Fotheringham John Knight
The Political History of England – Vol XI
The cry for retrenchment, now taken up by the country gentlemen, and not unmingled with suggestions for a partial repudiation of the national debt, compelled the government to adopt a policy of strict economy. Accordingly, in 1822, Vansittart introduced a scheme for the conversion of the so-called "Navy 5 per cents.," which resulted in a saving of above £1,000,000 annually. He also carried a more questionable scheme for the payment of military, naval, and civil pensions, which then amounted to £4,900,000 a year, but were falling in rapidly; the money required for this purpose was to be borrowed by trustees, and was to be repaid in the course of forty-five years at the rate of £2,800,000 a year; in this way an immediate saving of about £2,000,000 annually was effected at the cost, however, of the next generation. By means of these expedients, with a considerable reduction of official salaries, the government was enabled to repeal the additional duty on malt, to diminish the duties on salt and leather, and, on the whole to remit about £3,500,000 of taxes. When the entire credit of financial reform is given to Huskisson, Joseph Hume, and other economists of the new school, it should not be forgotten that a beginning was made by economists of the old school, before Huskisson joined the government in 1823, or Robinson took Vansittart's place as chancellor of the exchequer.
From the beginning of this reign a more enlightened spirit may be traced in parliamentary debates. This was aided by the growth of a constitutional movement in favour of reform in parliament as the first step towards a redress of grievances. The movement left its first trace on the statute-book in a measure carried by Lord John Russell in the session of 1821 for the disfranchisement of Grampound, though the vacant seats were transferred to the county of York, instead of to the "village" of Leeds or some other of the great unrepresented cities. This was the first instance of the actual disfranchisement of a constituency, though it was not without precedent that the franchise of a corrupt borough should be extended to the freeholders of the surrounding district. A notable sign of the progressive change was the reconstruction of the cabinet in 1822. Liverpool, who always possessed the gift of working harmoniously with colleagues of different views and felt the weakness of his present ministry, once more attempted to bring about a coalition with the Grenville party in the opposition. Grenville had long been drifting away from his alliance with Grey, and had been a stout advocate of repressive legislation which the more advanced whigs opposed. Though he declined office for himself, several of his relatives and adherents were rewarded with minor appointments, his cousin, Charles Wynn, became president of the board of control, in succession to Bragge-Bathurst, who had himself succeeded Canning in the previous year, and his nephew, the Marquis of Buckingham, obtained a dukedom. Such recruits added little strength to the Liverpool government, and Holland well said that "all articles are now to be had at low prices, except Grenvilles".
THE DEATH OF CASTLEREAGH.
But Liverpool gained far more powerful coadjutors in the Marquis Wellesley, Peel, and Canning. In December, 1821, Wellesley undertook the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, which had relapsed into so disturbed a state that it had been proposed to make Wellington both viceroy and commander-in-chief. The significance of this selection was increased by the appointment of Plunket as attorney-general. Sidmouth, while retaining his seat in the cabinet, retired, by his own wish, from the office of home secretary, with a sense of having pacified the country, and was succeeded by Peel. Castlereagh, now Marquis of Londonderry, remained foreign secretary, but on August 12, 1822, as he was on the point of setting out for the congress of Verona, he died, like Whitbread and Romilly, by his own hand. His suicidal act was clearly due to a morbid fit of depression, under the stress of anxieties protracted over more than twenty years; and the disordered state of his mind had been observed, not only by Wellington, but also by the king. His successor was Canning, who also became leader of the house of commons.
