A Short History of English Liberalism Part 4

Rousseau was a profligate. The French aristocracy had been ma.s.sacred. The French Church had been stripped of its possessions. The French landed proprietors had been spoiled. All this had been done in the name of the rights of man. The English Reformers believed in the rights of man. These had been proved by events in France to be incompatible with law, order, religion, and morality. All who valued these must unite in their defence against the deadly opinions. Belief in the rights of man marked an Englishman like a contagious disease. Atheists, Theists, and Christians, Trinitarians and Unitarians, Churchmen and Dissenters, Reformers, Radicals, and Republicans, landowners, manufacturers, and artisans, people who believed in vested interests and people who did not, all were Jacobins, and all were swept away in one turbid flood of unreasoning invective.

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Every proposal for change was opposed by the same arguments. Every inst.i.tution, good, bad, or indifferent, became a foothold for shuddering Conservatism. Alteration became synonymous with evil; there was no good save in establishment. Even the Slave Trade was strengthened against pious Tory gentlemen like Wilberforce by the same arguments which defended the representative system against the profane Republican artisans of Lancas.h.i.+re. Thus Lord Abingdon claimed to have "incontrovertibly proved that the proposition for the abolition of the Slave Trade is a French proposition, that it is grounded in and founded upon French principles, that it means neither more nor less than liberty and equality, that it has Tom Paine's _Rights of Man_ for its chief and best support ... that it has had in the colonies of France all the direful effects necessarily flowing from such principles, namely, those of insubordination, anarchy, confusion, murder, havock, devastation, and ruin."[132] Nearly thirty years after the publication of Paine's book, Lord Wellesley, denouncing universal suffrage, annual elections, and voting by ballot, said that, if carried into execution, they "would be the destruction of all regular government, the destruction of all religion, and the destruction of all private property."[133] But the most ludicrous expression of this fear of change occurs in one of Windham's speeches against the Bill to suppress bull-baiting. The House of Commons solemnly listened to a solemn a.s.surance that the Bill was promoted by Methodists and Jacobins, and that it was directed to the destruction of the old English character by the abolition of all rural sports. "Out of the whole number of the disaffected, he questioned if a single bull-baiter could be found, or if a single sportsman had distinguished himself in the Corresponding Society ... the antiquity of the thing was deserving of respect, for antiquity was the best preservation of the Church and State."[134]

The controversy was not allowed to remain a mere matter {120} of words.

Both sides set themselves to organize machinery for the dissemination of their opinions. The Radicals used the Society for Const.i.tutional Information. The extremists established the Corresponding Society, whose branches, composed chiefly of the middle and working cla.s.ses, corresponded with similar societies in France, held meetings and published their resolutions in the newspapers, and industriously circulated copies of the _Rights of Man_. So vigorous were their operations that a Royal Proclamation was issued in May, 1792, denouncing these "wicked and seditious writings" and correspondence with "persons in foreign parts," and exhorting all subjects of the Crown to discourage them.[135] In November the Tories formed an a.s.sociation for Preserving Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers, which declared that "It appears from history and observation, that the inequality of rank and fortune in this happy country is more the result of every man's own exertions than of any controlling inst.i.tution of the State. Men become great who have greatly distinguished themselves by the application of talents natural or acquired; and men become rich who have persevered with industry in the application to trade and commerce, to manufactures, and other useful employments."[136]

Such language was hardy enough in a society where public dignities were monopolized by a few families, whose inherited wealth was augmented as often by jobbery as by industry. The a.s.sociation seems to have acted as a private detective agency and sent reports and secret information to the Government. But the honours of agitation rested, as usual, with the reforming party. If their success was small, it was due less to the private efforts of their opponents than to the superior resources of the Government itself.

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It is difficult to discover how widely the new ideas had spread by the end of the century. The war with France, which lasted almost continuously from 1793 to 1815, probably drew off much of the national enthusiasm. A foreign war is always favourable to the enemies of domestic liberty, and however much their distresses may drive common men to hate their governors, they generally hate them less than the national enemy. Industrious as they were, the agitators were too closely identified with France to be popular, and it was not till the end of the war that the middle and working cla.s.ses as a whole began to lend them a favourable ear. In the meantime, they were regarded by the Government as infinitely more powerful than they really were, and for thirty years they worked in constant danger of imprisonment or transportation. They had been depressed, in common with Whigs like Fox and Grey, by the ferocity of the French mobs. But the invasion of France by the Duke of Brunswick and the complete victory of the new national Government, restored their confidence at the same time as it reawakened the terrors of the Tories. The most trifling expressions of sympathy with the French people or their principles exposed them to spies and informers and zealous loyalists.[137] On the 8th May James Ridgway and H. D. Symonds were sentenced to four years' imprisonment for publis.h.i.+ng Paine's works. On the 27th, for saying in a coffee-house, "I am for equality; I see no reason why one man should be greater than another; I would have no king, and the const.i.tution of this country is a bad one," Mr. Frost was struck oft the roll of attorneys and sentenced to an hour in the pillory and six months in Newgate. On the 1st October Mr. Pigott and Dr. Hudson were tried for drinking "The French Republic" in a coffee-house. At Leicester a man called Vaughan distributed a handbill criticizing the war because it inflicted hards.h.i.+p on the poor. He was sent to prison for three months. Benjamin {122} Bull distributed the _Rights of Man_ at Bath, and was imprisoned for a year.[138] Paine himself was tried for seditious libel in 1792, and in his absence was outlawed. But the most ferocious punishments were inflicted in Scotland. In England, short of high treason, there was no legal offence possible except sedition or seditious libel, for which the punishment was a term of imprisonment. In Scotland the offenders might be transported. In September, 1793, the Rev. Thomas Fysche Palmer, Unitarian minister at Dundee, for publis.h.i.+ng an address couched in very temperate language, from which it was proved that he had struck out some more extravagant expressions, was sentenced to seven years' transportation. The Whigs in Parliament protested against this monstrous sentence. But the House, by a large majority, refused even to compel the Home Secretary to detain the convict s.h.i.+p pending its revision.[139] In the same year Thomas Muir, a gentleman of acknowledged respectability, was sentenced to fourteen years'

transportation for an offence of as trivial a kind as that of Mr.

