Perilous Question Read online

  In contrast to such fulminations, the Birmingham Political Union, according to its long-held policy, remained temperate. And the Government acknowledged the importance of this restraint when on 8 October a communication was sent from Lord John Russell – he who had been dubbed ‘Lord John Reformer’ by Sydney Smith – Lord Althorp and Sir George Skipworth, thanking Attwood for his public support. In Russell’s words regarding the House of Lords: ‘It is impossible that the whisper of faction should prevail against the voice of the nation.’ Undoubtedly this straightforward declaration helped Attwood to preserve some kind of peace, and the Union continued to counsel, in the words of their address, ‘Patience! Patience! Patience!’ There were references to ‘our beloved King’ standing firm. Once again, the people were told that they had nothing to fear – nothing unless their own violence should rashly lead to anarchy. The motto was: be patient, be peaceful. But streets and pubs with signs not only of Wellington but of Queen Adelaide were pulled down. Alexander Somerville, then stationed in Birmingham, recorded later that the Queen’s influence was thought to be behind the rejection.5

  The mob had so far no overt reason to criticize the King. The Queen was another matter. In a disagreeable incident at Court, King William had felt compelled to side with his Government against his wife. One of the notable Lords who voted against the Bill was Earl Howe, the Queen’s Lord Chamberlain – suspected of being unduly close to her. (Kindly observers like Lady Bedingfield thought the devotion was actually all on his side; the Queen ‘was so truly good and virtuous that she has no idea that people would fancy she likes him too well’.)6 Howe’s prominence was due to his particular public role rather than the Queen’s favour, but the latter was undoubtedly a complication. Nor, for all her virtue, was Queen Adelaide particularly tactful where her husband’s Government was concerned: she had chosen all her coronation attendants from among ‘our enemies’, as one Whig put it. On 10 October Lord Grey urged that Lord Howe be dismissed from the Royal Household, on the grounds that an official had no right openly to disagree with the declared policy of the Government. Grey wanted to carry out the dismissal himself; the only concession William made to his wife’s feelings was to insist that Howe resign instead.

  The deed was done while Queen Adelaide was out riding. By her own account, she had no conception of what lay in store, and was therefore ‘very much surprised’ when, shortly after her return, Lord Howe brought her back his keys, declaring to her at any rate that he had been dismissed. The Queen wrote in her Diary: ‘I would not believe it, for I had trusted in, and built firmly on the King’s love for me.’ She added: ‘I fear it will be the beginning of much evil’ before confessing that she had had a hard struggle to appear at table after such a blow, ‘which I felt deeply as an insult, which filled me with “Indignation” [in English in the original]’. In short, ‘I felt myself deeply wounded both as wife and queen, and I cannot conquer the feeling.’7 Thereafter the Queen certainly made no secret of her hostility to Lord Grey, ostentatiously refusing to speak to him. When Princess Lieven commented to her in German that the Prime Minister was very much mortified at her behaviour, Adelaide replied stubbornly, also in her native language: ‘Is he? I am glad of it; he shall continue to be mortified for he shan’t be spoken to.’8 *

  ‘What have the Lords done?’ asked The Times in a leader on 10 October, before answering its own question: ‘They have done what they can never undo. The House of Lords will never again be on the same foundations in the confidence of the people.’ It was a question of 400 people versus twenty-two million, the population of the country. ‘The nation willed it. The Lords forbade it. Will the nation give way or will the Lords?’ And The Times mounted yet another attack on the errant bishops who had helped to bring about this miserable state of affairs.9

  Indeed, the prominence of the bishops’ vote in the tally of the majority was something not missed in the country as a whole. One prelate had the words ‘Bishop of Worcester Judas Iscariot’ scrawled on his cathedral walls; other bishops were said to be confined to their episcopal palaces for fear of outrages. Prominent anti-reforming clerics like Henry Phillpotts, recently made Bishop of Exeter, a high-flown and colourful debater on conservative issues of social order, were beginning to attract public attention. Like the Bishop of Durham, the Bishop of Exeter could no longer proceed freely round his diocese.10

