nearly all the great towns, and
indeed all over the country. London was illumin
ated, and so were most of the large provincial cities.
Unfortunately the exultations were accompanied by
a certain degree of violence. In the West End of
London many of the opponents of reform refused
to put lights in their windows, and the windows of
such recusants were smashed by a roaring crowd.
Apsley House, the town residence of the Duke of
WeUington, has a side row of windows which look
into Hyde Park. There was a noisy demonstration
outside the house, and the Hyde Park windows were

THE GREA T REFORM BILL 207
all smashed to pieces. The Duke of Wellington's
own comment on the event was that the demonstra
tion of hostility ought to have taken place — it was
then the month of June — on the fifteenth of that
month, the day of the crowning victory of Waterloo.
" That day he overcame the Nervii," is the heart-
thrilling line in which Shakespeare's Mark Antony
tells how the wound of the assassin's dagger came
in Caesar's mantle ; in that mantle which he put on
for the first time on a summer's evening in his tent
after his victory. The Duke of Wellington was
probably not a great student of Shakespeare, and
in any case he was not egotistic enough to think of
applying to himself the words that related to Julius
Caesar; but the application might have been made
for all that. The mob, however, did no great harm,
and did not mean to do much harm. They broke
the unlighted windows as a London mob of June,
1897, might possibly, without meaning much harm,
have broken some windows kept ostentatiously dark,
on the night of the Queen's Jubilee Celebration.
But the Duke, undoubtedly, took the insult to
heart ; and for some years the windows that turned
on the park were kept rigidly shuttered.
When the election began, the contest was kept up
on both sides with an utter prodigahty of expense.
There was not much to be said in favour of one side
against the other, so far as bribery and corruption
were concerned. Bribery and corruption ran their
unblushing way among Liberals and Tories, through
out nearly all the constituencies. As the results
began to be known, it was found that nearly all the

208 THE GREAT REFORM BILL
cities and great towns were on the side of Lord
Grey and Lord John Russell. One of the most
conspicuous opponents of the Reform Bill was turned
out of the important town of Liverpool by an im
mense majority of votes. Many of the counties
had likewise " gone solid" for reform, to use a
phrase familiar in modern politics. There was no
mistaking the meaning of all this ; the feeling of the
country was distinctly in favour of reform. The new
Parliament was opened on June 21st by William IV.
in person; and as the King went in state to the
House of Lords he was received with immense en
thusiasm by the crowds who thronged the streets.
William enjoyed the enthusiasm very much, and
was more than ever satisfied of his just claim to the
title of Patriot King.

CHAPTER X
THE REFORM BILL AGAIN
ON the 24th of June, Lord John Russell intro
duced a second Reform Bill which might be
called just the same in principle and substance as
that which he had brought in on the former occa
sion. The second reading was moved for on the 4th
of July ; and after a debate of three nights a division
was taken, and the second reading was carried by
three hundred and sixty-seven votes for, and two
hundred and thirty-one against — a majority of one
hundred and thirty-six in favour of the principle of
the measure. This put an end to all hope on the
part of the Tories that anything could be done in
the way of direct opposition to the Reform Bill.
But now the Tories put into action for the first time,
on a great and systematic scale, those tactics of par
liamentary obstruction which have become so famil
iar to the political world in more modern days.
The forms of the House of Commons then, and
even to a much later time, afforded infinite oppor
tunities for the reckless ingenuity of Tory members
to find means of postponing and postponing any
chance of coming to a decision upon anything. It
VOL. I. — X4 209

2IO THE REFORM BILL AGAIN
will be interesting to give some illustration of the
manner in which this system of interruption was kept
up without actually violating any of the rules of
order which govern the proceedings of the House.
For instance, what could be more reasonable than for
any member who thought the House had sat and de
bated long enough on that particular subject, to rise
and move that the House do now adjourn ? Every
sitting of the House is brought to a close by a motion
couched in just such a form, which on all ordinary
occasions and at a reasonable hour of the night is
agreed to without discussion or division. But in the
instances we are describing a member who moved that
the House do now adjourn had not the slightest de
sire that the question should be put to an instant divi
sion; he wanted all the debate that he could have;
he wanted to help in wearing the Government out.
Therefore he gave all the reasons that occurred to
him, all that his uttermost ingenuity could devise,
to show that the House was bound to adjourn just
then ; and he gave his reasons at immense length,
and went over them again and again as if he had
taken all time for his province.
In Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia we are told of a
beautiful young shepherd-boy who stands under the
trees on some fair summer's evening piping as
though he should never grow old. There is some
thing charming in the idea of this young lover of
music, piping on and on, as though youth and har
mony were to be always his own. The Conservative
orator talked in favour of adjournment as though he
should never grow old, as though he had aU time

THE REFORM BILL AGAIN 211
before him ; but his was not quite so picturesque a
figure as that drawn by Sir Philip Sidney. When
one Conservative orator had finished his speech,
another Conservative orator took up the tale, and
yet another, and another; until at last it was
thought to be convenient for a division to be taken.
The majority, of course, voted for going on with
the business and making some progress with the
Reform Bill, and the motion for adjournment was
therefore defeated. But the Tory tactics endured,
and a moment after the division had been declared
some Tory member got up and moved that the
Speaker do now leave the chair, which was only
another way of getting rid of the bill for that sitting.
Then came another long debate and another division ;
and, the Tories being once more defeated, some Tory
member fell back on the old motion that the House
do now adjourn. This was in strict accordance with
the rules, which did not allow precisely the same
motion to be made twice in succession ; and so the
alternate motions that the House do now adjourn,
and that the Speaker do leave the chair, were kept
up until breakfast time in the morning, and then the
members were allowed to go to their homes, having
to meet again at three that afternoon. For day
after day and night after night this sort of thing
went on. Nobody in the House listened to the de
bates, nobody outside the House paid the slightest
attention to what the Tories were saying.
The one question of keen public interest was how
long the Government could hold out against this
peculiar kind of opposition. It might be taken for

212 THE REFORM BILL AGAIN
granted that after a certain period in the year it
would be all but impossible to keep the House of
Commons together; even the most earnest reformers
had other duties to discharge besides waiting for the
divisions on the motion that the House do now
adjourn. Many of Lord Grey's followers began to
be seriously afraid that the whole session might be
wasted without advancing the reform scheme in any
measurable degree towards success. The Govern
ment, however, held firm ; and the disfranchisement
of what were called the rotten boroughs was abso
lutely accomplished so far as the House of Commons
could accomplish it. Then came the struggle
over the reduction in the representation of various
boroughs from two members to one member. Here
upon the obstruction got up again, alive and fully
armed for the work. The methods of obstruction
had by this time been organised and arranged as
by a regular process of drill. It is well to learn
something on this subject from Mr. Molesworth's
excellent History of the Reform Bill. Mr. Moles
worth tells us — and the facts are indeed beyond dis
pute — that there was a regular division of labour in
the work of obstruction, arranged and superin
tended by a committee of which Sir Robert Peel
was chairman.
Now we have had a good deal of obstruction,
deliberate and purposed obstruction, in the House
of Commons in later days; but it never happened
since 1 83 1 that a statesman of the rank of Sir Robert
Peel became president of a committee for the ex
press and the sole purpose of arranging and supply-

THE REFORM BILL AGAIN 213
ing a mere obstruction by speech-making, to prevent
a popular measure from passing on its way through
the House of Commons. The same arguments were
repeated over and over again without the slightest
pretence of a desire to find something new. Sir
Robert Peel himself set a good example to his com
rade-obstructionists. During one stage of the de
bate he delivered no less than forty-eight speeches.
Mr. Wilson Croker, a literary critic whom Macaulay
made famous by his scathing essay, and who was for
a long time, when Secretary to the Admiralty, the
target of some of Lord Cochrane's most dashing and
bitter attacks, — Mr. Wilson Croker spoke fifty-seven
times. Sir Charles Wetherell, who has been already
mentioned in this history as a type Tory of the ex
tinct school, went one speech better, for he spoke
fifty -eight times.
In the meantime, the reformers of the country
were not idle. Meetings were held in London and
in most of the towns, caUing on the Government to
take heart of grace, and not to give in to the Tories
by a single inch, but to keep Parliament sitting until
the bill should have gone through its every stage.
The Government answered pluckily to these appeals.
A meeting of influential supporters of the Ministry
was held in the Foreign Office ; and to that meeting
Lord Althorp declared, on behalf of his colleagues,
that the enemies of reform would find themselves
miserably mistaken. Rather than abandon the bill,
he assured his hearers, Parhament would be kept
sitting until the next December or the next Decem
ber twelvemonths if necessary. That settled the

214 THE REFORM BILL AGAIN
opposition for the moment. Amendments were
still proposed, and debates still went on, and divi
sions were taken ; but the Tories began to see at last
that the Government were thoroughly in earnest,
and that the country was behind Lord Grey and
Lord John Russell. The bill was carried through
its various stages, and the last division on the mo
tion, that the bill do now pass, showed three hun
dred and forty-five votes for the reform measure,
and only two hundred and thirty-nine against it — a
majority of one hundred and six in favour of the bill.
Then the hopes and hearts of all the anti-reformers
turned to the House of Lords. The House of Lords
had then, as now, a large Conservative majority, and
had, therefore, the power of upsetting the work of
the Commons, and rejecting the Reform Bill alto
gether. There are two checks on the unlimited
exercise of such a power by the House of Lords;
the one constitutional, and the other political and
moral. The constitutional check is found in the
fact that the Sovereign has always the right, on the
advice of his Ministers, to create as many new peers
as he thinks fit. If, therefore, there should be in
the House of Lords a known majority of peers, say
one hundred in number, against reform, the King
would only have to create one hundred and fifty
new peers from the Liberal ranks in time to carry
the reform measure through all its stages. Of
course, this is what might be called a desperate
remedy, and could only be tried as a last resource.
With a Sovereign like George III. it never could be
tried, because the King would never give his consent

THE REFORM BILL AGAIN 215
to a wholesale creation of peers for such a purpose.
In any case, only the most extreme emergency could
induce a Liberal Ministry to have recourse to such a
constitutional device. It was one of the many de
vices which may be called into existence under the
British Constitution, and which yet appear to be in
themselves fantastically unconstitutional and anom
alous. Therefore the Tories felt in good confidence
that Lord Grey would not advise the Sovereign to
take so unusual and extraordinary a step; and that
WiUiam IV., no matter how many crowds might
have called him the Patriot King, would never adopt
that way of showing his patriotic sentiment.
The other check on the power of the House of
Lords was that created by the strength of popular
feeling out-of-doors. If the majority of the con
stituencies should prove themselves so determined
on reform that the prolonged resistance of the peers
might risk a revolution, then it was almost certain
that the House of Lords would give way and yield
to the popular will. Such a result has always come
about in recent years. The House of Lords in our
times may be rehed upon never to resist the de
mands of the 'constituencies so far as to lead to
a crisis which might end in the overthrow of the
hereditary chamber itself. We have grown used
to that condition of things lately ; and curiously
enough the fact serves as an argument to those who
are in favour of the present constitution of the
House of Lords, and to those who are determinedly
against it. The advocates of the House of Lords
ask the country what serious objection there can be

2l6 THE REFORM BILL AGAIN
to a chamber which, at the most, can only interpose
delay and allow fuller time for calm consideration ;
and they point to the fact that the House of Lords
have never driven their opposition to any dangerous
extent, or done aught to provoke revolutionary de
mands. On the other hand, the opponents of the
House of Lords ask what can be the use of an insti
tution which does not any longer even profess to be
a saviour of society ; which has long since renounced
every pretence at a mission to save society from
society's self; and is always ready to give way if
society only makes clamour enough to be accepted
as a danger-signal.
In the days of the first Reform Bill, however, the
resisting power of the House of Lords to any popu
lar movement had not been thoroughly tested ; and
the Tories in general were of good hope that the
Lords would hold out, that the King would hold
out, and that the mob-orators and anarchists would
have to slink back into the state of obscurity to
which it had pleased Providence to call them. The
Tory peers kept up for a while their show of a reso
lute purpose. On October 3rd, Lord Grey moved
the second reading of the Reform Bill ; Lord Wharn
cliffe moved as an amendment that the biU be read
a second time that day six months, a motion which
amounted to the rejection of the measure. The
Duke of WeUington spoke, as was to be expected,
uncompromisingly against the bill ; Lord Lyndhurst,
one of the greatest lawyers of his day, opposed it
more dexterously, but not less decidedly; Lord
Brougham thundered in its favour. The division

THE REFORM BILL AGAIN 217
was taken on the morning of October 8th ; and it was
announced that the second reading was defeated by
a majority of forty-one. The House of Commons
had spent a whole session in vain over the passing
of the Reform Bill; the House of Lords undid the
work in a few days. Yet the majority against the
measure was not, after all, so great as might have
been expected, and some of the peers who had voted
in the majority must have felt themselves wondering,
as they went home that morning, whether they had
not hastened, rather than retarded, the movement
of reform.
The news of the adverse division in the House of
Lords created a passionate sensation all over the
country. Great meetings were held in every city
and town ; in many places the shops were closed
and mourning bells were pealed from some of the
churches. One of the most popular ideas of the day
was the suggested expedient that a run should be
made upon the Bank of England for gold, with the
view of obstructing the whole movement of com
merce, in the hope that thereby the Lords might be
brought to their senses; and a run for gold was
actually made, which at one time created much
alarm. In the streets from Charing Cross to the
Houses of Parliament vast crowds assembled every
evening, cheering the leaders of the reform move
ment, and hissing and cursing the peers or com
moners who had opposed the biU.
Clamorous proposals for the abolition of the
House of Lords became popular on every Radical
platform all over the country ; serious riots took place

