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SOCIAL ENGLAND
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"The history of social England is a stupendous undertaking,
and Mr. Traill has realised his heavy responsibilities. Few-
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important question how so complicated a theme was to be
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National Observer.
SOCIAL ENGLAND
JV fUrrrrft of tfjc progress of tlje
IN RELIGION LAWS LEARNING ARTS INDUSTRY COMMERCE SCIENCE
LITERATURE AND MANNERS FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES
TO THE PRESENT DAY
BY VARIOUS WRITERS
EDITED BY
H. D. TRAILL, D.C.L.
SOMETIME FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD
SCHOLASTIC
VOLUME VI
FROM THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO TO TEE -GENERAL ELECT*
OF 1885
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED
LONDON, PARIS &> MELBOURNE
1897
ALL RIGHTS KESEKVKD
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXI.
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM, 1815-1832.
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY 1
POLITICAL HISTORY 2
THE NAVY 11
THE CHURCH 20
LITERATURE 25
ART 35
MUSIC UNDER THE REGENCY AND GEORGE IV. . . . .61
SCIENCE : GEOLOGY, 1815-1840 54
CHEMISTRY 62
THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 64
THE TEXTILE INDUSTRIES, 1815-1851 69
AGRICULTURE, 1802-1832 75
THE SOCIAL ECONOMY 84
SOCIAL LIFE AFTER THE PEACE .94
SCOTLAND 103
IRELAND 107
AUTHORITIES 109
CHAPTER XXII.
PROGRESS AND REACTION, 1832-1846.
POLITICAL HISTORY Ill
THE ARMY, 1815-1854 120
THE NAVY . 126
THE CHURCH: THE OXFORD MOVEMENT 133
THE FREE CHURCHES, 1815-1885 141
LITERATURE 151
ART 167
ARCHITECTURE, 1815-1850 169
SCIENCE : ASTRONOMY, 1815-1846 . .172
PHYSICS, 1800-1846 178
CHEMISTRY 189
THE PUBLIC HEALTH 192
MINING AND METALLURGY, 1815-1846 194
THE RAILWAY SYSTEM 199
AGRICULTURE, 1832-1846 . .211
THE SOCIAL ECONOMY 217
PRISON DISCIPLINE AND PRISON REFORM 230
SOCIAL LIFE 234
THE POST-OFFICE 237
SCOTLAND 242
IRELAND .- 246
AUTHORITIES . 248
vi CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE RULE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS, 1846-1865.
PAGE
POLITICAL HISTORY 250
THE ARMY 262
THE NAVY 271
THE CHURCH 273
LITERATURE 275
ART 284
ENGLISH SCHOLARSHIP SINCE 1742 297
PHILOSOPHY 818
SCIENCE : BIOLOGY, WITH THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION . . . 328
G-EOLOGY, 1846-1885 341
PHYSICS, 1846-1885 347
CHEMISTRY AND ITS APPLICATIONS, 1846-1885 . . . 354
MEDICINE 358
MINING AND METALLURGY, 1846-1885 : THE IRON TRADE . . . 363
THE COAL MINING INDUSTRY 367
POTTERY, 1815-1885 379
THE MERCANTILE MARINE . 392
AGRICULTURE, 1846-1865 404
TRADE AND INDUSTRY 421
PRISON DISCIPLINE, 1846-1885 433
SOCIAL LIFE : THE THEATRE FROM 1815 ; THE PRESS . . . 437
DRESS, 1840-1885 443
SCOTLAND 445
IRELAND 448
AUTHORITIES .450
CHAPTER XXIY.
THE SUCCESSION OF THE DEMOCRACY, 1865-1885.
POLITICAL HISTORY .... . . . . . . 453
THE HISTORY OF LAW AND LEGAL PROCEDURE 469
THE ARMY 482
THE NAVY : GUNS AND ARMOUR, OFFICERS AND MEN . 496
THE CHURCH 509
LITERATURE : A KETROSPECT, 1815-1885 ...... 510
ART 520
DECORATIVE ART, 1800-1885 526
MUSIC FROM THE PtEIGN OF GrEORGE IV 541
PHILOSOPHY AND ANTHROPOLOGY, 1865-1885 . . . . . 548
SCIENCE : ASTRONOMY, 1846-1885 . 556
MEDICINE .562
ENGINEERING FROM 1815 . . 571
THE APPLICATIONS OF ELECTRICITY . . . . ' . . .681
THE TEXTILE INDUSTRIES, 1851-1885 589
AGRICULTURE 599
THE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS ... 607
EDUCATION IN ENGLAND, 1807-1885 620
MANNERS AND SOCIAL LIFE 634
SCOTLAND 643
IRELAND 648
EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY, 1815-1885 656
THE COLONIES AND ENGLAND 681
AUTHORITIES 688
INDEX . 691
CONTEIBUTOES TO THIS VOLUME.
BATESON, Miss M., Associate and Lecturer of Newnham College, Cambridge.
BEAK, W. E., Author of The British Farmer and his Competitors ; The Relations
of Landlord and Tenant , etc.
BONNET, Eev. Canon T. G., D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S., Professor of Geology in
University College, London.
BROWN, Rev. JOHN, B.A., D.D. , Author of John Bunyan : His Life, Times, and
Work ; and of The Pilgrim Fathers of New England.
CLERKE, Miss AGNES M., Author of A Popular History of Astronomy ; The
System of the Stars ; The Herschels, etc.
CLOWES, W. LAIRD, Fellow of King's College, London ; Hon. Member R.U.S.
Inst. ; Gold Medallist U.S. Naval Institute ; Editor of A Naval Pocket
Book.
COLVILLE, JAMES, M.A., D.Sc, (Edin.), Examiner in History at the University
of Glasgow ; Editor of Spalding's English Literature.
EDWARDS, H. SUTHERLAND, M.A., Author of Paris Old and New ; The Germans
in France; The Russians at Home; The Polish Captivity ; Life of
Rossini ; Rossini and the Italian School (" Great Composers " Series) ;
History of the Opera, etc.
FARRER, The Hon. T. C., M.A., Balliol College, Oxford; Director Midland
Railway.
GRETTON, Major G. LE M., 3rd Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment ; some-
time Examiner at the University of Adelaide.
GRIFFITHS, Major ARTHUR, late 63rd Regiment ; H.M. Inspector of Prisons ;
John Howard Gold Medallist ; Author of Chronicles of Neivgate ; Memo-
rials of Millbank ; Secrets of the Prison House.
HUGHES, REGINALD, D.C.L.
HUTTON, Rev. W. H., B.D., Fellow and Tutor of St. John's College, Oxford,
and sometime Examiner in the Honour School of Modern History ;
Birkbeck Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History at Trinity College, Cambridge ;
Author of William Laud; The Marquis Wellesley ; Sir Thomas More, etc.
JENKINS, HENRY C., A.R.S.M., Assoc.M. Inst.C.E., Instructor of Assaying,
Royal College of Science and Royal School of Mines, London.
JONES, 0. GLYNNE, B.Sc. Lond., Lecturer in Physical Science at the City of
London School ; formerly Head of the Mathematics and Physics Depart-
ment, Goldsmiths' Institute.
JOYCE, P. W., LL.D., one of the Commissioners for the Publication of the
Ancient Laws of Ireland ; Author of A Short History of Ireland ; The
Origin and History of Irish Names of Places ; Old Celtic Romances : Ancient
Irish- Music, etc.
KII.TIF, J. SCOTT, LL.D, Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society;
Author of Applied Geography ; The Partition of Africa ; Editor of the
Geographical Journal and The Statesman's Year Book.
viii CONTRIBUTORS.
MONTAGUE, F. C., M.A., late Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford; Professor
of History at University College, London ; Author of The Limits of
Individual Liberty ; Elements of English Constitutional History '.
MORRIS, Miss MAY, Author of Lessons in Embroidery, etc.
POWER, D'ARCY, F.S.A., M.A., M.B. (Oxon.), F.R.C.S. (Eng.) ; Surgeon to the
Victoria Hospital for Children, Chelsea ; Editor of South's Memorials of
the Craft of Surgery ; Contributor to the Dictionary of National Biography.
PROTHERO, R. E., M.A., sometime Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford ; Author
of Dean Stanley's Life; Editor of Dean Stanley's Letters and Verses;
Author of Pioneers and Progress of English Farming, etc.
RHODES, "W. G., M.Sc. (Viet.), Lecturer in Mathematics and Electrical En-
gineering at the Royal Technical Institute, Salford; formerly Demonstrator
in Applied Physics at the City and Guilds of London Institute, Central
Technical College, and Assistant Lecturer in Physics at Owens College.
RIDDELL, H., M.E., sometime Examiner in Linen Weaving to the City and
Guilds of London Institute.
SANDERS, LLOYD C., B.A., Editor of Lord Melbourne's Papers and of "The States-
man " Series.
SANDYS, JOHN EDWIN, Litt.D., Fellow and Tutor of St. John's College, and
Public Orator in the University of Cambridge : Hon. Litt.D. Dublin ;
Editor of the Orator of Cicero, the Bacchae of Euripides, the First
Philippic, the Olynthiacs, the Leptines of Demosthenes, and Aristotle's
Constitution of Athens.
SPARKES, J. C. L., Principal of the National Art Training School, South Ken-
sington.
STEELE, ROBERT, Librarian of the Chemical Society ; Editor of Lydgate's works
and of Burgh's Secrees, The Secrete of Secretes (three prose translations of
the Seer eta Sccretorum) and of Early English Arithmetics (E. E. T. S.)
STEPHENS, F. G., Artist, and Writer on Art; Author of Flemish Relics;
Memorials of Mulready ; Life of James Clarke Hook, R.A. ; English Children
as painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds ; Sir Edwin Landseer, etc.
SYMES, J. E., M. A., Principal of and Professor at University College, Nottingham ;
Author of A Short Text -Book of Political Economy; The French
Revolution; The Prelude to Modern History, etc.
TRAILL, H. D. (Editor) , sometime Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford ; Author
of The Life of Sir John Franklin, etc.
WHITTAKER, T., B.A., Joint-Editor of Groom Robertson's Remains ; formerly
Assistant-Editor of Mind ; Author of Essays and Notices, Philosophical and
Psychological.
The Editor desires to record his obligations to Mr. Hassall, Professor
Cunningham, Principal Fairbairn, and Professor Bonney, for much helpful
advice received from them in the preparation of SOCIAL ENGLAND.
And he welcomes this opportunity of acknowledging his deep indebtedness
to Mr. J. S. Mann [of the Editorial Department of Messrs. Cassell & Co.] for
the invaluable services rendered by him as Assistant-Editor of this woik.
SOCIAL ENGLAND.
CHAPTER XXI.
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 1815-1832.
WITH the Battle of Waterloo and the peace which followed
it the nineteenth century may be said, for Europe at any-
rate, to have begun. Its first fifteen years belong of right to
that preceding century which, at its death, had left behind
it an " estate " of unsettled political problems and fierce in-
ternational contentions, which it took half a generation to
wind up. The exhausting and almost unbroken war of
twenty years, which Waterloo brought to a close, must be
regarded as one long trial of the great issue raised by the
French Jacobins, and taken up by their suppressor and suc-
cessor one continuous prosecution of that far-reaching quarrel
into which all the European States, from the greatest to the
smallest, were successively drawn, and which for our own
country became in its later stages an actual fight for existence.
During the years of this lif'e-and-death struggle, when all the
energies of the nation were concentrated on the work of
self-preservation, social progress was of necessity to a great
extent arrested. Trade and industry were immensely but
variously influenced, the disastrous effects of the long war
upon them in some of their forms being but ill-balanced by
the artificially inflated prosperity which it imparted to others
(pp. 81, 85). Political movements which had seemed almost
within measurable distance of success when the excesses of the
French Revolution let loose a flood of reaction against them
in the last years of the eighteenth century were held
in check by the great European conflict for well-nigh twenty
years. In religion, in science, and even to some extent in
B VOL. VI.
2 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
literature itself, the effect of these formidable preoccupations
is to be noticed, and their consequences, direct and indirect,
are noticeable even after the pressure is removed. England
had still to fight her way through the desperate financial
complications that the war had left behind it, and to grapple
with the almost revolutionary disorders in which they in
their turn were prolific before her various faculties again had
time and freedom to expand. It was not, indeed, till the
century had run a third of its course that England, and
Europe generally, entered upon that extraordinary career of
political and social, industrial and commercial, and above all
of scientific, development of which the end is not yet, but
which has already secured for it a unique place among the
ages of the world.
THE Liverpool Ministry was ill fitted to deal with the
" condition-of-England " questions that thrust
L pouSc^ S Hi^o E i5 S ' themselves forward after the Peace of 1815.
It contained some ability, but little harmony,
and its finance was wretched. The export trade recovered
but slowly, owing to the exhaustion of the Continent. At
home there ensued a series of disastrous
Depression and harvests, together with the stress of foreign
Unsettlement . . ' , r TT . , ~, ,,
after the Peace, competition. Mr. Vansittart, the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, made no attempt to cut
down expenditure, beyond a slight reduction of the Civil
List. The agricultural interest forced through a Corn Law
which prohibited importation until the price of wheat
reached 80s. a quarter (p. 86).
The working classes promptly took to rioting. In the
Eastern Counties the labourers burnt ricks (p. 88); in the
manufacturing towns the artisans destroyed machinery. Some
dangerous revolutionists made use of the Spencean Philan-
thropists (p. 89) to organise a conspiracy for establishing a
Committee of Public Safety and seizing the Tower, of London.
Their meeting at Spa Fields was, however, an egregious
failure. After a stone had been hurled at the Regent's
carriage when he went to open Parliament, the Government
proceeded in 1817 to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act.
Nevertheless the North was alive with discontent. . The
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 3
1832]
Blanketeers set forth from Manchester to march on London,
and " Captain " Brandreth raised an insurrection at Derby.
Two years later an attempt to suppress a Radical meeting
in St. Peter's Field, near Manchester, was bungled by the
magistracy, and the troops, riding over the people, caused
the so-called Peterloo Massacre. The Government, which
had already failed to secure the conviction of Hone, the
bookseller, for his political parodies, proceeded to pass the
Six Acts. They aimed at suppressing sedition, alike on
the platform, the press, and in the field, and Lord Sidmouth,
the Home Secretary, rigidly enforced them.
Abroad, the military powers, under the leadership of the
sentimental Czar Alexander, had formed the
TT , . . 11 /-NI Tlie Holy Alliance.
Holy Alliance, nominally to support Chris-
tian principles of government, but really to keep under
popular movements. It received little support from Lord
Castlereagh, the Foreign Secretary, and thus England stood
more or less isolated.
The long reign came to an end at last, for on
January 29th, 1820, George III. died. The-
dynasty was undoubtedly unpopular with George m
the middle and lower classes. Princess
Charlotte, the Regent's daughter and the hope of the nation,
had died in 1817, after what promised to be a happy
marriage with Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. On tie
other hand, of the various members of the royal family who
had rushed into alliances, the Duke of Kent had become
the father of the present Queen, who was born on May 24th,
1819.
The new reign began with the detection of a plot
to murder Ministers at a Cabinet dinner
and seize the Bank of England and the
Tower. Its leader was Thistle wood, who
had been at the back of the Spa Fields affair, and it met
in Cato Street, Edgware Road. As usual, the Home Office
was warned by an informer, and the ringleaders were duly
hanged.
The return of Queen Caroline, from whom the King
had been separated since 1814, brought
fresh discredit on the royal house. Coming Que
back from abroad to assert her rights, she was met by a
B 2
4 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
Bill, introduced by Lord Liverpool, under pressure from
George IV., for the dissolution of her marriage. The
evidence produced before the House of Lords certainly
convicted her of astounding disregard for propriety ; but it
had no effect whatever upon the London mob, which persisted
in regarding her as a deeply wronged heroine. The
majorities for the Bill dwindled, and it was dropped after
its third reading in the Peers. Soon afterwards, however,
her hold on public sympathy began to relax; a foolish
attempt to force her way into Westminster Abbey on the
occasion of the King's coronation completed the popular
disillusionment, and in August she died. The crowd rioted
round her coffin as it was being conveyed through London.
The King went on his way to Ireland, where, to the disgust
of the Whigs, he was received with boisterous loyalty. In
the following year he showed to more credit in Edinburgh.
But he could not face London, and soon shut himself up
in the Brighton Pavilion, a prey to his whims and his
attendants.
Warned by recent events, Lord Liverpool resolved to
reconstruct his Ministry. In 1822 Lord
Sidmouth retired, and was succeeded by
Robert Peel, who had already made his
mark as Chairman of the Bullion Committee, which recom-
mended the resumption of cash payments. Later in the
year Lord Castlereagh committed suicide on the eve of his
intended departure for the Congress of Verona. He was
replaced by Canning, and two of Canning's friends also
joined the Government: Robinson as Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and Huskisson as President of the Board of
Trade.
Canning promptly tried a fall with the Holy Alliance,
which had determined to put down con-
stitutionalisin in Spain. He sent the Duke
of Wellington to Verona with instructions
to protest against any interference. The Duke went so far
as to withdraw from the Congress, but a French army was
nevertheless despatched across the Pyrenees. With supreme
adroitness Canning converted the rebuff into a diplomatic
triumph. He hastened to recognise the revolted Spanish
colonies, or to use his own rhetoric he "called the new
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 5
1832]
world into existence to redress the balance of the old." And
when Spain desired to suppress the constitutional cause
in Portugal, Canning intervened with decision. Within four
days an expedition Avas despatched to plant the British flag
on " the well-known heights of Lisbon," and Ferdinand VII.
withdrew the troops that he had sent in support of the
absolutist Dom Miguel. As a matter of fact Canning's policy
was less of a departure from Lord Castlereagh's than is
generally supposed, but he acted more freely, because he
was unhampered by private friendships with Metternich
and other Continental statesmen.
The Marquis of Hastings, Governor-General from 1814
to 1823, had enlarged the frontiers of India,
Driven by frontier raids to invade Nepaul, conquests and
-r i i- -i i 11 Reforms
the British troops deteated tne (jroorknas ana in India.
wrung from them hill-districts, which in-
cluded the healthy station of Simla. In Central India the
marauding Pindaris were chastised, and in 1817 and the
following year Lord Hastings tried conclusions with their
sympathisers, the Mahrattas ; Holkar, the leading spirit in
the confederacy, was heavily defeated at Mehidpore, its
nominal head, the Peishwa, was deposed and his dominions
annexed. The submission of the Rajputs rounded off the
Presidency of Bombay. On Hastings' successor, Lord
Amherst (1823-28), fell the responsibility of resisting Bur-
mese aggression. The war was tedious, and the troops
were decimated by the climate. In 1826, however, the
King surrendered by treaty Assam, and the districts of
Arakan and Tennaserim. Lord William Bentinck's Governor-
Generalship (1828-35) was unmarked by military expe-
ditions on a large scale. He suppressed Suttee, however;
exterminated the Thugs ; and appointed a Commission which,
with Macaulay as its President, codiried the Indian law.
At home the new element in the Government was doing
-excellent work. The Home Secretary set
himself to reform and consolidate the crimi-
nal law, abolishing the penalty of capital
punishment for nearly a hundred felonies. Robinson set
Aside the sinking fund, reduced the interest on the war debt,
^ind, after the commercial crisis of 1825 had tried credit very
severely, he countenanced the creation of joint-stock banks,
6 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
and prohibited the issue of 1 and 2 notes (p. 91). His
financial policy, which, though within limits, proved a distinct
advance on Vansittart's, was supposed to be largely influenced
by Mr. Huskisson. That able man modified the Navigation
Acts by carrying a Eeciprocity of Duties Bill, whereby foreign
nations were offered 'an equality of trade with this country.
He also lowered the duties on silk and wool, and so gave a
considerable impetus to both industries.
The Liverpool Ministry had gone far to recover its popu-
larity with tfce country. But the "pigtail Tories" were
infinitely disgusted, and even went so far as to oppose Mr.
Canning's friends at the polls. On the 7th of February,
1827, Lord Liverpool had a stroke of apoplexy, and with his
death the divisions of the party became past healing.
There were two possible Prime Ministers, Peel and Can-
ning, but neither would serve under the
The canning other. To his <n*eat disgust, the King was
andGoderich 111, j r 9i i. T_
Ministries. compelled to send for Canning, whom he
disliked on personal grounds. Peel and the
Duke of Wellington promptly resigned their offices, though
Catholic Emancipation was still to remain an open question.
Canning got together a Ministry of his personal friends, and
he was afterwards joined by Lord Lansdowne and other
Whigs. He was badly beaten in the Lords on a Bill for
graduating the corn duties, and on August 8th died, his-
last days having been embittered by party strife. Kobinson,
become Lord Goderich, attempted to carry on the rickety
Government. Its members, however, quarrelled violently,
and at last that "transient and embarrassed phantom," its
nominal chief, went to the King and resigned in tears. In
January, 1828, the Duke of Wellington formed a Ministry,
with Peel as his Home Secretary, and a Canningite element,
including Huskisson, Lamb, Palmerston, and Grant.
The Duke had promptly to deal with the Eastern question
in a very acute shape. The Greeks had re-
T Navarino f volted against Turkey, and their cause aroused
genuine, if exaggerated, sympathy in this.
country. It appeared hopeless, however, when Mehemet Ali,
the Viceroy of Egypt, sent an army under his son, Ibrahim
Pasha, to help the Sultan. Russia and England had long
been striving after a point of union, and, after the Porte had
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 7
1832]
refused an armistice, Lord Dudley, the Foreign Secretary of
the Canning Ministry, had signed the Treaty of London,
whereby the two Powers and France pledged themselves to
enforce a cessation of hostilities. Vague orders were sent to
Admiral Codrington, who commanded the Mediterranean
Squadron, and he remained at anchor while Ibrahim Pasha
ravaged the Morea. When, however, the Turkish fleet at-
tempted to issue from Navarino Bay and fired on the British
flag-ship, the allies replied in good earnest, and gained a
complete victory (October 27th, 1827). The Duke was far
from relishing this " untoward event," as it was styled in the
Queen's Speech. Instead of sending the British fleet to Con-
stantinople, he allowed Russia to prosecute the war alone,
and wring the Treaty of Adrianople from the Turks. The
limits of independent Greece were fixed by the allies in
London, and they were far from satisfying Philhellenist
aspirations.
At home the Government had no settled policy. Lord
John Russell forced upon it the Repeal of the
Test and Corporation Acts in February, 1828,
and thus removed a Nonconformist grievance.
The Canningites had threatened revolt, and in May they
resigned in a body over the question of the assignment of
the seats of the disenfranchised borough of East Retford.
Want of tact on Mr. Huskisson's part, rather than a deliberate
intention on the Duke's to shed the more Liberal members
of the Ministry, was probably the cause of the rupture. Still,
they went. Wellington's followers were soon
compelled to surrender the chief principle on Cat ^ olic
_ .. % . . Emancipation.
which the administration rested, namely, that
of resistance to Catholic Emancipation. This legacy from the
Union had frequently come before the House of Commons.
Resolutions in favour of the Catholics had passed, only to be
rejected by the Lords. The question became far more acute
when its control in Ireland passed from the hands of an easy-
going, aristocratic committee into the vigorous direction of
O'Connell (p. 107). He formed the Catholic Association, and
began to collect the Catholic rent in 1823. His meetings
were perfectly orderly, but they were inevitably calculated to
provoke Protestant reprisals, and his lieutenants were none too
discreet. Suppressed by law, the Association reconstituted
8 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
itself as an educational and charitable combination. At the
general election of 1826 O'Connell's candidate was returned
for County Waterford, despite the Beresford interest. In the
following year O'Connell, though ineligible, stood in person
for Clare, against Mr. Yesey Fitzgerald. The forty-shilling
freeholders deserted the landlords, and on the fifth day of
the polling O'Connell's opponent withdrew.
The Duke paused irresolutely between surrender and re-
volution. He compelled Anglesey, the Lord Lieutenant, to
resign for blurting out his differences with the Government
to O'Connell. But by the meeting of Parliament Peel's
common-sense got the upper hand. As a preliminary Peel
insisted upon the suppression of the Association, but it anti-
cipated him by dissolving. The religious scruples of the
King nearly wrecked the Government, but he was forced,
in the end, to ask Ministers to remain. Peel, who, rejected
by Oxford University, with difficulty found a seat at West-
bury, was at last free to carry his Bills. They admitted
Catholics to Parliament and office with the exception of the
Lord Chancellorship and Viceroyalty of Ireland, while, as a
safeguard, the Irish franchise was raised to 10. After a
final struggle with the King, they became law. But agitation
had taken deep root in Ireland, and O'Connell promptly
began to harangue the peasantry on the repeal of the Union.
The Duke was strongly in favour of non-intervention
abroad. Hence he was rather unjustly
Forein?o5c 8 y accused of countenancing absolutism. He
refused to interfere in Portugal, where Doin
Miguel had, for the moment, succeeded in ousting his niece,
and even prevented a loyalist expedition, fitted out in
British ports, from landing on the Azores. His attitude
was diplomatically correct, but it was liable to misconstruc-
tion. Even more damaging was his supposed dependence
on the judgment of the Due de Polignac, the reactionary
Minister who was swept away by the French Revolution
of July, 1830.
George IV. ended his useless life on June 26th. He
was succeeded by his brother William IV.,
George iv whose eccentricity was counterbalanced by
his honesty. He sympathised at the outset
with the cry for reform which, under stress of the upheaval
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 9
1832]
abroad, was ringing through the land. Wellington was the
only politician who could deal with George IV., and his death
removed the chief reason for the continuance of the Ministry.
The Duke made overtures to the Canningites, but the
death of Huskisson, who was killed at the opening of
the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (p. 201), altered the
situation, and they made common cause with the Whigs.
On the opening of Parliament in November, 1830, the
Duke made an emphatic declaration in favour of the ex-
isting system of representation. After that the Govern-
ment was hopelessly compromised ; it was defeated on Sir
Henry Parnell's motion for a select committee on the Civil
List, and resigned.
Lord Grey, though nearly seventy years old, was the
inevitable Prime Minister. Several Whigs
entered the Cabinet : Lord Lansdowne as T
President of the Council, Lord Althorp as Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and, eventually, Lord Brougham as Chancellor.
Lord Durham, the Lord Privy Seal, called himself a Radical.
The Canningites secured the secretaryships Lord Melbourne
(Lamb), Palmerston, and Goderich going to the Home,
Foreign, and Colonial Offices respectively. The Ministry was
strong in talent, but weak in administrative experience.
It was an anxious winter. There was rick-burning in
the agricultural districts of the South. The
*-u T\^ 4.-U j ^ The Winter,
artisans were moving in the Isorth, and the
violent language of the Birmingham Political Union was
calculated to breed trouble. In Ireland one-fifth of the
population was out of employment, and a tithe war was
proceeding simultaneously with O'Connell's agitation for
repeal. Melbourne, who as Home Secretary had control
both of English and Irish affairs, behaved with firmness.
The Birmingham League was left alone, but the rural rioters
were tried by a special commission. Anglesey, the Lord
Lieutenant, suppressed O'Connell's meetings, and finally
arrested him, though the Act under which he was con-
victed expiring with the dissolution, he was never sentenced.
On March 1st, Lord John Russell, the Paymaster of the
Forces, brought in the Reform Bill. It
i i TT The Reform Bill
proved too sweeping to please the House,
and, after passing its second reading by a majority of one,
10 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
suffered defeat in Committee on a proposal to reduce the
number of members. Ministers decided not to resign, and
induced the King to consent to a dissolution. They re-
turned with a majority of over 130, and a new and still
more thorough-going Bill was promptly introduced.
Though the Opposition debated the measure at inordinate
length, it passed through the Commons by
The second Bill i ar a e majorities. On October 8th the Lords.
Rejected by . .. J .
the Lords. rejected it on the first reading by 41.
Rioting began immediately in the large
towns, and at Bristol the weakness of Colonel Brereton gave
the mob the upper hand for forty-eight hours. Supported,
however, by a vote of confidence in the Lower House,.
Ministers decided to continue in office.
In March, 1832, Lord John Russell carried a third Bill
through the Commons. Through the influence
of the " Waverers," led by Lord Wharncliffe
and Lord Harrowby, it passed its second
reading by a majority of nine. In Committee, however.
Lord Lyndhurst persuaded the Peers to vote for his motion
postponing the disfranchising clauses. The Prime Minister
had no other course than to press on the King the necessity
of creating a batch of Peers, and, on his refusal, resigned.
Wellington undertook the desperate task of forming a
Cabinet of resistance to revolution. He failed to secure the
support of Peel, and retreated from an untenable position.
The renewed activity of the " Waverers," and a circular letter
of the King's praying the Peers to cease their opposition,
put an end to the crisis. On June 4th the Bill was free
of the House of Lords.
In its final shape the Act disfranchised 56 boroughs
with less than 2,000 inhabitants, returning
^ 8i An n t SOf HI members, took a member from 30
the Act. '
boroughs with less than 4,000, and deprived
one four-member constituency of two of its representatives.
Of these 143 seats, 65 were given to the counties ; 22 large
towns, including Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds, re-
ceived two members, and 21 smaller places one. Of the
remaining 13 seats ten were transferred to Scotland,,
the other three being reserved to increase the Welsh
representation. Copyholders, leaseholders, and tenants-at~
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. II
1832J
will paying a 50 rent received the county franchise. In
the boroughs a uniform 10 household franchise was'
established, though the rights of resident freemen were
respected. In the same session Reform Bills were passed
for Scotland and Ireland. The first country received eight
new members, while all owners of property, long leaseholders,
at 10 a year, and 50 tenants-at-will acquired the franchise.
Ireland had five additional borough members, but the
" forties " (p. 8) remained without the vote.
IN 1814, when the long Napoleonic war was, for the moment,.
terminated by the departure of Bonaparte
for Elba, and by the return to France ol w -
Louis XVIII. , Great Britain remained in
hostilities with the United States of America, and was thus.,
prevented from at once reducing her Navy
to its ordinary peace establishment. She was T the E peace f
enabled, however, to dispense almost imme-
diately with the services of no fewer than 50,000 seamen. In
the following year, although the fratricidal war with America
was ended (Vol. V., p. 521), the reappearance of Napoleon in the
field rendered any further reduction of armaments impossible ;
and during the greater part of that year 90,000 men had to
be kept in readiness to serve their country at sea. But when
1815 was past and over, and when European peace seemed
to be securely re-established by the banishment of the great
disturber of it to a distant island, wholesale reductions were
effected. The extent and nature of these will be clearly
understood from the following comparative statement of
the number of ships in commission, and of the number of
seamen nominally in service, at the conclusion of each , of
the years 1813, 1814, 1815, 1816, and 1817 :
Ships in Commission. 1813. 1814. 1815. 1816. 1817.
