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THE RESTORATION

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Originally appearing in Volume V09, Page 558 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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THE RESTORATION (1603-1689) The defeat of the See also:

Spanish See also:armada in 1588 had been the final victory gained on behalf of the See also:independence of the See also:English See also:church and See also:state. The fifteen years which followed had been years of successful See also:war; but they had been ih s also years during which the nation had been preparing 162,5. itself to conform its institutions to the new circumstances in which it found itself in consequence of the See also:great victory. When See also:James arrived from See also:Scotland to occupy the See also:throne of See also:Elizabeth he found a See also:general See also:desire for See also:change. Especially there was a feeling that there might be some relaxation in the ecclesiastical arrangements. See also:Roman Catholics and Puritans alike wished for a modification of the See also:laws which See also:bore hardly on them. James at first relaxed the penalties under which the Roman Catholics suffered, then he See also:grew frightened by the increase of their See also:numbers and reimposed the penalties. The See also:gunpowder See also:plot (1605) was the result, followed by a sharper persecution than ever (see GUNPOWDER PLOT). The Puritans were invited to a See also:conference with the See also:king at See also:Hampton See also:Court (1604). They no longer asked, as many of them had asked in the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, to substitute the presbyterian discipline for the episcopal See also:government. All they demanded was to be allowed permission, whilst remaining as ministers in the church, to omit the usage of certain ceremonies to which they objected. It was the See also:opinion of See also:Bacon that it would be See also:wise to See also:grant their See also:request. James thought otherwise, and attempted to carry out the Elizabethan conformity more strictly than it had been carried out in his predecessor's reign.

In 1604 the See also:

Commons agreed with Bacon. They declared that they were no Puritans themselves, but that, with such a dearth of able ministers, it was not well to lose the services of any one who was capable of See also:preaching the See also:gospel. 8aa the By his refusal to entertain their views James placed commons. himself in opposition to the Commons in a See also:matter which touched their deeper feelings. As a necessary consequence every dispute on questions of smaller See also:weight assumed an exaggerated importance. The king had received a scanty See also:revenue with his See also:crown, and he spent freely what little he had. As the Commons offered grudging supplies, the See also:necessity under which he was of filling up the See also:annual deficit led him to an See also:action by which a See also:grave constitutional question was raised. From the See also:time of See also:Richard II. to the reign of See also:Mary no See also:attempt had been made to raise duties on exports and imports without consent of See also:parliament. But Mary had, under a specious pretext, recommenced to a slight extent the evil practice, and Elizabeth had gone a little further in the same direction. In 16o6 a See also:merchant named See also:John See also:Bates (q.v.) resisted the See also:payment of an See also:imposition—as duties levied by the See also:sole authority of the crown were then called. The See also:case was argued in the court of See also:exchequer, and was there decided in favour of the crown. Shortly after-wards new impositions were set to the amount of £70,000 a See also:year. When parliament met in 1610 the whole subject was discussed, and it was conclusively shown that, if the barons of the exchequer had been right in any sense, it was only in that narrow technical sense which is of no value at all.

A See also:

compromise attempted See also:broke down, and the difficulty was See also:left to See also:plague the next See also:generation. The king was always able to assert that the See also:judges were on his See also:side, and it was as yet an acknowledged principle of the constitution that parliament could not change the See also:law without the See also:express consent of the crown, even if, which was not the case in this matter, the Lords had sided with the Commons. James's attempt to obtain further supplies from the Commons by opening a bargain for the surrender of some of his old feudal prerogatives, such as wardship and See also:marriage, which had no longer any real meaning except as a means of obtaining See also:money in an oppressive way, broke down, and See also:early in 1611 he dissolved his first parliament in anger. A second parliament, summoned in 1614, met with the same See also:fate after a session of a few See also:weeks. The See also:dissolution of this second parliament was followed by a See also:short imprisonment of some of the more active members, and by a demand made through See also:England for a benevolence to make up the deficiency which parliament had neglected to meet. The court represented that, as no compulsion was used, there was nothing illegal in this proceeding. But as the names of those who refused to pay were taken down, it cannot be said that there was no indirect pressure. The most important result of the See also:breach with the parliament of 1614, however, was the See also:resolution taken by James to seek See also:refuge ' from his See also:financial and other troubles in a See also:close See also:alliance Attempted with the king of See also:Spain. His own See also:accession had done See also:union with Scotland. much to improve the position of England in its relation with the See also:continental See also:powers. Scotland was no longer available as a possible enemy to England, and though an attempt to bind the union between the two nations by freedom of See also:coin- mercial intercourse had been wrecked upon the See also:jealousy of the English Commons (16(37), a legal decision had granted the status of See also:national subjects to all persons See also:born in Scotland after the king's accession in England. See also:Ireland, too, had been thoroughly over- powered at the end of Elizabeth's reign, and the See also:flight of the earls of See also:Tyrone and Tyrconnel in 1607 had been The See also:colon- followed by the See also:settlement of English and Scottish izatlon of See also:Ulster. . colonists in Ulster, a measure which, in the way in which it was undertaken, sowed the seeds of future evils, but undoubtedly conduced to increase the immediate strength of the English government in Ireland.

Without fear of danger at See also:

home, therefore, James, who as king of Scotland had taken no See also:part in Elizabeth's See also:quarrel with The See also:Philip II., not only suspended hostilities immediately Spanish on his accession, and signed a See also:peace in the following alliance. year, but looked favourably on the project of a Spanish marriage alliance, so that the See also:chief See also:Protestant and the chief See also:Catholic 'powers might join together to impose peace on See also:Europe, in the See also:place of those hideous religious See also:wars by which the last See also:century had been disfigured. In 16x1 circumstances had disgusted him with his new ally; but in 1614 he courted him again, not only on grounds of general policy, but because he hoped that the large portion which would accompany the See also:hand of an infanta would go far to fill the empty See also:treasury, In this way the Spanish alliance, unpopular in itself, was formed to liberate the king from the shackles imposed on him by the English constitution. Its unpopularity, great from the beginning, became greater when See also:Raleigh's See also:execution (1618) caused the government to appear before the See also:world as truckling to Spain. The obloquy under which James laboured increased when the See also:Thirty Years' War broke out (1618), and when his daughter Elizabeth, whose See also:husband, the elector See also:palatine, was the unhappy claimant to the Bohemian crown (1619), stood forth as the lovely See also:symbol of the deserted Protestantism of Europe. Yet it was not entirely in pity for See also:German Protestants that the See also:heart of Englishmen. See also:beat. Men See also:felt that their own See also:security was at stake. The prospect of a Spanish infanta as the See also:bride of the future king of England filled' them with suspicious terrors. In Elizabeth's time the danger, if not entirely See also:external, did not come from the government itself. Now the favour shown to the Roman Catholics by the king opened up a source of See also:mischief which was to some extent real, if it was to a still greater extent imaginary. Whether the danger were real or imaginary, the consequence of the distrust resulting from the suspicion was the reawakening of the slumbering demand for fresh persecution of the Roman Catholics, a demand which made a See also:complete reconciliation between the crown and the See also:Lower See also:House a matter of the greatest difficulty. In 1621 the third parliament of James was summoned to provide money for the war in See also:defence of his son-in-law's in-Parlia- heritance, the See also:Palatinate, which he now proposed to . See also:meat and undertake. But it soon appeared that he was not the mono- prepared immediately to come to blows, and the See also:pollen.

Commons, voting a small sum as a token of their See also:

loyalty, passed to other matters. Indolent in his See also:temper, James had been in the See also:habit of leaving his patronage in the hands of a confidential favourite, and that position was now filled' by See also:George See also:Villiers, See also:marquess and afterwards See also:duke of See also:Buckingham. The natural consequence was that men who paid court to him were promoted, and those who kept at a distance from him had no See also:notice taken of their merits. Further, a See also:system of granting monopolies and other privileges had again sprung up. Many of these grants embodied some See also:scheme which was intended to serve the interests of the public, and many actions which appear startling to us were covered by the extreme protectionist theories then in See also:vogue. But abuses of every See also:kind had clustered See also:round them, and in many cases the profits had gone into the pockets of hangers-on of the court, whilst officials had given their assistance to the grantors even beyond their legal powers. James was driven by the outcry raised to abandon these monopolies, and an att of Parliament in 1624 placed the future grant of protections to new inventions under the safeguard of the judges. The attack on the monopolies was followed by charges brought by the Commons before the Lords against persons implicated in carrying them into execution, and subsequently Fall of `against See also:Lord See also:Chancellor Bacon as guilty of corruption. Bacon. The See also:sentence passed by the Lords vindicated the right of parliament to punish officials who had enjoyed the favour of the crown, which had fallen into disuse since the accession of the house of See also:York. There was no open contest between parliament and king in this matter. But the initiative of demanding See also:justice had passed from the crown to the Commons.

It is impossible to overestimate the effect of these proceedings on the position of parliament. The crown could never again be regarded as the sum of the governmental system. When the Commons met after the summer See also:

adjournment a new constitutional question was raised. The king was at last determined to find troops for the defence of the Palatinate; and asked the Commons for money to pay them. They in turn petitioned the crown to abandon the Spanish alliance, which they regarded as the source of all the mischief. James told them that they had no right to discuss business on which he had not asked their opinion. They declared that they were privileged to discuss any matter See also:relating to the See also:commonwealth which they See also:chose to take in hand, and embodied their opinion in a protest, which they entered on their See also:journals. The king tore the protest out of the See also:book and dissolved parliament. Then followed a fresh See also:call for a benevolence, this time more sparingly answered than before. A year of fruitless See also:diplomacy failed to See also:save the Palatinate from See also:total loss. The See also:ill-considered See also:journey to See also:Madrid, in which See also:Prince See also:Charles, accompanied by Buckingham, hoped to wring from the Spanish statesmen a promise to restore the Palatinate in compliment for his marriage with the infanta, ended also in total failure. In the autumn of 1623 Charles returned to England without a wife, and without See also:hope of regaining the Palatinate with Spanish aid.

He came back resolved to take vengeance upon Spain. The parliament elected in 1624 was ready to second him. It voted some supplies on the understanding that, when the king had matured his plans for carrying on the war, The See also:

French it should come together in the autumn to See also:vote the alliance. necessary subsidies. It never met again. Charles had promised that, if he married a Roman Catholic, he would grant no See also:toleration to the English Catholics in See also:consideration of the marriage. In the autumn he had engaged himself to marry Henrietta Maria, the See also:sister of the king of See also:France, and had See also:bound himself to grant the very conditions which he had declared to the Commons that he never would concede. Hence it was that he did not venture to recommend his See also:father to summon parliament till the marriage was over. But though there was but little money to dispose of, he and Buckingham, who, now that James was sick and infirm, were the real leaders of the government, could not endure to abstain from the See also:prosecution of the war. Early in 1625 an expedition, under See also:Count See also:Mansfeld, was sent to See also:Holland that it might ultimately cut its way to the Palatinate. Left without pay and without supplies, the men perished by thousands, and when James died in See also:March the new king had to meet his first parliament burthened by a broken promise and a disastrous failure. When parliament met (1625) the Commons at first contented themselves with voting a sum of money far too small to carry on the extensive military and See also:naval operations in which Charles had embarked. When the king explained his necessities, they intimated that they had no confidence in Buckingham, and asked that, before they granted further See also:supply, the king would name counsellors whom they could See also:trust to advise him on its employment.

Charles at once dissolved parliament. He knew that the demand for ministerial responsibility would in the end involve his own responsibility, and, believing as he did that Buckingham's arrangements had been merely unlucky, he declined to See also:

sacrifice the See also:minister whom he trusted. Charles and Buckingham did their best to win back popularity by strenuous exertion. They attempted to found a great Protestant alliance on the See also:continent, and they sent a great expedition to See also:Cadiz. The Protestant alliance and the expedition to Cadiz ended in equal failure. The second parliament of the reign (1626) impeached Buckingham for crimes against the state. As Charles would not dismiss him simply because the Commons were dissatisfied with him as a minister, they See also:fell back on charging him with criminal designs. Once more Charles dissolved parliament to save Buckingham. Then came fresh enterprises and fresh failures. A See also:fleet under Lord See also:Willoughby (afterwards See also:earl of See also:Lindsey) was almost ruined by a See also:storm. The king of See also:Denmark, trusting to supplies from England which never came, was defeated at Lutter. A new war in addition to the Spanish war, broke out with France.

A great expedition to Re, under Buckingham's command (1627), intended to succour the See also:

Huguenots of La Rochelle against their See also:sovereign, ended in disaster. In See also:order to enable himself to meet See also:expenditure on so vast a See also:scale, Charles had levied a forced See also:loan from his subjects. Men of high See also:rank in society who refused to pay were imprisoned. Soldiers were billeted by force in private houses, and military See also:officers executed See also:martial law on civilians. When the imprisoned gentlemen appealed to the king's See also:bench for a See also:writ of habeas corpus, it appeared that no cause of committal had been assigned, and the judges therefore refused to liberate them. Still Charles believed it possible to carry on the war, and especially to send See also:relief to La Rochelle, now strictly blockaded by the forces of the French crown. In order to find the means for this See also:object he summoned his third parliament (1628). The Commons at once proceeded to draw a See also:line which should cut off the See also:Petition of possibility of a repetition of the injuries of which they Right. complained. Charles was willing to surrender his claims to See also:billet soldiers by force, to order the execution of martial law in time of peace, and to exact forced loans, benevolences, or any kind of See also:taxation, without consent of parliament; but he protested against the demand that he should surrender the right to imprison without showing cause. It was argued on his behalf that in case of a great See also:conspiracy it would be necessary to trust the crown with unusual powers to enable it to preserve the peace. The Commons, who knew that the crown had used the powers which it claimed, not against conspirators, but against the commonwealth itself, refused to listen to the See also:argument, and insisted on the See also:acceptance of the whole Petition of Right, in which they demanded redress for all their grievances. The king at last gave his consent to it, as he could obtain money in no other way.

In after times, when any real danger occurred which needed a suspension of the See also:

ordinary safeguards of See also:liberty, a remedy was found in the suspension of the law by See also:act of parliament; such a remedy, however, only became possible when king and parliament were on See also:good terms of agreement with one another. That time was as yet far distant. The House of Commons brought fresh charges against Buckingham, whose See also:murder soon after the See also:prorogation removed one subject of dispute. crown and But when they met again (1629) they had two quarrels parlia- ment. left over from the preceding session. About a third part of the king's revenue was derived from customs duties which had for many generations been granted by parliament to each sovereign for See also:life. Charles held that this grantwas little more than a matter of See also:form, whilst the Commons held that it was a matter of right. But for the other dispute the difficulty would probably have been got over. The strong Protestantism of Elizabeth's reign had assumed a distinctly Calvinistic form, and the See also:country gentlemen who formed the See also:majority of the House of Commons were resolutely determined that no other See also:theology than that of See also:Calvin should be taught in England. In the last few years a reaction against it had arisen especially in the See also:universities, and those who adopted an unpopular creed, and who at the same time showed tendencies to a more ceremonial form of See also:worship, naturally fell back on the support of the crown. Charles, who might reasonably have exerted himself to secure a See also:fair liberty for all opinions, promoted these unpopular divines to bishoprics and livings, and the divines in turn exalted the royal See also:prerogative above See also:parliamentary rights. He now proposed that both sides should keep silence on the points in dispute. The Commons rejected his scheme, and prepared to call in question the most See also:obnoxious of the See also:clergy.

In this irritated temper they took up the question of See also:

tonnage and poundage, and instead of confining themselves to the great public question, they called to the See also:bar some See also:custom-house officers who happened to have seized the goods of one of their members. Charles declared that the seizure had taken place by his orders. When they refused to accept the excuse, he dissolved parliament, but not before a tumult took place in the House, and the See also:speaker was forcibly held down in his See also:chair whilst resolutions hostile to the government were put to the vote. For eleven years no parliament met again. The extreme action of the Lower House was not supported by the See also:people, and the king had the opportunity, if he chose to use it, of putting himself right with the nation after no See also:long delay. But he never understood that See also:power only attends sympathetic leadership. He contented himself with putting himself technically in the right, and with resting his case on the favourable decisions of the judges. Under any circumstances, neither the training nor the position of judges is such as to make them See also:fit to be the final arbiters of See also:political disputes. They are accustomed to declare what the law is, not what it ought to be. These judges, more-over, were not in the position to be impartial. They had been selected by the king, and were liable to be deprived of their See also:office when he saw fit. In the course of Charles's reign two chief justices and one chief See also:baron were dismissed or suspended.

Besides the ordinary judges there were the extraordinary tribunals, the court of high See also:

commission nominated by the crown to punish ecclesiastical offenders, and the court of See also:star chamber, composed of the privy councillors and the chief justices, and therefore also nominated by the crown, to inflict See also:fine, imprisonment, and even See also:corporal See also:mutilation on See also:lay offenders. Those who See also:rose up in any way against the established order were sharply punished. The harsh treatment of individuals only calls forth resistance when constitutional morality has sunk deeply into the popular mind. The ignoring of the feelings and prejudices of large classes has a deeper effect. Charles's See also:foreign money. policy, and his pretentious claim to the See also:sovereignty of the See also:British seas, demanded the support of a fleet, which might indeed be turned to good purpose in offering a counterpoise to the growing navies of France and Holland. The increasing estrangement between him and the nation made him averse from the natural remedy of a parliament, and he reverted to the See also:absolute practices of the See also:middle ages, in order that he might See also:strain them far beyond the See also:warrant of precedent to See also:levy a tax under the name of See also:ship-money, first on the See also:port towns and then on the whole of England. Payment was resisted by John See also:Hampden, a See also:Buckinghamshire See also:squire; but the judges declared that the king was in the right (1638). Yet the arguments used by Hampden's lawyers sunk deeply into the popular mind, and almost every See also:man in England who was called on to pay the tax looked upon the king as a wrong-doer under the forms of law. In his ecclesiastical policy Charles was equally out of See also:touch with the feelings of his people. He shared to the full his father's dislike and distrust of the Puritans, and he supported with the Charles 1. 1625-1649. whole weight of the crown the attempt of See also:William See also:Laud (q.v.), since 1633 See also:archbishop of See also:Canterbury, to enforce conformity to the See also:ritual prescribed by the See also:Prayer Book.

At the same time offence was given to the Puritans by an order that every clergyman should read the See also:

Declaration of See also:Sports, in which the king directed that no one should be prevented from dancing or See also:shooting at the butts on See also:Sunday afternoon. Many of the clergy were suspended or deprived, many emigrated to Holland or New England, and of those who remained a large part bore the yoke with feelings of ill-concealed dissatisfaction. Suspicion was easily aroused that a deep plot existed, of which Laud was believed to be the centre, for carrying the nation over to the Church of See also:Rome, a suspicion which seemed to be converted into a certainty when it was known that Panzani and See also:Conn, two agents of the See also:pope, had See also:access to Charles, and that in 1637 there was a sudden accession to the number of converts to the Roman Catholic Church amongst the lords and ladies of the court. In the summer of 1638 Charles had long ceased to reign in the affections of his subjects. But their traditionary loyalty had not yet failed, and if he had not called on them for fresh exertions, it is possible that the coming re-volution would have been long delayed. Men were ready to shout See also:applause in See also:honour of Puritan martyrs like See also:Prynne, See also:Burton and See also:Bastwick, whose ears were cut off in 1637, or in honour of the lawyers who argued such a case as that of Hampden. But no signs of active resistance had yet appeared. Unluckily for Charles, he was likely to stand in need of the active co-operation of Englishmen. He had attempted to force a new Prayer Book upon the Scottish nation. A See also:riot at See also:Edinburgh in 1637 quickly led to national resistance, and when in See also:November 1638 the general See also:assembly at See also:Glasgow set Charles's orders at See also:defiance, he was compelled to choose between tame submission and immediate war. In 1639 he gathered an English force, and marched towards the border. But English laymen, though asked to supply the money which he needed for the support of his See also:army, deliberately kept it in their pockets, and the contributions of the clergy and of See also:official persons were not sufficient to enable him to keep his troops long in the See also:field.

