The Story of Britain

by Rebecca Fraser

  Next it was the turn of the working man to be treated as a human being. In 1824, after pressure from the Radicals, Peel took the great step forward of repealing the Combination Acts and restoring trade unions. Now employees could act collectively to raise their wages or to petition for shorter hours. Peel had none of the Tory Ultras’ fear of the workers because he knew them from his father’s textile mills. He believed that they had rights. ‘Men who have no property except their manual skill and strength’, he said, ‘ought to be allowed to confer together, if they think fit, for the purpose of determining at what rate they will sell their property.’

  Behind the figures and research which convinced Peel and Huskisson that trade unions would not wreck trade was a tailor with a shop in the Charing Cross Road named Francis Place. But Place was no ordinary tailor. He was a Parliamentary lobbyist who was passionate about the extension of the franchise and whose shop became a research library and meeting place for the Radical movement. Like William Cobbett, he was convinced that the way to salvation for the working classes was through Parliament rather than revolution.

  In 1826 when a new trade depression swept across England, Peel–against the wishes of many Tories–passed an emergency law allowing some cheap foreign wheat to come on to the market. He was accused of bowing to the mob, but he believed it was more important to assuage distress temporarily, so that the poor were not also starving as they contended with unemployment. His forethought prevented a famine as there was a bad harvest that autumn to add to everyone’s problems. Peel refused to view outbreaks of violence as an attempt to overthrow government. He was sympathetic to what he saw as a problem which was ‘fundamentally one of human suffering’.

  In 1829 Peel established the first Metropolitan Police Force, set up by Parliament with a commissioner at Scotland Yard directly responsible to the Home Office. He had been convinced by James Mackintosh, and by his own experience with a policing experiment as a young chief secretary in Ireland, that punishment was not a deterrent. A proper organization dedicated to preventing crime was the way forward. The success of the Metropolitan Police Force soon encouraged its imitation across the country, for crime figures were rising in the new industrial towns. Previously maintaining law and order in England had depended on the amateur talents of nightwatchmen, parish constables and the threat of coming up against the magistrate. But what worked in small villages where everybody knew one another was no longer feasible in crowded conurbations with shifting populations. By not arming the police, Peel silenced the old objections to a professional police force becoming the instruments of tyranny they were held to be abroad. The police were forbidden to act as spies like Sidmouth’s old network of agents provocateurs who had caused so much misery in the past. The new constables became so popular that they got the nickname they retained until very recently of Peelers and Bobbies, after their creator Robert Peel.

  And abroad George Canning, the new foreign secretary, reclaimed Britain’s old role as the foe of absolutism among the nations striving to be free. The son of an actress, Canning had a gift for the dramatic gesture which had been lacking in the austere Castlereagh. Britain stopped sending even observers to Congress meetings because, Canning said, the British people did not like ‘their representative communing in secret with despotic powers’. In 1826, the British fleet frightened off the Congress powers in the shape of Spain and France as they set about invading Portugal to stop King John granting his country a liberal constitution. Ever since the Peninsular War, Spain had been in awe of British military power, and as soon as Canning showed he meant business by sending 4,500 troops to Lisbon conveyed by a large British fleet the Spanish retreated. Portugal was allowed to have her constitution.

  In 1823 in defiance of the rest of the powers Canning recognized the independence of the South American colonies which had revolted against Spain. Not only did he threaten to use the Royal Navy, which was undefeated since Trafalgar, against any power that tried to recapture them for Spain, he enlisted the aid of the youthful United States of America, prodding President Monroe into declaring that South America was a sphere of interest to be treated as her own backyard. The so-called Monroe Doctrine stated that the United States would treat any European attempt to colonize the American continent or interfere with any of its countries or regimes as an act of war. In a memorable phrase Canning proclaimed, ‘I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.’ Recognizing the independence of the new republics of Buenos Aires, Colombia and Mexico made George IV so angry that he refused to read out the news to Parliament, pretending that he had lost his false teeth. Underlying Canning’s heroics was trade. For 300 years British merchants had tried to penetrate the old Spanish stamping ground of South America. Now they had independence the ex-Spanish colonies were enjoying a lucrative trade with British merchants which Canning was determined to preserve.

  Although the Concert of Europe was almost dead as a system of political co-operation, it lasted just long enough for Canning to achieve independence for Greece from the Ottoman Empire. It was with the Greek revolt against Turkish rule in 1821 that the first manifestation arose of what would be one of the great problems of the nineteenth century. Known to British diplomats as the Eastern Question, the issue was how far Russia should be allowed to expand into the power vacuum left by the declining Ottoman or Turkish Empire which stretched from the Balkans to Persia (Iran). Since the late eighteenth century the British had been alarmed by Russian ambitions to expand southwards, whether west into the Balkans or east into Persia, which directly threatened the route to India. Despite disapproval of Turkish rule which had given the country a bad name for centuries, the British Foreign Office believed that the Ottoman Empire was a bulwark against Russia. It had to be defended in its entirety because otherwise it would disintegrate.

