Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/385

Rh PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.] ENGLAND 365 poured in from the surrounding districts. These men had been previously drilled, for the purpose, as their own leaders asserted, of enabling them to preserve order, for the pur pose, as the magistrates suspected, of preparing them to take part in an armed insurrection. A fruitless attempt by the magistrates to arrest a popular agitator named Hunt as he was preparing to address the crowd was followed up by a charge of cavalry. Six persons were killed, and a far larger number were wounded in the onslaught. The Manchester massacre divided the kingdom into opposite camps. The use of military violence roused a feeling which struck a chord of old English feeling inherited from the days when Oliver s dragoons had made themselves hated. Large meetings were held to protest, and were addressed by men who had but little sympathy with the previous agitation. Parliament replied by enacting new laws, known as the Six Acts, in restraint of sedition, by sharpening the powers of the administrators of justice. The Government took up the same antagonistic position against the right of English men to meet for political purposes which had been taken up in the days of the Reign of Terror. But the very fact that there was no reign of terror on the other side of the Channel weakened its hands. The intelligence of the country was no longer on their side. Lord Sidmouth, the Addington who had made so inefficient a prime minister, was not the man to gain support as home secretary for a policy of severity which was only the disguise of weakness ; and Lord Castlereagh, to whom was intrusted the manage ment of foreign affairs, had disgusted all generous minds by his sympathy with despotic rule upon the Continent. Soon after George IV. became king, on the death of his father in 1823, the alienation of the people from the Government was marked by the indignation aroused by the attempts of ministers to pass a Bill of Pains and Penalties depriving the new queen of her rights as the wife of the sovereign on the ground of the alleged immorality of her conduct. Even those who suspected or believed that her conduct had not been blameless, were shocked at an attempt made by a king whose own life was one of notorious profligacy, and whose conduct towards his wife had been cruel and unfeeling, to gain his own ends at the expense of one whom he had expelled from his home anr 1 had exposed to every form of temptation. The failure of the ministers to carry the Bill of Pains and Penalties was a turning-point in the history of the country. The exist ing system lost its hold on the moral feelings as well as pn the intelligence of the nation. For some time to come, sympathy with parliamentary reform would be confined to the ranks of the Opposition. But in 1822 the death of Lord Castlereagh, who had recently become Lord London derry, and the retirement of Lord Sidmouth, placed Can ning in the secretaryship for foreign affairs and Peel at the home office. Canning carried the foreign policy of the country in a new direction. The desire for peace had led the ministry to support the Holy Alliance, a league formed between the absolute sovereigns of the Continent for the suppression in common of all popular movements. Canning broke loose from these old traditions. He made himself loved or hated by offering, without purpose of aggression or aggrandizement, aid or countenance to nations threatened by the great des potic monarchies; and he thus to some extent placed limits on the power of the military despotisms of Europe. Far more cautious and conservative than Canning, Peel took up the work which had been begun by Romilly, and put an end to the barbarous infliction of the penalty of death for slight offences. After Canning s short ministry, followed by his death (1827), Peel, after consenting to the abolition of the Test and Corporation Acts, passed a bill, in conjunction vrith the new prime minister the duke of Wellington, to admit Catholics to a seat in parliament, thus carrying out Domes- Pitt s great plan, though sadly late. From 1823 to 1828 tic policy Huskisson, as president of the Board of Trade, had been of f *1 .*.,,,, i, , j and Hus- at work loosening the bonds of commercial restriction, and ^isson. thus carrying out Pitt s policy in another direction. Such changes, however, were only an instalment of those which were demanded by the now ripened public opinion of the country ; and as the ministers had not been the initiators of the late concessions to Catholics and dissenters, they failed to obtain any enthusiastic support from reform ers ; whilst the fact that the concessions had been made alienated the opponents of reform. On the death of George IV. and the accession of William IV. (1830), a new minis- Lord try, a combination of Whigs and Canning! tes, came into Gre - v * office under Lord Grey. After a struggle lasting over more than a year, parlia- The Re- mentary reform was carried in the teeth of the opposition form Act of the House of Lords. The franchise was so arranged as to give a very large share of influence to the middle classes of the towns. But though the landowning aristocracy was no longer supreme, it was by no means thrown on the ground. Lords and gentlemen of large estate and ancient lineage had taken the lead in the reforming cabinet, and the class which had the advantages of leisure and position on its side would have no difficulty in leading, as soon as it abandoned the attempt to stand alone. Fortunately, too, at the time when the institutions of our country were refounded on a broader basis, science had long taken a form which im pressed the minds of the people with a reverence for know ledge. Mechanical invention, which had accomplished such wonders in the middle of the 18th century, entered upon a fresh period of development when the first passenger railway train was dragged by a locomotive in 1830. Mental power applied to the perfecting of manufacture is not in itself higher than mental power applied in other directions, but it is more easily understood and more readily respected. Experience taught large masses of men to sub mit to the guidance of those who knew what they did not know. Amongst statesmen, too, the shock to the old order produced an open mind for the reception of new ideas, and the necessity of basing authority on a wider foundation produced a desire for the spread of education, and gave rise to a popular literature which aimed at inter preting to the multitude the thoughts by which their con duct might be influenced. The first great act of the reformed parliament bore the Legisla- impress of the higher mind of the nation. The abolition tion h T of slavery (1833) in all British colonies did credit to its jj^ heart; the new poor-law (1834) did credit to its under- p ar ]j a. standing. An attempt to strip the Irish established church ment. of some of its revenues broke up the ministry. There were differences amongst the members of the Government, and those differences were echoed in the country. The king was frightened at the number of changes demanded, dis missed his ministers, and intrusted the formation of a new Government to Sir Robert Peel. The new Government Peel s abandoned the title of Tory for the title of Conservative. first It was the last time that the sovereign actively interfered n in the change of a ministry. The habits of parliament had been much changed since the days of the Regency Bill of 1 788, when it was acknowledged by all that a change of ministry would follow the announcement of the accession of the Prince of Wales to power, without any correspond ing change in the political temper of parliament. Sinecure appointments had recently been lopped away with an unspar ing hand, and the power of corrupting members of parlia ment had been taken away. The character of the members themselves had risen. They were more deeply interested in political causes themselves, and were too clearly brought under the full light of publicity to make it possible for them