Palmer.[140] Other Reformers, chiefly members of Corresponding Societies, met at Edinburgh in December, 1792, in what they rashly called a "National Convention." This consisted of delegates from Societies all over the kingdom. It pa.s.sed resolutions, appointed committees, and acted as a permanent body of political delegates is accustomed to act, in order to further the cause of Parliamentary Reform. There was nothing violent in the objects, the proceedings, or the language of the Convention, which pa.s.sed a resolution in favour of government by King, Lords, and Commons without a single dissentient voice.[141] But the French Revolution had begun by the meeting of a "Convention," and the delegates, in addition to selecting that unfortunate t.i.tle, presented an address to the French National Convention, and habitually addressed each other, in imitation of the French, as "citizens." This was {123} enough for the Government. A representative body, with a French t.i.tle, in communication with the French Government, and using French forms of speech, must meditate that sort of revolution which had been contrived by the French people. It fell upon the delegates with all the ferocity of despotism in a panic. William Skirving, Maurice Margarot, and Joseph Gerald were transported for fourteen years, and Alexander Callender was outlawed. English juries were less frantic than Scottish. The members of the London Corresponding Society had done similar acts in England. But in 1794, when several of them, including Horne Tooke, were tried for high treason, all were acquitted.

The precise details of all these proceedings, and the widespread suffering which they caused, are not important for this book. It is enough to state here that there was much expression of discontent, and that the Government dealt with it in the worst possible way. The wise course was to detach the respectable agitators from the agitators who were not respectable by substantial improvements in the franchise and the distribution of seats.

But the Government were incapable of drawing distinctions, and, by confounding all sorts of discontent in their repression, alienated and embittered even those whom they had it in their power to conciliate.

Evidence of any general conspiracy to alter the existing order by violent means there is none. Nothing was ever published on behalf of the Government itself which proved anything but const.i.tutional and orderly expressions of dissatisfaction, with occasional outbreaks of reckless language and exceedingly rare instances of such acts as the purchase or manufacture of weapons.[142] There were no collections of arms, no riots, except such as were purely industrial, and no demonstrations of force. Not a single life was ever taken or attempted by the Reformers, and the only dangerous political disturbance of the {124} period was the outbreak of the Tory mob, who looted and burnt the houses of Dissenters and Radicals at Birmingham.

But the governing cla.s.s was afraid, and in its fear it struck out blindly at everything which it disliked.

The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended in 1791, and the executive received power to arrest and detain suspects without trial. At a later date, extraordinary powers were created. A meeting held near London in October, 1795, was followed by an attempt to a.s.sa.s.sinate the King. The meeting was orderly, and there was not a shadow of proof that there was any connection between the two events. But the Government took advantage of the prevailing indignation to create new crimes, and to increase the punishments for existing crimes. The Treason Act made it an offence, punishable on a second conviction with seven years' transportation, to "incite or stir up the people to hatred or dislike of His Majesty's person or the established Government and const.i.tution of the realm," and extended the definition of high treason. The Sedition Act prohibited the holding of meetings without the presence of a magistrate, made it an offence punishable with death for twelve persons to remain together after a magistrate had called upon them to disperse, and declared that any house, where a substantial number of persons beyond that of the resident family a.s.sembled for a common purpose, should be treated as a disorderly house, unless specially licensed. In 1799, after the mutiny in the fleet at the Nore and the great Irish Rebellion, in both of which the Society of United Irishmen had been involved, new statutes made it a criminal offence, punishable by fine and imprisonment, to belong to the Corresponding Society, or the Societies of United Irishmen and United Englishmen, or to take oaths of secrecy. No printer was to be allowed to conduct his business without obtaining a certificate from a clerk of the peace. No attempt was made to discriminate between the Corresponding Societies, whose violence was confined to their language, and the other two societies, which had undoubtedly been concerned in the mutiny and the Rebellion. Individual atrocities were ascribed to French principles. The Reform Societies preached French principles. {125} Therefore they were as guilty as the criminals themselves. In effect, all organized political agitation was suppressed.

All these measures were steadily opposed by the small body of Parliamentary Whigs who had not lost their belief in free government. Fox, Grey, and Whitbread in the Commons, and Bedford, Lansdowne,[143] Moira, and Lauderdale in the Lords, denounced every restriction upon the right of free discussion, and at huge meetings at Copenhagen House and in Palace Yard they protested against the Treason and Sedition Bills. They were not in sympathy with the extremists, who often attacked them as bitterly as the Tories themselves. There is nothing so obnoxious to violent opinions as moderation. It seems to add hypocrisy to wickedness. But to those who can see historical events in proportion the good service of this handful of statesmen is beyond question. They maintained the purely Liberal view that toleration is not to be confined to opinions of which we ourselves approve.

