Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century Part 7

would be surprised to know that these sobriquets const.i.tute a popular tribute to the name of Robert Peel, the creator of the model force.

These legal and administrative reforms, beneficent as they were, were not great party questions like the two others which the Wellington government had to face, and gained so little credit in the facing. The Whigs, under John Russell, urged the demand for the relief of Protestant dissenters from their political disabilities by the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. Peel argued against the change, but it was carried, nevertheless, and the Tories accepted the measure with the best grace they could summon. Their resistance to Catholic emanc.i.p.ation cost them more dearly. O'Connell, master of all the arts of agitation, fanned the excitement in Ireland into flame. His Catholic a.s.sociation made itself heard, and felt, and feared. In June, 1828, a member of the government standing for election for County Clare was soundly defeated by O'Connell himself, a man whom the anti- Catholic laws disqualified from sitting in Parliament. The government knew not which way to turn, and O'Connell, perceiving his advantage, lashed his followers to the verge of an insurrection. This was the question on which George III. had broken with William Pitt a generation before, and now it was only by the most vehement arguments, and even by threats of resignation, that the ministers could obtain his son's consent to the inevitable. In a speech of four hours' duration Peel explained the measures to the House of Commons, confessing that the necessity under which he acted "was the severest blow it had ever been his lot to experience." The speech was an admission of defeat, and an elaboration of the measures by which the government, in the hour of concession, proposed to limit the "dangerous power of the Roman Catholics." The bill became a law, and the Irish Catholic members began to sit in Parliament--with some of the disturbing consequences which no one foresaw better than Peel himself.

The Wellington ministry barely survived the strain of carrying Catholic emanc.i.p.ation. The year 1830 found Sir Robert Peel--the elder baronet having died--the leader of the opposition. In this character he led his party against the Reform Bills of 1831-32.

Their weak points were mercilessly laid bare, and the excellences and past glories of the existing system were effectively displayed. But nothing at that day could stop the progress of reform, as the King and peers soon learned.

The defeat of the Tories in the first general election under the Reform Act was overwhelming. They mustered less than one-fourth of the House of Commons. It seemed to most cool political observers that the Whigs who now a.s.sumed office could not be displaced for a decade at least. The spirit of change was alive in all the nations of western Europe, and in England there seemed to be small need of a political party whose steady resistance to innovation was relieved only by the exceptions in which the party had espoused reform in extremity to save its own existence.

Wellington and the rigid Tories of his stripe saw no hope for their party, and little enough for England in the way along which she was plunging. Peel, however, was supremely suited to the times. Bound to the party of Church and Crown by the traditions of his father, he nevertheless was endowed with a mind which was not quite dominated by prejudice. The study of facts, the examination of conflicting claims, the weighing of argument, had their full effect upon him, and he had the courage of his convictions. At this juncture, when so much was s.h.i.+fting which had anch.o.r.ed England to the past, Sir Robert Peel, with his clear-eyed vision, his trained judgment, his honesty, and his moderation, formed a rallying point for those Tories who had no other leader, and attracted to him moderate and enlightened men of whatever party who feared the unbalanced radicalism of the day, and who were bent on preserving or conserving the best elements which remained of the ancient Const.i.tution of England.

From such accretions grew up a party which gradually dropped the name of Tory and adopted that of Conservative. One of Peel's biographers, writing of this period as Peel's opportunity, says: "Since Conservatism, like Liberalism, is an imperishable instinct in human nature, every society must contain a Conservative party, and such a party speedily develops, even amid the wildest storm of revolution. The Reform Act of 1832 had made room for a Conservative party suited to the age. The Tories had been weak because their strength was confined to the landed interest.

Possessed by a panic-dread of change, bred by the events of the French Revolution, they had refused to admit any new interests to a share of power. In their despite the Reform Act had transferred the control of politics from the aristocracy to the middle cla.s.s.