  The Greek Wars of Independence offered just the chance to move south that Russia desired, for Greece had warm-water ports and an outlet on to the trading lake of the Mediterranean. By treaty with Turkey Russia had some notional rights to defend the Christian populations of the Muslim Ottoman Empire. Russian interest in the fate of the Greeks had been quickened by the personality of the new tsar Nicholas I, who acceded to the throne in the autumn of 1825. He was keenly religious, and the Greeks who belonged to the Orthodox Church were not only useful potential empire material but his co-religionists. Posing as the champions of their Orthodox co-religionists the Russians might take over the Greek peninsula. This Canning was determined to prevent.

  But though Britain’s official aim was to prop up the ailing Turkish Empire, as it would be for the next fifty years, in the case of the Greek Wars British public opinion and Canning were fervently on the side of the Greeks. Every cultivated Englishman in the early nineteenth century was classically educated, and Latin and Greek philosophy and literature were the main subjects at university. When the Greek war broke out, it immediately attracted a host of British volunteer fighters paid for by Philhellenic societies which had sprung up everywhere. Among them was the living embodiment of Romanticism, Lord Byron.

  In 1827 after five years of war the Ottoman forces were joined by Egyptian troops and began to overrun Greece. Although Britain was officially neutral, British public opinion–outraged by Turkish massacres of Greeks–demanded in no uncertain terms that the government do something. As a responsive and modern politician Canning saw that he could not ignore this upsurge of feeling. He came to the conclusion that, if Russia was going to intervene, in this instance the best hope for the future was to work alongside her, in the old Concert of Europe. With the backing of France and Russia, he negotiated a deal that in reality obtained freedom for Greece from the murderous Turks while it nominally prevented the dismantling of an important section of the Ottoman Empire. Remaining in theory a part of the empire and having to pay Turkish taxes, Greece would in practice have self-government.

  In 1827 Lord Liverpool had a stroke, and Canning took over as prime minister. However, the enlightened Can
ning believed in Catholic Emancipation and this prompted all members of the government who were against it–led by Wellington and Peel–to resign, because they believed it would be the end of the Union with Ireland. Canning was in any case never popular among many of the Tories, who tended to think he was too clever by half, and in order to carry on in government he was forced to bring into his Cabinet some Whigs, who had been a negligible force in politics for twenty years, headed by the youthful Lord John Russell. The price of their support was a bill that repealed the Test and Corporation Acts against Nonconformists.

  But by 1828 the gifted Canning was dead, after a long period of very poor health. His place as prime minister was briefly taken by Frederick Robinson, the former chancellor of the Exchequer, now Lord Goderich. But in January 1828 Goderich had to resign because his Cabinet could not agree over the navy’s sinking of the Egyptian and Turkish fleet at the Battle of Navarino in support of the Greeks, Vice-Admiral Codrington having acted on his own initiative. George IV offered the premiership to the Duke of Wellington, who violently disapproved of this destruction of Turkish ships that could be useful in the future against the Russians. Wellington created a government of some liberal followers of Canning’s, such as Viscount Palmerston and Huskisson, and brought back the Tories who had resigned over Catholic Emancipation, including Peel.

  Exceptional soldier though he was, Wellington was no diplomat and he quickly undid Canning’s delicate footwork in the east. Canning’s aim had been to contain the Russians by forcing them to act in concert, but when Wellington apologized to the Turks for the Battle of Navarino the Russians were disgusted that the allies had not finished off the job and invaded Turkey in 1828. The conservative Wellington’s fear of revolution made him the enemy of any kind of independence struggles. But he now saw that it was better to make sure that Greek independence was real independence with international guarantees, otherwise Russia would make Greece part of her own empire. He therefore led the way to a tripartite agreement between Britain, France and Russia which enabled Greece to become free in 1829. It was the first blow in the dismembering of what was to be called the Sick Man of Europe, but there was nothing else for it.

  Meanwhile at home the liberal wing of the Tory party found the Iron duke too reactionary for them to stomach. He treated them like subalterns whose role was to get on with obeying his orders. Soon after the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts all the liberals such as Huskisson, William Lamb (the future Lord Melbourne) and Palmerston resigned. Wellington was left to govern with Peel and the Ultra Tories. The repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts had been a sign of a growing desire to end religious discrimination, even if thanks to Walpole the Test Acts were honoured in the breach. Within the year a daring election campaign in Ireland forced Wellington to bring in Catholic Emancipation.

  For some time a number of politicians had believed that Catholic Emancipation would have to take place. But the several bills introduced to give the Catholics the vote had been rejected by the House of Lords, a number of whose members had Irish estates. As there were very few Catholics in Britain by now, its importance lay in its application to Ireland. Pitt had given Irish Catholics the vote at the end of the eighteenth century, but as George III had prevented total Emancipation Catholics still could not hold any official positions. They might no longer be penalized for practising their religion, but they could not be magistrates, judges, county sheriffs or members of Parliament.