"All political libels," said Fox, "he would leave to themselves; discussions on government, so far as they did not interfere with private character, he would permit to pa.s.s entirely unrestrained."[144] "The best security of a Government," said Tierney, "is in the free complaints of a people."[145] "The safety of the State," said Grey, "could only be found in the protection of the liberties of the people.... There never was an extensive discontent without great misgovernment. The people ought to be taught to look to Parliament with a confident expectation that their complaints would be heard, and protection afforded to them. When no attention was paid to the calls of the people for relief, when their pet.i.tions were rejected, and their sufferings aggravated, was it wonderful that at last public discontents should a.s.sume a formidable aspect?"[146]

Protests sometimes became threats. Fox declared in 1795 that if the Treason and Sedition Bills were carried into law, the propriety of resistance to government would no longer be a matter of morality but of prudence only, and in this he was supported by Sheridan and Grey.

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These Whigs at least contrived to see the popular point of view, and would have suffered opinions which they would do nothing to promote. The Tories saw no point of view but their own. They hated free discussion, because they saw that it meant the end of the inst.i.tutions which they cherished.

Discussion was to them only a stage on the way to rapine and murder. It made, therefore, no difference whether discussion were honest and orderly or not. They were resolute to maintain existing establishments, and the most const.i.tutional of critics was as much a public enemy as the most ferocious of rebels. They drew no distinction between agitation and revolution. They inquired into discontents, but only into their extent and not into their causes. They applied violent remedies, not to the real disease, but to its symptoms. The patient was noisy, and they beat him for being noisy, when they ought to have cured the fever which produced his delirium. The vice of their system lay not so much in their suppression of disorder as in their neglect of reform. Order must be maintained by government, even when the breach of it is the fault of government. But it must be accompanied by redress of grievances. It is the business of a statesman to manage his people, not to compel them, and however necessary it may sometimes be for him to enforce the law, it remains the weakest, and should always be the last of his instruments. It is useless for him to maintain order unless it is accompanied by goodwill. Some men may be const.i.tutionally so disaffected that nothing can appease them. But the majority can always be satisfied by a generous treatment of their grievances. Even after the crisis of the Revolution Pitt might have made the state of England more happy than it was. But what he did not do was not so important as what he had not done. He believed in Parliamentary Reform, in Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation, in the relief of Dissenters, in Free Trade. He was in power from 1783 to the outbreak of the Revolution, and might have conciliated the middle cla.s.s and the Irish, diminished public corruption, stimulated industry, and reduced the cost of living. This would not have prevented all discontent. But it would have confined it to its essential and irreducible minimum. {127} Whether this inaction was due to his own lethargy or the incurable selfishness and stupidity of his a.s.sociates and supporters, it was undoubtedly responsible for a large part of his subsequent difficulties. He left heaps of combustible material untouched, and it was his own fault that it caught fire. In this unhappy state, lurching between bitter discontent and savage repression, English liberty struggled through the great war.

The affairs of Ireland furnished another battle-ground for contending principles during this period. The complete subjugation of that country was ended in 1782, when demonstrations of armed force wrested legislative independence from an England surrounded by foreign enemies. The Irish Parliament was left free to make such laws as it pleased for Ireland, and the deliberate destruction of Irish industries in the interest of English ceased for ever. But this independence, though won by the united efforts of all creeds and cla.s.ses, was the independence of a Protestant oligarchy. The great bulk of the Irish people escaped an external only to submit to an internal tyrant. The Irish Parliament, though patriotic in matters of commerce, was hardly any more indulgent than the English in its religious policy. Catholics were excluded from the Houses at Dublin as vigorously as from those at Westminster, and few important mitigations of their lot were obtained from their own countrymen. In 1792 Catholics were admitted to the Bar, mixed marriages were allowed, and it was made legal for a Catholic to educate his children abroad. In 1793 all public offices were thrown open to them, except seats in Parliament and the highest places in the Army, the Judicature, and the Civil Service. These changes removed the worst disabilities of the upper and middle cla.s.ses, who had now fewer disabilities than their fellows in England and Scotland, and there was thus exhibited a considerable reduction of Protestant insolence. The supremacy of Pitt in England aroused great hopes that the last stones of the edifice would soon be removed. Catholic emanc.i.p.ation would not have cured all the ills of Ireland, any more than Parliamentary Reform would have cured all the ills of England. An excessive population, {128} crowded into agriculture by the destruction of manufactures, demoralized by landowners who were too often thriftless or absentees, and deprived of education by the laws which prohibited teaching by Catholic priests or laymen, was in a condition which mere political reforms could do little to improve. What Catholic disabilities did was to poison economic discontent by the memories of racial and religious persecution. The conduct of the English Government of the day was dangerously uncertain. The hopes of the Catholics were roused in 1794 by the appointment of Lord Fitzwilliam as Lord-Lieutenant.

Fitzwilliam was notoriously in favour of the Catholic claims, even though he was not authorized to make any promises on behalf of the Government. He was too open in his professions of sympathy, and when Protestant bigotry procured his recall, the apparent treachery only aggravated the bitterness of old subjection. Catholic resentment and Protestant arrogance soon brought matters to a crisis. Neither party gained credit from the rising of 1798. The excesses of the magistrates and the troops before, during, and after the fighting were often of mediaeval atrocity, and the retaliation of the rebels cannot be justified, though it is amply explained by the character of the provocation. This fearful outbreak in the middle of the French War satisfied the English Government that only by a Union could Ireland be kept in peace. The good effects of the recent concessions had vanished in this whirlwind of savagery, and Protestant and Catholic were once more in the temper of the Middle Ages. Mutual goodwill could only be restored by a common tutelage.

There was nothing bad in itself in the plan for a legislative Union. Had it been carried through with a just regard for Irish opinion, and had it been followed by a strict attention to the grievances of the common people, the Union might have been one of the brilliant successes of the English race.

In fact it was itself effected by shameful means, and it was followed by misgovernment as fatally unsympathetic as that which had preceded it.

