Perilous Question Page 12

  The question remained: was the robed and nightcapped man really dying? Perhaps Russell’s purge was not so easily administered, especially to the unelected Members of the House of Lords.

  Meanwhile Reform continued to be the talk of fashionable London. Lord Grey called across to Creevey at dinner at his own house: ‘Do you think, Creevey, we shall carry our Reform Bill in the Lords?’ The diarist remarked on the Prime Minister’s renewed vitality: ‘all alive – o! quite overflowing’.14 Although in his private correspondence Grey, like many a politician before and after him, continued to bemoan his exhaustion and advancing years, where politics was concerned he was the warhorse who responded to the sound of trumpets ‘and smelleth the battle afar off’. The celebrated Tory hostess Lady Jersey had a very different slant on it all. ‘She is mad in her rage against our Reform,’ wrote Creevey, ‘and moves heaven and earth against it, wherever she goes, according to her powers; but these powers are by no means what they used to be. In short she is like the rotten boroughs – going to the devil as far as she can.’15

  In this fervid atmosphere, political theatre flourished. By an eighteenth-century Act of Parliament, spoken drama was supposed to be limited to the so-called patent theatres: the two Theatre Royals in the Hay-market and Covent Garden. The Royal Coburg Theatre,* founded in 1818, took advantage of its position on the south bank of the river to go in a more adventurous direction. Reform, or John Bull Triumphant was subtitled A Patriotic Drama: a play in one act by W.T. Moncrieffe, it was first performed on 14 March 1831.16

  John Bull, the essential, decent Englishman, in a ‘farmer’s drab great coat’, shows tolerance towards his incendiarist tenants, in contrast to his steward, named Premium: ‘why they set one of my barns on fire the other night, poor deluded creatures’. Other characters include a stereotype Irishman, Patrick Murphy, in a round hat with a shamrock in it, and a Scot named Sandy Glaskey in plaid, with a thistle in his bonnet. The callous Premium threatens the tenants with transportation to the Swan River if they do not pay their rents and upbraids one in particular for indulging in the luxury of a wife and family: ‘You should leave these enjoyments to your betters, sirrah.’ Unfortunately for Premium, this indulgent fellow is actually John Bull in disguise: he proceeds to belabour Premium with a stick and then assures his tenants: ‘Everything shall be reformed – you shall all henceforth have proper persons to represent your grievances.’

  Throughout, the play was notable for its favourable references to ‘that patriotic and good monarch’ William IV, indicative of the current climate of opinion about his reforming sympathies. It ended with an invocation by John Bull himself:

  Pshaw! Let’s from sorrow sever

  And shout reform forever.

  We’ll dance and sing

  God Save the King

  A better there was never.

  In its review of 19 March, the Spectator described the play as ‘completely successful – and so will Reform be’.

  On 7 March, the day that Doyle’s witty sketch appeared, The Times reported that many of its correspondents were calling for illuminations, possibly that very night when the King was due to go to the opera at Covent Garden: this would be ‘a public expression of rational joy’.17 The provincial reaction was equally warm; also on 7 March the Birmingham Political Union held a meeting. Thanks to Attwood’s energetic concerns on the subject, the Union had remained in principle law-abiding, an example to other unions. Now a concourse of about 15,000 people expressed its gratitude for the proposed measure – to the King and his Ministers. Henceforth the Union considered that there had been a ‘compact’ with Grey: he had their backing, so long as the Bill he produced remained intact. It was a version of what the Spectator had eloquently called for: ‘The Bill, the whole Bill and nothing but the Bill’.18 This kind of fruitful provincial reaction was of course counterpoised by the more mindless violence of the Swing-type rioters; together the two forces allowed the Government to feel that the country as a whole was resolutely on the side of Reform.

