\ , ) > > > > > d > J > D > > > > > > > > > > > CHAPTER 48 Toryism: Reactionary and Enlightened morse 1815-1827 ¥ Wear aynscs kd ovct tency yours of war had lon Engi lives? IF we were to answer this question from the evidess 1¢ novels of Jane Austen, which written at this time, then we should conclude that the effects were hardly noticeable. The Napoleonic struggle is scarcely ever mentioned in her pages and the characters pursue their interesting lives without any jaterrup- tion from the great events that are taking place elsewhers. The novels probably reflect the truth as accurately as they des: hbuman nature. The pleasant, cultured life of the aristocracy was rot upsct by the war, except that they coulé no longec travel abroad. Heavy taxation and rising prices at home did nce impair their comfortable standards of living. The war came no nearer hhome than it threstened to in the days when Napotcon contea- plated the invasion of England. ‘The strain of the long conflict had its effect however, both on English minds, in the form of revolutionary idess and Tory distaste for taetm, and on Engl Ways of Me, Jame Austen's Ts n0t, the complete: picture of English society, even in the countryside. For during the war the enclosure of the fields and commons was virtually completed and numbers of labourers and small-holdérs were left without land, They depended’on the farmers’ slender ‘wages, made up by payments from the Poor Law fund, to meet the rising cost of living and feed their families. For people like these |the war years meant a violent change from old ways and a good gal of misery, even though the war itself was noc directly responsible for it. Jane Austen does not mention them, Nor does sbe mention Manchester. In the [norh_of England] where the ‘England’s population was now to be found, the war conan cnige 454 i petal ot / 1815-1827 455 and progress. The progress was hindered by the Continental System, which deprived the textile industry of its markets, and interrupted by the war with the United States, which deprived Lancashire of cotton. But it had reached a speed by now at|which it could not be halted. The war meant more steam engines, more ‘blast furnaces and more power looms; more factories and mills. It also meant for the people who lived in the new towns and worked in the mills and factori ‘Ive, fourteen or sixteen hours work a day, for wages whcheege hind the rising cost of bred and ‘meat. The town labourers” new houses had been built in alhurry, back to back, without proper ventilation or drainage and sou without floors or windows. The biggest windows were in designed to Jet in every hour of daylight for the increas’ which the machines and their masters demanded. Not everyone lived and worked in these harsh con ‘The unskilled labourer was the real victim, the weaver w| given up the losing battle with the power loom for examy Ue orphan boy or gil, to take another. There was plenty in England for young hands to do, and children were Urought from orphanages allover the country to doi, Often too he young ‘pastas wale clon of doen entlaccline be they could skip among the machin yarn or clean the movin sat for twelve hours or more a day in darkness, opening ant ig doors. But that was work for small children. Bigger b girls could haul trucks of coal by ropes slung around / their foreheads. Small children, on the other hand, w Dest suited to work as chimney sweeps, crawling among chimney Gah private bouses. They were les ikely to get sce] ice again these are the worst examples of social conditions. But even if the children’s jobs were more congenial than the ones described and their masters well-meaning and considerate pt it ‘was impossible to keep them at work for over twelve hours a day without stern discipline. In many occupations, we may be tertain, ye children harshly treated and poorly fed, é ed injury, disease. The story of their ‘ment casts a dark ard shameful shadow across the Napoleonic war gid the years afte which are 50 remembered as ‘Regency Englan fe oie ne SP Bi456 TORYISM: REACTIONARY AND ENLIGHTENED extravagant fishions; or as the romantic years, when Constable” and Turner were painting and Wordsworth, Keats and Shelley” wrote poetry of beauty, love and childhood. In one of her novels,’ Emma, Jane Austen wrote that ‘One half of the world cannot “understand the pleasures of the other’. With fuller knowledge of the time, we may add that one half did not know about the other's hardships either, : So the sailors from ‘Trafalgar, and after them the soldiers fron. ‘There were no more government contracts for guns and uniforms, and the war-torn European countries who had been customers bf England in the past could not afford to bring back their custom yet! ‘The result of this falling-off in the demand for English goods was Waterloo, came home to a country where prosperity and misery / wets oe Wed ide oy te: They found obs bend were Be ee eal are 4 A of he won ar scruck-a telling blow at the growing Raglish Tndusties a fall in war-time prices, but the slump caused lower wages and = ‘Gnemployment as well Where jobs were available the demobilized Soldiess_had to compete for them with impoverished weavers and wit immigrants who came flooding into England from a county where there was neither land enough nor industry to wi ipport the growing population. The Irish were willing to live spree and work for te lowest wages, and thelr wilingnes Saget bee Sec pes of Mallon oe, .w however forbade any combined atempis on the