The 1820s (1): the coming of reform

Sir Robert Peel
Home Secretary from 1822
by Sir Henry William Pickersgill
Public domain

Liberal Toryism?

Lord Liverpool’s administration has traditionally been divided into two unequal periods:

1. a reactionary phase 1812-1820 symbolised by Sidmouth and the Six Acts
2. a shorter ‘liberal’ phase associated with the ‘second-wave’ ministers: William Huskisson, Frederick Robinson, Robert Peel.

This is now seen as an over-simplification. But there can be little doubt that the nation was changing. In March 1820 Robert Peel wrote to a friend:

‘Do you not think that there is a feeling becoming daily more general and more confirmed in favour of some undefined change in the mode of governing the country?’

The Whig politician, Henry Brougham, said

‘the schoolmaster had been abroad in the land’.

The Manchester Mechanics' Institute,
founded 1825

The Mechanics Institute movement, the brainchild of two Glasgow professors, John Anderson and George Birkbeck spread education among working men. Henry Brougham’s Practical Observations upon the Education of the People sold 50,000 copies in a few weeks and quickly went through twenty editions. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (founded by Brougham in 1826) provided them with cheap information. 

Free trade
The government was inexorably, if inconsistently, moving towards a policy of free trade.  As far back as 1812, Lord Liverpool had said,

‘the less commerce and manufactures were meddled with the more likely they were to prosper’.

On 26 May 1820 he delivered a speech extolling the virtues of free trade and in 1824-5 Frederick Robinson, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, lowered excise duties on a wide range of consumer goods.

The liberalisation of the economy threw into stark relief the anomaly of the Corn Laws, but the power of the landed interest was such that it could not be attacked frontally. The first important modification of the Corn Laws did not occur until 1828 - this was a clumsy sliding-scale of duties which tapered to nominal rates when wheat prices reached 73s – the sum agreed on was a compromise.

The Peterloo Massacre

This post owes a great deal to Robert Poole's brilliant article, '"By the Law or the Sword": Peterloo Revisited', History, 91 (2006): 254-276. The Wikipedia article on Peterloo is also extremely good and takes account of modern research including Poole's article. There is a more recent study of the background to Peterloo in this blog from the History of Parliament website. See also the account here, which gives special prominence to the female reformers.

There is an interesting discussion of Peterloo in Melvyn Bragg's 'In Our Time' programme on Radio 4. 

In 1819 radical reformers made serious attempts to stage a series of mass demonstrations.

In January there was a parliamentary reform meeting of about 10,000 at St Peter’s Fields in Manchester at which Henry Hunt was the principal speaker. Banners bearing the mottoes ‘Rights of Man’, ‘Universal Suffrage’ and ‘No Corn Laws’ were displayed.

The authorities were deeply alarmed. On 2 March, following reports that radical leaders were arming themselves with pikes, Henry Hobhouse, the permanent under secretary at the Home Office, wrote to the Oldham magistrates that the evidence confirmed the Home Secretary, Sidmouth’s, opinion that

‘your Country will not be tranquillized, until Blood shall have been shed either by the Law or the Sword.’ (Quoted Poole, 265).

In June there were a series of meetings in the industrial districts of Lancashire, Yorkshire, the Midlands and the west of Scotland. These peaceful meetings pounded the same theme: the sufferings of the people were due to the inadequacies and extravagance of government, and the remedy lay in annual parliaments and manhood suffrage.

Waterloo to Peterloo

Problems of the peace

The radical, Samuel Bamford wrote: 

While the laurels were yet cool on the brows of our victorious soldiers ... the elements of convulsion were at work among the masses of our labouring population.

Samuel Bamford in his respectable old age
Public domain

The immediate post-war years, 1815-21, saw unemployment and high bread prices coincide with renewed political discontent.

1. Adjustments had to be made in line with reduced demand for products associated with the war effort: provisions, timber, clothing, iron, leather, canvas, rope.
2. During the wars the armed forces of Britain had been increased to 400,000 men (with as many again in the reserves) compared with about 60,000 in 1791. Rapid demobilisation put nearly a third of a million ex-servicemen on the already glutted labour market. This depressed wage levels, added to unemployment, increased the burden of local taxation and ensured that the discontented would be led by those with military experience.
3. Added to this came the strains of technological redundancy. The number of shearing frames in Yorkshire had increased in the past decade from under a hundred to over 1,400 and in October 1817, 3,625 croppers petitioned Parliament for help. In Lancashire the number of handloom weavers continued to rise while their wages continued to fall.

The Corn Law

Even before Napoleon’s final defeat, the government of Lord Liverpool had bowed to massive agricultural pressure. In 1813 an abundant harvest sent prices tumbling. Peace in 1814 brought foreign grain imports with the promise of more to come. The government came under strong pressure from the landed interest , which argued that a Corn Law was justified in the interests of national security and domestic stability:

1. Britain might once again need to maximise the domestic supply of foodstuffs to counteract the effects of blockade.
2. Agriculture was the largest single employer of labour and was already subject to rural depopulation.