2l8 THE REFORM BILL AGAIN
at Derby, at Nottingham, and at Bristol ; the castles
and country houses of Tory noblemen and squires
were attacked, seriously damaged, and in some in
stances set on fire. One instance of this form of riot
is worth a special mention, if only because of the
curious and touching poetic associations which it
brings up with it. The house of Mr. Musters, near
Nottingham, was set on fire. Mr. Musters was the
husband of the Mary Chaworth who in the days of
our fathers and grandfathers was dear to every sen
timental heart as Lord Byron's first love, about
whom he wrote his famous poem, " The Dream."
When the house was set on fire, Mrs. Musters —
Mary Chaworth — fled in alarm and found refuge for
a while in one of the gardens. The terror and the
cold night air proved too much for her, and she
caught an attack of illness which ended soon after
in her death.
Many of the reformers were even impatient of
Lord Grey and Lord John Russell themselves. An
impression got abroad somehow, that the Govern
ment might be disposed to tamper with the people
by yielding so far to the House of Lords as to con
sent to a postponement of the Reform Bill. The
bare surmise or suspicion was enough for a time
to bring a certain amount of unpopularity on the
heads of the leading Ministers. In truth, the
country was aflame with passion; and a rash act
or two, even perhaps a rash word or two, on either
side of the political field, might have brought about
a tumult, which would have seemed to distant eyes
not altogether unlike a popular revolution. It can

THE REFORM BILL AGAIN 219
never be known for certain how near England really
did come at that crisis to a genuine revolutionary
struggle. Looking back upon that time, with only
the experience of more recent days to guide our
judgment, it is easy enough to tell ourselves com
placently that nothing serious could have occurred ;
that the English are a steadfast people, little like
the French and foreigners generally, and not in the
least addicted to revolution; and that everything
would have worked out quietly for the best.
History tells us that the English people have
never shown themselves afraid to risk a revolution
when there seemed no other means of removing an
intolerable grievance and making it sure that na
tional justice must be done. The more we study
the records of that reform time, the more we shall
be inclined to believe that England was brought
very near indeed to revolution. How far were the
more influential leaders of the Liberal party aware
of the threatening danger, and what thoughts were
passing through their minds as to the preparations
that would have to be made in order to encounter
it ? That, of course, we shall never fuUy know.
But it is at least certain that some of those leaders
must have found their minds perplexed by the doubt
whether the King would yield to, or would resist,
the advice of the Ministry and the demands of the
country; and if he should decide upon resistance,
what was to happen next ? Were the Liberal
leaders to allow things to drift into mere tumult, or
were they not to take some steps which might pro
vide for the guidance of the people and secure the

220 THE REFORM BILL AGAIN
country against the worst? Suppose the King were
to set himself doggedly against the advice of his
Ministers, and were to declare that he would throw
in his own fate, and that of his dynasty, with the
action of the House of Lords; what would remain
to be done in such a case ?
The question must have come up to the mind of
many a statesman of that time — whether in such a
case it would be the duty of the great Liberal
nobles of England to side with the King against
the House of Commons and the people, or to
stand, as their forefathers did, with the Parliament
— that is, with the real Parliament — and against
the revolutionary action of the Crown. The di
lemma, says a recent writer, appeared not unlike
that which was presented when Charles I. broke
away from his Parliament ; and he adds, that some
at least of the influential Enghsh nobles seemed to
have been inclined to cast in their lot with the Par
liament, and against the Sovereign, in the event of
the Sovereign proving faithless to the constitutional
principles by virtue of which alone he held his
Crown. Such a condition of things appears almost
incredible to us now. We have so long been ac
customed to the steady and safe working of the
political system under a thoroughly constitutional
Sovereign, that we find it hard to realise the possi
bility of a crisis occurring at so recent a date, which
would have rendered it necessary for great English
noblemen to make up their minds as to which side
was that of revolution, and which side was that of
the Constitution. But it is quite certain that such

THE REFORM BILL AGAIN 221
a question was presented for decision to some of the
great Liberal nobles.
Suppose the country were to be thrown into
actual domestic strife by the possible action of the
Sovereign, that action being a breach of the Con
stitution, on which side were the defenders of law
and order to take their stand ? It came out, during
the course of a great political trial some sixteen
years afterwards, that a correspondence had been
opened, undoubtedly under the sanction of some of
the great reformers, with Sir Charles Napier, the
famous soldier, for the purpose of endeavouring to
secure beforehand the co-operation of the army,
should the worst come to the worst. It is not too
much to say, that for some time England was
trembling on the very verge of a revolution.
Parliament was called together again on Decem
ber 6, 1 83 1. The King opened the session in per
son, and announced in his Royal Speech that bills
would be introduced for the reform of the House
of Commons, with the added declaration that the
speedy and satisfactory settlement of this question
becomes daily of more pressing importance to the
security of the State and the contentment and the
welfare of the people. It was possibly thought by
the leading Ministers that this emphatic declaration
might have the effect of discouraging the leaders of
the Opposition, and teaching them that in the opin
ion of the King himself the time had gone by for
any further resistance to reform. The words, how
ever, had no such effect. The leaders of the Tory
party were convinced in their hearts that the King

222 THE REFORM BILL AGAIN
was opposed to the Ministerial proposals for reform,
and that he was only waiting for an opportunity to
throw cold water upon the whole agitation. On the
other hand, the reformers out-of-doors still cherished
the opinion that the King was in favour of reform,
and that he was prepared to go to any constitutional
length which the advice of his Ministers could
suggest. On the 1 2th of December, Lord John RusseU
moved in the House of Commons for leave to bring
in his third Reform Bill. The bill was in all im
portant details, and of course in all its principles,
much the same as the first and second bills. The
first reading passed without a division; and when
the second reading came on there were three hun
dred and twenty-four votes for the biU, and one
hundred and sixty-two against it; so that the sup
porters of the measure were now in a majority of
exactly two to one over their opponents. Then
Parliament adjourned for the Christmas hohdays.
Part of the sacred and gladsome season was occu
pied in the trial of the rioters who had been arrested
for creating disturbances throughout the country.
Those were stern times, and the unfortunate rioters
received in many cases the hardest punishment the
law could inflict. There were four executions of
rioters at Bristol, and three at Nottingham. Pariia
ment came together again on the 17th of January,
1832; and on January 20th the House of Commons
went' into committee on the Reform BiU. Then
the work of obstruction came on with fresh vigour.
The bUl did not get through committee untU March

GENERAL SIR CHARLES JAMES NAPIER, G.C.B.
From a sketch by George Jones, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery.

THE REFORM BILL AGAIN 223
14th ; and it passed its third reading by a majority
of one hundred and sixteen, on the 23rd of the
month. It was sent up to the House of Lords at
once ; and then two popular questions at once arose
which have been echoed and re-echoed often since
that time.
The first question was. What will the House of
Lords do with the biU ? and the second and more
ominous question was. What is to be done with the
House of Lords ? Now, by this time, there had
been formed amongst the peers a sort of third party,
who became popularly known as the " Waverers,"
just as in former days another political party had
been known by the name of the " Trimmers."
The Waverers consisted for the most part, if not
altogether, of men who were opposed to the Reform
Bill, and, indeed, to all comprehensive schemes of
reform ; but who, nevertheless, were not prepared
to push their conservatism to dangerous lengths.
These men were for staving off reforms as long as
they could, but they were not willing to run the
risk of a social convulsion in their anxiety to defeat
or delay the Ministerial measure. They saw clearly
enough that the crisis was becoming most serious
and important ; and probably their uttermost hopes
at this stage of the proceedings were limited to the
possibility of reducing the Reform Bill to what they
would have considered a comparatively harmless
measure. The student of English history will be interested
in observing the fact that every great struggle for
political reform in England develops, in one or both

224 THE REFORM BILL AGAIN
Houses of Parliament, a third party which contrives
to get into its hands for the time the balance of
power, and thus becomes master of the situation.
In most instances the third party is formed by
Liberals who fall away from their leaders on some
project of reform, and are ready to give their votes
and their help to the anti-reform Opposition. In
the reform movement of 1831, the third party was
composed of men who, being anti-reformers them
selves, were yet willing to use the power they had
got on the side of a reform measure, rather than
run the risk of a popular uprising. The fact, how
ever, remains the same; and students who want to
get at a thorough understanding of our modern
history must take account of it, that every struggle
between political progress and political reaction in
England calls into existence a third party who con
trive for the hour to get into their hands the key of
the situation.
To the Waverers, therefore, the eyes of most
people turned as the possessors of the way out of
the deadlock. It was quite certain that if Lord
Grey could induce the King to give his consent to
the creation of new peers in sufficient number, the
Waverers would never think of putting Sovereign
or Government to the trouble of carrying any such
measure into effect. The mere announcement that
the King had given his consent would be enough
for them ; and they would at once withdraw from
further opposition to the Reform Bill. Of what
avail would it be for the Waverers to carry their
opposition any farther ? If the King chose to

THE REFORM BILL AGAIN 225
create new peers out of the Liberal ranks in suffi
cient number to form a majority for the passing of
the bill, what could the Waverers get by resistance ?
The bill would be carried in any case; and they
would only have the discomfort and the humiliation
of seeing their hereditary chamber flooded by a num
ber of Liberals from all parts of the country, who
had suddenly, at the King's order, been converted
into peers, and who could go on passing further and
further reforms of all kinds for the remainder of
their natural lives. The Waverers, in fact, hoped
that by standing out to a certain extent against
the bill they might strengthen the King in his sup
posed determination not to create new peers ; while
the King, for his part, was still, no doubt, under
the impression that the Waverers might frighten the
Ministry so far as to induce them to leave out of
their measure the principles which the King thought
harmful, but which the people ardently desired to
establish. The King, therefore, delayed and de
layed ; and Lord Grey could not obtain any promise
from him.
The bill came on for second reading in the House of
Lords on the 9th of April, and the Duke of Welling
ton spoke out as strongly against the measure as he
had spoken against the first Reform Bill brought in
by the Government. He was, however, much more
indiscreet in this speech than he had been on the
former occasion, and he went so far as to declare
his conviction that the King himself was not in
favour of any such measure of reform as his Minis
ters were endeavouring to force upon the House of

226 THE REFORM BILL AGAIN
Lords. The Duke, indeed, exceeded himself in his
indiscretion on this occasion ; for he declared his
full belief that, if the King's real feelings only could
be made known to the country. Lord Grey would
never have the slightest chance of passing such a
measure as that which he had been reckless enough
to introduce to Parliament. The Waverers, how
ever, were not altogether satisfied with the rash
declarations of the Duke of Wellington, and they
supported the second reading, and thus enabled the
reading to be carried by a majority of nine. Thus
they satisfied their purpose and their policy by
enabling the Government to carry their measure
another stage; while, at the same time, making it
clear to the Opposition that if the Government re
fused to give way on some material points, the bill
could be so mutilated by the help of the Waverers
as to make it utterly unsatisfactory to the country.
Accordingly, the Waverers gave the next helping
hand to the Opposition. Lord Lyndhurst proposed
an amendment, which the Government properly de
clared to be hostile to the conduct of the bill ; and
the Waverers supported Lord Lyndhurst, and his
motion was carried by a majority of thirty-five.
Lord Grey at once addressed himself to the King,
and as the King still hesitated about granting him
the power to make new peers, Lord Grey instantly
tendered his resignation. The resignation was
accepted ; indeed, there was nothing to be done but
to accept it, or to give in to Lord Grey's demands.
King William knew well that when Lord Grey had
once made up his mind, it would be useless for even

THE REFORM BILL AGAIN 227
the Sovereign to attempt any argument or per
suasion with him. Lord Grey and his colleagues
went out of office; and the King was left, meta
phorically, face to face with the country, face to
face with the possibility of revolution. The King
sent for Lord Lyndhurst, and pathetically, per
plexedly, besought for help and counsel. Lord
Lyndhurst had only one piece of advice to give, —
the only piece of advice any Tory could have given
under the circumstances, — and that was to send for
the Duke of Wellington. The Duke was sent for ;
and the King implored him to undertake the forma
tion and the leadership of a new Government.
The Duke of Wellington had encountered many
terrible risks and difficulties in his time ; but he had
never encountered any risk or any difficulty when
there was not the slightest chance of any good pur
pose whatever being served by the attempt. He
told the King bluntly that he did not believe it
would be possible for him to get together any
Government which could face the crisis; and in
order not to be wanting in advice of some kind, he
recommended the King to send for Sir Robert Peel,
and try what Peel could do. Then, and for ever
after, while Peel's life lasted, the Duke of Welling
ton looked up to Peel with a genuine and a generous
admiration as the man who could do anything, if
anything was possible to be done. So the King
sent for Peel; but Peel saw that this was a case in
which he could do nothing.
Peel was one of the most rising men of the time.
He must have known that he had a great career be-

