BOOK III THE NINETEENTH CENTURY I ENGLISH HISTORY SINCE 1800 IN 1800 King George III., who had been forty years on the throne, was lapsing into that melancholy madness in which his sixty years of royalty closed. The last ten years of his reign were virtually part of his successor's, the Prince Regent, afterward George IV. In 1830 King William IV. succeeded his brother; his reign lasted only seven years. Since 1837 the sovereign of England has been Queen Victoria. During the nineteenth century, then, only three English sovereigns came to the throne. It chances that each of these represents a distinct phase of English history. The Regency, under which general name we may for the moment include also the reign of George IV., was the time when the insular isolation of England was most pronounced. In 1798 Nelson won the battle of the Nile. No incident more definitely marks the international position of England as the chief conservative defender of such traditions as for a while seemed fatally threatened by the French Revolution becoming incarnate in Napoleon. During the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century the conflict persisted, more and more isolating England and emphasising English conservatism. In 1805, Trafalgar, which finally destroyed the sea power of Napoleon, made the English Channel more than ever a frontier separating England from the rest of Europe. It was not until ten years later, in 1815, that Waterloo, finally overthrowing Napoleon, made room for the reaction which overran continental Europe for thirty years to come; and only then could England begin to relax that insularity which the Napoleonic wars had so developed in English temper. England is the only country of civilised Europe where Napoleon never succeeded in planting his power; only English soil remained free from his invasion; and during the first part of the nineteenth century the price which England paid for this freedom was an unprecedented concentration of her own life within her own bounds. This era of dogged resistance to the French Revolution finally developed the traditional type of John Bull. To suppose that England remained unmoved by revolutionary fervour, however, would be a complete mistake. Two years after William IV. ascended the throne, there occurred in English politics an incident as revolutionary as any which ever took place in France. The results of it have long since altered the whole nature of English life, social and political. Although revolutionary in purpose, however, and in ultimate effect rather more successfully revolutionary than any convulsion of continental Europe, the Reform Bill of 1832 was carried through in England by formally constitutional means. This Bill permanently altered the theory and practice of suffrage in England, establishing the broadly democratic principle that representation in the House of Commons shall be apportioned to the population. To the conservative temper of the time nothing could have been more abhorrent than parliamentary reform. The fact that under the old system the House of Commons had worked admirably seemed reason enough why there should be no change; the principles on which reform was urged involved something like recognition of those abstract rights which even to the present day remain foreign to the most characteristic temper of England. Undoubtedly the consequent opposition of the better classes was blindly prejudiced. The reformed Parliaments, newly reformed more than once since 1832, have worked far better than the opponents of reform expected; but in the minds of many competent judges it is still an open question whether as agents of government they have worked so well as the Parliaments which came before. The old system, where a great gentleman often carried half a dozen boroughs in his pocket, made it easy to find a seat in the House for any young man of promise; to go no further, it was to this system that we owe the parliamentary career of Burke. There can be little doubt that with the progress of democratic temper in England the House of Commons has tended personally to deteriorate. No doubt there are aspects in which the new system seems more just than the old; but there are aspects, too, in which the old seems to have been the safer. Such speculations as this, however, are fruitless; the Reform Bill is a fact; and the thing for us to remark about it is that this virtual revolution in England was accomplished constitutionally. In brief, what happened was this. The House of Lords, the more conservative chamber of Parliament, was unprepared to pass the Reform Bill; the House of Commons, representing, it believed, the ardent conviction of the country, was determined that the Bill should be passed. Thereupon the King was persuaded to inform the Lords that in case they persisted in voting against the measure he should make a majority of the House. servative peers to terms. They did not vote for the measure, but under the leadership of the Duke of Wellington they walked out of the house in silent protest. A revolutionary threat on the part of the King had accomplished under constitutional forms a peaceful revolution. create new peers enough to This threat brought the con Five years later King William IV. was dead. Then began the reign of the most tenderly human sovereign in English history. For sixty-two years, in the full blaze of public life, she has unfalteringly done what she has deemed her duty. |