The characters and political aims of these rival statesmen have often been contrasted by historians of a later age, who have seldom done justice to Castlereagh. It is remembered that he was the author of the Walcheren expedition; it is forgotten that he was the advocate of sending a powerful force to the Baltic coast at the critical moment between Jena and Eylau, that he was not altogether responsible for the delays which rendered the Walcheren expedition abortive or for the choice of its incompetent commander, that his prime object was to strike a crushing blow at Napoleon's naval power, and that, if his instructions had been obeyed, this would have been effected by a rapid advance upon Antwerp when nearly all the French troops had been withdrawn from the Netherlands. It is remembered that he was at the war office when the operations of Wellington in the Peninsula were crippled for want of supplies; it is forgotten that it was he who selected Wellington, and that he loyally strained every nerve to keep him supplied with troops, provisions, and specie, when few but himself believed in the policy of the Peninsular war, and Sir John Moore had assured him that if the French dominated Spain, they could not be resisted in Portugal. It is remembered – or rather it is assumed – that he was the eager promoter of coercive and reactionary legislation at home; it is forgotten, or ignored, that he was among the earliest and staunchest advocates of catholic emancipation, and that a despotic temper is belied by the whole tone of his speeches. Above all, he is unjustly credited, in the face of direct evidence to the contrary, with being the champion of absolutism in the councils of Europe, the fact being not only that his voice was always on the side of moderation and conciliation, but that Canning himself, on succeeding him, dissociated Great Britain from the holy alliance by taking his stand upon an admirable despatch of Castlereagh and adopting it as his own. When he met with his tragical end, the brutal shouts of exultation raised by a portion of the crowd at his funeral were the expression of sheer ignorance and not of intelligent public opinion. He was a tory, in days when most patriots were tories, but he was a tory of the best type; and we of a later generation can see that few statesmen of George III.'s reign have left a purer reputation or rendered greater services to their country.
CANNING AND PEEL.
George Canning, his successor, has been far more favourably judged by posterity, and not without reason, if intellectual brilliancy is a supreme test of political merit. A firm adherent of Pitt, and a somewhat unscrupulous critic of Addington, he was probably the first parliamentary orator of the nineteenth century, with the possible exception of Sheridan. Pitt's eloquence was of a loftier and simpler type, Fox's was more impetuous and spontaneous; Peel's range of political knowledge was far wider; Gladstone excelled all, not only in length of experience but in readiness and dialectical resource. Canning's rhetoric was of a finer quality and was combined with great debating power, but he was a man to inspire admiration rather than confidence, and had not held one of the higher political offices since his resignation in 1809, after his quarrel with Castlereagh. He accepted a mission to Portugal, however, and was in Lisbon when Napoleon returned from Elba. In 1816, as has been seen, he became president of the board of control, but, having been formerly one of the queen's advisers, he declined to have anything to do with her trial and remained abroad during its continuance. In December, 1820, he returned, but persisted in resigning his place at the board of control on the supposed ground that further parliamentary discussion of the queen's case was inevitable. On this occasion he received a special vote of thanks from the directors of the East India Company for his services on the board. The king objected to his readmission after the queen's death, and he was a private member of parliament when he was offered and undertook the governor-generalship of India in March, 1822. But his departure was delayed until August, and he was on his way to bid farewell to his constituents at Liverpool when Castlereagh destroyed himself. It was generally felt that no other man was so well qualified as Canning to succeed him. But the king declared his "final and unalterable decision" to sanction no such change. Though he afterwards relented, on the remonstrances of Wellington, he did so with a bad grace; but there was no delay on Canning's part in accepting the foreign secretaryship thus offered. From his acceptance may be dated the most remarkable part of his career.
The accession of Peel to the Liverpool ministry, in the capacity of home secretary; was only less important than that of Canning. Hitherto, Peel had mostly been known to the British public as chief secretary for Ireland, and as chairman of the committee which, in 1819, recommended the early resumption of cash payments. In both these posts he displayed a certain moderation and independence of mind, combined with a rare capacity for business, which marked him out as a great administrator. This promise he amply fulfilled as home secretary. He was the first minister of the crown who took up the philanthropic work of Romilly and Mackintosh, largely reducing the number of offences for which capital punishment could be inflicted. He was also the first to reform the police system of London, and to substitute for a multitude of decrepit watchmen, incapable of dealing with gangs of active criminals, a disciplined body of stalwart constables, which has since been copied in every county and large town of Great Britain. Above all, while he cannot be said to have shown a statesmanlike insight or foresight of the highest order, he could read the signs of the times and the temper of his countrymen with a sagacity far beyond that of his predecessor, Sidmouth, or of such politicians as Eldon and Castlereagh. In him was represented the domestic policy of Pitt in his earlier days, as Pitt's financial views were represented in Huskisson, who had actually served under him.