  Within Parliament itself, those Irish Members under the charismatic leader Daniel O’Connell also perceived that support for the Whig proposals was in their own best interests. The situation of the Whigs regarding O’Connell was complicated. Edward Stanley, the Chief Secretary for Ireland (one of the necessary coalition Members), was totally opposed to what he saw as the Irishman’s seditious influence. A trumped-up charge of conspiracy was brought against him in January 1831:19 Stanley believed that if O’Connell was dealt with, even transported overseas, Ireland might be tranquil. The true Whigs in England, headed by Althorp, felt very differently. O’Connell’s support was vital. In the end a deal was done by which a guilty plea was entered, but by the time the case would have come to court, the law officers decided that the particular statute had expired.

  Now the Irish leader announced that, despite some objections, he would give the Bill ‘his most decided support’. O’Connell might be seen as Dr Frankenstein by Doyle – he who had created a monster. But if he was creating a monster, O’Connell had a definite, constructive agenda, the repeal of the Act of Union, however unpopular he might be in England. Furthermore he had a thrilling voice in which to expound it. Lytton wrote of its ‘sonorous swell’, paying tribute to the variety of its tones:

  It play’d with each wild passion as it went

  Now stirr’d the uproar, now the murmur still’d

  And sobs and laughter answered as it willed.20

  Numerically, there were 100 Irish MPs altogether, including one for Dublin University and comparatively few in O’Connell’s thrall. But then in the coming debate the numbers might be so tight that even the slightest support would prove significant. Certainly no political measure had ever before gained such countrywide, almost breathless attention; this was a time when labourers near Edinburgh, anxious for a full report, clubbed together for copies of the Caledonian Mercury and men in the Midlands eagerly awaited the arrival of the fast coaches from London bearing the latest news from Parliament.21

  While the interval between the two readings of the Bill gave time for public support to resonate throughout the country, it also enabled the Tories, so disunited since 1829, to rally. The Duke of Wellington remained obdurate on the question of Reform: suggestions that certain clauses could be opposed, others tolerated – what Croker called ‘moderate gunpowder’ – were dismissed. It was in the best interests of the country, Wellington believed, that the Tories should be in a belligerent mood; they should be unaffected by popular outcries for Reform from people of little sense and even less education. Thus on 18 March the Tories actually brought about a defeat of the Government – of all things the issue was a proposed alteration of the Timber Duties – but they secured a majority of 46 votes. Described by Grey as ‘an untoward event’, it was a warning that all the eager labourers in Scotland reading the Caledonian Mercury still were no closer to representation: in electoral terms nothing had changed.22

  Grey duly informed the King in a letter to Sir Herbert Taylor of ‘the determination taken by the Cabinet last night, to proceed with the Reform Bill as if the division on the Timber Duties had not taken place’, giving his technical reasons.23 At the same time defeat on such a trivial issue did raise the spectre of defeat on a larger scale – and on the great issue of the moment. The Whigs had been warned. If they were defeated, and then asked the King to dissolve Parliament – thus provoking a countrywide General Election – would he agree? The subject had to be raised and it had to be raised delicately. When Grey felt his way via Sir Herbert Taylor, he received a highly discouraging reply. The King, reported Taylor, was deeply against dissolution due to ‘apprehensions of a convulsion in this country, and chiefly in Ireland, which have taken such a hold on his mind, that I am persuaded no argument will shake them’. In response to ‘the perilous question’, dissolution had become ‘the obnoxious proposal’.24

  Then William spoke for himself. In an extremely long letter dated 20 March he rehearsed all his previous
support for Grey and the Bill.25 But he declared himself resolutely opposed to ‘an alternative . . . namely a dissolution of Parliament, to which it is his bounden duty most strenuously to object at this critical period’. It was the royal prerogative to dissolve Parliament. This meant presumably that it was also the royal prerogative not to do so. Was the docile William of January beginning to stir in his palace?