In February 1815 a parliament overwhelmingly dominated by the landed interest passed a law allowing the free importation of foreign corn only when the price of home-grown corn had reached the price of 80s.  a quarter. This decision -together with a run of bad harvests - helped ensure that the average price of corn was higher in the years 1810-19 than at any other time during the whole of the nineteenth century.

Radicalism and the end of the war

Whigs, Tories and radicals

The death first of Pitt and then of Fox in 1806 helped transformed politics. The ‘friends of Mr Pitt’ formed an embryonic Tory party. The ‘friends of Mr Fox’ grouped round Charles, 2nd Earl Grey.

The Whigs agreed on two issues: the need to reduce the power of the Crown and the need to settle the Catholic question. But they were embarrassed by radical elements within the party, who mounted frequent criticisms of the government’s war policy. There were also radicals outside the party, such as the radical baronet, Sir Francis Burdett, and the journalist, William Cobbett. They demanded a radical reform of taxation and manhood suffrage. 

From 1810 onwards, although the Tories were firmly in power, the country itself was becoming more unsettled. 1811 and 1812 were crisis years: a time of economic hardship, disillusionment at the Regent’s failure to dismiss his Tory ministers, war with the United States. In May 1812 the prime minister, Spencer Perceval, was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons. 

This is the background to the Luddite disturbances.

Luddism

The word Luddite has entered the vocabulary to denote an attitude of stubborn resistance to change an innovation. But the original Luddites were not ignorant, indiscriminate despoilers. They were skilled men who attacked specific targets. Nor was machine-breaking a new phenomenon. Spinning jennies, water-frames and carding engines were all attacked in Lancashire in the 1770s. Gig mills and shearing frames were attacked at the same time by ‘croppers’ or ‘shearmen’ (who raised and cut level the nap of woollen cloth) in the west of England. (In 1804 French weavers attacked the Jacquard loom in Lyons.)

From Trafalgar to the Peninsular War

The Treaty of Amiens

Pitt’s resignation came at a time when the nation was war-weary. Taxation was high, prices were rising and there was no immediate hope of military success. It was a crucial point in the war when Napoleon seemed to have Europe within his grasp, and Britain was without allies. The demand for peace was irresistible. 

On 1 October 1801 the peace preliminaries were signed and accepted by Parliament with comparatively little opposition.  In a Commons speech Pitt strongly endorsed the peace. The Treaty of Amiens was signed on 27 March 1802.  The terms were not advantageous to Britain, who finally acknowledged French hegemony in Europe, and took no account of recent British victories. Britain handed back the Cape of Good Hope to the Dutch and Trinidad to Spain. It recognised French dominance of northern Italy. However, the treaty’s popularity was confirmed by a comfortable win for Addington’s government in the general election of 1802.

James Gillray, The First Kiss
Library of Congress
Public domain

In the interval of peace, there was a spate of British visitors to France, including Fox, who travelled to France in the autumn of 1802 with Mrs Armistead. On 2 November he finally met First Consul Bonaparte, and was deeply disillusioned to learn that he was a dictator! 

Addington did not believe that the peace was permanent. He did not withdraw troops from the West Indies and made only moderate cuts to the army and navy. Meanwhile the French invaded and occupied Switzerland. By the spring of 1803 Britain’s defences were sufficiently good for Addington to take the initiative, declare war on 18 May and take Bonaparte by surprise. 

Ireland 1798: 'the Year of the French'

This post owes a great deal to R.R.Foster's classic Modern Ireland, 1600-1972 (Penguin, 1988) and to Marianne Elliott's Wolfe Tone. Prophet of Irish Independence (Yale, 1989). 

The Protestant Ascendancy

In 1800 the population of Ireland comprised: 

1.  Roman Catholic Irish (3.1 million) 
2.  Protestant Anglo-Irish (450,000)
3.  Presbyterians (900,000).

The eighteenth century was the period of the Protestant Ascendancy, buttressed by harsh penal laws. The mouthpiece of the Protestant ascendancy was the Irish Parliament in Dublin. 

The Parliament House, Dublin
Public domain

The British government was represented by the Lord Lieutenant. The parliament was dominated by the Anglo-Irish, an exclusive group that monopolised political power and saw themselves as both English and Irish. Deprived of a political role, with land-owning made increasingly difficult, the Catholic gentry tended to go into trade. The largest grievance of the population as a whole was the poverty of the rural labourers (except in Ulster where there was a flourishing linen industry). 

The Ulster Presbyterians had fewer grievances than Catholics, but until 1780 they were excluded from corporations, and though not legally barred from Parliament, only a few members were ever elected. 

