Illusions Of Change (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 6)

by Andrew Wareham

  “Some cotton is grown in Egypt, gentlemen. It seems to me that it might be a wise long-term measure to increase that endeavour. The nature of the Ottoman Empire is such that it would be very unwise at the moment for any commercial undertaking to attempt to establish plantations in the area. I believe that government might wish to consider the creation of a significant degree of influence in the Soudan and the southern parts of Egypt generally. That would of course be a matter of several decades of sustained diplomatic and military pressure. In the short run other measures must be taken…”

  Silence fell as he considered his own words, the implications of the statement he had just made.

  “In effect, gentlemen, whilst we agree that slavery is a great evil and that it must be brought to an end, we must reflect on the words of St Augustine.”

  “’But not yet’, Mr Andrews.”

  “Just so, gentlemen. Not indeed for several decades, until there is a possibility of an alternative supply of the fibre England depends upon.”

  It was obvious that government could not oppose Emancipation, not and survive in office. The electorate, small and limited in power though it was, would not accept such a policy and the House of Lords would be led into rebellion by the Lords Spiritual, the bishops in arms against oppression.

  “I am not familiar with the state of American politics, gentlemen. Is there a strong move towards Abolitionism?”

  “Not yet strong, Mr Andrews, but there is only a weak pro-slavery movement.”

  “The Andrews family is not politically active in the States, gentlemen, but Mostyns and Goldsmids are both represented there, as is the Star family. Mr Henry Star, Lord Star’s youngest son, is a businessman of New Orleans, well placed to offer support to local political figures. I think I could certainly commit the banks to acting as channels for the transmission of funds from British sources to an anonymous figure who could offer concrete support to Southern politicians who became active in Washington. The whole procedure would, it goes without saying, be conducted on a clandestine basis and the sums of money themselves would not be derived from the banks’ resources. As well, gentlemen, whilst I would guarantee a full accounting at the London end, all of the banks’ activity open to scrutiny, I most definitely could not offer any assurances relating to expenditure in New Orleans.”

  “We would obviously require your commitment to absolute confidentiality, Mr Andrews. Certain Ministers of the Crown are aware of our feelings on this matter, and will cooperate in releasing funds for our purposes. Others would very certainly be bitterly opposed to our project.”

  The names of Liverpool and Peel sprang to Robert’s mind. Neither man would be prepared to countenance any support of slavery.

  A collapse of British industry could not be tolerated. Any and every measure must be taken to avoid such an eventuality.

  “I will speak to my principals, gentlemen, but not to my father or to Lord Star. I believe I will be able to persuade both bankers to support this very necessary, but unpleasant, action. I cannot myself make six months free to go to America and speak to Mr Henry Star and must rely upon you to organise that.”

  “That can be done, Mr Andrews. A gentleman by the name of Mr Smith, who is not unknown to your father, by repute at least, will be in contact with you and will act for us in this matter. He is a gentleman of absolute discretion and is in very good odour with Lord Sidmouth and other senior ministers. I believe I can say that Mr Iain Mostyn will be invited to become Sir Iain Mostyn, Bt, within a very short while, Mr Andrews. Your family, and the Stars’, has displayed a remarkable degree of loyalty to us all over the years, sir, and I can assure you of the existence of a significant fund of goodwill to you.”

  Robert quite fancied becoming Viscount Andrews, and the implication was certainly there in those words.

  Now, how was he best to make the proposition to Papa Mostyn, butter him up first, or afterwards?

  Book Six: A Poor Man

  at the Gate Series

  Chapter Two

  Joseph was surprised at the tone of his father’s letter. Mary was outraged at the lack of deference to her husband’s genius; he could not be expected to respond to mere commercial demands, creativity could not be so trammelled.

  “I suppose I must do as the Old Gentleman instructs, Mary. It seems that the family needs me to look at this particular problem, so I can hardly refuse, and it really should not take too long, you know. Perhaps if I take a break from high-pressure steam, I might come back to the task refreshed.”

  She looked through the folders above his desk, found none specifically referring to the coaling of steamships.

  “I had thought to use something like the inclined planes to be found on some of the canals, Mary. A lift that will carry the coal up to a high bunker on the quayside, with doors at the bottom of the bunker itself opening into moveable chutes that can be shifted out over the ship needing coal. So, fill the bunker by a steam lift but let the coal fall by gravity. The bunker to have wharves on either side, so the colliers can load it from the left, say, while steamers take on coal on the right. Or vice versa, of course.”

  She sketched out a preliminary drawing. A crane to lift the coal out of the collier’s holds and into trucks on the quayside. The trucks to be pulled to the lift and then hauled up to the top of the bunker to tip and return empty. Men with shovels in the hold of the collier itself, but there seemed no obvious way round that. Labourers were cheap in any case.

  It occurred to Mary that Lord Andrews might not be entirely wrong. A little of discipline in his working life and Joseph could have produced this plan a year before, and increased his income as well.

  “We need a location, dimensions and cost next, Joseph. What weight of coal will the bunker carry? How strongly must it be built? Can we cast pillars to the size we need?”

