The English Utilitarians Volume II Part 2

'Agitators and incendiaries,' he says, 'retired into the background, as will always be the case when the country is in earnest: and statesmen who had much to lose, and were not afraid to risk it, stepped quietly and firmly to the front. The men and the sons of the men who had so long endured exclusion from office, embittered by unpopularity, at length reaped their reward.'[32] The Radical version of the history is different. The great men, it said, who had left the cause to be supported by agitators so long as the defence was dangerous and profitless, stepped forward now that it was clearly winning, and received both the reward and the credit. Mill and Place could not find words to express their contempt for the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, shuffling Whigs. They were probably unjust enough in detail; but they had a strong case in some respects. The Utilitarians represented that part of the reforming party which had a definite and a reasoned creed.

They tried to give logic where the popular agitators were content with declamation, and represented absolute convictions when the Whig reformers were content with tentative and hesitating compromises. They had some grounds for considering themselves to be the 'steel of the lance'; the men who formulated and deliberately defended the principles which were beginning to conquer the world.

The Utilitarians, I have said, became a political force in the concluding years of the great war struggle. The catastrophe of the revolution had unchained a whole whirlwind of antagonisms. The original issues had pa.s.sed out of sight; and great social, industrial, and political changes were in progress which made the nation that emerged from the war a very different body from the nation that had entered it nearly a generation before. It is not surprising that at first very erroneous estimates were made of the new position when peace at last returned.

The Radicals, who had watched on one side the growth of debt and pauperism, and, on the other hand, the profits made by stockjobbers, landlords, and manufacturers, ascribed all the terrible sufferings to the selfish designs of the upper cla.s.ses. When the war ended they hoped that the evils would diminish, while the pretext for misgovernment would be removed. A bitter disappointment followed. The war was followed by widespread misery. Plenty meant ruin to agriculturists, and commercial 'gluts' resulting in manufacturers'

warehouses crammed with unsaleable goods. The discontent caused by misery had been encountered during the war by patriotic fervour. It was not a time for redressing evils, when the existence of the nation was at stake. Now that the misery continued, and the excuse for delaying redress had been removed, a demand arose for parliamentary reform. Unfortunately discontent led also to sporadic riotings, to breaking of machinery and burning of ricks. The Tory government saw in these disturbances a renewal of the old Jacobin spirit, and had visions--apparently quite groundless--of widespread conspiracies and secret societies ready to produce a ruin of all social order. It had recourse to the old repressive measures, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, the pa.s.sage of the 'Six Acts,' and the prosecution of popular agitators. Many observers fancied that the choice lay between a servile insurrection and the establishment of arbitrary power.

By degrees, however, peace brought back prosperity. Things settled down; commerce revived; and the acute distress pa.s.sed away. The whole nation went mad over the wrongs of Queen Caroline; and the demand for political reform became for the time less intense. But it soon appeared that, although this crisis had been surmounted, the temper of the nation had profoundly changed. The supreme power still belonged const.i.tutionally to the landed interest. But it had a profoundly modified social order behind it. The war had at least made it necessary to take into account the opinions of larger cla.s.ses. An appeal to patriotism means that some regard must be paid to the prejudices and pa.s.sions of people at large. When enormous sums were to be raised, the moneyed cla.s.ses would have their say as to modes of taxation. Commerce and manufactures went through crises of terrible difficulty due to the various changes of the war; but, on the whole, the industrial cla.s.ses were steadily and rapidly developing in wealth, and becoming relatively more important. The war itself was, in one aspect at least, a war for the maintenance of the British supremacy in trade. The struggle marked by the policy of the 'Orders in Council' on one side, and Napoleon's decrees on the other, involved a constant reference to Manchester and Liverpool and the rapidly growing manufacturing and commercial interests. The growth, again, of the press, at a time when every one who could read was keenly interested in news of most exciting and important events, implied the rapid development of a great organ of public opinion.

The effects of these changes soon became palpable. The political atmosphere was altogether different; and an entirely new set of influences was governing the policy of statesmen. The change affected the Tory as much as the Whig. However strongly he might believe that he was carrying on the old methods, he was affected by the new ideas which had been almost unconsciously incorporated in his creed. How great was the change, and how much it took the shape of accepting Utilitarian theories, may be briefly shown by considering a few characteristic facts.