  Of course there were other clerics, good Whig men in Lord Holland’s phrase, of a very different turn of mind – Sydney Smith, for example. Lord Holland’s verdict on him to Grey was eloquent: what could be and was said against Smith was ‘all hypocrisy or at best trifling – founded on his own maxim that “no man can be pious who is not dull”’. It was in the spirit of enjoyment in a highly tense situation that, in a speech at Taunton on 11 October, Sydney Smith now evoked the character of Dame Partington. He compared Wellington to this sturdy lady who had attempted to repel the Atlantic Ocean with her housewife’s mop: ‘The Atlantic was roused,’ he declared. ‘I need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs Partington. She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest. Gentlemen, be at your ease – be quiet and steady – you will beat Mrs Partington.’ And the elderly clergyman began ‘trundling’ an imaginary mop about the platform, to the great delight of his audience.11

  Joyfully the cartoonists seized on the comparison. Wellington as Dame Partington, wearing a bonnet and a woman’s dress but his hawk-like features and black eyebrows clearly recognizable, armed with his/her mop, became a favourite subject of caricature. The enormous waves certainly looked as if they were about to engulf not only the Dame but also her modest dwelling.

  So far were the bishops in general identified with the Tories that The Times actually questioned whether they should have seats in the House of Lords in the first place.12 Alas, Smith, recently made a Canon of St Paul’s by Lord Grey, was not considered episcopal material; do anything else for Smith, Lord Milton told Grey, ‘but it will not do to give him a mitre’.

  In the Commons it was only a short while before the displeasure of the Whig majority was made known on the floor of the House. Macaulay’s trenchant speech on 10 October was thought by some to sail somewhat close to the wind on the delicate subject of intimidation since he made references to Ireland: ‘England may exhibit the same spectacle which Ireland exhibited three years ago – agitators stronger than the Magistrate. . . .’13 The keynote was as follows: ‘I know only two ways in which society can permanently be governed – by public opinion and the sword.’ And he referred feelingly to the relative keeping of the peace in the two cities of New York and Milan: in the one by the assent and support of the people, and in the other by the bayonets of Austrian soldiers. Therefore he did not understand how peace was to be kept in England, ‘acting on the principles of the present Opposition’. There was danger that fearful things like Democracy and Revolution would be unleashed. This allowed the Tory Sir Charles Wetherell to suggest that Macaulay was actually advocating a breach of the peace – otherwise why cite Ireland?

  Viscount Ebrington, heir to Earl Fortescue, who had been a Whig MP off and on for nearly thirty years, did better. With a fine upstanding appearance, looking ‘quite the model of an English nobleman’, he had, according to his friend Le Marchant, ‘one of the purest minds I have ever known’ with advanced views on the subject of liberty, even if he had a tendency to carry conscientiousness to extremes.14 A meeting of about 200 Whig MPs was held, and it was agreed to back Ebrington’s resolution which called on the House to redeem its pledge to the country concerning Reform. Ebrington’s subsequent speech did make the point that the country should remain ‘orderly’ – a subject on which he also felt strongly – but he declared his complete confidence that the Reform Bill would ‘consolidate all the blessings which the British constitution can bestow upon a happy and united people’. The result was ‘a most opportune triumph’ – 329 in support and 198 against.

  Such brave declaratio
ns left unsolved the question of Radicalism in the country and how – if it all – it could be harnessed to help the Government. Bodies like the National Union of the Working Classes, set up with elaborate rules in July 1831, were beginning to be more overtly revolutionary; it called, for example, for total equality before the law, which meant Universal Suffrage, although even here mention was made of the need ‘to wait with patience, and cheerfully pay the public taxes’.15 The middle classes were, however, still practising patience.

