A History of the Four Georges and of William IV Volume IV Part 10

The House of Lords had appointed a committee to inquire into the whole subject. The committee reported that a complete extinction of the t.i.the system was demanded, not only in the interests of Ireland but in the interests of the State Church itself, and suggested, as a means of getting out of the difficulty, that the t.i.thes might be commuted for a charge upon land or by an exchange for an investment in land. This meant, in other words, that the collection of t.i.thes should be devolved upon the landlord, leaving him to repay himself by a corresponding addition to the rent which he asked from his tenants. The House of Commons also appointed a committee to inquire into the subject, and the recommendation of that committee was in substance very much the same as the recommendation made by the committee appointed by the House of Lords.

The Government then took up the question, and in 1832 Lord Althorp announced that it was the intention of ministers to submit to the House of Commons a scheme of their own as a temporary settlement of the Irish t.i.the question, and out of which was to be developed, in time, a measure for the complete removal of the difficulty. A very brief description will serve to explain the nature of {212} this measure.

The Government proposed to advance a certain sum of money for the relief of the t.i.the-owners who had not been able to recover what the law held to be their due, and in the meantime to apply themselves to the preparation of some scheme which might transfer the t.i.the burden from the occupiers to the owners of the land. The Government thus admitted that at the moment they did not see their way altogether out of the t.i.the difficulty, but promised to apply their minds to the discovery of some final and satisfactory settlement, and undertook until then to pay to inc.u.mbents the arrears of t.i.thes, and to collect the money as well as they could from the indebted occupiers. In point of fact, Lord Althorp and his colleagues proposed to become the t.i.the-collectors themselves and to let any loss that might be incurred fall, for the time, upon the State and the national taxpayers. The plan was tried for a while, and we need hardly say that it proved altogether unsatisfactory. The Government had no better means of compelling the farmers to pay the t.i.thes than those means which they had already vainly put at the disposal of the t.i.the-owners. The farmer who could not be coerced by the police and the military into settling his accounts with the inc.u.mbent was not likely to be any the more ready to pay up because the demand for payment was made by the Lord-Lieutenant.

[Sidenote: 1834--Henry Ward and the Irish Church]

It was becoming more and more evident every day that the whole conditions of the State Church in Ireland were responsible for the trouble of which the t.i.thes difficulty was only an incident. Already a party was forming itself in the House of Commons composed of intellectual and far-seeing men who recognized the fact that the Irish State Church was in its very principles an anomaly and an anachronism.

On May 27, 1834, a debate on the whole question of the Irish State Church and its revenues was raised in the House of Commons by Mr. Henry Ward, one of the most advanced reformers and thoughtful politicians whom the new conditions of the franchise had brought into Parliament.

Henry Ward was a son of that Plumer Ward who was at one time famous as the author of a novel {213} called "Tremaine." If any memory of "Tremaine" lingers in the minds of readers who belong to the present generation, the lingering recollection is probably only due to the fact that in Disraeli's "Vivian Grey" there is an amusing scene in which the hero makes audacious use of an extemporized pa.s.sage, which he professes to find in Plumer Ward's novel. Henry Ward, the son, afterwards won some distinction by his administration of the Ionian Islands while the islands were under the charge of Great Britain. In our Parliamentary history, however, he will always be remembered as the author of the first serious attempt to obtain a national recognition of the principle which, within our own times, secured its final acknowledgment by the disestablishment of the Irish Church. The resolution which was proposed merely declared that the Protestant Episcopal Establishment in Ireland exceeded the wants of the Protestant population, and that, it being the right of the State to regulate the distribution of Church property in such manner as Parliament might determine, it was the opinion of the House that the temporal possessions of the State Church in Ireland ought to be reduced. This resolution went no further in words, as it will be seen, than to ask for a reduction of the revenues of that Church on the ground that it had already more funds than were required for the full discharge of its duties among those who attended its ministrations. But then the resolution also a.s.sumed the right of the State to inst.i.tute an inquiry into the application of the revenues and the needs of the surrounding population, and would necessarily carry with it the a.s.sertion of the principle that the Irish State Church existed only to minister to the wants of the Protestants of Ireland. It is clear that if once this principle were recognized by the State the whole theory of the Established Church in Ireland could no longer be maintained. That theory was that the State had a right to uphold and a duty to perform in the maintenance of a Protestant Establishment in Ireland for the purpose of converting to its doctrines that vast majority of the Irish population who could not be driven, even at the bayonet's point, to attend the {214} services conducted by a Protestant pastor. Only a few years after this time the great statesman who was afterwards to obtain from Parliament the disestablishment of the Irish Church was arguing, in his earliest published work, that the fewer the Protestants in Ireland the greater was the necessity for the State to be lavish of its money with the object of converting the outer population of Ireland to the established religion. Mr. Ward, in his speech, set himself to make it clear to the House of Commons that the collection of t.i.thes in Ireland was, at that time, the princ.i.p.al cause of the disturbance and disaffection which brought so much calamity on the unhappy island, and prevented any possibility of its becoming a loyal part of the British dominions. He showed by facts and figures that the opposition to the collection of t.i.thes was not any longer confined to the Catholic population alone, but had spread among the Protestants of dissenting denominations, and was showing itself in the North of Ireland, as well as in the provinces of the South and the West and the Midlands. He pointed to the fact that it was found necessary to maintain in Ireland, for the purpose of collecting the t.i.thes, an army larger than that which England needed for the maintenance of her Indian Empire, and that, nevertheless, it was found impossible to collect the t.i.thes in Ireland, and that the Government could suggest nothing better than a project for the payment of the t.i.thes out of the pockets of the national taxpayer. Mr. Ward made it clear to the House of Commons that the revenues of the State Church in Ireland were not distributed with anything like a view to the fair and equal remuneration of its clergy. In numbers of cases the clergy of the higher ranks had enormous incomes, quite out of all proportion to any duties they were even supposed to perform, while the clergymen who actually did the work were, as a general rule, screwed down to a pitiful rate of payment which hardly kept soul and body together. Twenty pounds a year was not an uncommon stipend among the curates who did the hard work, while an annual revenue of sixty pounds was regarded as something like opulence. Where the curate received his thirty {215} or forty pounds a year or less, the inc.u.mbent usually had his two thousand a year, and in many instances much more. As we said before, the inc.u.mbent deriving a rich revenue from his office was often habitually an absentee, who left the whole of his work to be performed, as best it might be done, by the curate, half starving on a miserable pittance. Mr. Ward made out a case which must have produced some impression on any Parliamentary a.s.sembly, and could hardly fail to find attentive listeners and ready sympathy among the members of the first reformed House of Commons.