English rule in Ireland was less ferocious in the {129} nineteenth century than in the eighteenth. But it was no less conspicuous a failure. No const.i.tutional machinery can be better than the men who work it, and Englishmen after the Union showed themselves no less unimaginative and egoistic than their predecessors. The objects of the Union were stated by Pitt, with perfect good faith, to be the subst.i.tution of government by an impartial authority for government by a faction which was steeped in the memories of old oppression. "An impartial Legislature standing aloof from local party connection, sufficiently removed from the influence of contending factions to be advocate or champion of neither, being so placed as to have no superst.i.tious reverence for the names and prejudices of ancient families, who have so long enjoyed the exclusive monopolies of certain public patronages and property ... this is the thing that is wanted for Ireland."[147] That was what was wanted for Ireland. What it obtained was a Legislature as partial, as inextricably involved in local party connection, and as closely wrapped about with superst.i.tious reverence for ancient families and their patronages and property as could have been contrived. For half a century at least the government of Ireland remained what it has always been in the hands of England, government by armed force, in the interests of the landlords against the tenants, of the Protestants against the Catholics. A system which Pitt devised as a protection against the old abuses was converted into an effective engine for their maintenance. Pitt was himself partly to blame for this disastrous failure.

He probably never saw the need for economic reorganization. But he saw clearly enough the need for the ending of religious strife, which poisoned the whole temper of the people and wasted on the jealousies of sects and the hatred of government energy which would otherwise be free to run in healthy and productive channels. His weakness in not pus.h.i.+ng on with Lord Fitzwilliam made the rebellion of 1798 inevitable. Similar weakness after the Union made the const.i.tutional change useless. It was undoubtedly part of his original plan to emanc.i.p.ate the Catholics. But the King, the {130} Church, and Protestant Ireland were too strong for him. Pitt resigned. The Whigs came into office, with a Ministry which was united at least on the Catholic question. The King again had his way, and rather than hold office without fulfilling their Catholic pledges, they resigned in their turn.[148] Pitt's course was clear. He should have refused to come back without permission to do what he thought right. But he preferred the convenience of the King, and accepted office on condition that the Catholic question was left open. This was as effective as a definite refusal.

Canning persuaded the House of Commons in 1812, but Eldon in the Lords defeated his colleague's Bill, and until Eldon could be expelled there was no hope for Ireland. The friendly Tories would never unite with the Whigs to defeat the hostile Tories. Nothing was done to solve the problem, and Ireland, for a generation after the Union, was governed by coercion.

Throughout this wretched dispute the Whigs maintained the ancient doctrines of their party with regard to religious disabilities. But the problem aroused controversy about a second conception of more recent growth, the conception of nationality. Burke had tried to treat Ireland as an equal nation for commercial purposes. The Whigs of 1801 extended the idea to its extreme limits. Had the Irish Parliament the right to surrender its powers to a Parliament of the United Kingdom without receiving the approval of its own electors? Unquestionably it had the legal right. Had it also the moral right? The Whigs held that it had not. "What right," asked Sheridan, "has the Irish Parliament to resolve that, instead of going back to their const.i.tuents, they shall form part of a foreign legislature?"[149] "The Union," said Fox, "is not an alteration, but a destruction and annihilation of the Irish Const.i.tution. Union therefore, like revolution, cannot be justifiable but by the unequivocal {131} consent of the people."[150] Pitt opposed this doctrine on the usual Tory ground. It led, he said, immediately "to the system of universal right of suffrage in the people, to the doctrine that each man should have a share in the government of the country by having a choice for his representative; and then goes back to the whole system of Jacobinism."[151]

The Union was therefore carried through the instrumentality of a legislature bribed to betray its const.i.tuents. This transaction was much worse than it appeared. The English Government which neglected the wishes of the Irish people in this matter would neglect them in all others. The Union was a supreme act of despotism, the fitting prelude to the systematic disregard of Irish opinion which followed it. "There must," wrote Fox a few years later, "be a fundamental change in the system of governing Ireland, to give even a chance of future quiet there.... That there should be a part of the United Kingdom to which our laws, nominally at least, extend, and which is nevertheless in such a state as to call for martial law, etc., so repeatedly, is of itself ground for reconsidering, at least, the system by which it is governed."[152] The Tories could not understand, even in the case of England, that it is the business of a governor to manage and not to coerce the governed, and race and religion combined to obscure still further their view of Ireland. The system remained what it had been and was, and the consequences of this fatal negligence are with us to this day.

The foreign policy of the Government gave not a few opportunities for expressions of Liberalism. The rights of nationalities were in issue in the beginning of the French War, in the treatment of Ireland, in the descent upon Copenhagen, and in the negotiations which followed the downfall {132} of Napoleon. In all these cases the Whig Opposition stated the pure Liberal doctrine. In that of the war with France, one section of them carried the doctrine to an absurd extent. In origin, the war was unquestionably a war of interference, an attempt to force upon the French people an obnoxious government, and to compel them to abandon those new and revolutionary principles which they had adopted for themselves. Pitt himself had apparently no such object, and was hurried into the war partly by the French threats of a.s.sisting other peoples to revolt, and chiefly by the irresistible pressure of the English governing cla.s.s. It is impossible to read contemporary literature, the debates in Parliament, the newspapers, the pamphlets of Burke and other acknowledged leaders of opinion, the resolutions of corporations and public meetings, and the private correspondence, without coming to the conclusion that the great bulk of influential political society was inspired by a fanatical hatred of the new opinions. Whatever pretexts may have been urged in public, and may have been in fact held by comparatively sober people like Pitt, the impelling force behind the English armies was dread of French principles. The sword of the invader could not have been feared more than the fatal contagion of his ideas. The Germans and Austrians, who invaded France in 1792 to restore the monarchy, were less concerned to hide their motives than the English Government. But there was little difference in substance between them. The Continental Sovereigns moved of their own motion. The English Ministers were carried on by their supporters.

