Part 8 (1/2)
Lord John himself was persuaded, some time before Mr. Bright made this speech, that it was useless to attempt to meet the captious and selfish objections on the question of agrarian reform of the landlord cla.s.s; and, as a matter of fact, he had already drawn up, without consulting anyone, the outline of a measure which he described to Lord Clarendon as a 'plan for giving some security and some provision to the miserable cottiers, who are now treated as brute beasts.' Years before--to be exact, in the spring of 1844--he had declared in the House of Commons that, whilst the Government of England was, as it ought to be, a Government of opinion, the Government of Ireland was notoriously a Government of force. Gradually he was forced to the view that centuries of oppression and misunderstanding, of cla.s.s hatred and opposite aims, had brought about a social condition which made it necessary that judicial authority should have a voice between landlord and tenant in every case of ejectment. Lord John's difficulties in dealing with Ireland were complicated by the distrust of three-fourths of the people of the good intentions of English statesmans.h.i.+p. Political agitators, great and small, of the Young Ireland school, did their best to deepen the suspicions of an impulsive and ignorant peasantry against the Whigs, and Lord John was personally a.s.sailed, until he became a sort of bogie-man to the lively and undisciplined imagination of a sensitive but resentful race.
[Sidenote: THE TREASON FELONY ACT]
Even educated Irishmen of a later generation have, with scarcely an exception, failed to do justice either to the dull weight of prejudice and opposition with which Lord John had to contend in his efforts to help their country, or to give him due credit for the constructive statesmans.h.i.+p which he brought to a complicated and disheartening task.[16] Lord John Russell was, in fact, in some directions not only in advance of his party but of his times; and, though it has long been the fas.h.i.+on to cavil at his Irish policy, it ought not to be forgotten, in common fairness, that he not only pa.s.sed the Enc.u.mbered Estates Act of 1848, but sought to introduce the principle of compensation to tenants for the improvements which they had made on their holdings. Vested interests proved, however, too powerful, and Ireland stood in her own light by persistent sedition. The revolutionary spirit was abroad in 1848 not only in France, but in other parts of Europe, and the Irish, under Mr. Smith O'Brien, Mr. John Mitchel, and less responsible men, talked at random, with the result that treasonable conspiracy prevailed, and the country was brought to the verge of civil war. The Irish Government was forced by hostile and armed movements to proclaim certain districts in which rebellion was already rampant. The Treason Felony Act made it illegal, and punishable with penal servitude, to write or speak in a manner calculated to provoke rebellion against the Crown. This extreme stipulation was made at the instance of Lord Campbell. Such an invasion of freedom of speech was not allowed to pa.s.s unchallenged, and Lord John, who winced under the necessity of repression, admitted the force of the objection, so far as to declare that this form of irksome restraint should not be protracted beyond the necessity of the hour. He was not the man to s.h.i.+rk personal danger, and therefore, in spite of insurrection and panic, and the threats of agitators who were seeking to compa.s.s the repeal of the Union by violent measures, he went himself to Dublin to consult with Lord Clarendon, and to gather on the spot his own impressions of the situation. He found the country once more overshadowed by the prospects of famine, and he came to the conclusion that the population was too numerous for the soil, and subsequently pa.s.sed a measure for promoting aided emigration. He proposed also to a.s.sist from the public funds the Roman Catholic clergy, whose livelihood had grown precarious through the national distress; but, in deference to strong Protestant opposition, this method of amelioration had to be abandoned. The leaders of the Young Ireland party set the authorities at defiance, and John Mitchel, a leader who advocated an appeal to physical force, and Smith O'Brien, who talked wildly about the establishment of an Irish Republic, were arrested, convicted, and transported. O'Connell himself declared that Smith O'Brien was an exceedingly weak man, proud and self-conceited and 'impenetrable to advice.' 'You cannot be sure of him for half an hour.' The force of the movement was broken by cliques and quarrels, until the spirit of disaffection was no longer formidable.
In August, her Majesty displayed in a marked way her personal interest in her Irish subjects by a State visit to Dublin. The Queen was received with enthusiasm, and her presence did much to weaken still further the already diminis.h.i.+ng power of sedition.
