SOCIAL ENGLAND

CHAPTER XXI.

PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM.

1815-1832.

H. D.

TRAILL.

Intro

WITH the Battle of Waterloo and the peace which followed it the nineteenth century may be said, for Europe at any rate, to have begun. Its first fifteen years belong of right to that ductory. preceding century which, at its death, had left behind it an estate" of unsettled political problems and fierce international contentions, which it took half a generation to wind up. The exhausting and almost unbroken war of twenty years, which Waterloo brought to a close, must be regarded as one long trial of the great issue raised by the French Jacobins, and taken up by their suppressor and successor-one continuous prosecution of that far-reaching quarrel into which all the European States, from the greatest to the smallest, were successively drawn, and which for our own country became in its later stages an actual fight for existence. During the years of this life-and-death struggle, when all the energies of the nation were concentrated on the work of self-preservation, social progress was of necessity to a great extent arrested. Trade and industry were immensely but variously influenced, the disastrous effects of the long war upon them in some of their forms being but illbalanced by the artificially inflated prosperity which it imparted to others (pp. 112, 116). Political movements which had seemed almost within measurable distance of success when the excesses of the French Revolution let loose a flood of reaction against them in the last years of the eighteenth century, were held in check by the great European conflict for well-nigh twenty years. In religion, in science, and even to some extent in literature

SANDERS.
Political
History.

J

[1815

itself, the effect of these formidable preoccupations is to be noticed, and their consequences, direct and indirect, are noticeable even after the pressure is removed. England had still to fight her way through the desperate financial complications that the war had left behind it, and to grapple with the almost revolutionary disorders in which they in their turn were prolific before her various faculties again had time and freedom to expand. It was not, indeed, till the century had run a third of its course that England, and Europe generally, entered upon that extraordinary career of political and social, industrial and commercial, and above all, of scientific, development of which the end is not yet, but which has already secured for it a unique place among the ages of the world.

LLOYD C. THE Liverpool Ministry was ill-fitted to deal with the "condition-of-England" questions that thrust themselves forward after the Peace of 1815. It contained some ability, but little harmony, and its finance was wretched. The export trade recovered but slowly, owing to the exhaustion of the Continent. At home there ensued a series of disastrous harvests, together with the stress of foreign competition. Mr. Vansittart, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, made no attempt to cut down expenditure, beyond a slight reduction of the Civil List. The agricultural interest forced through a Corn Law which prohibited importation until the price of wheat of wheat reached 80s. a quarter (p. 118).

Disturb

ances at Home.

The working classes promptly took to rioting. In the eastern counties the labourers burnt ricks (p. 119); in the manufacturing towns the artisans destroyed machinery. Some dangerous revolutionists made use of the Spencean Philanthropists (p. 120) to organise a conspiracy for establishing a Committee of Public Safety and seizing the Tower of LondonTheir meeting at Spa Fields was, however, an egrégious failure. After a stone had been hurled at the Regent's carriage, when he went to open Parliament, the Government proceeded in 1817 to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act. Nevertheless the north was alive with discontent. The Blanketeers set forth from Manchester to march on London, and "Captain" Brandreth raised an insurrection at Derby. Two years later an attempt to

1832]

suppress a Radical meeting in St. Peter's Field, near Manchester, was bungled by the magistracy, and the troops, riding over the people, caused the so-called Peterloo Massacre. The Government, which had already failed to secure the conviction of Hone, the bookseller, for his political parodies, proceeded to pass the Six Acts. They aimed at suppressing sedition, alike on

LORD LIVERPOOL, BY JOHN HOPPNER, R.A.

(By permission of the Right Hon. F. J. S. Foljambe.)

the platform, the press, and in the field, and Lord Sidmouth, the Home Secretary, rigidly enforced them.

Holy

Abroad, the military powers, under the leadership of the The sentimental Czar Alexander, had formed the Holy Alliance, Alliance. nominally to support Christian principles of government, but really to keep under popular movements. It received little. support from Lord Castlereagh, the Foreign Secretary, and thus England stood more or less isolated.

of George

III.

The long reign came to an end at last, for on January 29th, Death 1820, George III. died. The dynasty was undoubtedly unpopular with the middle and lower classes. Princess Charlotte, the Regent's daughter and the hope of the nation, had died in

[1815-1832

1817, after what promised to be a happy marriage with Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. On the other hand, of the various members of the royal family who had rushed into alliances, the Duke of Kent had become the father of Queen Victoria, born May 24th, 1819.

The new reign began with the detection of a plot to murder

The Cato
Street
Plot.

Queen

Caroline.

Photo: Walker & Cockereil.

(National Portrait Gallery.)

ministers at a Cabinet dinner and seize the Bank of England and the Tower. Its leader was Thistlewood, who had been at the back of the Spa Fields affair, and it met in Cato Street (now John Street), Edgware Road. As usual the Home Office was warned by an informer, and the ringleaders were duly hanged.

The return of Queen Caroline, from whom the king had been separated since 1814, brought fresh discredit on the royal