Ministers saw in the Luddite organization only another conspiracy
against the state; and, so far from seeking means for
removing the grievances that underlay popular disaffection,
the activity of parliament, inspired by the narrowest class
interests, only tended to increase them. The price of food,
already raised by the war, was still further increased by successive
Corn Laws and Enclosure Acts.
Corn Laws, and the artificial value thus given
to arable land led to the passing of Enclosure Bills,
under which the country people were deprived of their
common rights with very inadequate compensation,
and life in the village communities was made more and more
difficult. In the circumstances it is not surprising that the
spirit of unrest grew apace. In 1815 the passing of a new Corn
Law, forbidding the importation of corn so long as the price
for home-grown wheat was under 80s. the quarter, led to riots
in London. An attack made on the prince regent at the opening
of parliament on the 28th of January 1817 led to an inquiry,
which revealed the existence of an elaborate organization for
the overthrow of the existing order. The repressive measures
Repressive legislation.
of 1795 and 1799 were now revived and extended, and
a bill suspending the Habeas Corpus Act for a year
was passed through both Houses by a large majority.
On the 27th of March Lord Sidmouth opened the
government campaign against the press by issuing a circular to
the lords-lieutenants, directing them to instruct the justices of
the peace to issue warrants for the arrest of any person charged
on oath with publishing blasphemous or seditious libels. The
legality of this suggestion was more than doubtful, but it was
none the less acted on, and a series of press prosecutions followed,
some—as in the case of the bookseller William Hone—on grounds
so trivial that juries refused to convict. William Cobbett, the
most influential of the reform leaders, in order to avoid arbitrary
imprisonment, “deprived of pen, ink and paper,” suspended
the Political Register and sailed for America. A disturbance
that was almost an armed insurrection, which broke out in
Derbyshire in June of this year, seemed to justify the severity
of the government; it was suppressed without great difficulty,
and three of the ringleaders were executed.
It was, however, in 1819 that the conflict between the government and the new popular forces culminated. Distress was acute; and in the manufacturing towns mass meetings were held to discuss a remedy, which, under the guidance of political agitators, was discovered in universal Agitation for reform. suffrage and annual parliaments. The right to return members to parliament was claimed for all communities; and since this right was unconstitutionally withheld, unrepresented towns were invited to exercise it in anticipation of its formal concession. At Birmingham, accordingly, Sir Charles Wolseley was duly elected “legislatorial attorney and representative” of the town. Manchester followed suit; but the meeting arranged for the 9th of August was declared illegal by the magistrates, on the strength of a royal proclamation against seditious meetings issued on the 30th of July. Another meeting was accordingly summoned for the undoubtedly legal purpose of petitioning parliament in favour of reform. On the appointed day (August 16) thousands poured in from the surrounding districts. These men had been previously drilled, for the purpose, as their own leaders asserted, of enabling the vast assemblage to be conducted in an orderly manner; for the purpose, as the magistrates suspected, of preparing them for an armed insurrection. An attempt was made by a party of yeomanry The “Manchester Massacre.” to arrest a popular agitator, Henry Hunt; the angry mob surged round the horsemen, who found themselves powerless; the Riot Act was read, and the 15th Hussars charged the crowd with drawn swords. The meeting rapidly broke up, but not before six had been killed and many injured. The “Manchester Massacre” gave an immense impetus to the movement in favour of reform. The employment of soldiers to suppress liberty of speech stirred up the resentment of Englishmen as nothing else could have done, and this resentment was increased by the conviction that the government was engaged with the “Holy Alliance” in an unholy conspiracy against liberty everywhere. The true tendency of Castlereagh’s foreign policy was not understood, nor had he any of the popular arts which would have enabled Canning to carry public opinion with him in cases where a frank explanation was impossible. The Liberals could see no more than that he appeared to be committed to international engagements, the logical outcome of which might be—as an orator of the Opposition put it—that Cossacks would be encamped in Hyde Park for the purpose of overawing the House of Commons.
The dangerous agitation that gave expression to this state of feeling was met by the government in the session of November 1819 by the passing of the famous Six Acts. The first of these deprived the defendant of the right of traversing, but directed that he should be brought to trial The “Six Acts.” within a year; the second increased the penalties for seditious libel; the third imposed the newspaper stamp duty on all pamphlets and the like containing news; the fourth (Seditious Meetings Act) once more greatly curtailed the liberty of public meetings; the fifth forbade the training of persons in the use of arms; the sixth empowered magistrates to search for and seize arms.
The apparent necessity for the passing of these exceptional
measures was increased by the imminent death of the old king,
the tragic close of whose long reign had won for him
a measure of popular sympathy which was wholly
lacking in the case of the prince regent. On the 23rd
Accession
of
George IV.
of February 1820 George III. died, and the regent
became king as George IV. This was the signal for an outburst
of popular discontent with the existing order of a far more
ominous character than any that had preceded it. The king
was generally loathed, not so much for his vices—which would
have been, in this case as in others, condoned in a more popular
monarch—but for the notorious meanness and selfishness of
his character. Of these qualities he took the occasion of his
accession to make a fresh display. He had long been separated
from his wife, Caroline of Brunswick; he now refused her the
title of queen consort, forbade the mention of her name in the
liturgy, and persuaded the government to promote an inquiry
in parliament into her conduct, with a view to a divorce. Whatever
grounds there may have been for this action, popular sympathy
was wholly with Queen Caroline, who became the centre
round which all the forces of discontent rallied. The failure of
the Bill of Pains and Penalties against the queen, which was
dropped after it had passed its third reading in the Lords by a
majority of only seven, was greeted as a great popular triumph.
The part played by the government in this unsavoury affair
had discredited them even in the eyes of the classes whose fear
of revolution had hitherto made them supporters of the established
system; and the movement for reform received a new stimulus.
The Tory government itself realized the necessity for some concessions to the growing public sentiment. In 1821 a small advance was made. The reform bill (equal electoral districts) introduced by Lambton (afterwards Lord Durham) was thrown out; but the corrupt borough Beginnings of reform. of Grampound in Cornwall was disfranchised and the seats transferred to the county of York. Even more significant was the change in the cabinet, which was strengthened by the admission of some of the more conservative section of the Opposition, Lord Sidmouth retiring and Robert Peel becoming home secretary. A bill for the removal of Catholic disabilities, too, was carried in the Commons, though rejected in the Lords; and the appointment of Lord Wellesley, an advocate of the Catholic claims, to the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland marked yet another stage in the settlement of a question which, more than anything else at that time, kept Ireland and Irishmen in a state of chronic discontent and agitation.
It is not without significance that this modification of the policy of the Tory government at home coincided with a modification of its relations with the European powers. The tendency of Metternich’s system had long been growing distasteful to Castlereagh, who had consistently protested against the attempt to constitute the Grand Alliance general police of Europe and
