(By GEORGE BLACK.)
CHAPTER XXI.
The Reformed Parliament of 1833 proved somewhat reactionary in its influence, by reason of the inexperience of many of its members and the extreme opinions of an other section. It was by no means singular in this respect — legislative bodies recruited after a reform battle which has enlarged the area of enlistment have always been deemed to overshoot the mark, in the opinion of the timid, the conservative, and the cautious.
One of the foremost leaders of radical thought in this seething cauldron of unsettled opinion, was Joseph Hume, member for Montrose, and the son of a Scotch fisherman of that town. He had travelled the world, first as a seaman, and had made a large fortune in India, which he was now spending in defence of liberty and the rights of man. Hume was returned in 1816, but did not at once espouse the side of the people. Indeed, it was probably the already mentioned massacre by cavalry of over 400 men and women at St. Peters, Manchester, in 1819, which showed unmistakably where his sympathies lay. Hume's denunciation in parliament of this carnage was so unparalleled, so unconstitutional, that he was simply howled down, and indeed from that date onward, until the passing of the Reform Act, there existed a conspiracy to drown this voice whenever he raised it in the people's cause. When the question of reform was before the country, the party of which Hume was the nominal head, had demanded manhood suffrage ; but had been advised by the Grey party to accept a compromise rather than that all should be lost, with a promise of remedial legislation to follow. In the new Parliament, Hume, evolving out of chaos the nucleus of a Radical Party, was not slow to accuse the Grey Ministry of failure to keep its pledges. It was perhaps partially because of the attacks made on him by his whilom allies that Earl Grey resigned in 1834, when his Ministry was reconstituted under the leadership of Viscount Melbourne. The Grey administration, though robbed of much of its power for good by unremitting fluctuations of public opinion, had certainly done more during its ten years of office than had any of its predecessors. In 1833, it brought about the suppression of slavery in the British colonies at a cost of 20 millions ; it abolished the commercial monopoly of the East India Company, and threw the trade open to all traders ; in 1834, it enacted the new Poor Law to cope with the growing pauperism ; in 1835, it restored to the towns by the Municipal Corporations Act the self-government of which they had been deprived ever since the fourteenth century ; it commuted the tithes ; legalised civil marriage at the instance of the Dissenters ; and founded a system of national education in 1834.
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The first Melbourne administration did not last long in consequence of the antagonism of the King, who now espoused the causes of the Tories. It was succeeded briefly by Sir Robert Peel's Cabinet, which was quickly wiped out by a general election, which returned the Whigs under Lord Melbourne to office. One of the foremost acts of this administration was its extension of the educational grants. But the Ministry was somewhat hampered by Lord Palmerston's vigorous foreign policy. He was the principle agent in the Quadruple Alliance with France and the two Peninsular nations, to keep Donna Maria on the throne, of Portugal and Queen Isabella on that of Spain ; and in the war with China in 1839, because that country refused opium a free entry to its dominions — as unpopular as it was unjust. In that year also an Afghan rising and the annihilation of the British in the Khyber Pass somewhat weakened the Government. But here, I have somewhat overshot the mark, for William IV. died in 1837, and was succeeded by Victoria, daughter of Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent— the fifth child and fourth son of George III.— by Victoria, daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, and widow of the Prince of Leiningen. By the way, George III. and Queen Sophia Charlotte had a numerous family — nine sons and six daughters !