The ablest men who held office at the time were Canning, Huskisson, and Peel. They represented the conservatism which sought to distinguish itself from mere obstructiveness. Their influence was felt in many directions. The Holy Alliance had the sympathy of men who could believe that the war had brought back the pre-revolutionary order, and that its main result had been to put the Jacobin spirit in chains. Canning's accession to office in 1822 meant that the foreign policy of England was to be definitely opposed to the policy of the 'Holy Alliance.' A pithy statement of his view is given in a remarkable letter, dated 1st February 1823, to the prince who was soon to become Charles X.[33] The French government had declared that a people could only receive a free const.i.tution as a gift from their legitimate kings. Should the English ministry, says Canning, after this declaration, support the French in their attack upon the const.i.tutional government of Spain, it would be driven from office amid 'the execration of Tories and Whigs alike.' He thought that the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people was less alien to the spirit of the British Const.i.tution than the opposite doctrine of the legitimists. In the early days, when Canning sat at the feet of Pitt, the war, if not in their eyes an Anti-Jacobin crusade, had to be supported by stimulating the Anti-Jacobin sentiment. In later days, the war had come to be a struggle against the oppression of nations by foreign despots. Canning could now accept the version of Pitt's policy which corresponded to the later phase. Englishmen in general had no more sympathy for despots who claimed a divine right than for despots who acted in the name of democracy--especially when the despots threatened to interfere with British trade. When Canning called 'the new world into existence to redress the balance of the old,'[34] he declared that English policy should resist threats from the Holy Alliance directed against some of our best customers. The general approval had special force among the Utilitarians. In the South American States Bentham had found eager proselytes, and had hoped to become a Solon. He had been consulted by the const.i.tutionalists in Spain and Portugal; and he and his disciples, Joseph Hume in particular, had joined the Greek Committee, and tried to regenerate Athens by sound Utilitarian tracts. All English Liberals sympathised with the various movements which were more or less favoured by Canning's policy; but the Utilitarians could also see in them the opening of new fields already white for the harvest.

The foreign policy was significant. It proved that the war, whatever else it had done, had not brought back the old order; and the old British traditions in favour of liberty of speech and action would revive now that they were no longer trammelled by the fears of a destructive revolution. The days of July in 1830 gave fresh importance to the reaction of foreign upon English politics.

II. LAW REFORM

Meanwhile, however, the Utilitarians had a far stronger interest in domestic problems. In the first place, in Bentham's especial province a complete change of feeling had taken place. Romilly was Bentham's earliest disciple (so Bentham said), and looked up to him with 'filial reverence.' Every 'reformatiuncle' introduced by Romilly in parliament had been first brought to Bentham, to be conned over by the two.[35]

With great difficulty Romilly had got two or three measures through the House of Commons, generally to be thrown out by Eldon's influence in the Lords.[36] After Romilly's death in 1818, the cause was taken up by the Whig philosopher, Sir James Mackintosh, and made a distinct step in advance. Though there were still obstacles in the upper regions, a committee was obtained to consider the frequency of capital punishment, and measures were pa.s.sed to abolish it in particular cases. Finally, in 1823, the reform was adopted by Peel. Peel was destined to represent in the most striking way the process by which new ideas were gradually infiltrating the upper sphere. Though still a strong Tory and a representative of the university of Oxford, he was closely connected with the manufacturing cla.s.ses, and had become aware, as he wrote to Croker (23rd March 1820), that public opinion had grown to be too large for its accustomed channels. As Home Secretary, he took up the whole subject of the criminal law, and pa.s.sed in the next years a series of acts consolidating and mitigating the law, and repealing many old statutes. A measure of equal importance was his establishment in 1829 of the metropolitan police force, which at last put an end to the old chaotic muddle described by Colquhoun of parish officers and constables. Other significant legal changes marked the opening of a new era. Eldon was the very incarnation of the spirit of obstruction; and the Court of Chancery, over which he presided for a quarter of a century, was thought to be the typical stronghold of the evil principles denounced by Bentham. An attack in 1823 upon Eldon was made in the House of Commons by John Williams (1777-1846), afterwards a judge. Eldon, though profoundly irritated by the personal imputations involved, consented to the appointment of a commission, which reported in 1825, and recommended measures of reform. In 1828, Brougham made a great display upon which he had consulted Bentham.[37] In a speech of six hours' length he gave a summary of existing abuses, which may still be read with interest.[38] Commissions were appointed to investigate the procedure of the Common Law Court and the law of real property. Another commission, intended to codify the criminal law, was appointed in 1833. Brougham says that of 'sixty capital defects' described in his speech, fifty-five had been removed, or were in course of removal, when his speeches were collected (_i.e._ 1838). Another speech of Brougham's in 1828 dealt with the carrying into execution of a favourite plan of Bentham's--the formation of local courts, which ultimately became the modern county courts.[39] The facts are significant of a startling change--no less than an abrupt transition from the reign of entire apathy to a reign of continuous reform extending over the whole range of law. The Reform Bill accelerated the movement, but it had been started before Bentham's death. The great stone, so long immovable, was fairly set rolling.

Bentham's influence, again, in bringing about the change is undeniable. He was greatly dissatisfied with Brougham's speech, and, indeed, would have been dissatisfied with anything short of a complete logical application of his whole system. He held Brougham to be 'insincere,'[40] a trimmer and popularity-hunter, but a useful instrument. Brougham's astonis.h.i.+ng vanity and self-seeking prompted and perverted his amazing activity. He represents the process, perhaps necessary, by which a philosopher's ideas have to be modified before they can be applied to practical application. Brougham, however, could speak generously of men no longer in a position to excite his jealousy. He says in the preface to his first speech that 'the age of law reform and the age of Jeremy Bentham' were the same thing, and declares Bentham to be the 'first legal philosopher' who had appeared in the world. As the Chief advocates of Bentham he reckons Romilly, his parliamentary representative; Dumont, his literary interpreter; and James Mill, who, in his article upon 'jurisprudence,' had popularised the essential principles of the doctrine.