[Sidenote: 1834--George Grote]

The motion was seconded by a remarkable man in a remarkable speech.

Mr. George Grote, afterwards famous as the historian of Greece, was one of the new members of Parliament. He was a man of a peculiar type, of an intellectual order which we do not usually a.s.sociate with the movement of the political world, but which is, nevertheless, seldom without its representative in the House of Commons. Grote was one of the small group of men who were, at that time, described as the philosophical Radicals. He acknowledged the influence of Bentham; he was a friend and a.s.sociate of the elder and the younger Mill; he was a banker by occupation, a scholar and an author by vocation; a member of Parliament from a sense of duty. Grote, no doubt, was sometimes mistaken in the political conclusions at which he arrived, but he deserved the praise which Macaulay has justly given to Burke, that he was always right in his point of view. With Grote a political measure was right or wrong only as it helped or hindered the spread of education, human happiness, and peace. He was one of the earliest and most persevering advocates of the ballot system at elections, and during his short Parliamentary career he made the ballot the subject of an annual motion. Some of us can still well remember George Grote in his much later days, and can bear testimony to the fact that, to quote the thrilling words of Schiller, he reverenced in his manhood the dreams of his youth. We can remember how steady an opponent he was of slavery, and how his sympathies went with the cause of the North during the {216} great American civil war. One can hardly suppose that Grote's style as a speaker was well suited to the ways of the House of Commons, but it is certain that whenever he spoke he always made a distinct impression on the House. Some of us who can remember John Stuart Mill addressing that same a.s.sembly at a later day, can probably form an idea of the influence exercised on the House by the man who seemed to be thinking his thoughts aloud rather than trying to win over votes or to catch encouraging applause. Grote's speech on Ward's motion brought up one view of the Irish Church which especially deserved consideration. Grote dealt with the alarms and the convictions of those who were insisting that to acknowledge any right of Parliament to interfere with the Irish State Church would be to sound in advance the doom of the English State Church as well. He pointed out that, whatever difference of opinion there might be as to the general principle of a State Establishment, the case of the two Churches, the English and the Irish, must be argued upon grounds which had nothing in common. Every argument which could be used, and must be used, for the State Church of England was an argument against the State Church in Ireland. The State Church of England was the Church to which the vast majority of the English people belonged. It ministered to their spiritual needs, it was a.s.sociated with their ways, their hopes, their past, and their future. If an overwhelming majority in any country could claim the right, by virtue of their majority, to set up and maintain any inst.i.tution, the Protestant population of England could claim a right to set up a State Church. But every word that could be said in support of the English State Church was a word of condemnation and of sentence on the State Church in Ireland. The Irish State Church was the Church of so small a minority that, when allowance had been made for the numbers of dissenting Protestants in Ireland, it was doubtful whether one in every twelve of the whole population could be claimed as a wors.h.i.+pper in the temples maintained and endowed by law. Moreover, the Irish State Church was a badge of conquest, and was {217} regarded as such by the whole Celtic population of the island.

