Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century | Page 4

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 1834 put an end to these abuses by restricting outdoor relief to the aged and destitute, and requiring all other paupers to go to the union workhouse. Within two years the poor-rate was diminished fully one-third.
ABOLITION OF SLAVERY
In 1834 slavery was abolished throughout the