  On Wednesday 12 October a huge march took place in London.16 What was significant, in the opinion of Francis Place’s friend John Powell at least, was the competent organization throughout: ‘for young soldiers, we were not bad generals’. The files were six, eight or ten abreast and at each flank a man was stationed responsible for managing his own line. In order to avoid accusations of drunkenness, there were orders against alcohol. The consequence, wrote Powell, which was ‘universally admitted’, was that there was absolutely no disorder, unless you counted the groans which greeted the houses of known enemies of the Bill. Here were respectable people. Here were housekeepers, shopkeepers and superior artisans. The numbers were estimated from 70,000 to 300,000 – probably nearer the former – and the spectators included ‘elegantly draped ladies’. There were cheers and the waving of handkerchiefs. Not only petitions, but flowers and cockades were ‘fragrantly’ showered on the marchers as they passed. The music varied from the ‘Dead March’ and church bells tolling to ‘God Save the King’ and ‘Rule Britannia’.

  The declared intention was to present a petition to William IV at St James’s Palace, an intention which was not viewed at the palace itself ‘without alarm’. In the end the various deputies were persuaded to abandon their plan of seeking admission to the King himself, but to wait prudently in nearby St James’s Square while Joseph Hume and another MP presented their petitions. Equally prudent was the conduct of the Government, which, being apprised of the march, promised to keep the police – a potentially inflammatory symbol of authority – out of sight. Powell reflected subsequently that the whole episode taught him that ‘to the energetic, determined and persevering nothing is impossible . . . few things more repugnant to the general habits, customs and prejudices of the middle classes of London than walking through the streets in a procession can scarcely be conceived’. Yet it had been a triumph.

  At six o’clock that evening, a meeting of about 100 people was held at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand with the declared agenda of discovering the ‘best means of giving effectual support to the King and Government and on the measures necessary to secure the peace and safety of the metropolis’. Two long tables down the centre of the large room, and chairs at the sides, were all full, and many other people were standing. Unlike the march, the mood of the meeting was not encouraging, as Francis Place made despondent predictions about the Government’s intentions to modify the Bill.17

  Later, ‘past ten o’clock’ at night, Place led a self-styled delegation of members of London parishes to Number 10 Downing Street. There was no appointment but Grey agreed to see them. The demand of the delegates was simple: Grey should pass the Bill in seven days by the expedient of peer creation. The meeting did not, on the face of it, go particularly well. Sir John Hobhouse for example thought the whole thing was a mistake; he implied that ‘such ill-looking fellows’ had no place in the Prime Ministerial dwelling. Nor was Grey himself at his best in this kind of situation with his lofty manner: his idealistic purpose evidently did not help him to communicate with clever, determined men from a different class (who were not his tenants in the north) such as Place. This was not the House of Lords, ready to hear a rolling peroration in which past and future were seamlessly evoked. Francis Place, who was absolutely determined that the Bill should not be watered down, went away with the impression that Grey intended to do exactly that.18

  He described the occasion to Joseph Parkes in a letter written at seven the next morning.19 Francis Place made it clear that Grey’s florid Whig style was not his own; he told Parkes that he would not bother him with the various ‘tedious and silly repetitions’ which the ‘polite and courtier-like conduct of the Noble Lord occasioned’. What Place did tell him was that the delegation had clearly put Grey on the defensive from the first. Grey uttered various hardline sentiments about popular uprisings: if the people rioted, they would be bayoneted, shot and hanged. Apparently Grey did not intend to propose the creation of peers. ‘What say you now to your motto – Peers or Revolution?’ enquired Place of Parkes. Place thought the clear implication of the meeting was that Parliament would be prorogued and ‘a more conciliatory Bill’ would be introduced. All this was fairly disastrous.

  But there was another, more favourable side to the encounter. Despite the misunderstanding, Francis Place was deeply impressed by one thing and that was Grey’s integrity; he was ‘the most open and manly’ of Prime Ministers, and thus Place had at the very least confidence in Grey’s intention to do good, even if he questioned his judgement. A link had been forged which other, younger men – the genial Lord Althorp for example – might be able to exploit: this was a link between those in theory capable of provoking (or controlling) revolution and those in charge of the policies against which they reacted.