228 THE REFORM BILL AGAIN
fore him ; and he was quite unselfish and patriotic
enough to think little of risking that career, if only
thereby something could be done to serve the Sov
ereign and the State. But he was an intensely
practical man, and he did not see that either Sover
eign or State could be served by his simply dashing
his head against a stone wall. So he told the King
that it would be utterly impossible for him to keep
together a Ministry against the House of Commons
and against the country, and he declined to attempt
the impossible task. Then the King in despair sent
for the Duke of Wellington again and made it some
thing like a point of duty and of loyalty with him
to help the Sovereign out of his dilemma. The
Duke, who never was, and never could be, a poli
tician, was willing after such an appeal to dash his
head against the stone wall, and so he did actually
attempt to get together an Administration composed
of men who would stand up with him as opponents
of reform, the House of Commons, and the country.
The attempt utterly failed. Indeed, to say that it
failed is to give an inadequate idea of its futility.
No sooner was it made than it had to be abandoned.
There were no men outside Bedlam who would
undertake to co-operate in such a task.
What was the poor bewildered King to do ? Hc
could think of nothing, and nothing could be sug
gested to him but to send for Lord Grey again, and
request Lord Grey to reconstruct his Ministry and
go on with the Reform Bill. While all this was
happening the public mind was growing more and
more furious and the popularity of the Patriot King

THE REFORM BILL AGAIN 229
had entirely gone under. William was now de
nounced every day and every night in the streets of
London, and through all the great towns of Eng
land, Ireland, and Scotland. When his carriage
was seen in the West-End streets of London, it be
came instantly surrounded by hooting, hissing, fist-
shaking mobs. Indeed, the poor Sovereign had to
be most carefully guarded in order to secure him
against the possibility of some direct personal
attack. Now King William was a brave man and an hon
est man ; and we may be sure that he did not take
any account of the personal danger; but he had en
joyed the popularity which came around him of late
years, and it pained him to find himself an object
of distrust and dislike to so large a proportion of his
subjects. What course but one was left for him to
pursue ? He had no taste for the stirring up of a
popular revolution ; and amongst those to whom he
looked for advice he found no trustworthy person
who could counsel him to any such purpose. Well
ington, Lyndhurst, Peel, could not help him out of
his difficulty ; he had to go back to Lord Grey, and
Lord Grey was inexorable.
Nothing was to be done unless WiUiam would
give his consent to the creation of new peers. Lord
Brougham, who accompanied Lord Grey in one
momentous interview with the Sovereign, went so
far as to insist that the consent must even be given
in writing. The poor King had no other course
open to him than to yield to stern necessity. He
had argued with the inexorable long enough; and

230 THE REFORM BILL AGAIN
he was thoroughly tired of the futile argument.
He gave his consent, and he gave it even in writing.
" The King grants permission to Lord Grey and to
his Chancellor, Lord Brougham, to create such a
number of peers as wUl insure the passing of the
Reform Bill," were the words of the consent writ
ten on the paper which the King, at last submis
sive, handed to the rigorous and uncourtly Lord
Brougham. Of course, the moment the consent was given the
crisis was all over. It is needless to say that the
new peers were never created. It was enough for
the Opposition to know that the new peers would be
created if necessary, and there was an end of their
resistance at once. They did not want the Reform
Bill, and they did not want the new peers; but,
above all things, they did not want the Reform Bill
and the new peers together. The Duke of Welling
ton and some other peers withdrew from the House
of Lords altogether while the bill was running its
now short and summary course. They would not
look upon the consummation of a policy which it
was not possible for them any longer to retard.
The Waverers gave way and the fight was over.
On the 4th of June the bill passed through the
House of Lords; and a few days after, the poor
Patriot King had given it his Royal Assent.
Let us see now what were the two great preced
ents, the two great principles, which were estab
lished by the passing of the Reform Bill, and by the
manner in which it passed into law. We have
already told our readers what the bill itself did for

THE REFORM BILL AGAIN 23 1
the country ; we have described the general reforms
which it created ; and we have shown in what meas
ure it was seriously defective, and why it became
necessary that many further expansions of its scope
should be brought about. But the great principles
accomplished by the passing of the Reform Bill are
not to be found embodied in the contents of the
bill itself.
The most important constitutional principles
established for the first time, and we trust for all
time, by the triumph of Lord Grey and Lord John
Russell are two in number. The first is, that the
House of Lords must never carry resistance to any
measure coming from the House of Commons, that
is, from the chamber which represents the country,
beyond the point at which it becomes evident that
the House of Commons is in earnest, and that the
country is behind it. It is now settled that the
House of Lords shall have no greater power of re
sistance to a popular measure than that which, in a
different form, is given to the President of the
United States, the power to delay its passing until
the House of Commons shall have had full time to
reconsider its decision and say, on that reconsidera
tion, whether it is of the same mind as before, or
not. Many English reformers think that even this
degree of power is far too much to be given to the
House of Lords as at present constituted ; but it is
not necessary to enter into that question. It is
enough to say, that since the passing of the Reform
Bill the House of Lords has never, for any con
siderable length of time, put itself in direct antagon-

232 THE REFORM BILL AGAIN
ism to the House of Commons. The second great
principle which the passing of the Reform Bill es
tablished is, that the Sovereign of England must
give way to the advice of his Ministers on any
question of vital import to the State, and that the
personal authority of the Monarch is no longer to
decide the course of the Government. Never, since
that time, has the personal will of the Sovereign
been exercised as a decisive force to contradict and
counteract the resolve of the House of Commons.
The country is happy, indeed, which has seen so
beneficent a change accomplished, and to all ap
pearance safely accomplished for ever, without the
need of recourse to revolution.
It might have been worth a revolution to effect
such a change, if it could be accomplished by no
other means. For the peaceful results we must
thank the people of these countries, we must thank
the patriotic Ministers like Lord Grey and Lord
John Russell, we must thank the House of Com
mons, and let it be added that some thanks are
also due to the King, who had the manhood not to
be afraid of submitting his personal feelings and
wishes to the better judgment of his Ministers and
to the welfare of the country. Looking back com
posedly, at this distance of time, and after the ex
perience of many succeeding Reform Bills, it seems
surprising to niost of us that the Conservative party
did not better understand the real strength of the
movement which they were striving to resist. It
seems hard to comprehend how they could have
looked at the condition of things which prevailed

THE REFORM BILL AGAIN 233
just before the Reform Bill was introduced, the
parliamentary representation of empty spaces, the
right of the landowner and the close corporation to
nominate anybody to the House of Commons whom
the landlord or the close corporation thought fit to
honour with patronage, the close boroughs, the
rotten boroughs, the open and unabashed system of
bribery and corruption, the seats bought and sold
hke goods at an auction — it seems hard to compre
hend how any intelligent Conservative could have
looked at things as they were and not have seen for
himself that such things could not possibly last.
There were inteUigent Conservatives in those
days, as in all days. The Conservative party had
men of intellect, men even of genius, among their
leading members. They had Peel, they had Lynd
hurst, they had many other men who might have
been capable of guiding a party aright at such a
crisis; they had before them the example of the
United States, where the colonies achieved their
independence after a tremendous struggle rather
than endure a system of government without ade
quate representation; they had seen the historic
monarchy of France overturned, because the people
would no longer submit to be governed by the will
of the Sovereign; they had only just seen how an
other monarchy, set up in France by the combined
strength of all the great European Powers, had been
upset because the people found no proper represent
ation in the political system. They might have
known that the people of these countries are not
patient to servility, and that the days of personal

234 THE REFORM BILL AGAIN
government — government by the caprice of the
Sovereign — were gone for ever. They might even
have observed that the Reform Bill, brought in by
Lord Grey and Lord John Russell, did not by any
means satisfy the desires of the most earnest re
formers outside and inside Parliament. They might
have seen that the Reform Bill as it stood was only
possible because so many influential reform leaders
were willing to come to terms of compromise with
Lord Grey, and to accept half a loaf because it was
better than no bread. Under such conditions it may
well seem surprising to us now, that the Conserva
tives should not have seen the palpable fact that re
form of some kind must come, and that Lord Grey's
scheme was the most moderate which the country
could possibly accept. But the impression of the
Conservatives up to the last moment seems to have
been that, if only they could defeat Lord Grey and
his Reform BiU, the whole question would be set
tled, and that nothing more would be heard of re
form for many generations to come. On the whole,
these countries have no reason to regret that the
Tories fought out their battle to the end ; and that
they brought the King face to face with the ques
tion, whether to submit his personal will or to risk
a revolution. If they had compromised with Lord
Grey, the principle of government by the will of the
Sovereign might have dragged on for a few years
more, and the battle might have been fought under
leaders less capable than Lord Grey and Lord John
Russell. The name of Lord John RusseU reminds us that

THE REFORM BILL AGAIN 235
in one of the closing debates on the Reform Bill in
the House of Commons, Russell made use of a par
ticular phrase which was afterwards brought up
against him many times. The more extreme re
formers found fault with the phrase because they
thought it showed, on RusseU's part, a lack of
earnestness in the cause of reform — indeed, a lack of
true understanding as to the meaning of reform ;
while the anti-reformers used it as an argument to
prove that the Government had pledged the Liberal
party to be content with the way it had already
made, and to seek no further progress. Lord John
Russell said that, " so far as Ministers were con
cerned, the Reform Bill was, in his opinion, a final
measure." It was at once assumed by the extreme
men on both sides, that Lord John Russell, on the
part of the Government, meant to declare that
enough had been done in the way of reform, that
the country had had all the reform it wanted or
could get ; that no further steps were to be taken
in any similar direction, and that the Reform Bill
of 1832 was final.
Lord John Russell undoubtedly gave a good
chance, by his phrase, to those on the one side who
thought his Reform BUl inadequate, and to those
on the other side who thought that the most hmited
scheme of reform would be far too much. We all
understand now quite well what Lord John Russell
meant ; although it certainly would have been better
if he had made his meaning more clear at the time.
Most assuredly it never entered into a mind like that
of Lord John Russell to beUeve that the Reform

236 THE REFORM BILL AGAIN
Bill which he and his colleagues had carried would
satisfy the growing political wants of the people of
England for all time. A man like Lord John Rus
sell must have known very well — Lord John Russell,
of course, did know very well — that the ;^50 fran
chise in counties and the .£^10 franchise in boroughs
could not satisfy the needs of an ever-growing
population. No man of RusseU's intellect could
have supposed for a moment that the whole work
ing population of England could be content -to re
main for ever without that political franchise which
was already given to the people of France and the
people of the American Republic. What Russell
meant clearly was that the Government had com
pleted for the present their chapter of reform. No
man knew better than Lord John RusseU did, that
the people of these countries are not likely to de
vote all their days to political agitation ; and that
when they have accomplished one triumph in the
way of reform, they wiU be found ready to return
to their ordinary pursuits, and to wait until some
new exigency brings about the necessity of accom
plishing another work of the same kind. Russell,
in fact, continued, during all the rest of his long
political career, to be as earnest an advocate of re
form as he had proved himself to be when for the
first time he introduced his Reform Bill — for it may
well be called his — to the House of Commons. His
name was identified with many another project of
reform, with reform schemes launched by him in
later days, and carried to success by him or by
others who acted on his inspiration. But he spoke

THE REFORM BILL AGAIN 237
the words of plain common-sense when he said that
the Government of Lord Grey believed they had
done their work for the time in carrying their Re
form Bill, and were free, if they thought well, to
stand aside and leave future work to future hands.
The close of the great debates on the Reform Bill
may be regarded also as, in one sense, the close of
a great career. Here Charles, Earl Grey, to quote
the words of Carlyle applied to Mirabeau, " drops
from the tissue of our history, not without a tragic
farewell." Lord Grey had a special work appointed
for him to do; and he did it, patiently, persever
ingly, and with success. From the distant days
when he had presented the petition of ' ' the friends
of the people " to the House of Commons, — from
those days, and indeed from days long before. Lord
Grey had been a steady and devoted friend of re
form. He had followed the guidance of Fox, al
though he had little of Fox's enthusiasm or of that
gleam of the poetic and the romantic which inspired
so much of Fox's eloquence. Lord Grey was by
descent, by position, and by temperament an aris
tocrat of the aristocrats; and it would not have
been under ordinary circumstances natural for him
to concern himself much about securing the fran
chise for a class of men with whom, in most cases,
he could have little or nothing in common. A
political rival of Mirabeau once said that Mirabeau
owed much of his success to his " terrible gift of
familiarity," his power of entering into the ways
and feelings and common talk of men of the hum
blest class. Grey had none of that terrible gift of

238 THE REFORM BILL AGAIN
familiarity ; he could not talk to people in general ;
he was cold and austere among men even of his
own class; he was sometimes almost tongue-tied
when he had to deal with unlettered strangers. It
stands all the more to his honour that he fought the
great reform battle so chivalrously, that he ordered
his brave soul to face the struggle, and that he faced
it until success came in the end. Lord Grey was
the last English Minister who had served on any
thing like terms of equality with such men as Pitt,
and Fox, and Burke, and Sheridan. Macaulay says
well of him that " those who had listened to his
stately eloquence in the House of Lords could all
the better understand what that group of men must
have been among whom he was not the foremost."