But the English middle cla.s.s was naturally Conservative. It was orderly, it was rich, it was sensitive to social influence, it was devout and serious in a stiff, unbending way. Some reforms certainly it required; an effective administration for the great towns where it lived and traded; the amendment of a poor law which shocked all its economic maxims; the abolition of negro slavery which revolted its religion; the abolition of laws which, pressing hardly upon non-conformists, revolted its sense of justice. It had not yet declared for free trade, although it might be expected to do so. The ameliorations which the middle cla.s.s at this time desired, Peel was ready to approve, and these ameliorations once granted, the middle cla.s.s would tend to be Conservative. But theirs would not be the conservatism of squires and rectors. They would incline to a conservatism of their own, and they would want a leader of their own to formulate it and to organize them. They would want a statesman who was bone of their bone, and flesh of their flesh; a good man of business, cautious, but open to practical suggestions, one who would satisfy their ideal of industry and economy; one who would always be grave and decorous, never puzzle them with epigrams or alarm them with rhetoric; in short, such a great man as they could conceive. Such Sir Robert Peel was. There never breathed a politician more truly congenial to them. He represented their virtues and their failings; he shared their talents and their prejudices; he was always growing in their confidence; and when he died lamented by all his fellow-citizens, he was most deeply lamented by them."

With such tact and such mastery of the political situation did Peel conduct himself in the years of opposition--now mildly criticising the government's policy, now joining forces with it, and now tearing its policies to pieces--that he constantly grew in the national esteem, and began to be looked upon as the inevitable successor of the Whigs. His turn came sooner than any one expected, in December, 1834. It was too soon, in fact, for the first Peel ministry could maintain itself but a few months, failing to secure a majority of Parliament. Yet in this brief lease of power Peel gave evidence of his fitness to govern. He undertook the reform of the ecclesiastical courts, gratified the Dissenters by proposing to remove the regulations which required all marriages to be celebrated according to the rites of the Established Church. He even addressed himself to the delicate question of settling the temporalities of the Established Church in Ireland, where the collection of church t.i.thes was accompanied with much disorder and distress, arising from the fact that the vast majority of the t.i.the-payers were hostile to the Protestant bishops and clergy whom they were taxed to support. The opposition, led by John Russell, took advantage of the prejudices surrounding this subject and forced a succession of adverse votes, in consequence of which the Peel ministry abandoned office in April, 1835, after one hundred days of power--a period sometimes considered the most brilliant in Peel's whole career.

For six years Sir Robert Peel remained in opposition, conducting himself so sagaciously as to gather about him all disaffected elements of the disintegrating majority. Peel saw to it that whatever popular measures of reform were carried by the Melbourne ministry should be credited largely to Conservative support.

Wellington still survived as a great national figure, but his political influence was gone, and there was no one in the Whig or Liberal camp who could dispute Peel's position as the leading public man of England. Of his course at this time he said himself (1838): "My object is that by steadily attending to our duty, by censuring the government on all occasions when they deserve it, enforcing our principles by aiding them to carry those measures which we think right, even though by so doing we may be rescuing the government, we may establish new claims upon the approbation of the country."

The majority of the House of Commons was made up of incongruous elements, whose interests were at variance on many questions.

Peel actually came to the rescue of the ministers not once, but so many times as to give bitterness to the taunt hurled at them by a Radical orator: "Why! the right honorable member for Tamworth (Peel) governs England. The honorable and learned member for Dublin (O'Connell) governs England. The Whigs govern nothing but Downing Street. The right honorable member for Tamworth is contented with power without place or patronage, and the Whigs are contented with place and patronage without power!"

Hard times came on and the nation faced an annual deficit.

Distress was widespread among the people, nouris.h.i.+ng the Chartist agitation on the one hand, and giving point to the arguments of the Anti-Corn Law orators on the other. There was pressing need for a wise and energetic Prime Minister, and hope of such qualities in Lord Melbourne had long since failed. The general elections of 1841 showed a clear majority for the Conservatives, and in August Sir Robert Peel came back to power, backed by a consolidated party and trusted by the nation.

