656 The first Reformed Parliament [1832-3

traditional Whig distrust of the people, they were outnumbered in the Cabinet; and the Grey Ministry was essentially Whig. A body of men, however, stronger in the constituencies than in the House, regarded the Reform Bill as nothing more than the first of a series of measures designed to sweep away the power and privileges of the territorial aristocracy which had governed England since the Revolution. This party, of which Fonblanque was the spokesman in the Press and of which Joseph Hume had long been the leading spirit, was reinforced in the new Parliament by influential demagogues like Cobbett and Attwood and by recruits of higher social rank and intellectual caliber, such as Grote, Moles worth, and Roebuck, trained for the most part in the school of Bentham and in close touch with the elder and younger Mill and with Francis Place. The Radicals maintained an attitude of complete independence towards the Ministry, and formed the chief visible embodiment of the new spirit that had entered the House. A second group of independent members was formed by O'Connell and his followers. Though the Whigs had supported him on Catholic Emancipation and he had loyally aided them to carry Parliamentary Reform, he stood for much that they could not accept; and, while usually willing to aid them in repelling a Tory attack, he was ready to oppose them should their Irish policy meet with his disapproval. Thus the new House consisted of an enormous Whig majority and a small Tory Opposition, with the two groups of Radicals and O'Connellites, each about 30 strong, standing aloof from the historic parties. The history of the second half of the Grey Administration is the record of a three-cornered fight in which the Radicals and the Irish, though often acting on different principles, were found in frequent combination against the joint forces of Whigs and Tories; for the latter, well aware of their inability to form an alternative Government, felt it their duty to save the Whigs from their Radical allies. Thus the political situation, which the overwhelming Whig victory appeared to render comparatively simple, was in reality exceedingly complex and portended a condition of unstable equilibrium.

The feud broke out at once, when the House met in 1833. The Radicals objected to a Tory Speaker; and their disagreement with the Government was further emphasised in the debates on Ireland into which the House immediately plunged. The Cabinet had a very difficult problem before them. English Whigs were disappointed that Emancipation had not pacified Ireland; but the administration had not been improved and deeply-felt grievances remained unredressed. Four years after Emancipation and forty years after the great measure of 1793, no Roman Catholic judge or stipendiary magistrate had been appointed; the towns were in the hands of corrupt and bigoted corporations ; and the High Sheriffs, Grand Jurors, and officers of police, were largely Orangemen. The Irish Reform Bill was a bitter disappointment,

1832-3] Irish policy of Ministers 657

adding only five members instead of the 73 demanded by O'Connell as the share due to a growing population ; and the great measure of national education introduced by Stanley, creating elementary schools throughout the country with combined secular and separate religious instruction, was accepted without enthusiasm. The commutation of tithe desired by Grattan and Pitt was still unaccomplished ; and the peasant, made aware of the power of combination and feeling the impost more heavily as the increase of population led to the further subdivision of holdings, resisted collection by force. The Whiteboys reappeared, murders were committed, and sanguinary encounters with the constabulary took place. In a series of Cabinet meetings in the autumn of 1832, the Viceroy, Anglesey, who had returned to Ireland in 1830 as a member of Grey's Ministry, advised that the settlement of the tithe question, the reform of the Church, and the introduction of a Poor Law, should precede any measure of coercion; while Stanley, the Irish Secretary, insisted that coercion should precede or accompany relief, and presented the Cabinet with a Peace Preservation Act and a Church Temporalities Act. The former was so stringent that Althorp was only prevented from resigning by the information that Grey would follow his example. The Bills were slightly modified; and the Cabinet met the new Parliament with an apparently united front.