Against a war of this kind the Whigs spoke forcibly and with justice.

Lansdowne described it as "a war, the alleged object of which was to repel unprovoked aggressions, but the real one to prescribe laws to an independent country."[153] It was "a metaphysical war; it was declared against France on account of her internal circ.u.mstances."[154] Fox said it was no better than the methods of the Inquisition. We were killing people because they thought differently from ourselves. "How could we blame all {133} those abominable acts of bloodshed and torture, which had been committed from time to time under the specious name of religion, when we ourselves had the presumption to wage a similar war?"[155] It was "the most gross violation of everything sacred which could exist between nation and nation, as striking at the root of the right which each must ever possess of internal legislation."[156] "Whatever our detestation of the guilt of foreign nations may be, we are not called to take upon ourselves the task of avengers; we are bound only to act as guardians of the welfare of those with whose concerns we are immediately entrusted."[157]

This language was wise, and its wisdom was proved by events. The Bourbons were not restored. The temper of the French people was incredibly stimulated. The new system which might have repelled by its violence and rapacity became the centre of the national enthusiasm. It inflicted a crus.h.i.+ng defeat upon its foreign invaders and then proceeded to avenge this additional injury by the ma.s.sacre of those whom the invasion was intended to a.s.sist. Whether Napoleon would have appeared in French history or not without this strengthening of the Revolutionary system, it is impossible to say. Certainly the foreign interference with the first Government consolidated the nation, and prepared for Napoleon's use the most formidable weapon that he could have obtained for the braying of Europe.

There is a tragic instance of that insight which is not foresight in the correspondence of Castlereagh, and it shows how completely the English Government misunderstood what they had done. "The only thing ... which really dispirits me is, the unprecedented struggle of order against anarchy, and the unfortunate facility with which France recruits her army as fast as the sword exterminates it. A few days transforms their ragam.u.f.fins into troops, which are not contemptible even when opposed to the best soldiers in Europe.... It is the first time that _all_ the population and _all_ the wealth of a great kingdom has been concentrated in the field: what may be the result is beyond my perception."[158] {134} What was going on was that anarchy was being reduced into order within the boundaries of France, and no hatred of early extravagance or subsequent tyranny need blind us to the courage, energy, and skill of those French statesmen who, in the face of their enemies, built up the new system upon the ruins of the old. The war made their task comparatively easy, and if it diminished their strength, it made their material more workable. The foreign invasion operated like a powerful electric current, and fused the scattered particles of French nationalism into a solid bulk. The whole fiery ma.s.s of France was being beaten and welded and forged into something which Castlereagh could not understand: a nation, every member of which had a personal interest in and a personal devotion to his nationality. Such a thing had not been known before in France. But it was not long before even Castlereagh was made to feel that in the councils of Europe the rights of man might count for as much as government by orders.

The Whigs carried their maintenance of the equal rights of nationalities to its inevitable conclusion that nations, no less than individuals, must be bound by moral rules in their dealings with each other. Fox declared that "the greatest resource a nation can possess, the sweet source of power, is a strict attention to the principles of justice. I firmly believe that the common proverb of honesty being the best policy is as applicable to nations as to individuals ... and that cases which may sometimes be supposed exceptions arise from our taking narrow views of the subject, and being unable at once to comprehend the whole."[159] When he was almost at the point of death he proceeded to suggest an international congress for settling disputes. "He disapproved ... of any government pursuing under the t.i.tle of indemnities a system of part.i.tion of States, making some republics, some monarchies, and annihilating the political existence of others, without regard to moral rect.i.tude or to the common feelings of mankind, which considerations had more influence on the affairs of the world than some politicians were aware. The part.i.tion {135} of Poland, the seizure of Holland, the subjugation of Switzerland, and the division of States, by the agreement of some, and by the fraud and rapacity of others, had done more to destroy the confidence of mankind in each other than all the other misconduct of the powers put together. In private society, when men lost their confidence in one another, the compact was dissolved. The same rule applied to States, for they were only aggregates of individuals.

He recommended to all the powers of Europe a system of justice and moderation, as the only means of putting an end to the evils under which we labour. He recommended a general congress, and that these principles should be prevalent in its deliberations."[160]

