Beacon Lights of History, Volume 10 | Page 3

consumed, upon the necessities and conveniences of life as
well as its luxuries,--on tea, on coffee, on sugar, on paper, on glass, on
horses, on carriages, on medicines,--since money had to be raised to

pay the interest on the national debt and to provide for the support of
the government, including pensions, sinecures, and general
extravagance.
[Footnote 1: A quarter of a gross ton.]
In the poverty which enormous taxes and low wages together produced,
there were not only degradation and squalid misery in England at this
time, but violence and crime. And there was also great injustice in the
laws which punished crime. There were two hundred and twenty-three
offences punishable with death. If a starving peasant killed a hare, he
was summarily hanged. Catholics were persecuted for their opinions;
Jews were disqualified from holding office. Only men of comfortable
means were allowed to vote. The universities were closed against
Dissenters. No man stood any chance of political preferment unless he
was rich or was allied with the aristocracy, who controlled the House of
Commons. The nobles and squires not merely owned most of the
landed property of the realm, but by their "rotten boroughs" could send
whom they pleased to Parliament. In consequence the House of
Commons did not represent the nation, but only the privileged classes.
It was as aristocratic as the House of Lords.
In the period of repose which succeeded the excitements of war the
people began to see their own political insignificance, and to agitate for
reforms. A few noble-minded and able statesmen of the more liberal
party, if any political party could be called liberal, lifted up their voices
in Parliament for a redress of scandalous evils; but the eloquence which
distinguished them was a mere protest. They were in a hopeless
minority; nothing could be done to remove or ameliorate public evils so
long as the majority of the House of Commons were opposed to reform.
It is obvious that the only thing the reformers could do, whether in or
out of Parliament, was to agitate, to discuss, to hold public meetings, to
write political tracts, to change public opinion, to bring such a pressure
to bear on political aspirants as to insure an election of members to the
House of Commons who were favorable to reform. For seven years this
agitation had been going on during the later years of the reign of
George IV. It was seen and felt by everybody that glaring public evils

could not be removed until there should be a reform in Parliament
itself,--which meant an extension of the electoral suffrage, by which
more liberal and popular members might be elected.
On the accession of the new king, there was of course a new election of
members to the House of Commons. In consequence of the agitations
of reformers, public opinion had been changed, and a set of men were
returned to Parliament pledged to reform. The old Tory chieftains no
longer controlled the House of Commons, but Whig leaders like
Brougham, Macaulay, Althorp, and Lord John Russell,--men elected on
the issue of reform, and identified with the agitations in its favor.
The old Tory ministers who had ruled the country for fifty years went
out of office, and the Whigs came into power under the premiership of
Lord Grey. Although he was pledged to parliamentary reform, his
cabinet was composed entirely of noblemen, with only one exception.
There was no greater aristocrat in all England than this leader of
reform,--a cold, reticent, proud man. Lord Russell was also an
aristocrat, being a brother of the Duke of Bedford; so was Althorp, the
son and heir of Earl Spencer. The only man in the new cabinet of
fearless liberality of views, the idol of the people, a man of real genius
and power, was Brougham; but after he was made Lord Chancellor, the
presiding officer of the Chamber of Peers, he could no longer be relied
upon as the mouthpiece of the people, as he had been for years in the
House of Commons. It would almost seem that the new ministry
thought more and cared more for the dominion of the Whigs than they
did for a redress of the evils under which the nation groaned. But the
Whigs were pledged to parliamentary reform, and therefore were
returned to Parliament. More at least was expected of them by the
middle classes, who formed the electoral body, than of the Tories, who
were hostile to all reforms,--men like Wellington and Eldon, both
political bigots, great as were their talents and services. In politics the
Tories resembled the extreme Right in the French Chamber of
Deputies,--the ultra-conservatives, who sustained the throne of Charles
X. The Whigs bore more resemblance to the Centre of the Chamber of
Deputies, led by