The Utilitarians had at last broken up the barriers of obstruction and set the stream flowing. Whigs and Tories were taking up their theories. They naturally exaggerated in some respects the completeness of the triumph. The English law has not yet been codified, and it was characteristic of the Benthamite school to exaggerate the facility of that process. In their hatred of 'judge-made law' they a.s.sumed too easily that all things would be arranged into convenient pigeon-holes as soon as 'Judge and Co.' were abolished. It was a characteristic error to exaggerate the simplicity of their problem, and to fail to see that 'judge-made' law corresponds to a necessary inductive process by which the complex and subtle differences have to be gradually ascertained and fitted into a systematic statement. One other remark suggests itself. The Utilitarians saw in the dogged obstructiveness of Eldon and his like the one great obstacle to reform. It did not occur to them that the clumsiness of parliamentary legislation might be another difficulty. They failed to notice distinctly one tendency of their reforms. To make a code you require a sovereign strong enough to dominate the lawyers, not a system in which lawyers are an essential part of a small governing cla.s.s. Codification, in short, means centralisation in one department. Blindness to similar results elsewhere was a characteristic of the Utilitarian thinkers.

III. ECONOMIC REFORM

In another department the Utilitarians boasted, and also with good reason, of the triumph of their tenets. Political economy was in the ascendant. Professors.h.i.+ps were being founded in Oxford, Cambridge,[41]

London, and Edinburgh. Mrs. Marcet's _Conversations_ (1818) were spreading the doctrine among babes and sucklings. The Utilitarians were the sacred band who defended the strictest orthodoxy against all opponents. They spoke as recognised authorities upon some of the most vital questions of the day, of which I need here only notice Free Trade, the doctrine most closely a.s.sociated with the teaching of their revered Adam Smith. In 1816 Ricardo remarks with satisfaction that the principle 'is daily obtaining converts' even among the most prejudiced cla.s.ses; and he refers especially to a pet.i.tion in which the clothiers of Gloucesters.h.i.+re[42] expressed their willingness to give up all restrictions. There was, indeed, an important set-off against this gain. The landowners were being pledged to protection. They had decided that in spite of the peace, the price of wheat must be kept up to 80s. a quarter. They would no longer be complimented as Adam Smith had complimented them on their superior liberality, and were now creating a barrier only to be stormed after a long struggle.

Meanwhile the principle was making rapid way among their rivals. One symptom was the adoption by the London merchants in 1820 of a famous pet.i.tion on behalf of free trade.[43] It was drawn up by Thomas Tooke (1774-1858), who had long been actively engaged in the Russian trade, and whose _History of Prices_ is in some respects the most valuable economic treatise of the time. Tooke gives a curious account of his action on this occasion.[44] He collected a few friends engaged in commerce, who were opposed to the corn laws. He found that several of them had 'crude and confused' notions upon the subject, and that each held that his own special interests should be exempted on some pretext from the general rule. After various dexterous pieces of diplomacy, however, he succeeded in obtaining the signature of Samuel Thornton, a governor of the bank of England, and ultimately procured a sufficient number of signatures by private solicitation. He was favourably received by the Prime Minister Lord Liverpool, and Vansittart (then Chancellor of the Exchequer), and finally got the pet.i.tion presented to the House of Commons by Alexander Baring (afterwards Lord Ashburton). Tooke remarks that the Liverpool administration was in advance, not only of the public generally, but of the 'mercantile community,' Glasgow and Manchester, however, followed in the same steps, and the pet.i.tion became a kind of official manifesto of the orthodox doctrine. The Political Economy Club formed next year at Tooke's instigation (April 18, 1821) was intended to hasten the process of dispersing crude and confused ideas. It was essentially an organ of the Utilitarian propaganda.

The influence of the economists upon public policy was shown by the important measures carried through chiefly by Huskisson. Huskisson (1770-1830) was a type of the most intelligent official of his time.

Like his more brilliant friend Canning, he had been introduced into office under Pitt, and retained a profound reverence for his early leader. Huskisson was a thorough man of business, capable of wrestling with blue-books, of understanding the sinking-fund, and having theories about the currency; a master of figures and statistics and the whole machinery of commerce. Though eminently useful, he might at any moment be applying some awkward doctrine from Adam Smith.

Huskisson began the series of economic reforms which were brought to their full development by Peel and Gladstone. The collection of his speeches[45] incidentally brings out very clearly his relation to the Utilitarians. The most remarkable is a great speech of April 24, 1826[46] (upon the state of the silk manufacture), of which Canning declared that he had never heard one abler, or which made a deeper impression upon the House. In this he reviews his policy, going over the most important financial measures of the preceding period. They made a new era, and he dates the beginning of the movement from the London pet.i.tion, and the 'luminous speech' made by Baring when presenting it. We followed public opinion, he says, and did not create it.[47] Adopting the essential principles of the pet.i.tion, the government had in the first place set free the great woollen trade.