Though Huskisson was only made president of the board of trade, in January, 1823, and not chancellor of the exchequer, it is certain that his mind controlled that of Robinson, who succeeded Vansittart in that position. Vansittart, who was created Lord Bexley, succeeded Bragge-Bathurst as chancellor of the duchy. The cabinet changes were completed in October by the removal of Wellesley Pole, now Lord Maryborough, from the office of master of the mint. Huskisson, if any man, was the leading pioneer of free trade, and there can be little doubt that, had he not died prematurely, its adoption would have been hastened by ten or fifteen years. In his first year of office he welcomed petitions for the repeal of the import duties on foreign wool, but failed to convince the wool manufacturers that it must be accompanied by the abolition of export duties on British wool. The proposed reform was, therefore, dropped, and a like fate befell his attempt in the same year to benefit the silk trade by abolishing certain vexatious restrictions upon it, including the practice of fixing the wages of Spitalfields weavers by an order of the magistrates. For the moment the ignorant outcry of the journeymen themselves prevailed over their real interests, but in the following year, 1824, Huskisson carried a much wider measure, providing that foreign silks, hitherto excluded, should be admitted subject to a duty of 30 per cent. in and after 1826, and another measure for the joint relief of wool growers and wool manufacturers which imposed a small duty of equal amount on the importation and the exportation of wool.
His great achievement in 1823 was the reform of the navigation laws. These acts, dating from the commonwealth and the restoration, gave British shipowners a qualified monopoly of the carrying trade, since they prohibited the importation of European goods except in British ships or ships of the producing country, while the importation of goods from other quarters of the world was confined to British ships only. America had protested against this exclusive system, and it was abandoned, as regards the United States, by the treaty of Ghent in 1814. The mercantile states of Europe soon followed the example of America, and the reciprocity of duties bill, introduced by Huskisson on June 6, 1823, conceded equal rights to all countries reciprocating the concession, only retaining the exclusion against such countries as might reject equality of trade. The change involved some hardship to shipowners who had built their vessels with timber bought at prices raised by heavy duties, but they were too shortsighted to accept the compromise offered by Huskisson. Before long, however, the act was justified, and the shipowners compensated by a rapid increase in British shipping.
AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT.
For nearly five years after the accession of George IV. the state of the country was, on the whole, more prosperous, and the industrial classes were more contented, than in the five years next preceding. Such restlessness as there was prevailed among farmers and agricultural labourers rather than among workmen in the manufacturing districts, and in 1823 every branch of manufactures was reported to be flourishing. It is difficult for a later generation, accustomed to consider 30s. a quarter a fair price for wheat, to understand the perennial complaints and petitions of the agricultural interest when 60s. a quarter was regarded as a low price for wheat, and the cultivation of wheat extended over a vastly larger area than it does at present. Nor is the difficulty lessened, when we remember the miserably low rate of wages then paid by farmers. A partial explanation may be found in the fact that what they saved in wages they lost in poor rates, and that most agricultural products except corn were sold at a very small profit. The high poor rates were the result of the disastrous system of giving allowances to labourers.
But there were other evils caused by the vicious policy pursued by the government. The encouragement of home production had led to the enclosure of land not fit for cultivation, so that a slight fall in prices meant ruin to many farmers. Moreover, the corn laws, though framed for the purpose of arresting fluctuations in price, actually increased fluctuations and thus enhanced the risks attending agricultural enterprise. Nor were landlords who had thriven on war prices, and raised the scale of their establishments as if these prices were to be perpetual, willing to reduce their rents on the return of peace. Rent was said to have risen 70 per cent. since 1792; but the landlords were often embarrassed, because their lands had too often been burdened with jointures, settlements, and mortgages during the war. It was in their interest that the act of 1815, which aimed at maintaining war prices, had been passed. But the deeper reason for all this clamour from the rural districts was the stagnation of ideas, and incapacity of improvement, engendered by an artificial monopoly of the national food supply. This was not the special lesson impressed upon landlords or tenants by Cobbett, whose violent and delusive writings had a large circulation in the country. But his teaching was so far beneficial that it quickened the demand for parliamentary reform, though the fruits of that reform were destined to be very different from the expectations which he excited.
SPECULATIVE FRENZY.