  Politicians like Canning had believed that the only way to bring order to a country with a stupendous murder rate was to give the Catholics more of a stake in running it. With proper responsibilities, the Catholic community might give their backing to law-enforcement, but, excluded from power, they saw the magistracy as part of an alien system administered by the Protestant ascendancy. The problem was that most Irish Catholics were against the Union and were increasingly in favour of repealing it so that they could govern themselves.

  By the late 1820s the Catholics in Ireland had become much more militant. This was partly the effect of a new kind of patriotic priest turned out at Maynooth in Kildare ever since the Napoleonic Wars had cut off the Irish from their usual seminaries on the continent. The anger and resentment which in the past had been damped down by an apolitical clergy were also being stirred up by a well-off barrister named Daniel O’Connell. A speaker of genius in a country renowned for persuasive tongues, he soon became, in the old cliché, the uncrowned King of Ireland.

  O’Connell set out to create a situation in which it would be impossible to refuse the Catholics the vote. His organization, the Catholic Board, was publicized from every Catholic pulpit, becoming an extremely powerful pressure group which was funded by a ‘Catholic rent’ of a penny each month and orchestrated continuous agitation for Catholic Emancipation. When the Catholic Board was banned, as it had all the hallmarks of a political organization, O’Connell and his friends simply revived it under a different name, the Catholic Association.

  Thanks to the work of the priests and O’Connell, at the next election in 1828 the forty-shilling Roman Catholic freeholders in the counties (the property qualification entitling them to vote) had the courage to rebel against their powerful Protestant landlords. They voted instead for Catholic candidates fielded by the Catholic Association. It had always been theoretically possible for Catholics to stand for Parliament, as long as they took the oath of supremacy when elected. Of course in practice it never happened because swearing in that way would mean denying their faith and acknowledging that the British monarch was head of the Church. But, argued O’Connell, who was to know whether the elected MP would or would not take the oath? He was gambling on the expectation that, once a Catholic had been elected to Parliament, it would be extremely embarrassing for the English if they were to prevent him taking his seat. After all, Parliament’s refusal to allow the legally elected John Wilkes to take his seat had created an uproar sixty years before.

  To the government’s consternation O’Connell was returned as the MP for Clare, by an overwhelming majority. The Catholic Association warned that at the next election it would send back not just one but sixty Roman Catholic MPs. The system was in deadlock. Wellington was certain that Ireland would erupt in civil war if O’Connell was not allowed to take his seat at Westminster. Although only a year before the duke and Peel had both resigned office rather than serve under the pro-Emancipation Canning, Wellington now accepted that he had been outwitted–he had to support Catholic Emancipation and bow to force majeure. Wellington’s prestige as an upholder of the Protestant establishment and as an Irish Protestant grandee convinced the king that Emancipation had to be granted. Extremely reluctantly, for like his father he believed that his coronation vows bound him to uphold the Protestant religion, George IV agreed. O’Connell’s effrontery had won the day.

  From 1829 onwards Roman Catholics could sit in Parliament, though they still could not become lord chancellor or prime minister. Wellington would not allow O’Connell to take his seat in the House of Commons this time round, however, as the Catholic Relief Act had not been passed when he was elected. To get his revenge Wellington also dramatically increased the property qualifications for freeholders to £10 a year, putting the vote out of reach of many of the peasants and small farmers who had returned O’Connell. Nevertheless quite enough supporters remained to get O’Connell returned as MP at the next election.

  But not only did Catholic Emancipation mark the beginning of the end of the old establishment, it marked the end of Tory rule. The Ultra Tories were furious with Wellington because of what they considered his betrayal, and in 1830 they stabbed him in the back by voting with the Whigs to remove him and Peel from government. Their actions brought a Whig government to power for the first time since 1807.

  William IV (1830–1837)

  The gathering sense in England in 1830 of the old order passing away was enhanced on 26 June by the death of George IV. The First Gentleman of Europe, as he was known, had epitomized the glittering
rule of the aristocracy. A few months later the opening of the first long-distance steam railway line between Manchester and Liverpool was another indication that a clean break was about to be made with the past. The railway project was considered so exciting that the opening ceremony was attended by most of the Cabinet, including the prime minister the Duke of Wellington. They watched George Stevenson’s celebrated steam engine, the Rocket, inaugurate the line.

  But England was not only about to be transformed by the different pace of rail travel. Her population in the next decades would have gadgets their ancestors could not have dreamed of. They would soon be using the electric telegraph, invented by the Englishmen Charles Wheatstone and William Cooke, and enjoying what its English pioneers William Fox-Talbot and J. B. Reade called the photograph, but which was known in France as the daguerreotype. In the first steamships they would be crossing the Atlantic in ten days rather than the three months it took by sail. They began to have the sort of plumbing not seen in England since the Romans, to the great benefit of their health. They read by the gas light created by William Murdock at Watt’s steam-engine factory in the late eighteenth century which had become commonplace in towns. And, now that they didn’t have to strain their eyes by candlelight, they devoured vast three-decker novels by popular writers such as Charles Dickens, who would become the figures of the age, as well as its harshest critics.