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With the death of William IV., the Kingdom of Hanover passed to the next male heir, Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, and the British people were relieved of a probable source of further embroilment. Lord Melbourne, though highly in favor with the Queen, had steadily lost favor with the people, and was bitterly opposed by the landowners and farmers who desired a maintenance of the Protectionist policy of the country. Therefore, the general election restored to power the Tory Party, who then, for the first time, adopted the name of Conservatives. They came in, headed by Sir Robert Peel, with a majority of 100. It was about this time that Daniel O'Connell was convicted of sedition and liberated on an appeal to the House of Lords; China was granted peace on condition that she threw open some of her ports : General Pollock avenged the Cabul disaster ; and the Indian province of Scinde was annexed. The Anti-Corn-Law League, formed in 1839, had been steadily gaining ground. Its appeals had even weakened the beliefs of Peel, returned to power as a protectionist, and in 1846 the failure of the potato crop in Ireland compelled him to recognize that dear food could not be a cure for poverty or a means of general prosperity. And so, after a time, he introduced and passed into law a Bill for the repeal of the corn duties. But his own party punished him by turning him out of office, and he made way in 1852 for the Whigs under Sir John Russell — a man whose body was said to be too small to cover his intellect, left improperly exposed. The Russell Ministry carried out the work begun by Peel, and a policy of revenue tariff, falsely called freetrade, was eventually established in every department of commercialism. In 1848, there were several continental revolutions — those in France, Prussia, and Italy being the most serious. In the former country, Louis Philippe was forced to abdicate, and a provisional government was formed, then in a few months Louis Napoleon was elected President of France by a plebiscite vote. He, by the way, was at once the nephew and the step-grandson of the great Napoleon, being the putative son of his brother Louis, King of Holland, by Hortense, daughter of the Empress Josephine by Beauharnais, her first husband. About this time, the Smith O'Brien rising in Ireland was suppressed, and the defeat of the Sikhs in India was followed by the annexation of the Punjaub. And now the Chartists began their agitation.
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Chartism, largely a concept from the teachings of Paine, Godwin, Cobbett, Bentham, Cartwright, and others, was brought to consciousness mainly by the grouping together in factories of large bodies of men in similar economic circumstances. It first budded forth as The London Workingmen's Association, which called its first public meeting at the Crown and Anchor, Strand, on Feb. 28, 1837, when a petition — afterwards presented to the House of Commons by Mr. Roebuck— was drawn up by Secretary N. Lovett. The prayer of the petition afterwards became the basis of the document known to history as The People's Charter. At a meeting held in the following May several Ms.P. were present, and it was decided to draw up a Bill for the reform of the House of Lords and the entire system of political representation. The drafting committee was thus composed — Daniel O'Connell, T. A. Roebuck, W. S. Crawford, Dr. Bowring, J. P. Thompson, C. Hindley, W. Lovett, H. Vincent, Hetherington, Leader, Cleave, Watson, and Moore. The Bill then drafted was circulated throughout the Kingdom in 1836, together with the Charter. It proposed to give the suffrage to all sane males of 21 years who were free men at election time, and to all naturalised foreigners of two years' residence in the country ; to divide the country into 300 electoral districts of about 20,000 voters each ; that each district should return only one representative ; that the boundaries be laid out by specially appointed commissioners after each census taking ; and so on. In 1840, a committee appointed by the electors of Westminster, and which was presided over by Charles James Fox and Thomas Brand Hollis, recommended in its report that the electors should demand : — (1) Annual Parliaments; (2) universal suffrage for males; (3) equal voting districts ; (4) no property qualification ; (5) voting by ballot ; (6) payment of members.
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Because of these modest demands the Chartists were styled traitors to the realm, levellers, and disturbers of the peace. These epithets are freely launched to-day at those Australians who have gained five out of the six points of the Charter— the first having been abandoned — and are striving, for fresh reforms based thereon. And most certainly it will be found when these reforms are also won, that they, like the five Charter reforms, have resulted in an enlargement of the public welfare, and in an increased peace and contentment. The Chartists saw clearly what British trade unionism has just begun to recognize— the close connection between things political and economic. Stephens is reported to have said on one occasion: Chartism is a knife and fork question. The Charter for us means decent lodging, good eating and drinking, high wages, and short hours. About 1840, the movement was split into two parties — one proposing to achieve its ends by constitutional methods, and the other talking noisily of physical force. The latter body discredited the movement with the public, and the constitutional Chartists were gradually absorbed by Robert Owen's co-operative movement. The revolutionary party — headed chiefly by Bronterre O'Brien, Ernest Jones, Feargus O'Connor, Frost, and Stephens — was at length overawed by the much stronger physical force arguments advanced by the authorities. Their last public demonstration of any consequence took place at Kensington Common on 10th April, 1848, when 500,000 people were asked to assemble in order that they might march to the House of Commons, and there present through their leaders a petition in favor of the Charter, bearing 6,000,000 signatures. But only 50,000 assembled, and they were overawed by troops, with, whom the Duke of Wellington filled London, and 170,000 special constables whom he had enrolled.