The t.i.the exacted from the Irish Catholic farmer was not merely a tribute exacted by the conqueror, but was also a brand of degradation on the faith and on the nationality of the Irish Celt who was called upon to meet the demand. The student of history will note with some interest that, at a day much nearer to our own, the Lord Stanley whose name we shall presently have to bring up in connection with this debate on Mr. Ward's motion made use, in the House of Lords, of an appeal which suggested the idea that he had not heard or had forgotten George Grote's speech on which we have just been making comment. Not very long before his death Lord Derby, as he had then become, was declaiming in the House of Lords against the proposal to disestablish the Irish State Church, and he warned the House that if the fabric of the Irish Church were to be touched by a destroying hand it would be in vain to hope that the destruction of the English State Church could long be averted. [Sidenote: 1834--Lord Derby] Lord Derby had always a very happy gift of quotation, and he made on this occasion a striking allusion. He reminded the House of that thrilling scene in Scott's "Guy Mannering" where the gypsy woman suddenly presents herself on the roadside to the elder, the Laird of Ellangowan and some of his friends, and, complaining of the eviction of her own people from their homesteads, bids the gentlefolk take care that their own roof-trees are not put in danger by what they had done. Lord Derby made use of this pa.s.sage as a warning to the prelates and peers of England that, if they allowed the Irish State Church to be disestablished, the statelier fabric of their own Church in England might suffer by the example. It was pointed out at the time, by some of those who commented on Lord Derby's speech, that George Grote had answered this argument by unconscious antic.i.p.ation, and had shown that the best security of the English State Church was the fact that it rested on a foundation totally different from that of the State Church in Ireland.

The Government were greatly embarra.s.sed by all this {218} discussion as to the condition, the work, and the character of the Establishment in Ireland. Lord Grey, whose whole nature inclined him to move along the path of progress with slow, steady, and stately steps, began to chafe against the eagerness with which the more Radical reformers were endeavoring to hurry on the political movement. It was necessary that the Government should announce a purpose of one kind or another--should either give a general sanction to the inquiry into the claims and merits of the Irish Church, or declare themselves against any movement of reform in that direction. It was found hardly possible for the Government to ally themselves with the followers of old-fas.h.i.+oned Toryism, and it soon began to be rumored that Lord Grey could only keep on the reforming path at the cost of losing some of his most capable colleagues. Before long it was made publicly known that the rumors were well founded. Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham resigned their places in the Ministry. Graham afterwards held office in more than one Administration that might well be called Liberal, but Lord Stanley pa.s.sed the greater part of his Parliamentary life in the ranks of uncompromising Toryism. He had begun his public career as an enthusiastic champion of Parliamentary reform, and he was the figure-head of reform again at a much later date, but on all other questions he remained a steadfast and a most eloquent advocate of genuine Tory principles. It may fittingly be mentioned here that the existence of the Radical party, recognized as such and regarded as distinct from the ordinary Liberals, began with the debates on the State Church in Ireland. The pa.s.sing of the Reform Bill divided the Whigs and Tories into Liberals and Conservatives, and the discussions on the Irish Church divided those who had once been Whigs into Liberals and Radicals.

[Sidenote: 1834--King William and the Irish State Church]

Meanwhile poor old King William was greatly concerned by the attacks which were made upon the State Church in Ireland. William the Fourth had a simple sort of piety of his own, and was perhaps somewhat like the man whom Doctor Johnson commended because, whatever {219} follies or offences he might have committed, he never pa.s.sed a church without taking off his hat. The King knew little or nothing, we may well suppose, about the Irish Church and the way in which it fulfilled, or had any chance of fulfilling, its sacred office. But he took off his hat to it as a Church, and, more than that, he shed tears and positively blubbered over its hard fate in having to stand so many attacks from its enemies. The King received, on one of his birthdays, a delegation from the prelates of the Irish Church, and to them he poured out his a.s.surances that nothing should ever induce him to abandon that Church to its unG.o.dly foes. He reminded the prelates that he was growing an old man, that his departure from this world must be near at hand, that he had nothing left now to live for but the rightful discharge of his duties as a Protestant sovereign, and he bade them to believe that the tears which were bedewing his countenance were the tears of heartfelt sympathy and sorrow. The King nevertheless did not get into any quarrel with his ministers on the subject of the Irish Church, and when any doc.u.ments bearing on the question were presented to him for signature he ended by affixing his name and did not allow his tears to fall upon it and blot it out. The Duke of c.u.mberland, too, stood by the Irish Church to the best of his power. A member of the House of Lords has a privilege which is not accorded to a member of the House of Commons--he can enter on the books of the House his written protest against the pa.s.sing of any measure which he has not been able to keep out of legislation. The Duke of c.u.mberland entered his protest against some of the resolutions taken with regard to the Irish State Church, and he declared that the sovereign who affirmed such resolves must do so in defiance of the coronation oath. That coronation oath had not been brought into much prominence since the days of George the Third, when it used to be relied upon as an impa.s.sable barrier to many a great measure of political justice and mercy. The Duke of c.u.mberland was not exactly the sort of man who could quicken it anew into an animating influence, and King {220} William did what his ministers advised him to do, and the world went on its way. The King, however, liked his ministers none the more because he did not see his way to quarrel with them when they advised him to make some concessions to public feeling on the subject of the Irish t.i.thes. Thus far, indeed, the concessions were not very great, and the important fact for this part of our history is only that the t.i.the question brought up the far more momentous question which called into doubt the right to existence of the Irish State Church itself. The Government went no farther, for the time, than to offer the appointment of a commission to inquire into the incidence and the levying of the t.i.thes, and endeavored to evade the question of appropriation, that is, the question as to the right of Parliament to decide the manner in which the revenues of the Irish State Church ought to be employed. The t.i.the question itself was finally settled for England before it came to be finally settled for Ireland. But its settlement involved no such consequences to the English State Church as it did to the State Church in Ireland. For our present purposes it is enough to record the fact that the earliest clear indications of the national policy, which in a later generation disestablished the Irish State Church, were given by the first Reform Parliament. Meanwhile the controversy raised as to the position of the Irish Establishment had had the effect of disturbing Lord Grey, who did not like to be driven too rapidly along the path of reform; of greatly angering the sovereign, who grumbled all the more because he could not openly resist; and of dissatisfying men like Ward and Grote and Lord Durham, and even members of the Cabinet like Lord John Russell, who could not regard mere slowness as a virtue when there was an obvious wrong to be redressed.

