The Reform Movement

THE REFORM MOVEMENT Social Conditions.—War, however successful, leaves behind a rank seed-bed of discontent ; for its rewards and penalties are in general brutally unjust. Discharges of sailors and soldiers (some 4,000 were helped out to Grahamstown in 1819-20) and the collapse of war industries and prices worked havoc with a social system already tottering to a great change, and now bowed down under unheard-of burdens. The war had raised the National 'Issued off Rochefort in July 1815.

Debt to f 86i ,000,000 entailing the annual charge of £32,645,000. High taxes, bankruptcies and falling wages caused widespread discontent, which was accentuated by the repressive legislation of the Liverpool cabinet and the unpopularity of the prince regent. In fact Britain, which had deposed the imperial heir of the French revolution, now had to grapple with the outcome of her own in dustrial revolution. FOr during these twenty-one years of war the wonder-working inventions of Arkwright, Watt, Trevithick and Stephenson were multiplying steam-factories and laying out the first primitive railways—a change which drew population towards the coal fields. There these new amorphous groups, at the mercy of masters as hard as themselves, formed political gobbets indi gestible by the old Georgian England. The discontent of the working classes during the war having largely ranged them with the Jacobins, the Pitt ministry in 1799 had suppressed all com binations of wage-earners. Trade unions being illegal, dissatis faction with low wages and bad housing conditions took a threaten ing turn, as was seen in the Luddite Riots (see LUDDITES) of 1810 181 I and many outbreaks after the peace.

The schism between the new industrial England and the old agricultural England now yawned deep. For in 1815 farmers who during five years had waxed fat on wheat at an average of 1 oo shillings the quarter, had to face a drop to 63 shillings. The parliament of landlords, seeking to "save the farmer," imposed the Corn Law of 1815 excluding foreign corn until home grown corn reached the average of So shillings the quarter. The income tax of two shillings in the £ also gave place in 1816 to duties on very many articles which raised prices out of all proportion. Wages ruling low, there were numerous riots, the worst being the affair called Peterloo (q.v.) on the outskirts of Manchester (1819), when, at a meeting on behalf of parliamentary reform, the magis trates, in a fit of nervousness, let the Cheshire yeomanry charge, a dozen persons being killed and hundreds injured in the stampede. Rick burning in the country and machine breaking in the factories being rife, the Liverpool ministry, with Wellington and lords Sidmouth and Castlereagh as leading spirits, passed the repressive "Six Acts" (1819), which incited the extreme Radicals to the futile Cato street plot for the murder of ministers (182o). Know ledge now came under the official ban. The work of Bell and Lancaster in the new National schools and British schools being deemed dangerous, education was discouraged, and pamphlets and newspapers were subjected to a tax of fourpence a copy. The result was to favour the growth of the "unstamped press," secretly printed and circulated by Hetherington, Lovett and other working-men Radicals. And while the base of the social structure heaved with discontent the scandals of George IV.'s life and in 182o-21 his vulgar feud with Queen Caroline threatened to blow off the apex. Revolution, however, was averted both by the good sense of the mass of the people and by the slow but steady im provement of industrial conditions. Despite the financial vagaries of Vansittart, chancellor of the exchequer down to 1823, the Liv erpool administration (1812-27) paid off much war-debt, reduced its rate of interest, resumed cash payments at banks in 1821-23, and was then able to remit some f3,500,000 in taxation. Hus kisson, as president of the Board of Trade, reformed the naviga tion laws, lessened the duties on silks and sought to give effect to free trade principles. Nevertheless, Liverpool and his colleagues still opposed parliamentary reform, though the changing con ditions of English life rendered the old system increasingly anom alous, and aroused general discontent, stridently voiced by the ablest of English pamphleteers, William Cobbett, and by several agitators.

Canning.

On a higher plane was British foreign policy, ably conducted by Castlereagh. He, the cementer of the European alliance against Napoleon, now steadily and in the main success fully opposed the monarchical reaction symbolized in the Holy Alliance (q.v.) and manipulated by Metternich. Thus throughout the period of the Congresses (1818-22) Britain exercised a moderating influence detested by the autocrats. After his suicide (1822), his rival and successor, Canning, imparted an even more progressive trend to foreign policy. Acute friction with France ensued in 1823 owing to her invasion of Spain on behalf of the Spanish autocrat Ferdinand VII., and her designs on Spanish America, then freeing itself from the mother-land. By way of counterpoise Canning proposed joint action with the United States. Unfortunately, President Monroe declined it, but issued the mes sage, termed the Monroe Doctrine (q.v.), warning off the Con tinental Powers from the New World. Canning also recognized the independence of the Spanish American colonies on Dec. 31, 1824; and both they and the reactionary monarchs recognized in Britain's naval supremacy the decisive factor in the situation. Their rage was vented less on Monroe than on Canning; and he declared with no less justice than pride : "I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old." In the sequel he was able to counteract reaction both in Iberian affairs and by assuring the independence of Brazil, before he turned to grapple with the "eternal" Eastern question (q.v.).