Of the Line-of- )
Battle ... j " - 47 - 30 - 1* - 1S
Cruisers ...... 495 ... 392 ... 213 ... 100 89
Total ships ... 644 ... 485 ... 270 ... 124 ... 114
140 > 000 ...90,000 ...90,000 ...33,000 ...19,000
12 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
Thus, within the short space of four years, 530 ships of war
were laid up or finally disposed of, and 121,000 seamen were
thrown out of employment. The number of officers placed
upon half-pay was, of course, proportionate. Leaving out of
calculation the other ranks, we may fairly gauge the situation
after a survey of the condition of the active list of the lieu-
tenants. At the end of 1813 there were 3,285 of those
officers ; at the end of 1814, 3,211 ; at the end of 1815, 4,064 ;
at the end of 1816, 4,012; and at the end of 1817, 3,949: so
that there were positively more officers available for employ-
ment and consequent full pay in 1817, when but 114 vessels
of all classes were required for the public service, than there
had been in 1813, when 644 vessels were
needed. Very little reflection will show
that if every one of the lieutenants was
employed in 1813, at least 3,350 must have been unemployed
in 1817 ; and that if there were any unemployed lieutenants
in 1813, the number unemployed in 1817 must have been
even greater than 3,350. This state of affairs gave rise to
an incalculable amount of misery among all classes through-
out the country. The disbanded seamen had, with few
exceptions, no resources whatsoever possibly, in most cases,
not even a trade to fall back upon. The case of the officers
was almost as bad. The peace not merely deprived all of
them of practically every prospect of prize-in oney, but also
suddenly reduced the regular emoluments of upwards of 80
per cent, of them in the following proportions : Admirals,
from 5 to 2 2s.; vice-admirals, from 4 to 1 12s. 6d. ;
rear-admirals, from 3 to 1 5s. ; captains, from (in some
instances) 2 3s. lOd. to 14s. 6d. ; commanders, from 16s. 6d.
to 8s. 6d., or, at best, to 10s. ; and lieutenants to, in the vast
majority of cases, as little as 5s. a day. In no case could a
half-pay lieutenant expect to receive more than 7s., a sum
which is equal to 127 15s. a year ; and unless he happened
to be high up on the list, the prospect opened to him by the
peace was one of having to support himself as a gentleman,
and probably to support a wife and family as well, on an
annual income of 91 5s. If further evidence be needed of
the disastrous effects of the inevitable reduction of the naval
establishment upon the pecuniary prospects of the individuals
who, for upwards of twenty years, had kept Great Britain
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 1$
1832]
from the misfortunes of foreign domination, and had main-
tained her honour in every sea, it may be discovered in the
figures of the Naval Estimates of the years immediately before
and immediately succeeding the peace. The supplies voted
for the sea-service were, in 1813, 20,096,709 ; in 1814,
19,312,070; in 1815, 19,032,700; in 1816, 10,114,345;
in 1817, 7,645,422 ; and in 1818, 6,547,809.
These reductions were necessary enough ; but the effect of
them was almost equivalent to the temporary ruining of the-
naval profession. Seamen, idle from no fault of their own,,
thronged the streets of the large towns ; and although many
obtained engagements in the mercantile marine, there were-
still enough left ashore to form the nucleus of much disorder,,
and to materially assist in fanning popular discontent. As-
for the officers, most of them either starved genteelly at home,,
or went abroad to seek to retrieve their shattered fortunes.
Grants of land in various colonies drew away a certain
number of them, and helped in the peopling of Australia
and Canada; but not every half-pay officer possessed the-
capital to enable him to take up a grant of land, or the
inclination to settle down into the peaceful and monotonous
pursuits of country life in an undeveloped district. This
condition of things produced results the importance of which
is universally acknowledged, but the history of which is now
generally lost sight of.
At the time of the peace, and indeed for many years,
afterwards, the echoes of the French Revolution were still
resounding loudly throughout a great part of
both worlds (pp. 4, 6). The colonies of Spain
and Portugal were beginning to be restless
under the somewhat selfish dominion of the mother
countries ; Greece was painfully excogitating her independ-
ence; and soon many officers and men whose professional
future in England had been so seriously compromised were
found, serving, it is true, as mercenaries, yet ranged on the
side of human progress and liberty, and furthering the
advance of freedom and civilisation. Lord Cochrane, after-
wards Earl of Dundonald, who had been unjustly deprived
in 1814 of his commission in the Navy (although he was,,
happily, restored at a later date to his rank and honours), was.
the most distinguished of these maritime adventurers and
14 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
rsailors of fortune. He carried out with him to Chile in 1818
a number of unemployed officers, most of whom won glory,
.and some riches as well, in the course of the struggle there, in
Peru, and in Brazil, for the liberation of South America.
Lord Cochrane had similar companions when subsequently
he assisted the Greek revolutionary patriots. What he did
for Chile and Brazil few other men of his day could have
effected with such scant means as the feeble insurrectionary
.Governments of those times were able to place at his disposal ;
; and it is satisfactory to know that the memory of his work is
kept alive in Chile to this day by the conferring of his name
upon a battleship ; and that in Brazil, at least until the fall of
the Monarchy, he and his successors bore the title of Marquis
:of MaranhaO. Among names which deserve to be associated
.with his in these exploits are those of Crosbie, Foster, Hind,
.Taylor, Jowett, Grenfell, Guise, and Spry ; but scores of others
might be mentioned; and, in fact, for many years after 1815,
there was no war in the New World or in the Old in which, as
adventurers, the half-pay veterans of our own long struggle
with France did not take part. The practical disbanding of
.those tried and gallant fellows at the peace had a far wider in-
.fluence than is commonly suspected both upon the development
of what are now the large self-governing colonies, and upon
the constitutional growth of much of the rest of the world.
Another result of the peace was the previously unparal-
leled blocking of promotion in the various
commissioned grades of the naval service.
So long as war lasted, there was possible
promotion, at least as far as post-rank, for all ; and, from
1793 to 1815, deserving officers were seldom neglected for
long by those with whom lay the selection. But the very
-readiness of the Admiralty to reward good service during war-
time led in peace-time to considerable personal hardships,
besides being in some instances distinctly antagonistic to the
ipublic welfare. The promotions consequent upon the happy
conclusion of hostilities brought the captains' list up to 883,
the highest point it has ever attained since a British Navy
.has existed. At the time when that maximum was reached
it was in 1818 the senior captain on the list had held that
ranl^ for twenty-two years, a period more than long enough,
consistently with the best interests of the service, to qualify for
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 15
1832]
flag-rank and command. Yet twenty-two years was a very
short period in comparison with the time for which officers
who at the peace were captains of medium or junior standing
had to wait ere they attained flag-rank. The evil reached its
height in 1841. In the earlier part of that year all the
captains at the head of the list were men who had held
post-rank ever since the year after Trafalgar. The senior
one of them, judged by the date of his commission as captain,
was sixty-eight years of age ; several were over seventy ; and
one, at least, was as much as seventy-eight. Yet it was from
among these old gentlemen that the list of admirals had to be
recruited ; for then, as now, promotion to flag-rank went by
simple seniority; and, to make matters worse, there was at
that time no regular scheme of retirement for officers of above
the rank of commander. The consequence was that, almost
all the admirals, besides a large number of captains, were too
old to be in a condition to render effective service in their
profession ; and the political caricaturist was justified, a little
later, in representing the typical commander-in-chief of the
period as a gouty veteran, obliged to promenade his quarter-
deck in a bath-chair. Both Sir J. C. White and Vice-Admiral
Edward Harvey were seventy-four when they took .up the
command at the Nore ; Admiral Bowles was seventy-nine
when he became port-admiral at Portsmouth; Sir David
Milne was of the same age when he assumed the like office
at Devonport; and, even on foreign stations, Sir Robert
Stopford flew his flag at seventy-three; Sir Peter Halkett,
at seventy-two ; Rear- Admiral C. J. Austen, at seventy-three ;
and Lord Dundonald, at seventy-five. And, in spite of such
facilities as existed in 1841 for the retirement of officers of
rank less than that of post-captain, the active lists were still
choked throughout with old officers, survivors of the French
wars. Of this category, there were about 200 commanders
and 1,450 lieutenants who had received no promotion what-
soever for a period of twenty-six years or more. One officer
had been a commander for forty-seven years; another had
been a lieutenant for sixty years ; yet another had been , a
master for sixty-one years ; and there was a purser with
sixty-four years' service in that rank to his credit. All , these
officers, however, were set down in the Navy List as being
fit for duty.
16 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
It was the existence of this extraordinary state of affairs
that induced the Admiralty to adopt a more
Retirement reasonable and comprehensive scheme of
naval retirement than had previously been
in force. As early as 1816, not to go farther back, 100 of
the senior lieutenants who, owing to age and infirmities, were
assumed to be incapable of further service, had been permitted
to retire with the rank of commander and a pension of 8s. 6d.
a day ; and in 1830 another Order-in-Council had authorised
the retirement of lieutenants of sufficient seniority to be in
receipt of half-pay at 7s. a day. But these measures had
thinned the lower ranks only to a partial extent, and had left
the equally crowded upper ranks untouched. A further step
was taken in 1840, when fifty of the senior commanders were
allowed to retire with the rank of captain and with half-pay
of 10s. 6d. a day. Yet still the tension remained unrelieved
until the elaboration of a more general scheme, which was
published in the London Gazette of September 1st, 1846, and
became part of the regulations under an Order-in-Council of
April, 1847. This measure permitted the retirement, as rear-
admirals, of captains whose seniority placed them on the
14s. 6d. half-pay list ; the retirement, with increased pay, of
certain other captains of not less than twenty years' seniority ;
and the reduction to manageable proportions of the active
list. New Orders-in-Council followed in 1851, 1856, 1860,
1864, and 1866 ; and in 1870 a complete fresh scheme for
all ranks was at length adopted. This, although it has since
been considerably modified, remains the basis of the present
system of naval retirement. It may be said that the, upon
the whole, just and salutary schemes which thus received,
as it were, their codification in 1870, were the direct outcome
of the long and trying wars of the beginning of the century.
Nothing, indeed, is more certain than that for success-
ful commanders at sea in war-time the country must look
chiefly to the officers who are still in, or below, the prime of
life ; and that the best interests of the service require that it
should be possible for capable officers to reach flag-rank by
the age of forty, as Nelson did.
Some of the evil consequences of the neglect and pro-
crastination of the Admiralty hi dealing with the situation
bequeathed to us by the war which ended in 1815 appear to
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 17
1832]
have hampered the country when, nearly forty years later, war
broke out with Russia. During that war the
Navy, all things considered, effected remark- T <?j!^ean war. 6
ably little ; and the expectations of the country
were notoriously disappointed. The excessive age of many of
the flag-officers and captains who were entrusted with com-
mands may be accepted in partial explanation of the result.
Both Napier and Dundas were nearly seventy ; and Lyons and
Price, though only rear-admirals, were sixty- six ; while several
captains, both in the Black Sea and in the Baltic, were up-
wards of sixty years of age. From officers of such advanced
life, the energy, activity, and mental suppleness that dis-
tinguish capable younger men cannot be expected. The
sea, moreover, is an exceptionally wearing calling, and was
even more so in the first half of the century than it is now.
This has since been to some extent recognised in our own and
other Navies. A British admiral is now obliged to retire at
sixty-five, and a rear-admiral at sixty. In Germany, even
these ages are considered too great to admit of full efficiency.
There, no officer can remain on the active list after he is
fifty-six ; and rear-admirals are perforce retired at fifty-three.
It is important for the student of naval history to under-
stand the principles according to which
British ships of war were " rated" at various
times, and what, in the days of our wooden
walls, was the real meaning of such expressions as " a 36-gun
frigate," " a seventy-four," and so on. As a great and sensible,
if not entirely satisfactory, change in the system of rating
was introduced in 1817, immediately after the peace, the
present seems to be a convenient opportunity for dealing
with the subject.
In the seventeenth century, and in the first three-quarters
of the eighteenth, a vessel was rated and described according
to what may be regarded as the natural plan; that is, if
she actually carried 60 guns, she was known as a 60-gun
ship. But in 1779, when the carronade was made a regular
service weapon, nearly all vessels were given a certain
number of these pieces of ordnance, in addition to their
complement of guns. For instance, the 100-gun ships were
given 10 carronades ; 90- and 98-gun ships were given 10 also ;
74-gun ships were given 8 ; 50-gim ships were given 10, etc.
C VOL. VI.
Kate.
Nominal Guns.
First
100
Second
98
,, ... ... . ..
90
Third
74
64
Fourth
50
Fifth
44
,, ... ... . . .
38
,, ... ... . ..
36
j, ... ... . ..
32
Sixth
28
... ... . ..
24
,, ... ...
20
Sloops
18
16
14
18 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
To put the matter more concisely for purposes of reference,
the true gun strength of the chief classes of ships, as distinct
from the conventional gun strength, became as follows :
Actual Guns.
110
108
100
82
72
60
54
48
44
40
34
34
28
26
24
22
Yet, in spite of these considerable alterations, ships continued
to be officially classed as they had been classed before the
change. Other changes in the armament of ships were
effected subsequently, not only in consequence of Admiralty
orders, but also to suit the theories or temporary wishes
of individual captains ; so that in course of time the official
classification came to be almost meaningless. Any addition
of long guns to a ship raised her class in the Admiralty
estimate ; but no addition of carronades modified her status
on the books of the Navy. Thus, when
in 178 the Canada received two extra
18-pounder long guns, she rose from the
position of a 74 to that of a 76 ; but when in the following
year the Goliath, 74, was given, as part of her extra arma-
ment, two 68-pounder carronades, she still remained a 74,
although the additions made her probably a more powerful
ship, especially at close quarters, than the Canada. When,
therefore, in the history of the French wars, or of the war
of 1812, we read that a British ship was officially classed
as carrying a certain number of guns, we get little or no
guide to her actual offensive strength. The inconvenience
of this state of affairs was recognised when the recurrence
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 19
1832J
of peace enabled the Admiralty to consider the point; and
efforts were at once made to remedy it. But the Order-in-
Council of February, 1817, was after all only a half-measure;
for it merely directed that in future all his Majesty's ships
should be rated at the number of guns and carronades which
they actually carried on their decks, quarter-decks, and fore-
castles ; and it left out of account the carronades which,
in the ships of the three higher rates in the Navy, were
carried on the poop. Thus, the Superb, 74, though officially
promoted to be a 78, should in reality have been promoted
to be an 84. Indeed, all the first, second, and third rates,
even after the new Order, and the accompanying declaration
that " the force of each ship is stated according to the
number of guns and carronades actually carried," continued
to mount six more weapons than they were credited with.
The Victory, 104, was a 110 ; the Queen Charlotte, 108, was
a 114 ; the Prince, 98, was a 104 ; and, in fact, it would
appear that the rule had practically no exceptions. These
and other anomalies were not entirely got rid of until the
promulgation of a new scale of armament in 1847 ; and even
then they were got rid of only for a comparatively short
time. Certain guns, especially if of comparatively small size,
soon began to be again neglected in the official estimation of
a ship's armament ; and after armoured vessels became a
well-established feature in the Navy small guns were
gradually left wholly out of account, until in 1885 the year
in which this survey closes the official Navy List was even
more misleading than the official Navy List of 1814 had
been. In 1885, for example, one of the most formidable
completed ships in the service was the Collingwood, which
the Navy List described as of 10 guns ; and one of the most
insignificant was the wooden corvette Druid, which was
described as of 14. As a matter of fact, the Collingwood
really carried 35 guns, large and small, and the Druid only
22 ; but that statement by no means reflects the true differ-
ence between the force of the ships. The Druid's 14 guns,
the sole ones which were deemed worthy of official notice,
were all 64-pounder muzzle-loaders, of no armour-piercing
value whatsoever ; the Collingwood's 10 guns comprised
four 12-inch breechloaders, ranking among the most powerful
guns then in the service, and six 6-inch breechloaders, all
c 2
20 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
more than capable of piercing 10 inches of iron armour
at a distance of 1,000 yards, besides 12 guns which were of
much greater utility than anything mounted by the Druid.
Moreover, a single gun in the Collingwood weighed very nearly
as much as the entire armament of the other vessel.
THE powerful influence which had done so much to mould
English religious feeling, and to direct its
W The Church 1 *' course along particular channels of opinion
during the later years of the eighteenth
century, had lost, during the earlier part of the present
century, some of its more prominent characteristics. Evan-
gelicalism had abandoned something of its austere spirit, and,
while it had succeeded in arousing among the educated classes
a much more serious apprehension of social and religious
problems than had been common when Bishop Butler made
his famous lament, it had itself been insensibly affected by the
society which it had influenced, and tended to become, if not
" worldly," at least reasonable, polite, and not unfashionable.
If we turn first to the character of the religious laity of
the period, we shall see how strong had been
the influence in wnich the J were nurtured,
and how in later life it had encouraged the
pursuit of an ideal of definite philanthropy. Nor need it
be said that this influence was by no means confined solely
to those who would have called themselves " Evangelicals," or
to members of the Church of England. One of the greatest
practical workers for true religion and sound learning was
imbued with the older the Caroline, or Reformation
principles of the Church ; while among the pioneers of
philanthropic effort were the leading members of the Society
of Friends. Foremost among philanthropists was the great
Evangelical, William Wilberforce. He it was, more than any
other, who by his lifelong labours enforced on Parliament,
through the education of the popular conscience, the abolition
of the traffic in human beings. Evangelicalism, through one
of its greatest leaders, George Whitefield, had supported
slavery : now from an Evangelical the slave-trade received its
death-blow. Wilberforce, through his friendship Avith the
leading statesmen of the day, enjoyed a position of exceptional
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 21
1832]
advantage for .the work to which he devoted himself. He
was a link between the so-called " Clapham Sect " (the body
of wealthy business men and others who circled round the
Rev. John Venn, rector of Clapham), and the London society
of the day. By his side were peers such as Lord Teignmouth
and Lord Dartmouth, and the rich families of the Gurneys
and the Buxtons. For literary influence the religious and
social movements of the time were indebted to the vigorous
and popular writings of Hannah More. This kindly and
bright old lady, herself playwright and novelist as well as
writer of religious tracts, who is a fit link between the
ecclesiastical opinions of such typical English writers as
Dr. Johnson and Mr. E. A. Freeman, died in 1832. William
Wilberforce (whom J. J. Gurney described as "always in
sunshine, his mind strung to a perpetual tune of love and
praise ") died on July 29th, 1833, a month before the Bill for
the Abolition of Slavery became law (p. 111). There could
not be two better examples of the influence of religion and
philanthropy on the life of the English nation. The names
of both were household words beyond the boundaries of
Great Britain. Wilberforce was buried in the Abbey between
Canning and Pitt. Hannah More's books were read, it may
almost be said, in every English home. The anti-slavery
movement represented the best current of English feeling,
and was by no means tied to any particular religious body.
Fowell Buxton presented a petition for abolition from 187,000
women of Great Britain. Already practical men like J. J.
Gurney, and literary artists like Thomas Love Peacock in
" Melincourt," had urged the disuse of sugar till the slaves
who made it should be freed.
The philanthropy which so warmly espoused the anti-
slavery cause was no less powerful in social work within
the land. In the winter of 1816-17 Mrs. Fry began her
systematic visits to the prisoners in Newgate, in which she
was assisted by many ladies, Churchwomen as well as Friends,
and which had so remarkable an effect on the nature of
prison discipline throughout the country.
Among the laymen who devoted themselves to the
theoretical and practical interests of the Church, two should
especially be mentioned. Alexander Knox, well known in his
earlier life as a political writer, in later years was prominent
22 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
in defence of the Church. His especial work i.t was to defend
the teaching of the Church as embodied in the Prayer Book
a task which had a distinct value when great laxity as to
standards of doctrine and worship prevailed. He died on
January 17th, 1831. More active in good works was Joshua
Watson, who did great things for the literature and the
missions of the Church in connection with the Societies
for Promoting Christian Knowledge and for the Propagation
of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Through his energetic
devotion the interests of religion were continually supported
in Parliament. He became the constant adviser of the
Archbishop of Canterbury ( Manners- Sutton), and it was
not a little through his influence that many new Church
societies were founded, and that the colonial episcopate was
organised and endowed.
Of the clergy of this period two very different pictures
might be drawn. They misrht be described
The Clergy. , , , , . J ,,
as secular, though kindly and generous, as
scholars and gentlemen rather than missionaries and priests.
The novels of Peacock, of Jane Austen and George Eliot,
sketch clergymen of varying types which might fall within
this description. Certainly we should not greatly wrong
them if we wrote across the clergy list, " surtout point de
zele" The " high and dry " school had principles which
connected it with a great past. It " inherited the traditions
of a learned and sober Anglicanism, claiming as the authorities
for its theology the great line of English divines from Hooker
to Waterland, finding its patterns of devotion in Bishop
Wilson, Bishop Home, and the 'Whole Duty of Man/ but
not forgetful of Andre wes, Jeremy Taylor, and Ken preach-
ing, without passion or excitement, scholar-like, careful, wise,
often vigorously reasoned discourses on the capital points of
faith and morals, and exhibiting in its adherents, who were
many and important, all the varieties of a great and far-
descended school, which claimed for itself rightful possession
of the ground which it held. There was nothing effeminate
about it, there was nothing fanatical; there was nothing
extreme or foolish about it; it was a manly
$ H pty hUrCl1 scnool > distrustful of high-wrought feelings
and professions, cultivating self-command
and shy of display, and setting up as its mark, in contrast
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 23
1832]
to what seemed to it sentimental weakness, a reasonable
and serious idea of duty." * To that school belonged great
scholars like Dr. Routh, great prelates like Bishop Van
Mildert of Durham, and most striking example of all,
and occupying its position when it had been largely aban-
doned on both sides the great parish priest, Walter
Farquhar Hook, who carried on its tradition to a much
later generation.
The Evangelical party, on the other hand, had a body
of theology which was less wide, but cer-
tainly not less sincere. They were led by
men such as Charles Simeon, the influence
of whose strong character and long and blameless life gave
to his opinions a prolonged and almost unquestioned supre-
macy in the University of Cambridge. This school was
stronger in sentiment and personal piety than in theology ;
and from it, a few years later, came "almost all the first
important converts to Rome."f It was powerful in the
support of rich lay folk, and started what Sydney Smith
called " a regular fund to purchase livings for those groaning
and garrulous gentlemen whom they denominate (by a stand-
ing sarcasm against the regular Church) gospel preachers
and vital clergymen " ; yet " the deepest and most fervid
religion during the first three decades of this century was
that of the Evangelicals." J
Two facts are especially significant in the religious history
of this period. The first is the strong movement, somewhat
hastily identified with the Liberalism of the day, against
religious establishments in general and the Church in parti-
cular. The second is the formation, below the surface, of a
new and vigorous party of reform on the lines of traditional
Church teaching.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the alarm with Avhich
timid Churchmen regarded the future at the
period of the Reform Bill of 1832. "The
Whigs had come into power ; Lord Grey had
told the bishops to set their houses in order, and some of the
prelates had been insulted and threatened in the streets of
* Dean Church, " The Oxford Movement," pp. 8-9.
f Archd. Perry, " Church of England," 3rd period, p. 195.
$ Liddon, " Life of Pusey,"-vol. i., p. 255.
24 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
London."* Several Irish bishoprics had been suppressed.
Dr. Pusey, then known only as a young and very learned
Oxford professor, expressed to Mr. Gladstone, who had just
entered Parliament, his sense of the dangerous appearance of
public affairs "The appearances of things are very formidable,
if a Christian might fear." Men of less caution and restraint
felt still greater alarm. Dr. Arnold, the great schoolmaster,
who had such enormous effect on the religion of the next
generation, wrote, in 1832, " The Church as it now stands
no human power can save." In his pamphlet, "jThe Principles
of Church Reform," Dr. Arnold proposed to make the Church
once more identical with the State, by admitting all de-
nominations to its fold without requiring them to surrender
any of their distinctive doctrines. So strangely unpractical
were some of the schemes then suggested. The danger, like
other terrors, passed away, and left religion and the Church
stronger rather than weaker for the crisis. The strength came
in no small measure from the party which was springing up,
chiefly in Oxford.
Of Oxford, in 1830, Mark Pattison writes, t "the true re-
volutionary spirit was already there, though it
Movement ^ad not vet ta ken the precise direction which
it afterwards did." He is speaking chiefly of
Oriel, and the tutors J. H. Newman, R. I. Wilberforce, and
R. H. Froude. " They were, however," he adds, " young men ;
Newman, the oldest of the three, was thirty, and little known.
Neither my father nor his adviser could have any knowledge of
the stimulating power which was latent in the Oriel tutors of
1830." The influence had already spread outside Oxford.
John Keble had published, in 1827, " The Christian Year."
William Palmer, a graduate of Dublin who had come to study
in Oxford, published, in 1832, his " Origines Liturgicse." In
1829 Isaac Williams went to the curacy of Windrush, a little
parish on the borders of Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire. In
1832-33 Newman was travelling in Italy, and unconsciously
preparing for the great work he was to do. Pusey was quietly
studying and teaching at Christ Church. Poetry, the study
of ancient sources, humble ministerial work, earnest aspiration
and profound learning, all these were to be represented in the
* Xewman, "Apologia," p. 30.
t " Memoirs," p. 28.
1832]
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 25
1832]
movement which was to form the parallel in the nineteenth
century to the Wesleyan movement of the eighteenth.
THE decade which followed upon the Battle of Waterloo
was crowded with splendid achievements in
English poetry. Some, it is true, of the great
singers who have made the age famous had
fallen silent, or had sung their best. Coleridge's " Christabel,"
that germ of the new romance poetry, which had already
done its fertilising work in manuscript, had still to make
its published appearance in the second year of the period, and
to be succeeded on the part of its author by a long interval of
silence, broken only in the poet's later years by utterances of
for the most part far inferior power. The greatest efforts
of Wordsworth's long poetic life had been made several years
before. Scott closed the series of his romantic poems with
" The Lord of the Isles " in 1815, having published the first
of the immortal Waverley Novels in the previous year
ButJ between 1815 and 1823 all the best work of Shelley
and Byron and the entire and too slender body of Keats's
poetry were given to the world. A decade which covers the
publication of " The Kevolt of Islam " (1817), the " Prometheus
Unbound "(1819), the "Hellas" and the "Adonais" (1821);
of the Third (1816) and Fourth (1818) Cantos of Childe
Harold," the whole of the Byronic drama (1817-22), and
"Don Juan "(1819-23); of the "Endymion" (1818), of the
" Hyperion " (1819), and of those two incomparable odes,
" To a Nightingale " and " On a Grecian Urn," is not to be
matched in any period of our own or perhaps of the world's
history.
But the three poets whose masterpieces appeared in such
quick succession during these seven or eight years had little
but their productive fertility in common,
i ,-, ,, ., Byron, 1788-1824.
and though two of them are among the
glories of English literature, while the third shares with Scott
the honour of having given that literature its widest European
vogue and influence differed as strikingly in gift as in
circumstances and career. Byron, whose fame came to him
in a day and deserted him within a few years of his death
for more than a generation, ranks far below Keats and still
26 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
further below Shelley in the order of purely poetic merit.
There are even some who have denied him the title of poet
altogether ; and, indeed, at the height of the reaction which
followed upon the Byronic enthusiasm of the early century,
it is not improbable that a majority of otherwise competent
English critics would have concurred in that denial. Nor
from one point of view is this surprising. The defects both
of the matter and manner of Byron's poetry are not only
patent but obtrusive. His workmanship is often rough and
careless to the point of slovenliness ; his imagination, though
pOAverful, and his passion, though intense, are both of strictly
limited range; he has nothing of Shelley's tremulous sensi-
bility to beauty either in art or nature, nor any trace of
Wordsworth's profound insight into the mystery of the
external world. His command over the reader, where and
when it is exercised, is a pure triumph of force and fire ; his
influence is akin to that of the orator rather than of the poet.
It sweeps tempestuously over the emotions like one of the
" white squalls " of his beloved Mediterranean over its waters,
agitating them vehemently enough on their surface, but never
stirring them to their depths. And it is perhaps to his
mastery of these simple emotional effects that he owes his
attraction for the foreign reader, who is naturally less sensible
to those subtler poetic beauties which are in a great measure
hidden from him under the unappreciated shades of meaning
and the unfelt associations of a comparatively unfamiliar
language.
Meanwhile, however, the progress of the years "which bring
the philosophic mind " or should bring it to
H posSion nt the cr ^^ c as mucn as to the individual poet
has to some extent rescued Byron from the
neglect to which for well nigh half a century he was con-
signed. In an age which has been rendered fastidious by
familiarity with a hitherto unapproached excellence of
artistic form in poetry, it is unlikely that he will ever re-
gain his former popularity ; but a generation of critics more
catholic in their tastes and less prejudiced in their judg-
ment than their immediate predecessors have learnt the lesson
of respect for the magnificent strength and sweep of versified
rhetoric in " Childe Harold," for the fine dramatic quality of
" Marino Faliero " and its companion tragedies, and, above all,
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 27
1832J
for the brilliant assemblage of intellectual, if not always of
strictly poetic, gifts, which is displayed on every page of
" Don Juan."
The fame of Shelley has not only been of slower growth,
but has not even now attained, and prob-
,, . n , . Shelley, 1792-1822.
ably never will attain, to the proportions
which were reached by that of Byron during the second
decade of the century. In the spiritual quality of his
imagination there is none to compare with him in any age
of our literature, and in mysterious magic of language we
have to go to the greatest of the Elizabethans to find his peer.
There are short passages and even single lines in Shelley which
haunt the memory like Prospero's farewell to his wizardry, like
Lorenzo's " moonlight speech " to Jessica, like Perdita's rhap-
sody on the flowers let fall by Proserpine. But his poetry,
in its . higher nights, is not only too ethereal for " human
nature's daily food," it is unfitted for the spiritual sustenance
of even the rarer types of human nature save in moments
of exceptional exaltation. As for the ordinary mortal, he
can no more " breathe in that fine air " than could Guinevere
in the cold and saintly atmosphere with which Arthur sur-
rounded himself. The rarefied, the almost de-humanized,
character of Shelley's thought is nowhere more strikingly
shown than in the alienating effect which it exercised even
on so high and so idealistic an intelligence as that of Matthew
Arnold, and which disabled that otherwise acute critic from
doing him justice. Yet his famous comparison of Shelley to
"a beautiful but ineffectual angel beating in the void his
luminous wings in vain " needs only a slight modification in
a couple of points to make the image as perfectly accurate
as it is poetical and picturesque. "Ineffectual" and "in
vain " are exaggerated expressions. They are only true of
Shelley at those moments when he attempts more than human
speech can compass, and it is going too far to say that this is
constant or even frequent with him. But to that habitually
hovering elevation of his poetry above the ordinary thoughts
and passions and hopes of humanity, Arnold's angelic
metaphor is admirably appropriate. If Shelley does not beat
his wings " in vain," he beats them " in the void." He is
the poet of philosophers, dreamers, revolutionaries, of all who
are furthest removed from the life of their fellow-men ; and
28 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1315
that is why, of all the world's great poets, it is he who has
exercised the least influence on the poetry of the world.
Imperfect, on the other hand, as was the achievement of
Keats, many and serious as were his disad-
vantages of worldly position and surround-
ings, and premature as was the death by which the full
development of his genius was cut short, it is to him whom
we must look as the transmitter of the poetic tradition of our
Augustan age to the present era. A fuller pulse of humanity
beats in him than in Shelley, a more frankly sensuous delight
in material beauty animates his verse ; for Shelley's pre-
vailing mysticism, in which only the finest and subtlest
spirits can find any satisfying charm, he substitutes a
glow of romantic ardour which must communicate itself
in some measure at any rate to all but the dullest and most
hopelessly prosaic of human minds. We descend, in fact,
from that supernal, but barely respirable, ether bathed in un-
earthly radiance, wherein Shelley habitually moves, to the
revivifying atmosphere and exhilarating sunlight of the
common day.