The silk trade had been emanc.i.p.ated by abolis.h.i.+ng the Spitalfield Acts pa.s.sed in the previous century, which enabled magistrates to fix the rates of wages. The principle of prohibition had been abandoned, though protective duties remained. The navigation laws had been materially relaxed, and steps taken towards removing restrictions of different kinds upon trade with France and with India. One symptom of the change was the consolidation of the custom law effected by James Deacon Hume (1774-1842), an official patronised by Huskisson, and an original member of the Political Economy Club. By a law pa.s.sed in 1825, five hundred statutes dating from the time of Edward I. were repealed, and the essence of the law given in a volume of moderate size. Finally, the removal of prohibitions was undermining the smugglers.

The measures upon which Huskisson justly prided himself might have been dictated by the Political Economy Club itself. So far as they went they were an application of the doctrines of its thoroughgoing members, of Mill, Ricardo, and the orthodox school. They indeed supported him in the press. The _Morning Chronicle_, which expressed their views, declared him to be the most virtuous minister, that is (in true Utilitarian phrase), the most desirous of national welfare who had ever lived. The praise of Radicals would be not altogether welcome. Canning, in supporting his friend, maintained that sound commercial policy belonged no more to the Whigs than to the Tories.

Huskisson and he were faithful disciples of Pitt, whose treaty with France in 1786, a.s.sailed by Fox and the Whigs, had been the first practical application of the Wealth of Nations. Neither party, perhaps, could claim a special connection with good or bad political economy; and certainly neither was prepared to incur political martyrdom in zeal for scientific truth. A question was beginning to come to the front which would make party lines dependent upon economic theories, and Huskisson's view of this was characteristic.

The speech from which I have quoted begins with an indignant retort upon a member who had applied to him Burke's phrase about a perfect-bred metaphysician exceeding the devil in malignity and contempt for mankind. Huskisson frequently protested even against the milder epithet of theorist. He a.s.serted most emphatically that he appealed to 'experience' and not to 'theory,' a slippery distinction which finds a good exposure in Bentham's _Book of Fallacies_.[48] The doctrine, however, was a convenient one for Huskisson. He could appeal to experience to show that commercial restrictions had injured the woollen trade, and their absence benefited the cotton trade,[49] and when he was not being taunted with theories, he would state with perfect clearness the general free trade argument.[50] But he had to keep an eye to the uncomfortable tricks which theories sometimes play.

He argued emphatically in 1825[51] that a.n.a.logy between manufactures and agriculture is 'illogical.' He does not wish to depress the price of corn, but to keep it at such a level that our manufactures may not be hampered by dear food. Here he was forced by stress of politics to differ from his economical friends. The country gentleman did not wish to pay duties on his silk or his brandy, but he had a direct and obvious interest in keeping up the price of corn. Huskisson had himself supported the Corn Bill of 1815, but it was becoming more and more obvious that a revision would be necessary. In 1828 he declared that he 'lamented from the bottom of his soul the ma.s.s of evil and misery and destruction of capital which that law in the course of twelve years had produced.'[52] Ricardo, meanwhile, and the economists had from the first applied to agriculture the principles which Huskisson applied to manufactures.[53] Huskisson's melancholy death has left us unable to say whether upon this matter he would have been as convertible as Peel. In any case the general principle of free trade was as fully adopted by Huskisson and Canning as by the Utilitarians themselves. The Utilitarians could again claim to be both the inspirers of the first principles, and the most consistent in carrying out the deductions. They, it is true, were not generally bia.s.sed by having any interest in rents. They were to be the allies or teachers of the manufacturing cla.s.s which began to be decidedly opposed to the squires and the old order.

In one very important economic question, the Utilitarians not only approved a change of the law, but were the main agents in bringing it about. Francis Place was the wire-puller, to whose energy was due the abolition of the Conspiracy Laws in 1824. Joseph Hume in the House of Commons, and M'Culloch, then editor of the _Scotsman_, had the most conspicuous part in the agitation, but Place worked the machinery of agitation. The bill pa.s.sed in 1824 was modified by an act of 1825; but the modification, owing to Place's efforts, was not serious, and the act, as we are told on good authority, 'effected a real emanc.i.p.ation,'

and for the first time established the right of 'collective bargaining.'[54] The remarkable thing is that this act, carried on the principles of 'Radical individualism' and by the efforts of Radical individualists, was thus a first step towards the application to practice of socialist doctrine. Place thought that the result of the act would be not the encouragement, but the decline, of trades-unions.

The unions had been due to the necessity of combining against oppressive laws, and would cease when those laws were abolished.[55]

This marks a very significant stage in the development of economic opinion.