The most pressing problems were financial. Peel proposed a modification of the Corn Law duties, at the same time defending the system of protection, not in the interests of the agriculturist cla.s.s, but to make England independent of foreign countries for its food supplies. His proposals were enacted into law. His first budget attempted to turn the customary deficit into a surplus by means of an income tax of seven pence in the pound on incomes of one hundred and fifty pounds and upward. His revision of the tariff on imports introduced important changes looking toward increased freedom of trade, especially in the raw materials of manufacture. The times improved; revenue exceeded expenditure; consols were quoted at only a fraction below par, and two hundred and fifty million pounds of the national debt was converted from three and one-half per cent into a loan paying three and one-fourth per cent for ten years and three per cent thereafter. By another far-reaching measure--the Bank Charter Act--Peel placed salutary restrictions upon the issue of paper money, and increased his reputation as a master of financial legislation.

From year to year, as the surplus revenue increased, the government employed it to cut down the duties upon imports. From wool, cotton, and gla.s.s, and many minor items they were entirely removed, and there were reductions throughout the schedules. The grants in aid of education were trebled in the face of bitter protest from his own party. Education in Ireland was aided by grants to the Catholic College at Maynooth and by the establishment of other "Queen's colleges" in affiliation with the university at Dublin.

In one way and another Ireland played a great part in the history of this administration. In 1843 the agitation of O'Connell, for the repeal of the union of Ireland with England, culminated in immense and angry meetings which threatened the public peace. The government then took the matter in hand, "proclaimed" the gatherings and arrested O'Connell. It was the failure of the potato crop of 1845, and the consequent Irish famine which forced Peel to abandon the last stronghold of protection and recommend the total and absolute repeal forever of all duties on all articles of subsistence. The history of the repeal of the Corn Laws, in 1846, has already been given. On the day on which the bill pa.s.sed to its third reading in the House of Lords, all the enemies of the government, led by Tory protectionists who considered themselves betrayed by their own Prime Minister combined to overthrow him. On a bill for the protection of life in Ireland Peel was defeated by seventy-three votes. Four days later, on relinquis.h.i.+ng his place at the head of the government he p.r.o.nounced his memorable valedictory. He should leave a name, he said, severely censured by many who deeply regretted the severance of party ties, censured also by all sincere protectionists. "I shall leave a name execrated by every monopolist who, from less honorable motives, clamors for protection because it conduces to his own individual benefit. But it may be that I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of good will in the abodes of those whose lot it is to labor and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, when they shall recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened by a sense of injustice."

Peel never returned to office. His conversion to free trade had split his party, and the Whigs, under John Russell, succeeded to the direction of affairs. He remained in the House of Commons, and with such personal following as yet remained to him, supported the administration. The protectionists were rallied and led by George Bentinck and Benjamin Disraeli, whose star waxed as Peel's began to wane. Death put a sudden end to his activity. He was thrown from his horse while riding up Const.i.tution Hill in London, and died on the second of July, 1850. In accordance with his expressed wish, his family declined the honors of a public funeral, and he was buried without ostentation in the family tomb at Drayton Ba.s.sett. His statue, voted by the House of Commons, was placed in Westminster Abbey.

The Duke of Wellington, in his simple way, said of his late a.s.sociate: "I never knew a man in whose truth and justice I had a more lively confidence, or in whom I saw a more invariable desire to promote the public service. In the whole course of my communication with him I never knew an instance in which he did not show the strongest attachment to truth; and I never saw in the whole course of my life the smallest reason for suspecting that he stated anything which he did not firmly believe to be the fact." Remarkable testimony this, concerning a great politician.

From Disraeli, who would perhaps be less drawn to this qualification of a statesman, comes this word of praise, with many of detraction: "Nature had combined in Sir Robert Peel many admirable parts. In him a physical frame incapable of fatigue was united with an understanding equally vigorous and flexible. He was gifted with the faculty of method in the highest degree, and with great powers of application, which were sustained by a prodigious memory, while he could communicate his acquisitions with clear and fluent elocution. Such a man under any circ.u.mstances and in any sphere of life would probably have become remarkable. Ordained from his youth to be busied with the affairs of a great empire, such a man, after long years of observation, practice, and perpetual discipline, would have become what Sir Robert Peel was in the latter portion of his life--a transcendent administrator of public business and a matchless master of debate in a popular a.s.sembly."