In our present era of too copious poetical and quasi-
poetical production it is interesting to note
Minor Poets. fir if
by how few names, save those of actual
immortals, this greatest since Elizabeth's days of all periods,
of English poetry was illustrated. Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Scott, Byron, Shelley, Keats it was by the magnitude, not the
multitude, of such names as these that the age was rendered
famous. As a list of immortals it would be a long one for
even half a century, but as an enumeration of nearly all the
writers who were worthy to be styled poets at all, it would be
short even for twenty years. Yet outside this list it is diffi-
cult to find anyone fairly entitled to the honours of a poet,
even of the second rank. The doubtful exceptions of Moore
and Campbell have been noticed in a previous volume, and
the no less questionable claims of Landor might be admitted
to a place beside theirs ; but to Kogers it is quite impossible
to concede more than the merit of an agreeable versifier, and
though "sonneteering Bowles" had enough of "the root of
the matter " in him to inspire Coleridge, he cannot be said to
deserve more than the credit of good intentions unequally
matched with his powers of execution.
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM.
1832]
The prose, however, of the period covered by this chapter
is in a different case ; for if among its masters
there are perhaps but three De Quincey,
Lamb, and Landor who can be regarded as
of the first rank in point of style, the catalogue of dis-
tinguished essayists and critics is for the next twenty to
twenty-five years an imposingly long one. Between 1815 and
1840 not only had two of the three writers above mentioned
done all their best work, and the third completed his enduring
contribution to English literature and passed away, but men
so eminent in their various departments as Hazlitt, Wilson,
Lockhart, Sydney Smith, Hallam, Cobbett, Leigh Hunt, were
in full literary activity, and even within the first ten years of
the period an essayist destined to become more famous than
any of them had made his debut in the periodical press in the
person of Macaulay.
If we put the name of De Quincey (1785-1859) first, it
is certainly not because of any transcendent
perfection in the style of one who is in
truth an extremely unequal writer. Were the
place to be awarded on that principle to any essayist of the
period, it would assuredly fall to Charles Lamb (1775-1834),
who, indeed, is perhaps the most remarkable example in all
literature of a writer whose mere manner of saying the thing
apart altogether from the wisdom, wit, humour, pathos,
tenderness, urbanity of the thing said, though in all of these
qualities he is conspicuous is an unfailing source of delight.
Something of the same sort, though with an application to a
far more limited list of qualities, may be said of Walter
Savage Landor (1775-1864), whose noble monumental style,
far more truly and successfully Greek than his attempted
Hellenisings in verse, has reconciled many a reader to as
perversely ill-assorted a set of political and literary opinions
as was ever begotten of the union of Tory prejudices and
Jacobin theories in the same person, and to as arrogantly
defiant a dogmatism as overweening pride of intellect ever
brought to their support. But the interest of De Quincey
is that of an experimenter and pioneer in English prose. He
may, in fact, be described as the inventor of that variety of
prose a questionable variety in the hands of many of
his successors which has been named the " poetic " : a form
30 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
in which, to attain the ends of vivid description or of im-
passioned narrative, the restraints which the elder prose-
masters deliberately imposed upon themselves in respect
both of construction and vocabulary were as deliberately
thrown off. In other words, the attempt was for the first
time made to arouse emotions as vehement in the mind of a
reader through the medium of prose as are or may be
excited by the instrumentality of verse. In some of De
Quincey's most famous passages this exaltation of the emo-
tional power of prose is overwhelmingly felt. " The Vision
of Sudden Death," for instance, excites like a thrilling scene
of drama ; and the " Dream Fugue " that follows it impresses
like a majestic poem. The highly coloured diction and the im-
passioned rhythms by which these dramatic and poetic effects
are produced are not employed with invariable taste and dis-
cretion, and when they fail in their more ambitious attempts
the result is distressing. But, unequal as he is, De Quincey
fails very rarely in this respect, and his successes did un-
doubtedly reveal new capacities in English prose, which con-
temporaries like John Wilson (1785-1854), and successors
like Mr. Ruskin, were destined still further to develop.
The mention of John Wilson recalls a circumstance
which, in the pages of a history concerned
^periodiS f Primarily rather with movements than with
men, is especially worthy of note the
growing importance, that is to sa} r , of the connection between
literature and the periodical press of the day. The famous
prose- writer whom we have just dealt with gave all his
most famous pieces to the Avorld through the medium of " the
magazines." " The Confessions of an Opium-eater," for in-
stance, appeared in the London, which miscellany had also
the undying honour of ushering the "Essays of Elia" into
the world; and in later years De Quincey wrote much for
Hogg's Instructor and Tait's Magazine. Another case is that
of William Hazlitt (1778-1830), a fine, though unequal essay-
ist, and the most accomplished dramatic critic that England
has produced, who was also rnainly indebted to periodicals for
his introduction to the public. The entire period, in short, is
remarkable for the rapid and successful development of that
organisation of criticism the beginnings of which were noticed
in the closing chapter of the last volume (V., p. 589). To the
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 31
1832]
Edinburgh Eeview, in which Jeffrey (Vol. V., p. 591) had among
his principal colleagues the brilliantly witty Sydney Smith
(1771-1845) and the versatile Brougham (1778-1868), whose
omniscience did not exclude real knowledge of some of the
subjects which he handled; and to the Quarterly, which
under Gifford's editorship, and with such men as Sou they
and Scott among its contributors, had rapidly risen into
rivalry with the older periodical, was, in 1817, added Black-
wood's Magazine, an organ of more pronounced Conserva-
tism, both in politics and literature, than the Quarterly. >
This periodical was for many years distinguished by
the writings of John Wilson, under the pseudonym of
" Christopher North," a poet of little mark, but an essayist
and causeur of commanding and singularly varied powers,
whose " Noctes Ambrosianse," though always somewhat of a
stumbling-block to the Southron reader, still preserves for
those who have attained the proper "point of view" the
original charm of its gaiety, wit, and dramatic humour, its
innumerable episodes of brilliant, if sometimes perverse,
criticism, and its occasional passages of admirably eloquent
prose. It is perhaps, indeed, as a prose-writer of the new
" poetic " school founded by De Quincey that Wilson Avould
first claim consideration, were it not that his influence upon
English literature in this capacity was far more limited than
that of the author of " The Confessions of an Opium-eater."
Another writer of distinction, who was a contributor to
Blackwood in its early days, was John Gibson Lockhart
(1794-1854), afterwards editor of the Quarterly, a critic of
sound judgment and scholarly equipment, though given to a
severity of expression that sometimes bordered on the brutal,
but whose enduring fame reposes on his admirable Life
by general consent one of the two or three greatest
biographies in the language of his illustrious father-in-
law, Sir Walter Scott.
Of a yet earlier date than the birth of the Tory Black-
wood, or, indeed, than its quarterly prede-
cessor of the same politics, was the Radical
Examiner, a weekly journal started and
for fourteen years conducted by the brothers Hunt. The
former of these, Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), has secured
himself a place in the history of the period, if not by the
32 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
bulk of his prose-writings which, indeed, are often undis-
tinguished enough yet by occasional pieces of genuine merit
both for thought and style, and by a finely sympathetic
appreciation of all that is best in literature. And the list
of periodicals may, perhaps, fitly close with one which was
associated throughout its history with the name of a writer
of far greater power and of widely different temperament to
wit, the Weekly Register, a journal in which William Cobbett
(1762-1835 : p. 88) for years displayed, amid many extrava-
gances of prejudice and crudities of utterance, a command of
racy, homely, and vigorous English which made him the most
popular, if not the most powerful, political writer of his time.
The immensely important part played by periodicals in
the advancement of letters during these years may, per-
haps, be most conveniently measured by viewing it from
the point of view adopted in his history of "Nineteenth
Century Literature" by Professor Saintsbury, who, after
enumerating Cobbett, Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, John Wilson,
Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, De Quincey, Lock-
hart, and some others, remarks, with perfect truth, that
all of them were, "if not exactly journalists, at any rate
such frequent contributors to periodical literature of one
kind or another that in some cases nothing, in most com-
paratively little, would be left of their work if contributions
to newspapers, reviews, and magazines were to be excluded
from it."
Rich, however, as was the contribution of critics and
essayists to the prose literature of this period,
Scott. v J j V j j *
it was surpassed in splendour and far out-
done in historic importance and progenitive potency by the
achievements of its one great novelist. The seventeen
years over which this chapter extends have been rendered ever
memorable, not only by the production in the Waverley
Novels of by far the most splendid series of imaginative prose
works to which any single mind has ever given birth, but
also, and therewith, by the addition of what may fairly be
called an entirely new form to those three or four very ancient
moulds into which man has poured the fused metal of the
imagination since literature began. For Scott was the creator
of the historic romance a form which differed from the epic
in prose or poetry in that it did not confine itself to the
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 33
1832]
deeds of historical or historico-mythical personages ; from
the contes and fabliaux that succeeded the epic, and went to
the other extreme of being purely fanciful in character and
incident ; from the novel of the previous century, which in
the hands of Fielding, Smollett, Richardson, had been a pure
transcript of contemporary manners ; and lastly, of course,
from the drama, in the medium of its presentation. It is to
this last, however, in the shape which it took in Shakespeare's
Histories, that it bears a closer resemblance than to any other.
Real and imaginary personages and events are intermingled
in each. Dugald Dalgetty takes part in the actual warfare of
Royalist and Parliamentarian, as Falstaff fought, and narrowly
escaped death, at Shrewsbury tight. Oliver Proudfute is
made to move among historic Scotch barons, just as Ancient
Pistol is placed side by side with Harry the King, Bedford
and Exeter, Salisbury and Talbot, Warwick and Gloucester,
on the field of Agincourt. And it is this, indeed, which has
caused Scott to succeed or supplement Shakespeare as the
source of all the English history that is known to a large
number of the English people, a circumstance which should
give the professional historian reason to rejoice that Scott
had more reverence for historic truth than his great admirer
and the most successful of all the writers inspired by his
example, Alexandre Dumas. That splendidly fertile romancer
is, however, only one among an innumerable band of fol-
lowers on a path of literature which was eagerly pursued for
some years after Scott's death, and, after a certain slackening
of the stream in the third quarter of the present century, has
since then been thronged by a band of spirited, and in some
cases brilliantly accomplished, writers of the new school of
adventurous romance.
It is impossible within the limits of a work of this descrip-
tion to do more than attempt to fix Scott's
place in relation to the development of our
prose literature. Detailed criticism of the
extraordinary series of romances which began in 1814 with
" Waverley," and ended with " Castle Dangerous " the year
before his death, would in this place be impossible. Reckon-
ing the three short stories in the first series of the
" Chronicles of the Canongate " as one work, they number
twenty-seven in all, a figure not much below that of the
D VOL. VI.
34 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
Shakespearian canon ; and if it be true that even the greatest
of them fail to attain the Shakespearian level, it might
on the other hand be said of all but two or three of
them, produced under extremely adverse circumstances, that
no succession of imaginative creations maintaining a more
consistent and uniform standard of artistic mastery has ever,
even by Shakespeare himself, been presented to the world.
The gallery of the immortal romancer is hardly less crowded
with ever-living figures heroic, humorous, beautiful, pathetic,
terrible than is the gallery of the immortal dramatist.
Two female novelists one of considerable, the other of
surpassing" merit may for various reasons be
Maria Edgeworth. . , . , r . ,.
appropriately noticed in immediate succession
to Scott. It was to the Irish novels of Maria Edgeworth
(1767-1849) that Scott declared himself to be indebted not
only for the suggestion, but for the model of his own Scotch
romances. The suggestion may, indeed, have been so sup-
plied, but those who have made acquaintance with " Castle
Rackrent " and other works of Miss Edgeworth will hardly
be disposed to assign to these sketches of Irish life and
character, vivid, spirited, and amusing as they are, the place
which Scott in his generosity claimed for them.
A writer of far greater power, though even she, perhaps,
has been too highly extolled by the same
Jane Austen. , . . , & . J T J .
enthusiastic eulogist, was Jane Austen
(1775-1817), who in strictness of chronology should per-
haps have been dealt with in the last chapter of the
previous volume, but whose works, long retained in MS.,
were not published till just upon the close of the period
which that chapter covers. The unmeasured praises be-
stowed upon this extraordinary woman by Macaulay are well
known, and not less so is Scott's declaration that, though he
could " do the big bow-wow strain like any now going, the
exquisite touch which renders commonplace things and
characters interesting from the truth of the descriptions and
the sentiment " was " denied " to him. Herein he was cer-
tainly unjust to a hand which showed itself when the
occasion required it as consummate a master of miniature as
of fresco ; but the self- depreciation aside, Scott did no more
than justice to the marvellously finished portraits of the men
and women of her contracted circle which the author of
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 35
1832]
"Pride and Prejudice" has left behind her portraits so
closely resembling, yet so deftly discriminated from, each
other, and all alike " bitten in " upon the etching-plate with
an acid of the subtlest and most delicately flavoured irony
that is to be met with in all literature. The contemporary
novel of analysis is as direct a descendant from Miss Austen
as is the contemporary romance of adventure from Sir
Walter Scott.
THE years that followed the fall of Napoleon found English
art in a somewhat unfortunate position.
Portrait-painting was really decaying, though
Lawrence was in his zenith, and Raeburn, at
times, reflected the grandeur of the masters of the previous
century. Wilkie had set the fashion in genre, and to good
purpose, while Mulready, Leslie, Collins, and many smaller
men, were his rivals or imitators. The historical school was in
its normal state of ineffectiveness, being represented by the
veteran Benjamin West, by his countryman and feeble imi-
tator Allston, by the still feebler Howard, by Hilton, and by
Haydon. Perhaps the ablest of the band was William Hilton,
R.A., the son of a little known Lincoln artist,
IT 11- i i-i William Hilton
who devoted nimseli almost exclusively to re-
ligious compositions, and many church pictures are by his
hand. A certain Italian feeling for grandeur is to be
noticed in some of his works, but the inspiration flowed in
an attenuated stream. He died in 1839, in his fifty-fourth
year.
Benjamin Robert Haydon, born in 1786, was a stronger
individuality ; and if energy and self-con-
fidence could have supplied the place of
genius and industry, a high place in the
history of art would have been his. He was a West-
countryman, the son of a Plymouth bookseller, and in
1805, at the age of nineteen, was admitted a student at
the Academy. Sacred and classical art was his dream.
His first picture, commenced in his twenty-first year, was
a six-foot canvas, " Joseph and Mary entering on the road to
Egypt." His best pictures are not very well known, and
are usually genre subjects, like "Reading the Scriptures,"
D 2
36 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
or portraits such as " The Times." He was a fair draughts-
man, and a coarse but effective colourist, but his texture
is usually very unattractive, and an innate vulgarity mars
his efforts at expression. After a stormy life, during which
he was more than once in the debtors' prison, he committed
suicide in 1846.
It has been said of English painting of this time, that it is
often full of talent, and still more frequently of originality, but
is essentially deficient in genius. But one great exception
must be made. For landscape the period was a golden time.
We have already said a few words of Turner the water-
colour painter (Vol. V., p. 574). It is neces-
sar ^ to sa ^ somet hing f tne painter in oils,
and this notwithstanding that he has had
the supreme good fortune to have Mr. Ruskin for his vates
sacer. Up to the year 1819 Turner, who had set himself the
task of painting light and heaven and earth, water and
cloud and atmosphere, in the true colours that the sunshine
gives them, was content to follow the methods and to limit
himself to the aims of the "former men." First it is
Wilson, then it is the Dutchmen, Cuyp and Bol and
Vandevelde; then it is Poussin, and finally Claude Lorraine.
Such imitations were easy to him ; imitation was part of
Turner's course of study. The full strength of light, unsifted
and unstrained, is not to be found in Turner's models, nor
at first in Turner. During the whole of his first period he
uses, by preference, a low key of colour, to which all nature
is subdued, and employs, also obviously by preference, a
somewhat heavy touch. His figures are usually poor, but
that of the " Apollo killing the Python " shows that, had he
chosen, in this also he could have excelled. In the second
period, to quote Mr. Ruskin
" He worked on the principles which during his studentship he had
discovered, imitating no one, but endeavouring to do what the then
accepted theories of art required of all artists namely, to produce
beautiful compositions or ideals, instead of transcripts of natural fact."
To this period, which is usually considered as repre-
sented by the seventeen years between 1819 and 1836, be-
long his most perfect works " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,"
" The Bay of Baise," and that crowning glory of English art,
"Polyphemus deriding Ulysses." This is the central and
PEACE, ENTRENCHMENT, AND EEF011M. 37
1332]
quintessential work of the great painter. In his third period
which, to our view, shows the painter of the second
period working without any prevention or restraint we see
him setting down his impressions of Nature just as they
came to him : sometimes with violence, sometimes with the
most dazzling success ; occasionally turning back to the
ideals of his earlier time, occasionally spending all his force
in accuracy of delineation. The " Apollo and Daphne,"
" The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth," " The
Sun of Venice," and " The Burial of Wilkie," are among the
chefs-d'oeuvre of this later time.
It is difficult, even impossible, to sum up in a single
chapter, much less in a single paragraph, the contribu-
tion of this great genius to the world of art, and
so far as it is possible it has been done by Mr. Buskin.
It was not only that nobody before Turner had painted
mountains in the spirit of the mountains, or seas, still
or stormy, in the spirit of the sea, or that he first
interpreted for us the redundance of Nature, the infinity of
cloud perspective, the alluring mystery of distance he did
all this, but he did much more. He was the supreme
master of all the splendour, all the magic of the heavens.
And all this was done, or mainly done, in that period of
intellectual stagnation and formality, the age of the Regency
and the reign of George IV. and his successor. And he
who brought this revelation to man for it was nothing
short of a revelation was the son of a poor hairdresser in
Maiden Lane, without refinement, without schooling, coarse
in his tastes, ungainly in his person, uncouth in his speech ;
the greatest natural talent, the most lonely and isolated
individuality, that the century has produced. After a life
of unequalled productiveness in oils, in water-colours, in
drawings for the engravers, wealthy beyond his wants
and famous beyond his desires, he died in 1851 at the age
of seventy-six. It was one of the fancies of this strange,
great, lonely nature to hide himself on his holidays in some
hole or other, and, for his complete security, to go by a
feigned name. He was passing under the name of Brooks,
as a broken-down sea-captain, and lodging at a riverside
cottage at Battersea, when he was seized with his last
illness. There was a railed-in roof to the cottage, and as
38 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
long as he Avas able the painter, whose life had been given
to learn the mystery of light and its interpretation, used
regularly to drag himself up to gaze at the sunrise.
" The sun, it is God," were almost the last words that
escaped his lips. Truly a pious man this, according to his
creed.
Not only did Turner live his artistic life apart, but the
glorious creations of his maturity bear the distinctive marks
of an essentially lonely and incommunicable genius. In
consequence, his influence on English art, as a whole, has
been singularly small, and, indeed, in an inverse ratio to the
transcendent greatness of the artist. Quite otherwise has
it been with Constable. His, too, was a
ble ' thoroughly original talent; but he was a
great emancipator as well as a great artist, and largely in-
fluenced not only the landscape art of his native country,
but the landscape art of France. The amount of the debt
due to him may be disputed, but hardly the fact of indebted-
ness. Other landscape-painters, like Gainsborough, had
painted Nature to please themselves, but fate and Constable
alone proved strong enough to force recognition from an
unappreciative public.
This remarkable man, John Constable, came from Suffolk,
and the countryside which he has immortalised was only
a dozen miles or so to the south of Gainsborough's. He was
born in 1776 at East Bergholt, a village on the Stour, the
river whose finely timbered banks so often furnished him
with subjects. His father, Golding Constable, who came of
a Yorkshire stock, was a wealthy miller. He inherited
Flatford and its water-wheel, and acquired by purchase
Dedham, which his son's brush was to immortalise.
After a rather desultory schooling, intended to fit him
for orders, and about a year's practical work at the
milling business, John was allowed to commence an
artistic career. This was due, to some extent, to the good
nature of Sir George Beaumont, whose mother resided at
Dedham, and kindly introduced the miller's artistic son. He
praised some of his drawings, lent him some Girtins to study,
and allowed him to copy a favourite Claude. And he did
more; he persuaded the elder Constable to allow him to
go to London, with introductions from the baronet. It is
PEACE, EETRENGHMENT, AND REFORM. 39
1832]
curious that Sir George Beaumont, whose repute as a critic
was then at its height, and who was the most hidebound
advocate of the " brown tree " order of landscape, should
thus have been instrumental in forwarding the career of the
great naturalist painter, whose sturdy strokes felled " the
brown tree " to the earth. But beyond assisting Constable
to get to London and introducing him to certain Acad-
emicians of small parts, such as Farington, Sir George
Beaumont's influence on Constable was, fortunately, nil.
It was John Dunthorne, a plumber and glazier, an en-
thusiast for Nature, and a firm believer in the possibility
of painting its broad effects, who was the predominant
influence in Constable's early life. From him he received
his first lesson in the observation of Nature and acquired
the habit of painting in the open air. With the little
equipment that Dunthorne could provide, and Sir George
Beaumont's introduction, he arrived in London, but his
studies had advanced so little by 1797 that, on the
retirement of his father's old clerk in that year, he returned
to East Bergholt to manage the mills, and this he did
without a murmur, although fully believing that it meant
the abandonment of his artistic career. In 1799, however,
he was back in London, whence he wrote to Dunthorne
announcing his admission as a Royal Academy student.
Three years later he attracted the attention of West, whose
forgotten landscapes were probably his best works, and from
whom he received excellent advice and kind encouragement.
"Your darks should look like darks of silver" was a precept
of his, laid to heart by the young painter. It was in May,
1802, shortly after the exhibition of his first landscape at
the Academy, that he wrote to the faithful Dunthorne a
letter which is of singular interest, as it is at once an
apologia and a dedication of his life. "For the last two
years," he says, " I have been running after pictures, and
seeking the truth at second hand. I have not endeavoured
to represent Nature with the same elevation of mind with
which I set out, but have rather tried to make my per-
formances like the work of other men. I shall return to
Bergholt, where I shall endeavour to get a pure and
unaffected manner of representing the scenes that may
employ me. There is little or nothing in the exhibition
40 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
worth looking up to. There is room for a natural
painter."
To this goal he pressed forward from that time
to his death, with ever-increasing confidence, and a year
later he wrote, " I feel now more than ever a decided con-
viction that I shall, some time or other, make some good
pictures, pictures that shall be valuable to posterity if I do
not reap the benefit of them." So exact a forecast is unique
in the history of art, but the way was long, and appreci-
ation came slowly. His friends bought his pictures, and a
few brother artists ; but for the first ten years of his career
he did not sell a single landscape to a stranger. He was not
elected an Associate till 1819, or a full Academician till
1829, eight years before his death. He was, unfortunately
for his own happiness, morbidly sensitive to the want of
appreciation. In his later years, long after he had gained
a gold medal in the Paris Exhibition, after he had been
received into the full brotherhood of the Academy, and
when he felt himself a personage, he said bitterly, "The
painter himself is totally unpopular, and will be on this side
the grave."
Nevertheless Constable never faltered in the work he had
set out to do. He passionately loved the flat country of
his youth, the shallow rivers, the rich meadow grass by the
lock side, the masses of green elms, the wet leaves tipped with
silver under the broad sunlight, the harmonies of grey cloud
and drifting showers, the surprises of sunbeams piercing a men-
acing sky, all the greenness of the dripping woodland, all the
freshness of the summer rain. These things, every one of
them, he stated simply, lovingly, with all the strength that was
in him, and with the most absolute belief in their sufficiency.
He has been accused of sameness in his treatment ; but it
was part of his settled plan to keep on, to use his own
phrase, " hammering at the nail." Nature on the banks of
the Stour had, he said, taught him to be a painter, and
he repaid the debt by immortalising his teacher. " The
White Horse," " The Lock," "The Mill" (at Stratford and at
Flatford), "Dedham Vale," "The Hay wain," "Noon," "The
Jumping Horse," are his tribute. Nor, in all the noble series
of his works, is he ever more entirely himself than in these
home examples. It is interesting to note, however, that
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 41
1832]
his " Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows " was the picture
which he thought conveyed the fullest impression of the
compass of his work.
Constable was, besides, the most useful of pioneers, for he
taught the landscape-painter to go to Nature for his subjects ;
" to leave the galleries for a while and look at the creation,"
and paint such message as it had for him. Thus it has
happened that, on both sides of the Channel, he has had,
as he would have wished, followers of his
principles by the score, but hardly any imi- His influence in
1 f , . J . ,-(11 England and
tators of his practice. Just as Constable was France,
the first to paint the silver sparkle of the
light on the edges of the drenched elm-leaves, so Corot
was the first to give the smoky softness of the twittering
foliage of the French poplar. " Prenez garde aux tableaux
de ces Anglais; ils perdront 1'ecole," said the French critic,
when Constable's landscapes received a medal in the Salon.
The answer is the Avork of that admirable group of artists,
among whom Avere Corot and Millet, Kousseau and Troyon,
the school that has immortalised the little forest village of
Barbizon.
Nor Avere Constable's dispraisers found only or chiefly
among the foreign critics. At home they laughed at his
silvery lights " Constable's snoAv " they called it derisively.
They jeered, too, at his love of grey and shoAvery Aveather.
" Give me mine ombrella," said Fuseli, " I am going to see
a picture of Mr. Constable's." Even Mr. Ruskin Avrote that
" Constable perceives in a landscape that the grass is wet, and the
meadows flat, and the boughs shady ; that is to say, about as much as
I suppose might in general be apprehended between them by an intelli-
gent fawn and a skylark."
This diatribe contains perhaps the noblest compliment
ever paid to a landscape-painter. It goes, moreover, to the root
of the matter, for that Avas exactly Avhat Constable felt, and
those unnoticed beauties it Avas his hope and Avish to bring
to light. " I love every stile and stump and lane in the
village," he said ; " as long as I am able to hold a brush
I shall never cease to paint them." Hardly recognised, as Ave
have said, as a great artist until the Exhibition in Paris in
1824, Constable died in 1837 at the age of sixty; but the
maker of modern landscape had done his Avork.
42 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
Other landscape-painters of the period, whose names
cannot be omitted even from this most jejune sketch of
early nineteenth century art, were John
johnLinneii. Linnell and Francis Danby. The attitude
of both towards their subject was infinitely less devout, if
we may use the phrase, than that of Constable ; yet Lin-
nell did to some extent for Surrey what Constable did for
Suffolk. He was born in 1792 in London, and while very
young entered the studio of John Varley, the water-colour
painter, and had Mulready for a fellow-student. Before he
was thirteen he was admitted to the Royal Academy School,
where he was a great prize-winner. Three years later his
landscape, " Removing Timber in Autumn," obtained a prize
of 50 from the British Institution. He was an ardent
worker, drawing much from the antique, and, as has been
admirably said, " the stringent influence on his mind of the
Elgin marbles largely helped to preserve for him an ideal
and poetical attitude towards Nature." Notwithstanding his
early success he found a very scanty sale for his landscapes,
and his house was crowded (as Gainsborough's had been)
with canvases that nobody seemed to want. He was thus
driven to eke out a living by painting portraits, and Thomas
Carlyle, before he was a famous writer, sat to Linnell before
he was a famous painter. Curiously enough, his portraits
are markedly wanting in idealisation, being tight in execu-
tion, literal and prosaic. On the other hand, his landscapes,
even the most defective of them and occasionally he failed
totally both in texture and tone are remarkable for their
strongly emotional character. He was born a Baptist, and
subsequently became a Plymouth Brother ; but he was at all
times an ardent theologian, and some of his best pictures,
such as the "The Eve of the Deluge," with the superb
menace of its crimson and orange sky, are in the nature
of Biblical illustrations. Though early gaining distinction
as a student, he was never a member of the Royal Academy.
His name was on .the list of aspirants for many years, but
he was passed over so frequently that, in disgust, he with-
drew his candidature. Many years later, when material
success had long been assured, he was invited to allow
himself to be proposed again for the Associateship, but he
declared himself too old for that probationary honour, and
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 43
1832]
as the rules did not permit a direct election to full member-
ship, he remained outside.
A more eccentric personality was that of Francis
Danby. He was an Irishman, the son of a
small Wexford farmer, whom the Rebellion
of 1798 drove into Dublin. In 1820 he made a mark
by his highly dramatic (almost melodramatic) " Upas-tree."
It is a vivid rendering of the fable that the poison of this
terrible tree was obtained by criminals sentenced to death,
who risked their forfeited lives to obtain it, and the setting
is a dark and precipitous gorge, the bottom encumbered with
skeletons, dead men and beasts and birds, all seen under a
broken moonlight. This was followed by "Disappointed
Love " a girl meditating suicide, in appropriate surround-
ings. The pictures by which Danby is, however, best re-
membered are sunset effects. No man has been more
successful in painting the fiery orb of the sun low on the
horizon, when the violet rays are cut off by the depth of
moist atmosphere. It was one of these studies that opened
the way of fortune to the painter. His " Sunset at Sea
after a Storm," with its red, lurid light on the broken waves,
where a helpless raft lies tossing, was purchased by-Lawrence,
and the next year Danby was elected an Associate of the
Royal Academy. But a domestic esclandre, in which the
culpability of the painter is admitted, wrecked his career.
He was forced to quit the country, and for twelve years after
1829 he resided in Switzerland. He then returned, but the
Academy never forgave his early indiscretion, and he re-
mained a sort of pariah till his death. In this latter time
he painted some excellent pictures, one in particular, " The
Grave of the Excommunicated," a superb rendering of moon-
light, with the deep colour in the interspace of open sky,
and the hint of saffron on the racing clouds. At times, too,
particularly in dealing with subjects like the " Passage of
the Red Sea," where the pillar of fire fairly puts out the sun-
set, he shows a feeling for the terrible which is rare amongst
English artists. He did not die until 1853, but the best of
his work was done in the twenties and forties of the present
century.
To this class of painters, if to any, we suppose that John
Martin belongs. Like Bewick and Good and many others,
44 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
he was a North-countryman. He was born in 1789, and
learnt the rudiments of art from an Italian
named Musso, who practised at Newcastle as
an enamellist and painter of miniatures, with whom he came
to London. He, however, soon left his master, prosecu-
ting his studies in absolute solitude, and giving great
attention to architectural drawing. He began to exhibit at
the Academy as early as 1811. Ten years later he painted
the " Belshazzar's Feast," a grandiose perspective of im-
possible architecture. Thenceforward he painted a series of
similar subjects, such as "The Deluge," "The Last Judg-
ment," " Nineveh," etc. There is something very imposing in
many of his pictures, although the action and expression of
his figures is ill chosen and " bombastic." But his brush-work
is inferior, his methods mechanical, and his colouring, as a
rule, painfully inharmonious. The best that can be said
of this artist, who enjoyed a great reputation in his day,
was said by Wilkie, who declared that " although weak in all
those points in which he can be compared with other artists,
he is eminently strong in what no other artist has at-
tempted." He is best seen in his engravings, particularly
where the scale is small ; such, for instance, as the illus-
trations for Milton, where the faulty drawing is less apparent
and there is no colour to be objectionable. It has been
suggested that Martin was always slightly mad. and there
is much in his work to justify the notion.