{221}

CHAPTER LXXVI.

"ONLY A PAUPER."

[Sidenote: 1832--The poor-law system]

The spirit of reform was impelling Lord Grey's Government in other directions as well as in those which led to the abolition of slavery in the Colonies, the improved conditions of the factory works and the introduction of some better method for the collecting of t.i.thes. The state of the poor laws all over the country had long been attracting the attention of thoughtful, philanthropic, and at the same time practical men. The administration of relief to the poor was still conducted, up to Lord Grey's reforming Administration, on the same general principle as that which had been embodied in the famous statute of Queen Elizabeth.

The manner in which that principle had been working during the intervening centuries was only another ill.u.s.tration of Burke's maxim about systems founded on the heroic virtues to which we have lately made reference in this volume. The statute of Elizabeth was based on the principle that the State, or at least the local authorities, ought to find relief for all the deserving poor. The duty of making provision for the deserving poor was left in the hands of those who managed the affairs of the parishes, of whom the local clergy and magistrates were the princ.i.p.al personages. The means had to be furnished by the taxpayers, and the influential men of each parish were left to decide as to the claims and the deserts of the applicants. There was no regular body answerable to public opinion, nor was there indeed any practical way in which the public of a district could very effectively express itself.

Nothing could be better arranged for the development of that benevolent spirit which Sydney Smith describes as common to all humanity, and {222} under the influence of which no sooner does A hear that B is in distress than he thinks C ought at once to relieve him. Men and women had only to go and say that they were in distress, and some influential persons in the neighborhood were sure to find that the easiest way of doing a benevolent act was to provide them with orders for parochial relief inside or outside the workhouse. There seemed to be a sort of easy-going impression prevailing everywhere that when a man or a woman or a family had once been set down for relief from the rates the enrolment ought to endure as a kind of property for life, and even as an inheritance for future generations. The grant of parish relief under the old ways has been humorously likened to a State pension, which, when it has once been given, is never supposed to be revoked during the lifetime of the privileged pensioner. But the presumption in the case of those relieved by the parish had a still more abiding efficacy, for it was a.s.sumed that if a man got parish relief for himself and his family the beneficent endowment was to pa.s.s onward from generation to generation. It is quite certain that whole races of paupers began to grow up in the country, one family depending on the rates engendering another family, who were likewise to be dependent on the rates. Thus the vice of lazy and s.h.i.+ftless poverty was bequeathed from pauper sire to son. In the case of the ordinary man or woman there was no incitement to industry and perseverance. The idle pauper would be fed in any case, and no matter how hard he worked at the ordinary labor within his reach he could only hope to be poorly fed. Indeed, even the man who had an honest inclination for honest labor was very much in the condition of the Irish cottier tenant, described many years afterwards by John Stuart Mill as one who could neither benefit by his industry nor suffer by his improvidence.

[Sidenote: 1832--Some defects in the poor-law system]

The system may be said without exaggeration to have put a positive premium on immorality among the poorer cla.s.s of women in a district, for an unmarried girl who had pauper offspring to show was sure to receive the liberal benefit of parochial relief. Pity was easily aroused for {223} her youth, her fall, her deserted condition when her lover or betrayer had taken himself off to some other district. Any tale of deceived innocence was readily believed, and so far as physical comforts go the unmarried mother was generally better off than the poor toiling and virtuous wife of the hard-worked laborer who found her family growing and her husband's wages without any increase. Then, of course, there was all manner of jobbery, and a certain kind of corruption among parish officials and the local tradesmen and employers of labor generally, which grew to be an almost recognized incident of the local inst.i.tutions.

Labor could be got on cheaper terms than the ordinary market rates if the employers could have men or women at certain seasons of the year whom the parish was willing to maintain in idleness for the rest of the time.

Small contracts of all kinds were commonly made, in this sort of fas.h.i.+on, between parish officials and local employers, and the whole system of relief seemed to become converted into a corrupting influence, pervading the social life and showing its effects in idleness, immorality, and an infectious disease of pauperism. Owing to the many misinterpretations of the laws of settlement it was often easy for a rich and populous district to fling much of its floating pauperism on some poorer region, and thus it frequently happened that the more poverty-stricken the parish the greater was the proportion of unsettled pauperism for which it had to provide. In many districts the poorer cla.s.ses of ratepayers were scarcely a degree better off than the actual paupers whom they were taxed to support. Thus many a struggling family became pauperized in the end because of the increase in the rates which the head of the family could no longer pay, and the exhausted breadwinner, having done his best to keep himself and his family independent, had at last to eat the bread of idleness from parish relief, or to starve with his family by the road-side.