The masterly debater never rose to heights of eloquence. His thorough and practical mind enabled him to study, sift, and give form and substance to the broad political and economic conceptions of more idealistic men. Inheriting the narrow political creed of his father, he can scarcely be blamed if his mind came slowly to advanced positions. Rather shall he not be commended who, with such prepossessions and prejudices, and with such party co-workers, keeps his mind open to conviction? "The resumption of cash payments, the amendment of the criminal law, the inst.i.tution of the Irish constabulary and the London police, Catholic emanc.i.p.ation and the emanc.i.p.ation of trade, and a host of reforms only less beneficial than these make up a record of useful labor which has seldom been surpa.s.sed."

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. What unusual preparation had Peel for his public career?

2. Upon what political question did he and his father separate?

3. Describe his relations to Ireland as Chief Secretary.

4. What services did he render to criminal law?

5. What police reform is due to him?

6. What two famous party questions did he resist, but finally of necessity accept?

7. Why was Peel especially fitted to lead the new Conservative party, formed after 1832?

8. What fitness to govern did Peel show in his first ministry?

9. How did he serve his country as a member of the opposition?

10. How did he meet the financial needs of England in his second ministry?

11. How did his enemies finally overthrow him?

12. Why is Peel's life, in view of his inheritance, especially worthy of honor?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SIR ROBERT PEEL. J. R. Thursfield.

SIR ROBERT PEEL. Justin McCarthy.

BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. Walter Bagehot.

VIII

SHAFTESBURY AND PHILANTHROPY

[ANTONY ASHLEY COOPER, Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, born April 28, 1801; died October 1, 1885; educated at Harrow and Christ Church, Oxford (first-cla.s.s in cla.s.sics, 1822); Member of Parliament 1826; bore a leading hand in legislation for improving condition of laboring cla.s.ses; President of Ragged School Union, etc.; succeeded to the earldom on the death of his father, in 1851.]

The industrial expansion of England in the nineteenth century was not a blessing unalloyed. It built great cities and created enormous wealth, and gave employment at advanced wages to a vastly increased population. But it brought with it changes in the social condition of the laboring cla.s.ses which were productive of severe hards.h.i.+p.

The England of the olden time had been an agricultural country whose laborers, though poorly paid, either worked under mild conditions in the fields, or followed their trades in their cottages and workshops. The introduction of the steam engine brought with it a demand for fuel which forced thousands of men, women, and children to delve in the mines, and the use of machines and the adoption of the factory system shut up other thousands of both s.e.xes, and all ages, to labor for excessive hours in crowded cities under unsanitary conditions. At the present time the system of legislation regarding the employment of women and minors, and the regulation of unsanitary conditions of labor is so thorough that it is difficult to conceive that it has all been of recent growth. When the enemies of the abuses in mine and factory first raised their voices in the British Parliament, they were even told that such things were not proper subjects of legislation. In the opening years of the century the elder Robert Peel had attacked one of the foulest of industrial abuses--the "apprentice system." Under this system the pauper children of London and the south of England were rented out to the tender mercies of the avaricious cotton manufacturers of the north. From the age of seven they were compelled to work in the mills at long hours, under unhealthful conditions, and without opportunity of education or proper recreation. When not at work they were huddled in comfortless barracks little better than slave-pens. No wonder they grew up to be hopeless and brutalized, if they were so unfortunate as to survive the arduous period of their industrial bondage--for it was no less than that. Peel's act of 1802, and other remedial legislation which supplemented it, did away with the worst features of this white slavery, but the general condition of the women and children in the English factories and mines continued to be such as to move deeply the sympathies of the humane.