While Martin, as we have seen, was devoting his best
efforts to painting: imaginary architecture,
Samuel Prout. ,, ,. ,. J ..?,. . 6 ,. , J
the artistic possibilities or the reality were
being illustrated by the admirable water-colours of Samuel
Prout, and a little later by the work of David Roberts. Prout
was a Plymouth lad, and the schoolfellow and companion
of Haydon. His first employment was in making draw-
ings for "Picturesque Beauties of England," which was
published by one Button. He first exhibited at the
Academy in 1804, being then only twenty. At first he
seems to have desired to be a marine painter ; but his true
vocation was towards architecture, and in the years from 1815
to his death, in 1852, he poured forth an innumerable series
of studies of Gotjiic porches and towers, and Venetian and
Genoese palaces 5 .of Norman and Breton markets. His work
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 45
1832J
is frequently inaccurate in detail, but lie never fails to make
a picture.
In the same sequence we must mention David Roberts,
the Scotchman, born in 1796, who towers
above all the architectural artists of his
time. He was the son of a shoemaker, and was bred a house-
painter. Thence he advanced to the theatre, where he
probably first learnt the knack of painting buildings. It is
probable, too, that he acquired in the same rough school
his extraordinary skill in selecting the main lines which
must be inserted, and in indicating the rest by the most
shadowy suggestion. He joined the Society of British
Artists in 1824, and two years later sent his first picture to
the Academy, which gave him a kind reception. Meanwhile
in the pursuit of subjects he went even further afield, and
from Dry burgh and Melrose we find him going on to
Rouen and the Normandy towns, the Low Countries, Spain,
and even Morocco. Some of his most famous works, like
" The Gateway of the Great Temple, Baalbec," and "The Ruins
at Philoe," were the result of journeys in Syria and Egypt.
Of the Scotsman Wilkie we have already spoken
(Vol. V., p. 558) as the true founder of genre painting
in England, and his work, until he was
bitten by the oastrum of the historical school,
is the best of its kind. His greatest rival,
though his fame has been long on the wane, was the Irish-
man William Mulready. He was born in county Clare in
1786, the son of a breeches-maker, but the family passed
over to London, where the boy attracted the attention of
various artists, notably of Banks the sculptor. At fourteen
he got his student's ticket for admission to the Academy, and
five years later married the sister of John Varley, the water-
colourist. His " Fairtime," with the two tipsy countrymen,
now in the National Gallery, " The Fight Interrupted," with
the beaten school bully, " The Wolf and the Lamb," and
" Choosing the Wedding Gown," sufficiently gauge and
sample his talent. He was indefatigable in drawing from the
life, and many of his studies are masterly in the highest
sense. He was also an ingenious designer, as indeed is
visible in the famous " Mulready envelope," executed for the
Post Office in 1840 (p. 241).
46 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
Just the opposite may be said of his friend Leslie, who
without much feeling for colour, and not a
" rea ^ draughtsman nor a brilliant master of
the brush, is still one of the most popular of
English artists. This is obviously due to the fact that his
works without exception show a feeling for beauty of the
most healthy, if not the highest, kind, and an appreciation of
humour which is at once entirely sympathetic, yet entirely
refined. Indeed, the vulgar element in a subject frequently
disappears (not without some loss of dramatic force) in pass-
ing through that happy temperament of his; look, for instance,
at " Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman in the Sentry Box,"
now in the National Gallery. The pure gold of Uncle Toby
needs no refining, but the widow how immensely more
refined is Leslie's pencil than Sterne's pen! Charles
Robert Leslie, though born in London, was bred in Phila-
delphia. His parents were poor, and he was apprenticed to a
bookseller; but a chance sketch which the boy made of Cooke
the tragedian (who was starring in the Quaker city in the
character of Richard III.) induced his generous master to get
up a subscription to start him as an artist. He was just
seventeen when he sailed. The Americans, West and Allston,
opened their studios to him ; and at the Academy he studied,
or idled, under the so-called instruction of Fuseli. His first
efforts were in emulation of his countrymen, whose historical
pictures were the fashion; but his first great success was
with " Sir Roger de Coverley at Church," a subject in
exact accord with his own gentle and humorous spirit. From
this time forth a succession of genre pictures, from. "Don
Quixote," from the comedies of Shakespeare, and from the
English, and occasionally the French, humourists occupied
his time. He went back to America for a year, but
returning in 1834, lived the rest of his life in England.
Nor is there any painter of them all whose work, both in
its merits and defects, is more thoroughly English in feeling.
He attained full Academical honours in 1826, and after a
life of distinguished success lie died in 1857, universally
beloved.
With a more delicate sense of colour, but an inferior
executant, Gilbert Stuart Newton falls naturally into the
place after Leslie. Like Leslie, he came from the other side
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 47
1832]
of the Atlantic, having been born in Halifax in 1795. He
came of an artistic stock ; his father had
. , .. . G. S. Newton.
practised as a portrait-painter m America.
He was a good deal influenced in his choice of subjects by
Washington Irving. Many of them are Spanish, such as
" Camilla introduced to Gil Bias at the Inn " ; but he was
cosmopolitan in his tastes, and his " Portia and Bassanio " at
Kensington and " Yorick and the Grisette " in the National
Gallery, fairly gauge his talent. This, without being at all
great, has attractive peculiarities, the chief of which are his
keen eye for the subtleties of humour, and his real admir-
ation of innocent beauty.
Half-way between the painters of landscape and the
painters of genre come the painters of what
has been conveniently called " out-of-doors ^im
genre," that is, of landscape with figures, the
figures being introduced not merely to give accent to the land-
scape, but so as to constitute the predominant interest in the
picture. Though not as a rule men of great talent, they form
a group of some importance in this period. One such was
William Collins, the son of a picture-dealer in Great Titch-
field Street, London. He was born in 1788, and so was
a few years younger than Wilkie, whose fellow- student he
was at the Academy school. The family had a business
acquaintance with the ne'er-do-weel Morland, from whom
Collins received much instruction, and from whom he
doubtless imbibed that strong sympathy with the country
and country life that makes his principal charm. His was
a little talent, but it was exactly in accord with the humour
of his countrymen. His best work was executed between
1812 and 1836, in which last year he made a Continental
journey, remaining in Italy nearly two years. This was
still more injurious to him than a similar sojourn was to
Wilkie, and Collins's later pictures, which include such am-
bitious subjects as the " Disciples at Emmaus " and " Our
Lord among the Doctors of the Temple," are deplorable.
An infinitely sounder talent was that of his contemporary,
Thomas S. Good, the son of a Berwick trades-
man. It is not known whence came his
singular skill. He painted good portraits, including one of
Bewick the engraver, and also many specimens of indoor
48 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
and outdoor genre. His figures are masterly, and for strength
of drawing and brilliancy of touch, though the scale he uses
is small, he is second to none of his contemporaries. He
painted many groups of smugglers, fisherfolk, and the like, in
which he brings in, with excellent discretion, the rough cliffs of
the Northumbrian coast. He is best seen in these examples,
as they permit us to gauge his mastery both over landscape
and figures, and the certainty with which he can render atmo-
sphere and textures, the oily surface of a calm sea, the rich
dulness of old leather, or the silvery haze over the shining
sands. Good's artistic gift was, in truth, admirably round
and complete ; but lacking, as by ill luck it did, both the
stimulus of ambition and the goad of poverty, it wasted itself
on trifles and in the obscurity of a petty provincial town.
One hardly knows whether England can fairly claim
Richard Parker Bonington as one of her
Bonington. ,. , -,-> , , ,, ,
artists. But he is one of the rare geniuses
that belong wholly to the period under review. His father
was governor of Nottingham Jail, but in 1816, at the age of
fifteen, the son was sent to Paris, where later he entered the
studio of Gros. His career was of the shortest. In 1824,
when he was already famous in Paris, he exhibited a series
of Venetian sketches in London, which excited universal ad-
miration. His versatility was amazing, and he has left behind
works that are almost masterpieces, both in genre and in
landscape. His genre subjects, chiefly taken from French
history episodes in the lives of Henry IV., Francis I., and
the like are of quite singular distinction. Never stagey or
melodramatic, he has the finest instinct for naturalness and
simplicity of pose, and in these interiors he shows himself a
master of rich colour and of warm atmosphere. But it is
as a landscape-painter, even more than as a painter of genre,
that Bonington wiU be always attractive to his countrymen.
He is as thorough a plein-airiste as Constable, and with a
wider sympathy. Storm and sunshine, the gold of Venice
in autumn, and the grey of the Channel coast in winter,
serve him equally well. His short working life was prolific,
and his death, though England first heard his name only
some three and a half years before he died, was rightly
described by Sir Thomas Lawrence as a national misfortune.
It was caused by sunstroke, got while sketching in the
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 49
1832]
environs of Paris. He came to London in the hope of re-
covery, but disease attacked his lungs, and thus the artist
of, perhaps, the greatest promise born in England in this
century was cut off at the age of twenty-seven.
One of the most singular products of the age was William
Etty, who, coming, as it were, from no school,
11 u i j i rn William Etty.
and leaving behind him no followers, suc-
ceeded by sheer individual force of will. He was the son of
pious Methodist parents, bakers by trade, and was born in
York in 1787. A generous uncle, who admired the boy's
passion for drawing, brought him to London, and at the
age of twenty entered him as a student at the Academy.
His first efforts were in landscape, where he had little success,
and his attempts at portraiture, even after a year's instruc-
tion in Lawrence's studio, were equally futile. Afterwards,
as he says in his quaint autobiography
" When I found that all the great painters of antiquity had become thus
great through painting great actions and the human form, I resolved to
paint nothing else. And finding God's most glorious work to be woman,
that all human beauty had been concentrated in her, I resolved to dedicate
myself to painting not the draper's or milliner's work, but God's most
glorious work more than ever had been done before."
No painter was more slow in obtaining success. He never won
a prize at the Academy, and it was not until 1821 that he
made his mark with " Cleopatra sailing down the Cydnus."
He had already been abroad for short periods, but soon after
that success he made a long stay in Italy, where his work
proved popular amongst the Italians, the Venetians electing
him a member of their Academy. At home, however, he was
chiefly an artists' favourite. Thus it was Lawrence who bought
his " Pandora," and helped him to the Associateship of the
Academy, which he obtained in 1824, and John Martin became
the purchaser of his fine picture of " The Combat : Woman
pleading for the Vanquished." The unpopularity of Etty's
pictures in which, true to his original aim, " woman, not the
draper's or milliner's work," was the principal subject is a
curious sign of the times. They often show not only a pro-
found appreciation of sensuous beauty, but a true feeling for
decoration. His flesh, too, is frequently clean and sweet in
colour, though somewhat generalised in texture, and look-
ing at this day somewhat wanting in transparency. One may
E VOL. VI.
50 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
add that his nude figures, his " Heros " and " Andromedas " are
singularly inoffensive, and there is not a hint of salacity in
the whole series. But English society, which looked to
George IV. for its standard of purity and refinement, seems
to have been genuinely shocked at the very moderate realism
of the Nonconformist painter.
The time of the Regency and when George IV. was
king was a considerable epoch in the history
of water-colour painting. We have already
described the art of Samuel Prout, one of its most accom-
plished exponents, as falling naturally among the painters oi
architecture. But the list of his brother-artists, found at the
same time in the maturity of their powers, is long and
important. Besides Prout, there is Heapley the figure-painter
John Varley the great teacher, De Wint, Robson, Copley
Fielding and David Cox, the early plein-amstes, and Hills the
animal-painter. A little later we have Cattermole the draughts-
man of dramatic genre, William Henry Hunt the master of still-
life, Lewis the great Oriental colourist, and Samuel Palmer.
Of these Prout, Heapley, Hills, Varley, De Wint, Cox, and
Fielding were born, all of them, in the first fifteen years oi
the last quarter of the eighteenth century, while another two
decades saw the birth of the rest. Of these, special mention
must be made of Copley Fielding and David
Cox. The former was a great talent led into
overproduction and emptiness by popularity. But seen at
his best he is second only to Turner in the rendering oi
spacious, airy perspective.
David Cox, "the inspired sketcher," is still more eminent^
holding, in relation to water-colour, a position analogous
to that of Constable in regard to landscape in oils. He was
the son of a Birmingham blacksmith, and was preserved,
by the fortunate accident of a broken leg, from following
his father's trade. A box of toy paints given to the sick
child determined his future career. With a few lessons
from one Barker, a local drawing-master, and such hints as
he could pick up at the theatre, he rose to be scene-painter
in his native town, and in a like capacity served various
travelling companies. Tired of this wandering life, he
came to London, fell in with Varley, who invited him to his
studio. But he himself was in truth his only master.
PEACE, RLTRENCHMENT, AND HE FORM.
1832]
Owing to his imperfect training, exactness of outline and
modelling were at all times difficult to him ; but he supplied
the defects by a masterly precision and harmony of colour,
and an exact feeling for mass and for the graduated dimness
of a far-reaching prospect. The result is that the facts of his
landscape swim up out of the haze, like the real things oi
earth out of the air-clothed distance. His execution is
remarkable ; for with an unequalled subtlety and perfection ot
tone, and a poetical imagination guided by infallible taste,
is combined the loosest possible handling, in which truth of
form is always neglected for truth of generalisation. He has
even been compared with Turner himself. But Turner may be
said to have mastered the whole range of landscape beauty ;
the whole earth is his province ; Cox is satisfied with one
corner, England and Wales, and the beauties of its temperate
climate. But within his range he was without a rival.
Born in 1788, he lived till 1859, and, working till his death,
left behind him a vast body of precious drawings. In
later years he painted almost entirely at Bettws-y-Coed, in
North Wales, finding in that beautiful valley, its steep
mountain sides and its foaming torrents, just such inspira-
tion as Constable found in the flat Suffolk plain and the
slowly-moving Stour.
SEVENTY years ago England, without possessing any very
eminent composers of her own, was already
H. SUTHERLAND well in touch with the leading masters of the
Music. Continent. Beethoven had just written his
Ninth Symphony for the Philharmonic So-
ciety, and Weber his Oberon for Covent Garden. Rossini
had but recently visited London, where he engaged (ac-
cording to the memoirs of the period) to compose for the
King's Theatre an opera, to be entitled Ugone Re d' Italia,
which, for some unexplained reason, was never finished.
London maintained at that time two important concert,
societies the before-mentioned Philharmonic and the Society
of " Antient " Concerts to give the qualifying word its own
significant spelling. Much of the modern music of those
days is "antient" now, especially the music of the operatic
stage. Rossini had with Semiramide just finished his Italian
E2
52 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
career, and was about to establish himself in Paris, where
he was to produce a series of operas, renovated or altogether
new, ending with his masterpiece, Guillaume Tell. Donizetti
and Bellini were as yet unknown, while Meyerbeer was known
only as a composer of Italian operas, Margherita d'Anjou
and II Crociato ; the latter work remembered only in the
present day as the last in which that highly artificial vocalist,
the male soprano, was heard.
The two great concert societies, to both of which it was
a distinction to belong, pave between them
The Opera. ,
twelve concerts in the course or the year.
At the Italian Opera, of which the King's Theatre (afterwards
Her Majesty's) was the scene, there were two performances
each week during the season. The subscribers belonged
almost exclusively to the aristocracy, and the gatherings
between the acts in the so-called foyer were assemblies of
rank and fashion such as might have taken place, as the
result of invitation, at the house of some great nobleman.
The subscribers, all belonging to the same set, did not sell
their boxes to outsiders when they were unable themselves to
use them. They placed them at the service of friends.
The prices of admission were very moderate compared
with those charged in the present day. Stalls had not yet
been introduced. But a ticket for the pit cost eight and
sixpence if bought in advance, or ten shillings if paid for
at the doors on the night of performance. The singers
received about a tenth part of what is paid to them now,
except in the case of some phenomenal star like Catalan!,
to whom everything was sacrificed, and who took, by way of
remuneration, the whole of the receipts, minus such expend-
iture as was absolutely inevitable, together with a trifiing
little bit for the unhappy manager, who then, as now, what-
ever efforts he might make to keep his head above water, was
sure to go under at last. No more appropriate phrase could
have been put into his mouth than the one assigned to him
by a writer on this subject : Bankru2iturus vos salutat !
But the operatic gladiator was a personage so long as the
struggle was kept up. He lived sumptuously, and, for a
time, was one of the lights of the artistic and fashionable
world.
The singers (who had not yet learned to describe them-
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 53
1832J
selves as "artistes") were looked upon in the best society
as mountebanks of a superior kind. They were engaged to
sing at evening parties, but, far from being allowed to mingle
with the guests, were penned off like cattle in their own
allotted corner of the room. Rossini, whose first visit op.
reaching London was, by his Majesty's special desire, to King
George IV., could not but be treated with honour where-
ever he went. Spohr, too, arriving with introductions from
some of the most important personages in Europe, treated
as equals those whom he could not possibly look upon as his
superiors. He ignored the silken cord which separated the
singers and musicians from the company whom it was their
duty to entertain. But before ignoring it he had noticed its
existence, and he speaks of it with amazement in one of his
letters from England. It was always let down, too, for Henrietta
Sontag, who, besides introductions from members of the Prus-
sian Royal Family, had brought letters to England from
Goethe. The old poet admired her on the public stage, and
adored her in private life, telling Eckermann that though it
was "a joy to hear her sing," yet that to converse with her
was, still more emphatically, a " sweet delight." To the last a
passionate worshipper of charming women, he had a corre-
spondent in London who kept him constantly informed as to
Son tag's movements, and he heard with satisfaction that she
was everywhere and in all kinds of society appreciated at
her true worth.
Music, however, in those days, was not thought much of
in England. The spirit was still among us
of Lord Chesterfield telling his son not to The Social
n i A i_ : ' ./ j.ji 1 i Estimation
learn to play the fiddle when, by paying of Music,
money, he could get someone else to play it
for him ; which is about as sensible as it would be to tell a
lover of pictorial art not to paint pictures himself when, at
so much apiece, he could get pictures painted for him.
In the early part of the century, and even a little later,
the study and practice of music was really looked upon as an
unworthy occupation for gentlemen, because an unmanly one.
Not seventy, but scarcely more than fifty years have passed
since an undergraduate at Oxford was hissed, hooted, and put
to flight because at a local concert he ventured to play the
piano. Now and then a lord came forward as an amateur
54 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
composer the Earl of Mornington, for instance, and, again,
the Earl of Westmorland. But these were the eccentricities
of great noblemen. Besides, they did not play. They hired
(though in no Chesterfieldian spirit) musicians to play for
them.
Lord Westmorland's most important work in connection
with music was the establishment of the Royal Academy,
which at once underwent the influence of the recently founded
Conservatorium of Leipsic under the direction of Mendelssohn.
It was by Mendelssohn himself, rather than by his great
music-school, that the influence was exercised. Two, in any
case, of the best of our Royal Academy students, William
Sterndale Bennett and George Alexander Macfarren, went to
Leipsic, where, thanks to Mendelssohn's recognition of their
remarkable talent, several of their orchestral compositions
were produced at the Gewandhaus concerts. Each of these
composers became in due time chief of the institution at
which, as young men, they both had studied.
GEOLOGY as a science had a long infancy. At the end of
the last century it was still far from the adult
sta e - The 3 7ear 1815 witn essed an event
which produced on the future of the science
effects hardly less important than those of the Battle of
Waterloo on the future of Europe. This event was the publi-
cation of William Smith's Map of the Strata
smith's O f England and Wales. It was the outcome
StratigrapMcal , , ,, . , ,.
Map, 1815. ot more than twenty years 01 indefatigable
labour, undertaken by a simple land surveyor,
dependent for a living on his professional earnings. It con-
ducted him to fame and to poverty. At the time when he
was engaged on his work geologists were divided into two
schools the one, often called the Neptunists, of which the
leader was Karl Werner, the eminent German professor;
the other the Vulcanists. These regarded as their founders
Dr. James Hutton, who died in 1797, and
his friend and expositor, Dr. John Playfair,
who was still living in 1815. Both were
born north of the Tweed, where, however, the disciples of
Werner found an able champion in the person of Professor
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 55
1832]
Kobert Jameson, who had studied under that master at
Freiberg in Saxony.
Werner's leading idea was that " the earth had been
originally covered with an ocean, in which the materials of
the minerals were dissolved." Out of this ocean he conceived
that the various rocks were precipitated, in the same order
as that in which he found them in Saxony ; hence, " on the
retirement of the ocean, certain universal formations spread
over all the globe, and assumed at the surface various
irregular forms as they consolidated." * He had indeed caught
a glimpse of a great truth in regard to the chronological
grouping of strata, but he had ignored many facts of primary
importance, even going so far as to assign to basalt an
aqueous origin. Hutton and Playfair, on the contrary,
repudiated ah 1 cosmological speculations, and sought to make
Nature her own interpreter. They explained the past by the
present, and appealed to the action of streams and sea, of
all the processes of decay and renovation still at work, to
account for the geological changes of which the earth's crust
bore record. Its history they deemed to extend back into an
illimitable past, for it disclosed, as they affirmed, no sign of
a beginning, or forecast of an end. At the date named the
Huttonian school certainly had prevailed in England, and it
had been strengthened by the foundation of the Geological
Society of London, in 1807, with the avowed object of
gathering facts as to the composition and structure of the
earth, without reference to questions of theory. But the
northern teachers of geology partly, perhaps, owing to local
circumstances had paid little attention either to fossils or
to the succession of the rocks established by them ; in other
words, either to palaeontology or to stratigraphy. The im-
pulse towards these was given by the work of William
Smith, and they became for many years the chief subjects
of study among English geologists.
The twenty years that succeeded the foundation of the
Geological Society was one of great activity
and earnest work in the science. This Society
numbered among its earliest members a
remarkable group of men, most of them still in the prime
of life, many of them fortunate in the possession of means
* "Life of Sir R. I. Murchison," by Prof. A. Geikie, vol. i., p. 100.
56 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
ample enough to free them from the fetters of a profession
or of business; men such as Buckland, Conybeare, De la
Beche, Fitton, Greenough, Francis Homer, MacCulloch.
Scrope, Sedgwick, Warburton, Whewell, and Wollaston.
These, where not original members, came dropping in
during the first dozen years of the Society's history, i.nd
were quickly followed by Lyell, Mantell, and Murchison.
Though one or two of the first group still adhered to the
old ways, and even undervalued palaeontology, the majority
of them went eagerly along the lines indicated by William
Smith, and addressed themselves to working out in detail
those stratigraphical facts which he had drawn in outline
with a master's hand. In 1825 a Royal Charter was granted
to the Geological Society, and the official recognition thus
secured subsequently assumed the more substantial form
of giving it a " local habitation " as well as " a name." *
At the date of the Society's charter the principal tasks
which awaited its members were two in number: one, the
extension of William Smith's method of arrangement to the
vast masses of rocks underlying the Carboniferous system,
rocks which, in other words, were more ancient than those
containing the coal-measures. These rocks, though sometimes
fossiliferous, were often, and this through great thicknesses,
apparently barren of life ; they were faulted, folded, affected
by disturbances and mineral changes to a much greater
extent than was usual with the more recent rocks ; they also
occurred in less accessible districts ; so that the geologist, at
first, had considered it the wisest course, on meeting with
them, to glance and pass on. He termed these collectively
"Transition" rocks, described them as "greywackes," and left
them for future work.
The other task was an extension of the Huttonian principle
which its author does not appear to have
CatastropMsts contemplated. Catastrophic geology, as it is
uniformitarians. now generally termed, was in vogue during
the first quarter of the present century. It
was then generally supposed that this globe had been the
scene of a series of catastrophes, each of which had closed a
* The Society was allotted apartments at Somerset House in 1828. and
transferred to its present abode in the new buildings of Burlington House
in 1874.
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 57
1832]
long epoch of comparative repose, had been fatal to all living
creatures, and had been followed by a new exercise of
creative force. The appearance of man and of the fauna and
flora which now exists upon the earth had been heralded by
the last of these catastrophes. Such notions served to avert,
at any rate to a considerable extent, the denunciations of theo-
logians, who viewed the new science with no little suspicion,
owing to the obvious difficulty of reconciling its results
with the statements in the book of Genesis ; but beyond all
doubt the supposed necessity of doing this was for a long time
a serious impediment to real progress. But as the fossil
contents of the earth became better known, and the strata
themselves were studied over wider areas, it became more and
more difficult to find any place for these epochs of catas-
trophic destruction, while examination into the action of
existing causes made their occurrence not only an unnecessary
but also a far less probable assumption. It had been long
supposed that the most recent and most superficial terrestrial
deposits bore unequivocal testimony to the action of at least
one mighty deluge ; but in regard to these also a few geologists^
more keen-sighted and thoughtful than their neighbours,
began to doubt not only the interpretation of the evidence,
but also the adequacy of the cause.
The leader of this band of sceptics, the man who may
claim to have done more than any other in
the present century to purge geology from
crude speculation and to vindicate its position
as a science, was Charles Lyell, the eldest son of a Forfarshire
laird, a young barrister, who joined the Geological Society in
1819, shortly after taking his degree at Oxford. He became
speedily enthusiastic in working out the succession of the*
Tertiary deposits, to which William Smith had paid less
attention than to the Secondary strata, and in a few years,
about 1827, conceived the idea of the book which after-
wards established his reputation. This, as he mentions in
1829, was to be entitled " Principles of Geology : being an
Attempt to explain the Former Changes of the Earth's
Surface by reference to Causes now in Operation." The first
volume of the work appeared in January, 1830, the second just
two years later, the third in May, 1833. In order to prove the*
gradual passage from past geological ages to the present one/
58 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
it was necessary to study the Tertiary deposits with ex-
ceptional care ; while to establish the adequacy of existing
causes, the effects they were still engaged in producing
had to be investigated. For both these purposes travel
beyond the limits of the British Isles was necessary. In them
the later half of the Tertiary record is extremely imperfect ;
in them we have no active volcanos or lofty mountains, no
glaciers, snowfields, or large rivers. During the five years,
beginning with 1828, while his book was in progress, Lyell
devoted nearly one-third of the time to travelling in France,
Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Sicily, besides paying a
short visit to an interesting volcanic district in Spain, as well as
continuing to make occasional excursions in his own country.
It was no light task that lay before him. Almost all the
leaders of his science were more or less imbued with catas-
trophic notions. Scrope, perhaps, of those already named, was
the only one who had heartily espoused the " Uniformitarian"
creed. But the wealth of illustration, and the sound inductive
reasoning exhibited in the " Principles of Geology," aided
by its lucid statement and polished style, dealt a blow to
catastrophic geology, which ultimately, though somewhat
slowly, proved fatal. The month of January, 1830, when
the first volume of the " Principles " appeared, may be called
not improperly the nativity of Modern Geology.
But during these years work had been begun in the for-
bidding region of " greywacke." The first
Englishman to seriously address himself to
solving the difficulties of the Transition rocks
was Adam Sedgwick, Professor of Geology at Cambridge. As
his first contribution to this subject, he determined in general
outline the nature and succession of the rocks in the Lake
District and Western Yorkshire, of which indeed he was a
native, for he was born at Dent, near Sedbergh, in 1786.
Sedgwick next attacked a still more difficult problem, the
geology of North Wales. Beginning the task in 1831 from
the northern border of the Principality, he laboured assiduously
to bring this region into order, notwithstanding its frequent
paucity of fossils, and its ancient flows of lava and beds of tuff,
the want of good maps, and sometimes of adequate accommo-
dation. It was a task of immense difficulty, but in the course
of about three years' hard labour it was accomplished so
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 59
1832]
effectually that hardly any changes of real importance have
been made in the upward succession which Sedgwick
established, from Anglesey as a base.
But the problem was almost simultaneously attacked from
another side, and in the opposite direction, by
one who had already co-operated with Sedg-
wick in the important investigation into the
Old Red Sandstone of Scotland, during the summer of 1827.
Roderick Impey Murchison began on the eastern border of
the more central parts of Wales and worked downwards from
the Old Red Sandstone, investigating the outcrops of the older
rocks as well as some of the deposits of later age in the neigh-
bouring counties of England and extending his researches
westward into the Principality so as to traverse the region
south of that in which Sedgwick was at work; in other
words, to the south, speaking generally, of a line drawn
from Oswestry to the estuary of the Dovey. The results
of this work were announced from time to time in com-
munications to scientific societies, and were finally embodied
in his classic work, " The Silurian System," which, however,
did not appear till the end of 1838. Meanwhile the two
friends combined to attack another great mass
of "Transition rocks," viz. that constituting
the larger part of Devon and Cornwall. This
work was carried on at intervals from 1836 to 1839, and
resulted in the establishment of the Devonian system of
geology. The existence of such a system was inferred on
Palaeontological grounds by Lonsdale in 1837, and it was sub-
stantiated by their investigations ; though the explorers them-
selves were at first reluctant to admit the general parallelism of
the rocks beneath the Culm Measures of this part of England
(identified with the lower portion of the Carboniferous system)
and of the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland and South Wales ;
ultimately, however, they became convinced of its accuracy,
and maintained it in their publications.
Difficulties, however, even prior to the publication of " The
Silurian System," had already arisen in regard to fitting
together the work of Sedgwick and Murchison in Wales
difficulties which doubtless might have been cleared up had
the two friends made a joint and thorough examination of
the borderland. These became the origin of a dispute which
60 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
ultimately led, about the year 1854, to a painful and lifelong-
estrangement. Of this controversy little need now be said.
At first sight it seemed one only of nomenclature viz.
whether a certain important series of rocks which Sedgwick
had made the upper part of the Cambrian system, as estab-
lished by him in North Wales, should bear this name, or be
designated Lower Silurian the name given by Murchison to a
series in his own region which had since proved to be generally
identical with the above-named portion of Sedgwick's Cam-
brian, instead of overlying it, as had been at first supposed.
The nomenclature, however, was held by Sedgwick to involve
a principle. He maintained that his Cambrian system was
accurate from bottom to top, and this contention has been
confirmed in its essentials by all later researches ; while his
opponent, by confusing the Caradoc and the Upper Llan-
dovery groups, had missed the great physical break which
split his Silurian system into two, and had left the lower
part in which also another serious error had been detected
without any definite base.
It is now very commonly held that the scientific question
is best solved by recognising three distinct systems that
is, by restricting the name Silurian to the upper division of
Murchison, and Cambrian to the lower and middle divisions
of Sedgwick's system, and by conferring a new name, Ordo-
vician, on the part which has been the subject of debate.
Want of space forbids us to enumerate in detail, though it
must not be forgotten, the advances which
were being made during all this time in
perfecting the work of William Smith among
the great masses of stratified rock overlying and including
the Carboniferous system. In this task also Sedgwick and
Murchison had taken a share, the former in papers on the
lower part of the New Red Sandstone (with the Magnesian
Limestone of North-Eastern England), completed in 1828, and
in one on deposits of the same age in parts of Cumberland
and Lancashire, in 1832 ; the latter in papers on the Lias and
Oolites of Scotland and of some of the Western Counties in
England, and on the New Red Sandstone of the Midlands.
But, meanwhile, Gideon A. Mantell had been labouring at
the Chalk and underlying rocks of South-Eastern England, and
had discovered those wonderful reptilian remains in the Sussex
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 61
133:1
Weald which were afterwards acquired for the British Museum.