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Prior to this occurrence, in 1847 to be exact, the Radicals in Parliament— usually led by Joseph Hume — coalesced with Disreali's Young England Party and legalised the ten hours working day in the teeth of Lord John Russell. In 1851, the Radicals were supposed to have a majority of the Commons in favor of their proposals to extend the franchise, to introduce vote by ballot, and to wipe out the glaring anomaly which gave two members each to Knaresborough, 230 votes ; Honiton, 287; Tavistock, 336 ; Chippenham, 314 ; Cirencester, 467 ; Devizes, 358 ; Totries, 362 ; Birmingham, 7317 ; Lambeth, 16,284 ; Finsbury, 17,735 ; Marylebone, 18,079 ; and Tower Hamlets, 21,131. But by a clever political trick, Lord John Russell was able further to postpone these reforms for a period of from seventeen to thirty-three years. At a later date, the Radicals, then occasionally known as the Working-Class Party, made other attempts which also failed. For some unknown reason, this party became a mere wing of the Liberal force on the death of Hume.
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In 1852, the Conservatives under Lord Derby displaced the Whigs under Russell, but in a few months the latter body, headed by Lord Aberdeen, climbed back to office by a coalition with the Free Traders. It was about this time that Louis Napoleon, by his infamous coup d'etat of November, 1852, placed himself on the French throne a position he had long sought. Britain took him to her bosom, and in 1854 the silly and purposeless invasion of the Crimea by Britain, France, and Sardinia was entered on. The British troops were so badly prepared to meet the terrible Russian winter— being ill-housed, ill-clad, and but half fed — that it killed them off as a hard frost does flies. The public who had so enthusiastically cheered the departing soldiers objected to murder of such a prosaic character, and Lord Aberdeen was forced early in 1855 to make way for Lord Palmerston, whose Cabinet included the most warlike members of the late administration. The allies were successful at the Alma and at Inkermann, and when Sebastopol fell in 1856, after a year's siege, the key to the Crimea was won, and Russia consented to the peace of Paris. In 1857 occurred the mutiny of the native troops in Bengal. Delhi was taken, the Europeans at Cawnpore were massacred, and Lucknow was besieged. But the victories of Sir Henry Havelock, Sir Colin Campbell, Sir James Outram, suppressed the revolt within the year, and the government of India was at once transferred from the Company to the Crown — a step which should have been taken in the days of Warren Hastings. The attempt of Orsini to assassinate with a bomb Napoleon the Little in 1858, caused Palmerston to attempt to amend the laws concerning political conspiracy, but Parliament was against panic legislation, and it was defeated. This defeat had a dual effect — it brought Lord Derby again into power, and wrung such threats of reprisals from some hysterical Frenchmen as to cause a recrudescence of the Volunteer movement in Britain, where 150,000 voluntary warriors were soon under arms. The Derby administration did not last long, for the election of 1859 brought Lord Palmerston again into power, and his Ministry endured until his death in 1865. These were years of political inaction so far as reform was concerned, for Palmerston's sole aim apparently was to keep the country out of the great wars which then took place — between France and Austria (1859), with the result that Italy was freed from the tyranny of the latter country ; the American Civil War (1861-5), which ended in the abolition of slavery and the maintenance of the federation; a rising in Poland against the Austrian and Russian usurpers ; and the struggle of Denmark against the aggressions of Austria and Prussia in 1864, which ended in the smaller country's loss of the Schleswig-Holstein provinces. Lord John Russell succeeded Palmerston as Premier, and he successfully followed his policy of neutrality during the war between Prussia and Austria (1866), in which victory rested with Prussia and the needle gun, and of which the result eventually was the Federation, of the German principalities under the headship of Prussia.
(To be continued.)
Worker (Wagga, NSW ), Saturday 15 August 1903, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article145877193
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