  After this meeting Francis Place went on to enjoy the hospitality of the Philosopher Radical George Grote and his famously intellectual wife Harriet at their salon in Threadneedle Street, close by the Bank of England in the City.20 Both were or would be writers – Grote was at work on an authoritative History of Greece; they were in their late thirties and childless. Grote was an independently wealthy banker whose inclination was to be a scholar; influenced by both James Mill and Jeremy Bentham, he was ‘a zealous friend of liberty’ and had given £500 to the Committee of the July Revolution in Paris ‘for the beautiful cause’.

  Harriet Grote’s nineteenth-century biographer Lady Eastlake compared her to an English Madame de Staël; she was certainly a passionate reformer who in conversation at least did not shrink from advocating principles which might lead to civil war.21 As for George Grote, in Essentials of Parliamentary Reform, published in 1831, he boldly compared public feeling to that in France before the Revolution of 1789, and called firmly for the Secret Ballot, although as a banker he was both more reticent about personal involvement and a great deal more wary about the merits of public disorder. Mischievous Sydney Smith summed up the Grotes thus: ‘I like him, he is so ladylike and I like her, she’s such a perfect gentleman.’ Less delightfully he pretended the tall, striking, unconventionally dressed Harriet Grote was the origin of the word Grotesque; her family nickname of ‘The Empress’ gave a kinder impression of her general character.22

  On this occasion, as Francis Place fulminated in Threadneedle Street about Grey’s vacillation – as he saw it – the Grotes and their circle of intellectual reformers rejoiced in the developments which they saw in a far more favourable light. But the growing force was undoubtedly with the unions. This period marked the foundation of the National Political Union, under the inspiration of Place, in direct imitation, it was hoped, of the success of the Birmingham Political Union – and also with the indirect intention of securing the national leadership. While proposing to construct this Union as much as possible on the Birmingham plan, it was specified ‘that such matters as related to the particular views of Mr Attwood respecting the currency’ should be omitted.23

  Meanwhile the West Country of England seethed. Mary Frampton, sister of James Frampton, Justice of the Peace and Colonel of the Dorset Yeomanry, wrote a vivid account of it all in her Journal.24 The carriage of a sheriff and his assessor – Mr Davies of Milton Abbas and Mr Philip Williams – was attacked. Yeomanry did eventually rescue them but the town of Blandford and its neighbours still continued its ‘lawless proceedings’; the High Sheriff stayed the next day at Dorchester, fearing to pass through Milborne. A young couple, the Tory MP Lord Ashley and his wife, the captivating Minnie Cowper, reputedly t
he illegitimate daughter of Lord Palmerston by his mistress Lady Cowper, had to choose ‘an unlikely route’ to their house at St Giles, Wimborne, and a secret one to get away; Lord Ashley kept a pair of loaded pistols handy (although this fact was kept from the newly married Lady Ashley).

  Ashley, heir to the local grandee the Earl of Shaftesbury, had recently been elected MP for Dorset at a by-election, switching from Dorchester, which was left to his younger brother. Although he would be better known to history as the great philanthropist Lord Shaftesbury, after he inherited his father’s title in 1851, it was more relevant to the would-be attackers that Ashley was at this point a persistent anti-reformer; he had voted against the measure in March, and again in September. His evangelical principles, the compassion which had its origin in the sight of a pauper’s funeral when he was a schoolboy at Harrow, and caused him already to be described as ‘a Saint’, did not find expression in this particular cause; like the young Gladstone’s denunciation of Reform (he thought the Lords’ rejection highly satisfactory), it was an interesting reminder of the complex mosaic of society at this time where social issues were concerned.

  At the town of Sherborne, matters began on 19 October with cries of ‘Reform’ from the rough types gathered for the traditional October Pack Monday Fair; the windows of those who had supported Ashley in the recent by-election for the Dorset seat were the main target. Then a considerable mob broke every pane of glass they could find at Sherborne Castle, home of Lord Digby, and even tried to force the great gates. Mary Frampton recorded in her Journal that there was a large house party within the castle itself, playing at some round game, when the first yell was heard and a volley of stones broke the windows. Troops of yeomanry were summoned but for a while could do little in view of the general disaffection of the place; several of the yeomen were seriously injured by stones and knocked off their horses.