par of working men ise their wages, As Tong ago a2 1795, Pits goverment had forbidden such ‘combinations’. So to poverty was added helpless- ness to change it for the better. : ‘Soon hunger was added as well. The government introduced a Jaw to prohibit the import of foreign com until the price in Engdand had seached he level of eighty slings 2 quarter: iat is to say, about a shilling a Toaf, or the total of some country labourers’ weekly wage, without the charity which the Poor Law cated le Cece Cartoon devtgord ns Geeseet enitaga| Pale ‘den fall in prices when imports of foreign wheat were resumed after the war, though as it turned out it did not do that efficiently. “Taken together with new taxes on tea, sugar, beer, tobacco and soap which were levied to replace'the income tax which was aboli shed, it forced the cost of living to a height where men without 1815-1827 487 | steady wages or employment were threatened with starvation soa deprived of even the smaller comforts of existence. ‘These details of England’s condition when the war ended make expense of their poo! who was(now Regent)in his sick father’s place, was a man both selfish and callous, consuming his life in pleasure and a sordid and pubic quarrel with hs wile: The member of te Tor gesee ment [ed by Lord Liverpool, were more constientious men scent, ing to their lights; but the fact was chat they faced economic difficulties and social problems beyond their experience or under standing, and their only solution was to protect the propertied lasses of society, whose needs and demands at Jeast they under- Stood. For this reason they introduced the Corn Law, abolished € ‘the income tax and gave permission to complete enclosures; but so but far as industry, Tow wages and ‘unemployment were concerned, "~ they had no answer, So they took the advice of writers of the time (= ‘on economic matters, and left well alone. The economists assured them that prices and wages were decided by inexorable laws of supply and demand whose operation no government could affect, ‘They added the gloomy but comforting assurance that it was part of nature’s law to keep the poor on the edge of starvation and, if their numbers became too great for their wages to support them, to carry off the surplus by hunger or disease. ‘There were some men in Parliament however who pressed the government to attack the social problems of the time. In general they received little support, but sometimes a determined man achieved results. In 1819, for example, after being rejected once in 3815 by the House of Lords, a bill was forced through Parliament ‘0 limit the hours of children in the mills and forbid their labour altogether, under the age of nine. This bill was largely the work of rall-cwacn themiches The problem now however was to enforce [out it. The government shrank from compulsion and left the sk fo Jocal ‘magistrates. ‘These country gentlemiéi did’ not_press the ‘matter, and the Taw was easily evaded. The majority of manufac turers maintained that child labour and long hours were essential to the recovery of the cotton industry and the magistrates, like the government, treated their views with uneasy respect. They j the ruling classes seem a selfish and callous caste, intent on pro. asceHor tecting their own income and standards of living even at the He countrymen. The Prince of Wales, indeed, *2™> PPP GIGI IE Vitel Vee Vel EEUU UUULUY wvSS =e On ee ee 458 TORYISM: REACTIONARY AND ENLIGHTENED realized that the manufacturers were intelligent and determined ‘men, whose opposition to the government would be dangerous if once aroused. ; “The manufacturers were on the same side as the magistrates and, the government however whea it came to dealing wih the Tessed orders. of society and their threats to public peace. They were: scared of crime, and even more of revolution. ‘There was plenty of awlessness in post-war England, for poverty and hunger breed. Grime as well a5 other diseases. Some men went no farther thant poaching and petty theft, but others staged violent strikes in contravention of the Combination Laws. During the war, in 1811: fand 1812, weavers in Nottinghamshire orgenized in groups under: ‘a mysterious leader, Ned Lud, had taken to smashing che w ing machines which they blamed for putting down their wages.” In the post-war years therc we more_machine-breaking. ‘There, were political demonscrations too, aimed at forcing the governs ment into action over social problems, of even at reforming: Parliament itself; and there were more sinister agitators still who: aimed at provoking rebellion. Where crime was concerned the overnment met the challenge to law and order by increasing the penalties for it uauil ever two hundred offences mere punishao! by death Strikers and machine-breakers were arrested and “im- ‘prisoned, or transported to the penal colonies in Australia, and so ‘were poachers and other small offenders. To suppress political: agitators the government, and principally Lord Sidmouth, the: Home Secretary, adopted the methods which Pitt bad used, ceboting newsvanere-and Ties speech and suspending Habeas ‘Corpus once again, ‘Few among the agitators were revolutionaries, however wuality’and ‘cemocracy’ meant litle to them: compared with the need for work and food. The Manchester weavers, for instance, ‘who set out to march to London and tell the Prince Regent about, their hardships, took with them only blankets to sleep in, but they: were arrested and some of them were imprisoned