CHAPTER XI
SLAVERY — BLACK AND WHITE
THE first great work done by the reformed Par
liament was the total abolition of slavery in
the West Indian and other colonies of England.
The new Parliament, indeed, showed itself very
eager for the work of reform in any and every
direction, and we shall presently see with what
energy and success it applied itself to its very vari
ous tasks. If anything were needed to prove that
a great modern nation makes progress in proportion
to the genuineness of its representative system,
such proof would be amply furnished by the history
of the first reformed Parliament. The reform in
the representative system had not, indeed, gone
nearly as far as was needed or as it was destined be
fore very long to go ; but it had gone far enough to
make it certain that a Parliament which is brought
directly in touch with public opinion is able to do
great work, even under reluctant or lukewarm sover
eigns. The new Parliament applied itself at this very
period of its history to the abolition of the odious
slavery system which still prevailed in many of the
239

240 SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE
English Colonies. The slave-trade system had been
put down long before; that is, so far as English
influence and the strength of English navies could
put it down. Even at the present day the slave
trade lingers here and there, and shows itself by fits
and starts, although all the civilised nations of the
world are now in arms against it. England had at
one time, it must be owned, been herself a sad
offender in the toleration and the actual practice of
the slave trade. But better times had come, and
England had repented of her former error, and had
done her very best to suppress the unnatural traffic.
StUl it was quite a different task to attempt the
abolition of the system of domestic slavery in colo
nies where that system had existed from time im
memorial. England took over her colonies burdened
with the slavery system; and had not, it must be
said, concerned herself very much with any persist
ent efforts to get rid of the odious institution.
There had, indeed, been for a long time growing
up in England a party of philanthropic reformers,
whose main purpose was to relieve the English
Colonies from the shame and the sin of slavery.
Brougham was one of the most eloquent and ener
getic of the men whose voice had always denounced
the slave system. It was he who, in energetic and
memorable words, cried out against " the wild and
guilty fantasy that man can hold property in man."
Zachary Macaulay, the father of the famous historian,
had taken a most active and enlightened part in the
movement for the suppression of the slave system.
He had himself given practical evidence of his sin-

SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE 24 1
cerity, at the same time that he had accumulated an
immense amount of knowledge which he put at the
service of those who were endeavouring to arouse
public opinion on this subject. Zachary Macaulay
had had in his hands the management of a vast
West Indian estate which was worked by slave
labour. He resigned that lucrative position because
his conscience would not allow him to have any
thing to do with the system, which with his own
eyes he had seen to be productive of so much crime
and misery. William Wilberforce had identified his
name and the name of his family with the Abolition
movement. Another family of great note, the
Fowell Buxtons, had for a long time before and a
long time after, been the enemies of slavery in
whatever form. Samuel Whitbread was devoted to
the same cause ; not a great many years have passed
since his descendant, another Samuel Whitbread,
aroused the House of Commons by his generous
denunciation of certain practices which an English
Government had thoughtlessly tolerated — practices
which seemed to sanction the restoration of the
fugitive slave to those who claimed to be his owners.
Lord Grey and Lord John Russell were naturally to
be found among the earliest opponents of slavery ;
and it had no opponent more earnest than Daniel
O'Connell, the leader of the Irish people.
The first great difficulty was to get up a strong,
healthy public opinion on the subject of slavery.
Anyone can imagine, without too much racking of
his brain, the kind of argument which would be ap
plied by those who supported the system. It used
VOL. I. — 16

242 SLAVERY — BLACK AND WHITE
to be said, for example, that England had no right
to rob certain of her colonies of an institution which
was absolutely essential to the prosperity of the
colonies themselves. Without slave labour, it used
to be declared, it would be impossible for the
colonies to be prosperous, because without it they
could not hold their own against other places which
permitted and encouraged the use of slave labour.
Many even argued for the system in the interest of
the slaves themselves. " Who," it was asked in
cessantly, "is to feed and clothe these poor creat
ures, if we remove them from the protection of
their masters, who could only benefit by their labour
under the existence of a slave system ?" " How
would it be possible," it was asked triumphantly,
" for Europeans to toil in the sweltering tropical
rice-fields and cotton-fields ? "
Then, again, it need hardly be said that the ac
counts of cruelties practised on the negroes were
indignantly denied. The masters were kindness
itself to them — such was the voluble assertion ; even
if they had not been influenced by Christian feeling
and sentimental humanity, a merely selfish care for
their own interests would keep them from over
tasking and punishing their poor slaves. All the
talk about floggings and brandings; about the
separation of parents from children ; about women
and girls treated like beasts of the field and scourged
to their death ; about runaway slaves being identi
fied when captured because of the owner's brands
upon their breasts — all these were idle tales, utter
exaggerations such as only the fanatical fancy of an

WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, M.P.
From a picture by J. Rising.

SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE 243
Abohtionist could suggest. In truth the English
public had got into an easy, jog-trot way of dealing
in its mind and in its conscience with this question
of domestic slavery. Numbers of the best and most
respectable families of the country were known to
have large possessions in the West Indies, and was
it to be supposed that such men would tolerate for
a moment a system which was fraught with such
terrible consequences ?
Then, again, a very taking argument was found
by those who insisted that the workers on the West
Indian plantations were for the most part better fed
and cared for than the white slaves who drudged in
an English factory or risked their lives in an English
mine. This argument was especially telling because
undoubtedly it had a certain amount of truth in it ;
and the reformed Parliament had not yet seriously
turned its attention to the condition of women and
children in our factories and mines. As to the argu
ments drawn from the aUeged humanity of the
system, Zachary Macaulay and other experienced
men supplied their friends with facts and dates and
cases, which no sophistry could refute, to prove that
the whole system was interwoven with cruelty and
brutality of the most abominable kind. The public
advertisements printed in colonial papers concerning
escaped slaves would have supplied proof enough of
this, in the means of identification which were given,
— the backs marked with stripes, the breasts stamped
with the burnt-in brand of the owner.
How did it come about that English families of
honoured name had great possessions in the colonies

244 SLAVERY^BLACK AND WHITE
where slavery prevailed, and tolerated the existence
of such evils ? The answer was easy enough. Not
many of the heads of those great families were at
the pains of visiting their colonial estates and thor
oughly investigating the system for themselves.
They found the slavery institution going on, and it
did not occur to most of them that they were born
to set it right. Most of them, even of those who
actually went out and inspected their own estates,
were willing to accept the reports of the managers
and overseers, whom they trusted, and did not take
great trouble to discover what could very easily be
concealed from their sight. Then, again, some of
the owners of great estates did pay earnest attention
to the condition of the slaves and did take care that
so far as their own property went the negro worker
should be fairly and kindly treated. But even to
those men it was seldom borne in with any force of
conviction that the system of slavery was a barbarous
one in itself, and that merely to make the slave tol
erably comfortable did not by any means dispose of
even the principal objection to the odious system.
It had not yet got clearly into the public mind
that man's right to own his fellow-man was, as
Brougham said, " a wild and guilty fantasy."
Therefore the pioneers in the Abolition movement
had to set to work in the first instance to arouse the
national conscience and to create a public opinion
capable of supporting them in their noble and phil
anthropic efforts. But it was clear that with a non-
reformed — that is to say, a non-representative —
Parliament no strength of pubhc opinion could have

SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE 245
influence enough to carry the abolition of slavery.
What did the unreformed Pariiament care about the
eloquence of Brougham, or Zachary Macaulay's
array of facts and evidence, or the pleadings of
FoweU Buxton and Wilberforce and Whitbread ?
The House of Commons of that day was not respons
ible to the English public. It was responsible only
to the owners of the constituencies which held an
overpowering majority in the House of Cominons.
At one time the peers who sat in the House of
Lords had, as owners of the soil in this place and
that, a direct control over a large number of votes
in what was ordinarily called the Representative
Chamber. On such questions as that of slavery and
its abolition most of the landowners held firmly to
gether. An interference with the rights of those
who owned property in the West Indies might be
come but a precedent for an interference with the
rights of those who held property in England ; and
the right of property seemed in the minds of many
at that time to be something so sacred that no in
quiry as to its operation, its origin, its justice, or its
divinely appointed mission could be aUowed with
out dread of the vengeance of Heaven.
Then, again, there were difficulties of another kind.
Some of the West Indian Colonies, and also places
like Demerara, were governed directly from West
minster, and were, in fact, what are called Crown
Colonies; but some, Uke Jamaica, for instance, and
other West Indian islands, had a sort of representa
tive system of their own and a kind of local Parha
ment which managed their affairs. Now it was

246 SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE
easy to imagine, and the imagination was only too
well justified by the facts, that the colonies which
had any manner of local government would wax
highly indignant at the thought of their representa
tive system being interfered with by the meddling
of phUanthropists in the Enghsh House of Com
mons. Some of the strongest opponents of aU re
presentative systems in England were among the
most eager to seize upon this form of argument and
brandish it as their own in the faces of their philan
thropic opponents. " Where is your consistency?"
it was pertinaciously asked, sometimes in tones of
mere anger, sometimes in tones of sarcasm. " You
call yourselves Whigs and you are for ever clamour
ing about the independence of Parliament, and yet
you want to take away from the parliamentary
Assembly of Jamaica or of Barbadoes the right to
manage its own affairs. ' '
The Government made some efforts to compromise
with some of the colonies by issuing ordinances
which endeavoured to mitigate the severity of the
slave system on the plantations. The Jamaica As
sembly refused to accept the recommendations or
orders of the Colonial Office and tried to mend the
matter by passing an act to mitigate the system ;
but the act was of no practical use whatever, and
the Colonial Office declined to sanction it. In Dem
erara there was something of a disturbance caused
by the slaves in one part of the colony, who had
heard vague news that their emancipation was com
ing, and on a particular day struck work, as we
should put it in modern phraseology. This unhappy

SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE 247
little movement was crushed by the planters with
remorseless severity, and an incident occurred which
was very timely, in the fact that it brought home to
the mind of the British pubhc a distinct idea of what
the slave system could do in the way of hardening the
minds of masters. An English Dissenting minister,
the Rev. John Smith, was accused of inciting the
slaves to insurrection. He was put in prison; he
was made to stand a trial, which by its utter disre
gard of all the rules of evidence was itself an act of
lawlessness; he was found guilty and sentenced to
death. The court-martial which tried him accom
panied its judgment with a recommendation for
mercy ; but while some of the planters were humanely
urging that the recommendation ought to be carried
out, and others were insisting that the case of the
poor minister afforded an opportunity for a stern
example, to warn off other Abolitionists, the mis
sionary himself died from the effects of the imprison
ment and the hard treatment he had received. The
news of this death created a profound sensation in
England. Brougham, Mackintosh, Lushington, and
other philanthropists stirred up the feeling of Eng
lishmen to indignation. The Government were
compeUed by the force of public opinion to reverse
the sentence of the court-martial; and even when
they had made this inevitable concession to the
common feeling, Brougham went very near to carry
ing a resolution in the House of Commons denounc
ing the whole conduct of the trial.
A great meeting was held in London to agitate
for the complete abolition of slavery throughout all

248 SLAVERY^BLACK AND WHITE
the British Colonies. Brougham brought on the
whole question in the House of Commons and intro
duced a motion on the general subject of slavery.
Fowell Buxton did the same thing in the following
session, and at last the Government began to feel
that they must give way, and when Parliament met
in 1833 there was a new man in the office of Secre
tary for the Colonies, Lord Stanley, the eloquent
Lord Stanley as he may be described, who was
afterwards the Earl of Derby. Lord Stanley was a
man of generous emotions, and of great parliament
ary capacity. Macaulay said of him, that " with
Stanley the mastery of parliamentary debate was an
instinct." Short of the very highest gift of oratory,
he brought everything to a great parliamentary de
bate which could claim success. He had a fine
voice, a magnificent gift of language, and in espe
cial that gift of phrase-making which has had such a
captivation for the House of Commons. Some of
us can still remember him as Lord Derby in the
House of Lords, and can remember that in that
House he had, after Brougham's death, no superior;
while in the two Houses of Parliament taken to
gether he had no superior, and indeed no equal,
except alone Gladstone and Bright.
Lord Stanley was entrusted with the task of ex
pounding to the House of Commons the policy of
the Government with regard to the question of slav
ery, and of proposing for the acceptance of the
House certain resolutions in which that policy was
to be embodied. He rose to his task with splendid
effect, and no advocate could have better pleaded

SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE 249
his cause; but the policy of the Government was
not yet strong enough to satisfy the feeling of the
country. Lord Stanley had five resolutions to pro
pose—resolutions well worthy of being recorded,
although in somewhat abbreviated form, if only to
show that the high-water level of the Government
policy was as yet but the low-water level of the
popular demand. The first resolution declared the
opinion of the House, that " immediate and effectual
measures be taken for the entire abolition of slavery
throughout the colonies, under such provisions for
regulating the condition of the negroes as may com
bine their welfare with the interests of the pro
prietors." The second resolution proposed that
" aU children born after the passing of an Act of
Parhament for this purpose, or who should be under
the age of six years at that time, should be declared
free, subject nevertheless to such temporary restric
tions as may be deemed necessary for their support
and maintenance." The third resolution started a
new principle of compromise which found little
favour in the eyes of the more advanced Abolition
ists. This resolution declared that " all persons
then slaves should be entitled to be registered as
apprenticed labourers, and to acquire thereby all the
rights and privileges of free men, subject to the re
striction of labouring, under conditions and for a
time to be fixed by Parliament, for their present
owners." The fourth resolution authorised the
Government to advance, by way of loan, a sum not
exceeding ;^i 5,000,000 sterling to provide against
any loss which the owners of slaves might suffer by

250 SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE
the abolition of the slave system. The fifth resolu
tion merely gave authority to the Crown to establish
a staff of stipendiary magistrates in the colonies, and
to provide for the religious and moral education of
the negroes, who were to enter into a sort of condi
tional freedom.
The first and second resolutions passed easily
enough, but the third became, as might be ex
pected, a subject of much discussion. Mr. Buxton
condemned the compromise contained in the reso
lution, and argued, with much ability, that the
proposed interval of qualified servitude would do
nothing whatever to render the negroes more fit to
be entrusted with full and final freedom. Mr. Bux
ton received the powerful support of Lord Howick.
Some of us can still remember Lord Howick when,
as Earl Grey, he sat in the House of Lords, and was
remarkable at once for his sterling abilities and for
a certain independence of character which often
made it difficult for him to submit to the restraint
of official position. He was the son of the famous
Lord Grey, — Charles, Earl Grey, — the leader of the
reform movement in England, and by whom the
Reform Bill of 1830 had been introduced into
the House of Lords. Lord Howick, just before
he spoke against Lord Stanley's third resolution,
had given proof of his independence of character.
He had been appointed Under-Secretary for the
Colonies, and had resigned that position because
he could not support or sanction the dilatory com
promise recommended by Lord Stanley's third
resolution.

SLA VER Y—BLA CK AND WHITE 2 5 1
The Government had the powerful support of Mr.
Thomas Babington Macaulay, afterwards famous as
essayist and historian, son of the Zachary Macaulay
who, as we have already seen, did more than almost
any other man for the abolition of slavery. The
younger Macaulay's arguments merely went to the
effect that the transition from actual slavery to
the condition of apprenticeship was at all events a
decided step in advance, that it made absolute
emancipation merely a question of a few defined
years, and that it was probably about as far as the
Government could, with safety to the very interests
which they were striving to promote, venture to go
just at that time. One interesting fact for all
modern readers is that, in the course of the debates
on the slavery question, Mr. Gladstone was heard
for the first time in the House of Commons, which
he had but lately entered. Mr. Gladstone declared
himself in favour of emancipation, and had nothing
to say in support of any slave system ; but he was of
opinion that slave emancipation must be accom
plished gradually, that the slave must be educated
and stimulated to spontaneous industry, and that
the owners must be fairly compensated for the loss
which the State was about to impose on them. Mr.
Gladstone had not then risen to the high level of
opinion on all questions concerning any manner
of slavery to which he rose in his maturer years.
Mr. Buxton proposed one or two amendments to
the third resolution, but was prevailed upon, by the
advice of some of his friends, to aUow the resolution
to pass so far as he was concerned, and without

252 SLA VER Y—BLA CK AND WHITE
challenging a division. It is to the credit of Ireland
that her popular leader, Daniel O'ConneU, refused
to listen to any terms of compromise. He had him
self seconded Mr. Buxton's principal amendment,
but he firmly declined to aUow the third resolution
to pass without challenge. He insisted on a divi
sion, and with so many opponents to contend against,
— the whole Tory party, the planter party, all the
regular supporters of the Government, and many
sincere friends of Abolition, who were, nevertheless,
willing to listen to some sort of compromise, —
O'Connell carried forty votes with him out of a
House of three hundred and twenty-four. This
might seem a very small minority, and so it was,
numerically speaking; but those who understood the
House of Commons saw then, as those who under
stand it will see now, that the principle which at such
a time and in the face of almost unparalleled diffi
culty could secure forty independent votes was a
principle to be reckoned with by prudent Ministers.
The proposal of the Government for the ;^i 5,000,-
000 loan was fiercely opposed by all the friends of
the planter interest. It was urged on behalf of the
planters that the amount of the loan would not
nearly cover the loss which Abolition would bring
upon them, and there were not wanting many shrewd
political go-betweens who hinted in public and ex
plained in private that the loan was never likely to
be repaid. The Government after a while began
to think that there was little use in haggling over
the settlement of so portentous a question, and they
withdrew their proposal for a loan, offering instead

LORD MACAULAY.
From a painting by Sir Francis Grant, P. R, A., in the National Portrait Gallery.

SLA VER Y—BLA CK AND WHITE 253
an absolute gift of ;^20,ooo,ooo sterling out of the
national funds to recompense the planters for any
loss to which they might be put. The proposal was
carried without a division. There was much dif
ference of opinion about its justice then, and there
is some difference of opinion even now. Why,
it was asked, should the English populations be
taxed to meet the losses which men might suffer
who had to give up an odious trade, against which
every Christian doctrine and every humane feeling
alike protested ? As well, it was urged, might the
man who hved by the carrying off and selling of
slaves claim compensation for his losses, when civil
isation pronounced the decree that his infamous
traffic must cease. Why should not the pirate plead
for compensation when international law declared
that he must no longer ravage the seas ? Yet the
Government on the whole was right in spending
the money for the sake of obtaining a measure of
Abolition. England had grown up in a passive
recognition of the right of men to have slaves in
the colonies and to make their profits out of slave
labour. Two or three generations before the time of Wil
berforce and Zachary Macaulay, it seemed quite a
natural thing that the man who acquired West
Indian property should be the owner of slaves, and
nobody thought any the worse of him for it. Eng
land had allowed men to grow rich by slave labour
aU this time, without, untU quite lately, raising any
strong moral protest against it. We have seen
already how a pubhc opinion had to be literally

254 SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE
created in order to sustain any Government in an
attempt to abolish the ownership of slaves and the
making of fortunes out of slave labour. In the House
of Commons, at the very time when the measure
was introduced, there were many men, undoubtedly
educated and humane, who did not see anything
deserving of utter condemnation in the system of
domestic slavery. More than a quarter of a century
later still there were educated and humane English
men who got up on public platforms in London at
the time of the great American Civil War to tell
their audiences that the slaves on the plantations of
Georgia and South Carolina were better fed and
cared for than the workers in many an English fac
tory and mine, as if that settled the whole question
and left nothing else to be said.
On the whole, then, it was wise of the Govern
ment to get out of the entire controversy by throw
ing down ;^20,ooo,ooo of the national funds to buy
out the opposition of the planters and their friends.
The Government had no difficulty in carrying their
proposal through the House of Commons and the
House of Lords. The House of Lords, it may be
said, has rarely, if ever, put much difficulty in the
way of any proposal which tends to benefit the own
ers of landed property, at home or in the colonies.
A bill was brought in by the Government which
with some modifications simply carried into effect
Lord Stanley's resolutions as adopted by the Repre
sentative Chamber. The principal modifications
were the substitution of the larger gift for the
smaller loan, and a reduction in the term of appren-

SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE 255
tieeship, from twelve years to seven in one category
of apprentices, and from seven years to five in
another. The bill was then carried easily enough,
and slavery as a system was declared to be abolished
for ever in the British Colonies. This, as has been
said, was the first great work of the reformed Parlia
ment ; and it will be readily acknowledged that a re
formed Parliament could not have started on its way
with brighter omens than those which were shining
from that first great success.
During the debates on the slavery question the
phUanthropists, as they were contemptuously called,
— in other words, the opponents of the slave system,
— were constantly asked by the advocates of the
planters: " Why don't you look at home ? Why
don't you turn to the condition of your labourers in
ycur factories and your mines?" "If you will
only think about their condition," it was urged,
" you wiU have little time left to maunder and pot
ter over the condition of the slaves in the plantations
of Georgia and South Carolina. Don't you know
that there is white slavery as well as black slavery,
and that the white slavery is of your making, so far
as these islands are concerned ? Think more, then,
of the white slaves of these islands, and less of the
black slaves of Barbadoes and Jamaica." It would
have been impossible that some Enghshmen, and
among them some of the leading opponents of West
Indian slavery, should not have the condition of the
white slaves of Great Britain brought to their minds
long before the advocates of West Indian slavery
had publicly taunted them with their indifference to

256 SLAVERY^BLACK AND WHITE
the domestic evil. One of the principal opponents
of slavery, in whatever form, was the late Earl of
Shaftesbury — Lord Ashley, as he was at the time
of the West India BiU.
Lord Ashley had turned his attention, from his
early years, to the condition of the workers in our
factories and our mines. To him white slavery was
just as odious as black, and he made himself, during
his long career, a special champion of the white
slaves. Many of us can well remember Lord Shaftes
bury during his later days in the House of Lords.
Some of us had the honour of his personal acquaint
ance, and all who knew him admired his thorough
probity, his perseverance, and his practical philan
thropy. He was not by any means intellectually a
great man ; and his was not, in politics, a command
ing figure. He was a good speaker on any subject
which he had thoroughly made his own and mas
tered, but he never shone as a debater in the House
of Commons, where the years of his best activity
were spent, nor even later on in the less eager and
disturbing atmosphere of the House of Lords. He
had, undoubtedly, some of the objectionable quali
ties of the fanatic about him. Where religious
questions were concerned his opponents declared
him to be a mere bigot, and it is certain that he had
many strong prejudices, and was sometimes provok-
ingly wrong-headed. All the same he was a genuine
philanthropist, and when he kept to his own partic
ular questions he was safe and steady as a rock.
Lord Ashley made himself the pioneer of the par
liamentary movement for the regulation of the work

SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE 257
of women and children in factories, and he succeeded
after many efforts in obtaining the appointment of
a commission to inquire into the whole subject.
The commission took aU the evidence available, and
were able to present Parliament and the public with
an array of indisputable facts to show the utterly
destructive effect, both moral and physical, caused
by the overtasking of women and children; and
Lord Ashley at once set to work to agitate for
the passing of some measures which would limit
the hours and regulate the conditions under which
women and children were to be kept to labour. His
efforts raised a furious controversy, and brought up
for settlement also an important economical question.
The outcry raised by Lord Ashley's opponents was
that his agitation was directed towards a legislative
interference with the freedom of contract. There is
a great tendency in the English mind to be governed
by phrases, to turn some favourite phrase into an
oracle, and allow it to deliver judgment in the teeth
of whatever evidences and facts. For years and
years after Lord Ashley had started his movement
there were numbers of Englishmen filled with a fond
belief that the words " freedom of contract " settled
every question which could possibly come within the
reach of the principle they were supposed to embody.
Was it really proposed. Lord Ashley's opponents
asked in stern accents, that Parliament should inter
fere with the freedom of contract ; with the right of
one man to hire labour, and the right of another
man to let it out for hire ? If a grown woman
chooses to agree with an employer that she is to
VOL. I.— 17

2S8 SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE
work so many hours a day at a specified rate of
payment, what right has the Imperial Parliament to
say that she shall not be free to sell her labour on
such conditions as she finds suitable to her ? If a
man is willing to let out the labour of his children
for so many hours a day at a specified rate of pay
ment, has Parliament a right to step in and say that
a man shall not deal with his own children as he
thinks best for his interest and for theirs ? Is
it really proposed that the State shall assume the
rights of paternity over all the children of the work
ing classes in towns, and say when they may work
and when they may not work ? It did not seem to
have occurred to many of Lord Ashley's opponents
to ask themselves whether in such cases there is
always any real and equal freedom of contract. The
hard-worked artisan in a city with half a dozen child
ren whom he finds it hard to support — is he really
quite as free in the contract for their labour as the
capitalist who offers to hire it, and who can get
plenty of offers from others if some one particular
working man declines to agree with his terms ?
The opposition to Lord Ashley's measures did
not always come, however, from hard-headed and
hard-hearted economists who believed in freedom of
contract because the freedom was all on their own
side. Many men of the highest character and the
most unselfish motives, many owners of factories
who had through all their hves been filled with the
kindliest feelings towards their work-people, were
bitterly opposed to the whole principle underlying
Lord Ashley's efforts. Such men were sincerely

EARL OF SHAFTSBURY, K. G.
From a bust, mounted by Sir John Edgar Boehm, Bart., R. A., in the
National Portrait Gallery.

SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE 2$g
convinced, in many cases, that the economic laws
settled, and alone could settle, every trade diffi
culty ; and that Parliament could do no good, and
could only do harm, by any attempt at interference
with these inexorable influences. We have lost a
good deal of our faith in the extreme beneficence of
economic laws since that time, when so many were
inchned to give to them a strength and a sanctity
which mere instinct alone teaches us not to assign
to the physical laws. We know that legislation can
not banish winter or prevent storms, but we know
also that we can build houses to shelter us against
the winter and the storm. At that time there was
an opinion widely abroad among certain of the com
mercial and trading classes of England that a happy
era was fast approaching when almost everything
would be left to the settlement of the economic laws
and the magic principle of freedom of contract.
It was the dream then of many men, not other
wise much given to dreaming, that a time was
fast approaching when the whole postal system
of civilised countries would be left in the hands
of private competition and freedom of contract.
We have drifted far away from those ideas of late
years, but they were just beginning to take form
and strength at the time when Lord Ashley was
making his beneficent efforts to regulate the labour
of women and children in factories.
Lord Ashley was supported by a great many
landowners, for whom, naturally, the working of
factories had no direct personal concern, and who
could therefore afford to be phUanthropic at the ex-

26o SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE
pense of the factory owners. These latter and their
friends therefore turned fiercely on the landowners,
and asked, " Why don't you call for the regulation
of the working hours of women and children on your
own farms and on your own fields ? " They argued
that the condition of wretched children employed in
agricultural labour was far more pitiable, and far
more deserving of the intervention of Parliament,
than that of the well-paid and well-cared-for labour
ers in the factories, who were able to take care not
only of themselves, but also of their wives and
children. Then, again, the manufacturers urged that it
would be utterly impossible to apply any general
rule to all the various forms of employment in fac
tories. Different kinds of productiveness required
different hours and conditions of production. In
some trades business came with an almost over
whelming rush at one period of the year, and was
slack and short at another ; how, it was asked, can
you find any legislative rule which could apply with
equal fairness to such labour and to the labour
which went on steadily day after day throughout
the year ? In some trades the assistance of the
women and children might be restricted without any
serious delay of the labour of the adult men ; in
others, if the women and children were made to
stop off the easy work which gave assistance to the
whole production, the grown men would be com
pelled to let their work, too, come to a standstill.
How is it possible, it was asked, to get any Act of Par
liament which can deal fairly with such diversified

SLAVERY^BLACK AND WHITE 26 1
conditions of labour ? and what can Parliament do,
if it tries its bungling hand at intervention, but
make the condition of things infinitely worse than
it was, until another Act of Parliament has to be
passed to abolish by the common consent of every
body the misdirected and pernicious legislation
which Lord Ashley and his philanthropic friends
were striving to force upon the State ? Lord Ashley
and his philanthropic friends won the day neverthe
less, and an Act was passed in 1833 limiting the work
of children to eight hours a day, and that of young
persons under eighteen to sixty-nine hours a week.
Lord Ashley persevered in the policy which, under
his guidance, had proved so successful. At a later
period he succeeded in obtaining the appointment
of a commission to inquire into the conditions and
the results of the employment of women and girls
in mines. The evidence taken before the commis
sion disclosed a state of things which shocked and
startled even the most languid minds, and proved
capable of bearing down all opposition in the end.
The evidence brought out before the commission
revealed the fact that in several of the coal-mines,
for instance, women were employed literally as
beasts of burden. The seams of coal were often too
narrow to allow any grown person to stand upright,
and the women had to creep on their hands and
knees, crawling backwards and forwards for fourteen
or even sixteen hours a day. But they had not
merely to crawl backwards and forwards— they had
also to drag after them the trucks laden with coal.
The trucks and the women were harnessed together

262 SLAVERY^BLACK AND WHITE
after the simplest and rudest fashion — the usual
plan was to make fast each truck to a chain which
passed between the legs of the woman engaged in
drawing it, and the chain was then attached to a
belt which was strapped round her naked waist.
The women who worked in these mines usually wore
no clothing but an old pair of trousers made of the
roughest sackcloth ; they wore, in fact, the same
sort of costume as the men, and the chief difference
in their condition was that they were put to a lower
and more degrading kind of work than that which
was allotted to their male companions. These
women were, indeed, literally unsexed ; and not by
any means merely in that metaphorical sense in
which the word is sometimes now employed by the
opponents of an agitation for woman's suffrage. It
would be needless to attempt to describe the physi
cal and moral evils which were necessarily produced
by such a system.
Lord Ashley pressed on his movement, and it
required some courage on the part of any anti-
reformer to stand up against it. Finally he suc
ceeded in obtaining an Act of ParUament which
prohibited for ever the employment of women or
girls underground in the mines. The Act also de
clared that children under ten years of age were not
to be employed in the mines at all ; and the work of
the children above ten years was limited and regu
lated. A number of Government officials were
entrusted with the task of seeing that the provisions
of the new Acts were properly carried into force.
It may now be safely affirmed that the regulations

SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE 263
for the employment of women and children in mines
have worked with the most satisfactory results.
Lord Ashley was not indeed the actual pioneer of
the movement which he carried to such great suc
cess; many benevolent and enlightened men had
worked before him for the same purpose and with
the same high motives. But it is fairly to be said
that Lord Ashley was the first man who forced the
movement on the attention of Parliament, who
directed the intelligence and the sympathies of the
public in the right way, and who won the first last
ing triumphs for the great cause of which he was so
unselfish and persevering a champion. Since that
time Parliament has been going farther and farther
in the same direction. It has put forth its hand to
regulate the hours and conditions of labour in work
shops ; it has interfered to secure for the workman
some compensation for injuries caused by accidents
amongst the machinery, where he was not himself,
by negligence or otherwise, responsible for the harm
he had suffered ; it has asserted over and over again
its right to interfere between employer and work
man, where the workman is placed at an evident
disadvantage by conditions over which he has per
sonally no control; it will no doubt intervene, sooner
or later, on behalf of the children who work in the
fields, as it has interfered on behalf of the children
who work in the factories ; indeed, it may be taken
for granted that Parliament will go on for a long
time to come extending the apphcation of the prin
ciple adopted in 1833 with regard to the hours and
conditions of labour.

264 SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE
It has been well observed that the course of legis
lation with regard to the labour of working men and
working women has already passed through three
distinct stages. The first stage was that during
which no person not directly concerned troubled
himself about the conditions of labour at all. The
employer, it was commonly assumed, knew better
than anybody else how to deal with those who
worked for him, and even his own selfish interests,
it was complacently argued, would have prevented
any employer from overtaxing his workers too much ;
the man who harassed his work-people beyond their
strength would never, it was contended, be able to
get work enough out of them, and so, for their own
sakes at least, the masters would deal tenderly with
the man or the woman or the child. No doubt all
this was true of many intelligent employers; and
no doubt it was true also that a large proportion of
the employers were men too humane and too kindly
to exact overwork from those whom they employed.
But with the competition that exists in all manu
facturing communities, it is tolerably certain that
the work standard of the exacting employers will
become something like the common standard of the
whole body. A sort of class public-opinion, a sort
of false conscience, is apt to be generated even
among the kindliest of men who are rivals in the
same work, where no check is imposed by the world
outside. No check of any kind was employed in
England before the agitation began which Lord
Ashley conducted to success. Then there came a
second stage, during which many an enlightened

SLAVERY — BLACK AND WHITE 265
man endeavoured to set it up as a sort of scientific
principle, that freedom of contract, and the higher
forces of political economy, would manage every
thing for the best ; and that legislation would only
make things infinitely worse by its unskilled efforts
to interfere between capital and labour. Then there
followed the third stage or period, during which it
has come to be accepted that it is the right and the
duty of every representative Parliament to intervene,
wherever intervention is necessary, for the physical
and moral protection of its citizens against evils
which are not by any means a necessary part of the
growth of civilisation. For years and years we, in
these countries, have grown out of that condition of
mental development which can be satisfied with the
dogma that freedom of contract and the laws of
political economy may be trusted with the manage
ment of the world. Of late we have had legislation
to intervene between the right of .the landlord to
make what terms he pleases with the tenant. Leg
islation lately has shown no respect whatever for the
supposed rights of the owners of house property in
the great cities to let out their houses under what
conditions they please to enforce. We have had
Act of Parliament after Act of Parliament to compel
the owners of property to look after the sanitary
condition of the houses and the rooms which they
let out to hire.
It ought to be said that both the great political
parties of England have shown themselves equally
ready to recognise the new principles ; and the Tory
Governments have been just as ready as the Liberal

266 SLAVER Y^BLACK AND WHITE
Governments to interfere between the employer and
the workman, the landlord and the tenant, the house-
owner and the lodger, where the welfare of the pub
lic called for such intervention. Indeed, the whole
question may be said to have been long since lifted
out of the sphere of partisan politics. Of late years
there has been a sort of rivalry, and by no means
an ungenerous or unwholesome rivalry, between
Liberals and Conservatives, as to who should do the
most for the protection of those who otherwise could
do little to protect themselves.
Naturally, as the working population grew in num
bers, in education, and intelligence, they have been
able to assert their claims with an effect of which
their forefathers could never have dreamed. Nor
can it fairly be said that in later days the working
population have made any unfair, or even unreason
able, use of their growing strength. Working men's
associations and combinations have spread all over
these islands, as they have in many other countries
as well; and certainly we in these islands have no
reason to say that the power of the working classes
in their trades unions and their leagues has often been
misused. It is not so long since any combination of
working men to come to a common understanding
with regard to the hours they would work or the
wages they would accept was an offence against the
law, and was commonly treated as such, and fol
lowed by punishment of some kind, while, at the same
time, the masters were perfectly free to agree among
themselves as to the rate of wages they would pay
and the hours of labour they were to exact.

SLAVERY^BLACK AND WHITE 267
At the time when Lord Ashley began his agitation
the State did nothing whatever for the education of
the working man and his children. Since that time
we have had Acts of Parliament not merely estab
lishing, but even enforcing, systems of national edu
cation. The time is well within the memory of
most of us, when it was a common saying that the
principle of compulsory education was something
altogether un-English, a sort of system which might
suit Germans and such like, but could never be ac
cepted among the free-born population of Great
Britain. The principle of compulsory education
has done as much as anything could do to assist the
working out of those enlightened laws which Lord
Ashley did so much to call into existence.
Later on, a new and very peculiar interference be
tween employer and employed was accomplished by
Parliament. It did not strictly belong in date, or
in actual conditions, to the factory legislation which
Lord Ashley and his friends accomplished ; but in
its character it forms a proper part of the same great
movement for alleviating the condition of the hard
working and the badly used. It would be somewhat
too grotesque to speak of an interference between
capital and labour, where the capitalists concerned
were only the master-sweeps, and the labourers
were the httle climbing-boys who were employed
to cleanse the chimneys. Yet there was no reform
accomplished by the whole philanthropic movement
more cruelly needed than that which concerned itself
about the climbing-boys; nor were the sufferings
endured on the West India plantations more revolt-

268 SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE
ing to every humane mind than those which were
inflicted on the poor little helpless mites who were
sent up the chimneys in all the towns of Great
Britain and Ireland.
Many readers now will be required to be told what
the system was, which, in this instance, called so
pitifully for reform. To many of the younger gen
eration the name of the " climbing-boy " may con
vey possibly no manner of idea. Young men and
women of this day never saw a climbing-boy, never
heard the cry of " Sweep! " come shrilly into the
morning air from the top of a chimney. The trade
of the climbing-boy is believed to have been un
known to any country but the two islands under the
English Crown. It seems to have begun in these
countries somewhere about the opening of that
eighteenth century to which we are accustomed to
look back with an admiration which, intellectually,
that century well deserves; but the intellect of
the century did not apply itself over keenly to the
study of the grievances of labour ; and the romantic
youths and maidens who watched the sun rise with
poetic eyes were not brought back to the practical
rigours of life by the morning cry of the climbing-
boy. In most of our houses then the chimneys were
high, narrow, and crooked, and at the opening of
the eighteenth century statesmanship troubled itself
very little about the sanitary conditions of house
building. It became after a while the settled con
viction of all men and women who had what is called
the practical mind, that there was only one way of

SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE 269
properly cleansing a chimney, and that was by send
ing a little boy with a broom to climb his way
through it and scrape down the masses of soot as he
mounted up. The boy had to climb from the fire
place to the top of the chimney and to announce
the accomplishment of his mission by crying out
" Sweep!" when his soot-covered head and face
emerged from the chimney-top. If the boy did not
thus present himself to the open air and announce
his triumph, who was to know that the lazy little
fellow had not stopped his upward movement when
half-way up the chimney and then begun to climb
down again ? The interiors of narrow chimneys are
not provided with flights of steps for the convenience
of climbing-boys, and therefore the poor little creat
ures had to force their way up by working their
elbows and knees against the different sides of the
horrible structure. As a matter of course, their
hands, arms, and knees were always abrased, and
sometimes very severely injured, by this terrible
friction with the internal masonry of the chimneys.
Sometimes a chimney was so narrow that a poor
little boy stuck fast in it, and could only be relieved
from his awkward and dangerous position with much
trouble. It often happened that when the boy was
sent up, the chimney was still hot from the recent
use of the fire, and the poor little creature got
severely burnt. It was proved beyond question or
doubt that in many cases a boy who stuck fast in a
still heated chimney was found to be dead when at
last he was dragged back to the hearth. The poor
little creatures were dressed in a short gown of sack-