IV. CHURCH REFORM

The movement which at this period was most conspicuous politically was that which resulted in Roman Catholic emanc.i.p.ation, and here, too, the Utilitarians might be antic.i.p.ating a complete triumph of their principles. The existing disqualifications, indeed, were upheld by little but the purely obstructive sentiment. When the duke of York swore that 'so help him G.o.d!' he would oppose the change to the last, he summed up the whole 'argument' against it. Canning and Huskisson here represented the policy not only of Pitt, but of Castlereagh. The Whigs, indeed, might claim to be the natural representatives of toleration. The church of England was thoroughly subjugated by the state, and neither Whig nor Tory wished for a fundamental change. But the most obvious differentia of Whiggism was a dislike to the ecclesiastical spirit. The Whig n.o.ble was generally more or less of a freethinker; and upon such topics Holland House differed little from Queen's Square Place, or differed only in a rather stricter reticence.

Both Whig and Tory might accept Warburton's doctrine of an 'alliance'

between church and state. The Tory inferred that the church should be supported. His prescription for meeting discontent was 'more yeomanry'

and a handsome sum for church-building. The Whig thought that the church got a sufficient return in being allowed to keep its revenues.

On the Tory view, the relation might be compared to that of man and wife in Christian countries where, though the two are one, the husband is bound to fidelity. On the Whig view it was like a polygamous system, where the wife is in complete subjection, and the husband may take any number of concubines. The Whig n.o.ble regarded the church as socially useful, but he was by no means inclined to support its interests when they conflicted with other political considerations. He had been steadily in favour of diminis.h.i.+ng the privileges of the establishment, and had taken part in removing the grievances of the old penal laws. He was not prepared to uphold privileges which involved a palpable danger to his order.

This position is ill.u.s.trated by Sydney Smith, the ideal divine of Holland House. The _Plymley Letters_[56] give his views most pithily.

Smith, a man as full of sound sense as of genuine humour, appeals to the principles of toleration, and is keenly alive to the absurdity of a persecution which only irritates without conversion. But he also appeals to the danger of the situation. 'If Bonaparte lives,'[57] he says, 'and something is not done to conciliate the Catholics, it seems to me absolutely impossible but that we must perish.' We are like the captain of a s.h.i.+p attacked by a pirate, who should begin by examining his men in the church catechism, and forbid any one to sponge or ram who had not taken the sacrament according to the forms of the church of England. He confesses frankly that the strength of the Irish is with him a strong motive for listening to their claims. To talk of 'not acting from fear is mere parliamentary cant.'[58] Although the danger which frightened Smith was evaded, this was the argument which really brought conviction even to Tories in 1829. In any case the Whigs, whose great boast was their support of toleration, would not be prompted by any Quixotic love of the church to encounter tremendous perils in defence of its privileges.

Smith's zeal had its limits. He observes humorously in his preface that he had found himself after the Reform Bill engaged in the defence of the National Church against the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London. The letters to Archdeacon Singleton, written when the Whigs were flirting with the Radicals, show how much good an old Whig could find in the establishment. This marks the difference between the true Whig and the Utilitarian. The Whig would not risk the country for the sake of church; he would keep the clerical power strictly subordinate to the power of the state, but then, when considered from the political side, it was part of a government system providing him with patronage, and to be guarded from the rude a.s.saults of the Radical reformer. The Utilitarian, though for the moment he was in alliance with the Whig, regarded the common victory as a step to something far more sweeping. He objected to intolerance as decidedly as the Whig, for absolute freedom of opinion was his most cherished doctrine. He objected still more emphatically to persecution on behalf of the church, because he entirely repudiated its doctrines. The objection to spreading true doctrine by force is a strong one, but hardly so strong as the objection to a forcible spread of false doctrine. But, besides this, the church represented to the Utilitarian precisely the very worst specimen of the corruptions of the time. The Court of Chancery was bad enough, but the whole ecclesiastical system with its vast prizes,[59] its opportunities for corrupt patronage, its pluralism and non-residence was an evil on a larger scale. The Radical, therefore, unlike the Whig, was an internecine enemy of the whole system. The 'church of England system,' as Bentham calmly remarks, is 'ripe for dissolution.'[60] I have already noticed his quaint proposal for giving effect to his views. Mill, in the _Westminster Review_, denounced the church of England as the worst of all churches.[61] To the Utilitarian, in short, the removal of the disqualification of dissenters and Catholics was thus one step to the consummation which their logic demanded--the absolute disestablishment and disendowment of the church. Conservatives in general antic.i.p.ated the confiscation of church revenues as a necessary result of reform; and so far as the spirit of reformers was represented by the Utilitarians and their Radical allies, they had good grounds for the fear. James Mill's theory is best indicated by a later article published in the _London Review_ of July 1835. After pointing out that the church of England retains all the machinery desired for supporting priests and preventing the growth of intellect and morality, he proceeds to ask what the clergy do for their money. They read prayers, which is a palpable absurdity; they preach sermons to spread superst.i.tious notions of the Supreme Being, and perform ceremonies--baptism, and so forth--which are obviously silly. The church is a mere state machine worked in subservience to the sinister interest of the governing cla.s.ses. The way to reform it would be to equalise the pay: let the clergy be appointed by a 'Minister of Public Instruction' or the county authorities; abolish the articles, and const.i.tute a church 'without dogmas or ceremonies'; and employ the clergy to give lectures on ethics, botany, political economy, and so forth, besides holding Sunday meetings, dances (decent dances are to be specially invented for the purpose), and social meals, which would be a revival of the 'agapai' of the early Christians. For this purpose, however, it might be necessary to subst.i.tute tea and coffee for wine. In other words, the church is to be made into a popular London University. The plan ill.u.s.trates the incapacity of an isolated clique to understand the real tone of public opinion. I need not p.r.o.nounce upon Mill's scheme, which seems to have some sense in it, but one would like to know whether Newman read his article.