Fitton had worked out the puzzling strata between the Gault
and the Weald ; Lyell, Webster, and other workers were
reducing to order the Tertiary deposits ; G. B. Greenough
had published, in 1820, his well-known map of England and
Wales ; and the " Outlines of the Geology " of the same
region had been described in 1822 by W. B. Conybeare and
W. Phillips. John Phillips also, the nephew of William
Smith, had published the first volume of his excellent
" Geology of Yorkshire " in 1829 ; W. Lonsdale began work
about the same time on the Oolites of Gloucestershire ;
and almost every part of the kingdom was being assiduously
searched for fossils. It must not be supposed that Scot-
land, the land of Hutton and Playfair, was neglected.
J. MacCulloch, an accurate observer and acute reasoner, had
been at work there for several years. He published his classic
book, "Description of the Western Isles," in 1819, and in
1826 began, in a systematic way, his geological map of Scot-
land, which, however, was not published till 1836, shortly
after its author's death. Lyell, Sedgwick, and Murchison,
not to name others, had contributed their quota of Caledonian
geology ; but Hugh Miller's remarkable discoveries of fossil-
iish among the Old Red Sandstone were not made known till
near the end of the decade. Ireland, also, had been explored.
R. J. Griffith, justly called the father of Irish geology, had
published a geological map of Ireland as early as 1812, and
was the author of many papers on this subject, but in this
country greater difficulties attended geological work.
Besides all this, the early years of the third decade of
the present century were signalised, not only
by the publication of Lyell's " Principles," but
also by the appointment of a staff of workers
for the Geological Survey of England and Wales. This was
undertaken mainly at the instance of H. T. de la Beche. A
little junior to Murchison, he also had held a commission in
the army, which he had resigned in 1817 and had devoted
himself to science. After a period of study on the Continent
he settled down to geology at home ; and then, in consequence
of a new Ordnance Survey of England, urged upon the Govern-
ment the importance of laying upon the maps the geological
boundaries, himself taking in hand, as an example, Devon
62 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
and Cornwall. The idea was adopted : a small staff, with
funds and quarters equally modest, was placed at his dis-
posal in 1832. As time went on the staff was augmented, the
work extended from Great Britain to Ireland, and a Museum
of Economic Geology begun, until, in 1851, the Survey was
removed to the present handsome building in Jermyn Street,
in association with the School of Mines, the organisation of
which had been in progress for several years (p. 369). On
the death of De la Beche in 1855, Murchisori became
Director-General, and held the post till he died in 1872. His
successor was A. C. Ramsay, who, on retirement in 1881, was
followed by A. Geikie, the present head of
the Surve y- The R y al Sch o1 of Mines had
been removed to South Kensington, and its
name has been recently changed to the Royal College of
Science. Except in one respect, to be mentioned hereafter, the
Survey, though it has been sometimes liable to the common
frailty that office is equivalent to inspiration has done
almost inestimable service, by its maps and memoirs, to
British geology.
DURING the early years of the century chemistry was the
science which, more than any other, in-
ckemStry tiuenced men's minds. It had been re-
cognised that knowledge was international,
and an honourable rivalry was set up for priority. Berzelius
in Sweden, Gay Lussac and Thenard in France, strove for
pre-eminence with Davy in England. The great scientific
periodicals were founded, and in full working order the
Annalen der Physik und Ghemie (1790), the Annales de
Chimie et de Physique (1789), and a few years later the
Philosophical Magazine (1797-98) and any new discovery
was subjected to the criticism of Europe. The Royal Society
and the Institute of France set an example to others of
interest in the science, and the happy fortune of the Royal
Institution in securing Davy as a lecturer
ensured its own success, and directed the
attention of the public to a lighter side of
science, which it has never lost sight of since. In 1816 Davy
dealt a first blow to the doctrine of Lavoisier, that all acids
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 63
1832]
must contain oxygen, by proving that what was then known
as oxyrnuriatic acid contained no oxygen, but was an un-
decomposed body chlorine. In 1813 Faraday (p. 184) was ap-
pointed an assistant at the Royal Institution, and Brande be-
came Professor of Chemistry on Davy's resignation of the post.
In his earliest lectures at the Royal Institution Davy had
laid stress on the connection between science and industry,
and some of his finest work was inspired in this way. His
lectures on agricultural chemistry lie at the root of all subse-
quent treatises on the subject, and he was the first to insist
that agriculture must look to natural science for a solution
of its problems. But a still greater example of the debt
of industry to science is the invention of the safety lamp
(1815 : p. 179) in direct response to an appeal from those
interested in coal-mining. With this discovery Davy's active
career comes to a close.
On the death of Sir Joseph Banks, Davy was elected
President of the Royal Society, Wollaston
(1776-1829) refusing to be put into nomina-
tion. While he had made few great discoveries, the volume
of Wollaston's work was considerable ; his invention of the
reflecting goniometer made modern crystallography possible,
and the method of working platinum was in the first instance
due to him. His cautious criticism was of the greatest service
in the long discussions of the atomic theory of Dalton.
In 1815-16 William Prout (1785-1850) published papers
on the relation between the atomic weights
of the elements and the density of their Hypothesis
vapours, in which the tenet was set up that
the atomic weights of the elements were multiples of that of
hydrogen the lightest element known. Perhaps an idea
from which such weighty theoretical conceptions have arisen
has never originated in such a faulty manner. Pr out's
own investigations are few and of no importance, but the
prospect afforded by him of a simple explanation of the
problem of the constitution of matter served as a spur to
further research, which has since disproved his hypothesis.
Brande (1786-1866), who succeeded Davy at the Royal
Institution, was not a man of great originality. He was con-
cerned with Faraday in the scientific study of coal-gas, and
was a well-known writer on chemistry. He founded in 1812
64 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
the Society for the Improvement of Animal Chemistry for
the study of physiological chemistry.
Another important work done in this period was Faraday's
achievement in 1823 of condensing chlorine
an( ^ a ^ ew otner g ases - The simplicity of the
process and the ability shown in dealing with
it marked him off as the only successor to Davy possible ; but
though he made several important chemical discoveries, and
notably that of benzine in the liquor obtained from condensed
coal-gas, his future career belongs rather to physics than to
chemistry. A new generation was, however, growing up
which succeeded to the achievements of Davy and Priestley,
Dalton and Faraday, and built on their foundation chemistry
as we know it to-day.
MANY events have combined to make the medical history of
the nineteenth century remarkable. The
D'ARCY POWER, restlessness of its opening years was a fitting 1
The Medical ,, ,. V ?. J , , , ,. '
Profession. prelude to the activity which has marked its
whole course. The first effect of educating
the rank-and-file of the profession was to evoke the critical
faculty, to overthrow authority, and to widen the outlook both
in medicine and in surgery. The medical practitioners in
England at the beginning of this century were the physicians,
the surgeons, and the apothecaries ; beneath these three
recognised classes was a group of nondescript persons calling
themselves surgeon-apothecaries, men-midwives, cuppers,
tooth-drawers, compounders and dispensers of medicines.
The physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries alone had received
even the rudiments of a technical education, and had sub-
mitted themselves to examination, but they formed the
minority of the profession. The host of general practitioners
had gained their knowledge empirically, were subject to no
controlling body, and were unrecognised by law.
The first movement in advance came from the ranks of
the profession itself. Improved methods
The Apothecaries' Q t eac hi n g showed the general practitioner
his ignorance. The better class amongst
them tried to benefit their fellows by making education com-
pulsory ; the baser sort endeavoured to limit competition by
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 65
1832]
establishing legal restrictions to the indiscriminate practice
of medicine. The objects of both parties were, therefore,
identical though their motives were widely different. The
two great corporate bodies of the kingdom were approached,
but neither the College of Physicians nor the College of
Surgeons was disposed to assist, still less to initiate, any
change in the system to which they had been accustomed.
Kecourse was then had to the Society of Apothecaries, which
had long fretted under the controlling action of the College
of Physicians. The company was induced to promote a Bill
in Parliament, and the Apothecaries' Act passed the Legislature
on January 15th, 1815. This Act marks a new era of medicine
in England, for it ordained that no one should practise r.s
an apothecary in any part of England or Wales without being
properly qualified : that the qualification should be ascertained
by examination, and that no person should be admitted to th r )
examination unless he had served an apprenticeship to an
apothecary of not less than five years, and could bring
certificates of a sufficient medical education and of good moral
conduct. Unlicensed apothecaries were punished by a fine,
and expressly debarred from recovering any charges claimed by
them in a court of law. The new Act did not affect chemists
or druggists, and the licensing powers of the Universities of
Oxford and Cambridge, of the Royal College of Physicians
and of the Royal College of Surgeons, were exempted from its
provisions. The Act introduced a new and important
principle into the practice of medicine, for the State then
affirmed it to be necessary for every medical man to give
evidence that he possessed a minimum amount of knowledge
before he entered upon the practice of his profession.
Hitherto, anyone might practice his art unmolested, unless he
desired to enter the Army or Navy, so long as he did not
encroach upon the privileges of the various corporate bodies
in the kingdom. The Society of Apothecaries executed its
difficult task with judgment, and a regular system of medical
education was soon developed.
The multiplication of the private medical schools was one
of the first results of the increased demand for medical
education. The schools were officered by able men recruited
from all parts of the kingdom, but their success made them
unacceptable to the medical schools attached to the larger
F V OL . vi.
66 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
hospitals in the metropolis. The teachers in the hospital
schools were conservative, and held the highest official
positions in the profession. The teachers in the private
schools were more progressive ; and though they were under
the control of the Colleges, who had the power to prescribe
the course of study, they had the teaching of the youth
who were to become the medical profession. The physicians
and surgeons triumphed for a time, and slowly each private
school disappeared. The teachers died, too often heart-
broken and impoverished, but their pupils survived, and
their methods lived and bore fruit, for in due season the
Colleges adopted and extended them.
Anatomy was the first branch of medicine to feel the
strain of the new educational requirements.
The Anatomy Act. -n i v i T V1
rublic and private teachers were alike
unanimous in insisting upon a thorough knowledge of the
human body as the only true foundation of medicine.
Anatomy, too, had the further advantage that, as it had some
affinity to an exact science, it was of great value as an
educational agent, an advantage it shared with classificatory
botany. Anatomy, then, was taught with eagerness, but its
practice was attended with the very greatest difficulty. No
provision was made by law for dissection ; dead bodies had
to be obtained by exhumation, conducted either by the teacher
and his pupils, or by associated bands of wretches known as
resurrectionists, or body snatchers. These methods led to
frightful abuses, which culminated in murder for the sake
of obtaining bodies. The atrocious crimes committed at
Edinburgh by Burke and Hare in the winter of 1827-28 led
to the appointment of a select committee to report to Parlia-
ment upon the proper means for securing and rendering
legal the practice of anatomy. Evidence was taken in May,
1828, and, after an abortive attempt in March, 1829, the
provisions of a simple but effectual Act for regulating schools
of anatomy came into force upon 1st August, 1832.
The closing years of the reign of George IV. were a
momentous time in the history of scientific
Hi lducation Cal medicine, for the medical profession was then
fully awakened to the necessity of providing
more than a minimum technical education. The idea of
establishing a liberal University in London which should
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 67
1832]
be free from the trammels of the older universities and
teaching bodies had been a favourite idea of the poet Thomas
Campbell. The idea became a reality owing to the energy
of Mr. (afterwards Sir) Isaac Lyon Goldsmid and of Lord
Brougham. Active measures were taken in April, 1825, to
found an establishment under the title of the London
University, and in the following year seven acres of freehold
ground were obtained between Upper Gower Street and the
New Road. Mr. Wilkins, R.A., immediately proceeded to
erect the present buildings upon the site thus acquired, and
professorial work was begun in them in the autumn of 1828.
The institution, commenced as a private enterprise, was strong
enough to obtain a charter of incorporation in November,
1836. Some opposition, however, having arisen, and King's
College having become incorporated in the meantime, a
separate charter was granted in the same year to a new
body, whose business it was to examine and not to teach.
This body obtained the title of London University a title
it still retains whilst the older teaching body in Gower
Street became known by its present name of University
College. The medical faculty was at first well represented
by excellent teachers, but internal dissensions soon drove
them out, and for the first few years of its existence the
faculty passed through most troublous times. The hospital
was founded on September 8th, 1828, as a dispensary, and
steps were almost immediately taken to equip it for such
clinical teaching as would render it most useful to the
medical students presenting themselves for degrees at the
London University.
The teaching of medicine up to this date had been most
defective in England. London then, as now,
had an inexhaustible supply of material for
the best clinical teaching, yet students like Robert Christison
coming from Edinburgh, where clinical methods were at their
best, could not conceal their astonishment at the supineness
OE the physicians and surgeons attached to the large metro-
politan hospitals. Such students made but a short stay here,
and, with a keen eye to their own interests, passed on to Paris
and Vienna, where clinical medicine and surgery were well
taught. A few names, indeed, saved the reputation of the
London physicians, and foremost amongst these was that of
F 2
68 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1315
Peter Mere Latham, a writer of pure English, the teacher
and friend of Sir Thomas Watson.
The revival of medicine was associated with, perhaps in
part was due to, the introduction about the year 1821 of
the stethoscope as an aid to diagnosis. Auscultation was soon
followed by percussion; both methods came to us from abroad,
and, like many great inventions, were received with ridicule.
They have revolutionised the practice of medicine, for they
render possible an exact diagnosis, and afford information
which the older physicians had been obliged to obtain from
the aspect and attitude of their patients.
Surgery was in a somewhat better position than medicine
during the first quarter of the century. The
skill and reputation of Sir Astley Cooper was
more than sufficient to maintain our reputation amongst
foreign nations, but the surgical acumen of Abernethy, the
penetration, the incisiveness, and power of expression of his
great pupil Lawrence, and the philosophy of Joseph Henry
Green advanced English surgery, and kept alive the traditions
handed down from Pott and Hunter. Too much time, how-
ever, was wasted by the leaders both in medicine and in
surgery in promoting what appeared to be the interests of
the colleges, and in those unprofitable squabbles upon questions
of internal economy which have so often proved the ruin of
the best minds in our Universities.
Specialism began early in the profession, and somewhat
earlier in surgery than in medicine. Diseases
Specialism. /> -, i -i i
of the eye seem first to have obtained special
attention during the present century, for the manipulations
needed to correct its defects are necessarily more delicate than
those required in many other branches of surgery. The Koyal
London Ophthalmic Hospital was founded as early as 1804,
whilst an institution with similar objects was established at
Charing Cross in 1816. Orthopaedic surgery was next made a
special study, and from 1830 it was looked upon as a distinct
branch by the surgeons who practised it. Aural surgery
became a specialty about the same time, but laryngology did
not come into existence until 1860. It cannot be doubted that
the subdivision which still increases in medicine and surgery
has had a baneful influence upon our profession. It has
destroyed our science, though it has improved our art by
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 69
1832J
giving to individuals that degree of mechanical skill which
is to be acquired by repetition.
It is pleasant to turn from the debased condition of
medicine and surgery at this time to the
- ., 1 r 1-1 j Morbid Anatomy,
more fertile ground or morbid anatomy and
pathology. The leaven of Hunter's influence still worked.
Baillie upon the medical side and Stanley in surgical
affections made careful and accurate observations upon
the anatomy of diseased tissues, whilst Sir Everard Home
continued to publish valuable papers of a more philosophical
character. The present superstructure of morbid anatomy
has been raised upon the foundations thus laid, whilst Brodie
and Wardrop, Bright and Hodgkin, Addison, Paget, and
Gull, have each in turn added to our stores of knowledge
and have rendered possible the most accurate diagnosis.
Such additions to knowledge were made formerly by in-
dividuals who could be named. It is now our good fortune
that they are made by whole classes of men who have
banded themselves together into the various pathological
societies which are to be found in each of the towns
where there is a medical school or a local hospital.
THE marvellous change developed in the condition of England
since the year 1815 is nowhere more visible
than in the manufacture of textiles. Old H. RIDDELL.
methods have given place to new ; me-
chanical arts and science have been lavishly
called upon in the invention and manufacture
of machinery, amazing in the complexity of its construction
and in the perfection of the result. This development is the
result of many forces, social and economic as well as inventive ;
but it is rather to the introduction of new processes, methods,
and machines, to which attention will be given in the brief
summary which follows.
At the beginning of the period under review this im-
provement in machinery and processes was actively in progress,
and has not ceased during the many years which have
followed, nor can it be supposed that the limit of skill,
ingenuity, or invention has yet been reached. In the early
years of the period the power-loom was just beginning to
70 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
come into use ; the mule had not yet come under the re-
forming hand of Koberts ; nor had Arkwright's slubbing and
roving frames been perfected by the adoption of Houlds-
worth's differential motion. The hand-loom still held its
ground. The advantage shown by the power-loom (Vol. V.,
p. 469) was so small, even so doubtful, that investment of
capital in such machines seemed almost certain to result
in loss. The number of such looms did not exceed four
or five thousand, and experienced observers were hopeless
of much increase. A contemporary writer took a most de-
spondent view of the future of the weaving trade. He said
" Whenever the great current of English twist flows freely into the
Indian market all the exertions to improve the steam-loom will he-
come futile, and all the capital and machinery employed in working it
a ruinous speculation. The Indian will obtain our twist, weave it into
cloth, return it to England, and, with all our boasted machinery, all our
steam-looms and their subordinate preparing machines, will undersell us
in our own markets."
The hand-loom then held its ground, and seemed likely to do
so indefinitely.
For many reasons the decay of the hand-loom industry
must be regretted. It was carried on essentially in the
homes of the weavers, providing employment for their wives
and children without confining them within a factory, and
it could be carried on in conjunction with agriculture. There
was no need for the workers to gather into towns, and it was
possible to carry on the trade under the most healthy and
wholesome conditions. With the extension of power-loom
weaving all this was changed. It was impossible to work
profitably without collecting a large number of looms into one
building, and the conditions which already obtained in the
spinning trade became more and more the rule in the
weaving. It was but slowly, however, that the hand-looms
gave way to their powerful rivals, and that cottage industry
was replaced by the factory system.
In considering the advance made by the textile manu-
facture it may be more interesting, and at the same time
more effective, to select a few branches of the trade, and
to follow in detail the more important changes and im-
provements in each. In any such selection the first place
must be given to the cotton trade, whether its importance
1832]
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 71
1832]
be measured by the number of workers employed, by the
capital invested, or by the total value of the product. The
linen industry may be chosen for the second position, affect-
ing Ireland in the main, as the cotton trade does England,
while jute may be looked upon as a trade especially belonging
to Scotland. Only a small space can be given to the silk
and woollen trades, not as of small importance or outside
the limits of the subject, but simply because the three
trades already mentioned may be considered as sufficiently
representative.
The cotton trade of England had made great advances
before the year 1815. The labours of Ark-
. i , / TT en i Tlie Cotton Trade,
wrignt and Hargreaves, 01 L/rompton and
others, had brought the spinning machinery to a state of
very considerable efficiency, and it became necessary to find
outlets for the twist which was poured forth so plentifully
and, comparatively, so cheaply. For this purpose the power-
loom was well adapted, and although its introduction was
slow and experimental, yet it was not long after the year
1815 before the advantage in its use became apparent,
and factories and looms rapidly multiplied. Thus while in
1815 there were in England not many more than 3,000
power-looms, five years later the number had grown to
12,000, and by 1825 the new machines numbered 30,000.
It was only by the help of improved construction and
the inventive skill of many ingenious men that the power-
looms obtained the decisive advantage over the old hand-
looms. Yet the advance was unchecked, although the
hand-loom trade fought hard, and perished fiowly. In
1825 it was estimated that there were still in England
250,000 hand-looms. In 1834, when the power-looms in
England numbered 100,000, a committee was appointed by
the House of Commons to inquire into the impoverished
condition of the hand-loom weavers. It had been repre-
sented to the House that the trade had fallen off and the
workers were reduced to destitution. The evidence given
left no doubt whatever of the terrible state of this once
prosperous trade. The finer and more skilled branches still
survived in comparative prosperity, but the weavers of such
goods as common cotton shirtings could no longer earn a
living, and those who could turn to no other employment
72 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
had become miserably poor. The fact was that their trade
was already dead, killed by the extraordinary productive
power of the t: steam" loom. Each power-loom could turn
out more cloth than a hand-loom, and at the same time
one weaver could attend several looms. Thus in power-
loom weaving one man could produce from six to eight
times more cloth than when employed upon hand work.
Production thus cheapened naturally led to increased con-
sumption, and thus reacted upon the spinning trade, which
became exceedingly prosperous. In 1815 82,000,000 Ibs. of
cotton were imported, and by 1830 the import had grown
steadily, until in that year it reached 247,000,000.
The years between 1815 and 1830 were marked by
continuous advance in construction and in
mvent i n > bth in weaving and in spinning
machinery. In 1820 the first mention of
the Jacquard machine appears in the patent list. It was
this invention which rendered possible the use of the power-
loom for goods of really complex patterns, and its intro-
duction into the English weaving industry was an event
of the greatest possible importance. Mrs. Dresser is credited
with being the first to use this machine in the Coventry
silk trade, and being thus the pioneer of the Jacquard in
England. Such a valuable invention could not be neglected
by her competitors, and the machines soon became common in
Coventry, but were not adapted to the power-loom for some
years. Inventions and improvements in power-looms during
these fifteen years belong rather to details of construction,
there being no single invention of startling importance.
It was quite otherwise in spinning machinery ; the years
1823 and 1826 were marked by the first
Improvements m . '.
spinning steps in two inventions ot revolutionary im-
Machinery. p Orta nce : the differential motion for the
slabbing and roving frames, and the self-acting mule.
It is not settled whether to England or America is due
the invention of the differential motion, but
there seems to be no doubt tnat Asa Arnold
first applied this exceedingly beautiful device
to cotton-spinning. It was patented by him in America in
1823, and in England by Houldsworth in 1826 in an im-
proved form. As applied to the slubbing and roving frames
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 73
1832]
by Houldsworth, the invention at once took rank as of the
very highest importance. The difficulty encountered and
overcome is easily understood. In throstle-spinning machi-
nery the resulting thread is wound upon the bobbin by
applying friction to the latter so as to sufficiently retard
its motion compared with that of the flyer. Thus it is the
thread which drags the bobbin round, and at the same time
bears the additional strain of the friction necessary to wind it
upon the bobbin. In the preparing frames, known as slubbers
or rovers, the bobbins were necessarily large and weighty, and
the yarn could not be given twist sufficient to strengthen it,
as such twist would render it altogether unsuitable for the
succeeding operation. It was therefore necessary to drive
the flyer and bobbin independently, and to maintain a proper
and exact proportion in their speeds. This involved altering
the speed of the bobbin at every reverse of the building
motion, as it was necessary to allow for the increasing diameter
upon which the yarn was wound. This was accomplished by
the differential motion in the neatest and most perfect way,
and it is difficult to see how the movement can possibly
be improved. Details of construction vary, but the prin-
ciple of the mechanism is to-day just as it was applied by
Houldsworth.
Roberts's invention of the self-acting mule made an even
greater advance in the productive capacity of
cotton-spinning machinery. Up till this time
the hand-mule was the machine most used in
spinning wefts, the throstle yarn being much better adapted
for strong warps. Indeed, it was impossible to spin weak
wefts to advantage in the throstle, owing to the yarn not
being sufficiently strong to drag round the bobbin. The cost
of spinning wefts of finer numbers was very heavy, being
about 5d. per Ib. for 60's. Gradually, however, about 1830, by
coupling mules together and applying power to help the
spinner with some of the motions, this last was materially
reduced. By the introduction of Roberts's mule, self-acting
in every movement, the cost became a mere fraction of the
5d., and the effect upon the trade may be easily understood.
Roberts took five years to develop and complete his inven-
tion, his final patent not appearing until 1831.
Richard Roberts was a man of great inventive power, who
74 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
conferred an enormous boon upon the cotton industry ; but,
unlike Arkwright, he seems to have been unable to derive
personal benefit from his many inventions, and was in
poverty at the time of his death. His mule remains un-
altered in principle at present, though wonderfully improved
in detail.
Many other inventors took part in the improvement of
the preparing and spinning machinery ; and such men as
Whytock, Smith of Deanston, and Evan Leigh contributed
much towards its present perfection.
After 1830, and up to 1851, progress in spinning was
chiefly obtained by continuous improvement
in details f construction and accuracy of
adjustment of the machinery employed, and
by the steady increase in skill of the workers. In weaving
machinery Kenworthy and Bullough made a noteworthy
advance in 1841 by introducing the weft stop motion; while
the invention of the double-acting Jacquard by Barlow, in
1849, was a real and most important improvement. By
careful attention to the details of loom-construction the
speed was greatly increased, and the use of automatic
machinery was greatly extended in the manufacture of
goods of increasing fineness and complexity.
The progress of the trade was great and continuous.
Thus, in 1835 the consumption of cotton was 318,000,000 Ibs.;
in 1840 it had risen to 459,000,000 Ibs., while in 1851 it
reached 659,000,000 Ibs. The trade had thus increased
eightfold in thirty-six years.
There is a common feeling that England has lost by such
free exposures of her best machinery and practice at the
great Exhibitions, of which 1851 was the first ; and there is no
doubt that foreign spinners learnt from the English show in
Hyde Park, and that valuable hints and ideas were carried
home from the centre of the cotton trade. At the same time
it is equally true that the English trade gained by the adop-
tion of at least one foreign invention shown, which cheapened
and greatly improved the production of fine yarns. This
invention was the combing machine of Heillman, and to this
extent the cotton trade of England gained by the great
Exhibition of 1851.
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 75
1832J
UP to the close of the eighteenth century, it was the excep-
tion, rather than the rule, to find the cultivators of the
soil dispossessed of all rights over the
land they cultivated (Vol. V., p. 100). The R. E. PROTHERO.
characteristic feature of the period in iso^iss^ 6
review is that, within its limits, this ex-
ceptional condition became the almost exclusive rule.
Between the years 1802 and 1832 the existing system of
British farming, by which land is owned by landlords, occupied
by tenants, and cultivated by labourers, became practically
universal. In this country it has been so long established as
to make the present generation forget that, in anything like
its present extent, it is not yet a century old.
We have already seen that the immense impulse given
nt the close of the eighteenth century to en-
closures of wastes, commons, and open-field Revolution in
,. n , , Land Tenure :
I arms reduced a large number ot cottagers, Enclosures,
copyholders, and cultivators of village farms to
the position of wage-dependent labourers (Vol. V, p. 458). In
the reign of George III. alone, 6,288,810 acres were enclosed.
Economically, there can be no question that the change was
advantageous ; it was, in fact, demanded by national necessities.
Without it the soil would have remained undeveloped, its
natural fertility neglected, its powers of supporting a growing
population wasted. It was calso urged, and with partial truth,
that enclosures were a moral gain, because the commoners
were an " idle, wretched class," who relied on a precarious sub-
sistence, eked out by pilfering. On the other hand, it was
contended that enclosures depopulated the country districts,
and inflicted irreparable injury upon the poorer classes. So
far from decreasing the rural population, experience proved
that their numbers were rather increased by a change which
extended tillage at the expense of pasturage. The real
argument against enclosures was the injury they often inflicted
011 the poor. In 1772 a remarkable pamphlet on "The
Advantages and Disadvantages of Inclosing Waste Land " was
written by "A Country Gentleman." The writer strongly
advocated a change which, as he showed, enormously profited
the landlord, the farmer, and the nation. But he also recog-
nised the loss which it inevitably entailed upon the "small
76 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
common-field farmer," who must necessarily become a " hired
labourer." To make the lot of these " reduced farmers " as
easy as possible, he recommended that " a sufficient portion of
land " should be " laid " to their cottages to enable them to
keep a cow or two.
The predictions of "A Country Gentleman " were re-
markably fulfilled, both as to the loss and the gain derived
from enclosures. Arthur Young, ardent advocate of the
change though he was, lamented its disastrous effect on the
general condition of the labouring population. Many of the
commoners failed to prove their legal rights ; others were
assigned too little land to maintain a cow; others were
persuaded to sell their allotments before, or after, the award
was made ; often the allotments were made to the owners and
not to the occupiers of the cottages. Sometimes, on the other
hand, the interests of the poor were carefully protected, strict
legal proof was not required, and sufficient land was allotted
for the summer and winter keep of their cattle. Young, in
"The Question of Scarcity Plainly Stated" (1800), advises
that every scrap of waste and neglected land should be con-
verted into possessions for the poor, and that all labourers
should be assigned gardens and grass-land for the keep of
one or two cows. Another writer, Thomas Wright, in " The
Monopoly of Small Farms a Great Cause of the Present
Scarcity" (1795), complains that England produced less
poultry, eggs, and pigs than formerly, and urges that associ-
ations should be formed to purchase large estates, divide them
into small farms, and let or sell them to small farmers. But
the mischief was already partly done. In 1801 Arthur Young
wrote a pamphlet " On Wastes," in which he gives the result
of some inquiries that he had instituted into the effect of
enclosures. " Many kept cows that have not since," is his
frequent summary of results. Out of thirty-seven parishes he
found only twelve in which the condition of the poor was
improved by the compensation for the loss of their commons.
" It is computed," writes the author of " A Plan for Believing
the Rates by Cottage Acres" (1817), "that, since the year
1760, there have been upwards of forty thousand small farms
monopolised and consolidated into large ones, and as many
cottages annihilated."
The sudden displacement of so many cottagers, commoners,
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 77
1832]
and open-field farmers, occurred at a difficult crisis. At the
moment when they lost the grazing rights on which their
existence depended, they also found their domestic industries
superseded by manufactured goods. Population was shifting
from the south to the north, and old markets were deserted
for those which now sprang up round the coal and iron
fields. As machinery was introduced, thousands of handi-
craftsmen were deprived of their livelihood. So long as the
French war lasted, the prices of necessaries were doubled,
yet wages remained stationary. When peace was proclaimed,
the disbanding of soldiers, sailors, and militiamen increased
the distress of the rural population. These difficulties were
aggravated by the mischievous administration of the Poor
Law. The weekly earnings of labourers were supplemented
from the rates by allowances for children, and the man with
the largest family thus became the cheapest implement for
the farmer to employ. Hence, also, single men were thrown
upon the rates, and improvident marriages were encouraged.
Napoleon was the Triptolemus of British farmers, who found
their profits swollen by the Corn Laws, improved markets, and
war prices, while their labour bills were paid by the ratepayer.
For landlords and tenants the period was one of unprecedented
prosperity ; for wage-earning labourers it was one of almost
unparalleled misery.
The reclamation of heaths and commons demanded a vast
expenditure of capital. An equally large
outlay was required to restore fertility to the ^ Farming 6
barbarously cropped and impoverished open
fields. But land was a profitable investment, and money was
poured into farming. Large landlords, like Mr. Coke of
Holkham, Lord Rockingham at Wentworth, the Duke of
Bedford at Woburn, Lord Egremont at Petworth, Lord Kames
and Sir John Sinclair in Scotland, put themselves at the head
of the movement of agricultural enterprise. The King re-
joiced in the title of " Farmer George," contributed articles,
under the signature of Ralph Robinson, to Young's " Annals
of Agriculture," kept his model farm at Windsor, and ex-
perimented in stock-breeding. Fox, even in Paris, considered
whether the weather was favourable to his turnips at St.