  A month of investigation and calculation made it clear that it would be wisest to build a whole new coaling dock wherever the steamers were to be found. The simple bulk involved, loads of up to five hundred tons at a time at the moment, demanded a massive masonry construction, footings sunk deep into the waterside muds; allowance must be made for ships growing bugger as well. In the nature of things, ports were to be found at the mouths of rivers and tended to be built on alluvial, loose soils rather than soundly based on solid rock. It was a nuisance, Joseph thought, wondering if they might not perhaps be able to shift Liverpool a few miles down the coast, rebuilding the town at the foot of the Welsh mountains. Mary persuaded him it was not practical.

  “Two hundred thousand pounds? The boy’s gone soft in the head!”

  Tom was not impressed by Joseph’s proposal, his eye having gone immediately to the bottom line.

  Coaling berths in South Wales, Liverpool, London and Southampton would leave very little change out of a million pounds when allowance was made for inevitable extras which would arise. Roberts Ironfounders simply could not do it.

  Tom thought and talked the problem over with Captain Matthew Star, decided that if steam was to grow then there must be a solution to the bunkering problem. Matthew pointed out that Roberts would not be the sole proprietor of steamers in any port; other firms would need to coal up.

  “Giving us a choice of build the facility ourselves and charge them for its use, or set up a firm owned by all the merchants between them to run the bunkering.”

  “Perhaps, my lord, we could seek an Act of Parliament to create a public body to run the whole port, one that could seek government funding to build new and could also set out regulations for the correct operation of shipping in its waterways.”

  “Not dissimilar to the Trinity House monopoly of pilotage in British waters. Every owner must pay his fees, every ship must take a pilot. Perhaps it would become the case that every sailing ship would be obliged to take a steam tow in harbour waters, together with every steamer of more than a certain size. The costs would certainly become more controllable then, as would the profits. Steam tugging boats in every harbour in the
country, dozens of them in each of the large ports.”

  It was clear to them that this was the way forward, for the safety of mariners as much as anything, of course. The Marine Insurers would also be in favour, they expected, the number of collisions and sinkings in harbours being much reduced. The colliery owners would be happy to see a growing market for steam coals, the iron industry could only support the increased demand for plate, even the navy would be in favour of an expanding mercantile marine to supply a reserve of trained seamen in case of wartime need.

  Tom resigned himself to a few months in London, whispering into the ears of the powerful, persuading the rich, bringing the political factions into temporary alliance. He had wanted to spend the winter quietly on the estate, building bridges there, calming his people, but it was not to be.

  If he went directly to the Board of Trade with his proposal he would be turned down out of hand. The government’s aim was to reduce spending and cut its involvement in the everyday business of the country, it could not welcome any suggestion of the direct opposite. That meant the back door rather than the front.

  Huskisson was a sensible man and actually understood the economy of the country, thus unique amongst politicians. He would be aware of the need for government to take an occasional lead where a task was too great for the ordinary individual. Peel would also understand the problem, but would wish to do nothing that might draw attention to his own origins in trade.

  Canning might be sympathetic, but he was somewhat blown upon just at the moment due to his indiscretions with Caroline, which were being remembered a few years after the event. A strange fellow, Canning, with his habit of writing witty little verses in his letters and instructions to his civil servants; very literary and polished, but not quite what one expected.

  The Prince Regent’s estranged wife was in people’s thoughts again, due to the expectation that the old king must very soon die, making her Queen Caroline. If she returned from the Continent, as she seemed to be threatening, then she would become an embarrassment, would indeed take great delight in making a very public spectacle of herself. Her adulteries had been many and conducted in the full daylight, apparently quite literally so on occasion; she almost matched her husband in terms of libertine propensities.

  Canning had rather foolishly accepted her favours when offered and even more unwisely he had made no secret of the fact. He might well have been seen as an alternative to Liverpool as Prime Minister had there not been a general distaste for his boasting, a feeling that he was flawed and might well show unreliable in other ways if given the opportunities of the highest office.

  Tom found himself at a stand for names. He went to Robert for advice.

  “It won’t work, sir. Can’t be done. Liverpool’s administration is too shaky for the while and the only question to be answered is who is to succeed him. No senior politician with ambitions to become Prime Minister will possibly take the risk of being associated with a spending project, no easier way of alienating supporters at the moment than to lay out money and raise taxes. My advice, sir, is to form a joint enterprise, similar to those created to build the largest canals. Raise your money jointly, the banks offering credit and taking part of the risk and the Bank of England making benign noises in the background. A separate issue for each particular docks, so as to cater for local interests. South Wales, Liverpool and London would present few difficulties; there are well-to-do merchants besides the industrialists and mill-owners who would wish to be involved. Southampton is a different matter, a poorer place and with no significant industry, and I would simply not build there, no more than a pair of beam engines to power cranes working a pile of coals at wharfside.”

  ‘If you ask for advice, take it’ had long been one of Tom’s mottoes. He agreed to follow Robert’s dictum.

  “Mostyn’s will underwrite your issue, sir. I can commit us to that extent. I believe as well that I can request favourable attention of the Bank of England.”