V. SINISTER INTERESTS

In questions of foreign policy, of law reform, of political economy, and of religious tests, the Utilitarians thus saw the gradual approximation to their most characteristic views on the part of the Whigs, and a strong infiltration of the same views among the less obstructive Tories. They held the logical creed, to which others were slowly approximating, either from the force of argument or from the great social changes which were bringing new cla.s.ses into political power. The movement for parliamentary reform which for a time overshadowed all other questions might be regarded as a corollary from the position already won. Briefly, it was clear that a new social stratum was exercising a vast influence; the doctrines popular with it had to be more or less accepted; and the only problem worth consideration by practical men was whether or not such a change should be made in the political machinery as would enable the influence to be exercised by direct and const.i.tutional means. To the purely obstructive Tory parliamentary reform was a step to the general cataclysm. The proprietor of a borough, like the proprietor of a church patronage or commission in the army, had a right to his votes, and to attack his right was simply confiscation of private property.

The next step might be to confiscate his estate. But even the more intelligent Conservative drew the line at such a measure. Canning, Huskisson, and even Peel might accept the views of the Utilitarians in regard to foreign policy, to law reform, to free trade, or the removal of religious tests, declaring only that they were obeying 'experience'

instead of logic, and might therefore go just as far as they pleased.

But they were all pledged to resist parliamentary reform to the utmost. Men thoroughly steeped in official life, and versed in the actual working of the machinery, were naturally alive to the magnitude of the change to be introduced. They saw with perfect clearness that it would amount to a revolution. The old system in which the ruling cla.s.ses carried on business by family alliances and bargains between ministers and great men would be impracticable. The fact that so much had been done in the way of concession to the ideas of the new cla.s.ses was for them an argument against the change. If the governing cla.s.ses were ready to reform abuses, why should they be made unable to govern?

A gradual enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the great towns on the old system might be desirable. Such a man as Huskisson, representing great commercial interests, could not be blind to the necessity. But a thorough reconstruction was more alarming. As Canning had urged in a great speech at Liverpool, a House of Commons, thoroughly democratised, would be incompatible with the existence of the monarchy and the House of Lords. So tremendously powerful a body would reduce the other parts of the const.i.tution to mere excrescences, feeble drags upon the new driving-wheel in which the whole real force would be concentrated.

That this expressed, in point of fact, a serious truth, was, I take it, undeniable. The sufficient practical answer was, that change was inevitable. To refuse to adapt the const.i.tutional machinery to the altered political forces was not to hinder their growth, but to make a revolution necessary. When, accordingly, the excluded cla.s.ses began seriously to demand admission, the only question came to lie between violent and peaceable methods. The alarm with which our fathers watched the progress of the measure may seem to us exaggerated, but they scarcely overestimated the magnitude of the change. The old rulers were taking a new partner of such power, that whatever authority was left to them might seem to be left on sufferance. As soon as he became conscious of his strength, they would be reduced to nonent.i.ties. The Utilitarians took some part in the struggle, and welcomed the victory with antic.i.p.ations destined to be, for the time at least, cruelly disappointed. But they were still a small minority, whose views rather scandalised the leaders of the party with which they were in temporary alliance. The principles upon which they based their demands, as formulated by James Mill, looked, as we shall see, far beyond the concessions of the moment.

One other political change is significant, though I am unable to give an adequate account of it. Bentham's denunciation of 'sinister interests'--one of his leading topics--corresponds to the question of sinecures, which was among the most effective topics of Radical declamation. The necessity of limiting the influence of the crown and excluding 'placemen' from the House of Commons had been one of the traditional Whig commonplaces, and a little had been done by Burke's act of 1782 towards limiting pensions and abolis.h.i.+ng obsolete offices.