270 SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE
ing, which was so covered with soot that it looked
as if it never could be made clean again — and prob
ably, indeed, no attempt was ever tried to make it
clean again. The soot of one day's deposit was
added to the soot of the former day, and after the
first day or two the keenest unprofessional eye could
not have detected any difference in the black ac
cumulation. There was something peculiarly grim,
pathetic, and touching in Charles Lamb's descrip
tion of the climbing-boys as " these almost clergy
imps." The faces of the poor boys were always
covered and clotted with soot ; and as the master-
sweep's countenance generally bore the same appear
ance, perhaps as a professional symbol, it was not
likely that any great use was made of soap and water
to give the climbing-boy a short and futile interval
of cleanliness.
For years and for generations people went on
taking no notice of the sufferings of the little
sweeps; the ordinary householder grew accustomed
to them, — it is very easy to grow accustomed to the
routine sufferings of other human creatures, — and it
never occurred to most persons to ask themselves
whether humanity could do nothing in the matter.
The philanthropists, as usual, were the first to stir
in the wretched business. These philanthropists
would not even be content to let the master-sweep
do what he liked with his own climbing-boys. In
some cases they were literally his own climbing-
boys; for it was shown in evidence that master-
sweeps of the worst class had sometimes, for the
sake of economy, employed their own children in

SLA VER Y^B LACK AND WHITE 27 1
sweeping the householders' chimneys. Here again
the philanthropists were not to be daunted; they
insisted on the right of legislation to interfere be
tween the parent and his child when the parent set
his child to the filthy and dangerous work of a
climbing-boy. The philanthropists carried their
way in the end ; they set about rousing public
opinion, and they did at last thoroughly rouse pub
lic opinion.
A mountain of evidence w^ls produced to show
the horrors of the system. It was proved that in
many cases master-sweeps had actually employed
little girls to do the abominable work ; and it was
stated in Liverpool, and so far as we know never
contradicted, that in one case at least a master-
sweep who had a wife, a young, small, and slender
woman, passed her off as a boy and employed her
in the climbing of chimneys. In many cases, as it
was proved by uncontradicted evidence, when a
poor child stuck fast in a chimney a master-sweep
declared that the boy was only shamming, that he
was lazy and stubborn, and accordingly ordered a
fire to be again lighted in the grate, so as to compel
the unfortunate creature to mount the chimney in
order to escape from the flames. Of course the
extreme cases thus brought forward in the evidence
did not even profess to be an illustration of the
common ways of the trade. Many of the master-
sweeps were decent poor fellows enough : but there
was the trade, under the same conditions as those
which they had always known to belong to it ; and
when the respected and educated householder in

272 SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE
the towns, when the county gentleman, and even
the clergyman, made no objection to the practice,
how was the poor sweep to find out that the em
ployment of climbing-boys was a disgrace to hu
manity ? Such, however, it was; and so it was
soon proved to be.
The master-sweep and his ways began to be a
horror to the whole community. The Saracens, we
read, used to frighten their naughty children into
submission by threatening to hand them over to be
dealt with by King Richard of England. In days
that some of us can still remember many a rebellious
infant was frightened into good order by the threat
that he would be handed over to the master-sweep.
All sorts of stories began to get afloat about child
ren of high birth and delicate nurture who were
stolen away and sold to the master-sweep; and,
indeed, the master-sweeps began to play in legend
and in romance something like the part that had
been played by the gipsies. A long time had to be
spent in energetic agitation before anything practi
cal was done by Parliament; but at last in 1840 an
act was passed which abolished the whole system.
For a certain time, however, after the employment of
climbing-boys had thus been proclaimed illegal and
with a penalty on it, the practice was still carried on
clandestinely, and, indeed, in some places, with
little or no appearance of secrecy. It puts the or
dinary householder out of his way to be told that
when his chimney smoked he must refuse the
friendly offices of the master-sweep, unless the sweep
came provided with a properly made mechanical

SLAVERY—BLACK AND WHITE 273
brush for the purpose ; and some of these average
householders, being wedded to old-fashioned ways,
thought the new system was only all nonsense got
up by those interfering reformers.
-Public opinion, however, grew and grew, and at
last became so strong and general and keen-eyed
that the most old-fashioned and reactionary house
holder could not let his neighbours suppose that
he was a party to the torture of an unfortunate
climbing-boy. The machines adopted for the
cleansing of chimneys proved to be able to do their
work in a manner far more thorough and satis
factory than the most energetic poor child, who
wore out his life under the old system, could pos
sibly have done. Then we began to construct our
houses on the more rational principles; and the
sanitary laws came to be consulted, even in the con
struction of chimneys ; and there was no longer any
occasion for the sacrifice of the childhood of thou
sands and tens of thousands of httle climbing-boys.
Society, therefore, it was found out at last, not only
did not lose but actually gained by the intervention
of the philanthropic reformers. As we have said,
the old system is now forgotten by the present
generation ; but it is quite worth while to revive its
memory for a while, if only to tell the story of those
poor little martyrs to civilisation who were once re
garded as so necessary a part of our domestic system
that people never thought anything about their
martyrdom, and did not even consider such a form
of employment an evil serious enough to call for a
moment's thought.
VOL. I.— 18

274 SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE
Another of the reforms which, like those we have
already been describing, came in the wake of the
great Reform Bill itself, was the abolition of the
law of impressment for the navy. How long that
law of impressment, or perhaps that custom of
impressment which soon came to have the force
of a law, had existed in our history, it seems hard,
indeed, to decide. What we do know is, that in
the days of the early Plantagenet kings we find
it alluded to as a system long in practice and
accepted as one of the needs of our national de
fence. Of course it became, after a while, regulated
by comparatively modern Acts of Parliament, which
endeavoured to soften its rigours as much as it
seemed possible to each succeeding generation of law
makers; but the very laws which regulated it also
of necessity acknowledged and sanctioned the custom
of impressment for the navy. No regulation, no
mitigation, could make it anything except a horrible
grievance and a disgrace to a civilised system.
The principle of all the acts relating to impress
ment was that when the Government wanted sailors
to man our ships of war, the authorities could seize
men wherever they could get them, could capture
them as if they were felons, and could send them
for enforced service in the navy. It was not merely
a plan of conscription like that which still exists in
many civilised countries, applied to the recruiting
for the navy. The system of conscription, whatever
may be said for or against its merits, is a recognised
system which applies to all citizens alike, which is
one of the responsibilities of citizenship for which a

SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE 275
citizen can prepare himself in advance, with refer
ence to which he can mould his future arrangements,
and for which, in most countries where it prevails,
he is free to find a substitute. The impressment of
men for the navy absolutely depended on the will
or even the caprice of the authorities of that branch
of the Sovereign's service. A sudden alarm of
threatened war, a mere panic, a scare as we should
call it in our days, might be enough at any time to
set the naval authorities clamouring for fresh hands
to the work, and enough to put the impressment
system in active motion. It imposed not so much
a civic responsibility as a penal responsibility, for
the impressed men were simply captured and carried
off as if they were escaped convicts who had to be
haled back to prison.
Naturally the seaport towns were the places where
the naval authorities usually made their captures,
and the stray seaman from a merchant vessel was
preferred in all cases to the ordinary civilian. The
impressment system was seldom carried on upon
anything like a large scale without serious riot, and
sometimes serious loss of life. The novel-writer,
the poet, and the painter found ample and varied
themes for their different orders of art in the work
ings of this extraordinary system of naval supply.
Our romance is full of stories, some of which are
read at the present day by young people who other
wise, probably, would never have known what the
impressment system was. Many of these stories
give pathetic accounts of young men pressed into
the naval service just as they were returning from

276 SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE
the church where they had been married, and sent
off to serve at war on the seas, perhaps never to re
turn to the scenes and the home of their birth.
There is at least one touching poem which tells the
story of a young man thus impressed on his wedding-
day, who serves on board all through the great wars
with France in Napoleon's time, who returns, a man
of more than middle age, to find that his wife has
long been dead, and that in his native town nobody
even remembers his name. Poetic stories, some
what like that of Tennyson's Enoch Arden, gave an
additional pang to the pathos, by describing the
man as returning to his home to find his wife, who
had long believed him dead, married to another
husband ; and picture him in despair returning again
to the sea and the service, which had been his hard
est enemies, but had now become his only friends.
In many of Captain Marryat's novels, once the de
light of all boys and of many grown men, we have
vivid pictures of the riots caused by some sudden
impressment in one of our seaport towns; of the
press-gang, as it was called, forcing its way, cut
lass in hand and pistols in belt, through resisting
streets and lanes, which fire their shots from the
windows as if they were striving to check the move
ments of a conquering invader; of houses defended
literally from room to room ; of desperate hand-to-
hand fights; of women joining in the struggle; of
wounds given and received ; of death-blows given
and received; and, finally, of the captured men
dragged off as convicts might have been dragged to
the galleys.

SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE 277
At last public opinion began to be aroused to the
horrors of the system. The philanthropic reformer,
here, as everywhere else, was asserting his presence
and making his voice heard. The anti-reformers
were stubborn. It was an article of faith with every
anti-reformer that it would be utterly impossible to
man the navy if the power to impress men and drag
them on board ship were not left unchecked and
unchallenged in the hands of the authorities. To
listen to such arguments might well have made a
foreigner imagine that the Englishman of the poorer
class, especially in the seaport towns, was a creature
who detested the sea waves, who had not the cour
age to fight an enemy, and who thought it no con
cern of his even if the Frenchman were to invade
the country. The reformers, however, had their
way in the end. They were now, in fact, riding on
the crest of the reform wave; and in 1835 the Gov
ernment brought in a bill to abolish the press-gang
and to fix a period of five years as the limit of com
pulsory service in the navy. Since the abolition of
the press-gang it has not been found that the naval
service of England has been wholly neglected, or
that English fleets are utterly without sailors to man
them. One genuine reform usually brings another in its
wake. The abolition of the press-gang system gave
the first fair chance for the abolition of flogging in
the navy. When the press-gang captured and car
ried off dozens of men from the lower quarters of
some seaport town, it was not usual to require a
certificate of character from the men who were thus

278 SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE
compelled to do service in the fleet. It very often
happened that the press-gang swept off among their
captives many men who helped to form the mere
scum of the streets in which they were found — men
who had just come out of prison and were likely
enough before long, if they remained on shore, to
commit some new offence and be sent to prison once
more. Men of this class, sent to do duty in the
forecastle of one of our vessels of war, were not
likely to exercise a moralising influence on the
habits and characters of the sailors who were com
pelled to associate with them. The disorder, the
bad example, the defiance of discipline which such
impressed men brought with them sometimes were
infectious in their character, and helped to debase a
ship's company. Crimes were undoubtedly some
times committed which might excuse the mainten
ance of the flogging system in the minds of those
who believed that anything but evil could possibly
come out of such a system.
The abolition of flogging in the navy is an event
which comes well within the recollection of most
of us. Some of the most effective arguments made
in the House of Commons against the use of the
lash as a means of enforcing disciphne were made by
the owners of great merchant vessels or passenger
vessels who happened to be Members of Parliament.
These men pointed, again and again, to the example
afforded by the discipline of the mercantile fleets.
Take, they said, the great Atlantic Hnes of steamers,
the great Pacific lines of steamers, the merchant
steamers sailing every day from the port of London,

SLAVERY^BLACK AND WHITE 279
from Liverpool, from Newcastle, from Glasgow,
from Southampton, from every great seaport town
— where can you find discipline better maintained ?
These vessels run all the risks that the war steamers
have to face, except alone the rare risk of war, and
it was not pretended even by the stoutest advocate
of flogging that the blue-jacket was only inclined to
fail in his duty when he had to encounter a floating
enemy and a foreign flag. The finest of the mer
chant fleets had the additional disadvantage of hav
ing to carry on board great numbers of passengers,
men, women, and children, whose presence at a
time of threatened wreck must undoubtedly tend to
increase confusion and to make the prompt and
efficient discharge of the seaman's duty much more
difficult. Yet the merchant vessels were able to do
all their various and complicated work, although
their captains were not entrusted with the right of
flogging a refractory seaman.
The arguments of the reformers prevailed in the
end ; and the flogging system was abolished both
from army and navy. In truth it is hard to believe
that any Government could have serious difficulty
in manning either army or navy if reasonable and
liberal measures were adopted to make it worth the
while of a decent class of men to enter into either
field of England's warlike service. The navy, in
especial, has always been dear to the general popu
lation of England. The Greeks of the classic days
and the English of all days have been described as
the only two peoples whose literature pictures the
sea as a smiling and a tempting sight. The young

28o SLAVERY— BLACK AND WHITE
Englishman of the poorest class has a natural fond
ness and aptitude for the sea ; and although, even at
the present time, we have our occasional scares, and
we find eager anti-reformers crying out that the
service is going to the dogs, there is no evidence to
prove or even to suggest that England is likely to
want seamen at any hour of national need. Time
has proved that the naval service is all the better for
the disenrolment of the press-gang and the abolition
of the lash. END OF VOLUME I.

Heroes of the Nations.

EDITED BY

EVELYN ABBOTT, M.A.,
Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.