without trial. ‘Some of the agitators, on the other hand, had violence in mind Jeremiah Brandreth and the ‘Derbyshire Rebels” planned to seize Nottingham Castle. Other demonstrators had vague political aims, like those of the Spa Fields rioters in London, who wore ‘caps of liberty’ like those seen in France in the revolutionary years: Seren | 1815-1827 459 ‘Whatever their intentions Lord Sidmouth and the magistrates regarded all the demonstrators as would-be revolutionaries,| They ‘used spies to ascertain their movements and provoke them tojbreak, the law, and soldiers to disperse their meetings and marchts and, arrest their leaders. ‘The penalties proposed for agitators were so harsh that many juries refused to convict the wretched prisoners who came before them. | ‘The grim story of discontent, misunderstanding and oppression which is the history of these post-war years reaches its climax{on an ‘August day in 1519, when a crowd of over sixty thousand men, svomen and children assembled in Sz P’sr:r's Fields at Manchester to hear a well-known orator, Hiensy Hive, speak about the nded for| a change in the policy of the government, and particularly thf need| for reform of Parliament to give representation to the mahufac- turing north. From the windows ef an inn near by thé local ‘magistrates watched anxiousiy as the great concourse secret an orderly and obviously well-organized manner. They tooklalarm at the numbers and the evidence of organization and, fearing they they Knew not what sort of rising, ordered cavalrymen to arrdst the speaker and break up the meciing. The mounted soldiers moved jnto the crowd but they were brought to a balt and separated ‘each other by the press of people. They drew their’ Sabres about them. Reinforcements charged to join them and a panic ensued as the crowd scattered to: escape them. Six were killed and four hundred injured a$ the meeting bro disorder. This victory of soldiers over unarmed people became known, ironically, as ‘Peterloo’. Tr shocked many people in England, ‘squires, manufacturers, reformers and Tories alike, The gbvern- ‘ment however congratulated che magistrates in the Prince Regent's name on ‘their prompt, decisive and efficient measures fpr the vation of the public tranquillity’. They passed new laws to suppress public meetings and <€ditio 5 “This final act of fear and callousness marked the lowest point in ‘the régime of oppression however. Next year there was a wild plot tomurder the whole cabinet as it sat at dinner. The plot failed and the cabinet lived, but better times began. Hunger and unesnploy- ‘ment, the causes of discontent, became less urgent as English ade ful {INARA up in Fre RLOY460 TORYISM: REACTIONARY AND ENLIGHTENED ‘began to recover its prosperity. The new markets in South America| Began to pay dividends, and old ones in Europe were ‘regained. Private houses and public buildings began to go up in great num bers at home. There were more jobs, better wages; and ‘peace, cheerfulness and industry’ returned to the manufacturing areas. Against this happier background Lord Liverpool and his cabinet took up more constructive and less terrifying policies. The more sensible and more humanitarian characteristics of Englishmen began to show through the mask of tyranny which England’s rulers had worn throughout the post-war years. ‘The nature of the government began to change in several ways + during the 1820's. For one thing the governors themselves were 0's poh different men. In 1820 the Prince Regent succeeded his father as King George IV; but this was not really an important change. George proved no more or less the ruler of his country in the next ten years than he had in the last ten, His quarrel with Caroline, hhis wife, had now turned into a scandalous lawsuit and English people, after first examining the evidence with some interest, became bored with both their new monarch and_his queen. ‘The really important changes were among ‘tani Lord Sidmouth was replaced as Home Secretary by Robert Peel, the son of a Lancashire mill-owner. Another young man, George ‘Canning, took the place of Lord Castlereagh, the Foreign Secretary who had represented England at the second Congress of Vienna, and whose name had become linked with the régime of oppressior’ oth abroad and at home. ‘These new brooms began to perform their proverbial task, Peel's achievement was to abolish the death sentence for over a| ‘hundred crimes and to create the Metropolitan Police, a force of| Alema venbion [three thousand constables; armed with tave’) who soon made their impression on the criminals of Londai. “The provincial cities| followed London’s example and created police forces of their own. findeed they had to do so in order to deal with the exodus of| [criminals to the provinces which was the result of the ‘Bobbies’” efficiency in the capital, And so a new. body of officers was found to keep the peace in England, and -sSbre-rattlingsavalrymen were required less often to charge their own countrymen. mings Canning pursued a new foreign policy, which Castlereagh had ey be already begun in part. He drew away from the rulers of Europe and zie ens, 1815-1827 4 their attempts to suppress the ambitions of their subjécts to rule themselves, and used the English fleet and English diplomatic {nfuence tosuppore the Spanish colonies n South Americ oes + evolt against the parent country, and to protect Portugal against the threat of Spanish invasion, Not only did this policy gain Eng- land a reputation as