The king, therefore, thought it best to agree to terms of pacification. Misunderstandings broke out as to the See also:

interpretation of the treaty, and Charles having discovered that the Scots were intriguing with France, fancied that England, in hatred of its See also:ancient foe, would now be ready to rally to his See also:standard. After an See also:interval of eleven years, in See also:April 1640 he once more called a parliament. The Short Parliament, as it was called, demanded redress of grievances, the See also:abandonment of the claim to levy ship-money, and a complete change in the ecclesiastical system. The Short Charles thought that it would not be See also:worth while even Parlia- ment. to conquer Scotland on such terms, and dissolved parliament. A fresh war with Scotland followed. See also:Wentworth, now earl of See also:Strafford, became the leading adviser of the king . With all the See also:energy of his disposition he threw himself into Charles's plans, and left no See also:stone unturned to furnish the new expedition with supplies and money. But no skilfulness of a See also:commander can avail when soldiers are determined not to fight. The Scots crossed the See also:Tweed, and Charles's army was well pleased to See also:fly before them. In a short time the whole of See also:Northumberland and See also:Durham were in the hands of the invaders. Charles was obliged to leave these two counties in their hands as a See also:pledge for the payment of their expenses; and he was also obliged to summon parliament to grant him the supplies which he needed for that object.

When the Long Parliament met in November 164o it was in a position in which no parliament had been before. Though nominally the Houses did not command a single soldier, they had in reality the whole Scottish army at their back. By refusing supplies they would put it out of the king's power to fulfil his engagements to that army, and it would immediately pursue its onward march to claim its rights. Hence there was scarcely anything whichthe king could venture to deny the Commons. Under See also:

Pym's leadership, they began by asking the See also:head of Strafford. Nominally he was accused of a number of acts of oppression in the See also:north of England and in Ireland. His real of al°der offence lay in his attempt to make the king absolute, Strafford. and in the See also:design with which he was credited of intending to bring over an Irish army to crush the liberties of England. If he had been a man of moderate abilities he might have escaped. But the Commons feared his commanding See also:genius too much to let him go See also:free. They began with an See also:impeachment. Difficulties arose, and the impeachment was turned into a See also:bill of See also:attainder. The king abandoned his minister, and the execution of Strafford left Charles without a single man of supreme ability on his side.

Then came rapidly a See also:

succession of blows at the supports by which the Tudor See also:monarchy had been upheld. The courts of star chamber and high commission and the See also:council of the north were abolished. The raising of tonnage and poundage without a parliamentary grant was declared illegal. The judges who had given obnoxious decisions were called to See also:answer for their See also:fault and were taught that they were responsible to the House of Commons as well as the king. Finally a bill was passed providing that the existing House should not be dissolved without its cwn consent. It was clearly a revolutionary position which the House had assumed. But it was assumed because it was impossible to expect that a king who had ruled as Charles had ruled could take up a new position as the exponent of the feelings which were represented in the Commons. As long as Charles lived he could not be otherwise than an object of suspicion; and yet if he were dethroned there was no one available to fill his place. There arose therefore two parties in the House, one ready to trust the king, the other disinclined to put any confidence in him at all. The See also:division was the sharper because it coincided with a difference in matters of See also:religion. Scarcely any one wished to see the Laudian ceremonies upheld. But the members who favoured the king, and who formed a considerable minority, wished to see a certain liberty of religious thought, together with a return under a modified See also:Episcopacy to the forms of worship which prevailed before Laud had taken the church in hand.

The other side, which had the majority by a few votes, wished to see the Puritan creed prevail in all its strictness, and were favourable to the See also:

establishment of the Presbyterian discipline. The king by his unwise action threw power into the hands of his opponents. He listened with tolerable calmness to their See also:Grand Remonstrance, but his attempt to seize the five members whom he accused of high See also:treason made a good understanding impossible. The Scottish army had been paid off some months before, and See also:civil war was the only means of deciding the quarrel. At first the See also:fortune of war wavered. Edgehill was a See also:drawn See also:battle (1642), and the See also:campaign of 1643, though it was on the whole favourable to the king, gave no decisive results. The civil Before the year was at an end parliament invited a war new Scottish army to intervene in England. As an inducement, the See also:Solemn See also:League and See also:Covenant was signed by all Parliamentarian Englishmen, the terms of which were interpreted by the Scots to bind England to submit to See also:Presbyterianism, though the most important clauses had been purposely left vague, so as to afford a loophole of See also:escape. The battle of See also:Marston See also:Moor, with the defeat of the Royalist forces in the north, was the result. But the battle did not improve the position of the Scots. They had been repulsed, and terians and the victory was justly ascribed to the English See also:con- Indepentingent. The See also:composition of that contingent was such dents.

as to have a See also:

special political significance. Its See also:leader was See also:Oliver See also:Cromwell. It was formed by men who were fierce Puritan enthusiasts, and who for the very See also:reason that the intensity of their religion separated them from the See also:mass of their countrymen, had learnt to uphold with all the energy of zeal the See also:doctrine that neither church nor state had a right to interfere with the forms of worship which each See also:congregation might select for itself (see See also:CONGREGATIONALISM and CROMWELL, OLIVER). The principle advocated by the army, and opposed by the Scots and the The Church. Charles and Scotland. The Scottish Invasion. The Long See also:Patna-meat. majority of the House of Commons, was liberty of sectarian association. Some years earlier, under the dominion of Laud, another principle had been proclaimed by See also:Chillingworth and See also:Hales, that of liberty of thought within the unity of the church. Both these movements conduced to the ultimate establishment of toleration, but for the See also:present the See also:Independents were to have their way. The Presbyterian leaders, See also:Essex and See also:Manchester, were not successful leaders. The army was remodelled after Cromwell's See also:pattern, and the king was finally crushed at See also:Naseby The (1645).

The next year (1646) he surrendered to the second Scots. Then followed two years of fruitless negotiation, civil war. in which after the Scots abandoned the king to the English parliament, the army took him out of the hands of the parliament, whilst each in turn tried to find some basis of arrangement on which he might reign without ruling. Such a basis could not be found, and when Charles stirred up a fresh civil war and a Scottish invasion (1648) the leaders of the army vowed that, if victory was theirs, they would bring him to justice, To do this it was necessary to drive out a large number of the members of the House of Commons by what was known as See also:

Pride's Purge, and to obtain from the mutilated Commons the dismissal of the House of Lords, and the establishment of a high court of justice, before which the king was brought to trial and sentenced to See also:death. He was beheaded on a See also:scaffold outside the windows of See also:Whitehall (1649).1 The government set up was a government by the committees of a council of state nominally supporting themselves on the House of Commons, though the members who still The retained their places were so few that the council of See also:common- See also:wealth. state was sufficiently numerous to form a majority in the House. During eleven years the nation passed through many vicissitudes in its forms of government. These forms take .no place in the See also:gradual development of English institutions, and have never been referred to as affording precedents to be followed. To the student of political See also:science, however, they have a special See also:interest of their own, as they show that when men had shaken themselves loose from the See also:chain of habit and See also:prejudice, and had set themselves to build up a political shelter under which to dwell, they were irresistibly attracted by that which was permanent in the old constitutional forms of which the special development had of See also:late years been so disastrous. After Cromwell had suppressed resistance in Ireland (1649), had conquered Scotland (165o), and had over-thrown the son of the late king, the future Charles II., at See also:Worcester (1651), the value of government by an assembly was tested and found wanting. After Cromwell had expelled the remains of the Long Parliament (1653), and had set up another assembly of nominated members, that second experiment was found equally wanting. It was necessary to have recourse to one head of the executive government, controlling and directing its actions. Cromwell occupied this position as lord crom- See also:protector.

He did all that was in his power to do to well's See also:

pro- tectorate. Prevent his authority from degenerating into tyranny. He summoned two parliaments, of only one House, and with the consent of the second parliament he erected a second House, so that he might have some means of checking the Lower House without constantly coming into See also:personal collision with its authority. As far as form went, the constitution in 1658, so far as it differed from the See also:Stuart constitution, differed for the better. But it suffered from one fatal defect. It was based on the See also:rule of the See also:sword. The only substitute for traditional authority is the clearly expressed expression of the national will, and it is impossible to doubt that if the national will had been expressed it would have swept away Cromwell and all his system. The majority of the upper and middle classes, which had See also:united together against Laud, was now reunited against Cromwell. The Puritans themselves were but a minority, and of that 1 The events of the reign of Charles I. are treated in greater detail in the articles CHARLES I., King of Great See also:Britain and Ireland; STRAFFORD; HAMPDEN; PYM; GREAT See also:REBELLION; CROMWELL, &c.minority considerable numbers disliked the free liberty accorded to the sects. Whilst the worship of the Church of England was proscribed, every illiterate or frenzied enthusiast was allowed to harangue at his See also:pleasure. Those who cared little for religion felt insulted when they saw a government with which they had no sympathy ruling by means of an army which they dreaded and detested. Cromwell did his best to avert a social revolution, and to See also:direct the energies of his supporters into the channels of merely political change.

But he could not prevent, and it cannot be said that he wished to prevent, the rise of men of ability from positions of social inferiority. The nation had striven against the arbitrary government of the king; but it was not prepared to shake off the predominance of that widely spreading See also:

aristocracy which, under the name of country gentlemen, had rooted itself too deeply to be easily passed by. Cromwell's rule was covered with military See also:glory, and there can be no doubt that he honestly applied himself to solve domestic difficulties as well. But he reaped the See also:reward of those who strive for something better than the generation in which they live is able to appreciate. His own faults and errors were remembered against him. He tried in vain to establish constitutional government and religious toleration (see CROMWELL, OLIVER). When he died (1658) there remained branded on the national mind two strong impressions which it took more than a century to obliterate—the dread of the domination of a See also:standing army, and abhorrence of the very name of religious zeal. The eighteen months which followed deepened the impression thus formed. The army had appeared a hard See also:master when it See also:lent its strength to a wise and sagacious rule. It was worse when it undertook to rule in its own name, to anarchy. set up and pull down parliaments and governments. The only choice left to the nation seemed to be one between military tyranny and military anarchy. Therefore it was that when See also:Monk advanced from Scotland and declared for a free parliament, there was little doubt that the new parliament would recall the exiled king, and seek to build again on the old See also:foundations.

The Restoration was effected by a See also:

coalition between the Cavaliers, or followers of Charles I., and the Presbyterians who had originally opposed him. It was only after The Re-the nature of a great reaction that the latter should for storation. a time be swamped by the former. The Long Parliament of the Restoration met in 1661, and the Act of Uniformity entirely excluded all See also:idea of reform in the Puritan direction, and ordered the See also:expulsion from their benefices of all clergymen who refused to express approval of the whole of the Book of -Common Prayer (1662). A previous See also:statute, the Ccrporation Act (1661), ordered that all members of corporations should renounce the Covenant and the doctrine that subjects might in any case rightfully use force against their king, and should receive the See also:sacrament after the forms of the Church of England. The object for which Laud had striven, the compulsory imposition of uniformity, thus became part of the law of the See also:land. Herein lay the novelty of the system of the Restoration. The system of Laud and the system of Cromwell had both been imposed by a minority which had possessed itself of the powers of government. The new uniformity was imposed by parliament, and parliament had the nation behind it. For the first time, therefore, all those who objected to th established religion sought, not to alter its forms to suit tha selves, but to gain permission to worship in See also:separate congregations. Ultimately, the dissenters, as they began to be called, would obtain their object. As soon as it became clear to the mass of the nation that the dissenters were in a decided minority, there would be no reason to fear the utmost they could do even if the present liberty of worship and teaching were conceded to them. For the present, however, they were feared out of all proportion to their numbers.

They counted amongst them the old soldiers of the See also:

Protectorate, and though that army had been dissolved, it always seemed possible that it might See also:spring to arms once more. A See also:bitter experience had taught men that a See also:hundred of Oliver's See also:Ironsides might easily See also:chase a thousand Cavaliers; and as long Execution of the king. as this danger was believed to exist, every effort would be made to keep dissent from spreading. Hence the Conventicle Act (1664) imposed penalties on those taking part in religious meetings in private houses, and the Five Mile Act (1665) forbade an expelled clergyman to come within five See also:miles of a corporate See also:borough, the very place where he was most likely to secure adherence, unless he would swear his See also:adhesion to the doctrine of non-resistance. The doctrine of non-resistance was evidently that by which, at this time, the loyal subject was distinguished from those whom he stigmatized as disloyal. Yet even the most Doctrine loyal found that, if it was wrong to take up arms o against the king, it might be right to oppose him in ressister istance. other ways. Even the Cavaliers did not wish to see Charles II. an absolute sovereign. They wished to reconstruct the system which had been violently interrupted by the events of the autumn of 1641, and to found government on the co-operation between king and parliament, without defining to themselves what was to be done if the king's conduct became insufferable. Openly, indeed, Charles II. did not force them to reconsider their position. He did not thrust members of the Commons into See also:prison, or issue writs for ship-money. He laid no claim to taxation which had not been granted by parliament.

But he was extravagant and self-indulgent, and he wanted more money than they were willing to supply. A war with the Dutch broke out, and there were strong suspicions that The first Charles applied money voted for the fleet to the See also:

main-Dutch war. tenance of a vicious and luxurious court. Against the See also:vice and luxury, indeed, little objection was likely co be brought. The over-haste of the Puritans to See also:drill England into ways of morality and virtue had thrown at least the upper classes into a See also:slough of revelry and baseness. But if the vice did not appear objectionable the expense did, and a new See also:chapter in the financial See also:history of the government was opened when the Commons, having previously gained See also:control over taxation, proceeded to vindicate their right to control expenditure. As far, indeed, as taxation was concerned, the Long Parlia- ment had not left its successor much to do. The abolition of feudal tenures and See also:purveyance had long been de- manded, and the conclusion of an arrangement which had been mooted in the reign of James 1. is only notable as affording one instance out of many of the tendency of a single class to shift burdens off its own shoulders. The predominant landowners preferred the grant of an See also:excise, which would be taken out of all pockets, to a land-tax which would exclusively be felt by those who were relieved by the abolition of the tenures. The question of expenditure was constantly telling on the relations between the king and the House of Commons. After the Puritan army had been disbanded, the king resolved to keep on See also:foot a See also:petty force of 5000 men, and he had much difficulty in providing for it out of a revenue which had not been intended by those who voted it to be used for such a purpose. Then came the Dutch war, bringing with it a See also:sus- picion that some at least of the money given for paying sailors and fitting out See also:ships was employed by Charles on very different See also:objects. The Commons accordingly, in 1665, succeeded in enforcing, on precedents derived from the reigns of Richard II.

and See also:

Henry IV., the right of ppropriating the supplies granted to special objects; and withtnore difficulty they obtained, in 1666, the See also:appointment of a commission empowered to investigate irregularities in the issue of moneys. Such See also:measures were the See also:complement of the control over taxation which they had previously gained, and as far as their power of supervision went, it constituted them and not the king the See also:directors of the course of government. If this result was not immediately felt, it was because the king had a large certain revenue voted to him for life, so that, for the present at least, it was only his extraordinary expenses which could be brought under parliamentary control. Nor did even the renewal of parliamentary impeachment, which ended in the banishment of Lord Chancellor See also:Clarendon (1667), bring on any direct collision with the king. If the Commons wished to be rid of him because he upheld the prerogative, the king was equally desirous to be rid of him because he looked coldly on the looseness of the royal morals. The great See also:motive power of the later politics of the reign was to be found beyond the Channel. To the men of the days of Charles II., See also:Louis XIV. of France was what Philip II. of Spain had been to the men of the days of Elizabeth. aCharfes n. Gradually, in foreign policy, the commercial emulation Louis xiv with the Dutch, which found vent in one war in the time of the Commonwealth, and in two wars in the time of Charles II., gave way to a dread, rising into hatred, of the arrogant potentate who, at the head of the mightiest army in Europe, treated with contempt all rights which came into collision with his own wishes. Louis XIV., moreover, though prepared to quarrel with the pope in the matter of his own authority over the Galilean Church, was a bigoted upholder of Catholic orthodoxy, and Protestants saw in his political ambitions a menace to their religion. In the case of England there seemed a special danger to Protestantism; for whatever religious sympathies Charles II. possessed were with the Roman Catholic faith, and in his annoyance at the interference of the Commons with his expenditure he was not ashamed to stoop to become the pensioner of the French king. In 167o the See also:secret treaty of See also:Dover was signed. Charles was to receive from Louis 200,000 a year and the aid of 6000 French troops to enable him to declare him-self a convert, and to obtain special advantages for his religion, whilst he was also to place the forces of England at Louis's disposal for his purposes of aggression on the continent of Europe.

Charles had no difficulty in stirring up the commercial jealousy of England so as to bring about a second Dutch war (1672). The next year, unwilling to See also:

face the dangers of his larger See also:plan, he issued a declaration of See also:indulgence, which, by a single act of the prerogative, suspended all penal laws against Roman Catholics and dissenters alike. To the country gentlemen who constituted the See also:cavalier parliament, and who had long been drifting into opposition to the crown, this was intolerable. The pre-dominance of the Church of England was the See also:prime See also:article of their political creed; they dreaded the Roman Catholics; they hated and despised the dissenters. Under any circumstances an indulgence would have been most distasteful to them. But the growing belief that the whole scheme was merely intended to serve the purposes of the Roman Catholics converted their dislike into deadly opposition. Yet the parliament resolved to See also:base its opposition upon constitutional grounds. The right claimed by the king to. suspend the laws was questioned, and his claim to special authority in ecclesiastical matters was treated with contempt. The king gave way and withdrew his declaration. But no solemn act of parliament declared it to be illegal, and in due course of time it would be heard of again, The Commons followed up their See also:blow by passing the Test Act, making the reception of the sacrament according to the forms of the Church of England, and the renunciation of the The Test doctrine of See also:transubstantiation, a necessary qualifica- Act tion for office. At once it appeared what a hold the members of the obnoxious church had had upon the See also:administration of the state. The lord high See also:admiral, the lord treasurer, and a secretary of state refused to take the test.

The lord high admiral was the See also:

heir to the throne, the king's See also:brother, the duke of York. Charles, as usual, See also:bent before the storm. In See also:Danby (see See also:LEEDS, 1ST DUKE OF) he found a minister whose views answered precisely to the views of the existing House of Commons. See also:Dam ,s Like the Commons, Danby wished to silence both n,in stry. Roman Catholics and dissenters. Like the Commons, too, he wished to embark on a foreign policy hostile to France. But he served a master who regarded Louis less as a possible adversary than as a possible paymaster. Sometimes Danby was allowed to do as he liked, and the marriage of the duke of York's eldest daughter Mary to her See also:cousin the prince of See also:Orange was the most lasting result of his administration. More often he was obliged to follow where Charles led, and Charles was constantly ready to sell the See also:neutrality of England for large sums The Commons aim at control over expenditure. Second Dutch war, and declaration of indulgence. of French See also:gold. At last one of these negotiations was detected, and Danby, who was supposed to be the author instead of the unwilling See also:instrument of the intrigue, was impeached.

In order to save his minister, Charles dissolved parliament (1678). He could not have chosen a more unlucky time for his own quiet. The strong feeling against the Roman Catholics had been quickened into a See also:

flame. by a great imposture. The inventors of the so-called popish plot charged the leading English Roman Catholics with a design to murder the king. Judges and juries alike were maddened with excitement, and listened greedily to the lies which poured forth from the lips of profligate informers. See also:Innocent See also:blood was See also:shed in abundance. The excitement had its See also:root in the uneasy feeling caused by the knowledge that the heir to the throne was a Roman Catholic. Three parliaments were summoned and dissolved. In each parliament the main question at issue between the Commons and the crown was the Exclusion Bill, by which the Commons sought to deprive the duke of York of his See also:inheritance; and it was notorious that the leaders of the See also:movement wished the crown to descend to the king's illegitimate son, the duke of See also:Monmouth. The principles by which the Commons were guided in these parliaments were very different from those which had prevailed in the first parliament of the Restoration. Those Whigs and principles, to which that party adhered which about Tories. this time became known as the Tory party, had been formed under the See also:influence of the terror caused by militant See also:Puritanism.