These principles of international morality were applied most forcibly to the destruction of the Danish fleet at Copenhagen in 1805. The Danes were not hostile to us, and in common with all the other small peoples of Europe they had every reason to fear Napoleon. The English Government knew that Napoleon intended, if he could, to use the Danish fleet against them. The English fleet accordingly was sent to Copenhagen to demand the surrender of the Danish s.h.i.+ps, and on receiving a very natural refusal, destroyed some and carried off the rest. This proceeding is generally treated in English schools as a matter for national gratification. To Liberals it appears a very dangerous abuse of arbitrary power. Contemporary Europe was of the same opinion, and the direct consequence of the affair was to range all the Northern States on the side of Napoleon. We deprived him of the Danish s.h.i.+ps, and we threw into his hands the Danish army, and all the forces of Sweden, Norway, and Russia as well. The chorus of denunciation in Parliament was for once not confined to the Whigs. Even Windham said "he would sooner have seen the Danish fleet in Buonaparte's hands than in ours, under all the circ.u.mstances of the case."[161] Erskine lamented that the whole course of civilization had been interrupted by this act. "If anything could give delight in reading the history of civilized nations, it was the progressive improvement that was to be traced {136} in law and civilization amongst the nations of the world. This was the first instance in which the principles of that amelioration had been trampled upon by us."[162] Lord Moira spoke in the same strain. "As long as there was a power in Europe which, from its regard to justice and to the rights of other States, could form a sort of rallying-point to the oppressed, there was some probability that the nations who were groaning under the yoke of a pitiless and inexorable tyrant would have watched for some opportunity, and made some exertion in common to throw it off. Such a power was this country, previous to the late most unjustifiable and unfortunate attack upon Denmark; but by this attack that hope had been completely extinguished."[163] Grey disposed of the argument that reasons of State could justify immorality. "So far from adding to the safety of the country, that point on which its safety most particularly depended, he meant its honour, had not only been greatly weakened, but had in fact received a mortal stab."[164] Prior to this oppression of the Danes, England had had the chance of heading a European movement for emanc.i.p.ation from Napoleon. Every small State might have supported her as a protector, and every large one as an ally against a dangerous rival. After the attack it became for the small States simply a choice between two protectors, either of whom seemed to offer security against the other if not against itself. The exasperation of the moment swung the balance to the side of Napoleon, and England found herself face to face with a hostile Continent.[165]

Fortunately for the country, the Government soon effected a great change in their policy. For the first time they enlisted on their side what the French had had from the beginning, the idea of nationality. The war had entirely changed its character. Beginning as an interference with the internal affairs of the French people, it had merged, since the rise of Napoleon, into a struggle against a power which was as universal in its appet.i.te {137} as it was unscrupulous in its methods. Against this force, which was so astonis.h.i.+ng that it appeared to many pious Christians as Anti-Christ himself, schemes and combinations had proved powerless. England had escaped disaster because she was an island. The rest of Europe, with the exception of Russia, had been beaten to the ground. These dynastic contrivances of kings and emperors wanted the national spirit which supported their adversary. To the common people in many parts of Europe Napoleon appeared as a deliverer from their domestic oppressors, and the little states of Germany and Italy, which he had carved out of the bigger, were ready enough to see a champion of freedom in one who tyrannized only over tyrants. The end began when he deposed a Spanish king and put his own brother on the throne of the proudest and most exclusive nation of Europe.

The Peninsular War at last found England in her right place, at the head of a league of nationalities. The Whig Opposition, always weak in numbers, was now broken to pieces. Part of it repeated the old arguments, which applied to everything but the present facts, hailed Napoleon as the champion of liberty, and even expressed regret at his downfall at Waterloo. The wiser men saw at once the significance of the Spanish expedition. Canning was now the Tory Foreign Secretary. He found a hearty supporter in Grey among the Whigs, and both felt an idea in what for Castlereagh was still no more than a matter of business. "Of all the infamies ever incurred by a nation," said Grey, "I think the greatest would have been to have appeared to abandon the Spaniards."[166] "The allies have now been placed by France in the situation in which France was originally placed by the allies. The success of both has been occasioned by the spirit of resistance, produced by injury and oppression; and my great hopes of the present confederacy are chiefly derived from this, that it has arisen rather from the feeling of the peoples than the policy of the Governments which it embraces."[167] The new principle succeeded at last. The Spanish people, with English {138} help, crippled Napoleon, the Russian people wore him out, and the German people overwhelmed him. In 1815 the victory of Waterloo completed his destruction, and the European peoples had at last leisure to look to themselves.

Comparing the England of 1815 with the England of 1790, the Liberals of the time would find little cause for satisfaction. The economic problems of the country were more acute, and the attempts to remedy them directly by legislation and indirectly by encouraging combinations of workmen had been defeated. A solitary Act of 1802, which did something to regulate the conditions of parish children who had been apprenticed to private employers, was the only measure of protection which had pa.s.sed into law.

Parliamentary Reform and Religious Emanc.i.p.ation seemed more remote than ever. The principle of nationality had been violated in Ireland, and if the recognition of it in the later stages of the war gave some ground for future confidence, hope was soon to be dispelled.

Unhappily for the common people, the spirit of nationality had been used only as a means and not as an end by the various enemies of Napoleon. No sooner was the common enemy destroyed than the victorious monarchs sat down to cut up and distribute Europe among themselves. They had fought, not the French, but the French Revolution, and when the main conflagration had been extinguished, they had still to stamp out the burning embers which had been blown about its borders. The young Republics which had been created were to be restored to their old rulers, and all the ancient monarchies were to be re-established, and where necessary strengthened by the acquisition of new territory. There is something almost ludicrous to modern eyes in the spectacle of these kings and emperors and their chancellors and envoys a.s.signing and allotting human beings, by millions together, without inquiring into the wishes or interests of those with whom they dealt.

England partic.i.p.ated in the game, and Toryism and Liberalism were again brought into conflict. {139}