  The debate on the second reading of the Reform Bill was summed up by Lord John Russell on 22 March.26 He addressed himself firmly to the question of civic unrest, its cause, its cure, and gave his own take on history. Sir Richard Vyvyan, the MP for Cornwall, had referred to revolutions in 1789 and the time of Charles I; but Russell wanted to refer listeners not only to the revolutions of ‘our ancestors’ but also to that which occurred in France in July last. He posed a rhetorical question: ‘How was it caused? Were Charles X and his Ministers too ready to come forward with plans for Reform?’ Russell answered his own question. He himself firmly believed ‘that if the people were popularly represented, they would not make that Revolution which Sir Richard Vyvyan dreaded. It gave him great satisfaction to think . . . that they had not hesitated to risk that power, to risk their fame, to risk their places, and all that was dear to them as men and Ministers, to improve, largely, liberally and generously, and he hoped successfully, the Constitution of Great Britain.’ The vote was now put, actually on the motion of Sir Richard Vyvyan for delay: that the second reading of the Bill for Representation of Parliament should be held in six months’ time. Thus, paradoxically, ‘No’ became the positive vote in favour of Reform.

  The voting took place ‘at exactly three minutes to three’, as Hobhouse meticulously noted, early in the morning of 23 March. ‘The excitement was beyond anything,’ with each side confident of winning. As a result, in Greville’s account, there were ‘great sums’ betted on the outcome.27 When the Speaker, according to custom, put the question that Sir Richard Vyvyan’s motion should be passed, the Whigs bellowed out ‘No’ and with equal ferocity the Tories responded with ‘Aye’; there was a roar, in Macaulay’s vivid phrase, like two volleys of cannon from opposite sides of a battlefield. The Speaker admitted that he did not know which side had it and put the question again. This time he declared: ‘I am not sure but I think the Ayes have it.’

  It was at this point, by tradition, that the Ayes left the Chamber to register their votes, which meant that those still in their seats could also be counted. The Ayes seemed to take for ever filing out; to the nervously watching Whigs, the Commons appeared horribly empty after their departure. There was extreme despondency, which gradually faded as the tellers began their work of counting the heads that remained. The tellers spoke loudly so that all could hear . . . Thus there was a shout as they acclaimed 290, a further cry of joy at 300. The ultimate figure of 302 was received with further enthusiasm. At the same time the tension was only building because, clearly, in a house of over 650 Members the possibility of defeat still loomed over them. Rumours came in from outside where the Tory Ayes were gathered: 307, 310, 305 – all disastrous.

  It was only when the voice of Charles Wood, Grey’s young son-in-law and Private Secretary, was heard calling out that the truth was known. Wood had jumped onto a bench by the entrance. ‘They are only three hundred and one,’ he shouted. Macaulay said that the shout that the Whigs sent up in reply could have been heard at Charing Cross.28

  One vote: but it was enough. Hepburne Scott, an MP who was against Reform, captured something of the astonishing surprise. When the last man walked in and the numbers were declared, ‘I felt as if my nearest relative was dead, a sort of shock I could hardly have conceived it possible on a division in the House.’ Nor was he the only one: Hepburne Scott saw many others who were so overcome that they were unable to speak.29

  The Chamber of the House of Commons rapidly emptied as MPs rushed to spread the news. In the small hours crowds were still thronging all through the corridors of Parliament waiting to hear the result. Reporters ran to file their copy and coaches set out through the growing daylight for the provinces. Macaulay had a particularly satisfying encounter with his cab driver as he left the precincts of Westminster at four o’clock in the morning. The first thing the driver asked was: ‘Is the Bill carried?’ ‘Yes, by one.’ ‘Thank God for it, Sir,’ replied this stout reformer. Macaulay reflected that the scene would probably never be equalled in Westminster until the reformed Parliament itself needed reforming; in an optimistic prediction he added, ‘not till the days of our grandchildren’. It was like seeing Caesar stabbed in the Senate house or Oliver Cromwell taking the mace from the table, ‘a sight to be seen only once and never to be forgotten’.30 Of the two alternatives he was convinced faced the country, Reform or Revolution, it seemed for the time being that Reform had been chosen.

  The reaction to the news in the rest of the country was predictably ecstatic. Alexander Somerville was a witness to the scene in Edinburgh. At this point he was nineteen or twenty, the youngest of eleven children of an East Lothian farm worker, who had supported himself by manual labour since the age of eight; later in the year Somerville enlisted in the Scots Greys, and later still published his memoirs under the title The Autobiography of a Working Man, an important testimony since he had lived through many of the events of the Reform era in the ranks of the Army.