A Series of biographical studies of the lives and work
of a number of representative historical characters about
whom have gathered the great traditions of the Nations
to which they belonged, and who have been accepted, in
many instances, as types of the several National ideals.
With the life of each typical character will be presented
a picture of the National conditions surrounding him
during his career.
The narratives are the work of writers who are recog
nized authorities on their seveial subjects, and, while
thoroughly trustworthy as history, will present picturesque
and dramatic " stories " of the Men and of the events con
nected with them.
To the Life of each " Hero " wiU be given one duo
decimo volume, handsomely printed in large type, pro
vided with maps and adequately iUustrated according to
the special requirements of the several subjects. The
volumes wUl be sold separately as follows :
Large 12°, cloth extra  $1 50
Half morocco, uncut edges, gilt top . . . i 75

HEROES OF THE NATIONS.
Nelson, and the Naval Supremacy of England. By W. Clark Russell, author of
" The Wreck of the Grosvenor," etc.
Gustavus Adolphus, and the Struggle of Protestantism for Existence. By C. R.
L. Fletcher, M.A., late Fellow of All Souls' College.
Pericles, and the Golden Age of Athens. By Evelyn Abbott, M.A.
Theodoric the Goth, the Barbarian Champion of Civilisation. By Thomas
HoDGKiN, author of " Italy and Her Invaders," etc.
Sir Philip Sidney, and the Chivalry of England. By H. R. Fox-Bourne, author of
" The Life of John Locke," etc.
Julius Csesar, and the Organisation of the Roman Empire. By W. Ward
Fowler, M.A., FeUow of Lincoln College, Oxford.
John Wyclif, Last of the Schoolmen, and First of the English Reformers. By
Lewis Sergeant, author of " New Greece," etc.
Napoleon, Warrior and Ruler, and the Military Supremacy of Revolutionary
France. By W. O'Connor Morris.
Henry of Navarre, and the Huguenots of France. By P. F. Willert, M.A., Fel
low of Exeter College, Oxford.
Cicero, and the Fall ofthe Roman Republic. By J. L. Strachan-Davidson, M.A.,
Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.
Abraham Lincoln, and the Downfall of American Slavery. By Noah Brooks.
Prince Henry (of Portugal) the Navigator, and the Age of Discovery. By C. R.
Beazley, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.
Julian the Philosopher, and the Last Struggle of Paganism against Christianity.
By Alice Gardner.
Louis XIV., and the Zenith ofthe French Monarchy. By Arthur Hassall,
M.A,, Senior Student of Christ Church College, Oxford.
Charles XII., and the Collapse of the Swedish Empire, 1682-1719. By R. Nisbet
Bain.
Lorenzo de* Medici, and Florence in the 15th Century. By Edward Armstrong,
M.A., Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford.
Jeanne d'Arc. Her Life and Death. By Mrs. Oliphant.
Christopher Columbus. His Life and Voyages. By Washington Irving.
Robert the Bruce, and the Struggle for Scottish Independence. By Sir Herbert
Maxwell, M.P.
Hannibal, Soldier, Statesman, Patriot ; and the Crisis of the Struggle between
Carthage and Rome. By W. O'Connor Morris, Sometime Scholar of Oriel
College, Oxford,
Ulysses S. Grant, and the Period of National Preservation and Reconstruction,
1833-1885. By Lieut.-Col. William Conant Church.
Robert E. Lee, and the Southern Confederacy, 1807-1870. By Prof. Henry
Alexander White, of the Washington and Lee University.
The Cid Campeador, and the W^aning of the Crescent in the V/est. By H.
Butler Clarke, Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford.
Saladin, and the Fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. By Stanley Lane-Poole,
author of '' The Moors in Spain," etc.
Bismarck, and the New German Empire. How it Arose and What it Displaced.
By W. J. Headlam, M.A., Fellow of King's College.
To be followed by :
Moltke, and the Military Supremacy of Germany. By Spencer Wilkinson,
London University.
Judas Maccabaeus, the Confiict between Hellenism and Hebraism. By Israel
Abrahams, author of " The Jews of the Middle Ages."

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London.

The Story of the Nations.

Messrs. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS take pleasure in
announcing that they have in course of publication, in
co-operation with Mr. T. Fisher Unwin, of London, a
series of historical studies, intended to present in a graphic
manner the stories of the different nations that have
attained prominence in history.
In the story form the current of each national life is
distinctly indicated, and its picturesque and noteworthy
periods and episodes are presented for the reader in their
philosophical relation to each other as well as to universal
history. It is the plan of the writers of the different volumes to
enter into the real life of the peoples, and to bring them
before the reader as they actually lived, labored, and
struggled — as they studied and wrote, and as they amused
themselves. In carrying out this plan, the myths, with
which the history of all lands begins, will not be over
looked, though these will be carefully distinguished from
the actual history, so far as the labors of the accepted
historical authorities have resulted in definite conclusions.
The subjects of the different volumes have been planned
to cover connecting and, as far as possible, consecutive
epochs or periods, so that the set when completed will
present in a comprehensive narrative the chief events in
the great STORY OF THE Nations ; but it is, of course,
not always practicable to issue the several volumes in
their chronological order.

THE STORY OF THE NATIONS.

The "Stories" are printed in good readable type, and in
handsome izmo form. They are adequately illustrated and
furnished with maps and indexes. Price per vol., cloth, $1.50 ;
half morocco, gilt top, $1.75.

The following are now ready
GREECE. Prof. Jas. A. Harrison.
ROME. Arthur Oilman.
THE JEWS. Prof. James K. Hosmer.
CHALDEA. Z. A. Ragozin.
GERMANY. S. Baring-Gould.
NORWAY. Hjalmar H. Boyesen.
SPAIN. Rev. E. E. and Susan Hale.
HUNGARY. Prof. A. V4mb6ry.
CARTHAGE. Prof. Alfred J. Church.
THE SARACENS. Arthur Oilman.
THE MOORS IN SPAIN. Stanley
Lane-Poole.
THE NORMANS. Sarah Orne Jewett.
PERSIA. S. G. W. Benjamin.
ANCIENT EGYPT. Prof. Geo. Raw
linson.
ALEXANDER'S EMPIRE. Prof. J.
P. Mahaffy.
ASSYRIA. Z. A. Ragozin.
THE GOTHS. Henry Bradley.
IRELAND. Hon. Emily Lawless.
TURKEY. Stanley Lane-Poole.
MEDIA, BABYLON, AND PERSIA.
Z. A. Ragozin.
MEDI.ffiVAL FRANCE. Prof. Gus
tave Masson.
HOLLAND. Prof. J. Thorold Rogers.
MEXICO. Susan Hale.
PHCENICIA. Geo. Rawlinson.
THE HANSA TOWNS. Helen Zim-
mern.
EARLY BRITAIN. Prof. Alfred J.
Church.
THE BARBARY CORSAIRS. Stan
ley Lane-Pool.
RUSSIA. W. R. Morfill.
THE JEWS UNDER ROME. W. D.
Morrison.
SCOTLAND. John Mackintosh.
SWITZERLAND. R. Stead and Mrs.
A. Hug.
PORTUGAL. H. Morse-Stephens.
THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. C. W.
C. Oman.
SICILY. E. A. Freeman.
THE TUSCAN REPUBLICS. Bella
Duffy.
POLAND. W. R. Morfill.

PARTHIA. Geo. Rawlinson.
JAPAN. David Murray.
THE CHRISTIAN RECOVERY OF
SPAIN. H. E. Watts.
AUSTRALASIA. Greville Tregar-
then.
SOUTHERN AFRICA. Geo. M.
Theal.
VENICE. Alethea Wiel.
THE CRUSADES. T. S. Archer and
C. L. Kingsford.
VEDIC INDIA. Z. A. Ragozin.
BOHEMIA. C. E. Maurice.
CANADA. J. G. Bourinot.
THE BALKAN STATES. William
Miner.
BRITISH RULE IN INDIA. R. W^.
Frazer.
MODERN FRANCE. Andr6 Le Bon.
THE BUILDINGOF THE BRITISH
EMPIRE. Alfred T. Story. Two
vols.
THE FRANKS. Lewis Sergeant.
THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND IN
THE 19TH CENTURY. Justin
McCarthy, M.P. Two vols.
Other volumes in preparation are :
THE WEST INDIES. Amos K.
Fiske.
MODERN SPAIN. Major Martin A.
S. Hume.
AUSTRIA, THE HOME OF THE
HAPSBURG DYNASTY, FROM
I28a TO THE PRESENT DAY.
Sydney Whitman.
THE UNITED STATES, 1775-1897.
A. C. McLaughlin, Professor of
American History, University of
Michigan. In two vols.
BUDDHIST INDIA. Prof. T. W.
Rhys-Davids.
MOHAMMEDAN INDIA. Stanley
Lane-Poole.
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.
Helen A. Smith.
WALES AND CORNWALL. Owen
M. Edwards.
THE ITALIAN KINGDOM.

HEROES OF THE REFORMATION
I.— Martin Luther (1483-1546). The Hero of the Refor
mation. By Henry Eyster Jacobs, D.D., LL.D. (Thiel
College, 1877, and iSgi, respectively) ; Professor of Sys
tematic Theology, Evangelical Lutheran Seminary, Phila
delphia, Pa.; author of "The Lutheran Movement in
England during the Reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward
VL, and its Literary Monuments." With 73 illustrations,
12°, $1.50.
II,— Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560). The Protestant
Preceptor of Germany, By James William Richard,
D.D. (Pennsylvania College, 1886) ; Professor of Homi-
letics, Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettysburg, Pa.
With 35 illustrations. 12°, $1.50.
III.— Desiderius Erasmus (1467-1536). The Humanist in
the Service of the Reformation. By Ephraim Emer-
ton, Ph.D. (Leipzig University, 1B76) ; Professor of Eccle
siastical History, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. ;
author of " The Middle Ages (375-1300),"
The following are in preparation : —
IV.— Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556). The English Reform-
er. (Author will be announced later.)
v.— Huldreich Zwingli (1484-1531). The Reformer of
German Switzerland. By Samuel Macaulay Jackson,
LL.D., (Washington and Lee University, 1892) ; D.D.
(New York University, 1893) ; Professor of Church His
tory, New York University. Editor of the Series.
VI. — John Knox (1505-1572). The Hero of the Scotch
Reformation. (Author will be announced later.)
VII. — John Calvin (1509-1564). The Founder of Reformed
Protestantism. By Williston Walker, Ph.D. (Leipzig
University, 1888) ; D.D. (Adelbert College, 1894, Amherst
College, 1895) ; Professor of Germanic and Western Church
History, Theological Seminary, Hartford, Conn. ; author
of " The Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism."
VIII. — Theodore Beza (1519-1605). The Counsellor of the
French Reformation. By Henry Martyn Baird, Ph.D.
(College of New Jersey, 1867) ; D.D. (Rutgers College,
1877) ; LL.D. (College of New Jersey, 1882) ; L.H.D.
(Princeton University, l8g6) ; Professor of the Greek
Language and Literature, New York University; author
of " The Huguenots," 5 vols.

G. ?, PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London

THE SCIENCE SERIES

(Volumes ready, in press, and in preparation.)
The Study of Man. By Professor A. C. Haddon, M.A., D.Sc, Royal
College of Science, Dublin. Illustrated. 8°, $2.00
The Ground^work of Science. A Study of Epistemology. By St.
George Mivart, F.R.S. 8°, $1.75
Rivers of North America. A Reading Lesson for Students of Geography
and Geology. By Israel C. Russell, LL.D., Professor of Geology
in the University of Michigan. Illustrated.
Earth Sculpture. By Professor James Geikie, F.R.S., University of
Edinburgh. Illustrated.
The Stars. By Professor Simon Newcomb, U.S.N., Nautical Almanac
Office, and Johns Hopkins University.
Meteors and Comets. By Professor C. A. Young, Princeton University.
The Measurement of the Earth. By Professor T. C. Mendenhall,
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, formerly Superintendent of the U. S.
Coast and Geodetic Survey.
Volcanoes. By T. G. Bonney, F.R.S., University College, London.
Earthquakes. By Major C. E. Dutton, U.S.A.
Physiography ; The Forms of the Land. By Professor W. M. Davis,
Harvard University.
The History of Science. By C. S. Peirce.
General Ethnography. By Professor Daniel G. Brinton, University
of Pennsylvania.
Recent Theories of Evolution. By J. Mark Baldwin, Princeton
University.
Whales. By F. E. Beddard, F.R.S. , Zoological Society, London.
The Reproduction of Living Beings. By Professor Marcus Har tog.
Queen's College, Cork.
Man and the Higher Apes. By Dr. A. Keith, F.R.C.S.
Heredity. By J. Arthur Thompson, School of Medicine, Edinburgh.
Life Areas of North America: A Study in the Distribution of
Animals and Plants. By Dr. C. Hart Merriam, Chief of the Bio
logical Survey, U. S. Department of Agriculture.
Age, Growth, Sex, and Death. By Professor Charles S. Minot,
Harvard Medical School.
Bacteria. Dr. J. H. Gladstone.
History of Botany. Professor A. H. Green.
Planetary Motion. G. W. Hill.
Infection and Immunity. Geo. M. Sternberg, Surgeon-General U.S.A.

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York & London

03747 4815