Anne's Hill, and Burke conducted experiments in carrots as a
field crop on his farm at Beaconsfield. Men kept their eyes
78 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
open for every new book which appeared on the subject of
farming, and Miss Edgeworth's volume on " Irish Bulls " was
ordered by the secretary of an agricultural society as soon
as it appeared. Nor were the clergy less enthusiastic. An
archdeacon, finding the churchyard cultivated for turnips,
rebuked the rector with the remark, " This must not occur-
again." The reply, " Oh, no ! Mr. Archdeacon, it will be
barley next year," shows that, whatever were the shortcomings
of the Church in the eighteenth century, her clergy were at
least alive to the importance of a proper rotation of crops.
In every department of agriculture a new spirit of energy
and enterprise was manifest. Rents rose, but the profits of
farmers outstripped the rise. New crops were introduced :
swedes, kohl-rabi, prickly comfrey, mangel-wurzel, were readily
adopted by a new race of agriculturists. New implements
were introduced ; Small's plough, Meikle's thrashing-machine
economised labour, while patents were taken out, between
1788 and 1816, for reaping, mowing, winnowing, and hay-
making machines, as well as for chaff-cutters, scarifiers,
turnip-slicers, food-crushers, and other mechanical aids to
agriculture. Cattle-shows and ploughing matches were held
throughout the country. Farmers' clubs and provincial
societies were established. The Bath and West of England
Society was founded in 1777, the Highland Society in 1784,
the Smithfield Club in 1793. In the latter year the Board of
Agriculture was established, with Sir John Sinclair as pre-
sident, and Arthur Young as secretary, and did useful service
by diffusing knowledge of the best agricultural practices, as
well as by conducting statistical surveys of the farming of
the whole country.
The early part of the period under review was one of
progress and prosperity. Under the stimulus of high prices
new land was brought into cultivation, and to obtain an
arable surface no labour or expense was spared. The new
system of large landlords, large farms, long leases, and large
capital was firmly established, and found in Mr. Coke of
Holkham its most sagacious and practical champion. His
estate-management, farm buildings and cottages were the
model of other landlords ; his sheep-shearings were meeting-
places for practical and theoretical agriculturists, for farmers
of every district, and breeders of every kind of stock.
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 79
1832]
In 1776 Mr. Coke came into his estate, with " the King
of Denmark as his nearest neighbour." Ex-
cluded by his politics from Court and Parlia- Mr - Coke's
, J , i n i /> Improvements:
ment, he devoted all his energies to farming. wheat-Growing.
He reaped a rich reward. Dr. Rigby, writing
in 1816, stated that the rental of the Holkham estate rose
from 2,200 in 1776 to 20,000 in 1816. When Mr. Coke
took his farm in hand he determined that he would grow
wheat on the sandy soil, which then yielded only a thin crop
of rye, and a bare subsistence for a few milch cows and
Norfolk sheep. He marled his land, purchased large
quantities of manure, trebled his live-stock, and in nine years
attained his object. A Yorkshire foxhunter in 1772 ac-
cidentally discovered the value of bones as manure, and Coke
at once realised the importance of the new fertiliser. He also
introduced into the country oil-cake and other artificial foods,
which, with the addition of turnips, enabled Norfolk farms to
carry more live-stock. He set the example of stall-feeding,
and the grass lands on which our ancestors had fed their beef
and mutton were deserted for the Eastern
Counties. Without deep drainage heavy rich
lands could not compete with the lighter soils under the new
system : and the older, but inferior, implement was discarded
The Norfolk fairs were crowded with half-fed Galloway Scots.
Highlanders, Lowland Scots, and Skye cattle, as well as beasts
from less remote districts, which were fattened in the Eastern
Counties for the London markets. Thus the Flemish proverb
proved true of Coke's farming : Point de fourrage, point de
bestiaux; sans bestiaux, aucun engrais ; sans engrais
nulle recolte. Nowhere in Europe were the grain crops
heavier than in the Eastern Counties, because nowhere did
the farmer command so abundant a wealth of manure.
Nor did Coke neglect the improvement of pasture. The
Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manu-
factures and Commerce had, in the middle
of the eighteenth century, offered prizes for the cleanest
meadows, in which were grown only the best sorts of grasses.
Stillingfieet, in 1760, had distinguished the good and worthless
herbage by excellent illustrations of the various kinds that
were calculated to produce the sweetest hay and richest
pasture. Yet Arthur Young, in his "Rural Economy,"
80 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
laments the neglect with which grass lands were treated.
Here again the want of deep drainage was severely felt; the
wet pastures favoured the growth of the coarsest and rankest
vegetation. If land wanted seeding, farmers threw on the
ground an indiscriminate collection of seeds, which often
contained as much rank weed or coarse grass as nutritious
herbage. Coke was the first practical farmer who appreciated
the value of distinguishing between the various kinds. To
the children of his tenantry he gave simple botanical lessons
during May and June, when the grass was in bloom, and
employed them to scour the country in search of the best
stock of seed. Even as meadows and pastures, the light lands
of Norfolk began to beat the undrained grass-lands of other
counties, in spite of their natural superiority in richness, out
of the market.
Convinced of the community of interest that exists
between landlord and tenant, Coke encouraged
^ s f armers to P llt more capital into their
land, stimulated their enterprise, and assisted
them to take advantage of every new improvement or
discovery. By offering leases for twenty-one years he
secured to his tenants a return for their outlay, while, by in-
serting clauses of management, and covenants for the adoption
of the Norfolk system of husbandry, he protected his land
against impoverishment by excessive cropping. The " Practical
Norfolk farmer " (1808) holds up Coke's example as in this
respect especially worthy of imitation. " In vain," he says,
"are Acts passed for the inclosing heaths and commons, if
the old cultivated lands are suffered to remain, by this
bar to improvement of having no leases, in a state of semi-
cultivation." Though long leases and clauses of management
were innovations, Holkham farms commanded the pick of
English tenants. Cobbett was no friend to landlords: but
even he acknowledged the benefit which the tenantry derived
from Coke's paternal rule. "Every one," he wrote in 1818,
" made use of the expressions towards him which affectionate
children use towards their parents."
The useful work which Arthur Young had done in dis-
seminating the latest improvements in farming
P ractice has been already noticed. Mr. Coke
followed in the same path. The Holkham
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 81
1832]
sheep-shearings did much to break down prejudices and
diffuse knowledge, and similar meetings were organised in
other parts of the county by such landlords as the Duke of
Bedford and Lord Egremont. The Holkham meetings began
in 1778, when Mr. Coke, then himself ignorant of farming
matters, gathered parties of farmers to his house to aid him
with their experience. From that time forward the gatherings
were held annually. Dr. Rigby in 1818 describes one of these
meetings, when open house was kept for a week, and hundreds
of persons assembled from all parts of Europe and America.
The mornings were spent in inspecting the farm buildings, the
crops and the stock; at three o'clock six hundred persons
sat down to dinner, and spent the rest of the day in speeches
and toasts.
The close of the Napoleonic War in 1815 terminated the
period of agricultural progress and prosperity.
,. n -, , r i \ The Fall in Prices
It was followed by twenty years of almost
unexampled adversity. Contracts of all kinds had been made
in the expectation that the inflated prices of the war would
continue to prevail. When these fell, landlords and tenants,
who had borrowed capital, were confronted with wholesale
ruin. Land had sold for exorbitant sums ; reckless com-
petition for farms had produced excessive rentals ; extravagant
standards of living, undue expenditure on buildings, had been
the result of inflated prices; heavy mortgages had been
charged on estates to meet annuities, legacies and portions,
which falls in prices rendered improvident and dispropor-
tionate ; invaluable pasture, which had been ploughed up in
years when wheat rose to 115s. the quarter, was ruined. War
prices and the Corn Laws made farming almost a gambling
speculation ; the wheat area alternately swelled and con-
tracted ; violent fluctuations in the purchasing power of money
accentuated the depression, which resulted in widespread
distress among both landlords and tenants, and aggravated the
bitter discontent of the agricultural labourer. The table of
the House of Commons groaned under petitions for relief.
Select Committees sate to investigate the crisis in 1820, 1821,
1822, 1833, and 1836. The evidence shows that the loss had
been enormous. It could scarcely have been otherwise when
prices dropped, between January, 1819, and July, 1822, in the
following proportions : Wheat (per quarter), from 74s. to 43s. ;
G VOL. VI.
82 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1816
beef (per stone), from 4s. 6d. to 2s. 5d. ; mutton (per stone),
from 5s. 8d. to 2s. 2d. To increase the misery, in 1810, 1824,
and 1830-1 the rot swept oft' vast numbers of sheep ; in the
latter year it is stated that two million perished. Richard
Preston, M.P., writing on "The State of the Nation," in 1816,
says that some of the best estates of the kingdom were selling
at a depreciation of 50 per cent., and that one of the finest
grass farms in Somersetshire sold at ten years' purchase.
Evidence given before the Select Committee in 1833 shows
that landlords had lost nine millions, by reductions alone, on
their rentals of previous years ; that many farmers had lost all
they had, and were working on the road ; that in the weald of
Kent and Sussex there was not one solvent tenant.
It was during this disastrous period that the old yeomanry
practically disappeared. More substantial
^ftS? Y*oSy e than the P en - neld farmers or cottagers, they
had maintained the struggle for existence
with more tenacity. The evidence of the Agricultural Com-
mission of 1 833 proves that they still existed in almost every
county : but their numbers had greatly diminished. The
causes of their disappearance are not difficult to discover.
Lambard in his " Perambulation of Kent," says :
" A man may find sundry yeomen (although otherwise for wealth
comparable with many of the gentler sort) that will not yet for all that
change their condition, nor desire to be apparayled with the title of
Gentrie."
A century later the Spectator thus describes a member of
the same class :
" He is a yeoman of about one hundi-ed pounds a year, an honest man ;
he is put within the Game Act, and qualified to kill a hare or a pheasant :
he knocks down a dinner with his gun once or twice a week, and by that
means lives much cheaper than those who have not so good an estate as
himself. He would be a good neighbour if he did not destroy so many
partridges ; in short, he is a very sensible man, shoots flying, and has been
several times foreman of the petty jury."
Towards the close of the eighteenth century men of this
class were still prosperous. In Hampshire, Vancouver (1813)
says that there were many farmers who were also " possessors
of small estates which their thrifty management keep upon
the increase." In Kent, Boys (1793) says that " the number
of the yeomanry of this county seems annually on the
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 83
1832]
increase. There is no description of persons who can afford to
give so ranch money for the purchase of an estate as those
who buy for their own occupation. Many estates in the
eastern part of the county have been so sold, within these
few years, for forty, and some for fifty, years' purchase, and
upwards." In Essex (1807) land was bought up by the
farmers, so that " there is a prospect of the tenure of land
returning to the conditions of the seventeenth century, when
the county was tilled with small gentry residing upon their
estates." In Berkshire (1813), Mavor reports that one-third
of the soil was cultivated by the owners themselves in small
estates. In Norfolk (1804) there was said to be an increasing
number of small estates. In Suffolk (1794) numerous yeomen
flourished, cultivating estates of value rising from a hundred
to four hundred pounds a year.
Similar evidence might be gathered from other counties
to show that the yeomanry had weathered the storm of
enclosures. But during the French war a very large number
had consulted their pecuniary interests by selling their estates
at the fancy prices which then prevailed. Those who retained
their properties too often mortgaged their land to make pro-
vision for their children, to increase or improve their estate, or
to erect farm buildings. When prices fell after the peace, the
debt remained. The struggle was brief. Their fanning de-
teriorated, their buildings fell out of repair, and finally their
estates were sold. The new purchasers were not small capi-
talists, but neighbouring landlords, or successful merchants.
In Yorkshire, for example, if one small freeholder went, his
place, in former years, was taken by another ; after 1820 this
ceased to be the case. In Kent and Sussex, again, many
freeholders retained their land by vigorous economy and by
wholly ceasing to employ labour ; but all who had mortgages
or annuities to pay were forced to sell.
The change is on social grounds deplorable enough ; but,
at the time, both economically and com-
mercially, the nation orained. Without capi- The Effect on
1111 -i i Agriculture,
talist landlords, agriculture could riot have
recovered from the prolonged misery of 1818-36, and its
rapid revival was due to the new conditions of British land-
ownership, which the nineteenth century saw firmly established
and daily becoming the almost universal system.
G 2
84 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
11815
THE war had severely strained national resources. Probably
one out of every six adult males served in the
j. E. SYMES. army, navy, or militia, yet the exhaustion of
'Economy. men was perhaps less felt than the exhaustion
of wealth. In 1778, Hume, the acutest of
living observers, thought that the size of the National Debt
threatened the very existence of the nation. Since then the
debt had more than trebled. In 1792 it was less than two
hundred and forty millions. In 1815 it exceeded eight
hundred and sixty millions.
There can be no doubt that it was the Industrial He-
volution (Vol. V., p. 601 seqq.) that enabled
our country to bear the great burden of the
war. Under its influence England had ceased
to be a mainly agricultural nation, and big towns with
factories and workshops had suddenly sprung up. Manchester
had already 140,000 people ; Birmingham 80,000 ; Sheffield
and Leeds each about 50,000. These numbers do not sound
very impressive to us ; but we must remember that only a
century earlier Manchester was scarcely more than a village,
with only 12,000 inhabitants. The total population of England
and Wales had risen, in spite of the war, from eight and a half
millions in 1790 to about eleven millions in 1815, and the
nation's wealth had increased even more rapidly. The wage-
earning classes had, however, gained little advantage from
this increase. Their wages had seldom risen proportionally
to the prices which they had to pay for the necessaries of
life. The new wealth which the manufacturing industries
were creating provided a fund from which the expenses of
the war were defrayed. It was those classes that had profited
by the industrial revolution who advanced the successive
loans ; though the masses had to bear a large share of the
burden of paying the interest on these loans. They escaped,
indeed, the income tax, which had now risen to two shillings
in the pound ; but indirect taxes were imposed on many of
the necessaries of life. Bread, boots, and salt may be taken
as specimens of the things that were taxed.
The most prosperous class, at the close of the war, was what
was described as " the landed interest." Every improvement
in manufacture had tended to raise rents. Every increase
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 85
1832]
iii population had operated in the same direction, while the
war had helped to keep up the price of
food. The farmers shared in the landlord's
prosperity. Their rents were seldom raised to
the full amount of the increased value of the land, and when
they held their farms on lease, they were able to gain the
whole increment, till such time as the lease expired. They
were naturally disposed to support a war which kept up
agricultural prices, and protected them from foreign com-
petition.
The large manufacturers were also fairly prosperous. The
war was a heavy burden on them, but the
Industrial Revolution enabled them, in many
cases, to build up considerable fortunes, by availing themselves
of division of labour, and other advantages of production on
a large scale. The gradual introduction of steam power, and
other improvements in cotton and wool spinning, more' espe-
cially the introduction of the power-loom (p. 71), gave great
advantages to those who were shrewd enough to avail them-
selves of these discoveries, and who possessed, at the same
time, exceptional ability for the organisation of labour.
Thus, landlords, farmers, and large manufacturers were
prosperous, but the bulk of the people suffered
f, T . ,, T -, 0/VI r 4 -, The Employed, 1815.
greatly during the war. In 1801 we hnd cotton
spinners working seventy-four hours a week for thirty-two
shillings and sixpence, which, at the then existing prices, was a
miserable pittance. The quartern loaf cost one and tenpence,
and butter was two shillings a pound. Many were driven to
substitute shell-fish for meat. Some ate nettles and weeds,
often without salt, for salt was taxed fifteen shillings a bushel.
Nevertheless, as long as the war lasted, popular discontent was
partly kept in check by patriotic feelings and by the hope of
better days when peace was restored. Reviews, illuminations
in celebration of victories, the public funerals of soldiers, and
the thanksgiving services in the churches, helped to keep up
enthusiasm, and to restrain dissatisfaction.
At length came the long expected peace, but it brought in
its train little or no alleviation of the general
misery. In fact, from the almost universal
complaints of bad trade and lack of employ-
ment, we should gather that the early years of the peace
86 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
actually aggravated the sufferings of the masses. Some
allowance must, no doubt, be made for a natural reaction.
The cessation of war had been so hopefully looked forward
to, that, if it brought no alleviation of poverty, it was almost
certain that people would think and say that things were
actually worse. Nevertheless, after due allowance for this,
the balance of evidence seems to show that the country
suffered more during the years 1815-21 than during
the war.
Various explanations have been given of this state 01
things. It is evident that the restoration
"forLatSu? d ot P eace cut off the demand for certain
kinds of labour. The need of soldiers and
sailors, and of all the industries that minister to war, was
of course much diminished. No doubt the demand for un-
productive labour does, in the long run, impoverish a nation.
It men are withdrawn from manufacture and agriculture, and
employed in taking other men's lives, the resources of the
nation are diminished, but this loss may mainly fall on the
well-to-do classes, especially if, as in this case, the expendi-
ture is largely met by loans. At the declaration of peace a
number of men were suddenly thrown on the labour market
who could only gradually be absorbed in productive work,
especially as the nation had been depleted of capital by the
war, and had besides to meet the interest on the heavy debt it
had incurred. A great and sudden change in the character of
the demand for labour is generally for a time injurious, even
where it is in the long run beneficial.
The injury done to the landed interest by the increased
importation of foreign produce and the fall of prices is another
illustration of the same fact. Consumers profited by the
change, and gradually part of the labour and capital that
would otherwise have been devoted to agriculture was
directed towards the supplying of manufactured comforts
and luxuries ; but for some years the injury done to agri-
culture probably considerably overbalanced the advantages
gained by the consumers (p. (SI). The Corn Law of 1815
(p. 2) was afterwards modified, but even after modification it
was most disastrous to England. Nevertheless, it is open
to doubt whether, in the critical early years of the peace, it
did not prevent more injury than it caused.
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 87
1832J
The manufacturing class might have been expected to reap
the greatest and most immediate harvest from
f f f. -i Foreign Trade,
the peace, and, as a matter of fact, we find
that in 1815 their exports rose in value from forty-five to fifty-
one millions ; but it was soon seen that English manufacturers
and merchants had over-estimated the foreign demand. The
Continent was (even more than England) impoverished by the
great war, and in many cases there proved to be no customers,
at remunerative prices, for British goods. In Holland, for
instance, our exports were actually sold at lower prices than
they would have fetched in London. The protective policy of
the legislature aggravated the evil. In the long run exports
are mainly paid for by imports, but the British Government
deliberately hindered importation by heavy customs duties.
The only branch of our trade that flourished during these
years was that with America, and this prosperity was largely
due to the fact that there were no protective duties against
American cotton. The importation of this commodity rose in
value from eighty-six millions in 1816 to one hundred and
sixteen millions in 1817, and one hundred and sixty-two
millions in 1818 ; and, as was natural, our export trade to
America similarly increased.
Another cause of the misery of the masses during the
early years of the peace was the lack of
organisation. The mediaeval and post- or b anSation
mediaeval organisations of labour had broken
down under the industrial revolution (Vol. V., p. 601 seq.). The
age of Factory Acts, and similar legislative organisations, had
not yet begun, and trade unionism was still in its infancy.
Till the eighteenth century an artisan, if he were a man of
skill and industry, rose in time to be a master workman.
There was no permanent combination of operatives for the
purpose of improving and regulating the condition of their em-
ployment. Gradually, however, there grew up a class of skilled
workmen who were practically certain to remain workmen
all their lives. Improvements in machinery and the rapidly
growing employment of steam power made the possession
of capital almost indispensable for the employing class. In
other words, in many trades the workers found themselves
cut off from the hope of ever becoming employers or
directors of industry. Hence it was that the eighteenth
88 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
century saw the rise of enduring combinations of the em-
ployed. The ruling classes watched the movement with
suspicion, and in 1799 and 1800 Acts were passed definitely
forbidding trade combinations. The theory still survived
that wages should be fixed, not by individuals, nor by
collective bargaining, but by the intervention of the justices.
But with the growing complexity of industry, this was
becoming more and more impracticable, and the spread of
the doctrines of Adam Smith tended to discredit the idea
of State interference with labour. As early as 1808 a Com-
mittee of Parliament reported that a proposal to fix a
minimum wage " was inadmissible in principle . . . and
if practicable, would be productive of the most fatal conse-
quences"; and in 1813 the law empowering justices to fix
the rate of wages was formally repealed, and the other
remnants of mediaeval organisation were swept away in the
following years. Thus workmen were told in effect that the
State would not help them, and that they might not com-
bine to help themselves. They naturally resorted to violence
and riots. The bad harvest of 1816 was followed by much
destruction of machinery, burning of hayricks, plundering
of shops, and other disorderly proceedings, which only tended
in the long run to increase the general distress.
This was clearly perceived by the more intelligent of
those who regarded the poor as wronged and
Radical Reformers. , *
oppressed. foremost amongst these was
William Cobbett, whose Weekly Political Register, originally
published at a shilling and a halfpenny, began in 1816 to
appear at twopence. This may be regarded as the beginning of
the modern cheap Press (p. 32). Cobbett achieved the great
result of convincing the more thoughtful of the working
classes that the root of the evils from which they were
suffering was planted in misgovernment, and that their
remedy was to be found, not in rioting and machine-break-
ing, but in sound legislation, for which the way must be
prepared by Parliamentary reform. So great was his success
that, when the national distress was at its worst, violence
almost ceased and a peaceful agitation took its place.
" Hampden Clubs " began to be founded in many parts of
the country. Working men orators and working men poets
began to appear, calling on their comrades to organise them-
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 89
1832]
selves, and to demand annual Parliaments and universal
suffrage. Sir Francis Burdett, Member for Westminster,
was chairman of the London Hampden Club, and was
supported by Lord Cochrane, and several of the upper and
middle classes.
There were also some organisations of a more advanced type.
A Yorkshire schoolmaster, named Spence, had
some years previously propounded the theory Reformers
of the nationalisation of land as the true cure
for poverty, and in 1816 this theory was taken up by a band
of persons who called themselves the Spencean philanthropists.
Some of them were pronounced Socialists, and in favour of
resorting to physical force (p. 2). The Government employed
spies to encourage violent proposals, and then to give evidence
against those who embraced them, but on the whole, the
agitation, like that of Cobbett, was of a peaceful character,
and the patience with which the poor endured their misery
was remarkable.
The social evils were undoubtedly aggravated by the Poor
Laws, which encouraged improvidence, kept
-, -, n ,,. The Old Poor Law.
down wages, and wasted large sums or public
money. This subject, however, must be reserved till a later
chapter (p. 219).
The last cause we shall mention of the misery of the
early years of the Peace is the contraction
of the currency, and the consequent fall of
prices. Since 1797 the Bank of England notes
had been inconvertible, and since 1808 they had been issued
to such an amount as to put gold at a premium. By 1817
the premium had so fallen that the Bank undertook to
redeem a portion of their smaller notes at par. Later on
in the same year the offer was extended, but the Bank found
much difficulty in meeting its engagements. Parliament,
therefore, interfered, and fixed rates at which all notes must
be convertible, at a gradually reduced premium, until May 1st,
1823. After that date all notes were to be convertible into
gold at their full value. The Bank did not, however, avail
itself of the full delay allowed by Parliament ; and from May,
1821, there were practically no more inconvertible notes in
circulation. This gradual restriction of the currency naturally
lowered prices, and the fall was further hastened by the
90 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
outbreak of revolutions in Spanish America (p. 4), and the
consequent interruption of silver mining. The further fall in
prices which ensued checked the development of industry,
lowered profits and wages, and increased the numbers of
the unemployed.
Nevertheless, the return to cash payments tended, in
the long run, to restore confidence and
cre dit. Accordingly, from about 1822, there
began to be distinct evidences of an
improvement in trade. The financial policy of the Liver-
pool Cabinet was at this time largely directed by Mr.
Huskisson, who took advantage of the growing prosperity
to introduce a number of changes in the direction of Free
Trade. In June, 1823, the Navigation Laws were practic-
ally repealed, in the case of all foreign nations that were
willing similarly to remove restrictions on trade done by
British vessels. Our shipowners said they would certainly
be ruined, but in twenty years the English merchant navy
was increased in tonnage by over forty per cent. Huskisson
next proceeded to relieve the important wool and silk
industries from a large part of the protective duties by
which they were hampered. The tax on imported raw
silk was almost abolished, that on spun silk was about
halved, and even that on manufactured silk was reduced.
British silk manufacturers believed that they could not
hold their own against the French without more protection,
but the event proved that they were soon able to sell silk
goods in the French markets. The woollen trade was
similarly relieved. Hitherto our manufactures were ham-
pered by import duties, and our agriculturists by export
duties on raw wool. Both trades were now set free, and
both gained much by the change.
It is possible that Huskisson was moving even too fast.
The stimulus given to trade by his bold
Crash of 1825. , . L , , , , ^ ,.
policy was supplemented by the opening or
South American and Mexican markets. The rebellious
Spanish Colonies had attained their independence, and
mining operations were renewed. A period of over-specula-
tion ensued. A number of joint stock companies were
formed, many of them by dishonest persons anxious to
reap the fruits of the exaggerated hopes of a speedy fortune
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 91
1832]
to be made in commercial undertakings. The Bank of
England, as well as the private banks, were too much
inclined to avail themselves of the alacrity of the public to
take their paper. Sharing in the general confidence, they
showed an undue readiness to give credit. There followed
that sort of crash with which later experience has
familiarised us. Bubble companies burst, credit contracted,
everyone began to call in his money, or to refuse to part
with it. Rash speculators, as well as those who had been
only unfortunate, or somewhat too sanguine, were ruined ;
and many legitimate companies and honourable individuals
were dragged down by the reaction from excessive confidence
to equally excessive caution. In six weeks more than sixty
banks stopped payment. The Government did its best to
check the panic. The Mint worked hard to .replace the
metallic currency, which had been driven out of circulation
by the excessive issue of bank-notes. The restriction under
which private banks had been limited to six partners,
thereby limiting the solvency of the banks, was abolished.
The directors were persuaded to lend freely where the
security was good, and the issue of one pound and two pound
notes was forbidden from the idea that small notes are
especially likely to be over-issued.
All these measures, with the doubtful exception of the
last, were wise and timely, but they could
not prevent great and widespread suffering.
The contraction of credit compelled a con-
traction of business, which threw thousands of the working
classes out of employment. Once more there was an out-
break of rioting and machine breaking. The distress was
so severe that Huskisson actually succeeded in persuading
his Tory colleagues to modify the Corn Laws. Already, in
1822, a slight change had been introduced in the form of a
sliding scale. The scale was now altered. When the price
of wheat was as low as fifty shillings a quarter the duty on
it was to be thirty- six and eightpence, but as the price rose
the duty was to fall. When the price reached sixty-eight
shillings the duty was to be sixteen shillings and eight-
pence. When it reached seventy- three shillings the duty
was to be only one shilling.
Gradually trade began to recover, and indeed there were
92 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
forces at work tending to enrich the nation, which could
hardly fail to balance in the long run evils
due to mere credit fluctuations. Foremost
among these was the introduction of railways (p. 199 seqq.}, by
which an immense demand for labour and capital was
created, and industry thus helped to recover from the panic
of 1825, and the subsequent depression.
Meanwhile the law against trade combinations had been
first repealed, and then very partially re-
stored. The movement for the repeal was
directed with great skill by Francis Place, a man who
began life as a journeyman breeches-maker. In 1818 he
started a newspaper, in which he pleaded for the right of
combination with so much ability as to enlist the advocacy
of Joseph Hume and J. R. McCulloch, then editor of the
Scotsman. Chiefly through Hume's advocacy, a committee
of inquiry was appointed by the House of Commons in
1824. Place organised the evidence so effectually that a
Bill was passed repealing all laws against combination. The
result was a series of strikes, which so alarmed the ruling
classes that Parliament again declared combination to be
illegal, but an exception was made in favour of associations
for dealing with questions of wages' and the hours of labour.
This was in effect a great victory for the workmen. It must
be attributed partly to the spread of the doctrines taught
by Adam Smith, which implied a certain freedom of com-
bination. Huskisson, Peel, and others of the younger Tories
had accepted this part of the orthodox political economy,
and held firm to it against tremendous pressure from the
employing class. A formidable agitation and fears of
a revolution no doubt helped the Ministry, and the fact
that Parliament was essentially a body of landowners, and
that the capitalist employers were comparatively weak in
it, was, of course, very conducive to a fair hearing of the
case of the unemployed. The victory, however, was only
partial, for the somewhat ambiguous prohibitions of molesta-
tion and of obstruction were certain to be rigidly enforced
against trade unionists. The years immediately following
the Bill were years of trade depression (1826-30). Unions
multiplied, but were generally defeated in their attempts
to prevent reductions in wages; and the more thoughtful
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 93
1832]
of the working men began to rest their hopes rather on
radical and socialistic reforms than on the efficacy of strikes
and trade organisations. The new unionism of 1829 to
1842 was based on the belief that there ought to be a
national confederation of workers, and not merely separate
unions for the different trades. In December, 1829, "The
Grand General Union of the United Kingdom " was formed.
It was to be open to all male workers at a subscription of
a penny a week. This union soon fell to pieces, but a few
months later a fresh society was formed by delegates from
twenty organised trades. It was called " The National
Association for the Protection of Labour," and its aim was
to prevent reductions, but not directly to promote advances
of wages. Unionists had yet to learn that strikes against
reductions are less likely to be successful than strikes for
advances. They naturally disliked the former more than
they liked the latter, but, as reductions usually come with
a contraction in trade, a policy of mere general resistance
to reductions is not likely to be successful. However,
the National Association was for a time fairly flourishing.
It obtained large funds, and in 1831 it started a paper of
its own The Voice of the People.
The efforts of the trade unionists to organise combinations
either of separate trades, or of a more general
character, were, however, less in evidence than T ? e 4 ? e ^ onn
Agitation,
the agitation for an extension of the suffrage
and a re-distribution of seats. Throughout this period there
were two distinct movements, one aiming at an improvement
in the condition of the poor by legislative changes, the other
attaching most importance to voluntary combinations and
organisations. As early as 1819 a great reform meeting at
Manchester was dispersed by force (the Peterloo Massacre,
p. 3). The subject was then taken up by the Whigs in
Parliament, and the outside agitation was to some extent
quieted; but after 1823, when the Parliamentary movement
languished, the country began to show unmistakable signs of
a genuine demand for manhood suffrage, equal electoral
divisions, annual parliaments, and the ballot. Meanwhile the
middle classes were becoming more and more determined on
changes far less sweeping than these, but almost equally
hateful to the aristocracy. The death of George IV. gave
94 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
them their opportunity, and the Radicals showed more
readiness than might have been expected to support the more
moderate reformers. By means of enthusiastic meetings, and
ultimately by riots, they supplied the democratic pressure
that helped to ensure victory to the great middle class.
On the whole, then, this period was a period of distinct,
though slow, progress. The population of
the United Kingdom rose from about eighteen
to about twenty -four millions. National wealth
increased even more rapidly. In money value the increase
is estimated at fifty per cent. ; but if the fall in prices be
allowed for, we cannot put the actual increase of wealth,
measured in commodities, at less than eighty per cent.
