in 1824, at the instance of Joseph Hume, a rising economical reformer, and with the warm support of Huskisson, the President of the Board of Trade, the laws against combinations were repealed, though in 1825, in consequence of acts of violence done by the workmen against unpopular masters, a further act was passed making legal all combinations both of masters and men, if entered on for the purpose of fixing wages, but illegal if entered on for any other purpose. 18. Robinson's Budgets. 1823-1825.-This attempt to give freedom to labour was accompanied by steps in the direction of freedom of trade. Robinson, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, supported by Huskisson, employed the surplus given him by the 1823-1827 POLITICS AND LITERATURE 887 prosperity of the country to reduce the duties on some imports. It was but little that was done, but it was the first time since Pitt's commercial treaty with France that a government showed any signs of perceiving that Englishmen would be better off by the removal of artificial difficulties in the way of their trade with other nations. 19. The End of the Liverpool Ministry. 1826-1827.--Though the ministry was in name a Tory ministry, it was far from being united on any subject. Some of its members, like the Chancellor, Lord Eldon, continued to detest all reforms, thinking that they must ultimately lead to a catastrophe; whilst other ministers, like Canning, Peel, and Huskisson, were in favour of gradual reforms, though there were some particular questions on which even the reformers were not in agreement. So discordant a ministry could hardly have been kept together but for the tact and easy nature of its head, the Earl of Liverpool, who allowed the ministers to argue against one another in Parliament even on important subjects. On February 17, 1827, Liverpool was incapacitated from public service by an attack of apoplexy, and it was by that time evident that the two sections of the Cabinet would not be able to serve together under any other leader. Whatever differences there might be about details, the main difference between the two sections can be easily described. On the one hand, the unprogressive section not only disliked the idea of changing institutions which had proved themselves useful in past times, but also shrank from giving way to increased popular control over Parliament, or to any violent popular demand for legislation. On the other hand, the progressive section, though hardly prepared to allow the decisions of Parliament to be influenced by popular pressure, was yet in some sympathy with the popular feeling on subjects ripe for legislation. 20. Burns, Byron, and Shelley. As usually happens, the strong opinions which prevailed amongst politicians were reflected in the literature of the time. Burns, the Ayrshire ploughman, whose first verses were written in 1775, was in full accordance with the precursors of the French Revolution in his love of nature and his revolt against traditional custom, and too often in his revolt against traditional morality. The often-quoted lines The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gowd for a' that, show the same contempt for class distinctions as inspired the writings of Rousseau. Whilst, however, Rousseau looked to the good sense of the masses to remedy the evils of the time, Burns turned hopefully to the work and sturdiness of individual men to heal the evils caused by the inordinate value placed on social rank. The honour paid to the free development of individual character was, in fact, the characteristic of the English and Scottish Sir Walter Scott: from a painting by Colvin Smith. revolt against existing order, as opposed to the honour paid by the French Revolutionists to the opinion of the community. Byron, whose first poems were printed in 1806, but whose first great workthe first two cantos of Childe Harold-appeared in 1812, embodied this form of revolt in his works as well as in his life in a very different fashion from that of Burns. Breaking loose himself from moral restraints, he loved to glorify the characters of those who set at defiance the order of civilised life. In 1824 he died of fever at Missolonghi, fighting for Greek independence. Shelley, whose 1793-1814 POETRY AND POLITICS 889 poems range from 1808 to his early death by drowning in 1822, had a gentler spirit. All human law and discipline seemed to him to be the mere invention of tyrants, by which the instinctive craving of the soul for beauty of form and nobility of life was repressed. 21. Scott and Wordsworth.-On the other hand two great poets, Scott and Wordsworth, upheld the traditions of the ancient order of society. Scott's first great poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, appeared in 1805. In 1814 he deserted poetry for the writing of the Waverley Novels. His mind was filled with reverence for the past life of his country, and this he set forth in verse and prose as no other writer has done. Yet Scott's works may be quoted in support of the doctrine that no considerable movement of thought can leave its greatest opponents unaffected, and the better side of the revolutionary upturning, its preference of the natural to the artificial, and of the humble to the exalted, inspired the best work of Scott. His imaginative love for the heath-clad mountains of his country, and his skill in depicting the pathos and the humour of the lowly, stood him in better stead than his Wordsworth at the age of 28: from a portrait by skill in bringing before his readers the chivalry and the pageantry of the past. As it was with Scott so it was with Wordsworth whose first poetry was published in 1793. The early promise of the French Revolution filled him with enthusiasm, but its excesses disgusted him, and he soon became an attached admirer of the institutions of his country. It was not this admiration, however, which put the stamp of greatness on his work, but his open eye fixed, even more clearly than Scott's, upon the influences of nature 3 M upon the human mind, and a loving sympathy with the lives of the poor. 22. Bentham. In politics and in law the same influences were felt as in literature. As the horror caused by the French Revolution cleared away, there arose a general dissatisfaction with the existing tendency to uphold what exists merely because it exists. The dissatisfaction thus caused found support in the writings of Jeremy Bentham, who busied himself from 1776 to his death in 1832 with suggestions of legal and political reform. Like Voltaire and the French encyclopedists, he asked that legislation might be rational, and he sought a basis for rational legislation in the doctrine of utility. Utility he defined to be that property in any object whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness, or to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered.' The object which Bentham desired, therefore, has been summed up in the phrase the greatest happiness of the greatest number,' and though in pursuit of this Bentham and his disciples often left out of sight the satisfaction of the spiritual and emotional parts of man's complex nature, they undoubtedly did much to clear away an enormous quantity of mischievous legislation. It was in a kindred spirit that Romilly, Mackintosh and Peel urged on the modification of the criminal law, and it was hardly likely that a movement of this kind, when once begun, would be soon arrested. Books recommended for the further study of Part X. LECKY, W. E. H. History of England in the Eighteenth Century. Vol v. p. 154-Vol. vi. p. 137; Vol. vi. p. 456-Vol. viii. MASSEY, W. A History of England in the Reign of George III. Vol. iv. MARTINEAU, HARRIET (MISS). History of England, A.D. 1800-1815. Vol. ii. p. 125. A History of the Thirty Years' Peace. Vol. i. WALPOLE, SPENCER. A History of England from the Conclusion of the Great War in 1815. Vol. i.-Vol. ii. p. 158. LEWIS, SIR GEORGE CORNEWALL. Essays on the Administrations of Great Britain. Pp. 129-432. NAPIER, SIR W. F. P. History of the Peninsular War. BRIAI MONT, A. Life of Arthur, Duke of Wellington, translated from the French, with emendations and additions by the Rev. G. R. Gleig. |