Things had come to such a pa.s.s indeed that many earnest and capable observers, like Lord Brougham, Mr. Na.s.sau Senior, and Miss Martineau, were beginning to advocate the doctrine that no remedy could be found for {224} the system of legalized poor relief short of its total abolition.

It was gravely contended by many reformers, whose guiding spirit was pure love of humanity, that the best course for the Government to take would be to abolish the poor-relief system altogether, and leave the really deserving poor to the mercy of private benevolence. By such a measure, it was contended, private charity would be left to find out its own, and would, before long, find out its own, and the charity thus given would carry with it no demoralizing effect, but would be bestowed, as all true charity is bestowed, with the object of enabling those whom it helped to help themselves after a while. The owner of an estate, it was argued, can easily find out where there is genuine distress among those who depend upon him, and can sustain them through their time of need, so that when their hour of sickness or enforced idleness is over they may be able to begin again with renewed energy, and work with the honest purpose of making themselves independent. It was urged that the operation of the legalized poor law relief could only create new pauperism wherever its unwholesome touch was felt. It would impress on the well-inclined and the industrious the futility of honest and persevering endeavor, inasmuch as idleness could get itself better cared for than laborious poverty.

Idleness and immorality, it was argued, were well housed and fed, while honest independence and virtue were left outside in cold and hunger.

[Sidenote: 1832-33--A commission on poor-law relief]

The study of political economy was even already beginning to be a part of the education of most men who took any guiding place or even any observant interest in the national life. Writers who dealt with such subjects were beginning to find readers among the general public. Some of the members of Lord Grey's own Administration had taken a close interest in such questions. The whole subject of poor relief and its distribution was one of the earliest which came under the consideration of the Liberal Government after the pa.s.sing of the Reform Bill. It was clear that something would soon have to be done, and, as the Whig ministers had a good deal of other work on their {225} hands, the natural course, at such a time, was to appoint a commission which should inquire into the whole system of poor-law relief, and report to the Government as to the best means for its reorganization. Such a commission was appointed and set at once to its work. Among the commissioners and the a.s.sistant-commissioners nominated for the purpose were some men whose names are well remembered in our own days. One of those was Mr. Na.s.sau Senior, a man of great ability and wide practical information, who distinguished himself in many other fields of literary work, as well as that which belonged to what may be called the literature of pure economics. Another was Mr. Edwin (afterwards Sir Edwin) Chadwick, who was a living and an active presence, until a very short time ago, among those who devoted themselves to the study and the propagation of what are called social science principles, and whose work was highly valued by so well qualified a critic as John Stuart Mill. The commission made careful inquiry into the operation of the poor-law relief system, and presented a report which marked an epoch in our social history, and might well have a deep interest even for the casual student of to-day. The result of the inquiries made was such as to satisfy the commissioners that the administration of the poor law had increased the evils of pauperism, wherever it found them already in existence, and had created and fostered evils of the same kind, even in regions which had not known them before they were touched by its contagion. The report of the commissioners p.r.o.nounced that the existing system of poor law was "destructive to the industry and honesty and forethought of the laborers, to the wealth and morality of the employers of labor and the owners of property, and to the mutual good-will and happiness of all." This may be thought a very sweeping condemnation, but the more closely the evidence is studied the more clearly it will be seen that where the poor-relief system had any effect worth taking into calculation this was the sort of effect it produced. The real objects of the legalized poor-law relief system were well and even liberally described in the report of the {226} commissioners. The object of poor relief, as the commissioners defined it, should be to make provision for that proportion, to be found in almost every community, which is plunged into such a condition of distress that it never can hope to be self-supporting again, and for that more fluctuating proportion made up of those who at the time are unable to support themselves, but whom some temporary relief may enable to return to their former condition of independence. In each cla.s.s of cases it ought to be made equally clear, before public relief were called in, that those in distress, continuous or temporary, had no near relatives in a condition to afford them reasonable a.s.sistance without undue sacrifice.

Of course it was understood that these conditions included the men and women who, owing to some temporary lack of employment, were actually unable to find the means of living by their own honest labor. The ideas of the commissioners were not pedantically economical in their range, nor did they insist that public relief must be given only as the reward of personal integrity when visited by undeserved misfortune. It was freely admitted that even where men and women had allowed themselves, by idleness or carelessness, to sink into actual poverty, it was better to give them temporary relief at the public expense than allow them to take up with the ways of crime, or leave them to pay the penalty of their wrongdoings by death from starvation. But it was strictly laid down that a healthy system of public relief was to help men and women for a time, in order that they might be able to help themselves once again, as soon as possible, and to make provision for those who had done their work and could do no more, and who had no near relatives in a condition to keep them from starvation. The report of the commissioners pointed out that the existing system "collects and chains down the laborers in ma.s.ses, without any reference to the demand for their labor; that, while it increases their numbers, it impairs the means by which the fund for their subsistence is to be reproduced, and impairs the motives for using those means which it suffers to exist; and that every year and every day these evils are becoming {227} more overwhelming in magnitude and less susceptible of cure."