In the state the Tory inherited the ideas of Clarendon, and, without being at all ready to abandon the claims of parliaments, nevertheless somewhat inconsistently spoke of the king as ruling by a divine and indefeasible See also:

title, and wielding a power which it was both impious and unconstitutional to resist by force. In the church he inherited the ideas of Laud, and saw in the See also:maintenance of the Act of Uniformity the safe-guard of religion. But the hold of these opinions on the nation had been weakened with the cessation of the causes which had produced them. In 168o twenty years had passed since the Puritan army had been disbanded. Many of Cromwell's soldiers had died, and most of them were growing old. The dissenters had shown no signs of engaging in plots or conspiracies. They were known to be only a comparatively small minority of the See also:population, and though they had been cruelly persecuted, they had suffered without a thought of resistance. Dread of the dissenters, therefore, had become a See also:mere See also:chimaera, which only those could entertain whose minds were influenced by prejudice. On the other hand, dread of the Roman Catholics was a living force. Unless the law were altered a Roman Catholic would be on the throne, wielding all the resources of the prerogative, and probably supported by all the resources of the king of France. Hence the leading principle of the Whigs, as the predominant party was now called, was in the state to seek for the highest national authority in parliament rather than in the king, and in the church to adopt the rational theology of Chillingworth and Hales, whilst looking to the dissenters as See also:allies against the Roman Catholics, who were the enemies of both. Events were to show that it was a wise See also:provision which led the Whigs to seek to exclude the duke of York from the throne.

But their plan suffered under two faults, the con-Tory of which was ruinous to them for the time. reaction. junction In the first place, their choice of Monmouth as the heir was infelicitous. Not only was he under the stain of See also:

illegitimacy, but his succession excluded the future succession of Mary, whose husband, the prince of Orange, was the hope of Protestant Europe. In the second place, drastic remedies are never generally acceptable when the evil to be remedied is still in the future. When, in the third of the short parliaments held at See also:Oxford the . Whigs rode armed into the See also:city, the nation decided that the future danger of a Roman Catholic succession was incomparably less than the immediate danger of another civil war. Loyal addresses poured in to the king. For the four remaining years of his reign he ruled without summoning any parliament., Whigswere brought before prejudiced juries and partial judges. Their blood flowed on the scaffold. The See also:charter of the city of See also:London was confiscated. The reign of the Tories was unquestioned, Yet it was not quite what the reign of the Cavaliers had been in 1660. The violence of the Restoration had been directed primarily against Puritanism, and only against certain forms of government so far as they allowed Puritans to gain the upper hand.

The violence of the Tories was directed against rebellion and disorder, and only against dissenters so far as they were believed to be the fomenters of disorder. Religious hatred had less part in the action of the ruling party, and even from its worst actions a wise man might have predicted that the See also:

day of toleration was not so far off as it seemed. The accession of James II. (1685 ) put the views of the opponents of the Exclusion Bill to the test. A new parliament was elected, almost entirely composed of decided Tories. A rebellion in Scotland, headed by the earl James ll., 1ti85- of See also:Argyll, and a rebellion in England, headed by the 1688. duke of Monmouth, were easily suppressed. But the inherent difficulties of the king's position were not thereby over-come. It would have been hard, in days in which religious questions occupied so large a space in the field of politics, for a Roman Catholic sovereign to rule successfully over a Protestant nation. James set himself to make it, in his case, impossible. It may be that he did not consciously present to himself any object other than fair treatment for his co-religionists. On the one hand, however, he alienated even reasonable opponents by offering no guarantees that equality so gained would not be converted into superiority by the aid of his own military force and of the assistance of the French king; whilst on the other hand he relied, even more strongly than his father had done, on the technical legality which exalted the prerogative in defiance of the spirit of the law. He began by making use of the necessity of resisting Monmouth to increase his army, under the pretext of the danger of a repetition of the late rebellion; and in the regiments thus levied he appointed many Roman Catholic officers who had refused to comply with the Test Act.

Rather than submit to the gentlest remonstrance, he prorogued parliament, and proceeded to obtain from the court of king's bench a See also:

judgment in favour of his right to dispense with all penalties due by law, in the same way that his grandfather had appealed to the judges in the matter of the See also:post-nazi. But not only was the question put by James II. of far wider import than the question put by James I., but he deprived the court to which he applied of all moral authority by previously turning out of office the judges who were likely to disagree with him, and by appointing new ones who were likely to agree with him. A court of high commission of doubtful legality was subsequently erected (1686) to deprive or suspend clergymen who made themselves obnoxious to the court, whilst James appointed Roman Catholics to the headship of certain colleges at Oxford. The legal support given him by judges of his own selection was fortified by the military support of an army collected at See also:Hounslow See also:Heath; and a Roman Catholic, the earl of Tyrconnel, was sent as lord-See also:deputy to Ireland (1687) to organize a Roman Catholic army on which the king might fall back if his English forces proved insufficient for his purpose. Thus fortified, James issued a declaration of indulgence (1687) granting full religious liberty to all his subjects. The belief, that the grant of liberty to all religions was only intended James's to serve as a cloak for the ascendancy of one, was so declarastrong that the measure roused the opposition of all See also:Lion of 1n those who objected to see the king's will substituted for dulgence. the law, even if they wished to see the Protestant dissenters tolerated. In spite of this opposition, the king thought it possible to obtain a parliamentary See also:sanction for his declaration. The parliament to which he intended to See also:appeal was, however, to be as different a See also:body from the parliament which met in the first year of his reign as the bench of judges which had approved of the dispensing power had been different from the bench which existed at his accession. A large number of the borough members were in those days returned by the corporations, and The Popish plot. The Exclusion Blll. the corporations were accordingly changed. But so thoroughly was the spirit of the country roused, that many even of the new corporations were set against James's declaration, and he had therefore to abandon for a time the hope of seeing it accepted even by a packed House of Commons.

All, however, that he could do to give it force he did. He ordered the clergy to read it in all pulpits (1688). Seven bishops, who presented Trial of a petition asking him to relieve the clergy from the the seven bishops. burthen of proclaiming what they believed to be illegal, were brought to trial for See also:

publishing a seditious See also:libel. Their acquittal by a See also:jury was the first serious blow to the system adopted by the king. Another event which seemed likely to consolidate his power was in reality the See also:signal of his ruin. The See also:queen bore him a son. There was thus no longer a strong See also:probability that R of1688tton the king g would be succeeded at no great distance of of 1688. time by a Protestant heir. Popular incredulity ex-pressed itself in the assertion that, as James had attempted to gain his ends by means of a packed bench of judges and a packed House of Commons, he had now capped the See also:series of falsifications by the See also:production of a supposititious heir. The leaders of both parties combined to invite the prince of Orange to come to the See also:rescue of the religion and laws of England. He landed on the 5th of November at See also:Brixham. Before he could reach London every class of English society had declared in his favour.

James was deserted even by his army. He fled to France, and a See also:

convention parliament, summoned without the royal writ, declared that his flight was See also:equivalent to See also:abdication, and offered the crown in See also:joint sovereignty to William and Mary (1689). IX. THE REVOLUTION AND THE See also:AGE OF See also:ANNE (1688–1714) The Revolution, as it was called, was more than a mere change of sovereigns. It finally transferred the ultimate decision in William the state from the king to parliament. What parlia- 1689. in the end of the 17th century with the House of Commons predominating. That House of Commons was far from resting on a wide basis of popular See also:suffrage. The See also:county voters were the freeholders; but in the towns, with some important exceptions, the See also:electors were the richer inhabitants who formed the corporations of the boroughs, or a body of select householders more or less under the control of some neighbouring landowner. A House so chosen was an aristocratic body, but it was aristocratic in a far wider sense than the House of Lords was aristocratic. The trading and legal classes found their See also:representation there by the side of the great owners of land. The House See also:drew its strength from its position as a true representative of the effective strength of the nation in its social and economical organization. Such was the body which firmly grasped the control over every See also:branch of the administration.

Limiting in the Bill of Rights the powers assumed by the crown, the Commons declared that the king could not keep a standing army in time of peace without consent of parliament; and they made that consent effectual, as far as legislation could go, by passing a See also:

Mutiny Act year by year for twelve months only, so as to prevent the crown from exercising military discipline without their authority. Behind these legal contrivances stood the fact that the army was organized in the same way as the nation was organized, being officered by gentlemen who had no desire to overthrow a constitution through which the class from which they sprung con-trolled the government. Strengthened by the cessation of any fear of military violence, the Commons placed the crown in financial dependence on themselves by granting a large part of the revenue only for a limited See also:term of years, and by putting strictly in force their right of appropriating that revenue to special branches of expenditure. Such a revolution might have ended in the substitution of the despotism of a class for the despotism of a man. Many causes combined to prevent this result. The landowners, who formedthe majority of the House, were not elected directly, as was the case with the See also:nobility of the French states-general, by their own class, but by electors who, though generally loyal to them, would have broken off from them if they had attempted to make themselves masters of their See also:fellow citizens. causes in favour of No less important was the almost absolute inde- liberty. pendence of the judges, begun at the beginning of the reign, by the grant of office to them during good behaviour instead of during the king's pleasure, and finally secured by the clause in the Act of Settlement in 1701, which protected them against dismissal except on the joint address of both Houses of Parliament. Such an improvement, however, finds its full counterpart in another great step already taken. The more representative a government becomes, the more necessary it is for the well-being of the nation that the expression of individual thought should be free in every direction. If it is not so, the government is inclined to proscribe unpopular opinion, and to forget that new opinions by which the greatest benefits are likely to be conferred are certain at first to be entertained by a very few, and are quite certain to be unpopular as soon as they come into collision with the opinions of the majority. In the middle ages the benefits of the liberation of thought from state control had been secured by the antagonism between church and state. The Tudor sovereigns had rightfully asserted the principle that in a well-ordered nation only one supreme power can be allowed to exist; but in so doing they had enslaved religion. It was fortunate that, just at the moment when parliamentary control was established over the state, circumstances should have arisen which made the majority ready to restore to the individual See also:conscience that supremacy over religion which the See also:medieval ecclesiastics had claimed for the See also:corporation of the universal church.

Dissenters had, in the main, stood See also:

shoulder to shoulder with churchmen in rejecting the suspicious benefits of James, and both gratitude and policy forbade the thought of replacing them under the heavy yoke which had been imposed on them at the Restoration. The exact mode in which relief should be afforded was still an open question. The idea prevalent with the more liberal minds amongst the clergy was that of comprehension—that is to say, of so modifying the prayers and ceremonies of the church as to enable the dissenters cheerfully to enter in. The scheme was one which had approved itself to minds of the highest order—to See also:Sir See also:Thomas More, to Bacon, to Hales and to See also:Jeremy See also:Taylor. It is one which, as long as beliefs are not very divergent, keeps up a sense of brotherhood overruling the diversity of opinion. It broke down, as it always will break down in practice, whenever the difference of belief is so strongly felt as to seek earnestly to embody itself in diversity of outward practice. The greater part of the clergy of the church felt that to surrender their accustomed formularies was to surrender somewhat of the belief which those formularies signified, while the dissenting clergy were equally reluctant to adopt the common prayer book even in a modified form. Hence the Toleration Act, which guaranteed the right of separate Toleration assemblies for worship outside the See also:pale of the church, Act. though it embodied the principles of Cromwell and See also:Milton, and not those of Chillingworth and Hales, was carried without difficulty, whilst the proposed scheme of comprehension never had a See also:chance of success (1689). The choice was one which posterity can heartily approve. However wide the limits of toleration be drawn, there will always be those who will be left outside. By religious liberty those inside gain as much as those who are without. From the moment of the passing of the Toleration Act, no Protestant in England performed any act of worship except by his own free and deliberate choice.

The See also:

literary spokesman of the new system was See also:Locke. His Letters concerning Toleration laid down the principle which had been maintained by Cromwell, with a wider application than was possible in days when the state was in the hands of a mere minority only able to maintain itself in power by See also:constant and suspicious vigilance. One measure remained to place the dissenters in the position of full membership of the state. The Test Act excluded them from office. But the memory of the high-handed proceedings of Puritan rulers was still too See also:recent to allow Englishmen to run the See also:risk of a reimposition of their yoke, and this feeling, fanciful as it was, was sufficient to keep the Test Act in force for years to come. The complement of the Toleration Act was the abolition of the censorship of the See also:press (1695). The ideas of the author of the Areopagitica had at last prevailed. The attempt to the Liberty See also:fix certain opinions on the nation which were pleasing to those in power was abandoned by king and parliament alike. The nation, or at least so much of it as cared to read books or See also:pamphlets on political subjects, was acknowledged to be the supreme See also:judge, which must therefore be allowed to listen to what counsellors it pleased. This new position of the nation made itself felt in various ways. It was William's merit that, fond as he was of power, he recognized the fact that he could not rule except so far as he carried the See also:goodwill of the nation with him. No doubt he was helped to an intelligent See also:perception of the new situation by the fact that, as a foreigner, he cared far more for carrying on war successfully against France than for influencing the domestic legislation of a country which was not his own, and by the knowledge that the conduct of the struggle which lasted till he was able to treat with France on equal terms at See also:Ryswick (1697) was fairly trusted to his hands.

Nevertheless these years of war called for the united action of a national government, and in seeking to gain this support for himself, he See also:

hit upon an expedient which opened a new era in constitutional politics. The supremacy of the House of Commons would have been an evil of no common magnitude, if it had made government Beginning impossible. Yet this was precisely what it threatened of See also:cabinet to do. Sometimes the dominant party in the House govern- pressed with unscrupulous rancour upon its opponents. meat. Sometimes the majority shifted from side to side as the House was influenced by passing gusts of See also:passion or sympathy, so that, as it was said at the time, no man could foretell one day what the House would be pleased to do on the next. Against the first of these dangers William was to a great extent able to guard by the exercise of his right of dissolution, so as to appeal to the constituencies, which did not always See also:share in the the passions of their representatives. But the second danger could not be met in this way. The only cure for waywardness is responsibility, and not only was this precisely what the Commons had not learned to feel, but it was that which it was impossible to make them feel directly. A body composed of several hundred members cannot carry on government with the requisite steadiness of action and clearness of insight. Such See also:work can only fitly be entrusted to a few, and whenever difficult circumstances arise it is necessary that the action of those few be kept in See also:harmony by the predominance of one. The scheme on which William hit, by the See also:advice of the earl of See also:Sunderland, was that which has since been known as cabinet government. He selected as his ministers the leading members of the two Houses who had the confidence of the majority of the House of Commons.

In this way, the majority felt an interest in supporting the men who embodied their own opinions, and fell in turn under the influence of those who held them with greater prudence or ability than fell to the See also:

lot of the See also:average members of the House. All that William doubtless intended was to acquire a ready instrument to enable him to carry on the war with success. In reality he had refounded, on a new basis, the government of England. His own personal qualities were such that he was able to dominate over any set of ministers; but the time would come when there would be a sovereign of inferior powers. Then the body of ministers would step into his place. The old See also:rude arrangements of the middle ages had provided by frequent de-positions that an inefficient sovereign should cease to rule, and those arrangements had been imitated in the cases of Charles I. and James II. Still the claim to rule had, at least from the time of Henry III., been derived from hereditary descent, and the interruption, however frequently it might occur, had been regarded as something abnormal, only to be applied where therewas an absolute necessity to prevent the wielder of executive authority from setting at defiance the determined purpose of the nation. After the Revolution not only had the king's title been so changed as to make him more directly than ever dependent on the nation, but he now called into existence a body which derived its own strength from its conformity with the wishes of the representatives of the nation. For the moment it seemed to be but a temporary expedient. When the war came to an end, the Whig party which had sustained William in his struggle with France split up. The dominant feeling of the House of Commons was no longer the desire to support the crown against a foreign enemy, but to make government as cheap as possible, leaving future dangers to the chances of the future. William had not so understood the new invention of a united See also:ministry as binding him to take into his service a united ministry of men whom he regarded as See also:fools and knaves.

He allowed the Commons to reduce the army to a See also:

skeleton, to question his actions, and to treat him as if he were a See also:cipher. But it was only by slow degrees that he was brought to acknowledge the necessity of choosing his ministers from amongst the men who had done these things. The time came when he needed again the support of the nation. The death of Charles II., the heirless king of the huge Spanish monarchy, had long been expected. Since The the peace of Ryswick, William and Louis XIV. had Spanish come to terms by two successive See also:partition See also:treaties for saccesa division of those vast territories in such a way that See also:Sion. the whole of them should not fall into the hands of a near relation either of the king of France or of the See also:emperor, the head of the house of See also:Austria. When the king of Spain actually died in 1700, William seemed to have no authority in England whatever; and Louis was therefore encouraged to break his engagements, and to accept the whole of the Spanish inheritance for his See also:grandson, who became Philip V. of Spain. William saw clearly that such predominance of France in Europe would See also:lead to the development of pretensions unbearable to other states. But the House of Commons did not see it, even when the Dutch garrisons were driven by French troops out of the posts in the Spanish See also:Netherlands which they had occupied for many years (1701). William had prudently done all that he could to conciliate the Tory majority. In the preceding year (1700) he had given office to a Tory ministry, and he now (1701) gave his assent to the Act of Settlement, which secured the The See also:Awe- ct succession of the crown to the electress See also:Sophia of n t See also:Hanover, daughter of James I.'s daughter Elizabeth, to the exclusion of all Roman Catholic claimants, though it imposed several fresh restrictions on the prerogative. William was indeed wise in keeping his feelings under control. The country sympathized with him more than the Commons did, and when the House- imprisoned the gentlemen deputed by the freeholders of See also:Kent to present a petition asking that its loyal addresses might be turned into bills of supply, it simply advertised its weakness to the whole country.

The reception of this Kentish petition was but a foretaste of the discrepancy between the Commons and the nation, which was to prove the marked feature of the middle of the century now opening. For the present the House The Grand A!/See also:

lance. was ready to give way. It requested the king to enter into alliance with the Dutch. William went yet further in the direction in which he was urged. He formed an alliance with the emperor, as well as with the Netherlands; to prevent the union of the crowns of France and Spain, and to compel France to evacuate the Netherlands. An unexpected event came to give him all the strength he needed. James II. died, and Louis acknowledged his son as the rightful king of England. English-men of both parties were stung to indignation by the insult. William dissolved parliament, and the new House of Commons, Tory as it was by a small majority, was eager to support the king. It voted men and money according to his wishes. England was to be the soul of the Grand Alliance against France.

But before a blow was struck William was thrown from his See also:

horse. He died on the 8th of March 1702. " The man," as See also:Burke said of him, " was dead, but the Grand Alliance survived in which King William lived and reigned." Upon the accession of Anne, war was at once begun. The Grand Alliance became, as William would have wished, a league to wrest the whole of the Spanish dominions from Philip, in favour of the See also:Austrian See also:archduke Charles. It found a chief of supreme military and See also:diplomatic genius in the duke of See also:Marlborough. His victory at See also:Blenheim (1704) drove the French out of See also:Germany. His victory of See also:Ramillies (17o6) drove them out of the Netherlands. In Spain, See also:Gibraltar was captured by See also:Rooke (1704) and See also:Barcelona by See also:Peterborough (1705). Prince See also:Eugene relieved See also:Turin from a French See also:siege, and followed up the blow by See also:driving the besiegers out of See also:Italy. The influence of Marlborough at home was the result partly of the See also:prestige of his victories, partly of the dominating influence of his strong-minded duchess (" Mrs See also:Freeman ") over the queen (see ANNE, queen of England). The duke cared little for home politics in themselves; but he had his own ends, both public and private, to serve, and at first gave his support to the Tories, whose church policy was regarded with favour by the queen. Their efforts were directed towards the restriction of theToleration Act within narrow limits.