When English Radicalism revived, the a.s.sault was renewed in parliament and the press. During the war little was achieved, though a revival of the old complaints about placemen in parliament was among the first symptoms of the rising sentiment. In 1812 an attack was made upon the 'tellers of the Exchequer.' Romilly[62] says that the value of one of these offices had risen to 26,000 or 27,000 a year. The income came chiefly from fees, and the actual work, whatever it was, was done by deputy. The scandal was enormous at a time when the stress upon the nation was almost unbearable. One of the tellers.h.i.+ps was held by a member of the great Grenville family, who announced that they regarded the demand for reform as a personal attack upon them. The opposition, therefore, could not muster even its usual strength, and the motion for inquiry was rejected. When the war was over, even the government began to feel that something must be done. In 1817 some acts were pa.s.sed[63] abolis.h.i.+ng a variety of sinecure offices and 'regulating certain offices in the Court of Exchequer.' The Radicals considered this as a mere delusion, because it was provided at the same time that pensions might be given to persons who had held certain great offices.

The change, however, was apparently of importance as removing the chief apology for sinecures, and the system with modifications still remains. The marquis of Camden, one of the tellers of the Exchequer, voluntarily resigned the fees and accepted only the regular salary of 2500. His action is commended in the _Black Book_,[64] which expresses a regret that the example had not been followed by other great sinecurists. Public opinion was beginning to be felt. During the subsequent period the cry against sinecures became more emphatic. The _Black Book_, published originally in 1820 and 1823, and afterwards reissued, gave a list, so far as it could be ascertained, of all pensions, and supplied a ma.s.s of information for Radical orators. The amount of pensions is stated at over 1,000,000, including sinecure offices with over 350,000 annually;[65] and the list of offices (probably very inaccurate in detail) gives a singular impression of the strange ramifications of the system. Besides the direct pensions, every new department of administration seems to have suggested the foundation of offices which tended to become sinecures. The cry for 'retrenchment' was joined to the cry for reform.[66] Joseph Hume, who first entered parliament in 1818, became a representative of the Utilitarian Radicalism, and began a long career of minute criticism which won for him the reputation of a stupendous bore, but helped to keep a steady pressure upon ministers.[67] Sir James Graham (1792-1861) was at this time of Radical tendencies, and first made himself conspicuous by demanding returns of pensions.[68] The settlements of the civil lists of George IV., William IV., and Victoria, gave opportunities for imposing new restrictions upon the pension system. Although no single sweeping measure was pa.s.sed, the whole position was changed. By the time of the Reform Bill, a sinecure had become an anachronism. The presumption was that whenever an opportunity offered, it would be suppressed. Some of the sinecure offices in the Court of Chancery, the 'Keeper of the Hanaper,' the 'Chaffwax,' and so forth, were abolished by an act pa.s.sed by the parliament which had just carried the Reform Bill.[69] In 1833 a reform of the system of naval administration by Sir James Graham got rid of some c.u.mbrous machinery; and Graham again was intrusted in 1834 with an act under which the Court of Exchequer was finally reformed, and the 'Clerk of the Pells' and the 'Tellers of the Exchequer' ceased to exist.[70] Other offices seem to have melted away by degrees, whenever a chance offered.

Many other of the old abuses had ceased to require any special denunciations from political theorists. The general principle was established, and what remained was to apply it in detail. The prison system was no longer in want of a Howard or a Bentham. Abuses remained which occupied the admirable Mrs. Fry; and many serious difficulties had to be solved by a long course of experiment. But it was no longer a question whether anything should be doing, but of the most efficient means of bringing about an admittedly desirable end. The agitation for the suppression of the slave-trade again had been succeeded by the attack upon slavery. The system was evidently doomed, although not finally abolished till after the Reform Bill; and ministers were only considering the question whether the abolition should be summary or gradual, or what compensation might be made to vested interests. The old agitation had been remarkable, as I have said, not only for its end but for the new kind of machinery to which it had applied. Popular agitation[71] had taken a new shape. The county a.s.sociations formed in the last days of the American war of independence, and the societies due to the French revolution had set a precedent. The revolutionary societies had been suppressed or had died out, as opposed to the general spirit of the nation, although they had done a good deal to arouse political speculation. In the period of distress which followed the war the Radical reformers had again held public meetings, and had again been met by repressive measures. The acts of 1817 and 1819[72] imposed severe restrictions upon the right of public meeting. The old 'county meeting,' which continued to be common until the reform period, and was summoned by the lord-lieutenant or the sheriff on a requisition from the freeholders, had a kind of const.i.tutional character, though I do not know its history in detail.[73] The extravagantly repressive measures were an anachronism, or could only be enforced during the pressure of an intense excitement. In one way or other, public meetings were soon being held as frequently as ever. The trial of Queen Caroline gave opportunity for numerous gatherings, and statesmen began to find that they must use instead of suppressing them. Canning[74] appears to have been the first minister to make frequent use of speeches addressed to public meetings; and meetings to which such appeals were addressed soon began to use their authority to demand pledges from the speakers.[75] Representation was to be understood more and more as delegation. Meanwhile the effect of public meetings was enormously increased when a general organisation was introduced. The great precedent was the Catholic a.s.sociation, founded in 1823 by O'Connell and Sheil. The peculiar circ.u.mstances of the Irish people and their priests gave a ready-made machinery for the agitation which triumphed in 1829. The Political Union founded by Attwood at Birmingham in the same year adopted the method, and led to the triumph of 1832.