[Sidenote: 1833--Plans to improve the relief system]

The pa.s.sages which we have quoted are taken from the recommendations of Mr. Chadwick. He goes on to say that, "of those evils, that which consists merely in the amount of the rates--an evil great when considered by itself, but trifling when compared with the moral effects which I am deploring--might be much diminished by the combination of workhouses, and by subst.i.tuting a rigid administration and contract management for the existing scenes of neglect, extravagance, jobbery, and fraud." Mr.

Chadwick points out that "if no relief were allowed to be given to the able-bodied or to their families, except in return for adequate labor or in a well-regulated workhouse, the worst of the existing sources of evil--the allowance system--would immediately disappear; a broad line would be drawn between the independent laborers and the paupers; the numbers of paupers would be immediately diminished, in consequence of the reluctance to accept relief on such terms, and would be still further diminished in consequence of the increased fund for the payment of wages occasioned by the diminution of rates; and would ultimately, instead of forming a constantly increasing proportion of our whole population, become a small, well-defined part of it, capable of being provided for at an expense less than one-half of the present poor rates." And finally it was urged that "it is essential to every one of these improvements that the administration of the poor laws should be intrusted, as to their general superintendence, to one central authority with extensive powers; and, as to their details, to paid officers, acting under the consciousness of constant superintendence and strict responsibility." On these reports and recommendations the new measure for the reorganization of the poor-law system was founded. The main objects of the measure were to divide these countries, for poor-relief purposes, into areas of regular and, in a certain sense, of equal proportions, so that the whole burden of poverty should not be cast for relief on one particular district, while a neighboring and much richer {228} district was able to escape from its fair measure of liability; to have the relief administered not by local justices, or parish clergymen, but by representative bodies duly elected and responsible to public opinion; and by the creation of one great central board charged with the duty of seeing to the proper administration of the whole system. Thus, it will be observed that the main principle of the Reform Bill, the principle of representation, had been already accepted by statesmans.h.i.+p as the central idea of a department of State which had nothing to do with the struggles of political parties.

[Sidenote: 1834--Pa.s.sage of the Poor-law Bill]

The measure when it came before Parliament met, of course, with strong opposition, first in the House of Commons and then in the House of Lords.

Much of the opposition came, no doubt, from men of old-fas.h.i.+oned ways, who dreaded and hated any changes in any inst.i.tutions to which they had been accustomed, and who held that even pauperism itself acquired a certain sanct.i.ty from the fact that it had been fostered and encouraged by the wisdom of so many succeeding generations. Some of the opposition, however, was inspired by feelings of a more purely sentimental, and therefore perhaps of a more respectable order. It was urged that the new system, if carried into law, would bear hardly on the deserving as well as the undeserving people; that the workhouse test would separate the husband from wife, and the father from the children; and, above all, that certain clauses of the new measure would leave the once innocent girl who had been led astray by some vile tempter to bear the whole legal responsibility as well as the public shame of her sin. It is not necessary for us now to go over at any length the long arguments which were brought up on both sides of the controversy. Many capable and high-minded observers were carried away by what may be called the sentimental side of the question, and forgot the enormous extent of the almost national corruption which the measure was striving to remove, in their repugnance to some of the evils which it did not indeed create, but which it failed to abolish. One weakness common to nearly all the arguments employed against the {229} measure came from the facility there was for putting out of sight altogether, during such a process of reasoning, the fact that the daily and hourly effect of the existing system was to force the deserving and hard-working poor to sink into that very pauperism which it was the object of all law-makers to diminish, or to abolish altogether. The wit of man could not devise any system of poor relief which should never go wrong in its application, should never bear harshly on men and women who deserved, and were striving for, an honest and independent subsistence.

The Bill, however, was pa.s.sed in the House of Commons by a large majority. It was carried after a hard fight through the House of Lords, and received the royal a.s.sent in August, 1834. It should be said that the Duke of Wellington, although usually strong and resolute as a party man, had good sense and fair spirit enough to make him a warm supporter of the measure, despite the vehement protestations of many of his own habitual supporters. Since that time it seems to be admitted by common consent that the measure has accomplished all the beneficial results which its promoters antic.i.p.ated from it, and has, in many of its provisions, worked even better than some of its supporters had expected.

Of course, our poor-law system has since that time been always undergoing modifications of one kind or another, and public criticism is continually pointing to the necessity for further improvement. We hear every now and then of cases in which, owing to local maladministration, some deserving men and women, honestly struggling to keep their heads above pauperism, are left to perish of hunger or cold. We read well-authenticated, only too well-authenticated, instances of actual starvation taking place in some wealthy district of a great city. We hear of parochial funds squandered and muddled away; of the ratepayers' money wasted in extravagance, and worse than extravagance; of miserable courts and alleys where the deserving and undeserving poor are alike neglected and uncared for. But it would be utterly impossible that some such defects as these should not be found in the management of any system worked by {230} human mechanism for such a purpose as the relief of a great nation's poverty.

The predominant fact is that we have a system which is based on the representative principle, which is open to the inspection and the criticism of the whole country, and which frankly declares itself the enemy of professional beggary and the helper of the poverty which is honestly striving to help itself. Much remains yet to be done for the improvement of our national system of poor relief, but it has, at least, to be said that the reformed Parliament did actually establish a system founded on just principles and responsible to public judgment.