Many dissenters had evaded the Test Act by partaking of the communion in a church, though they subsequently attended their own chapels. An Occasional Conformity Bill, imposing penalties on those who adopted this practice, twice passed the Commons (1702, 1703), but was rejected by the House of Lords, in which the Whig See also:

element pre-dominated. The church was served in a nobler manner in 2704 by the abandonment of first-fruits and tenths by the queen for the purpose of raising the pittances of the poorer clergy (see QUEEN ANNE'S See also:BOUNTY). In r707 a piece of legislation of the highest value was carried to a successful end. The Act of Union, passed in the parliaments of England and Scotland, joined the legislatures of the two kingdoms and the nations themselves in an indissoluble See also:bond. The ministry in office at the time of the passing of the Act of Union had suffered important changes since the commencement of the reign. The Tories had never been as See also:earnest in the prosecution of the war as the Whigs; and Marlborough, who cared above all things for the furtherance of the war, gradually replaced Tories by Whigs in the ministry. His intention was doubtless to conciliate both parties by admitting them both to a share of power; but the Whigs were determined to have all or none, and in 1708 a purely Whig ministry was formed to support the war as the first purely Whig ministry had supported it in the reign of William. The years of its power were the years of the victories of Oudenarde (1708) and of See also:Malplaquet (1709), bringing with them the entire ruin of the military power of Louis XIV. Such successes, if they were not embraced in the spirit of moderation, boded no good to the Whigs. It was known that even before the last battle Louis had been ready to abandon the cause of his grandson, and that his offers had been rejected because he would not consent to join the allies in turning him out of Spain. A belief spread in England that Marlborough wished the endless prolongation of the war for his own selfish ends.

Spain was far away, and, if the Netherlands were safe, enough had been done for the interests of England. The Whigs were charged with refusing to make peace when an See also:

honourable and satisfactory peace was not beyond their reach. As soon as the demand for a vigorous prosecution of the war relaxed, the Whigs could but rely on their domestic policy, in which they were strongest in the eyes of posterity but weakest in the eyes of contemporaries. It was known that they looked for the principle on which the queen's throne rested to the national act of the Revolution, rather than to the See also:birth of the sovereign as the daughter of James II., whilst popular feeling 0referred, however inconsistently, to attach itself to some fragment of hereditary right. What was of greater consequence was, that it was known that they were the See also:friends of the dissenters,and that their leaders, if they could have had their way, would not only have maintained the Toleration Act, but would also have repealed the Test Act. In 1709 a See also:sermon preached by Dr See also:Sacheverell (q.v.) denounced toleration and the right of resistance in tones worthy of the first days of the Restoration. Foolish as the sermon was, it was but the reflection of folly which was widely spread amongst the rude and less educated classes. The Whig leaders unwisely took up the See also:challenge and impeached Sacheverell. The Lords condemned the man, but they condemned him to an easy sentence. His trial was the signal for riot. Dissenting chapels were sacked to the cry of High Church and Sacheverell. The queen, who mm st had personal reasons for disliking the Whigs, dis- missed ry.

them from office (1710), and a Tory House of Commons was elected amidst the excitement to support the Tory ministry of Harley and St John. After some hesitation the new ministry made peace with France, and the treaty of See also:

Utrecht (1713), stipulating for the permanent separation of the crowns of France and Spain, and assigning See also:Milan, See also:Naples and the Spanish Peace of Utrecht. Netherlands to the Austriah claimant, accomplished all that could reasonably be desired, though the abandonment to the vengeance of the Spanish government of her Catalan allies, and the base See also:desertion of her continental confederates on the very field of action, brought dishonour on the good name of England. The Commons gladly welcomed the cessation of the war: The approval of the Lords had been secured by the creation of twelve Tory peers. In home politics the new ministry was in danger of being carried away by its more violent supporters. St John, now See also:Viscount See also:Bolingbroke, with unscrupulous audacity placed himself at their head. The Occasional Conformity Bill was at last carried (1711). Con- occast" To it was added the See also:Schism Act (1714), forbidding forml y dissenters to keep See also:schools or engage in tuition. Boling- Act and broke went still farther. He engaged in an intrigue See also:Ath~Sohlsm for bringing over the Pretender to succeed the queen upon her death. This See also:wild conduct alienated the moderate Tories, who, much as they wished to see the throne occupied by the heir of the ancient line, could not bring themselves to consent to its occupation by a Roman Catholic prince. Such men, therefore, when Anne died (1714) joined the Whigs in proclaiming the elector of Hanover king as George I.

X. THE HANOVERIAN See also:

KINGS (1714—1793) The accession of George I. brought with it the predominance of the Whigs. They had on their side the royal power, the greater part of the aristocracy, the dissenters and the higher trading and commercial classes. The Tories appealed to the dislike of dissenters prevalent amongst the country gentlemen and the country clergy, and to the jealousy felt by the agricultural classes towards those who enriched themselves by See also:trade. Such a feeling, if it was aroused by irritating legislation, might very probably turn to the See also:advantage of the exiled house, especially as the majority of Englishmen were to be found on the Tory side. It was there-fore advisable that government should content itself with as little action as possible, in order to give time for old habits to See also:wear themselves out. The landing of the Pretender in Scotland (1715), and the defeat of a portion of his army which had advanced to See also:Preston—a defeat which was the consequence of the apathy of his English supporters, and which was followed by the complete suppression of the rebellion—gave increased strength to the Whig government. But they were reluctant to face an immediate dissolution, and the Septennial Act was passed (1716) to extend to seven years the duration of parliaments, which had been fixed at three years by =ejslonal the Triennial Act of William and Mary. Under General conform. See also:Stanhope an effort was made to draw legislation in a ityAct and more liberal direction. The Occasional Conformity this' Act and the Schism Act were repealed (1719); but the majorities on the side of the government were unusually small, and Stanhope, who would willingly have repealed the Queen Anne, 17024714. Union with Scotland.

United Whig ministry. Accession of the House of Hanover. Test Act so far as it related to dissenters, was compelled to abandon the project as entirely impracticable. The See also:

Peerage Bill, introduced at the same time to limit the royal power of creating peers, was happily thrown out in the Commons. It was proposed, partly from a desire to guard the Lords against such a sudden increase of their numbers as had been forced-on them when the treaty of Utrecht was under discussion, and partly to secure the Whigs in office against any change in the royal See also:councils in a succeeding reign. It was in fact conceived by men who valued the immediate victory of their principles more than they trusted to the general good sense of the nation. The Lords were at this time, as a matter of fact, not merely wealthier but wiser than the Commons; and it is no wonder that, in days when the Commons, by passing the Septennial Act, had shown their distrust of their own constituents, the peers should show, by the Peerage Bill, their distrust of that House which was elected by those constituencies. Nevertheless, the remedy was worse than the disease, for it would have established a close See also:oligarchy, bound sooner or later to come into conflict with the will of the nation, and only to be overthrown by a violent alteration of the constitution. The excitement following on the bursting of the See also:South See also:Sea Bubble (q.v.), and the death or ruin of the leading ministers, See also:Walpole's brought Sir See also:Robert Walpole to the front (1721). As ministry. a man of business when men of business were few in the House of Commons, he was eminently fit to See also:manage the affairs of the country. But he owed his long continuance in office especially to his sagacity. He clearly saw, what Stanhope had failed to see, that the mass of the nation was not fitted as yet to interest itself wisely in affairs of government, and that therefore the rule must be kept in the hands of the upper classes.

But he was too sensible to adopt the coarse expedient which had commended itself to Stanhope, and he preferred humouring the masses to contradicting them. The struggle of the preceding century had left its See also:

mark in every direction on the national development. Out of the reaction against Puritanism had come. a widely-spread relaxation of morals, and also, as far as the educated class was concerned, an eagerness for the discussion of all social and religious problems. The fierce excitement of political life had quickened thought, and the most anciently received doctrines were held of little ,north until they were brought to the test of reason. It was a time when the See also:pen was more powerful than the sword, when a secretary of state would treat with condescension a Witty pamphleteer, and when such a pamphleteer might hope, not in vain, to become a secretary of state. It was in this world of reason and literature that the Whigs of the Peerage Bill moved. Walpole perceived that there was another world which understood none of these things. With cynical insight he discovered that a great government cannot See also:rest on a clique, however distinguished. If the mass of the nation was not conscious of political wants, it was conscious of material wants. The merchant needed See also:protection for his trade; the voters gladly welcomed See also:election days as bringing guineas to their pockets. Members of parliament were ready to sell their votes for places, for See also:pensions, for actual money. The system was not new, as Danby is credited with the See also:discovery that a vote in the House of Commons might be See also:purchased.

But with Walpole it reached its height. Such a system was possible because the House of Commons was not really accountable to its constituents. The votes of its members were not published, and still less were their speeches made known. Such a silence could only be maintained around the House when there was little interest in its proceedings. The great questions of religion and taxation which had agitated the country under the Stuarts were now fairly settled. To re-awaken those questions in any shape would be dangerous. Walpole took good care never to repeat the See also:

mistake of the Sacheverell trial. When on one occasion he was led into the proposal of an unpopular excise he at once drew back. England in his days was growing See also:rich. Englishmen were See also:bluff and See also:independent, in their ways often coarse and unmannerly. Their life Ix. 18was the life depicted on the See also:canvas of See also:Hogarth and the pages of See also:Fielding.

All high See also:

imagination, all devotion to the public weal, seemed laid asleep. But the political See also:instinct was not dead, and it would one day express itself for better ends than an agitation against an excise bill or an outcry for a popular war. A government could no longer employ its powers for direct oppression. In his own house and in his own conscience, every Englishman, as far as the government was concerned, was the master of his destiny. By and by the idea would See also:dawn on the nation that anarchy is as productive of evil as tyranny, and that a government which omits to regulate or control allows the strong to oppress the weak, and the rich to oppress the poor. Walpole's administration lasted long enough to give See also:room for some feeble expression of this feeling. When George I. was succeeded by George II. (1727), Walpole remained in power. His eagerness for the See also:possession of that power which he desired to use for his country's good, together with the incapacity of two kings born and bred in a foreign country to take a leading part in English affairs, completed the change which had been effected when William first entrusted the conduct of government to a united cabinef. There was now for the first time a prime minister in England, a See also:person who was himself a subject imposing harmonious action on the cabinet. The change was so gradually and silently effected that it is difficult to realize its full importance. So far, indeed, as it only came about through the incapacity of the first two kings of the house of Hanover, it might be undone, and was in fact to a great extent undone by a more active successor.

But so far as it was the result of general tendencies, it could never be obliterated. In the ministries in which See also:

Somers and See also:Montagu on the one hand and Harley and St John on the other had taken part, there was no prime minister except so far as one member of the administration dominated over his colleagues by the force of See also:character and intelligence. In the reign of George III., even North and Addington were universally acknowledged by that title, though they had little claim to the independence of action of a Walpole or a See also:Pitt. The change was, in fact, one of the most important of those by which the English constitution has been altered from an hereditary monarchy with a parliamentary regulative agency to a parliamentary government with an hereditary regulative agency. In Walpole's time the forms of the constitution had become, in all essential particulars, what they are now. What was wanting was a national force behind them to set them to their proper work. The growing opposition which finally drove Walpole from power was not entirely without a nobler element than could be furnished by personal rivalry, or ignorant distrust of commercial and financial success. It was well that The GppO-sition. complaints that a great country ought not to be governed by patronage and See also:bribery should be raised, although, as subsequent experience showed, the causes which rendered corruption inevitable were not to be removed by the expulsion of Walpole from office. But for one See also:error, indeed, it is probable that Walpole's rule would have been still further prolonged. In 1739 a popular excitement arose for a declaration of war against Spain. Walpole believed that war to be certainly unjust, and likely to be disastrous.

He had, however, been so accustomed to give way to popular pressure that he did not perceive the difference between a wise and timely determination to leave a right action undone in the face of insuperable difficulties, and an unwise and cowardly determination to do that which he believed to be wrong and imprudent. If he had now resigned rather than demean himself by acting against his conscience, it is by no means unlikely that he would have been recalled to power before many years were over. As it was, the failures of the war recoiled on his own head, and in 1742 his long ministry came to an end. After a short interval a successor was found in Henry See also:

Pelham. All the ordinary arts of corruption which Walpole had practised were continued, and to them were added arts of corruption II George H. 1727-1760. War with Spain. which Walpole had disdained to practise. He at least under-stood that there were certain principles in accordance with which he wished to conduct public affairs, and he had driven colleague after colleague out of office rather than allow them to distract his method of government. Pelham and his brother, the Thomas Pelham, duke of See also:Newcastle, had no principles of government whatever. They offered place to every man of parliamentary skill or influence. There was no opposition, because the ministers never attempted to do anything which would arouse opposition, and because they were ready to do anything called for by any one who had power enough to make himself dangerous; and in 1743 they embarked on a useless war with France in order to please the king, who saw in every commotion on the continent of Europe some danger to his beloved Hanover.

At most times in the history of England such a ministry would have been driven from office by the outcry of an offended people. In the days of the Pelhams, government was The regarded as lying too far outside the all-important Rebellion 011745. private interests of the community to make it worth of174 t7hile to make any effort to rescue it from the degradation into which it had fallen; yet the Pelhams had not been long in power before this serene belief that the country could get on very well without a government in any real sense of the word was put to the test. In 1745 Charles See also:

Edward, the son of the Pretender, landed in Scotland. He was followed by many of the Highland clans, always ready to draw the sword against the constituted authorities of the Lowlands; and even in the Lowlands, and especially in Edinburgh, he found adherents, who still felt the sting inflicted by the suppression of the national independence of Scotland. The British army was in as chaotic a See also:condition as the British government, and Charles Edward inflicted a complete defeat on a force which met him at See also:Prestonpans. Before the end of the year the See also:victor, at the head of 5000 men, had advanced to See also:Derby. But he found no support in England, and the mere numbers brought against him compelled him to See also:retreat, to find defeat at See also:Culloden in the following year (1746). The war on the continent had been waged with indifferent success. The victory of See also:Dettingen (1743) and the glorious defeat of See also:Fontenoy (1745) had achieved no objects worthy of English intervention, and the peace of See also:Aix-la-Chapelle put an end in 1748 to hostilities which should never have been begun. The government pursued its inglorious career as long as Henry Pelham lived. He had at least some share in the financial ability of Walpole, and it was not till See also:lie died in 1754 that the real difficulties of a system which was based on the avoidance of difficulties had fairly to be faced. The change which was needed was not any mere re-See also:adjustment of the political See also:machine.

Those who cared for religion or morality Moral and had forgotten that man is an imaginative and emotional religious being. Defenders of See also:

Christianity and of See also:deism alike atmo- appealed to the reason alone. See also:Enthusiasm was treated See also:sphere. as a folly or a See also:crime, and earnestness of every kind was branded with the name of enthusiasm. The higher order of minds dwelt with preference upon the beneficent See also:wisdom of the Creator. The lower order of minds treated religion as a kind of life assurance against the inconvenience of eternal death. Upon such a system as this human nature was certain to revenge See also:Wesley itself. The preaching of Wesley and See also:Whitefield and appealed direct to the emotions, with its doctrine of See also:White- " See also:conversion," and called upon each individual not field' to understand, or to admire, or to act, but vividly to realize the love and See also:mercy of See also:God. In all this there was nothing new. What was new was that Wesley added an organization, See also:Methodism (q.v.), in which each of his followers unfolded to one another the secrets of their heart, and became accountable to his See also:fellows. Large as the numbers of the Methodists ultimately became, their influence is not to be measured by their numbers. The See also:double want of the age, the want of spiritual earnestness and the want of organized coherence, would find See also:satisfaction in many ways which would have seemed See also:strange to Wesley, but which were, nevertheless, a continuance of the work which he began. As far as government was concerned, when Henry Pelham died (17J4) the lowest See also:depth of baseness seemed to have been reached.

The duke of Newcastle, who succeeded his brother, looked on the work of corruption with absolute pleasure, and regarded genius and ability as an awkward interruption of that happy arrangement which made men subservient to flattery and money. Whilst he was in the very act of trying to drive from office all men who were possessed of any sort of ideas, he was surprised by a great war. In See also:

America, the French settlers in See also:Canada and the English settlers on the See also:Atlantic See also:coast were falling to blows for the possession of the vast territories drained. by the See also:Ohio and its tributaries. In See also:India, Frenchmen and Englishmen had striven during the last war for authority over the native states round See also:Pondicherry and See also:Madras, and the conflict threatened to break out anew. When war began in earnest, and the reality of danger came home to Englishmen by the See also:capture of See also:Minorca (1756), there arose a demand for a more capable government than any which New-See also:castle could offer. Terrified by the storm of obloquy which he aroused, he fled from office. A government was formed, of which the soul was William Pitt. Pitt was, in some sort, to the political life of Englishmen what Wesley was to their religious life. He brought no new political ideas into their minds, but he ruled them by the force of his character and the example of his purity. His weapons were trust and confidence. He appealed to the patriotism of his fellow-countrymen, to their imaginative love for the national greatness, and he did not appeal in vain. He perceived instinctively that a large number, even of those who took greedily the bribes of Walpole and the Pelhams, took them, not because they loved money better than their country, but because they had no conception that their country had any need of them at all.

It was a truth, but it was not the whole truth. The great Whig families rallied under Newcastle and drove Pitt from office (1757). But if Pitt could not govern without Newcastle's corruption, neither could Newcastle govern without Pitt's energy. At last a compromise was effected, and Newcastle undertook the work of bribing, whilst Pitt undertook the work of governing (see See also:

CHATHAM, WILLIAM PITT, IST EARL OF). The war which had already broken out, the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), was not confined to England alone. By the side of the See also:duel between France and England, a war was going on upon the continent of Europe, in which TYeahersSeven Austria—with its allies, France, See also:Russia and the war. German princes—had fallen upon the new See also:kingdom of See also:Prussia and its sovereign See also:Frederick II. England and Prussia therefore necessarily formed an alliance. Different as the two governments were, they were both alike in recognizing, in part at least, the conditions of progress. Even in Pitt's day England, however imperfectly, rested its strength on the popular will. Even in Frederick's day Prussia was ruled by administrators selected for their special knowledge. Neither France nor Austria had any conception of the necessity of fulfilling these requirements.

Hence the strength of England and of Prussia. The war seemed to be a mere struggle for territory. There was no feeling in either Pitt or Frederick, such as there was in the men who contended See also:

half a century later against See also:Napoleon, that they were fighting the battles of the civilized world. There was something repulsive as well in the enthusiastic nationalism of Pitt as in the cynical nationalism of Frederick. Pitt's sole object was to exalt England to a position in which she would fear no See also:rival. But in so doing he exalted that which, in spite of all that had happened, best deserved to be exalted. The habits of individual energy fused together by the See also:inspiration of patriotism conquered Canada. The unintelligent over-regulation of the French government could not maintain the colonies which had been founded in happier times. In 1758 See also:Louisburg was taken, and the mouth of the St See also:Lawrence guarded against France. In 1759 See also:Quebec fell before See also:Wolfe, who died at the moment of victory. In the same year the naval victories of See also:Lagos and See also:Quiberon See also:Bay established the supremacy of the British at sea. The battle of See also:Plassey (1757) had laid See also:Bengal at the feet Ministry of Henry Pelham.