The Tory view, expressed by Castlereagh and Liverpool, was hardly less callous than that of the Tzar Alexander himself. There is hardly a word in any of their speeches or dispatches which shows any tenderness for men and women as such. Human beings to them were only subjects. The old form of Europe was to be restored, subject only to such changes as were necessary to strengthen the princ.i.p.al enemies of Revolutionary France. To the balance of power was to be sacrificed all local or national independence. "Upon the subject of Austria and Prussia," wrote Lord Liverpool, "we must always expect a degree of jealousy on the part of every French Government. It is quite essential, however, to any balance of power that these two monarchies should be made respectable. The principle recognized in the early part of this year, that Austria should have a population in the whole of about 27,000,000 of souls, and Prussia one of about 11,000,000, appears to be quite reasonable, and ought to give no umbrage to France."[168] Lord Liverpool wrote of "souls," but if he had been writing of cattle his language would have been no different. Castlereagh was no better. The Congress of Vienna, at which this vivisection of a continent took place, had in his eyes two objects, to check France and to check Russia. Prussia and Austria must therefore be aggrandized. Italy might be the next free people and become as dangerous as France, and the dream of her unity and independence must be subordinated to the necessity of at once strengthening Austria against Russia and of suppressing those small states upon which Napoleon had conferred independence. Venice, an ancient Republic, was handed over to Austria. Lest France should infect Italy, the Genoese Republic must be annexed to the Kingdom of Piedmont. Lest Russia should dominate Sweden, Norway must be taken from Denmark and given to Sweden. In order that Holland might be strengthened against France in the North, she must be allowed to annex Belgium. Prussia must be strengthened, but not too much, and accordingly the Kingdom of Saxony was cut in half. The Poles had been {140} divided between Russia, Austria, and Prussia in 1792. They now expressed a desire for independence, but in vain.[169] Austria and Prussia must be maintained at all costs. Castlereagh regretted that they should be sacrificed and left them to their fate.

The Whigs protested warmly against this infamous disposition of the affairs of unconsenting peoples. Particular acts, in particular the part.i.tion of Poland, it was not in the power of England to prevent. But that was no reason why she should give them her formal sanction. "England," said the young Lord John Russell, "might have appeared as a member of a confederacy to oppose France without sanctioning any of those acts of pillage by which the deliverance of Europe has been disgraced. If she was not able to prevent those acts, she need not have soiled her fair fame by appearing to countenance them."[170] But other matters were entirely within the control of England. She had entered into a treaty with Russia and Sweden, by which she bound herself not only formally to transfer Norway from Denmark to Sweden, but actually to compel the Norwegians by force of arms to submit to their new masters. Even Canning, who, though a member of the Government, held Liberal opinions in foreign affairs, declared that "if the question now was, whether consent should be given to the treaty, he had no hesitation in saying that he would refuse it."[171] Wilberforce "considered the part.i.tioning of States against their will a most despotic sacrifice of public rights."[172] Lord Grenville appealed "to the old-established and true principles of national law in opposition to the new-fangled doctrine of utility, or, in other words, the subversion of all moral principle," and denounced "the horrible injustice by which an unoffending people were to be bent to the dominion of a foreign power."[173] Grey expressed the complete Liberal theory. "The principles are the same in the one case and the other, whether between individuals or {141} between States. No matter to what degree the impunity of power might silence the claims of right, its nature cannot be altered; it is equally sacred, equally important, and is equally to be recognized, in every attempt to protect the weak against the strong.... The rights of the Sovereign over his subjects are not the rights of property. They do not confer the privilege of transferring them from one to another like cattle attached to the soil.... The Sovereign might withdraw himself from their protection. He might absolve them from their allegiance to himself; but he had no right to transfer their allegiance to any other State. It became, then, the right of the people to decide to whom their allegiance should be given."[174] He dealt in fitting terms with the contention that it was after all for the benefit of the Norwegian people.

"Can it be argued," he asked, "that any country shall be obliged to accept what a foreign State thinks proper to consider as happiness? No sort of tyranny can, in my judgment, be conceived more complete than that a Government should undertake to force another people to submit to that system which such Government may regard as happy, although that people may think quite the contrary."[175] Neither the reluctance of Canning nor the attacks of the Whigs could prevent the outrage. The British fleet blockaded the Norwegian ports, and the Norwegian people submitted to their new masters.

{142}

CHAPTER V

THE DECLINE OF TORYISM

The conclusion of the war closed the outlet through which the national energies had been so long strained, and left the people free to contemplate their own situation. Popular discontent again made itself felt, and it was more formidable than ever. Trade was dislocated by the peace, industries were reduced which had fattened upon the war, and the numbers of the idle workmen were swollen by disbanded soldiers and sailors. At the same time bad harvests diminished the supply of corn, and a new Corn Law which prohibited imports till the home price was eighty s.h.i.+llings a quarter aggravated the effects of natural deficiency. Wages in some trades were bad, and grew worse. In 1819 ribbon and silk weavers of Coventry pet.i.tioned Parliament to provide them with the means of emigrating to another country.

They worked sixteen hours a day, in some cases for eighteenpence or half a crown a week. None of them earned more than ten s.h.i.+llings a week. A hand-loom cotton weaver could make only five or six s.h.i.+llings a week. A pound a week was a good wage for a workman in any industry.[176] The price of corn rose higher and higher. In January, 1816, a quarter of wheat cost fifty-two s.h.i.+llings and sixpence. In June, 1817, it cost a hundred and seventeen s.h.i.+llings.[177] As each member of the working cla.s.s consumed on the average about one quarter a year, it {143} follows that a family of five spent on bread at the rate of 13 a year at the first rate, and eighteen months later at the rate of 29. The whole income of a weaver might be swallowed up in buying bread alone, and his family be still left in want.

To this dreadful picture a comic touch was not wanting. The Lord Advocate once referred to it in language which shows how remotely separated were the people and their rulers. "In many instances," he said, "the manufacturers, who in former times were in the habit of attending church, now employed the forenoon of the Sabbath in political discussions; and it was a common practice for weavers to work at their looms on the same day, and till a late hour of the night--and this too with their windows open, to the horror and disgust of the pa.s.sengers."[178] The economic necessity which deprived the wretched artisans even of the day appointed for their rest was thus twisted into a stain upon their character. It is not surprising that they discussed politics. Pending their emanc.i.p.ation, they had only three possible aids, starvation, parish relief, and charity; and many unhappy workmen and their families experienced all three. Political agitation revived on the conclusion of peace, and it was more extensive and more determined than before. It was met by the same dull and brutal repression and refusal of redress.