Political combination henceforth took a different shape, and in the ordinary phrase, 'public opinion' became definitely the ultimate and supreme authority. This enormous change and the corresponding development of the power of the press, which affected to mould and, at any rate, expressed public opinion, entirely fell in with Utilitarian principles. Their part in bringing about the change was of no special importance except in so far as they more or less inspired the popular orators. They were, however, ready to take advantage of it. They had the _Westminster Review_ to take a place beside the _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly Reviews_, which had raised periodical writing to a far higher position than it had ever occupied, and to which leading politicians and leading authors on both sides had become regular contributors. The old contempt for journalism was rapidly vanis.h.i.+ng.

In 1825 Canning expresses his regret for having given some information to a paper of which an ill use had been made. He had previously abstained from all communication with 'these gentry,' and was now resolved to have done with _hoc genus omne_ for good and all.[76] In 1839 we find his former colleague, Lord Lyndhurst, seeking an alliance with Barnes, the editor of the _Times_, as eagerly as though Barnes had been the head of a parliamentary party.[77]

The newspapers had probably done more than the schools to spread habits of reading through the country. Yet the strong interest which was growing up in educational matters was characteristic. Brougham's phrase, 'the schoolmaster is abroad' (29th January 1821), became a popular proverb, and rejoiced the worthy Bentham.[78] I have already described the share taken by the Utilitarians in the great Bell and Lancaster controversy. Parliament had as yet done little. A bill brought in by Whitbread had been pa.s.sed in 1807 by the House of Commons, enabling parishes to form schools on the Scottish model, but according to Romilly,[79] it was pa.s.sed in the well-grounded confidence that it would be thrown out by the peers. A committee upon education was obtained by Brougham after the peace, which reported in 1818, and which led to a commission upon school endowments. Brougham introduced an education bill in 1820, but nothing came of it. The beginning of any partic.i.p.ation by government in national education was not to take place till after the Reform Bill. Meanwhile, however, the foundation of the London University upon unsectarian principles was encouraging the Utilitarians; and there were other symptoms of the growth of enlightenment. George Birkbeck (1776-1841) had started some popular lectures upon science at Glasgow about 1800, and having settled as a physician in London, started the 'Mechanics' Inst.i.tution'

in 1824. Brougham was one of the first trustees; and the inst.i.tution, though exposed to a good deal of ridicule, managed to take root and become the parent of others. In 1827 was started the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, of which Brougham was president, and the committee of which included James Mill. In the course of its twenty years' existence it published or sanctioned the publication by Charles Knight of a great ma.s.s of popular literature. The _Penny Magazine_ (1832-1845) is said to have had two hundred thousand subscribers at the end of its first year of existence. Crude and superficial as were some of these enterprises, they clearly marked a very important change. Cobbett and the Radical orators found enormous audiences ready to listen to their doctrine. Churchmen and Dissenters, Tories and Radicals were finding it necessary both to educate and to disseminate their principles by writing; and as new social strata were becoming accessible to such influences, their opinions began to exercise in turn a more distinct reaction upon political and ecclesiastical affairs.

No party felt more confidence at the tendency of this new intellectual fermentation than the Utilitarians. They had a definite, coherent, logical creed. Every step which increased the freedom of discussion increased the influence of the truth. Their doctrines were the truth, if not the whole truth. Once allow them to get a fulcrum and they would move the world. Bit by bit their principles of legislation, of economy, of politics were being accepted in the most different quarters; and even the more intelligent of their opponents were applying them, though the application might be piecemeal and imperfect. It was in vain that an adversary protested that he was not bound by logic, and appealed to experience instead of theory. Let him justify his action upon what grounds he pleased, he was, in point of fact, introducing the leaven of true doctrine, and it might be trusted to work out the desirable results.

I must now deal more in detail with the Utilitarian theories. I will only observe in general terms that their triumph was not likely to be accepted without a struggle. Large cla.s.ses regarded them with absolute abhorrence. Their success, if they did succeed, would mean the destruction of religious belief, of sound philosophy, of the great important ecclesiastical and political inst.i.tutions, and probably general confiscation of property and the ruin of the foundations of society. And, meanwhile, in spite of the progress upon which I have dwelt, there were two problems, at least, of enormous importance, upon which it could scarcely be said that any progress had been made. The church, in the first place, was still where it had been. No change had been made in its const.i.tution; it was still the typical example of corrupt patronage; and the object of the hatred of all thoroughgoing Radicals. And, in the second place, pauperism had grown to appalling dimensions during the war; and no effectual attempt had been made to deal with it. Behind pauperism there were great social questions, the discontent and misery of great ma.s.ses of the labouring population.

Whatever reforms might be made in other parts of the natural order, here were difficulties enough to task the wisdom of legislators and speculators upon legislative principles.

FOOTNOTES:

[32] _Life of Macaulay_, p. 114. (Popular Edition).

[33] Canning's _Political Correspondence_, i. 71-76.

[34] 12th December 1826.

[35] Bentham's _Works_, v. p. 370.