In the year 1833 the little group of humanitarian leaders who had succeeded in turning the attention of the nation to the disgraceful condition of child labor, were striving to get a hearing in the House of Commons for their "short time" proposal-- a law framed by Michael Thomas Sadler, for the purpose of limiting the hours of child labor in textile factories to ten hours a day. Sadler had lost his seat in Parliament, and a new spokesman was needed for the cause. The committee ventured to ask Lord Ashley to take charge of the bill, and his acceptance enlisted in the humanitarian movement a young man who was destined to be its champion for half a century.

Antony Ashley Cooper, then sitting in the House of Commons under the name of Lord Ashley, and after 1851 known to the world as the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, was one of the most remarkable Englishmen of the century. This new-found champion of the working-cla.s.ses was born in London, April 28, 1801. His father was the sixth Earl of Shaftesbury, and his mother was a daughter of the third Earl of Marlborough. The father's preoccupation in public life and his mother's social duties left the early home training of the lad to a pious domestic, an earnest Christian, whose precepts and example did more than anything else to give bent to his life. In later years the Earl freely owned his mother's housekeeper to be the best friend he had ever had. He did little to distinguish himself as a schoolboy at Harrow, but Oxford appealed to him, and he applied himself to cla.s.sical studies at the university with a zeal which won for him a degree with the first honors.

Parliament was the natural place for a peer's son in those days of pocket boroughs, and into the House of Commons he went as Lord Ashley at the age of twenty-five. In his diary he recorded his devout purpose to use his position "for the success of religion and true happiness," and on taking the oaths he "breathed a slight prayer for a.s.sistance in thoughts and deeds." A man of profound introspection, intense religious feeling, and sincere purpose to be of service to his kind, had some difficulty in adjusting himself to the selfish politics of the House. The first subject upon which he found voice was the reform of the laws for the care of lunatic paupers, a cla.s.s whose pitiable state might have moved the most stolid heart. To this merciful project he addressed himself with a zeal and persistency which were to characterize his later efforts for other downtrodden cla.s.ses.

When the labor leaders turned to him, in 1833, to champion their cause, he took the question into consideration over night, obtained his wife's cordial approval, consulted his Bible, resorted to prayer, and the next day gave himself unreservedly to the cause. His friends of the aristocratic families shunned him, his parents discountenanced his design and closed their doors against him for many years, but, said he, in dedication of himself to the work, "I believe it is my duty to G.o.d and to the poor, and I trust He will support me."

The manufacturers sought to side-track the Ten-Hours Bill by proposing that nothing should be done until a committee of Parliament should make thorough inquiry into the alleged conditions in the mills. But the very commission which they asked for could not go against the evidence of their own eyes in the factory towns, swarming with ignorant, ragged child-operatives, prematurely old. The commission reported: (1) that the work hours of children and adults were the same; (2) that such labor was resulting in the permanent physical and intellectual deterioration of the young; (3) that these maltreated children were not free agents, but hired out by parents or guardians; and finally, "that a case was made out for the interference of the legislature on behalf of the children employed in factories."

In place of the radical measure of Lord Ashley the government carried a subst.i.tute, the Factory Law of 1833. "Night work was prohibited to persons under eight even in cotton, wool, worsted, hemp, flax, tow, and linen spinneries and weaving mills; children from nine to thirteen were not allowed to work more than forty- eight hours a week, and young persons thirteen to eighteen were restricted to sixty-eight hours a week. In silk factories children might be admitted under nine, and children under thirteen were to be allowed ten hours a day. Provision was made for a certain amount of school attendance, and factory inspectors were provided to inquire into violations of the statute." At the time Ashley and his friends bewailed the pa.s.sage of the Factory Act as a defeat, though the former eventually admitted that "it contained some humane and highly useful provisions, and established for the first time the great principle that labor and education should be combined."

Defeat, if that be a defeat, which forces your foe to adopt your own principles in order to win, only proved Lord Ashley's superior fitness for the leaders.h.i.+p of the cause. Instead of abandoning the contest he began to prepare for a fresh a.s.sault by collecting information touching every part of the question. He visited the workrooms and lodgings of the operatives in every part of the land, examining at first hand their condition, and studying the problem in all its bearings with the same persistency and intellectual force which had won him his "first- cla.s.s" at the university. Nothing which could subserve his cause escaped his searching inquiry, and when he arose to address Parliament his mastery of his subject was so complete as to baffle the skill of the few who durst ask him questions.