We have before us all the evidence upon which the Government proceeded, and there can be even less doubt than in connection with the events of twenty years before that its action was wrong and foolish. Almost every disturbance which took place could be traced to industrial or agrarian causes, and the ordinary law was in all cases sufficient. The Government preferred to treat the riots as proof of a general conspiracy against the State, and they took extraordinary steps in order to suppress them. In 1817 they suspended the Habeas Corpus Act. The suspensions of the {144} earlier period might have been justified by the universal war, by the rapid dispersion of Jacobin principles, by the dangerous state of Ireland. The suspension of 1817 had no such excuse. The paroxysm of the French Revolution had come to an end. Ireland was disaffected but subdued. There was no war. The Government had nothing to do but to attend to the condition of the people. But this was the last thing which it occurred to the Government to do. Even when the original impulse had ceased to operate, they continued to move in the line of reaction, and repeated mechanically the watchwords of their predecessors, who had at least the excuse that they were surprised and horrified. Sidmouth gravely described the Radicals as "the enemy."[179] It never seems to have occurred to any one in authority that Radicalism and riots were not cause and effect, and instead of grappling with the economic conditions which were equally the cause of both, Ministers discussed nothing but the means whereby the law was to be more easily enforced.[180] Undoubtedly there were occasional disturbances of a serious character. Between 1801 and 1811 the population increased by 21 per cent. The bulk of increase was among the North Country artisans, whose growing numbers at once made their economic distress and their political impotence more conspicuous than ever. There was a dangerous riot in Spa Fields, London, in November, 1816. Another occurred at Huddersfield in the following May, a third at Derby, and a fourth at Nottingham. Secret societies were formed in different parts of the country, and the tongue of Hunt and the pen of William Cobbett, rivalling the earlier popularity of {145} the _Rights of Man_, led the Government to suppose that the whole fabric of society was in danger. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, the Seditious Meetings Act was revived, and Secret Committees of both Houses were appointed to collect information.

It is clear from the reports of these Committees that there was nothing in the state of the country to justify these unusual measures. The great ma.s.s of the people showed no sympathy with the rioters. Education was spreading rapidly in Lancas.h.i.+re, Yorks.h.i.+re, and Scotland, and the artisans were thinking for themselves. Violence was rare, but agitation was general.

Large bodies of people marched to public meetings at Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and other provincial towns. Not a shadow of proof was produced by the Committees that these had any criminal intention, and one fact is sufficient to prove the contrary. At almost every meeting women and children were present.[181] The discipline and order of these crowds were indeed, in the obscure reasonings of men like Liverpool, Sidmouth, and Castlereagh, an additional proof of their seditious character. A turbulent common people never puzzled a Tory. It was the nature of the beast to be disorderly. But a common people which thought, and spoke, and organized, and met and dispersed in companies at the advice of its leaders, was a thing which he could not understand. What he could not understand, he feared. Not the least significant fact in this record of dull and unimaginative mismanagement is the connection between Castlereagh and Continental statesmen of the type of Metternich. These people had formed a Holy Alliance for the express purpose of suppressing attempts to establish Liberal Const.i.tutions in Europe. Castlereagh, representing Great Britain, had refused to join the Alliance. But in his own country he was pursuing its very policy, as the European despots well knew. The letters in which the Courts of {146} Vienna and Berlin congratulated him on his suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act and the right of public meeting are among the most degrading which have ever pa.s.sed through the British Foreign Office.[182]

The worst incident of this struggle between people and Government was the affair of Peterloo. This showed, as vividly as could have been desired, how completely the working cla.s.s was at the mercy of a governing cla.s.s, which controlled Parliament, the Army, and the Bench. A large but peaceful meeting, containing many women and children, was held in St. Peter's Square, Manchester, to hear speeches by Hunt and other popular leaders. The crowd had gathered from all the towns in the neighbourhood, and had marched, unarmed but in military order, to the place of a.s.sembly. The magistrates thought they were faced with rebellion. They sent police and yeomen to arrest Hunt, who stood on a waggon in the middle of the crowd.

The yeomen got entangled among the people, and with the a.s.sistance of some hussars proceeded to convert the meeting into a riot. Men, women, and children were cut down or trampled by the horses; a few were killed and many injured. The action of the soldiers was endorsed by the magistrates and by the Government.[183] Whigs in both houses protested and demanded an inquiry, and Radical meetings everywhere denounced the affair as a ma.s.sacre. The Government listened neither to expostulation nor to abuse.

They refused to hold an inquiry. Persons injured had a legal remedy, and it was not the business of the executive to investigate matters which might come before the judiciary. It was true that a man or woman who was cut down in the midst of a panic-stricken mob might be unable to identify the cavalryman concerned. But it was not the business of the Government to step in where the law failed. Besides, the magistracy were honourable and patriotic men, and it would cast a slur upon them and weaken {147} their authority if their superiors examined their conduct. The language of Ministers was in keeping with their whole policy. The people were to be kept down, and it was not necessary, seeing that they were politically powerless, to be squeamish about ways and means. All the usual arguments were thus employed to protect the official wrongdoers against the public.

One official will always defend the wickedness of another against private persons who happen to be unpopular, and a Secretary of State, who can rely on the support of a resentful party, will always ignore the wrongs of political opponents upon whose votes he is not forced to depend.[184] It is in agitations for the franchise that we learn best to appreciate it. In no other circ.u.mstances is the tendency to abuse power greater in the governor, nor the incapacity to obtain redress more conspicuous in the governed.