  The Bank of England occupied an anomalous position in the City of London, still engaging in some commercial banking for profit but primarily serving as the government’s banker and to an extent an agent of the Treasury, always authoritative and carrying the unsaid threat that it could make or unmake any law in pursuit of its own aims. The Bank had, when one examined the statute book, very little legal power, but it was clear that if it felt the need it could carry a very big stick indeed. On the occasions that the Bank intimated that it would like a share issue to succeed then that success simply occurred; if, even more rarely, it hinted the opposite then the issue would not go forward for lack of any banker or broker willing to handle it.

  It did not occur to Tom to question how Robert should have interest with the Bank, rather to the younger man’s relief.

  “By the way, sir, my lady wife has raised my hopes again, February or March, she believes.”

  “A daughter this time, I trust! Those are two handsome boys she has given you, my son!”

  Word came from the closed rooms at Windsor that the end was close, that the old gentleman was in his last illness, still as mad as ever and unable to pronounce any meaningful valediction, though he had addressed a bedpost in the most moving terms.

  A week later the doctors were pleased to announce that their patient had rallied, though he now seemed to be both blind and almost wholly deaf.

  “One is inclined to wonder, Mr Andrews, that they do not put a pillow over the poor old man’s face! Was he my dog I would have had him put out of his misery a year since, yet we cannot treat human beings so kindly it seems.”

  Lord Castlereagh, making a point of always speaking to James whenever they passed at Westminster, knowing who was his brother, was irritated at the delays. He was needed in Vienna, he said, and very much wished to speak with the more sensible members of the French administration, but must remain in England while it was probable that the king’s days were numbered.

  “Do the doctors give any meaningful report of His Majesty’s condition, my lord? An indication of how long, perhaps?”

  “None! They are far too busy arguing with each other to perform any function of so much use to state and people alike!”

  The Willises and Sir Henry Halford had been at odds for several years, both parties having a legitimate argument as well as detesting each other personally.

  The Willises, father and son, were mad-doctors with a practice which they described as ‘successful’ in Yorkshire. Halford, ‘the eel-backed baronet’, was a fashionable physician, much beloved by the dowagers of Mayfair for his courtesy and supple bow.

  The scientific treatment of madness demanded that the patient be ‘isolated’, sometimes translated as meaning that he should not be permitted converse with those who might remind him of past events which might have contributed to his insanity. The Willises took isolation to mean solitary confinement where feasible, conversation with any other than themselves to be utterly forbidden. Halford was thus in the position that he might not speak to his patient, although he was permitted to listen to anything that the king might choose to say to him, or to the furniture.

  The Willises insisted that Halford was hindering their treatment of the king’s madness; Halford had long trumpeted that they prevented him from attending to the king’s bodily ills.

  After a score of years, the king’s madness obdurate, the doctors were far more intent on feuding than on attending their patient.

  Other doctors occasionally intervened, sent by the Privy Council or the Archbishop to give an independent opinion. They attracted the abuse of Halford and the Willises equally.

  “What does Sir Henry say, my lord?”

  “Weeks, he thinks.”

  Castlereagh would not have spoken to the Willises, provincial nobodies that they were, and in any case they were not physicians.

  “Best get yourself to Scott, Mr Andrews – he will be overwhelmed by orders for mourning within a week or two!”

  “Good advice, my lord. I shall certainly take
it! At least the tailors will be made happy by the event, my lord, a flow of income to them.”

  Castlereagh chuckled, then shook his head gloomily.

  “Architects and builders as well, Mr Andrews. One gathers that Carlton House provides insufficiently regal state for a king. A new palace must be built at an early date to provide an elegant setting for our new Fountainhead of Britannic Honour. It may well occupy the gentleman’s mind to the exclusion of more overtly political matters.”

  James scowled in his turn. He had been invited to the Pavilion and was due to attend in the coming week, it having proved impossible to procrastinate further. He was not looking forward to the honour. He had been taking lessons in card playing, knowing that he would have no alternative to joining the games and not wishing to lose thousands through ignorance. He could now hold his own against an average player at piquet, and faro demanded little skill, except in cheating, while the various forms of vingt-et-un all demanded a good memory and a very basic knowledge of the laws of chance. There was little chance of brag being played – it was generally seen as a vulgar, lower-class game.

  The trouble was, he felt, that he just found cards to be boring. Excitement had been to scale an enemy’s wall with a sword and pistol in hand; turning pasteboards did not compare.

  There would be other forms of entertainment as well, he feared, and it would be almost impossible to avoid them. He had heard of Prinny’s dinner-parties at the Pavilion, good food, too much wine and then a Roman orgy. Participation was mandatory, unless one became so drunk as to make it impossible to rise to the occasion.

  The Pavilion was not quite all that James had expected. The drinking was heavy and incessant, breakfast as wet as dinner. The card-playing never seemed to end. Female, and male if demanded, companionship was both available and obtrusive. The worst excesses, however, were not to be observed. Colonel Georgie Hanger explained at the beginning of his week that the expectation of the death of the old lunatic of Windsor had drawn the public eye to the Pavilion and that it had been felt better to tone down the scale of the Prince’s hospitality.