Ministry of New-castle. Ministry of Pitt and New-castle. of See also:

Clive; and See also:Coote's victory at See also:Wandiwash (1760) led to the final ruin of the See also:relics of French authority in See also:southern India. When George II. died (176o) England was the first maritime and colonial power in the world (see SEVEN YEARS' WAR; CANADA: History; INDIA: History). In George III. the king once more became an important See also:factor in English politics. From his childhood he had been trained by his See also:mother and his instructors to regard the break- George See also:ing down of the power of the great families as the task 1820 of his life. In this he was walking in the same direction ls2o. as Pitt. If the two men could have worked together, England might have been spared many misfortunes. Unhappily, the king could not understand Pitt's higher qualities, his bold con- fidence in the popular feeling, and his contempt for corruption and intrigue. And yet the king's authority was indispensable to Pitt, if he was to carry on his conflict against the great families with success. When the war came to an end, as it must come to an end sooner or later, Pitt's special predominance, derived as it was from his power of breathing a martial spirit into the fleets and armies of England, would come to an end too.

Only the king, with his hold upon the traditional instincts of loyalty and the force of his still unimpaired prerogative, could, in ordinary times, hold head against the wealthy and influential aristocracy. Unfortunately, George III. was not wise enough to See also:

deal with the difficulty in a high-minded See also:fashion. With a well-intentioned but narrow mind, he had nothing in him to strike the imagination of his subjects. He met influence with influence, corruption with corruption, intrigue with intrigue. Unhappily, too, his earliest relations with Pitt involved a dispute on a point on which he was right and Pitt was wrong. In 1761 Pitt resigned Pltt's re- office, because neither the king nor the cabinet were sigaatioa. willing to declare war against Spain in the midst of the war with France. As the war with Spain was inevitable, and as, when it broke out in the following year (1762), it was followed by triumphs for which Pitt had prepared the way, the prescience of the great war-minister appeared to be fully established. But it was his love of war, not his skill in carrying it on, which was really in question. He would be satisfied with nothing short of the absolute ruin of France. He would have given England that dangerous position of supremacy which was gained for France by Louis XIV. in the 17th century, and by Napoleon in the loth century. He would have made his country still more haughty and arrogant than it was, till other nations rose against it, as they have three times risen against France, rather than submit to the intolerable yoke.

It was a happy thing for England that peace was signed (1763). Even as it was, a spirit of contemptuous disregard of the rights of others had been roused, which would not be easily allayed. The king's premature attempt to secure a prime See also:

Bute and minister of his own choosing in Lord Bute (1761) See also:Grenville. came to an end through the minister's incapacity (1763). George Grenville, who followed him, kept the king in leading strings in reliance upon his parliamentary majority. Something, no doubt, had been accomplished by the incorruptibility of Pitt. The practice of bribing members of parliament by actual presents in money came to an end, though the practice of bribing them by place and See also:pension long continued. The arrogance which Pitt displayed towards foreign nations was displayed by Grenville towards classes of the population of the British dominions. It was enough for him to establish a right. He never put himself in the position of those who were to suffer by its being put in force. The first to suffer from Grenville's conception of his See also:duty were the See also:American colonies. The See also:mercantile system, which had sprung up in Spain in the 16th century, held that colonies were to be entirely prohibited from trading, except with the mother country.

Every See also:

European country had adopted this view, and the acquisition of fresh colonial dominions by England, at the peace of 1763, had been made not so much through lust of See also:empire as through love of trade. Of ;ill English colonies, the American were the most populous and important. Their proximity- to the Spanish colonies in the See also:West Indies had naturally led to a See also:contraband trade. To this trade Grenville put a stop, as far as lay in his power. Obnoxious as this measure was in America, the colonists had acknowledged the principle on which it was founded too long to make it easy to resist it. Another step of Grenville's met with more open opposition. Even with all the experience of the century which followed, the relations between a mother country and her colonies are not easy to arrange. If the burthen of defence is to be See also:borne in common, it can hardly be left to the mother country to declare war, and to exact the necessary taxation, without the consent of the colonies. If, on the other hand, it is to be borne by the mother country alone, she may well complain that she is left to See also:bear more than her due share of the weight. The latter alternative forced itself upon the See also:attention of Grenville. The British parliament, he held, was the supreme legislature, and, as such, was entitled to raise taxes in America to support the military forces needed for the defence of America. The act (1765) imposing a See also:stamp tax on the American colonies was the result.

As might have been expected, the Americans resisted. For them, the question was precisely that which Hampden had fought out in the case of ship-money. As far as they were concerned, the British parliament had stepped The See also:

Rock-into the position of Charles I. If Grenville had re- l„ag iasmry. mained in office he would probably have persisted in his resolution. He was driven from his post by the king's resolve no longer to submit to his insolence, and a new ministry was formed under the marquess of See also:Rockingham, composed of some of those leaders of the Whig aristocracy who had not followed the Grenville ministry. They were well-intentioned, but weak, and without political ability; and the king regarded them with distrust, only qualified by his abhorrence of the ministry which they superseded. As soon as the See also:bad See also:news came from America, the ministry was placed between two recommendations. Grenville, on the one hand, advised that the tax should be enforced. The 1)e-Pitt, on the other, declared that the British parliament ciaratory had absolutely no right to tax America, though he Act and held that it had the right to regulate, or in other words See also:repeal of to tax, the See also:commerce of America for the benefit of the Astactm. P British merchant and manufacturer. Between the two the government took a middle course. It obtained from parliament a total repeal of the Stamp Act, but it also passed a Declaratory Act, claiming for the British parliament the supreme power over the colonies in matters of taxation, as well as in matters of legislation.

It is possible that the course thus adopted was chosen simply because it was a middle course. But it was probably suggested by See also:

Edmund Burke, who was then Lord Rockingham's private secretary, but who for some time to come was to furnish thought to the party to which he attached himself. Burke carried into the world of theory those politics of expediency of which Walpole had been the See also:practical originator. He held that questions of abstract right had no place in politics. It was therefore as absurd to argue with Pitt that England had a right to regulate commerce, as it was to argue with Grenville that England had a right to levy taxes. All that could be said was, that it was expedient in a widespread empire that the power of final decision should be lodged somewhere, and that it was also expedient not to use that power in such a way as to irritate those whom it was the truest wisdom to conciliate. The weak side of this view was the weak side of all Burke's political See also:philosophy. Like all great innovators, he was intensely conservative where he was not an See also:advocate of change. Am.. With new views on every subject relating to the meatsasd of Plff exercise of power, he shrank even from entertaining the Burke, slightest question relating to the See also:distribution of power. He recommended to the British parliament the most self-denyingwisdom, but he could not see that in its relation to the colonies the British parliament was so constituted as to make it entirely unprepared to be either wise or self-denying. It is true that if The American colonies.

Burke's political theory. he had thought out the matter in this direction, he would have been led further than he or any other man in England or America was at that time prepared to go. If the British parliament was unfit to legislate for America, and if, as was undoubtedly the case, it was impossible to create a representative body which was fit to legislate, it would follow that the American colonies could only be fairly governed as practically independent states, though they might possibly remain, like the great colonies of our own day, in a position of alliance rather than of dependence. It was because the issues opened led to changes so far greater than the wisest statesman then perceived, that Pitt's See also:

solution, logically untenable as it was, was preferable to Burke's. Pitt would have given bad reasons for going a step in the right direction. Burke gave excellent reasons why those who were certain to go wrong should have the power to go right. Scarcely were the measures relating to America passed when the king turned out the ministry. The new ministry was formed by Pitt, who was created earl of Chatham (1766), on the principle of bringing, together men who had shaken themselves loose from any of the different Whig cliques. Whatever chance the plan had of succeeding was at an end when Chatham's mind temporarily gave way under stress of disease (1767). Charles See also:Townshend, a brilliant, headstrong man, led parliament in the way which had been prepared by the Declaratory Act, and laid duties on See also:tea and other articles of commerce entering the ports of America. It was impossible that the position thus claimed by the British parliament towards America should affect America alone. The habit of obtaining money otherwise than by the consent of those who are required to pay it would be certain to make parliament careless of the feelings and interests of that great majority of the population at home, which was unrepresented in parliament.

The resistance of America to the taxation imposed was therefore not without benefit to the people of the mother country. Already there were signs of a readiness in parliament to treat even the constituencies with contempt. Wilkes In 17631 in the days of the Grenville ministry, John and "The Wilkes, a profligate and scurrilous writer, had been North arrested on a general warrant—that is to say, a warrant Briton." in which the name of no individual was mentioned—as the author of an alleged libel on the king, contained in No. 45 of The North Briton. He was a member of parliament, and as such was declared by Chief Justice See also:

Pratt to be privileged against See also:arrest. In 1768 he was elected member for See also:Middlesex. The House of Commons expelled him. He was again elected, and again expelled. The third time, the Commons gave the seat to which Wilkes was a third time chosen to See also:Colonel See also:Luttrell, who was far down in the See also:poll. Wilkes thus became the representative of a great constitutional principle, the principle that the electors have a right to choose their representatives without restriction, save by the regulations of the law. For the present the contention of the American colonists and of the defenders of Wilkes at home was confined within the See also:compass of the law. Yet in both cases it might easily pass beyond that compass, and might rest itself upon an appeal to the duty of governments to modify the law, and to enlarge the basis of their authority, when law and authority have become too narrow.

As regards America, though Townshend died, the government persisted in his policy. As resistance grew stronger in America, the king urged the use of compulsion. If he had not Lord the wisdom of the country on his side, he had its North's prejudices. The arrogant spirit of Englishmen made mtnistry. them comtemptuous towards the colonists, and the desire to thrust taxation upon others than themselves made the new colonial legislation popular. In 1770 the king made Lord North prime minister. He had won the object on which he had set his heart. A new Tory party had sprung up, not distinguished, like the Tories of Queen Anne's reign, by a special ecclesiastical policy, but by their acceptance of the king's claim to nominate ministers, and so to predominate in the ministryhimself. Unhappily the opposition, united in the desire to conciliate America, was divided on questions of home policy. Chathamwould have met the new danger by parliamentary reform, giving increased voting power to the freeholders of the counties. Burke from principle, and his See also:

noble patrons mainly from lower motives, were opposed to any such change. As Burke had wished the British parliament to be supreme over the colonies, in confidence that this supremacy would not be abused, so he wished the great landowning connexion resting on the rotten boroughs to ruie over the unrepresented people, in confidence that this power would not be abused.

Amid these distractions the king had an easy See also:

game to See also:play. He had all the patronage of the government in his hands, and beyond the circle which was influenced by gifts of patronage, he could appeal to the See also:ignorance and self-seeking of the nation, with which, though he knew it not, he was himself in the closest sympathy. No wonder resistance grew more vigorous in America. In 1773 the inhabitants of See also:Boston threw ship-loads of tea into the See also:harbour rather than pay the obnoxious duty. In 1774 The the Boston Port Bill deprived Boston of its commercial American rights, whilst the See also:Massachusetts Government Bill took war of away from that See also:colony the ordinary political liberties 'IIdence. epend= of Englishmen. The first skirmish of the inevitable war was fought at See also:Lexington in 1775. In 1776 the thirteen colonies united in the continental See also:congress issued their Declaration of Independence. England put forth all its strength to beat down resistance; but the task, which seemed easy at a distance, proved impossible. It might have been so even had the war been conducted on the British side with greater military skill and with more insight into the conditions of the struggle, which was essentially a civil contest between men of the same See also:race. But the initial difficulties of the vast field of operations were greatly increased by the want of skill of the British leaders in adapting themselves to new conditions, while even loyalist sentiment was shocked by the employment of German mercenaries and Red See also:Indian savages against men of English blood. Even so, the issue of the struggle was for long doubtful, and there were moments when it might have ended by a policy of wise concession; but the Americans, though reduced at times to desperate straits, had the advantage of fighting in their own country, and above all they found in George See also:Washington a leader • after the See also:model of the English country See also:gentleman who had up-held the standard of liberty against the Stuarts, and worthy of the great cause for which they fought.

In 1777 a British army under See also:

Burgoyne capitulated at See also:Saratoga; and early in 1778 France, eager to revenge the disasters of the Seven Years' War, formed an alliance with the revolted colonies as free and independent states, and was soon joined by Spain. Chatham, who was ready to make any concession to America short of independence, and especially of independence at the dictation of France, died in 1778. The war was continued for some years with varying results; but in 1781 the See also:capitulation of a second British army under See also:Cornwallis at See also:Yorktown was a decisive blow, which brought home to the minds of the dullest the assurance that the See also:conquest of America was an impossibility. Before this event happened there had been a great change in public feeling in England. The increasing weight of taxation gave rise in 178o to a great See also:meeting of the freeholders of York-See also:shire, which in turn gave the signal for a general agitation for the reduction of unnecessary expense in the government. To this desire Burke gave expression in his bill for economical reform, though he was unable to carry it in the See also:teeth of interested opposition. The movement in favour of See also:economy was necessarily also a movement in favour of peace; and when the surrender of Yorktown was known (1782), Lord North at once resigned office. The new ministry formed under Lord Rockingham comprised not only his own immediate followers, of whom the most prominent was Charles See also:Fox, but the followers of Chatham, The second of whom Lord Shelburne was the acknowledged leader. Rocking- A treaty of peace acknowledging the independence mham in stry. of the United States of America was at once set on foot; and the negotiation with France was rendered easy by the defeat of a French fleet by See also:Rodney, and by the failure of the combined forces of France and Spain to take Gibraltar. Ministry of Lord Chatham. Already the ministry on which such great hopes, had been placed had broken up.

Rockingham died in See also:

July 1782. The two sections of which the government was composed had different aims. The Rockingham See also:section, which now looked up to Fox, rested on aristocratic connexion and influence; the Shelburne section was anxious to gain popular support by active reforms, and to gain over the king to their side. Judging by past ex- perience, the See also:combination might well seem hopeless, and honour- able men like Fox might easily regard it with suspicion. But Fox's allies took good care that their name should not be associ- ated with the idea of improvement. They pruned Burke's Economical Reform Bill till it left as many abuses as it sup- pressed; and though the bill prohibited the grant of pensions above £300, they hastily gave away pensions of much larger value to their own friends before the bill had received the royal assent. They also opposed a bill for parliamentary reform brought in by See also:young William Pitt. When the king chose Shelburne as prime minister, they refused to follow him, and put forward the incompetent duke of See also:Portland as their See also:candidate for the office. The struggle was thus renewed on the old ground of the king's right to select his ministers. But while the king now put forward a minister notoriously able and competent to the task, his opponents put forward a man whose only claim to office was the possession of large estates. They forced their way back to power by means as unscrupulous as their claim to it was un- justifiable. They formed a coalition with Lord North, whose politics and character they had denounced for years.

The The coalition, as soon as the peace with America and coalition. France had been signed (1783), drove Shelburne from office. The duke of Portland became the nominal head of the government, Fox and North its real leaders. Such a ministry could not afford to make a single blunder. The king detested it, and the See also:

assumption by the Whig houses of a right to nominate the head of the government The India without reference to the national interests, could never BIM be popular. The blunder was soon committed. Burke, hating wrong and injustice with a bitter hatred, had descried in the government of British India by the See also:East India See also:Company a disgrace to the English name. For many of the actions of that government no honourable man can think of uttering a word of defence. The helpless natives were oppressed and robbed by the company and its servants in every possible way. Burke drew up a bill, which was adopted by the coalition government, for taking all authority in India out of the hands of the company, and even placing the company's management of its own commercial affairs under control. The governing and controlling body was naturally to be a council appointed at home. The question of the nomination of this council at once drew the whole question within the domain of party politics.

The whole patronage of India would be in its hands, and, as parliament was then constituted, the See also:

balance of parties might be more seriously affected by the distribution of that patronage than it would be now. When, therefore, it was understood that the government bill meant the council to be named in the bill for four years, or, in other words, to be named by the coalition ministry, it was generally regarded as an unblushing attempt to turn a measure for the good government of India into a measure for securing the ministry in office. The bill of course passed the Commons. When it came before the Lords, it was thrown out in consequence of a See also:message from the king, that he would regard any one who voted for it as his enemy. The contest had thus become one between the influence of the crown and the influence of the great houses. Constitutional Ministry historians, who treat the question as one of merely of the theoretical politics, leave out of consideration this younger essential element of the situation, and forget that, if pi`t' it was wrong for the king to influence the Lords by his message, it was equally wrong for the ministry to acquire for themselves fresh patronage with which to influence the Commons. But there was now, what there had not been in the time of Walpole and the Pelhams, a public opinion ready to throw its weight on one side or the other. The county members still formed the most independent portion of the representation, and there were many possessors of rotten boroughs, who were ready to agree with the county members rather than with the great landowners. In choosing Pitt, the young son of Chatham, for his prime minister, as soon as he had dismissed the coalition, George III. gave assurance that he wished his counsels to be directed by integrity and ability. After a struggle of many weeks, parliament was dissolved (1784), and the new House of Commons was prepared to support the king's minister by a large majority. As far as names go, the change effected placed the new Tory party in office for an almost uninterrupted See also:period of See also:forty-six years. It so happened, however, that after the first eight years of that period had passed by, circumstances occurred which effected so great a change in the composition and character of that party as to render any statement to this effect entirely illusive.

During eight years, however, Pitt's ministry was not merely a Tory ministry resting on the choice of the king, but a Liberal ministry resting on national support and upon advanced political knowledge. The nation which Pitt had behind him was very different from the populace which had assailed Walpole's Excise Bill, or had shouted for Wilkes and liberty. At the beginning of the century the See also:

intellect of thoughtful Englishmen progress. had applied itself to speculative problems of religion and philosophy. In the middle of the century it applied itself to practical problems affecting the employment of See also:industry. In 1776 See also:Adam See also:Smith published the Wealth of Nations. Already in 1762 the work of See also:Brindley, the See also:Bridgewater See also:canal, the first joint of a network of inland See also:water communication, was opened. In 1767 Hargreaves produced the See also:spinning-jenny; See also:Arkwright's spinning machine was exhibited in 1768; See also:Crompton's See also:mule was finished in 1779; See also:Cartwright hit upon the idea of the power-See also:loom in 1784, though it was not brought into profitable use till 18oi. The See also:Staffordshire See also:potteries had been flourishing under See also:Wedgwood since 1763, and the improved See also:steam-See also:engine was brought into shape by See also:Watt in 1768. During these years the duke of See also:Bedford, See also:Coke of See also:Norfolk, and Robert See also:Bakewell were busy in the improvement of stock and See also:agriculture. The increase of wealth and prosperity caused by these changes went far to produce a large class of the population entirely out-side the associations of the landowning class, but with sufficient intelligence to appreciate the advantages of a government carried on without regard to the personal interests and rivalries of the aristocracy. The mode in which that increase of wealth was effected was even more decisive on the ultimate destinies of the country.

The substitution of the organization of hereditary monarchy for the organization of wealth and station would ultimately have led to evils as great as those which it superseded. It was only tolerable as a stepping-stone to the organization of intelligence. The larger the numbers admitted to influence the affairs of state, the more necessary is it that they respect the powers of intellect. It would be foolish to See also:

institute a comparison between an Arkwright or a Crompton and a Locke or a See also:Newton. But it is certain that for one man who could appreciate the importance of the See also:treatise On the Human Understanding or the theory of See also:gravitation, there were thousands who could under-stand the value of the water-See also:frame, or the power-loom. The habit of looking with reverence upon See also:mental power was fostered in no slight measure by the See also:industrial development of the second half of the 18th century. The supremacy of intelligence in the political world was, for the time, represented in Pitt. In 1784 he passed an India Bill, which left the commerce and all except the highest patronage of India in the hands of the East India rndr$ Blii Company, but which erected a See also:department of the home government, named the See also:board of control, to compel the company to carry out such political measures as the government saw fit. A bill for parliamentary reform was, however, thrown out by the opposition of his own supporters in parliament, whilst outside parliament there was no general desire for a change in a system which for the present produced such excellent fruits. Still more excellent was his plan of legislation for Ireland. Irish-men had taken advantage of the weakness of England during the American War to enforce upon the ministry of the day, in 1780 and 1782, an abandonment of all claim on the part of the English government and the English judges to interfere in any way with Irish affairs. From 1782, therefore, there were two independent legislatures within the British Isles—the one sitting at See also:Westminster and the other sitting in See also:Dublin.