[Sidenote: 1833--The East India Company's charter]

Another of the great reforms which was accomplished in this age of reform found its occasion when the time came for the renewal of the East India Company's charter. The Government and the Houses of Parliament had to deal with the future administration of one of the greatest empires the world had ever seen, brought together by events and forces the like of which had not been at work in any previous chapter of the world's history. We have already traced, in this book, the growth of the East India Company's possessions, a growth brought about by a combination of the qualities which belonged to the Alexanders and the Caesars, and of the qualities also which go to the expansion of peaceful commerce and the opening up of markets for purely industrial enterprise. The charter of the Company had been renewed by legislation at long intervals, and the first reformed Parliament now found itself compelled to settle the conditions under which the charter should be renewed for another period of twenty years. Mr. Molesworth justly remarks that "it was a fortunate circ.u.mstance that the Reform Bill had pa.s.sed, and a Reform Parliament been elected, before the question of the renewal of the Company's charter was decided; for otherwise the directors of this great Company and other persons interested in the maintenance of the monopolies and abuses connected with it would in all probability have returned to Parliament, by means of rotten boroughs, a party of adherents sufficiently large to have effectually prevented the Government and the House of Commons from dealing with {231} this great question in the manner in which the interests of England and India alike demanded that it should be dealt with."

Up to the time at which we have now arrived the East India Company had an almost absolute monopoly of the whole Chinese trade, as well as the Indian trade, and a control over the administration of India such as might well have gratified the ambition of a despotic monarch. The last renewal of the Company's charter had been in 1813, and it was to run for twenty years, so that Lord Grey's Government found themselves charged with the task of making arrangements for its continuance, or its modifications, or its abolition. Some distinction had already been effected between the powers of the Company as the ruler of a vast Empire under the suzerainty of England, and its powers as a huge commercial corporation, or what we should now call a syndicate, but the company still retained its monopoly of the India and China trade. In the mean time, however, the principles of political economy had been a.s.serting a growing influence over the public intelligence, and the question was coming to be asked, more and more earnestly, why a private company should be allowed the exclusive right of conducting the trade between England and India and China. An agitation against the monopoly began, as was but natural, among the great manufacturing and commercial towns in the North of England. Miss Martineau, in her "History of the Thirty Years' Peace,"

ascribes the beginning of this movement to a once well-known merchant and philanthropist of Liverpool, the late Mr. William Rathbone, whom some of us can still remember having known in our earlier years. Miss Martineau had probably good reasons for making such a statement, and, at all events, nothing is more likely than that such a movement began in Liverpool, and began with such a man. In London the directors and supporters of the East India Company were too powerful to give much chance to a hostile movement begun in the metropolis, and it needed the energy, the commercial independence, and the advanced opinions of the northern cities to give it an effective start.

{232}

When the time came for the renewal of the Company's charter, the Government had made up their mind that the renewal should be conditional on the abolition of the commercial monopoly, and that the trade between the dominions of King William and the Eastern populations should be thrown open to all the King's subjects. The measure pa.s.sed through both Houses of Parliament with but little opposition. Mr. Molesworth is perfectly right in his remarks as to the different sort of reception which would have been given to such a measure if the charter had come up for renewal before the Act of Reform had abolished the nomination boroughs and the various other sham const.i.tuencies. But it is a striking proof of the hold which the representative principle and the doctrines of free-trade were already beginning to have on public opinion that the monopoly of the East India Company should not have been able to make a harder fight for its existence. The wonder which a modern reader will be likely to feel as he studies the subject now is, not that the monopoly should have been abolished with so little trouble, but that rational men should have admitted so long the possibility of any justification for its existence.

The renewal of the Charter of the Bank of England gave an opportunity, during the same session, for an alteration in the conditions under which the Bank maintains its legalized position and its relations with the State, and for a further reorganization of those conditions, which was in itself a distinct advance in the commercial arrangements of the Empire.

Other modifications have taken place from time to time since those days, and it is enough to say here that the alterations made by the first reformed Parliament, at the impulse of Lord Grey and his colleagues, were in keeping with the movement of the commercial spirit and went along the path illumined by the growing light of a sound political economy.

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CHAPTER LXXVII.

PEEL'S FORLORN HOPE.

[Sidenote: 1834--Retirement of Lord Grey]