[Sidenote: SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS]
The question of education lay always close to the heart of Lord John Russell, who found time even amid the stress of 1847 to advance it. The Melbourne Administration had vested the management of Parliamentary grants in aid of education in a committee of the Privy Council. In spite of suspicion and hostility, which found expression both in Parliament and in ecclesiastical circles, the movement extended year by year and slowly pervaded with the first beginnings of culture the social life of the people. Lord John had taken an active part in establis.h.i.+ng the authority of the Privy Council in education; he had watched the rapid growth of its influence, and had not forgotten to mark the defects which had come to light during the six years' working of the system. He therefore proposed to remodel it, and took steps in doing so to better the position of the teacher, as well as to render primary education more efficient. Paid pupil teachers accordingly took the place of unpaid monitors, and the opportunity of gaining admittance after this practical apprentices.h.i.+p to training colleges, where they might be equipped for the full discharge of the duties of their calling, was thrown open to them. As a further inducement, teachers who had gone through this collegiate training received a Government grant in addition to the usual salary. Grants were also for the first time given to schools which pa.s.sed with success through the ordeal of official inspection.
The pa.s.sing of the Factory Bill was another effort in the practical redress of wrongs to which Lord John Russell lent his powerful aid. The measure, which will always be honourably a.s.sociated with the names of Lord Shaftesbury and Mr. Fielden, was a victory for labour which was hailed with enthusiasm by artisans and operatives throughout the land.
It came as a measure of practical relief, not merely to men, but to upwards of three hundred and sixty-three thousand women and children, employed in monotonous tasks in mill and manufactory. Another change which Lord John Russell was directly instrumental in bringing about was the creation of the Poor Law Commission into a Ministerial Department, responsible to Parliament, and able to explain its work and to defend its policy at Westminster, through the lips of the President of the Poor Law Board. Regulations were at the same time made for workhouse control, meetings of guardians, and the like. The great and ever-growing needs of Manchester were recognised in 1847 by the creation of the Bishopric.
Parliament was dissolved on July 23, and as the adoption of Free Trade had left the country for the moment without any great question directly before it, no marked political excitement followed the appeal to the people. The Conservative party was in truth demoralised by the downfall of Peel, and the new forces which were soon to shape its course had as yet scarcely revealed themselves, though Lord Stanley, Lord George Bentinck, and Mr. Disraeli were manifestly the coming men in Opposition.
If the general election was distinguished by little enthusiasm either on one side or the other, it yet brought with it a personal triumph to Lord John, for he was returned for the City at the head of the poll. The Government itself not only renewed its strength, but increased it as a result of the contest throughout the country. At the same time the hostility of the opponents of Free Trade was seen in the return of two hundred and twenty-six Protectionists, in addition to one hundred and five Conservatives of the new school of Bentinck and Disraeli.
[Sidenote: DIFFICULTIES OF A PLAIN ENGLISHMAN]
In other directions, meanwhile, difficulties had beset the Government.
The proposed appointment of a Broad Churchman of advanced views, in the person of Dr. Hampden, Regius Professor at Oxford, to the vacant see of Hereford filled the High Church party with indignant dismay. Dr. Newman, with the courage and self-sacrifice which were characteristic of the man, had refused by this time to hold any longer an untenable position, and, in spite of his brilliant prospects in the English Church, had yielded to conscience and submitted to Rome. Dr. Pusey, however, remained, and under his skilful leaders.h.i.+p the Oxford Movement grew strong, and threw its spell in particular over devout women, whose aesthetic instincts it satisfied, and whose aspirations after a semi-conventual life it met.[17] Lord John had many of the characteristics of the plain Englishman. He understood zealous Protestants, and, as his rejected scheme for aiding the priests in Ireland itself shows, he was also able to apprehend the position of earnest Roman Catholics. He had, however, not so learnt his Catechism or his Prayer Book as to understand that the Reformation, if not a crime, was at least a blunder, and therefore, like other plain Englishmen, he was not prepared to admit the pretensions and a.s.sumptions of a new race of nondescript priests. Thirteen prelates took the unusual course of requesting the Prime Minister to reconsider his decision, but Lord John's reply was at once courteous and emphatic. 'I cannot sacrifice the reputation of Dr. Hampden, the rights of the Crown, and what I believe to be the true interests of the Church, to a feeling which I believe to have been founded on misapprehension and fomented by prejudice.'