The burden of taxation was also much diminished, and the
annual national expenditure had fallen from one hundred to
fifty-two million pounds. There was, however, little increase
in wages. The improvement was mainly among the well-
to-do. The evils of the factory system (p. 217 seqq.) were at
their worst. Labour was still almost unorganised. There
was no system of national education, and the overworked
children were almost without instruction. On the other
hand, the working classes had gained much knowledge and
experience, especially through their failures, and were soon
to secure for themselves improved conditions of labour.
As the lives of Queen Charlotte and of George III. drew to a
close, men began to fear lest a crop of social
M. BATESON. ev ils should spring from the example set bv
Social Life r r> -r> j i r rT- TTT i
after the Peace, the Prince-Regent and his wife. Sir Walter
Scott writes in 1818 : " If we should suppose
the Princess of Wales to have been at the head of the
matronage of the land for these last ten years, what would
have been the difference on public opinion !
Honest old Evelyn's account of Charles II. 's court presses
on one's recollection." But if George IV. with his eighteen
mistresses five historic, eleven named, two unnamed could
compete with Charles II. in wantonness, in social talent he
could not do so ; nor, even had his gifts been greater, could
he have rivalled Charles II. 's influence, for social conditions
were changed. The personal influence of the sovereign was
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 95
1832J
never stronger than in the reign of Charles II., never weaker
than in the reigns of George IV. and his brother.
The Prince Regent did not exercise any paramount
authority even on the subject of dress, for
there his friend Beau Briunmel was supreme
dictator as president of the Council of Taste, and the Regent
himself wept when the Beau disapproved of the cut of his
coat. When the Beau's influence was removed, George IV.
showed himself unwilling to succumb to a new fashion till
it had been firmly established in his despite. In 1816
Weston, in Old Bond Street, had the best cut for the long-
tailed and short- waisted coat, which for morning and evening
dress alike was generally blue. Pantaloons were close-fitting
and made of stockinette ; they stopped some inches short of
the ankle, showing black silk stockings and pumps. About
1830 pantaloons were superseded by long black trousers, held in
place by silk straps under the foot. Only at court, at the opera,
and at Almack's balls, knee-breeches and " chapeau bras " were
still etiquette. When Lord Barrymore as a leader of fashion
put his hat on a chair, George remarked, " A well-bred man
places his hat under his arm on entering a room, and on his
head when out of doors." In 1824 the tails of the coat were
shorter, and the frock coat made its appearance. Brass
buttons went out, but the button-holes were now heavily
frogged, while a black stock was worn instead of a white
stock or cravat with a cauliflower frill.
Till the middle of the period women's walking and
evening dresses were still made of light
materials in all seasons, and when cloth dresses
began to be worn indoors, grave dangers to health were an-
ticipated. Instead of the long, plain, clinging skirts, petticoats
were made short, wide, and over-trimmed. The characteristic
garment of the period was the pelisse. In 1819 the mourning
for Queen Charlotte was black crape over a white satin slip,
black cloth pelisse lined with white sarcenet and trimmed
with white silk cord, a bonnet of black Leghorn trimmed with
blond and satin. By 1820 the waist was in its natural
position, and the bodice and sleeve, which in the classical
period almost vanished, began to grow wider and wider ;
indeed the "gigot" sleeves in 1827 were as big as those of
1894, and the width from shoulder to shoulder was increased
96 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
.by the pelerine. In 1815 the small beehive bonnet was worn,
but in 1827 bonnets were as big as umbrellas. At that time
it was fashionable for ladies to carry real flowers. The style
of hair-dressing was not becoming to many faces, for the hair
was drawn up tightly and dressed high ; curls or " poufs "
were arranged a la Ckinoise on each side of the parting,
or on the left side only, while ribbon loops were woven in
among them, and plumes of marabout, flowers, or combs stood
above erect; in 1830 the high tortoise-shell comb a la
giraffe was in vogue. The abolition of the crinoline from
court, where it had held its own throughout the classical
period of fashionable dress, was due to George IV. 's decree.
George IV. can also claim to have conferred a benefit upon
his country when he naturalised the supreme
de volatile, and other inventions of French
cookery. His influence upon the table of the upper classes
was not due only to example, for he put his most famous
cooks to national uses. A number of club men were dining
with him when he was Regent, and he asked them about their
dinners. They one and all complained of the eternal joints,
beef-steaks, boiled fowls with oyster sauce, and apple tarts :
wherefore, taking compassion upon them, George prevailed
upon his cook Wattier to start a club. This ultimately failed
by reason of the high play at macco, but another of his cooks,
Ude, undertook the cuisine of Crockford's Club, made it
famous, and was succeeded by Francatelli. Gronow describes
his dinners as " wonderfully solid, hot, and stimulating."
Mulligatawny and turtle soups were served, with salmon
at one end of the table and turbot with smelts round it
at the other ; then saddle of mutton or roast beef, and
fowls, tongue and ham " succeeded as regularly as darkness
after day." Four side-dishes, flanks, and removes were
required, and the entrees would be placed in duplicates
at opposite corners. But the French side-dishes were there,
Gronow says, for appearance sake only, and went away
neglected because they were not well cooked. The wines
were sherry, champagne, and port, and after soup everyone
began taking wine with everybody else till the end of dinner.
Dr. Kitchener, the author of the popular " Cook's Oracle,"
recommends the host to fill the plates and send them
round, and not to ask each guest if he will take soup
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 97
1832]
or fish, or what particular part he prefers, since all cannot
be choosers.
Clubs of the new model are said to have been invented by
the officers retired on half-pay after the peace,
who regretted the loss of mess dinners, and
to supply their place opened the United Service Club in 1819.
In the new clubs all the members were co-proprietors, not
mere subscribers. The old clubs, which had originally been
coffee-houses, were called subscription clubs for distinction
sake ; they were run each by a single proprietor, who made
his profits out of the subscriptions and the hazard table. At
the new clubs, with an average entrance fee of twenty guineas,
and subscription of ten guineas a year, it was possible to
provide the members with the comforts of a magnificent
hotel, eating-house, cafe, reading-room and library. H. Crabb
Robinson's opinion of the newly-created Athenaeum, 1823,
was that " it is a genteel establishment, but I foresee it will
not answer my purpose as a dining-place."
The new clubs were more utilitarian and less exclusive than
of old, when surgeons, architects, and attorneys could find no
admission. But exclusiveness was still the
golden rule of society in London. The test of
membership of the fashionable world was a ticket of admission
to Almack's. The lady patronesses who held the keys of this
seventh heaven were known to be inflexible. Admission to
the opera also was by ticket, requiring the voucher of a lady
patroness.
In 1842 Raikes writes that the change in society is very
apparent
" It was called, and perhaps justly in my time, dissipated ; but the
leaders \vere men of sense and talent, with polished manners, and gener-
ally high-minded feelings. The young men of the present day seem
without any prominent feature of character, indifferent instead of fas-
tidious, careless in their manner to the women, and making it the right
tiling to afficlier a heartless, selfish tone^of feeling, such as would not be
tolerated in French society, where the women certainly maintain a social
influence that is not to be observed here."
He finds no egards pour les convenances in London drawing-
rooms, in dress, manner, or language. " Steam has here
dissolved the exclusive system and leems to have substituted
the love of wealth for both the love of amusement and of
H VOL. VI.
98 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
social distinction." Raikes' view is perhaps unduly gloomy.
Had he been writing in 1820 he would probably have found
as little to praise. Like Gronow, he would have told us that
the dandies were " not high-born, nor rich, nor very good-
looking, nor clever, nor agreeable, but generally middle-aged
men, with large appetites, who sat in White's bay-window,
swore a good deal, never laughed, had their own particular
slang, looked hazy after dinner, and had most of them been
patronised by. the Prince Regent or Beau Brummel." But
the Prince Regent did not produce them, nor did steam
abolish them ; they are with us still.
The women, Gronow says, were more beautiful, better
bred, and more distinguished in appearance, and above all in
manner, than they are nowadays (I860). " How grand they
used to look with their tall, stately forms, small thorough-
bred heads, and long flowing ringlets." There were none of
the fast girls, such as Gronow saw in 1862 ; he grieved to find
that the ideal was something between the dashing London
horse-breaker and some Parisian artiste dramatique, and that
a jaunty, devil-may-care look was accounted the thing. It
was probably the crinoline that made women appear short to
Gronow's eyes, and it is hard to believe that in that demure
and matronly attire the girls of 1862 were addicted to betting
and slang.
Literary distinction in either sex met with ample social
reward. George IV., with his usual affection
for the example of Charles II., cultivated the
society of wits, and admitted even the journalist Theodore
Hook to his table, because of his fame as a jester. In fact, it
needed the wits to make the long sittings over the dinner-
table bearable. More purposeless was the rage for literary and
scientific lions. Harriet Martineau gives an amusing account
of lionism in 1830, of the measures a hostess must take to
draw out a literary lady, of the girls begging each for just one
line in her album. At her own soirees Miss Martineau would
have no crowd of admirers round a gentleman haranguing on
the sofa which he keeps all to himself, and "no literary
flirtations in the style of half a century ago." She mocks at
Lady Mary Shepherd for saying, " Come now, let us have a
little discussion about space." The most successful " salons "
were those of Lady Blessington, of the Dowager Countess of
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND HE FORM. 99
1332]
Cork, and of Lady Holland. Lady Blessington at Seamore
Place, and afterwards at Gore House, Kensington, gathered
about her a host of authors, booksellers, publishers, and
journalists whom she got to contribute to her Book of Beauty,
the Keepsake, Flowers of Loveliness, and other literary efforts of
her editing, but her parties were not for men's wives. Lady
Holland's " omnium-gatherums " were more cosmopolitan and
more political in tone. Between 1799 and 1840 there was
scarce an Englishman of any distinction in politics, science, or
literature who had not been a guest at Holland House. Oddly
enough, in 1831 the meal for the poets was declared to be
breakfast, for Rogers and Moore shone at this prosaic hour ;
Macaulay could be relied on at all hours. Even at breakfasts
Moore could be coaxed to sing his Irish melodies, unaccom-
panied, for it was a time when unaccompanied singing was a
fashionable accomplishment, as harps were too cumbrous to
carry, and not every- house had a piano. At this time, too,
literary and scientific interests were the rage, and society
crowded to the meetings of the British Association, and
passed the hours away in lecture-rooms, hearing Carlyle at
Willis's Rooms, or Faraday at the Royal Institution.
The fashionable dances of the period were the waltz, intro-
duced in 1813 by Madame de Lieven ; the quadrille, brought
from Paris by Lady Jersey after the Peace ; Lancers, a varia-
tion of the quadrille, introduced about 1820 ; the " sprightly
galoppade," and after 1830 the polka.
Between 1831 and 1881 the population of London increased
from an average of 22 to an average of 51 per
acre. The districts in which the growth has
been most remarkable are :
TH- t , Population Population
per acre 1831. per acre 188L
Bromley 9 106
Paddington 12 86
Kensington ... ... ... 9 ... ... 74
Fulham 4 56
Camberwell 6 42
Hampstead 3 20
Bow, Stratford, Bromley, Clapham, Tottenham, Canonbury
were still villages in 1831, while Brixton, Kilburn, Chalk Farm,
Kentish Town formed no part of continuous London. Islington
H 2
100 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
had but one street ; Westbourne Grove, Netting Hill, Campden
Hill, Earl's Court, were country districts. The Bayswater Road
and Tyburnia had lately become fashionable building sites
now that criminals were no longer hanged at Cumberland Gate.
In 1820 Moorfields and Spafields still had some green acres ;
Woburn, Tavistock, and Gordon Squares were laid out in
market gardens. Among the improvements of the reign was
Regent Street with the Quadrant and Waterloo Place, planned
by Nash to connect Carlton House and Pall Mall with the
new house which the Regent proposed to build for himselt
overlooking Regent's Park. The Whigs, who were horrified
at all George's extravagant building schemes, vowed that they
would never desert Bond Street to walk under the covered
arcade of the Quadrant, which was supported by 140 cast-iron
pillars, the object of much indignation.* It was the age of
stucco building, and George IV. fell in with the prevailing
taste. " He finds London brick and he -leaves it all plaster."
But the democratic party ought to have been pleased at the
changes in Hyde Park, where the brick wall, which shut it in
all the way to Kensington, was removed, and iron railings
were substituted. Following the example of Charles II..
George IV. interested himself in the parks; in 1827-29 St.
James's Park was relaid, and his own Regent's Park was the
wonder and delight of his time. The Zoological Gardens
were opened in 1828, and among the chief national under-
takings were the National Gallery, 1824, and the adaptation
of Montagu House to the needs of the British Museum, which
acquired George III.'s library in 1821. At the Co vent Garden
pantomime a possible Thames Embankment was shown as a
panorama, " a pleasing anticipation of a splendid dream, which
not even in this projecting age can become a reality." It had
been talked of in 1666 by Sir Christopher Wren, but it was
not made till 1870. The new London Bridge, planned by
Rennie in 1823, was opened in 1831 ; Waterloo Bridge in 1817.
Improved markets were laid out; Covent Garden fruit and
flower market was built 1829-30 : Fleet Market was moved
in 1829, and the old Fleet Market became Farringdon Street ;
Hungerford Market, now the site of Charing Cross Station,
was rebuilt in 1830. In 1833 100,000 was spent by a private
speculator on Islington Market, but the Smithfield live-stock
* The arcade was removed in 1848.
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 101
1832]
market remained in a bad state till it was removed in 1855 to
Copenhagen Fields.*
Many rich merchants still lived at their places of business
in the City, but many were already building
houses far distant from business, and a system comyance
of stage carriages was in use for those who
lived in the suburbs. By 1837 there were licensed 400 omni-
buses, 1,200 cabriolets, and 600 hackneys, instead of the 1,300
hackneys which in 1815 were the only public conveyances.
The omnibus was noticed by Crabb Robinson in Paris, August,
1828 ; he foretold that by Christmas it would be in use in
London, and his prophecy was fulfilled. Shillibeer's 'buses
were drawn by three horses, and carried twenty passengers
inside and nine out. For every 'bus ride, long or short, the
charge was 6d. The cabriolet was peculiar to London, and
was invented by Davies in 1823. Eight were licensed then, and
plied at fares one-third lower than those of hackney coaches.
The cabriolet or cab was for one passenger, who was protected
by a high hood, which separated him from the driver sitting
by his side. Hansom's patent cab (1834) had a square body
in a square frame, with wheels as high as the vehicle. In
1836 Gillett and Chapman, improving on this model, pro-
duced the modern hansom. Street tramways, though tried
experimentally in the Bayswater Road by an eccentric
American genius, G. F. Train, for a short period in 1861, and
at Birkenhead and elsewhere, were not used on a large scale
in London till 1870, when the Tramways Act was passed.
The fashionable family carriages in the period 1820-40
were yellow landaus, displaced in 1839 by
the homely brougham, which allowed four
to ride inside behind one horse. The dandy rode in a
tilbury or curricle, which required two servants. There were
also high four-horse phaetons, landaulets, Dennets, or
Stanhope gigs, Clarences, Vis-a-vis. The middle and lower
classes did not penetrate into Hyde Park at the fashionable
hours, and then, as now, no hired cabs were there to detract
from the brilliance of the scene.
The control of the traffic, which had belonged to the
" street-keeper " in most parts of London, passed in 1829
to a new police force. There had been in 1818, 1822, and
* Cf. Dickens's account of it in " Oliver Twist."
102 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
1828 inquiries into the condition of the London police, which
showed the organisation to be inadequate,
antiquated, and indeed almost mediaeval in
character. There was first the general police for
the city, under the control of the Lord Mayor and aldermen,
which consisted of a number of officers engaged in day or
night patrol, whose duty it was to visit the watch-houses and
supervise the officers appointed by the wards. Each ward
appointed a certain number of beadles, constables, watchmen,
and street-keepers, paid by a rate levied on the ward. The
beadles were annually elected; the constables, who were
chosen in rotation from the inhabitants of the ward, and were
bound to attend the whole night at the watch-house, received
no salary, but could hire substitutes from 8 15s. a year.
Only in some wards was there an afternoon patrol, from about
three or four p.m. till the night watch was set. The watch-
men were appointed by the Alderman and Common Council
of the ward, and since the Act of 1817 care was taken to
employ none but able-bodied men. Almost every ward
had a street-keeper to regulate the traffic, who attended from
eight a.m. till the patrol came on duty. Besides this central
and local force in the City, there was the entirely separate
police of the Dean and High Steward of Westminster, and
local forces in each parish of Westminster. Further, there
was the separate establishment of magistrates and clerks and
police officers at Bow Street with a foot and horse patrol
under their authority, who were established in 1805 to pre-
vent highway robberies within twenty miles of London ; and
also a separate organisation for the Thames police, and for
six other police-courts.
The Act of 1829 declared that the limited sphere or
authority and the want of connection and co-operation rendered
the force inadequate, wherefore a new force under the direct
control of the Home Secretary was created, and London was
mapped out into police districts, all obedient to two officials,
who were at first called Justices of the Peace, and in 1839
became Commissioners. In 1856 the two Commissioners
were replaced by one Commissioner and two Assistant-Com-
missioners. The City of London was not to be one of the
Metropolitan police districts, but in 1839 it was secured that
the police of the City should be of the new type under the
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 103
1832]
control of the civic corporation. The original change was
not brought about without a severe struggle with vested
rights, and the scheme was believed to be part of a great
plot to establish a military despotism. Cobbett raved
against a police establishment a la Bourbon, with com-
missaries at the head and with subaltern officers, with men
in an uniform dress, and with others dressed like other
people, going about into all companies and places, and
communicating what they saw and heard to the commis-
saries. By this system he believed that Sir Robert Peel
had laid the foundation of an Austrian slavery or of a
dreadful convulsion. Ultimately, however, the principle of
centralisation was applied to the whole country ; first by the
Permissive Act of 1839, which allowed justices at Quarter
Sessions to create a paid constabulary, and in 1856 this
permission became compulsion.
THE fever heat which had carried the nation to the
triumphant close of the great war was followed
by a reaction in which every industry was J> scotiIiid' E
depressed, every interest disaffected. In
1812 the weavers of the west formed their first formidable
combination against low wages and dear meal. They found
it hard to exist on a weekly pittance of 8s. 6d. with meal
at 3s. a peck. But the Riot Act and the shooting down of
luckless victims on the streets of Glasgow crushed disaffection.
Probably there were never so many destitute at one time in
Edinburgh as in 1816 a sad year for the poor, for the
harvest had been unusually bad, foreign markets were glutted,
and wheat was doubled in price. During the winter of 1819-20
the Clyde was frozen over for months, and employment scarcely
to be had. The starving weavers flocked to Edinburgh, where
relief works had been started. The heads of the well-to-do
classes were stuffed with rumours of the secret drilling and
arming of a vast Radical horde, and everywhere yeomanry
and sharp-shooters were volunteering against mob law. The
excitement culminated in the Bonnymuir
rising of April, 1820, a sort of Scottish Peterloo.
It seems to have been a diabolical plot of the party in
power to entrap the disaffected into overt action. On the
104 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
first Sunday of April all Glasgow was thrown into panic over
a treasonable placard, calling upon the oppressed to " assert
their rights at the hazard of their lives." A Government spy
induced about a hundred desperate weavers to march towards
Carron, and after a weary trudge the famished band were set
upon by cavalry from Stirling and taken prisoners. Three of
these deluded visionaries were tried and exe-
Sediti i820 TrialS> cutecl as leaders Hardie, Baird, and Wilson.
Carlyle, visiting Edward Irving in Glasgow
immediately after the affair, says, "The Radicals are quiet.
How many lies have been told about them ! Poor wretches,
they are to be pitied as well as condemned." As a student in
Edinburgh, he had just " seen substantial burghers and other
idle loyalists training themselves to the use of arms for sup-
pressing imaginary revolts of the lower orders. Steel pills,
though a very natural, are a very inefficient remedy for a
decayed constitution."
To the great delight of the Tories, George IV. visited Edin-
burgh in August, 1822. Scott's adaptation of an
old song, " Carle, now the king's come ! " was on
every lip. He landed at Leith and held court
at Holyrood amid a burst of romantic enthusiasm unknown
since Prince Charlie's entry into his northern capital. It
was calculated that one-seventh of the entire population
feasted their eyes on their anointed king, whose sartorial
sentiments must have been gratified by the magistrates'
command to the citizens to dress for the occasion in nankeen
pants, white vest, St. Andrew cross in hat as a cockade, and
blue coat with " Welcome " on its large gilt buttons. Christison
saw it all as a lad, and very sensibly remarks " Sir Walter
Scott as M.C. and costumier was responsible for spreading
the common delusion of Englishmen and foreigners that
Scotland is a nation of Celtic Highlanders," an absurd
delusion still growing in vogue daily.
No part of the kingdom took a more earnest or intelligent
share than Scotland in the constitutional
rm ' victory of 1832. With the opening century
reforming principles had spread, mainly from the University
and the Bar, and this through the influence of such men as
Brougham, Jeffrey, Cockburn, Horner, Sir William Petty, and
Lord John Russell all legitimate products of a Scottish
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 105
1832]
education in political reasoning. This was all the more
surprising as Edinburgh University was under the control of
the Town Council, Tories to the backbone, while the Court of
Session had always been an appanage of the landed interest
A notable incident of 1817 was the appearance of an in-
dependent weekly, the Scotsman. Carlyle notes at the time
that he had seen the first three numbers " all a little violent
in their Whiggism." Bitter partisan hostility was a feature of
social life then. The scandalous licence of the Tory journals
led to a fatal duel, the great sensation of the day, when
Stewart of Dunearn mortally wounded Boswell, son of
Johnson's biographer. Another sign of the times was the
frequency of great political meetings to petition on public
questions, culminating in a notable gathering in 1830 to
congratulate the French on their successful revolution.
The fate of the Reform Bill was followed with breath-
less interest. Charles, now Earl, Grey, had
warmly supported Thomas Muir in 1793-94,
while Lord John Russell had sat at the feet
of Dugald Stewart, the Edinburgh Professor. A general illu-
mination in Glasgow marked the second reading of the Bill
in the Commons. But the news of its rejection in the Lords
was received by a crowd of about ten thousand indignant
citizens, waiting patiently at the Edinburgh post-office, while
similar sights were common in every considerable centre.
When success was assured, a lovely August day of 1832 saw
Bruntsfield Links and the Meadows covered with orderly
processions and rejoicing spectators, all joining, with the
earnest devotion of a Covenanters' Sacrament, in the sublime
strains of " Scots Wha Hae ! "
The Church had long afforded the only open arena for
advanced popular opinion. Moderatism and Dissent were now,
thanks to fresh social problems, ioined by a
-p TV mi i- The Church,
new power, Evangelicalism. 1 nese lorces were
respectively conservative, exclusive, and restlessly aggressive.
Moderatism, very much the creation of Principal Robertson,
the historian, had been, in its best days, an immense power
for good in liberalising thought and action. This is what a
keen but not very friendly critic like young Carlyle thought
of its founder in 1824, when this once all-powerful move-
ment was on the wane: "I used to find in him a shrewd
106 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
system but not a great understanding, and no more heart
than in my boot. He was a kind of Deist in the guise of a
Calvinist priest, a portentous combination." A new spirit broke
in upon his well-ordered system when Chalmers began (1815),
in the densely peopled Tron parish of Glasgow, " to excavate
the heathen," as he called the innovation. His week-day
sermon, the Astronomical Discourses of his published works,
was the first attempt to attract alike the religious and the
literary public through the pulpit. His Sunday schools took
up the movement which Dr. Burns, kindly minister of the
neighbouring Barony parish, had inaugurated as early as
1775, five years before Raikes began work at Gloucester.
The task upon which Chalmers and his eloquent assistant,
Edward Irving, entered with such enthusiasm was the most
notable social factor of the time. But an unkind fate has too
often decreed that when some of Scotland's greatest appeared
Knox, Henderson, Chalmers the bitter warfare of church
polity, and not social amelioration through Christian en-
deavour, has been the question of the hour.
George Burns, of Cunard fame (p. 399) and a pioneer of
ocean travel, rapidly developed the work which Henry Bell
began, and, thanks to his energy and enter-
prise, before 1830 his deep-sea steamers were
running from the Clyde as far as Liverpool and Dublin. They
were engined by Robert Napier, a Glasgow blacksmith of great
genius. In Aberdeen, Hall's clippers were carrying emigrants
over the globe. From Glasgow and Dundee the weaving of
cotton and linen was overflowing into the fields, and the
click of the shuttle was heard in every hamlet. Savings
banks, set agoing through the Rev. H. Duncan of Ruthwell
in 1810, were helping the people to tide over the failures
of 1826. The Union Canal (1822) connected Edinburgh and
Glasgow; the Caledonian, the east and west sides of the
island. Both cities were lit up by gas in 1818, and in the
same year Edinburgh enjoyed her Crawley water, brought
by gravitation from springs in the Pentland Hills. Magnifi-
cent new approaches adorned the city, 1823-27. Her School
of Arts (1821) was spreading the technical education which
the Andersoiiian People's College in Glasgow had begun, while
to the activity of her medical teaching was due the Anatomy
Act (1829), which followed the revelations of 1828 (p. 66).
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 10;
1832]
FOR many years about this time there was great and
widespread distress, arising partly from the
stagnation of business after the conclusion R ^eiand E
of the Continental wars, and partly from the
pitiless exactions of landlords, middlemen, and tithe-proctors.
The misery culminated in 1822, when there was a general
failure of the potato crop. There was much disturbance
among the starving and despairing peasantry, and there were
numerous outrages, followed by the usual coercion acts with
wholesale arrests and prosecutions, without the least effect in
producing tranquillity ; and the country was kept down only
by an army almost as large as if it had just been conquered
in a successful invasion.
In 1823 the " Catholic Association " was founded by
O'Connell and Eichard Lalor Sheil, and soon
spread through the whole country. The
expenses were paid by what was called
" Catholic Rent," a contribution of a penny a week from
each member ; and this organisation was the chief agency
by which Emancipation was ultimately carried. In 1828
Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, Member of Parliament for Clare, having
accepted office, had to seek re-election, and O'Connell
determined to oppose him. He knew well that he could
not enter Parliament, for the admission oath was such as
no Catholic could take; but he wished to bring before the
electors of Great Britain the hardship and absurdity of
disfranchising a constituency because the chosen member
refused to swear that his own religion was false. Notwith-
standing the crushing influence of the landlords he was
returned by an immense majority. The Government were
now greatly alarmed, and all the more so when they heard
that the Catholic Association were preparing to return
Catholic members all through Ireland. Wellington and
Peel gave way, and introduced a Bill, which after a stormy
debate was carried in the Commons. The opposition was
still more violent in the Lords ; but Wellington ended the
matter by declaring that they should choose between
Emancipation and Civil War ; whereupon the Bill passed,
and received the royal assent on. April 13th, 1829. The
Act contained one provision, raising the franchise in Ireland
108 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815
from 40s. to 10 ; though the qualification for England
remained at 40s. (p. 8). By the Emancipation Act a new oath
was framed which Catholics might take ; and at the General
Election of 1830, O'Connell and several other Catholics
were returned.
Hitherto the primary education aided by the State in
Ireland was exclusively for Protestants; and
Catholic children could not attend the public
schools, as they would have to join classes
receiving Protestant religious instruction. This state of
things was remedied in 1831, when the system of National
Education was founded, which Catholics were able to take
advantage of, inasmuch as it provided for separate religious
instruction for children of different religious denominations.
This measure turned out very successful; for since 1831
both the Government subsidies and the number of schools
have gone on increasing year by year.
After the great Reform Bill had passed for England in
1832, a corresponding Bill was introduced
Reform of 1832. , , , . \, -r, , , ,
for Ireland in the same year. But though
the Irish members led by O'Connell and Sheil had materially
aided the Government in passing the English measure, the
Irish Bill was narrow and unsatisfactory. The franchise
was limited to tenants of 50 a year and leaseholders of
10 a year for 99 years. The Irish leaders attempted to
have the franchise restored to the 40s. freeholders; but the
ministers had the amendment voted down (p. 11).
Of all the payments exacted from the peasantry tithes
were the most bitterly resented; for their
Tithe War. . . ,.
gross injustice was obvious to the most
ignorant. The Protestant clergy lived comfortably all
through the county, and ministered on Sundays in decent
well-kept churches to congregations of perhaps half a
dozen, or less ; for all which the Catholic people were forced
to pay to support the clergy and keep the churches in
repair; while their own priests lived in poverty, and cele-
brated Mass to overflowing congregations in thatched cabins
or in the open air. And whenever tithe-payment was not
at once forthcoming, the tithe-proctors seized and carried
off the poor people's cows, fowls, bed-clothes, kettles, or
anything they could lay hands on. At length, about the
PEACE, RETRENCHMENT, AND REFORM. 109
1832J
year 1830, a vehement movement arose almost simultaneously
against tithes quite a spontaneous uprising, not incited by
leaders or agitators from outside ; and for some years a
destructive " tithe war " raged, especially in the south ot
Ireland. The military and police were called out to support
the proctors, and there were frequent conflicts, with great
loss of life. But even when a seizure was made, it commonly
turned out useless; for no one dared bid for any seized
article set up for sale ; or if by chance a sale was effected,
the purchasers were pretty sure to suffer outrage of some
sort. The proctors were everywhere pursued with vengeance,
often mutilated, and sometimes killed. Then came, ot
course, a Coercion Act ; and the military engaged in this
warfare formed quite a large army; yet they succeeded in
collecting only a small fraction of the total sum assessed,
and even that at a cost far exceeding the amount collected.
Hundreds of the Protestant clergy received little or nothing,
and were reduced to destitution, seldom through any fault
of their own, for they were the victims of an unjust and
unwise institution ; and the Government had to come to their
relief by advancing a million on loan. At length, some years
later (1838), the tithes were put on the landlords instead
of the tenants, which terminated the tithe war.
A TJTHORITIES.lSlb-imi.
GENERAL HISTORY.
Spencer Walpole, History of England ; Harriet Martineau, History of the Peace ;
May, Constitutional History ; Fyffe, Modern Europe ; Debidour, Histoire Diplo~
matique de P Europe ; Molesworth, History of the Reform Bill ; Wheeler, History of
India ; Duke of Buckingham, Memoirs of the Court of the Regency ; Correspondence
of William IV. and Earl Grey ; Le Strange, Correspondence of Earl Grey and Mme.
de Lieven ; Greville, Memoirs ; Croker Papers ; Pellew, Life of Lord Sidmouth ;
Twiss, Life of Lord Eldon ; Alison, Lives of Lord Londonderry and Sir C. Stewart ;
Yonge, Life of Lord Liverpool ; Stapylton, George Canning and His Times and
Canning' 1 s Speeches; Peel, Memoirs and his Correspondence, edited by C. S. Parker;
Herries, Life of J. C. Herries ; Torrens, Life of Lord Melbourne ; Sanders,
Melbourne Papers; Sir D. Le Marchant, Life of Lord Althorp ; Brougham's Life
and Times ; Spencer Walpole, Life of Lord John Russell ; Fitzpatrick, 0' Connellys
Correspondence ; Metternich, Memoirs.
SPECIAL SUBJECTS.
Naval History and Church History. See list appended to ch. xxiv.
