Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century | Page 4

In 1830 representation in the House of Commons still

remained upon a basis which had been established centuries before.
Meantime the distribution of the voting population had been totally
transformed. The most populous shires had no more seats than the least
of all. There were decayed boroughs which had dwindled in population
until but a handful of voters remained, yet these "rotten" boroughs
retained their right to choose one or more members of Parliament,
while the great modern manufacturing towns and seaports were totally
unrepresented. The agitation for parliamentary reform, which rose in
the middle of the eighteenth century, was directed against the sale of
seats in the rotten boroughs, and the shameless bribery. As early as
1770 Lord Chatham had predicted reform or revolution. His son, the
younger Pitt, had proposed remedies, but the deluge which
overwhelmed the government of France in the closing years of the
century stiffened English conservatism for a century against any radical
political change. Meanwhile the rapid industrial expansion of the
kingdom, with its unprecedented increase of population, and the sudden
growth of insignificant hamlets into teeming factory towns, had
emphasized the injustice of existing arrangements. Earl Grey, who had
been an advocate of reform for forty years, and Lord John Russell, who
had championed the cause for a decade, were united in the Whig
ministry which succeeded Wellington in 1830. Supported by a
tremendous popular demand which seemed to stir the nation to its
depths they brought in their first bill in 1831. It prevailed in the
Commons by a bare majority, but the Tory House of Lords threw it out.
This action by the privileged class was a signal for an indignant
outburst from the nation. The "Radicals," as the advanced Whigs were
already beginning to be called, did not conceal their lack of respect for
the Upper House, and used revolutionary threats against it as a relic of
mediaevalism which should no longer be tolerated in a free state. But
the time had passed when the peers could flout an aroused nation.
When the Third Reform Bill was ready for passage, the ministers
secured the King's promise to frustrate the opposition of the Lords by
filling up the House with new peers created expressly to vote for
reform. The threat sufficed. Wellington and the most stern and
unbending Tories absented themselves from the decisive division, and
allowed the Reform Bill to become a law in June, 1832.

ADMINISTRATIVE REFORMS
Great things were expected of the first Parliament which was chosen on
the basis of the new law. The seats gained by the disfranchisement of
the small and corrupt boroughs were distributed to new constituencies
in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Newcastle,
and the other modern cities. The more populous counties were
subdivided into districts, and the divisions received additional
representation. The franchise had also been extended and based upon a
moderate property qualification. The result was, that the center of
political power passed from the nobility and landed gentry, with whom
it had resided for centuries, and came to the farmers and shop-keepers,
the so-called middle class, lying between the ancient aristocracy of
birth and landed possessions and the still unenfranchised masses of mill
operatives and agricultural laborers. That the new Parliament would
show a new temper and be dominated by new ideas was but natural.
But those who inferred from the bitterness of the struggle for reform
that the nation was on the verge of an abyss into which the Lords and
the Crown should shortly topple, greatly deceived themselves.
THE POOR LAWS
The reformed Parliaments devoted themselves to certain long- deferred
and intensely practical reforms which were social and economic in their
nature, leaving the constitution alone for the next twenty years. In these
Parliaments and ministries for the next forty years the Whig party
usually had the upper hand. In 1834 Parliament revolutionized the
system of public relief to the needy which had existed for fifty years, to
the extreme demoralization of the poorer working-classes and the
frustration of really benevolent purpose. The old law had assumed that
each parish owed every native a living. A sliding scale was accordingly
provided by which, as the rate of wages declined, the parish should pay
to the workman enough to bring his receipts up to the standard amount.
Employers took advantage of this system cut wages to a minimum, the
parish making up the difference. Another mischievous clause increased
the pauper's dole in proportion to the number of his children, with the
direct result of early and improvident marriages. To put it bluntly,

children were bred for the bounty. The number of persons receiving
parish aid was enormously increased. The self-respect of the poor was
destroyed, and the poor-rate became a burden of millions of pounds
annually upon the treasury. The act of