The Greeks, then almost beaten in their heroic struggle for independence, owe far more to Canning than they have generally realized. Though not claiming for them independence, which then seemed hopeless, he cautiously prepared the way for it, first, in 1823, by recognizing them as belligerents, next by sending to Constantinople as ambassador Stratford Canning with pro-Greek instructions, also by framing a close agreement with the new tsar, Nicholas I. After Canning became prime minister (April, 1827) this masterly orientation in British policy led to the Treaty of London (July 6, 1827) between Britain, Russia and France for imposing an armistice on Turks and Greeks with the ulterior aim of establishing Greek autonomy under the Sultan's suzerainty; failing which the three powers would interpose to prevent further hostilities. Before this last (secret) clause took effect Canning died (Aug. 8) ; but his last diplomatic action led to the joint pacific blockade of the Morea, which involved the Battle of Navarino (q.v.). More than any one man, Canning freed Greece.

Less progressive in home than in foreign affairs, Canning blocked the way to reform except in regard to Catholic emanci pation, which, as a pupil of Pitt, he sought to further. Finally, Wellington as prime minister (1828-30) had reluctantly to con cede this measure as needed to pacify Ireland, then roused to passion by O'Connell's indignant oratory. Despite the king's op position and the no-popery cry, the bill passed both houses in March–April, 1829. Justice had been tardily done to Noncon formists in 1828 by the abolition of the Test and Corporation Acts (see TEST ACTS) on the motion of Lord John Russell.

Parliamentary Reform.

Meanwhile the disfranchisement of three of the most rotten boroughs, Grampound, Penryn and East Retford, showed that parliamentary reform could not long be staved off. That question had passed through the following phases—in 178o-84 constitutional growth, 1785-90 apathy, 1790 98 Gallophile effervescence, 1799-1815 apathy, 1815-29 revival under the impulse of material distress and the diatribes of Cobbett, etc. The quick shifting of population to the new industrial towns furnished an even more cogent argument against the old haphazard plan whereby many villages returned two members apiece and Cornwall sent up 44 members as against 45 from the whole of Scotland. The caprices of the old franchise being equally fantastic, Lord John Russell easily proved the need for a system which would be intelligible and national. Fortunately, the opportune death of George IV. now brought to the throne William IV. ; and against the homely "sailor king" it was hard to get up a revolution. The general election of September, under the impulse of the democratic July revolution at Paris, sent up a majority favourable to Reform. Wellington, declaring in favour of the old system as the best that the wit of man could devise, was beaten; and the second Earl Grey formed a ministry, which, after two rejections by the House of Lords and fierce rioting by way of protest, car ried its third Bill through that house on June 4, 1832.

That measure disfranchised 56 nomination boroughs, and halved the members from 3o more. In all 143 seats were left free for distribution and of these 65 were allotted to counties in England and Wales, which were to send 15o members, elected by the 40 shilling freeholders along with f 1 o copyholders and f 5o lease holders. Forty-three towns now became parliamentary boroughs, having a uniform f io household suffrage in place of the old chaotic franchises- Scotland now gained her due place in parlia ment. The power or the squires was lessened, for shop-keepers in the towns, and in the counties, landlords and farmers, now formed the majority of voters. The result disgusted not only the old Tories but also the Radical workingmen, who complained that Grey and Russell had cheated them of power. Hence the Chartist movement of the near future.

Viewing the period as a whole, we see that the divergence and subsequent clash of the reform movements of England and France worked infinite harm on both peoples. Apathy, bred of contentment, hypnotized English reformers in I785-89; just grievances, national excitability and a long series of political blunders worked up those of France to fury, with its sequel the Terror and war with England. That internecine conflict led France to an empire, England to reaction. Fear of the red spectre haunted the minds of Pitt's followers even up to 1827. Fox and his dis ciples saw more clearly that reform would strengthen the con stitution ; but their anti-national tirades during the war long clogged their efforts. Finally the slew but mighty uplift of the industrial revolution removed the war-incubus ; and, by a curious stroke of irony, the Paris revolution of 183o came to clinch the finale at Westminster. When the dust of conflict cleared, the Reform Bill of 1832 was seen to be truly conservative, and might indeed claim a lineal descent from Pitt's reforming efforts in 1783-85. (See also REFORM MOVEMENT and the various bio graphical articles.) (J. H. Ro.)