Although Dr. Pusey did not hesitate to declare that the affair was 'a matter of life and death,'[18] ecclesiastical protest availed nothing, and Dr. Hampden was in due time consecrated.
Neither agrarian outrages in Ireland nor clerical agitation in England hindered, in the session of 1848, the pa.s.sing of measures of social improvement. The Public Health Act, which was based on the representations of Sir Edwin Chadwick and Dr. Southwood Smith, grappled with the sanitary question in cities and towns, and thus improved in a variety of directions the social life of the people. It had hitherto been the fas.h.i.+on of Whigs and Tories alike to neglect practical measures of this kind, even though they were so closely linked to the health and welfare of the community.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] _The Croker Papers_, vol. iii. ch. xxiv. p. 53.
[16] Judge O'Connor Morris, in his interesting retrospect, _Memories and Thoughts of a Life_, just published, whilst severely criticising the Whig att.i.tude towards Ireland, admits that Russell's Irish policy was not only 'well-meant,' but in the main successful.
[17] The first Anglican Sisterhood was founded by Dr. Pusey in London in the spring of 1845.
[18] _Life of E. B. Pusey, D.D._, by H. P. Liddon, D.D., vol. iii. p.
160.
CHAPTER VIII
IN ROUGH WATERS
1848-1852
The People's Charter--Feargus O'Connor and the crowd--Lord Palmerston strikes from his own bat--Lord John's view of the political situation--Death of Peel--Palmerston and the Court--'No Popery'--The Durham Letter--The invasion scare--Lord John's remark about Palmerston--Fall of the Russell Administration.
ENGLAND in 1848 was not destined to escape an outbreak of the revolutionary spirit, though the Chartist movement, in spite of the panic which it awakened, was never really formidable. The overthrow and flight of Louis Philippe, the proclamation in March of the French Republic on the basis of universal suffrage and national workshops, and the revolutionary movements and insurrections in Austria and Italy, filled the artisans and operatives of this country with wild dreams, and led them to rally their scattered and hitherto dispirited forces. Within six years of the pa.s.sing of the Reform Bill, in fact, in the autumn after the Queen's accession, the working cla.s.ses had come to the conclusion that their interests had been largely overlooked, and that the expectations they had cherished in the struggle of 1831-32 had been falsified by the apathy and even the reaction which followed the victory. Not in one, but in all the great civil and religious struggles of the century, they had borne the brunt of the battle; and yet they had been thrust aside when it came to the dividing of the spoil.
The middle cla.s.ses were in a different position: their aspirations were satisfied, and they were quite prepared, for the moment at least, to rest and be thankful. The sleek complacency of the shopkeeper, moreover, and his hostility to further agitation, threw into somewhat dramatic relief the restless and sullen att.i.tude of less fortunate conscripts of toil. Food was dear, wages were low, work was slack, and in the great centres of industry the mills were running half-time, and so keen was the struggle for existence that the operatives were at the mercy of their taskmasters, and too often found it cruel. Small wonder if social discontent was widespread, especially when it is remembered that the people were not only hopeless and ill-fed, but housed under conditions which set at defiance even the most elementary laws of health. More than to any other man in the ranks of higher statesmans.h.i.+p the people looked to Lord Durham, the idol of the pitmen of the North, for the redress of their wrongs, and no statesman of that period possessed more courage or more real acquaintance with the actual needs of the people. Lord Durham, though a man of splendid ability, swift vision, and generous sympathy, had, unhappily, the knack of making enemies, and the fiery impetuosity of his spirit brought him more than once into conflict with leaders whose temperament was cold and whose caution was great. The rebellion in Canada withdrew Lord Durham from the arena of English politics at the beginning of 1838. Then it was that the people recognised to the full the temper of the statesmen that were left, and the fact that, if deliverance was to come from political and social thraldom, they must look to themselves and organise their strength.
The representatives of the working cla.s.ses in 1838 formulated their demand for radical political reform in the famous six points of the People's Charter. This declaration claimed manhood suffrage; the division of the country into equal electoral districts; vote by ballot; annual Parliaments; the abolition of property qualification for a seat in the House of Commons; and payment of members of Parliament for their services. The People's Charter took the working cla.s.ses by storm: it fired their imagination, inspired their hopes, and drew them in every manufacturing town and district into organised a.s.sociation.
[Sidenote: A SORRY CHAMPION]