When the debate on the Address was over, Althorp rose to explain the Government's proposals with regard to the Irish Church. Of a population of eight millions, not more than one-tenth belonged to the State Church, the annual income of which amounted to over £750,000, exclusive of £60,000 from Church cess. Out of this enormous sum, the 22 Bishops received £150,000. Althorp proposed to deduct from the bishoprics, chapters, and richer benefices, a sum sufficient to cancel the cess; to abolish ten bishoprics, and to apply their incomes to such purposes as Parliament should determine. The old Tories and the High Churchmen were aghast; and Keble denounced the suppression of bishoprics in a sermon which Newman afterwards described as the starting-point of the Oxford movement. On the other hand, Wellington supported the second reading; Peel delivered a temporising speech; and O'Connell expressed his cordial satisfaction. The healing effect of the measure was cancelled three days later, when Grey introduced the most stringent Coercion Bill that Parliament had witnessed since the Six Acts. The Lord Lieutenant was empowered to suppress all meetings and to declare any county to be in a state of disturbance; while it was rendered penal for the inhabitants of suspected districts to be out of doors between sunset and sunrise. Since such provisions might be nullified by the refusal of juries to convict, offenders in disturbed districts were now to be tried by court-martial. The measure passed the Lords almost without discussion ; but it was hotly denounced by O'Connell and Sheil; and Althorp allowed his own dislike of its provisions to

C. M. H. x. 42

658 Movement for abolition of slavery [1821-33

appear. The fate of the Bill was in doubt, when Stanley rose and, in perhaps the greatest oratorical effort of his life, won back the wavering House by a lurid picture of outrage and robbery and carried the measure almost without amendment. O'Connell denounced him as " Scorpion Stanley " ; and Fonblanque dubbed him in bitterness " Secretary at War with Ireland."

The Ministry now turned to their remedial measure ; but a section of the Cabinet disliked the diversion of the revenues of the suppressed bishoprics; and the omission of the clause was moved and carried by Stanley, under pretext of smoothing the passage of the Bill through the Upper House. O'Connell and the Radicals loudly complained that its chief merit had disappeared; but, even thus lightened, the measure was nearly shipwrecked in the Lords. Though the Irish Bills were carried, they had strained the Ministry almost to breaking-point; and Durham, unable to work harmoniously with Grey, disgusted at Stanley's despotic sway in the Cabinet, and tortured by disease and family troubles, immediately resigned. It was generally felt that the position of the Government was very insecure. The Prime Minister attempted to strengthen his position by transferring Stanley from Ireland to the Colonial Office, where work of an equally exacting but more fruitful character was awaiting him.

The growth of the humanitarian spirit, combined with the new outburst of reforming zeal, rendered it almost certain that the great work of the Whig Ministry of 1807 would be completed by its successor. The evils of slavery were as terrible as those of the slave trade ; but its abolition appeared an even more formidable task. It would be a forcible interference with property ; and it might lead to a terrible insurrection and possibly ruin England's wealthiest colonies. On the other hand, the trade of the West Indies was now less than half what it had been during the war ; and the social and political influence of the planters had in consequence diminished. Wilberforce had felt the task to be beyond his strength; but in 1821 he persuaded Thomas Fowell Buxton to assume the leadership of a new crusade. The new leader commenced his apostolate by mastering the facts collected for him by Zachary Macaulay and other veterans; and in 1823 he demanded the general abolition of slavery. Canning replied by resolutions promising the alleviation of its hardships; but the Assembly of Jamaica told Parliament to mind its own business, while in Barbados an attack on the missionaries followed the receipt of the dispatch. In Demerara the slaves, believing that they had been set free, refused to work, and were treated like rebels. The insolence and ferocity of the planters provoked a storm of indignation in England ; but the restrictions imposed on their power accomplished little for lack of supervision.

In 1830 Brougham's powerful voice boldly demanded abolition ; and, when in 1831 Buxton pressed the matter on the attention of Ministers,

1831-4] Emancipation of the slaves 659

Althorp emancipated the slaves who were the property of the Crown. Jamaica negroes, believing that all slaves were to be freed, refused to work, and attacked a number of plantations. The insurrection was speedily quelled, and the Government granted compensation to the planters; but the need for a decision became more and more urgent, since the declining prosperity of the colonies, and still more the rapid decrease in the number of slaves, made the planters exact harder work from their chattels. In the following year Buxton secured 130 votes for an abolitionist resolution. The vote was a surprise to Althorp, who remarked : " that division has settled the slavery question ; the Government will take it up." On his appointment to the Colonial Office in 1833, Stanley introduced a measure for the abolition of slavery, on lines suggested by James Stephen, counsel to the Colonial Department. The Bill proposed the immediate emancipation of children under six, and for all over that age a transitional state, the slaves being apprenticed to their masters for twelve years and obliged to give three-quarters of their time in return for food and clothing, special magistrates being appointed, with power to flog them on their refusal to work. A loan of 15 millions was to be made to the colonists; and moral and religious training was to prepare the negroes for their release. In committee the period of apprenticeship was reduced to seven years; and the hostility of the planters was disarmed by substituting a gift of 20 millions for a loan of 15. When the moment of emancipation arrived, on August 1, 1834, fears of insurrection and disorder proved to be groundless. Buxton's goal was reached; but he continued to hold a watching brief for the natives, and created the Aborigines Protection Society to aid him in his task.