With these political changes Fox professed himself to be content. Pitt, whose mind was open to wider considerations, proposed to throw open commerce to both nations by removing all the restrictions placed on the trade of Ireland with England and with the rest of the world. The opposition of the English parliament was only removed by concessions continuing some important restrictions 'Ipon Irish exports, and by giving the English parliament the right of See also:

initiation in all measures relating to the regulation of the trade which was to be common to both nations. The Irish parliament took umbrage at the superiority claimed by England, and threw out the measure as an insult, though, even as it stood, it was undeniably in favour of Ireland. The See also:lesson of the in-compatibility of two coordinate legislatures was not thrown away upon Pitt. In 1786 the commercial treaty with France opened that country to English trade, and was the first result of the theories laid down by Adam Smith ten years previously. The first attack upon the horrors of the slave-trade was made in 1788; and in the same year, in the debates on the Regency Bill caused by the king's See also:insanity, Pitt defended against Fox the right of parliament to make provision for the exercise of the powers of the crown when the wearer was permanently or temporarily disabled from exercising his authority. When the king recovered, he went to St See also:Paul's to return thanks on the 23rd of April 1789. The enthusiasm with which he was greeted showed how completely he had the nation on his side. All the hopes of liberal reformers were now with him. All the hopes of moral and religious men were on his side as well. The See also:seed sown by Wesley had grown to be a great See also:tree.

A spirit of thoughtfulness in religious matters and of moral energy was growing in the nation, and the king was endeared to his subjects, as much by his domestic virtues as by his support of the great minister who acted in his name. The happy prospect was soon to be overclouded. On the 4th of May, eleven days after the See also:

appearance of George III. at St Paul's, the French states-general met at See also:Versailles. By the great mass of intelligent Englishmen the change was greeted with enthusiasm. It is seldom that one nation under- The stands the tendencies and difficulties of another; and French the mere fact that power was being transferred from Revolu- an absolute monarch to a representative assembly lion; led superficial observers to imagine that they were English feeling. witnessing a mere repetition of the victory of the English parliament over the Stuart kings. In fact, that which was passing in France was of a totally different nature from the English struggle of the 17th century. In England, the conflict had been carried on for the purpose of limiting the power of the king. In France, it was begun• in order to sweep away an aristocracy in church and state which had become barbarously oppressive. The French Revolution was not, therefore, a conflict for the reform of the political organization of the state, but one for the reorganization of the whole structure of society; and in proportion as it turned away from the path which English ignorance had marked out for it, Englishmen turned away from it in disgust. As they did not understand the aims of the French Revolutionists, they were unable to make that excuse for even so much of their conduct as admits of excuse. Three men, Fox, Burke and Pitt, however, represented three varieties of opinion into which the nation was very unequally divided. Fox, generous and trustful towards the movements of large masses of men, had very little intellectual grasp of the questions at issue in France.

He treated the struggle as one simply for the establishment of free institutions; and when at last the crimes of the leaders became patent to the world, he contentedhimself with lamenting the unfortunate fact, and fell back on the argument that though England could not sympathize with the French tyrants, there was no reason why she should go to war with them. Burke, on the other hand, while he failed to understand the full tendency of the Revolution for good as well as for evil, understood it far better than any Englishman of that day under-stood it. He saw that its main aim was equality, not liberty, and that not only would the French nation be ready, in pursuit of equality, to welcome any tyranny which would serve its purpose, but would be the more prone to acts of tyranny over individuals. This would arise from the remodelling of institutions, with the object of giving immediate effect to the will of the masses, which was especially liable to be counterfeited by designing and unscrupulous See also:

agitators. There is no doubt that in all this Burke was in the right, as he was in his denunciation of the mischief certain to follow when a nation tries to start afresh, and to blot out all past progress in the See also:light of See also:simple reason, which is often most fallible when it believes itself to be most infallible. Where he went wrong was in his ignorance of the special circumstances of the French nation, and his consequent See also:blindness to the fact that the See also:historical method of gradual progress was impossible where institutions had become so utterly bad as they were in France, and that consequently the system of starting afresh, to which he reasonably objected, was to the French a matter not of choice but of necessity. Nor did he see that the passion for equality, like every great passion, justified itself, and that the problem was, not how to obtain liberty in defiance of it, but how so to See also:guide it as to obtain liberty by it and through it. Burke did not content himself with pointing out speculatively the evils which he foreboded for the French. He perceived clearly that the effect of the new French principles could no more be confined to French territory than the principles of Protestant-ism in the 16th century could be confined to See also:Saxony. He knew well that the appeal to abstract reason and the hatred of aristocracy would spread over Europe like a See also:flood, and, as he was in the habit of considering whatever was most opposed to the object of his dislike to be wholly excellent, he called for a crusade of all established governments against the anarchical principles of dissolution which had broken loose in France. Pitt occupied ground apart from either Fox or Burke. He had neither Fox's sympathy for popular movements, nor Burke's intellectual appreciation of the immediate tendencies of the Revolution.

Hence, whilst he pronounced against any active interference with France, he was an advocate of peace, not because he saw more than Fox or Burke, but because he saw less. He fancied that France would be so totally occupied with its own troubles that it would cease for a long time to be dangerous to other nations. This view was soon to be stultified by the effect of the coalition against France in 1792 of Prussia and Austria. The See also:

proclamation of the allies calling on the French to restore the royal Beginning authority was answered by a passionate outburst of of the re-defiance. The king himself was suspected of See also:corn- volutionplicity with the invaders of his country, and the rising My ` ars. of the loth of See also:August was followed by the proclamation of the See also:republic and by the awful " See also:September massacres " of helpless prisoners, guilty of no crime but noble birth, and therefore presumably of See also:attachment to the old regime, and treason towards the new. This passionate attachment to the Revolution, which in France displayed itself in a See also:carnival of insane suspicion and See also:cruelty, inspired on the frontiers an astonishing patriotic resistance. Before the end of the year the invasion was repulsed, and the ragged armies of the Revolution had overrun See also:Savoy and the Austrian Netherlands, and were threatening the aristocratic Dutch republic. Very few governments in Europe were so rooted in the affections of their people as to be able to look without terror on the challenge thus thrown out to them. The English government was one of those very few. No mere despotism was here exercised by the king. No broad impassable line here divided the aristocracy from the people. The work of former genera- tions of Englishmen had been too well done to call for that breach of historical continuity which was a dire change of necessity in France.

There was much need of reform. feeling in England. There was no need of a revolution. The whole of the upper and middle classes, with few exceptions, clung together in a fierce spirit of resistance; and the mass of the lower classes, especially in the country, were too well off to wish for change. The spirit of resistance to revolution quickly See also:

developed into a spirit of resistance to reform, and those who continued to advocate changes, more or less after the French model, were treated as the enemies of mankind. A fierce hatred of France and of all that attached itself to France became the predominating spirit of the nation. Such a change in the national mind could not but affect the constitution of the Whig party. The reasoning of Burke would, in itself, have done little to effect its disruption. But Division of the great landowners, who contributed so strong an the Whig party, element in it, composed the very class which had most to fear from the principles of the Revolution. The old questions which had divided them from the king and Pitt in 1783 had dwindled into nothing before the appalling question of the immediate present. They made themselves the leaders of the war party, and they knew that that party comprised almost the whole of the parliamentary classes. What could Pitt do but surrender?

The whole of the intellectual basis of his foreign policy was swept away when it became evident that the continental war would bring with it an accession of French territory. He did not abandon his opinions. His opinions rather abandoned him. A wider intelligence might have held that, let France gain what territorial aggrandizement it might upon the continent of Europe, it was impossible to resist such changes until the opponents of France had so purified themselves as to obtain a hold upon the moral feelings of man-kind. Pitt could not take this view; perhaps no man in his day could be fairly expected to take it. He did not indeed declare war against France; but he sought to set a limit to her conquests in the See also:

winter, though he had not sought to set a limit to the conquests of the allied sovereigns in the preceding summer. He treated with supercilious contempt the National Convention, which had dethroned the king and proclaimed a republic. Above all, he took up a declaration by the Convention, that they would give help to all peoples struggling for liberty against their respective governments, as a challenge to England. The horror caused in England by the trial and execution of Louis XVI. completed the estrangement between the two countries, and though the declaration of war came from France (1793), it had been in great part brought about by the bearing of England and its government. (S. R. G.) XI.

THE REVOLUTIONARY See also:

EPOCH, THE REACTION, AND THE See also:TRIUMPH OF REFORM (1793–1837) In appearance the great Whig landowners gave their support to Pitt, and in 1794 some of their leaders, the duke of Portland, Lord See also:Fitzwilliam, and See also:Windham, entered the cabinet to serve under him. In reality it was Pitt who had surrendered. The ministry and the party by which it was supported might call themselves Tory still; but the great reforming policy of 1784 was at an end, and the government, unconscious of its own strength, conceived its main See also:function to be at all See also:costs to preserve the constitution, which it believed to be in danger of being overwhelmed by the rising See also:tide of revolu- tionary feeling. That this belief was idle it is now easy enough to see; at the time this was not so obvious. Thomas See also:Paine's Rights of Man, published in 1791, a brilliant and bitter attack on the British constitution from the Jacobin point of view, sold by tens of thousands. Revolutionary See also:societies with high-See also:sounding names were established, of which the most con- spicuous were the Revolution Society, the Society for Consti- tutional See also:Information, the London Corresponding Society, and the Friends of the People. Of these, indeed, only the two last were directly due to the example of France. The Revolution Society, founded to commemorate the revolution of 1688, had long carried on a respectable existence under the patronage of cabinet ministers; the Society for Constitutional Information, of which Pitt himself had been a member, was founded in 178o to advocate parliamentary reform; both had, however, developed under the influence of the events in France in a revolutionary direction. The London Corresponding Society, composed mainly of working-men, was the direct outcome of the excitement caused by the developments of the French Re-volution. Its leaders were obscure and usually illiterate men, who delighted to propound their theories for the universal See also:reformation of society and the state in See also:rhetoric of which the characteristic phrases were borrowed from the See also:tribune of the Jacobin See also:Club. Later generations have learned by repeated experience that the eloquence of See also:Hyde See also:Park orators is not the See also:voice of England; there were some even then--among those not immediately responsible for keeping order--who urged the government " to trust the people ";1 but with the object-lesson of France before them it is not altogether surprising that ministers refused to believe ih the harmlessness of societies, which not only kept up a fraternal See also:correspondence with the National Convention and the Jacobin Club, but, by attempting to establish throughout the country a network of affiliated clubs, were apparently aiming at setting up in Great Britain the Jacobin idea of popular control. The danger, of course, was absurdly exaggerated; as indeed was proved by the very popularity of the repressive measures to which the government thought it necessary to resort, and which gave to the vapourings of a few knots of agitators the dignity of a widespread conspiracy for the overthrow of the constitution.

On,the 1st of See also:

December 1792 a proclamation was issued calling out the See also:militia on the ground that a dangerous spirit of tumult and disorder had been excited by evil-disposed persons, acting in See also:concert with persons in foreign parts, and this statement was repeated in the king's speech at the opening of parliament on the 13th. In spite of the protests of See also:Sheridan and other members of the opposition, a campaign of press and other prosecutions now began which threatened to extinguish the most cherished right of Englishmen—liberty of speech. The country was flooded with government spies and informers, whose efforts were seconded by such voluntary societies as the Association for preserving Liberty and See also:Property against Republicans and See also:Levellers, founded by John See also:Reeves, the historian of English law. No one was safe from these zealous and too often credulous defenders of the established order; and a few indiscreet words spoken in a See also:coffee house were enough to bring imprisonment and ruin, as in the case of John See also:Frost, a respectable See also:attorney, condemned for See also:sedition in March 1793. In Scotland the panic, and the consequent cruelty, were worse than in England. The meeting at Edinburgh of a "convention of delegates of the associated friends of the people," at which some foolish and exaggerated See also:language was used, was followed by the trial of Thomas See also:Muir, a talented young advocate whose brilliant defence did not save him from a sentence of fourteen years' transportation (August 30, 1793), while seven years' transportation was the See also:punishment of the Rev. T. Fyshe See also:Palmer for circulating an address from " a society of the friends of liberty to their fellow-citizens " in favour of a reform of the House of Commons. These sentences and the proceedings which led up to them, though attacked with bitter eloquence by Sheridan and Fox, were confirmed by a large majority in parliament. It was not, however, till late in the session of 1794 that ministers laid before parliament any See also:evidence of seditious practices. In May certain leaders of democratic societies were arrested and their papers seized, and on the 13th a king's message directed the books of certain corresponding societies to be laid before both Houses. The See also:committee of the House of Commons at once reported that there was evidence of a conspiracy I The position of the Corresponding Society was greatly strengthened by the establishment of,the Friends of the People by See also:Erskine and See also:Grey.

The rovernmentand the" revolutionxry" agitation. 552 to supersede the House of Commons by a national convention, and Pitt proposed and carried a bill suspending the Habeas Corpus Act. This was followed by further reports of the committees of both Houses, presenting evidence of the secret manufacture of arms and of other proceedings calculated to endanger the public peace. A series of state prosecutions followed. The trials of Robert Watt and See also:

David Downie for high treason (August and September 1794) actually revealed a treasonable plot on the part of a few obscure individuals at Edinburgh, who were found in the possession of no less than fifty-seven pikes of home manufacture, wherewith to overthrow the British government. The execution of Watt gave to this trial a See also:note of tragedy which was absent from that of certain members of the Corresponding Society, accused of conspiring to murder the king by means of a poisoned arrow shot from an See also:air-See also:gun. The ridicule that greeted the See also:revelation of the " Pop-gun Plot " marked the beginning of a reaction that found a more serious expression in the trials of Thomas See also:Hardy, John See also:Horne See also:Tooke and John Thelwall (See also:October and November 1794). The prisoners were accused of high treason, their chief offence consisting in their attempt to assemble a general convention of the people, ostensibly for the purpose of obtaining parliamentary reform, but really—as the prosecution urged—for subverting the constitution. This latter See also:charge, though proved to the satisfaction of the committees of both Houses of Parliament, broke down under the See also:cross-examination of the government witnesses by the counsel for the defence, and could indeed only have been substantiated by a dangerous stretching of the doctrine of constructive treason. Happily the jury refused to convict, and its See also:verdict saved the nation from the disgrace of meting out the extreme See also:penalty of high treason to an attempt to hold a public meeting for the redress of grievances. The common sense of a British jury had preserved, in spite of parliament and ministry, that free right of meeting which was to be one of the strongest See also:instruments of future reform. The government, however, saw little reason in the events of the following months for See also:reversing their coercive policy.

The year 1795 was one of great suffering and great popular unrest; for the effect of the war upon industry was now beginning to be felt, and the See also:

distress had been aggravated by two bad harvests. The sudden determination of those in power, who had hitherto advocated reform, to stereotype the existing system, closed the avenues of hope to those who had expected an improvement of their lot from constitutional changes, and the disaffected temper of the populace that resulted was taken advantage of by the London Corresponding Society, emboldened by its triumph in the courts, to organize open and really dangerous demonstrations, such as the vast mass meeting at See also:Copenhagen House on the 26th of October. On the 29th of October the king, on his way to open parliament, was attacked by an angry See also:mob shouting, " Give us See also:bread," " No Pitt," " No war," " No See also:famine,"; and the See also:glass panels of his state See also:coach were smashed to pieces. The result of these demonstrations was the introduction in the House of Lords, on the 4th of November, of the Treasonable Practices Bill, the main principle of which was that it modified the law of treason by dispensing with the necessity for the See also:proof of an overt act in order to secure conviction; and in the House of Commons, on the loth, of the Seditious Meetings Bill, which seriously limited the right of public meeting, making all meetings of over fifty persons, as well as all political debates and lectures, subject to the previous consent and active supervision of the magistrates. In spite of the strenuous resistance of the opposition, led by Fox, and of numerous meetings of protest held outside the walls of parliament, both bills passed into law by enormous majorities. The inevitable result followed. The London Corresponding. Society and other political clubs, deprived of the right of public meeting, became secret societies pledged to the overthrow of the existing system by any means. United Englishmen and United Scotsmen plotted with United Irish-men for a French invasion, and sedition was fomented in the army and the See also:navy. Their baneful activities were exposed in the inquiries that followed the Irish rebellion of 1798, and the[1794-4797 result was the Corresponding Societies Bill, introduced by Pitt on the 19th of April 1799, which completed the series of repressive measures and practically suspended the popular constitution of England. The right of public meeting, of free speech, of the free press had alike ceased for the time to exist. The See also:justification of the government in all this was the life and death struggle in which Great Britain was engaged with the power of republican France in Europe.

Yet Pitt's The conduct of the war, so far as the continent was con- Revoda- cerned, had hitherto led to nothing but failure after tioaary failure. In 1794, in spite of the presence of an English war. army under the duke of York, the Austrian Netherlands had been finally conquered and annexed to the French republic; in 1795 the Dutch republic was affiliated to that of France, and the peace of See also:

Basel between Prussia and the French republic left Austria to continue the war alone with the aid of British subsidies. On the sea Great Britain had been more successful, See also:Howe's victory of the 1st of See also:June 1794 being the first of the long series of defeats inflicted on the French navy, while in 1795 a beginning was made of the vast expansion of the British Empire by the capture of See also:Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch (see FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS) The war, however, had become so expensive, and its results were evidently so small, that there was a growing feeling in England in favour of peace, especially as the Reign of Terror had come to an end in 1794, and a See also:regular government, the See also:Directory, had been appointed in 1795. At last Pitt was forced to yield to the popular clamour, and in 1796 Lord See also:Malmesbury was sent to France to treat for peace. The negotiation, however, was at once broken off by his demand that France should abandon the Netherlands. The French government, assured now of the assistance of Spain and Holland, and freed of the danger from La See also:Vendee; now determined to attempt the invasion of Ireland. On the 16th of December a fleet of 17 battle-ships, H pedtuon 13 frigates and 15 smaller vessels set See also:sail from See also:Brest, to trelaad. carrying an expeditionary force of some 13,000 men under General See also:Hoche The British fleet, under Lord See also:Bridport, was wintering at Spithead; and before it could put to sea the French had slipped past. Before it reached the coast of Ireland, however, the French fleet had already suffered serious losses, owing partly to the attacks. of British See also:frigate detachments, partly to the bad See also:seamanship of the French crews and the rottenness of the ships. Only a part of the fleet succeeded in reaching See also:Bantry Bay on the 20th of December, and of these a large number were scattered by a storm on the 23rd. See also:Roche himself, with the French admiral, had been driven far to the westward in an effort to avoid capture; the attempt of See also:Grouchy, in his See also:absence, to land a force was defeated by the See also:weather, and by the end of the See also:month the whole expedition was in full retreat for Brest. A French diversion on the coast of See also:Pembroke was even less successful; a force of 1500 men, under Colonel See also:Tate, an American adventurer, landed in See also:Cardigan Bay on the 22nd of See also:February 1797, but was at once surrounded by the See also:local militia and surrendered without a blow. A more serious attempt was now made to renew the enterprise by means of a junction of the French, Spanish and Dutch fleets.