As the Anti-Corn Law gained ground the labor reformers met with a new form of opposition. Lord Ashley was taunted with inconsistency in seeking the welfare of the factory workers, while neglecting to remedy the no less servile condition of the agricultural laborers. Manufacturers as high-minded as Cobden and Bright did not scruple to say--as doubtless they believed--that the outcry against the manufacturers sprang from the desire of the landowners to hara.s.s the opponents of "the tax on bread."

John Bright answered Lord Ashley's arguments for the ten hours'

clause in the bill of 1844 in a speech as vindictive as it was eloquent. Though Ashley was again defeated, at this time the new Factory Act, which was pa.s.sed, carried farther the principles of the original law. In 1845 his calico print-works measure brought relief to thousands of weary little hands, and in 1847 the long- worked-for and earnestly prayed-for Ten-Hours Bill became a law.

Lord Ashley had resigned his seat in Parliament, but had not relaxed his efforts in behalf of the bill which he had borne on his heart for fourteen years. When the news came that the bill, after going through the Commons with flying colors, had pa.s.sed the critical stage in the Upper House, Lord Ashley's feelings found vent in this entry in his journal: "I am humbled that my heart is not bursting with thankfulness to Almighty G.o.d--that I can find breath and sense to express my joy. What reward shall we give unto the Lord for all the benefits he hath conferred upon us? G.o.d, in his mercy, prosper the work and grant that these operatives may receive the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord! Praised be the Lord! Praised be the Lord in Christ Jesus!" The operatives received the news with tumultuous joy, for the act brought substantial relief to fully three hundred and sixty thousand persons, more than two-thirds of all the operatives then employed in the textile industries of the kingdom.

The manufacturers who attributed Ashley's professions of friends.h.i.+p for their employees to his cla.s.s hatred of their masters little knew the man. His sympathies were engaged in behalf of the poor and weak in every calling, and the mill-hands were only the first whose cause he championed. The manufacturers had sometimes sought to divert attention from their own shortcomings by pointing to the greater hards.h.i.+p of the colliery workers, and in 1840 Lord Ashley took up this subject by moving for a parliamentary commission to inquire into the employment of the children of the poorer cla.s.ses in mines and collieries. The first report of this commission, issued in 1842, is one of the most appalling of public doc.u.ments. Sworn testimony was presented to show that much of the underground labor was performed by children under thirteen years of age, and that little boys and girls were set to work in the dark and noisome tunnels at the age of five. First as "trappers" these child laborers opened and shut the trap-doors in the pa.s.sages of the mine. The stronger children, boys and girls alike, dragged and pushed the little coal wagons along the narrow pa.s.sages--the roofs too low for them to stand upright, often so low as to compel them to creep on all- fours in the black slime of the floors. Some with laden baskets on their backs climbed many times a day up steep ascents. Some stood ankle-deep in water from morning till night in the depths of the pit, wearing out their little lives at the hand- pumps.

"The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, The young birds are chirping in the nest; The young fawns are playing with the shadows, The young flowers are blowing toward the west.

But the young, young children, O my brothers, They are weeping bitterly!

They are weeping in the playtime of the others, In the country of the free."

So sang Elizabeth Barrett of the sorrows of the children of the mines and mills in those dismal days, and it must be said for the great heart of England that its beat was still true. The coal- owners made the pitiful plea in extenuation of all the misery and indecency of the mines that without the labor of women and children the collieries must shut down, not only for lack of profit, but for the cogent reason that the flexible vertebra of childhood were especially adapted to the constrained positions required in the tunnels, and that there could be no good colliers unless as children they became inured to the privations and hards.h.i.+ps of the life. The government tried to keep the report out of the hands of the indignant public, but "by a most providential mistake," as Lord Ashley believed, it got into circulation, to the horror and disgust of all right-minded persons. The press joined in the cry for remedial legislation.