The same fruitful session witnessed the first sustained effort to deal with another equally urgent problem. The enormous increase of population ensured a plentiful supply of child labour ; and, when one died from overwork, insanitary conditions, or cruelty, a dozen were ready to fill its place. The working day was seldom less than twelve hours. Neither party was anxious to grapple with the task, the Tories from dislike of change, the Whigs from their belief that political economy forbade any interference with the conditions of labour. Thus the championship of the children fell to men outside the inner circle of party leaders, who rejected the current Ricardian individualism and had no belief in the efficacy of purely political remedies. The most powerful defender of these views in the Press was Southey ; but the actual work of propaganda was undertaken by Michael Thomas Sadler, the member for Leeds, Richard Oastler, soon known as the "Factory King," and Joseph Rayner Stephens, a Wesleyan minister, who were before long joined by Lord Ashley, and John Fielden, a cotton manufacturer. In 1831, when Sadler introduced a Bill to limit the working day of young persons under eighteen to ten hours, the question was referred to a Select Committee.

660 The first Factory Act. — Finance [1832-4

The report made legislation a necessity; and in 1833 a Bill was introduced by Ashley, who had accepted the position of Parliamentary spokesman of the movement when Sadler lost his seat at the general election. The measure forbade employment under nine years, limited the working day of those under eighteen to ten hours, and provided for the appointment of inspectors and the education of the children. To carry the manufacturers with him, Althorp limited the application of the ten hours' clause to children under thirteen, and, when Ashley gave up the Bill in disgust, adopted it as a Government measure, altering it once more to secure an eight hours' day for children under thirteen, but allowing twelve hours a day or sixty-nine hours a week till the age of eighteen. In this modified form, the first important Factory Act was placed on the statute-book.

The new Parliament had thus in its first session abolished slavery, reduced the Irish Establishment, and regulated the labour of factory children, in addition to terminating the monopoly of the East India Company and revising the Bank Charter; but the measures of the Government had raised up enemies on every side, while its Coercion Bill had provoked the Radicals and Irish to fierce hostility. Its weakness was increased by the unpopularity of its finance. Althorp had hitherto met deficits by reducing expenditure; but the newly enfranchised electors of the towns clamoured for the extinction of the tax on houses, while the country gentlemen demanded the repeal of the duties on malt. The reductions proposed in the budget of 1833 satisfied no one ; and a proposal to halve the duty on malt was carried against the Government; but, when the repeal of the house-tax was also demanded, Althorp pointed out that the deficiency resulting from the removal of these two taxes would have to be met by a general tax on property, and in this way secured the retention of both. Nevertheless, the refusal to remove the assessed taxes led to great indignation in the towns. The Government perceived its unpopularity; and Althorp reduced the house and window tax, promising to repeal the former as soon as possible. At this moment the trade of the country began to recover from the depression which had lasted since 1826; but agriculture had no share in the rising tide of prosperity. It was to the removal of one of the causes of rural distress that the session of 1834 was to be devoted.

In 1832, at the suggestion of Hyde Villiers, a brother of Clarendon, the future Foreign Secretary, a commission of enquiry into the Poor Law was appointed, the chief members of which were Blomfield, the indefatigable Bishop of London, Nassau Senior, one of the first of living economists, and Sturges Bourne, the chairman of a committee which had sat on the same question in 1817, to whom Chadwick, a disciple of Bentham, introduced to Senior by Mill, was added in 1833. At Brougham's suggestion, the commission was divided into a central board and itinerant commissioners, the latter to be chosen by the former. Reports on every