The spell of general prosperity which, in spite of some distress in the rural districts, prevailed in the years 1820-23 was somewhat broken in 1824 by strikes and outrages in the manufacturing districts. Strikes for higher wages naturally arose out of the increase in mill owners' profits, and the ferocious spirit displayed by the strikers against masters and fellow-workmen was attributed by reformers to the one-sided operation of the combination laws. Accordingly, a committee of the house of commons reported in favour of repealing these laws, and also part of the common law which treated coercion either by trade unions or by masters as conspiracy. A bill founded on this report was hastily passed, with the natural result that strikes broke out in every quarter of the country; wholesale and cruel oppression was practised by trade unionists, and it became necessary for parliament to retrace its steps. Under a new act, passed in 1825, which continued in force until very recent times, trade unions were recognised as legal, but their worst malpractices were once more brought within the control of the criminal law.71 So far the commercial policy of Huskisson was justified, as a whole, by its effects on trade, and the session of 1824 was closed on June 25 by a cheerful speech from the king, in which the disturbed state of Ireland was the only topic suggestive of anxiety. Already, however, the revival of commercial hopefulness at home, with the opening of new markets in South America, was paving the way for the most ruinous mania of speculation known in England since the south sea bubble. It was well that sound and sober-minded economists now guided the action of the government, and that Liverpool proved himself a worthy successor of Sir Robert Walpole during the great financial crisis of 1825.72
The speculative frenzy of 1825 differed from the railway mania of the next generation in that it had no solid basis of remunerative investment. The development of the railway system, after the application of locomotive steam engines to iron tramways, offered a legitimate promise of large profits, and this promise would have been still more amply realised but for the shameful waste of capital on competition and law expenses. It was otherwise with the dupes and victims of the rage for speculation which possessed all classes of society in 1825, and arose out of an immense accumulation of wealth for which no safe employment could be found at home except at a modest rate of interest. The weakening of the hold of Spain on South America left her colonies open to foreign trade, but the enterprises there and elsewhere which absorbed the hard-won savings of humble families, by thousands and tens of thousands, were nearly all chimerical, and some of them grotesque in their absurdity. Whether or not warming-pans and skates were actually exported to the tropics, it is certain that Scotch dairy-women emigrated to Buenos Ayres for the purpose of milking wild cows and churning butter for people who preferred oil. The incredible multiplication of bubble-companies was facilitated by a marvellous cheapness of money, largely due to an inordinate issue of notes by country bankers, and even by the Bank of England, in spite of the fact that gold and silver were known to be leaving the country in vast quantities, especially in the shape of loans to France. The inevitable reaction came when the Bank of England contracted its issue of notes in order to arrest the drain of gold; goods recklessly bought up had to be sold at a fearful loss, bills upon which advances had been made proved to be of no value, and several great London banking houses stopped payment, bringing down in their fall a much larger number of country banks dependent on them.
In the month of December, 1825, the crisis was at its height, and it is stated that within six or seven weeks after the failure of the banking firm of Pole & Company on the 5th, sixty or seventy banks had broken. The king's speech in July had congratulated parliament on increasing prosperity and had betrayed no misgivings about its stability. When the crash came, however, the ministers showed no want of firmness or resource. They could not repair the consequences of national folly, but they devoted themselves with intelligence to a restoration of credit. For this purpose they suppressed at once the further issue of small notes from country banks by a high-handed act of authority, for which they admitted that an act of indemnity might be needed. At the same time they rapidly increased the supply of small notes from the Bank of England, and of coin from the mint. Moreover, they induced the Bank of England to establish branches in a few provincial towns and to make advances upon merchants' goods to the amount of three millions. It cost a greater effort to break down the monopoly of the Bank of England by legalising joint-stock banks in the provinces, though not within a distance of sixty-five miles from London. Such practical expedients as these, seconded by the good sense of the mercantile community, proved sufficient to avert a catastrophe only less disastrous than national bankruptcy. With the subsidence of alarm, the causes of alarm also subsided, the recuperative powers of the country reasserted themselves, as during the great war, and the heart-breaking anxieties of 1825-26 were ignored, if not forgotten, in the political excitement of 1827.73
ECONOMIC REFORM.
The budgets of 1823-26 indeed mark a memorable advance in financial reform, which the commercial panic of 1825 scarcely interrupted. There had been a reduction of the national debt by about £25,000,000. "The poorer householders had been relieved from the pressure both of house tax and window tax. The manufacturing classes had been encouraged by the reduction of the duties on silk, wool, and iron. The consuming classes had been benefited by the reduction of duties on spirits, wines, coffee, and sugar."74 Owing to Huskisson's enlightened policy the old navigation laws had been repealed upon the condition of reciprocity; the combination laws had been liberally revised; various bounties had been abandoned on free trade principles, and the monstrous evils of smuggling had been greatly abated. If the chancellor of the exchequer could show no surplus in 1826, he could at least boast that after so desperate a crisis there was no deficit, and he had no reason to be ashamed of Cobbett's nickname, "Prosperity Robinson," which he owed to his optimism, largely founded upon facts. Before the close of the year 1826, however, this optimism received a rude shock. The agitation against the corn laws assumed an acuter form than ever, and Huskisson prudently deprecated it on the simple ground that no effective action could be taken in an expiring parliament. Distress had recurred in the manufacturing districts; mills and power-looms were again destroyed. The free trade policy of Huskisson was vigorously attacked in parliament, but it was successfully defended in powerful speeches by Canning as well as by himself. Ultimately the government, having obtained limited powers from parliament to admit foreign corn during the temporary emergency, had the courage to exceed those powers and seek an indemnity from the next parliament.