Lord Grey was growing tired of the work of that Administration. It had been incessant work, and its great successes of later years had been checkered by some disappointments, which, although not deep-reaching, were irritating and disturbing. Some of his most capable colleagues had broken away from him, and he probably began to feel that the reformers all over the country expected more of him than he saw his way to accomplish. In 1834 he asked to be relieved from the duties of his office, and the King consented, probably with greater good-will than he had felt in acceding to some of Lord Grey's previous requests, and accordingly Lord Grey ceased to be Prime Minister. With his resignation of office Lord Grey pa.s.ses out of this history and takes an abiding place in the Parliamentary history of his country. He can hardly be called a great statesman, for he had been mainly instrumental in bringing to success and putting into legislative form the ideas of greater men, but his must be regarded as a distinguished and n.o.ble figure among England's Parliamentary leaders. He was especially suited for the work which it was his proud fortune to accomplish at the zenith of his power, for no one could be better fitted than he for the task of discountenancing the wild alarms which were felt by so many belonging to what were called the privileged cla.s.ses at the thought of any measures of reform which might disturb the existing order of things, and lead to red ruin and the breaking-up of laws. On Lord Grey's retirement he was succeeded as Prime Minister by Lord Melbourne, who had previously been Home Secretary. Lord Melbourne might have been thought just the sort of {234} person with whom King William could easily get on, because such a Prime Minister was not likely to vex his sovereign's unwilling ear by too many demands for rapid and far-reaching reform. Melbourne was a thoroughly easy, not to say lazy, man. He was certainly not wanting in intellect, he had some culture, he was a great reader of books and a great lover of books, and he was often only too glad to escape into literary talk and literary gossip from discussions on political questions and measures to be introduced into Parliament. He was fond of society, made himself generally agreeable to women, and was usually well acquainted with the pa.s.sing scandals of high social life.

[Sidenote: 1834--Peel to be Premier]

One might, indeed, have thought that such a man was just the minister in whom King William would find a congenial companion and adviser. But the truth was that the King had grown tired of the Whig statesmen, and had long been looking out for an opportunity to get rid of them on easy terms. Perhaps he did not quite like the idea of telling a man of Lord Grey's stately demeanor that he wished to dispense with his services and saw in Lord Melbourne a minister who could be approached on any subject without much sensation of awe. However that may be, the King soon found what seemed to him a satisfactory opportunity for ridding himself of the presence of his Whig advisers. Lord Althorp was suddenly raised to the House of Lords by the death of his father. Earl Spencer, and of course some rearrangement of the Ministry became necessary, as it would not be possible that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should have a ministerial place anywhere but in the House which has the levying of the taxes and the spending of the money. When Lord Melbourne came to advise with his sovereign on the subject the King informed him, in the most direct and off-hand manner, that he contemplated a much more complete rearrangement than Lord Melbourne had suggested, and, in fact, that he had made up his mind to get rid of the present Government altogether. Lord Melbourne, of course, bowed to the will of his master, and, indeed, was not the sort of man to take a {235} dismissal from office greatly to heart, believing it, no doubt, quite likely that some restoration to office might await him, and possibly feeling that life had some enjoyments left for him even though he were never again to be Prime Minister.

The King determined to send for Sir Robert Peel and intrust him with the task of forming an Administration. William had, as might naturally be expected of him, consulted in the first instance with the Duke of Wellington. Wellington, with the practical good sense which was a part of his character, had told the sovereign that at such a time it was futile to think of calling upon any one to become Prime Minister who had not a seat in the House of Commons. As the King was resolved to have a new Administration, Peel was obviously the man to be intrusted with the task of forming it, and therefore the King sent for him at once. But Peel was not in England; he had gone with his wife to Italy, and, as we know from his own published letters, he had not entered into any communication, even with the Duke of Wellington, as to the probable movements of political affairs in his absence, not supposing for a moment that any emergency could arise at home which might make it necessary for him to cut short his holiday and return to the working ground of Westminster. A special messenger had to be sent off at once to convey to Peel the wishes of his sovereign, and one has to stop and think over things a little before he can quite realize what it meant in those days, which seem so near our own, to send a special message from London to the heart of Italy. Peel was at Rome, and had just returned with his wife one night from a great ball given by a celebrated Italian Princess, when he received the letter which urged him to come back and become for the first time Prime Minister of England. Peel's mind was at once made up. That sense of duty which always guided his movements dictated his reply. There was for him no question of personal pride or ambition to be gratified, or of any graceful effort to affect the ways of one who modestly shrinks from a task beyond his power. He saw that his sovereign needed {236} his immediate services, and that was enough for him. He and his wife were just on the eve of what had promised to be a delightful visit to Naples, but the visit to Naples was put off without a second thought to the indefinite future, and the statesman and his wife set out at once on their journey to London. The preparations for such a journey at that time were such as might give pause even to an experienced explorer in our own easy-going and luxurious age. Sir Robert Peel, of course, had to travel by private carriage. He had to traverse more than one State in order to reach the sea at Calais. The roads were dangerous in many places, and Peel had to take some well-armed servants with him. He had to go well provided with the most elaborate official pa.s.sports. He had even to obtain a special pa.s.sport for himself, lest, in the event of his wife finding the constant travel too much for her, she might have to take rest at some town on the way, and Peel, if he attempted to continue his journey, might be stopped somewhere until he had satisfactorily accounted for the disappearance of the lady who was described in the original pa.s.sports as his travelling companion and his wife. The journey was interrupted by unforeseen obstacles in several places. At one spot the rising of a river relentlessly barricaded the progress of the travellers for many hours. At another point a bridge was broken down. In France, Peel and his wife were brought to a stand at the city of Lyons because that city happened just then to be in a state of siege, and the travellers had to furnish satisfactory evidence that they were not emissaries of some revolutionary propaganda. It took twelve days to cover the distance from Rome to Dover, and, except for such delays as have just been mentioned, our travellers had gone on night and day without stopping. Even when they arrived at Dover, Peel took no thought about rest, but journeyed on all night until he reached London.