In the later eighteenth century the harshness of the penal laws was toned down. Catholic chapels were built and the land tenure laws were liberalised. It was relatively easy to soften the penal laws - harder to resolve Ireland's underlying economic problems.

The Volunteer Movement 

One issue that united most Irish people was a desire for greater independence from Westminster. This case was taken up in the Irish Parliament by two MPs,  Henry Grattan and Henry Flood. During the American War many Ulster Presbyterians  enthusiastically took up the cause of the colonists; like them, they were angered by the taxation policy of the Westminster Parliament. In 1778, with French entry into the war, the Volunteer Movement began in Ulster and spread over the whole country. It was not a militia under government control but a national volunteer army, and exclusively Protestant. In 1779 the Volunteers paraded in Dublin with a decorated brass cannon with the placard: ‘Free trade - or else’. In response the British Parliament passed acts removing the restrictions on Irish trade and allowing Presbyterians to take up local appointments. In February 1782 a convention in Dungannon, addressed by Grattan and Flood, called for independence for the Irish Parliament. A new constitution was granted by the reluctant Rockingham government, giving more rights for Catholics and greater legislative independence for the Irish Parliament.

The period of ‘Grattan's Parliament’ was the greatest period of independence Ireland ever knew under British rule. It was a fitting end to the eighteenth century and coincided with an upsurge in national pride - the setting up of the Bank of Ireland, the continuing transformation of Dublin into a showcase Georgian city. But it was a very partial independence. Catholics were still not allowed to vote or to stand for Parliament and the liberalising measures only served to emphasize their disabilities. 

The United Irishmen

Theobald Wolfe Tone
Public domain.

The French Revolution had a profound effect on Ireland. In the 1790s the Volunteer movement revived, but support was now concentrated among shopkeepers and skilled urban workers - exactly the same classes as the corresponding societies in England and Scotland. In 1790-1, the Catholic Committee, a movement of members of the Irish Catholic middle class, began to campaign for the abolition of the penal laws. On 18 October 1791 the Belfast Society of United Irishmen was founded. Among the founders was Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763-98), a young Protestant lawyer from Dublin. For Tone radical political reform and nationalist identity went hand in hand, with no place for sectarian divisions. The first resolutions of the United Irishmen asserted

That the weight of English influence in the Government in this country is so great, as to require a cordial union, among ALL THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND. ... No reform is practicable, efficacious, or just, which does not include Irishmen or every religious persuasion.

In his posthumously published autobiography, written in 1796, Tone described his aim as

To subvert the tyranny of our execrable Government, to break the connexion with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my country - these were my objects. To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissensions and to substitute the common name of Irishmen in the place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter - these were my means.

His biographer, Marianne Elliott describes this as 'the most quoted passage of Irish history'.

The United Irishmen sought to forge a new political alliance between the middle-class politically-aware Presbyterians of Belfast and Dublin and the rural Catholic majority, though these two groups - the one non-sectarian, the other devoutly religious - were largely incompatible. 

A nation at war: poverty, politics, finance

Hannah More's Cheap Repository Tract,
'The Riot',
published in 1795

Wartime hardship

The summer of 1794 was one of prolonged drought and intense heat, and the result was a disappointing though not a disastrous harvest. This was followed by a severe winter, creating a grain shortage in early 1795. The spring saw rapid price rises. Shortages intensified in the summer, with garrison and naval towns suffering particularly. Bread rioters set fire to mills, sometimes they attacked those whom they believed to be hoarders or selling short measure; at other times they tried to prevent grain from leaving an area. At other times they commandeered goods and sold them at what they regarded as a fair price. This was not thuggery, but what the historian, E. P. Thompson, described as 'moral economy': a traditionalist attempt to rectify what were seen as injustices in the pricing and sale of goods.

Women were prominent in these riots. They felt so strongly because they were trying to feed their families under difficult conditions. They also benefited from the law which regarded married women as acting under the direction of their husbands - could they therefore be punished as independent agents?

Solutions to poverty?

The newspapers recommended recipes such as rice or potato bread. The rich were urged to stew their meat rather than roast it. The royal family tried to give a lead by reducing its consumption of white bread and eating more brown bread. The poor were urged to cook rice puddings - but the problem was that they did not have the ovens to cook them. They were also encouraged to eat potatoes rather than bread, but proved resistant. 

The imposition of excise duty on hair powder (with a £20 fine for those caught breaking the law) was designed to lessen the use of flour. Legislation forbade the use of wheat in distilling and in making starch. It is not clear that anyone starved to death during the shortage - but it must have had a devastating effect on health. 

One solution to rural poverty was found by the magistrates of Speenhamland in Berkshire in May 1795. This provided variable amounts of relief according to the size of a labourers’ family and the prevailing price of bread. It was bitterly attacked by political economists as encouraging large families and encouraging farmers to pay the lowest possible wage. It was also criticised for failing to discriminate between the idle and the industrious worker. However the system was quite widely adopted in the southern counties.