The victory of Jervis over the Spanish fleet at Mutinies St See also:

Vincent on the 14th of February postponed the at See also:Spit imminence of the danger; but this again became acute head and owing to the general disaffection in the fleet, which in the wore. April and May found vent in the serious mutinies at Spithead and the See also:Nore. The mutiny at Spithead, which was due solely to the intolerable conditions under which the See also:seamen served at the time, was ended on the 17th of May by concessions: an increase of pay, the removal of officers who had abused their power of discipline, and the promise of a general free See also:pardon. More serious was the outbreak at the Nore. The disaffection had spread practically to the whole of Admiral See also:Duncan's fleet, and by the beginning of June the mutineers were blockading the See also:Thames with no less than 26 vessels. The demands of the seamen were more extensive than at Spithead; their resistance was better organized; and they were suspected, though without reason, of harbouring revolutionary designs. The return of the Channel fleet to its duty emboldened the See also:admiralty to refuse any concessions, and the vigorous measures of repression taken proved effective. One by one the mutinous crews surrendered; and the arrest of the ringleader, Richard See also:Parker, on board the " See also:Sandwich," on the 14th of June, brought the affair to an end.1 The seamen regained their reputation, and those who Battle eM1 had been imprisoned their liberty, by Duncan's victory down. over the Dutch fleet at Camperdown (October 11), by which the immediate danger was averted. Though the French attempt at a concerted invasion had failed, however, the Directory did not abandon the enterprise, and commissioned See also:Bonaparte to draw up fresh plans. At the close of the year 1797 the position of Great Britain was indeed sufficiently alarming. On the 18th of April, during the very crisis of the mutiny at Spithead, Austria had signed with Bonaparte the humiliating terms of the preliminary peace of See also:Leoben, which six months later were embodied in the treaty of Campo Formio (October 17). On the loth of August See also:Portugal had concluded a treaty with the French Republic; and Great Britain was left without an ally in Europe.

The mutiny at the Nore, the See also:

threat of rebellion in Ireland, the alarming fall in See also:consols, argued strongly against continuing the war single-handed, and in July Lord Malmesbury had been sent to See also:Lille to open fresh negotiations with the plenipotentiaries of France. The negotiations broke down on the refusal of England to restore the Cape of Good Hope to the Dutch. But though forced, in spite of misgivings, to continue the struggle, the British government in one very important respect was now in a far better position to do so. For though Great Britain was now isolated and her policy in Europe advertised as a failure, the temper of the British people was less inclined to peace in 1798 than it had been three years before. The early enthusiasm of the disfranchised classes for French principles had cooled with the later developments of the Revolution; the attempted invasions had roused the national spirit; and in the public imagination the sinister figure of Bonaparte, the rapacious conqueror, was beginning to loom large to the exclusion of lesser issues. Henceforth, in spite of press prosecutions and trials for political libel, the government was supported by public opinion in its vigorous prosecution of the war. If the danger of French invasion was a reality, it was so mainly owing to the deplorable condition of Ireland, where the The Ad natural disaffection of the Roman Catholic majority of Union of the population—deprived of political and many with social rights, and exposed to the insults and oppression Ireland. of a Protestant minority corrupted by centuries of ascendancy—invited the intervention of a foreign enemy. The full measure of the intolerable conditions prevailing in the country was revealed by the horrors of the rebellion of 1798, and after this had been suppressed Pitt decided that the only way to deal with the situation was to establish a union between Great Britain and Ireland, similar to that which had proved so successful in the case of England and Scotland. He saw that to establish peace in Ireland the Roman Catholics would have to be enfranchised; he realized that to enfranchise them in a separated Ireland would be to subject the proud Protestant minority to an impossible domination, and to establish not peace but war. The Union, then, was in his view the necessary preliminary to Catholic emancipation, which was at the same time the reward held out to the majority of the Irish people for the surrender of their national quasi-independence. It was a bribe little likely to appeal to the Protestant minority which constituted the Irish parliament, and to them other inducements had to be offered if the scheme was to be carried through. These inducements were not all corrupt.

Those members who stood out were, indeed, bought by a lavish distribution of money and coronets; but the advantages to Ireland which might reason-ably be expected from the Union were many and obvious; and if all the promises held out by the promoters of the measure 1A vivid See also:

account of the mutiny and its causes is given in See also:Captain See also:Marryat's King's Own.have even now not been realized, the fault is not theirs. The Act of Union was placed on the statute-book in 'Soo; Catholic emancipation was to have been accomplished in the following session, the first of the united parliament. But Pitt's policy broke on the stubborn obstinacy of George III., who believed himself bound by his See also:coronation See also:oath to resist any concession to the enemies of the Established Church. The disadvantage of the possession of too strait a conscience in politics was never more dismally illustrated. To the Irish people it was the first breach of faith in connexion with the Union, Resignaand threw them into opposition to a settlement into ption of its. which they believed themselves to have been drawn under false pretences. Pitt, realizing this, had no See also:option but to resign. The resignation of the great minister who had so long held the reins of power coincided with a See also:critical situation in Europe. The See also:isolation of Bonaparte in See also:Egypt, as the result Bonaparte of See also:Nelson's victory of the See also:Nile (1798), had enabled breaks up the allies to recover some of the ground lost to France. the See also:coati-But this had merely increased Bonaparte's prestige, tion. and on his return in 1799 he found no difficulty in making him-self master of France by the coup d'etat of the 18th See also:Brumaire. The campaign of See also:Marengo followed (1800) and the peace of See also:Luneville, which not only once more isolated Great Britain, but raised up against her new enemies, to the See also:list of whom she added by using her command of the sea to enforce the right of See also:search in order to seize enemies' goods in neutral vessels. Russia joined with See also:Sweden and Denmark, all hitherto friendly powers, in resistance to this claim.

Such was the position when Addington became prime minister. He was a man of weak character and narrow intellect, whose main claim to succeed Pitt was that he shared to Addington the full the Protestant prejudices of king and people. ministry. His See also:

tenure of power was, indeed, marked by British successes abroad; by Nelson's victory at Copenhagen, which broke up the See also:northern alliance, and by See also:Abercromby's victory at See also:Alexandria, which forced the French to evacuate Egypt; but these had been prepared by the previous administration. Addington's real work was the peace of See also:Amiens (1802), an experimental peace, as the king called it, to see TheAmiofpeace ens. if the First See also:Consul could be contented to restrain himself within the very wide limits by which his authority in Europe was still circumscribed. In a few months Great Britain was made aware that the experiment would not succeed. Interference and See also:annexation became the standing policy of the new French government; and Britain, discovering how little intention Rfhe enewalwarof Bonaparte had of carrying out the spirit of the treaty, refused to abandon See also:Malta, as she had engaged to do by the terms of peace. The war began again, no longer a war against revolutionary principles and their propaganda, but against the boundless ambitions of a military conqueror. This time the British nation was all but unanimous in resistance. This time its resistance would be sooner or later supported by all that was healthy in Europe. The news that Bonaparte was making preparations on a vast scale for the invasion of England roused a stubborn spirit of resistance in the country. See also:Volunteers were enrolled, and the coast was dotted with Martello towers, many of which yet remain as monuments of the time when the " army of England " was encamped on the heights near See also:Boulogne within sight of the English cliffs.

To meet so great a crisis Addington was not the man. He had been ceaselessly assailed, in and out of parliament, by the trenchant See also:

criticism, and often unmannerly wit, of " Pitt's friends," among whom George See also:Canning was now conspicuous. Pitt himself had remained silent; but in view of the seriousness of the crisis and of a threatened illness of the king, which would have necessitated a regency and—in view of the prince of See also:Wales's dislike for him—his own permanent exclusion from office, he now put himself forward once more. The government majorities in the House now rapidly dwindled; on the 26th of April 1804, Addington resigned; and Pitt, after his attempt to form a national coalition ministry. had broken See also:nut of Portland, Lord See also:Westmorland, Lord Castlereagh and returns to office. Lord Hawkesbury retained office, the latter surrender- ing the foreign office to Lord See also:Harrowby and going to the home office. Dundes, now Lord See also:Melville, became first lord of the admiralty, and the cabinet further included Lord See also:Camden, Lord See also:Mulgrave and the duke of See also:Montrose. Canning, See also:Huskisson and See also:Perceval were given subordinate offices. Save for the commanding See also:personality of Pitt, the new govern- ment was scarcely stronger than that which it had replaced. It had to face the same Whig opposition, led by Fox, who scoffed at the French peril, and reinforced by Addington and his friends; and the whole See also:burden of meeting this opposition fell upon Pitt; for Castlereagh, the only other member of the cabinet in the House of Commons, was of little use in debate. Nevertheless, fresh vigour was infused into the conduct of the war. The Additional Forces Act, passed in the teeth of a strenuous op- position, introduced the principle of a modified system of com- pulsion to supplement the deficiencies of the army and reserve, while the navy was largely increased. Abroad, Pitt's whole energies were directed to forming a fresh coalition against Bonaparte, who, on the 14th of May 1804, had proclaimed him- self emperor of the French; but it was a year before Russia signed with Great Britain the treaty of St See also:Petersburg (April 11, 1805), and the accession to the coalition of Austria, Sweden and Naples was not obtained till the following September.

In the following month(October 21) Nelson's crowning victory Tattle of See also:

Trafalgar. at Trafalgar over the allied fleets of France and Spain relieved England of the dread of invasion. It served, however, to precipitate the crisis on the continent of Europe; the great army assembled at Boulogne was turned eastwards; by the capitulation of See also:Ulm (October 19) Austria lost a large part of her forces; and the last news that reached Pitt on his See also:Austerlitz. death-See also:bed was that of the ruin of all his hopes by the crushing victory of Napoleon over the Russians and Austrians at Austerlitz (December 2). Pitt died on the 23rd of See also:January, and the refusal of Lord Hawkesbury to assume the premiership forced the king to Death of summon Lord Grenville, and to agree to the inclusion Pitt. of Fox in the cabinet as secretary for foreign affairs. "Ministry Several members of Pitt's administration were ad- of all the mitted to this " Ministry of all the Talents," including Talents." not been extended to England, though by the Act of Union the armies had become one. The king, however, was not to be moved from his position; and he was supported in this attitude not only by public opinion, but by a section of the ministry itself, of which See also:Sidmouth made himself the See also:mouthpiece. The demand of George III. that ministers should undertake never again to approach him on the subject of concessions to the Catholics was rejected by Grenville, rightly, as unconstitutional, and on the 18th of March 1807 he resigned. The new ministry, under the nominal headship of the valetudinarian duke of Portland, included Perceval as chancellor of the exchequer, Canning as foreign secretary and Castlereagh as secretary for war and the colonies. ministry. It had given the undertaking demanded-by the king; those of its members who, like Canning, were in favour of Catholic emancipation, arguing that, in view of greater and more pressing questions, it was useless to insist in a matter which could never be settled so long as the old king lived. Of more importance to Great Britain, for the time being, than any constitutional issues, was the life - and - death struggle with Napoleon, which had now entered on a new phase. Defeated at sea, but master now of the greater part of the continent of Europe, the French emperor planned to bring Great Britain to terms by ruining her commerce with the vast territories under his influence.' In November 1806 he issued from See also:Berlin the famous See also:decree prohibiting the importation of British goods and excluding from the harbours under his control even neutral ships that had touched at British ports. The British government replied by the famous Orders in Council of 1897, which declared all vessels trading with France liable to seizure, and that all such vessels clearing from France must touch at a British port to pay customs duties. To this Napoleon responded with the Milan decree (December 17), for-bidding neutrals to trade in any articles imported from the British dominions.

The effects of these measures were destined to be far-reaching. The Revolution had made war on princes and See also:

privilege, and the common people had in general gained wherever the See also:Napoleonic regime had been substituted for their effete despotisms; but the " Continental System " was felt as an oppression in every humble See also:household, suddenly deprived of the little imported luxuries, such as See also:sugar and coffee, which custom had made necessaries; and from this time date the beginnings of that popular revolt against Napoleon that was to culminate in the War of Liberation. Great Britain, too, was to suffer from her own retaliatory policy. The Americans had taken advantage of the war to draw into their own hands a large part of the British carrying trade, a Warwith America. See also:process greatly encouraged by the establishment of the Continental System. This brought them into conflict with the British acting under the Orders in Council, and the consequent ill-feeling culminated in the war of 1812. It was not only the completion of the Continental System, however, that made the year 1897 a fateful one for Great Britain. On the 7th of July the young emperor See also:Alexander I. of Russia, fascinated by Napoleon's genius and bribed T Sit of by the offer of a partition of the world, concluded the treaty of See also:Tilsit, which not only brought Russia into the Continental System, but substituted for a coalition against France a formidable coalition against England. A scheme for wresting from the British the command of the sea was only defeated by Canning's action in ordering the English fleet to capture the Danish navy, though Denmark was still nominally a friendly power (see CANNING, GEORGE). Meanwhile, in order to complete the See also:ring fence round Europe against British commerce, Napoleon had ordered See also:Junot to invade Portugal; French In-See also:Lisbon was occupied by the French, and the Portu- vasion of guese royal See also:family migrated to See also:Brazil. In the follow- Spain and ing year Napoleon seized the royal family of Spain, Portugal and gave the crown, which Charles VI. resigned on behalf of himself and his heir, to his brother See also:Joseph, king of Naples. The revolt of the Spanish people that followed was the first of down on the king's refusal to admit Fox, became head of a government constructed on a narrow Tory basis. Of the members of the late government Lord See also:Eldon, the duke Addington (now Lord Sidmouth), who had rejoined the ministry in December 1804 and again resigned, owing to a disagreement with Pitt as to the charges against Lord Melville (q.v.) in July 1805.

The new ministry remained in office for a year, a disastrous year which saw the See also:

culmination of Napoleon's power: the crushing of Prussia in the campaign of See also:Jena, the formation of the See also:Confederation of the See also:Rhine and the end of the See also:Holy Roman Empire. In the conduct of the war the British government had displayed little skill, frittering away its forces Abolition on distant expeditions, instead of concentrating them of the in support of Prussia or Russia, and the chief title slave- to fame of the Ministry of all the Talents is that it trade. secured the passing of the bill for the abolition of the slave-trade (March 25, 1807). The death of Fox (September 13, 1806) deprived the ministry of its strongest member, and in the following March it fell on the old. question of concessions to the Roman Catholics. True to his principles, Fox had done his best to negotiate terms of peace with Napoleon; but the breakdown of the attempt had persuaded even the Whigs that an arrange- ment was impossible, and in view of this fact Grenville thought it his duty to advise the king that the disabilities of Roman Catholics and dissenters in the matter of serving in the army and navy should be removed, in order that all sections of the nation might be united in face of the enemy. The situation, moreover, was in the highest degree anomalous; for by an act passed in 1793 Roman Catholics might hold commissions in the army in Ireland up to the rank of colonel, and this right had Catholic question. The continental system. The Orders in Council. the national uprisings against his rule by which Napoleon was destined to be overthrown. In England it was greeted with immense popular enthusiasm, and the government, without realizing the full import of the step it was taking, sent an ex- pedition to the See also:Peninsula. It disembarked, under the command of Sir See also:Arthur See also:Wellesley, at See also:Figueras on the 1st of Penins War. See also:ulcer August. It was the beginning of the See also:Peninsular War, War. which was destined not to end until, in 1814, the British troops crossed the See also:Pyrenees into France, while the Allies were pressing over the Rhine.

The political and military events on the continent of Europe do not, however, belong strictly to English history, though they profoundly affected its development, and they are dealt with elsewhere (see EUROPE: History; NAPOLEON; NAPOLEONIC See also:

CAMPAIGNS; PENINSULAR WAR; See also:WATERLOO CAMPAIGN). The war, while it lasted, was of course the main preoccupation of British ministers and of the British people. It entailed Walcheren enormous sacrifices, which led to corresponding disexpedition. contents; and See also:differences as to its conduct produced cabinet frequent See also:friction within the government itself. A crisis' cabinet crisis was the result of the outcome of the unfortunate Walcheren expedition of 18o9. It had been Castlereagh's conception and, had it been as well executed as it was conceived, it might have dealt a fatal blow at Napoleon's hopes of recovering his power at sea, by destroying his great naval establishments at See also:Antwerp. It failed, and it became the subject of angry dispute between Canning and Castlereagh, a dispute embittered by personal rivalry and the friction due to the ill-defined relations of the foreign secretary to the secretary for war; the quarrel culminated in a duel, and in the resignation of both ministers (see See also:LONDONDERRY, 2ND MARQUESS OF, and CANNING, GEORGE). The duke of Portland resigned at the same time, and in the reconstruction of the ministry, under Perceval as premier, Lord Wellesley became foreign secretary, Perceval ministry. while Lord See also:Liverpool, with See also:Palmerston as his under- secretary, succeeded Castlereagh at the war office. The most conspicuous member of this government was Wellesley, whose main object in taking office was to second his brother's efforts in the Peninsula. In this he was, however, only partially successful, owing to the incapacity of his colleagues to realize the unique importance of the operations in Spain. In November 18ro the old king's mind gave way, and on the 11th of February 1811, an act of parliament bestowed the regency, under certain restrictions, upon the prince of Wales. The prince had been on intimate terms with the Whig leaders, and it was assumed that his accession to power would mean a change of government. He had, however, been offended by their attitude on the question of the restriction of his authority as See also:regent, and he continued Perceval in office.

A year later, the king's insanity being proved incurable, the regency was definitively established (February 1812). Lord Wellesley took advantage of the reconstruction of the cabinet to resign a position in which he had not been given a free hand, and his post of foreign secretary was offered to Canning. Canning, however, refused to serve with Castlereagh as minister of war, and the latter received the foreign office, which he was to hold till his death in 1822. A month later, on the 11th of May, Perceval was assassinated in the See also:

lobby of the House of Commons, and Lord Liverpool became the head of a government that was to last till 1827. The period covered by the Liverpool administration was a fateful one in the history of Europe. The year 1812 saw Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and the disastrous Liverpool ministry. retreat from See also:Moscow. In the following year Welling- ton's victory at See also:Vitoria signalled the ruin of the French cause in Spain; while Prussia threw off the yoke of France, and Austria, realizing after cautious delay her chance of retrieving the humiliations of 18oq, joined the alliance, and in concert with Russia and the other German powers overthrew Napoleon at See also:Leipzig. The invasion of France followed in 1814, the abdication of Napoleon, the restoration of the Bourbons and the assembling of the congress of See also:Vienna. The following year saw the returnof Napoleon from See also:Elba, the close of the congress of Vienna, and the campaign that ended with the battle of Waterloo. The succeeding period, after so much storm and stress, might seem dull and unprofitable; but it witnessed the instructive experiment of the government of Europe by a concert of the great powers, and the first victory of the new principle of See also:nationality in the insurrection of the Greeks. The share taken by Great Britain in all this, for which Castlereagh pre-eminently must take the praise or blame, is outlined in the article on the history of Europe (q.v.). Here it must suffice to point out Foreign how closely the development of foreign affairs was policy os interwoven with that of home politics.

The great castle-war, so long as it lasted, was the supreme affair of reagh. moment; the supreme interest when it was over was to prevent its recurrence. For above all the world needed peace, in order to recover from the exhaustion of the revolutionary epoch; and this peace, bought at so great a cost, could be preserved only by the honest co-operation of Great Britain in the great inter-national alliance based on " the treaties." This explains Castlereagh's policy at home and abroad. He was grossly attacked by the Opposition in parliament and by irresponsible critics, of the type of See also:

Byron, outside; historians, bred in the See also:atmosphere of 'See also:mid-Victorian Liberalism, have re-echoed the cry against him and the government of which he was the most distinguished member; but history has largely justified his attitude. He was no friend of arbitrary government; but he judged it better that " oppressed nationalities " and " persecuted Liberals " should suffer than that Europe should be again plunged into war. He was hated in his day as the See also:arch-opponent of reform, yet the triumph of the reform movement would have been impossible but for the peace his policy secured. To say this is not to say that the attitude of the Tory government towards the great issues of home politics was wholly, or even mainly, inspired by a far-sighted wisdom. It character had departed widely from the Toryism of Pitt's of the younger years, which had sought to base itself on Tory popular support, as opposed to the aristocratic ex- pay' elusiveness of the Whigs. It conceived itself as the trustee of a system of government which, however theoretically imperfect, alone of the governments of Europe had survived the storms of the Revolution intact. To tamper with a constitution that had so proved its quality seemed not so much a See also:sacrilege as a folly. The rigid conservatism that resulted from this attitude served, indeed, a useful purpose in giving weight to Castlereagh's counsels in the European concert; for Metternich at least, wholly occupied with " propping up mouldering institutions," could not have worked harmoniously with a minister suspected of an itch for reform. At home, however, it undoubtedly tended to provoke that very revolution which it was intended to prevent.