The dissolution of 1826, closing the life of one of the longest parliaments in modern times, was the prelude to a very eventful year. The general election brought into prominence the two burning questions of catholic relief and the corn laws, and unseated for the moment Brougham, Cobbett, Hunt, and Lord John Russell, but it produced no material change in the balance of parties. Little was done in the short autumn session, but when parliament met again early in February, 1827, great events had already cast their shadows before. The Duke of York, heir-presumptive to the crown, had died on January 5. He was known to be a strong tory in politics, but, in spite of this, and of the scandals which attached to his name in earlier years, he enjoyed a considerable share of popular confidence. Compared with his elder brother, he was respected; he was a true Englishman, like his father, whom he resembled in character; his administration of the army had survived hostile criticism, while a declaration which he had recently made against catholic emancipation had produced a profound impression on public opinion. Much less was known of the Duke of Clarence, who stood next in succession. He had already injured himself in public estimation by declining the increased allowance offered him, and then claiming it with arrears; nor did he now improve his position in the eyes of his future subjects by stickling for a larger addition to it than parliament was disposed to grant. But the Duke of York's death was followed by a far more important incident. Liverpool was disabled by illness from attending his funeral, which, occurring in the depth of winter, proved directly fatal to one of those who were present, and seriously weakened the constitutions of others, including Canning. On February 8, the first day of the session, Liverpool was in his place, though in broken health, and on the 17th he took a feeble part in the debate on the grant to the Duke of Clarence. On the following morning he was struck down by a paralytic seizure, and, though his life was prolonged for two years, he never recovered the use of his faculties.
THE CLOSE OF LIVERPOOL'S MINISTRY.
Liverpool's disappearance from the political scenes may be said to mark an epoch in the later history of England. Though only fifty-six years of age, he had been continuously in office for twenty years, and prime minister for fifteen, a tenure of power which none of his predecessors had exceeded except Walpole and Pitt. His lot was cast in the most critical period of the great war, and in the long night of adversity and anxiety which ushered in the "thirty years' peace". As foreign secretary he conducted the negotiations for the peace of Amiens; as home secretary he led the house of lords and was responsible for the government of Ireland; as secretary for war and the colonies he gave Wellington a steady, if not ardent, support in those apparently barren campaigns which strained the national patience; as prime minister he guided the ship of state in all the difficulties of foreign and domestic affairs which arose between 1812 and 1827. Castlereagh may have been the most influential minister in the earlier years of his administration, and Canning in the later, but he was never the mere tool of either; on the contrary, it Is certain that he was treated with respect and deference by all his numerous colleagues. In general capacity and debating power he was inferior to few of them; in temper, judgment, and experience he was superior to all.
He may be said to have lived and died without "a policy," in so far as he forebore to identify himself with any of the great questions then pressing for solution. His real policy both at home and abroad was one of moderation and conciliation; he looked at party divisions almost with the eyes of a permanent official who can work loyally with chiefs of either party; and he succeeded in keeping together in his cabinet ambitious rivals who never would have co-operated under any other leader. This is not the road to fame, neither is it the course which men of imperious character like Castlereagh, or Canning, or Wellington, in his place, would have adopted. But Canning and Wellington actually proved themselves incapable of winning the confidence which Liverpool so long retained, and the whig government which followed them fell to pieces in two years. Moderation in statesmanship does not always imply mediocrity of ability; and if Liverpool failed to see how many institutions needed radical amendment, he was not so blind as some of his more celebrated associates. Not only was he more liberal in his views than Eldon and Castlereagh, but he was less opposed to free trade than most of his cabinet, to parliamentary reform than Canning, and to catholic emancipation than Wellington or Peel. His fault was that he did not act upon his own inward convictions with sufficient promptitude, or assert his own authority with sufficient energy. Had he done so, the beneficial measures of the last years of his administration might have been anticipated, and the country might have been spared much of the misery which darkened the close of George III.'s reign.