  Now he described how the Edinburgh crowd roared like a wild beast roaming the streets.31 ‘It proclaimed itself the enemy of anti-reformers – and of glass.’ Somerville also sounded a cautious note. This was a parliament of popular commotion and at first even the sound of breaking glass was ‘not unmusical’; but as ‘dash, smash, crash’ went on towards midnight, there were those who began to reflect seriously and severely whether this was truly about Reform ‘or was it popular liberty?’ It was a pertinent enquiry which would grow in strength as time passed. But in the first happy reaction to the majority – however minuscule – this question was less important than the general rejoicing.

  There was ‘a sort of repose from the cursed Bill for a moment’, wrote Greville in London.32 It was not however a repose which the two groups ranged on either side of the issue of Reform expected to enjoy as they entered the Committee stage of the Bill. Lord Grey in the House of Lords announced that he stood by the Bill and would not amend it. Reforming groups such as the Birmingham Political Union declared that their support was for the compact, which supposed the whole compact – in short the whole Bill and nothing but the Bill, as the Spectator had it. The support of the Irish Members led by O’Connell for Reform, at 56 votes, had been decisive – English Members voted narrowly by 3 votes against it. They were not in a mood to accept a watering-down of the Bill. Yet some kind of amelioration, as the Tories saw it, was what they were determined to secure. After all, many of them, including Peel himself, had talked of moderate Reform.

  * Now the Old Vic.

  CHAPTER SIX

  KING AS ANGEL

  ‘The King has behaved like an angel.’ –

  Lord Grey to the Marquess of Anglesey

  ‘The best dressed, the handsomest, and apparently the happiest man in all his royal master’s dominions’ – thus Creevey described Lord Grey standing in his own drawing room, alone with his back to the fire, on 25 March 1831, two days after the vote in favour of the second reading of the Bill: a considerable change from the doleful Grey of January. Lady Grey also looked as handsome and happy as ever she could be.1 This was an exciting time for the Whigs as a whole and the Cabinet in particular. Of course, these were disparate men, ranging from the fanatical reformer ‘Radical Jack’ Durham and the sincere advocate of change ‘Honest Jack’ Althorp, to Stanley and Richmond, Tories who had entered the Cabinet to form a kind of coalition in favour of moderate Reform.

  Brougham in particular could never have been expected to act Patient Griselda, Chaucer’s long-suffering bride; his close relationship with the charismatic editor of The Times, Thomas Barnes, led to leaks which reflected whatever Brougham’s curre
nt conspiratorial strategy was at the moment. That gossipy Tory, Mrs Arbuthnot, eagerly reported Brougham’s indiscreet disparagements of his fellow Cabinet members: Grey was in his dotage, led by the nose by Durham, Althorp was a blockhead, Sir James Graham (at the age of twenty-six) a puppy and, in a flourish of malice, the Duke of Richmond had not enough brains to fill the smallest thimble that ever fitted the smallest lady’s finger.2 For all these internal difficulties – against the attacks from the Tories pledged at the very least to diminish the Bill, and the Radicals calling for something far more extreme – the Cabinet remained remarkably united.

  Henry Hunt, MP for Preston, was a key figure in the protests of the Radicals. Now nearly seventy, he had aimed to restore his fortune by commerce after his release from prison following Peterloo. Hunt offered a series of products including tax-free Breakfast Powder and shoe-blacking, whose bottles were embossed appropriately enough with the slogan: Equal Laws, Equal Rights, Annual Parliaments, Universal Suffrage and the Ballot. Caricaturists were naturally happy with Hunt and his wildly bombastic manner of speaking: he was depicted as bursting a symbolic bottle of blacking in the Chamber of the House of Commons. Hunt had originally been supportive of Russell’s unofficial earlier Bill, but increasingly felt that it had not gone far enough; now the Reform Bill proffered by the Whig Government lacked any proposals for what may be termed the shoe-blacking ideals.