This was due not so much to the notorious corruption of the representative system as to the fact that it represented social and economic conditions that were rapidly passing away. Both Houses of Parliament were in the main assemblies of aristocrats and landowners; but agriculture was ceasing to be the characteristic industry of the country and the Parliaold semi-feudal relations of life were in process of n,entand rapid dissolution. The invention of machinery and the jades-the concentration of the working population in manu- facturing trial re-centres had all but destroyed the old See also:

village volution. See also:industries, and great populations were growing up outside the traditional restraints of the old system of class dependence. The distress inevitable in connexion with such an industrial revolution was increased by the immense burden of the war and by the high protective policy of the parliament, which restricted trade and deliberately increased the See also:price of See also:food in the interests of the agricultural classes. Between 1811 and 1814 bands of so-called " See also:Luddites," starving operatives out of work, scoured the country, smashing machinery—the immediate cause of their misfortunes—and committing every sort of out-rage. The fault of the government lay, not in taking vigorous measures for the suppression of these disorders, but in remaining obstinately See also:blind to the true causes that had produced them. The regency. Ministers saw in the Luddite organization only another conspiracy against the state; and, so far from seeking means for removing the grievances that underlay popular disaffection, the activity of parliament, inspired by the narrowest class interests, only tended to increase them. The price of food, already raised by the war, was still further increased by See also:sue-corn Laws cessive Corn Laws, and the artificial value thus given and to arable land led to the passing of Enclosure Bills, Enclosure under which the country people were deprived of their ads. common rights with very inadequate See also:compensation, and life in the village communities was made more and more difficult. In the circumstances it is not surprising that the spirit of unrest grew apace. In 1815 the passing of a new Corn Law, forbidding the importation of corn so long as the price for home-grown See also:wheat was under 8os. the See also:quarter, led to riots in London.

An attack made on the prince regent at the opening of parliament on the 28th of January 1817 led to an inquiry, which revealed the existence of an elaborate organization for the overthrow of the existing order. The repressive measures of 1795 and 1799 were now revived and extended, and Repressive a bill suspending the Habeas Corpus Act for a year iegisie- Lion. was passed through both Houses by a large majority, On the 27th of March Lord Sidmouth opened the government campaign against the press by issuing a circular to the lords-lieutenants, directing them to instruct the justices of the peace to issue warrants for the arrest of any person charged on oath with publishing blasphemous or seditious libels. The legality of this See also:

suggestion was more than doubtful, but it was none the less acted on, and a series of press prosecutions followed, some—as in the case of the bookseller William See also:Hone—on grounds so trivial that juries refused to convict. William See also:Cobbett, the most influential of the reform leaders, in order to avoid arbitrary imprisonment, " deprived of pen, See also:ink and See also:paper," suspended the Political See also:Register and sailed for America. A disturbance that was almost an armed insurrection, which broke out in See also:Derbyshire in June of this year, seemed to justify the severity of the government; it was suppressed without great difficulty, and three of the ringleaders were executed. It was, however, in 1819 that the conflict between the govern- ment and the new popular forces culminated. Distress was Agitation acute; and in the manufacturing towns mass meetings forreform. were held to discuss a remedy, which, under the guid- ance of political agitators, was discovered in universal suffrage and annual parliaments. The right to return members to parliament was claimed for all communities; and since this right was unconstitutionally withheld, unrepresented towns were invited to exercise it in anticipation of its formal concession. At See also:Birmingham, accordingly, Sir Charles See also:Wolseley was duly elected " legislatorial attorney and representative " of the See also:town. Manchester followed suit; but the meeting arranged for the 9th of August was declared illegal by the magistrates, on the strength of a royal proclamation against seditious meetings issued on the 3oth of July. Another meeting was accordingly summoned for the undoubtedly legal purpose of petitioning parliament in favour of reform. On the appointed day (August 16) thousands poured in from the surrounding districts.

These men had been previously drilled, for the pur- pose, as their own leaders asserted, of enabling the vast assem- blage to be conducted in an orderly manner; for the purpose, as the magistrates suspected, of preparing them for an armed insurrection. An attempt was made by a party of See also:

yeomanry The to arrest a popular agitator, Henry See also:Hunt; the angry •• Man- mob surged round the horsemen, who found themselves See also:chester powerless; the Riot Act was read, and the 15th See also:Massacre." Hussars charged the See also:crowd with drawn swords. The meeting rapidly broke up, but not before six had been killed and many injured. The " Manchester Massacre " gave an immense impetus to the movement in favour of reform. The employment of soldiers to suppress liberty of speech stirred up the resentment of Englishmen as nothing else could have done, and this resentment was increased by the conviction that the government was engaged with the " Holy Alliance " in an unholy conspiracy against liberty everywhere. The true tendency of Castlereagh's foreign policy was not understood, nor had he any of the popular arts which would have enabled Canning to carry public opinion with him in cases where a See also:frank ex-planation was impossible. The Liberals could see no more than that he appeared to be committed to See also:international engagements, the logical outcome of which might be—as an orator of the Opposition put it—that See also:Cossacks would be encamped in Hyde Park for the purpose of overawing the House of Commons. The dangerous agitation that gave expression to this state of feeling was met by the government in the session of November 1819 by the passing of the famous Six Acts. The first of these deprived the See also:defendant of the right of travers- Act The '~siX s. ing, but directed that he should be brought to trial within a year; the second increased the penalties for seditious libel; the third imposed the newspaper stamp duty on " all pamphlets and the like containing news; the See also:fourth (Seditious Meetings Act) once more greatly curtailed the liberty of public meetings; the fifth forbade the training of persons in the use of arms; the See also:sixth empowered magistrates to search for and seize arms. The apparent necessity for the passing of these exceptional measures was increased by the imminent death of the old king, the tragic close of whose long reign had won for him a measure of popular sympathy which was wholly Aofccession lacking in the case of the prince regent. On the 23rd George iv. of February 1820 George III. died, and the regent became king as George IV.

This was the signal for an outburst of popular discontent with the existing order of a far more ominous character than any that had preceded it. The king was generally loathed, not so much for his vices—which would have been, in this case as in others, condoned in a more popular monarch—but for the notorious meanness and selfishness of his character. Of these qualities he took the occasion of his accession to make a fresh display. He had long been separated from his wife, See also:

Caroline of See also:Brunswick; he now refused her the title of queen See also:consort, forbade the mention of her name in the See also:liturgy, and persuaded the government to promote an inquiry in parliament into her conduct; with a view to a See also:divorce. What-ever grounds there may have been for this action, popular sympathy was wholly with Queen Caroline, who became the centre round which all the forces of discontent rallied. The failure of the Bill of Pains and Penalties against the queen, which was dropped after it had passed its third See also:reading in the Lords by a majority of only seven, was greeted as a great popular triumph.. The part played by the government in this unsavoury affair had discredited them even in the eyes of the classes whose fear of revolution had hitherto made them supporters of the established system; and the movement for reform received a new stimulus. The Tory government itself realized the necessity for some concessions to the growing public sentiment. In 1821 a small advance was made. The reform bill (equal electoral districts) introduced by Lambton (afterwards Lord Begin- nings of Durham) was thrown out; but the corrupt borough reform. of See also:Grampound in See also:Cornwall was disfranchised and the seats transferred to the county of York. Even more significant was the change in the cabinet, which was strengthened by the See also:admission of some of the more conservative section of the Opposition, Lord Sidmouth retiring and Robert See also:Peel becoming home secretary. A bill for the removal of Catholic disabilities, too, was carried in the Commons, though rejected in the Lords; and the appointment of Lord Wellesley, an advocate of the Catholic claims, to the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland marked yet another See also:stage in the settlement of a question which, more than anything else at that time, kept Ireland and Irishmen in a state of chronic discontent and agitation.

It is not without significance that this modification of the policy of the Tory government at home coincided with a modification of its relations with the European powers. The tendency of Metternich's 'system had long been growing distasteful to Castlereagh, who had consistently protested against the attempt to constitute the Grand Alliance general See also:

police of Europe and had specially protested against the See also:Carlsbad Decrees (q.v.). The first steps towards the inevitable breach with the reactionary powers had already been taken before Castlereagh's tragic death on the See also:eve of the congress of See also:Verona brought George George Canning into office as the executor of his policy. With Canning. Canning, foe of the Revolution and all its See also:works though he was, the old liberal Toryism of Pitt's younger days seemed once more to emerge. It might have emerged in any case; but Canning, with his brilliant popular gifts and his frank appeal to popular support, gave it a revivifying stimulus which it would never have received from an aristocrat of the type of Castlereagh. The new spirit was most conspicuous in foreign affairs; in the protest of Great Britain against the action of the continental Changes powers at Verona (see VERONA, CONGRESS OF), in tendency the recognition of the South American republics, and of British later in the sympathetic attitude of the government policy towards the insurrection in See also:Greece. This policy had been foreshadowed in the instructions drawn up by Castlereagh for his own guidance at Verona; but Canning succeeded in giving it a popular and national See also:colour and thus removing from the government all suspicion of sympathy with the reactionary spirit of the " Holy Alliance." In home affairs, too, the government made tentative advances in a Liberal direction. In January 1823 See also:Vansittart was succeeded as chancellor of the exchequer by See also:Robinson (afterwards Lord Goderich), and Huskisson became See also:president of the Board of Trade. The term of office of the latter was marked by the first tentative efforts to modify the high protective system by which British trade was hampered, especially by the See also:Reciprocity of Duties Act (1823), a modification of the See also:Navigation Acts, by which British and foreign See also:shipping were placed on an equal footing, while the right to impose restrictive duties on ships of powers refusing to reciprocate was retained. In spite, however, of the improvement in trade that ultimately resulted from these measures, there was great depression; in 1825 there was a financial crisis that caused wide-spread ruin, and in 1826 the misery of the labouring poor led to renewed riots and machinery smashing. It became increasingly clear that a drastic alteration in the existing system was absolutely inevitable.

As to this necessity, however, the ministry was in fact hopelessly divided. The government was one of compromise, in which even so burning a question as Catholic emancipation had been left open. Among its members were some—like the lord chancellor Eldon, the duke of Welling ton, and the premier, Lord Liverpool, himself—whose Toryism was of the type crystallized under the influence of the Revolution, See also:

adamant against change. Such progressive measures as it had passed had been passed in the teeth of its own nominal sup-porters, even of its own members. In 1826 Lord Palmerston, himself a member of the government, wrote: " On the Catholic question, on the principles of commerce, on the corn laws, on the settlement of the currency, on the laws relating to trade in money, on colonial See also:slavery, on the game laws . . . ; on all these questions, and everything like them, the government will find support from the Whigs and resistance from their self-denom- inated friends." t was, in fact, only the personal influence of Liverpool that held the ministry together, and when, on the 17th of February 1827, he was seized with an apoplectic fit, a crisis was inevitable. The crisis, indeed, arose before the nominal expiration of the Liverpool administration. Two questions were, in the view of Catholic Canning and his supporters, of supreme importance—Emancipa- Catholic emancipation and the reform of the Corn Laws. See also:Eton and The first of these had assumed a new urgency since the corn formation in 1823 of the Catholic Association, which Laws. under the brilliant leadership of See also:Daniel O'Connell established in Ireland a national organization that threatened the very basis of the government. In March 1826 Sir See also:Francis See also:Burdett had brought in a Catholic Relief Bill, which, passed in the Commons, was thrown out by the Lords. A year later Burdett's See also:motion that the affairs of Ireland required immediate attention, though supported by Canning, was rejected in the Commons.

A bill modifying the Corn Laws, introduced by Canning and Huskisson, passed the House of Commons on the 12th of April 1827, but was rejected by the Lords. Meanwhile (April 1o) Canning had become prime minister, his appointment being followed by the resignation of all the most conspicuous members of the Liverpool administration: See also:

Wellington, Eldon, Melville, See also:Bathurst, Westmorland and Peel, the latter of whom resigned on account of his opposition to Catholic emancipation. The new government had perforce to rely on the Whigs, who took their seats on the government side of the House, Lord See also:Lansdowne being included in the cabinet. Before this coalition could be completed, however, Canning died (August 8). The short-lived Goderich administration followed; and in January 1828 the king, weary of the effort to arrange a coalition, summoned the duke of Wellington to office as head of a purely Tory cabinet. Yet the See also:logic of facts was too strong even for the stubborn spirit of the See also:Iron Duke. In May 1828, on the initiative of Lord John See also:Russell, the Test and Corporation Acts were repealed; in the same session a Corn Bill, differing but little from those that Wellington had hitherto opposed, was passed; and finally, after a strenuous agitation which culminated in the election of O'Connell for See also:Clare, and in spite of the obstinate resistance of King George IV., the Catholic Emancipation Bill was passed (April 1o, emthotie emanclpa- 182q) by a large majority. On the 26th of June 1830 tion the king died, exactly a month before the outbreak Passed. of the revolution in See also:Paris that hurled Charles X. from Revolution the throne and led to the establishment of the Liberal' ofisd0. Monarchy under Louis Philippe; a revolution that was to exert a strong influence on the movement for reform in England. King William IV. ascended the throne at a critical moment in the history of the English constitution. Everywhere misery and discontent were apparent, manifesting themselves in riots against machinery, in rick-burning on a large Wtmam scale, and in the formation of trades unions which tended to develop into organized armies of sedition.

All the elements of violent revolution were present. Nor was there anything in the character of the new king greatly calculated to restore the damaged prestige of the crown; for, if he lacked the evil qualities that had caused George IV. to be loathed as well as despised, he lacked also the sense of personal dignity that had been the saving See also:

grace of George, while he shared the conservative and Protestant prejudices of his predecessors. Reform was now inevitable. The Wellington ministry, hated by the Liberals, denounced even by the Tories as traitorous for the few concessions made, resigned on the 16th of November; and the Whigs at last came into office under Lord Whig. Grey, the ministry also including a few of the more ministry Liberal Tories. Lord Durham, perhaps the most under influential leader of the reform movement, became Lord Grey. privy See also:seal, Althorp chancellor of the exchequer, Palmerston foreign secretary, See also:Melbourne home secretary, Goderich colonial secretary. Lord John Russell, as paymaster-general, and See also:Stanley (afterwards Lord Derby), as secretary for Ireland, held office outside the cabinet. With the actual House of Commons, however, the government was powerless to effect its purpose. Though it succeeded in carrying the second reading of the Reform Bill (March 21, 1831), it was defeated The great in committee, and appealed to the country. The Bl dorm result was a great governmental majority, and the bill passed the Commons in September. Its rejection by the Lords on the 8th of October was the signal for dangerous rioting; and in spite of the opposition of the king, the bill was once more passed by the Commons (December 12). A violent agitation marked the See also:recess.

On the 14th of April 1832 the bill was read a second time in the Lords, but on the 7th of May was again rejected, whereupon the government resigned. The attempt of Wellington, at the king's instance, to form a ministry failed; of all the Tory obstructionists he alone had the courage to face the popular rage. On the 15th Lord Grey was in office again; the demand was made for a sufficient creation of peers to swamp Canning ministry. Welling-ton ministry. the House of Lords; th(; king, now thoroughly alarmed, used his influence to persuade the peers to yield, and on the 4th of June the great Reform Bill became law. Thus was England spared the crisis of a bloody revolution, and proof given to the world that her ancient constitution was sufficiently elastic to expand with the needs of the times. The effect of the Reform Bill, which abolished fifty-six " rotten " boroughs, and by reducing the representation of others set free 143 seats, which were in part conferred on the new industrial centres, was to See also:

transfer a large share of political power from the landed aristocracy to the middle classes. Yet the opposition of the Tories had not been wholly inspired by the desire to maintain the political predominance of a class. Canning, who had the best reason for knowing, defended the unreformed system on the ground that its very anomalies opened a variety of paths by which See also:talent could make its way into parliament, and thus produced an assembly far more widely representative than could be expected from a more See also:uniform and logical system. This argument, which the effect of progressive extensions of the See also:franchise on the intellectual level of parliament has certainly not tended to weaken, was however far outweighed—as Canning himself would have come to see—by the advantage of reconciling with the old constitution the new forces which were destined during the century to transform the social organization of the country. Nor, in spite of the drastic character of the Reform Bill, did it in effect constitute a revolution. The 143 seats set free were divided equally between the towns and the counties; and in the counties the landowning aristocracy was still supreme.

In the towns the new £ro household franchise secured a democratic See also:

constituency; in the counties the inclusion of tenants at will (of £50 annual See also:rent), as well as of copyholders and See also:lease-holders, only tended to increase the influence of the landlords. There was as yet no secret See also:ballot to set the voter free. The result was apparent in the course of the next few years. The first reformed parliament, which met on the 29th of January 1833, consisted in the main of Whigs, with a sprinkling of Radicals and a compact body of Liberal Tories under Sir Robert Peel. Its great work was the act emancipating the slaves in the British colonies (August 30). Other burning questions were the condition of Ireland, the See also:scandal of the established church there, the misery of the poor in England. In all these matters the House showed little enough of the revolutionary temper; so little, indeed, that in March Lord Durham resigned. To the Whig leaders the church was all but as sacrosanct as to the Tories, the very See also:foundation of the constitution, not to be touched save at imminent risk to the state; the most they would ad-venture was to remedy a few of the more glaring abuses of an establishment imposed on an unwilling population. As for O'Connell's agitation for the repeal of the Union, that met with but scant sympathy in parliament; on the 27th of May 1834 his repeal motion was rejected by a large majority. In July the Grey ministry resigned, and on the i6th Lord Melbourne became prime minister. His short tenure of office is memorable for the passing of the bill for the reform Melbourne ministry. of the Poor Law (August). The reckless system of outdoor relief, which had pauperized whole See also:neighbour-hoods, was abolished, and the system of unions and workhouses established (see PooR LAW).

An attempt to divert some of the revenues of the Irish Church led in the autumn to serious differences of opinion in the cabinet; the king, as tenacious as his father of the exact obligations of his coronation oath, dismissed the ministry, and called the Tories to office under Sir Robert Peel and the duke of Wellington. Thus, within three years of the passing of the Reform Bill, the party which had most strenuously opposed it was again in office. Scarcely less striking testimony to the constitutional temper of the English was given by the new attitude of the party under the new conditions. In the " See also:

Tam-The worth manifesto " of January 1835 Peel proclaimed "Conser- the principles which were henceforth to guide the vative" party, no longer Tory, but " Conservative." The party. Reform Bill and its consequences were frankly accepted; further reforms were promi;ed, especially in the matter of the municipal corporations and of the disabilities of the dissenters. The new parliament, however, which met on the Igth of February, was not favourable to the ministry, which fell on the 8th of April. Lord Melbourne once more came into office, and the Municipal Corporations Act of the 7th of September was the work of a Liberal government. This was the last measure of first-See also:rate importance passed before the death of King William, which occurred on the 20th of June 1837. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance, not only for England but for the world at large, of the epoch which culminated in the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832. All Europe, whether Liberal or reactionary, was watching the constitutional struggle with strained attention; the principles of monarchy and of constitutional liberty were alike at stake. To foreign observers it seemed impossible that the British monarchy could survive. Baron_ See also:Brunnow, the See also:Russian See also:ambassador in London, sent home to the emperor See also:Nicholas I. the most pessimistic reports.

According to Brunnow, King William, by using his influence to secure the passage of the Reform Bill, had " See also:

cast his crown into the See also:gutter"; the throne might endure for his lifetime, but the next heir was a young and inexperienced girl, and, even were the princess See also:Victoria ever to See also:mount the throne—which was unlikely —she would be speedily swept off it again by the rising tide of republicanism. The course of the next reign was destined speedily to convince even Nicholas I. of the baselessness of these fears, and to present to all Europe the exemplar of a progressive state, in which the principles of traditional authority and democratic liberty combined for the common good. (W. A.

End of Article: THE RESTORATION

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