the friend of liberty and the protector of the Lights of small nations, but it was good for trade as well. The new eS ‘of South Amezica were as grateful for English exports they were for English diplomatic help. In eastern Europe, Canzing sent a fleet to the help of the Greeks, ‘who were in rebellion against their Turkish overlords. There was J. “nothing particulary t be gained Trom this move, but it was forced upon the Foreign Secretary by English publicopinion, which dew its knowledge of Greek affairs from the study of Homer, and con. cluded that the rebels must be heroes in the mould of Ulysses and Achilles. ‘Volunteers like the poet, Lord Byron, went to fight in , Greece, and Canning had to give in to the mood of the moment, and add government support. His other motive was to prevent Russia, who had also intervened, from getting all the credit for the subject peoples. were Bromedk So the ‘Enlightened Tories’, as historians have come to call them, began to show that er ek could move withthe tees As yet they had not tackled social questions however. They had sot touched the worst conditions in the new towns, or set the children in the factories free. Nor had they faced the problem of poverty in the countryside, which was costing the natiog, £7 million a year in Poor relief. Their knowledge of these proble:fs was still imperfect, Bet eee interfere They sue neo science of individuals to tackle the problems, and relied on in charity to do the work which they were not ready to in, ‘There were religious and conscientious people who were ready to ae ection; Wome Tike Elizabeth Fry, the Quaker, wis teed ‘herself to work among prisoners, and men like young Robert Ashley, later to become Earl of Shaftesbury, who had already * bad conablone im ous Youn, chifchin im Poetores , powtrby fn th counthnysicle eds a hher influence towards the Mediterranean, \CDistrust of Russia wagto be as mar re of British forei policy in the nirfeteenth century-as" Su the aspirations of ~ PIOIGEY Pee bb Yel bY VU Ue UUQevermmenfenclosures and the high price of bread had 462 TORYISM: REACTIONARY AND ENLIGHTENED resolved to spend his life in getting the children out of the factories: There were other humanitarians like Robert Owen, the mill aaencr in Lanark, who right back in the war years had built good, JRouses and schools for his workpeople and paid them good wages} for reasonable hours. There were also determined men like Francis Place, a London tailor, who forced through Parliament by his skill: and persistence the repeal ofthe Combination Laws, ‘Conscience and resolution were at work in England in the: 18is's and by the end of the decade Home Secretary Peel had. Sagan to make inquiries into social corditions. But che Tory: PParliamient had yet to make a positive effort to isoprene cone ‘ision of England, and some of the would-be reformers were be~. ‘impatient at the delay, Among these critics of the govern=: cnittercons |miERt Was [Widiars Codbete) a farmer and journalist who toure England at the end of the 1820's and described the poverty which caused, Cobbert had reached the conclusion that there would be no im:provement until Parliament itself had been reformed. He blamed the aristocracy for causing the distress by selfish legislation, and demanded a change; fn the character of the government. ‘There is,’ wrote Cobbett “ial the men calling themselves English country gentlemen something. superlatively base. They are, I sincerely believe, the most cruel the’ nest unfeeling, the most brutally insolent. I know; I can proves ‘Tan safely take my oath that they are the most base of all creatures, that God ever suffered to take human shape.’ Evidently, for all the tribulations of the post-war years, free speech was not yet dead in England. sae | his view that England’s form of goverament should be chang CHAPTER 49 The Reform of Parliament 1827-1832 | ‘THE REFORM of Parliament now became the great issue of English politics. Not everyone shared Cobbett’s distaste for the aristdcracy for his taste for strong language; but more and more people shared dA philosopher (jez=my-Beat=an) had put the argument in a different way some years before. He represeated human life(as a suim,)in which pleasures were the plus qualities, and pains the mintiges. If the sum had a positive answer, chen aman was happy; if a negative, then he was miserable, The governmert’s duty, Bentham|went a to'myoes arto rene tis arse SST ounrof Ma ness for the greatest possible utimberof people, Clearly, the snent was So doing iatat th beginning ofthe nineteenth coqcury. "The power of the aristocracy had outlasted their usefulness {o the country. It was time that their undisputed authority was brought to an end, and a more useful form of government put in its pl Bentham's arguments and Cobbett’s complaints were echofd by [manufaccurers] These men were now prosperous and influential in oe itary a cony ssid shat bos led glee oa tect 0 part in the history of the last fifty years as the aristocracy had lone. Birmingham)and/Manchesterwere ortant in English fife as London, and far more important than Yet that old Jbutmound stil sent its representatives to che Hause of Commons, and so did many other rotten boroughs, while Manchestei SS were oe ‘The Eng electoral still made it a principl i¢ politician and historian said, ‘to invest a hundred drunken fot-wallopers)in one place, or the owner of a ruined(hove))in another, with powers which are withheld from cities renowned to the farthest ends ae | 463