Literature, 1815-1885. Saiutsbury, Nineteenth Century Literature, for the sub-
ject generally. In poetry the growth of Tennyson's genius is lucidly exhibited
in Mr. Arthur Waugh's Tennyson: A Study of his Life and Work. For an acute
and valuable, though not unprejudiced, criticism, of Macaulay's prose style, chap. ii.
of the late J. Cotter Morrison's Macaulay (" English Men of Letters " Series) may
be consulted with advantage ; and an appreciation of Carlyle's literary characteristics,
110 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1815-1832
and of his past and present relation to the thought of the age, will be found in the
introduction to the Centenary Edition of his works.
Geology, 1815-1885. Besides the more special works mentioned in the text, the
following will be found useful: J. Playfair, Biographical Account of James
Hutton; J. Phillips, Memoirs of William Smith ; A. Geikie, Life of Sir Roderick J.
Murchison, 2 vols. ; J. W. Clark and T. McK. Hughes, Life and Letters of the
Rev. Adam Sedgwick, 2 vols. ; Life, Letters, and Journal of Sir C. Lyell, edited
by Mrs. Lyell, 2 vols. ; T. G. Bonney, Lyell and Modern Geology ; A. Geikie, Life
of Sir A. Ramsay, and Letters of J. B. Jukes; F. Darwin, Life and Letters of
Charles Darwin, 3 vols. ; W. D. Conybeare and W. Phillips, Outline of the Geology
of England and Wales; H. B. Woodward, The Geology of England and Wales. The
details of the development of the subject will be found in the publications of the
Geological Society; first in the Transactions (1811-56), and the Proceedings
(1826-45), and then in the Quarterly Journal (vol. i., 1845). To these may be
added Memoirs and other publications of the Geological Survey, and the annual
volume of the Palaeontological Society.
Art, Chemistry, Textiles. See chaps, xxii., xxiii. and xxiv. respectively.
Medicine. The General History of Medicine in the earlier part of the century may
be read in Clarke's A utobiographical Recollections of the Medical Profession, 1874, II.);
in Dr. C. J. B. Williams' Memorials of Life and Work, 1884 ; and in Sir Eobert
Christison's Life, ed. by his sons (1885-86). The condition of the schools of
anatomy before the passing of the Anatomy Act is well described in Lonsdale's Life
of Robert Knox. The professional reader may refer with advantage to the Report of
the Select Committee on Anatomy (folio 1832), and to J. Blake Bailey, Diary of
a Resurrectionist (1896). The evil effects of intramural interment can only be
adequately appreciated by reading the disgusting details given in the Report of
the Select Committee upon the effect of the interment of bodies in Towns (1842).
Sir Thomas Longmore has prefixed a short history of the Army Medical Service to
his Manual of Ambulance Transport, ed. 2, by Surg.-Capt. W. A. Morris, A.M.S.,
1893. Sir John Simon has published an admirable history of English Sanitary
Institutions (Lond., 1890); whilst the history of Dentistry has been written by
Alfred Hill (Lond., 1877), and the history of the Medical Education of Women
by Miss Sophia Jex-Blake (12mo, 1880).
Agriculture, 1802-1846. William Cobbett, Tour in the Northern Counties, Rural
Rides ; Journal of the Royal Agriciiltural Society of England, 1st Series ; Harriet
Martineau, History of the Thirty Years' Peace ; Sir George Mcholls, History of the
English Poor Law, and On the Condition of the Agricultural Labourer; Sir Robert Peel,
Speech on the Repeal of the Corn Laws in the House of Commons, 1846 ; G. R. Porter,
Progress of the Nation, 1843 ; A. Prentice, History of the Anti-Corn-Law League ;
Reports of Select Committees on the Operation of the Poor Laws, 1817, 1834, 1844,
and on Agriculture {see below) ; J. E. Thorold Rogers, History of Agriculture and
Prices, and Six Centuries of Work and Wages ; Russell M. Gamier, History of the
English Landed Gentry, and Annals of the British Peasantry.
Economic History, 1802-1885. The most important materials are to be found in
Reports of various Parliamentary Committees and Commissions, especially on
Agriculture in 1821, 1822, and 1833; on Machinery in 1824; on the Poor Laics in
1821, 1834, 1843, 1845, 1847, and 1849 ; on Finance and Currency in 1819, 1828, and
1841 ; on Children in Factories, 1816, 1833, 1842, and 1883 ; on the Coal Trade in
1830, 1844, and 1871; on Framework Knitters in 1845; on Handloom Weavers in
1839 and 1840 ; on Joint Stock Companies in 1844. To the list given in Vol. V.,
p. 513, we may add S. and B. Webb, History of Trade Unions ; Holyoake, History of
Co-operation; Frome Wilkinson, Friendly Societies ; Qosc\ien,Forcign Exchanges, and
the works on Economics by Mill, Marshall, Walker, Cairns, Jevons, Bagehot, etc.
There are many important papers in the Journal of the Statistical Society, but any
adequate list of authorities would occupy more space than can be afforded here.
Social Life and Scottish History. See ch. xxiii. Ireland. See ch. xxiv.
CHAPTER XXII.
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 1832-1846.
THE troubles of the Grey Ministry by no means ended with
the reform of Parliament. The new House
was eager for further changes, but the LL OYD - SANDERS.
.*>.' , Political History:
Government, confused by conflicting demands Trouble in Ireland,
and divided against itself, introduced large
and ill-considered Bills. Ireland, besides, blocked the way
to English legislation. More formidable than O'Connell's
Repeal agitation was the war against tithes (p. 108), supported
by organised outrage. After a disastrous attempt to collect
the unpopular tax itself the Government passed a Composi-
tion Bill, which by securing the advances to the Irish clergy
on a land tax invited further resistance to the law. Lord
Althorp's Irish Church Bill, again, was reduced to a dis-
appointing fragment, which suppressed a few sees and docked
the incomes of others. He dropped the Appropriation clause,
permitting the use of surplus moneys for secular purposes.
The terrific indictment of O'Connell by the Chief Secretary,
Stanley, secured the passage of a drastic Irish Coercion Bill,
but he was shortly afterwards transferred to the Colonial
Office to mollify the resentment of the Liberator.
Stanley proceeded to carry a Bill abolishing slavery in
the West Indies. A plan for gradual ad-
mission to freedom had been tried, but ^^^sitves! f
neither planters nor negroes accepted it
loyally, and it was far from satisfying Sir Thomas Fowell
Buxton and his fellow-enthusiasts. Stanley's Bill secured
immediate freedom for all children of six years of age and
under. The rest were to serve a twelve years' apprentice-
ship; but this expedient was abandoned after four years'
disheartening experiment. The planters received the com-
fortable compensation of 20,000,000.
112 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832
Lord Althorp bungled his Budget, being defeated on a
motion for the reduction of the malt tax by
Ba ?ct Cha T one-half. He was driven to threaten the
House with a general property and income
tax, and Opposition votes turned the scale. The Government,
however, renewed its contract with the Bank of England
for twenty-one years, and made bank-notes legal tender, in
spite of an irrational outcry against the possible depreciation
of paper.
The session of 1834 found the Grey Ministry tottering.
Lord Durham, after insulting his father-in-
^ aw ' ^ad resi gned because it was not suffi-
ciently Radical. There followed the retire-
ment of Stanley and the more Conservative members, who
were frightened by a motion of Mr. Ward's on the Irish
Church, embodying the principle of the Appropriation clause.
Finally, the meddlesomeness of Lord Brougham and the
blundering indiscretion of Mr. Littleton, the new Chief
Secretary for Ireland, produced hopeless mismanagement
over the renewal of the Irish Coercion Act. Lord Althorp
persisted in resigning, and in July Lord Grey declared the
administration at an end.
On Lord Melbourne, who judiciously declined to form a
Coalition Cabinet with Peel and Stanley, fell
tlie tnankless tag k of patching together the
old Cabinet, with the assistance of Althorp.
Before the prorogation of Parliament the Bill for the reform
of the Poor Law passed (p. 221). It dealt with a rate exceed-
ing 8,000,000 and a lax system of relief that was fast de-
moralising the agricultural labourer. The new Act grouped
parishes together, and established central workhouses,
governed by Poor Law Guardians. It permitted the con-
tinuance of out-door relief for the aged and deserving under
severe restrictions. Finally, it abolished the Law of Settle-
ment, which prohibited removals from one district to another
in search of work (Vols. IV., p. 477 ; V., p. 133).
Lord Brougham occupied the recess with a vainglorious
campaign in Scotland, during which he
succeeded in picking a quarrel with Lord
Durham. The proceeding was scandalous,
and it confirmed the King in his desire to be rid of the
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 113
1846]
Ministry. He found his opportunity when Lord Althorp,
on the death of his father, was removed to the Upper
House. Melbourne was summoned to Brighton, and was told
that the Duke of Wellington would be requested to form
an Administration.
During these eventful years the strenuous diplomacy of
Lord Palrnerston had strengthened the credit
of the country abroad. After tedious nego-
tiations he succeeded in saving Belgium,
which had risen in revolt against the House of Orange after
the July revolution, from being overrun by the Dutch on the
one hand, and from becoming a Trench province on the other.
The candidature of the Due de Nemours, a son of Louis
Philippe, seemed likely to embroil England and France in
war, but it was averted by Palmerston's firmness. He also ex-
acted satisfaction from Dom Miguel, the Absolutist ruler in
Portugal, who had seized British vessels ; and his moral support
of the cause of Donna Maria went far to secure its ultimate
success. In Spain he promptly recognised Isabella as against
Don Carlos, and in April, 1834, a Quadruple Treaty was signed
by England, France, Spain and Portugal by which those four
Powers bound themselves to compel the two pretenders to
withdraw from the Peninsula. The British Legion, however,
which was allowed to volunteer for Spanish service under an
Order-in-Council, was disbanded after exploits the reverse of
glorious. Nor was Palmerston able to prevent the Porte,
alarmed by Mehemet Ali's rapid conquest of Syria, from
surrendering itself to Russia, tied hand and foot by the
Treaty of Hunkiar Skelessi (1833). He protested against it,
as he protested against the abolition of constitutional liberties
in Poland, but without avail.
The news of Melbourne's dismissal reached Sir Robert
Peel at Rome. Pending his arrival, the Duke
held no fewer than four offices, but he at once
surrendered the Premiership to Peel. A
Ministry was formed including Wellington as Foreign Secre-
tary, Aberdeen at the Colonial Office, and Goulburn at the
Home Office. Peel recommended a dissolution, and issued the
Tamworth Manifesto, which accepted the Reform Bill as " a
final and irrevocable settlement," and advocated "a careful
review of institutions, civil and ecclesiastical." The election
I VOL. VI.
114 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832
failed to turn the balance of parties, and when Parliament
met (February 19th, 1835) the Opposition carried Mr.
Abercromby for the Speakership against Mr. Manners Sutton.
Peel nevertheless fought that brilliant political campaign
known as his " hundred days" before Lord John Russell
defeated him on a motion embodying the principle of the
Appropriation clause. " I certainly never remember," wrote
Charles Greville, " a victory for which Te Deum was chanted
with so faint and joyless a voice."
Lord Melbourne's second Ministry excluded Brougham,
who had rendered himself impossible as a
Melbourne Ministry. c U ea g ue - For the most part it was com-
posed of old materials, Mr. Spring Rice be-
coming Chancellor of the Exchequer in place of Lord
Althorp. It had no majority independent of O'Connell, and
was, in consequence, terribly weak. The Bill, however, for
the reform of Municipal Corporations was carried before the
close of the Session. It abolished much con-
pora^n?Act *i835 ^ usion ancl - corruption, establishing in each
corporate town a mayor, annually elected,
and a town council for the management of borough funds.
An amendment introduced in the House of Lords preserved
their privileges to existing freemen. London was left un-
touched owing to the power of its vested interests.
Otherwise the record of the Ministry for the remainder ot
the reign was one of failure. It carried a Bill legalising the
marriage of Dissenters, and a measure for the
commutation of English tithe into a rent-
charge based on the price of corn for seven
years. But the Irish Tithe Bill was abandoned after the
Appropriation clause had been rejected by the House of
Lords, and a similar fate attended the Irish Municipal
Corporations Bill. The English Church Rates Bill was
introduced early in the session of 1837, but it had not become
law when, on June 20th, William IV. died. His hostility to
the Whig party had latterly been most pronounced.
The accession of a Queen but eighteen years old, whose
dignity and modesty delighted everybody,
Que C en S vic?orL hel P ed to strengthen the Ministry for the
time being. Lord Melbourne set himself to
form her mind, and discharged a delicate duty to universal
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 115
1846]
admiration. The Government, after a general election, still
lay at the mercy of Peel and Lord Lyndhurst on the one
hand, and of O'Connell on the other. In the session of 1838
it passed the Irish Poor Law Bill, establishing a system
analogous to that in England. The Irish Tithe Bill (p. 109)
also became law after the Appropriation clause, on which the
Whigs had staked their political reputation, had been rejected
by the House of Lords, and the Government
had tamely acquiesced in the rebuff. In 1840
the Irish Corporation Bill got clear of the House at last, after
the Opposition had transformed it into what was practically
a new measure. But though the Government displayed
vacillation in Parliament, its Irish administration, thanks
mainly to the Under- Secretary, Thomas Drummond, was
most able and sympathetic.
Whig finance, as represented by Mr. Spring Rice, was
deplorably bad. In 1839 he took up the
reform of penny postage (p. 239 ) a question
brought to the front by the persistency of
Rowland Hill but it resulted at first in a loss to the
revenue, and his Budgets gave a series of deficits.
Trade was slack and employment scarce. The working
classes, among whom trade-unionism had
been rapidly spreading, thought that sweep-
ing legislative reforms were the only remedy. A People's
Charter was framed (p. 224) containing six points: (1)
universal suffrage ; (2) the ballot ; (3) annual Parliaments ;
(4) the abolition of the property qualification for members
of Parliament ; (5) payment of members ; (6) equal electoral
districts. Their nominal leader was an empty braggart,
Feargus O'Connor, but behind him lurked a Physical Force
party. After a National Petition had failed to secure the
attention of Parliament, the extremists gained the upper
hand. Riots occurred at Birmingham and elsewhere, and
there was a pitched battle with the military and police in
the streets of Newport. The severe punishment administered
to Frost and his fellow-agitators gave pause to Chartism
for awhile.
The two provinces of Canada were drifting into rebellion
at the beginning of the reign, chiefly from the mutual
jealousies of the French and English populations. Upper
i 2
116 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
1832
Canada was saved by the resource of the Governor, Sir Francis
Head, who threw himself on the loyalty of
the militia - In tne Low er Province, Sir John
Colborne put down the rising with British
troops. Thereupon, the Government resolved to send out
Lord Durham, armed with special powers. He promptly
issued an ordinance by which eight Canadians were trans-
ported to Bermuda, and Papineau and fourteen more, who had
fled the country, sentenced to death. Brougham forced upon
the Government the disallowal of the ordinance, and Durham,
who had left it without a word of information, resigned and
came home. However, he had signed a " Report on the
Administration of Canada," drawn up by Charles Buller,
which gave full constitutional liberties to the colonists, and
the appointment of an able Governor in Lord Sydenham put
an end to discontent. Shortly afterwards the beginnings of
constitutionalism were established in Australia, when, in
1840, New South Wales was permitted to elect two-thirds of
its Council.
In May, 1839, the Whig Ministry was beaten on the Jamaica
Bill, and resigned. Peel, who was summoned by
the Q ueen > clumsily insisted that the Ladies
of the Bedchamber should simultaneously give
up their appointments. The Queen absolutely refused, and the
W T higs returned to. place though not to power. They lingered
long enough to see the Queen happily married (February 10th,
1840) to the husband of her choice, Prince Albert of Saxe-
Coburg-Gotha, and to produce a Budget, Sir Francis
Baring's, imposing a low fixed duty on corn,
Meibo-uraeMinistry mstea d of the sliding scale. But that con-
version was too sudden to be sincere. Defeated
in Parliament on a vote of want of confidence, they were
placed in a considerable minority at the general election of
1841. The opportunity for which Peel had been patiently
waiting had come to him at last.
Lord Palmerston's diplomacy had been, as always, bold and
effective. He did away with the Treaty of
Hunkiar Skelessi, by concluding (July 15th,
1840) the Quadrilateral Treaty, whereby Eng-
land, Russia, Austria, and Prussia bound themselves to protect
the Porte against aggression. But France where sympathy
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 117
1846]
ran strongly with Mehemet All, who had overrun Syria
resented this arrangement, and prepared for war. Fortu-
nately, Louis Philippe had more prudence than his Ministers.
He dismissed the Thiers Cabinet and appointed instead a
colourless Ministry under Guizot and . Marshal Sotilt. The
hold of Mehemet Ali on Syria proved, besides, to be ex-
ceedingly feeble. Beyrout was bombarded by the allies in
November. A month later Acre fell and the Pasha sub-
mitted.
Fear of Russia had meantime driven the Government into
interference in Afghanistan. Dost Mohammed, who had
received a Russian embassy, was dethroned, and the puppet
Shah Sujah installed in his place. The Afghans rose, and
massacred the British force that had been
stationed at Cabul after treacherously C Mnes*wa?3.
promising that it should be allowed to retire.
Sir Robert Sale, however, made an heroic defence at
Jellalabad, General Nott held Candahar, and the disaster
was ultimately avenged by General Pollock. On the other
hand, a war with China was forced on England by the high-
handed conduct of Commissioner Lin, who confiscated 20,000
chests of opium. After tedious operations, and still more
tedious negotiations, peace was declared in 1842, whereby we
acquired Hong- Kong, and five ports were opened to commerce.
Peel's second Cabinet contained tried Conservative politi-
cians in the Duke of Wellington (who did not
take office), Lyndhurst, the Lord Chancellor,
Goulburn, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
and Lord Aberdeen, the Foreign Secretary. Of the Whig
seceders Stanley became Colonial Secretary, Graham Home
Secretary, and Lord Ripon, formerly Lord Goderich, President
of the Board of Trade. The Ministry seemed likely to last a
generation. But Peel's hand was forced by the agitation of
the Anti-Corn Law League, which had eloquent spokesmen
in Mr. Villiers within the House, and in Cobden and Bright
outside it. He had been returned to uphold Protection ; he
was rapidly forced to abandon that principle. The financial
measures of 1842 modified the sliding scale,
H_ j . ,, , The Budget of 1842.
imposed an income tax of 7d. in the pound,
and reduced duties on 750 articles. The effect was to annoy
the agriculturists without conciliating the Corn-Law Repealers.
118 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832
The Budget of the following year contained, nevertheless, a
further reduction of duties, notably that on timber.
In the session of 1842 Lord Ashley carried a Bill for-
bidding the employment of women, and
Factory SUB. limiting that of children in mines and col-
lieries (p. 229). Next year, Sir James Graham
was forced by him to introduce a Bill lessening the labour and
providing for the instruction of children in factories. The
education clauses created such a clamour that the Bill had to
be dropped. It passed in the session of 1844, without the
obnoxious clauses, the hours of labour being fixed at ten,
much to Lord Ashley's indignation.
In Ireland Peel found himself confronted by a revival of
the Kepeal agitation (p. 247). O'Connell was
Peel's Irish Policy. M1 . . i i -i
still its mouthpiece, but in alliance with him
were Thomas Davis, Charles Gavan Duffy, and other excitable
youths, calling themselves "Young Ireland," and favouring
rebellion in their noisy verse. A series of monster meetings
tried the patience of the Executive, and in October, 1893, a
gathering at Clontarf was proclaimed. The arrest of O'Connell
followed, and he was condemned for conspiracy, but the
House of Lords reversed the verdict. His reputation had
suffered a blow from which it never recovered. Young
Ireland broke with him, and in 1847 he died on his way to
Rome. To repress disorder Peel carried a stringent Irish
Arms Act. He also appointed a strong Commission of Inquiry
under Lord Devon to investigate the land question, and it pre-
sented a searching report. As a palliative to Roman Catholic
grievances in Ireland he increased the grant to Maynooth
College, and established the three " godless " Queen's Colleges.
The Protestant outcry, led by Sir Robert Inglis, was long and
loud, and Mr. Gladstone, the Vice-President of the Board of
Trade, resigned from motives that were not particularly
intelligible.
Lord Aberdeen conducted foreign affairs safely and un-
sensationally. Friendship with France inspired
nis P onc J> an( * except for an absurd quarrel
about Mr. Pritchard, a missionary and British
consul at Tahiti, whom the French admiral ejected from the
island, relations ran smoothly enough. He also ended a
troublesome dispute with the United States by despatching
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 119
1846]
a special embassy under Lord Ashburton, which settled the
Canadian frontier on terms that were reasonably equitable to
both sides (1842). The controversy over the Oregon boun-
dary was sharper, and President Polk threatened war. How-
ever, after an interval of tension, negotiations were resumed,
and in 1846 both parties signed a treaty which left Vancouver
Island to the English, and admitted the two nations to the
Columbia river.
Lord Ellenborough, a Governor- General whose boastfulness
detracted from his ability, had meanwhile
despatched Sir Charles Napier to conquer
Scinde. He defeated the Ameers at Miani
(February 23rd, 1843), and annexed the province, to the
Bombay Presidency. The Governor- General, however, came
to loggerheads with the Directors, and in the following year
he was replaced by Lord Hardinge. The collapse of the
Sikh empire on the death of Runjeet Singh was followed by
the invasion of British territory. Our forces under Sir Hugh
Gough were hard put to it before the victory of Sobraon
secured a treaty of peace, by which the child Duleep Singh
was recognised as ruler of the Punjaub, with Sir Henry
Lawrence as Resident.
The followers of Peel were becoming increasingly suspicious
of his Free Trade tendencies. The first to
1 Young England.
revolt were the Young Lngland party, with
Mr. Disraeli and Lord John Manners as its most prominent
members. They began to attack Peel in the session of 1844,
which was marked by a Budget abolishing the import
and export duties on wool. In the same year Mr. Goulburn
converted a great part of the National Debt from 3J to 3 per
cent., and renewed the Bank Charter Act on terms that com-
pelled the Bank of England to keep an adequate gold reserve
and limited the issues of the country banks
(p. 228). Discontent rose higher in 1845 when ^^Sie. f
Peel, taking charge of the Budget, abolished the
duty on raw cotton and 429 other articles, but did nothing, so
the country members complained, for the agricultural interest.
In the autumn the potato crop failed throughout Ireland,
and grave differences of opinion divided the Cabinet. When
Peel insisted on the suspension of the Corn Laws by an Order-
in Council, and their gradual abolition, Stanley and the Duke
120 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
of Buccleuch resigned. Peel went down to Windsor and
placed his own resignation in the Queen's hands. Lord John
Russell, however, failed to form a Government owing to the
refusal of Lord Grey, the son of the Reform Premier, to serve
with Lord Palrnerston, and Peel returned to office, replacing
Stanley by Mr. Gladstone. On January 27th, 1846, he unfolded
his plan, the proposal being that after the 1st of February,
1849, corn should be taxed at Is. the quarter. Before that
date the duty was to range between 10s. and 4s., according to
price. Rallying round Lord George Bentinck and Mr. Disraeli,
the Protectionists fought Peel with the resolution and vindic-
tiveness of despair. Supported by Whig votes, however, Peel
carried the third reading of the Corn Bill by a majority of 98,
after a speech in which he assigned the merit of the economic
revolution to Mr. Cobden. On the 25th of June the Protec-
tionists found their revenge by joining the Opposition in
voting against the second reading of the Irish Coercion Bill,
and the Ministry fell. The system of party government
seemed in imminent danger of disintegration.
DURING the Napoleonic war money had been lavished
by Parliament upon every branch of the
G. LE M. GRETTON. military service. But when the troops
1815-1854 7 ' returned in 1818 from the occupation of
France they found that the nation had
grown weary of the soldiers to whose prowess in a
great measure was due the proud position which England
held among the nations of Europe. In peace time
the army was virtually unrepresented in the Cabinet,
and thus there was no minister to defend it against the
attacks of the economists, who insisted upon an enormous
reduction in military expenditure, carried
oufc with com P lete disregard for military
efficiency. The army was starved, both as
regards the numbers in its ranks, and the supply of stores
in its arsenals. So ruthlessly indeed was its personnel cut
down that in 1821 only 101,000* men were left to defend
the whole of the British possessions throughout the world.
The Militia were disbanded, the Volunteers ceased to exist ;
* Exclusive of the Company's troops in India.
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 121
thus behind the small regular army there were absolutely
no reserves. Not more than half the troops were quartered
in the United Kingdom ; about 20,000 were in India, and the
remainder garrisoned the colonies. It is said that the Duke
of Wellington purposely stationed a very large proportion
of the army out of England in order to keep them out of the
sight of the public, among whom the old unreasoning dread
of a standing army was still strong. Whether this is true or
not, the fact remains that the policy of scattering the army
in weak detachments throughout the British Empire was
continued until 1870, when concentration, not dissemination,
became the leading principle in the distribution of the forces.
As regards stores, Wellington himself in his celebrated
letter to Sir John Burgoyne, written in 1847,
admitted that the supplies of guns, carriages, Deficiency in
...,.* Stores and
arms, ammunition, and materiel of every de- Home Garrison,
scription were very inadequate, as successive
Governments had been in the habit of disposing of these stores
in order to reduce the amount of money which Parliament was
annually asked to grant for military purposes. At this time
war with France appeared imminent, yet only 30,000 men
were stationed in the United Kingdom, a garrison which in
the Duke's own words " would not afford a sufficient number
of men for the mere occupation and defence, on the
breaking out of war, of the works constructed for the
defence of the dockyards and naval arsenals, without leaving
a single man disposable" to take the field. Lord Pal-
merston in 1846 had warned his colleagues in the Cabinet
that " this empire is existing only by sufferance and by the
forbearance of other powers." But neither the energy of
Lord Palmerston, the authority of the Duke of Wellington,
nor the exertions of Sir John Burgoyne, could awaken the
nation from its dreams of universal and unending peace.
It was not until 1851 that England was roused into a sem-
blance of activity by the election of a nephew of the Great
Napoleon / to the Presidency of the French Republic.
Then the Militia was revived, and 80,000
men speedily were enrolled in this the con- Louis Napoleon
. J . 1 , ;r , , ., and the Revival
stitutional iorce of the country, while some O f the Militia.
steps were taken towards increasing the
scanty numbers of the reserve of pensioners, instituted a few
122 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
years previously. For the first time since 1815 an attempt
was made to give some practical training in the field to the
army at home. In 1853 8,000 men were assembled under
canvas at Chobhain. The officers and the men, no doubt,
profited by their novel experiences in camp ; but the Com-
missariat learned nothing, for the troops never ventured a
day's march from the encampment ; their horses and their
carts were hired by the day, and their supplies were delivered
on the spot by London contractors.
For many years after Waterloo the army was thoroughly
unprogressive ; it rested on the laurels gained in the great
war, and the best regiments were considered to be those
which most closely adhered to the Peninsular standard.
In some ways, indeed, the policy of the Horse Guards
was distinctly retrograde. During the stress
of the war with Franc e, men had been
allowed the option of enlisting for unlimited
service or for comparatively short periods ; but in 1829 these
limited engagements were discontinued, and men were only
enrolled for life-long service. As a great privilege, soldiers
of thoroughly good character were permitted to purchase
their discharge ; as a punishment, men of especially bad
character were expelled from the ranks with ignominy ;
but for the average private, until he should be invalided
out of the army, there was no prospect beyond a life
spent in unmeaning and monotonous details. Thus in 1829
" it took the whole .of a man's time to clean his things ! His lock was
bright ; his white trowsers were pipe-clayed ; he was three-parts pipe-clay,
brass-ball, and blacking."
If quartered in India, a soldier had, at any rate, the
chance of the excitement of active service, for there were
frequent campaigns in the East ; but if his corps was
in Europe or the Colonies, he dragged out his existence
under conditions which to us appear simply revolting.
The barrack - rooms were overcrowded, often without
fireplaces ; and until the Duke of Wellington became
Commander-in-Chief, each bed was shared
by two soldiers. In many barracks the beds
were arranged in tiers, like berths on board a ship. To
each man the Duke allotted a separate bed, and thus
redressed a great abuse ; but another and a far greater
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 123
evil remained for many years unremedied. No separate
quarters were provided for married soldiers ; they were
obliged to live with their wives and children in the general
barrack -rooms. The only partitions which gave these
families even a partial privacy were extemporised out of
rugs and blankets hung round their beds. On board the
transports decency was even more outraged than on shore,
for at sea the women and children slept in hammocks,
slung among those of the men, without even a screen to
separate them. In barracks the washing appliances seem to
have been even more scanty than the sleeping accommodation.
An army surgeon in 1846 says that for " want of all con-
veniences of this kind, soldiers frequently washed their hands
and face by filling a small tin with water at the pump, from
which a man takes a mouthful which is squirted out into his
hands and subsequently applied to his face."
The rations, though sound in quality, were monotonous
to a degree. Every day in the year (except
Christinas, when the officers provided their
men with a good dinner) exactly the same viands, cooked
in exactly the same way, were served out respectively for
breakfast and for the mid-day meal. No supper was
provided, so that the men were almost driven into the
public-houses, to drown in beer the hunger which assailed
them every evening.
Food for the mind, where any was provided for soldiers
in the shape of libraries, was nearly as
insipid as the eternal boiled meat on which
their bodies were fed. A sergeant describes the books
provided for the troops at a large station in India as
" very ill - chosen a great number treated of abstruse,
ethical, and doctrinal topics, much better calculated for
the perusal of metaphysicians and divines." The same
man incidentally mentions that at this station, where
1,200 Englishmen were cantoned, there was no Church
of England chaplain, as the climate was considered too
unhealthy for a clergyman to live in ! In this connection
it may here be stated that liberty of conscience in the
army made a great stride in 1839, when it was ordered
that no soldier who was a Roman Catholic or a
Dissenter should be compelled to attend the Church of
124 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
England, but that he should be at liberty to attend his
own place of worship.
Although enlightened military opinion early in the
century had declared against the abuse
Punishments. r-i-ii /i . i ^
of the lash, flogging, though under ever
increasing limitations, long continued to be in force in
the British army. It was finally abolished in 1881, but
as a matter of fact the cat, except on active service and
then only for acts punishable by death, had not been
called into requisition for many years before its use
became illegal. But during the first half of the century,
when men misconducted themselves, they were either
flogged, or imprisoned for terms varying with their de-
linquencies. Under the modern regime these sentences
are now served in military gaols, where the soldier is
kept absolutely free from the taint of civil prisons and
civilian convicts ; but before 1844 the men were confined
in the common Houses of Correction, and thus for purely
military offences were condemned to associate with the
lowest of the low. It is said that during the year 1833,
not less than one out of every five men then serving in
England passed through a civil prison. It
is not surprising that to enlist for life into
a service where men were so treated was
regarded by the working classes as social suicide, and that
parents preferred to see their sons in their coffins rather
than in the uniform of her Majesty's army. In 1847 the
system of life engagement finally broke down, and was re-
placed by enlistment for ten or twelve years. During the
pressure of the Crimea and the Mutiny men were allowed
to join for much shorter terms; and- in 1870 the present
principle of short service with the colours, and a further
liability to serve while in the reserve, was definitely adopted.
Although the accurate shooting of the British infantry
had largely contributed to our victories in the
etry ' Peninsula, musketry was entirely neglected
during the dead period after Waterloo. " Soldiering in those
days," writes a sergeant, " was all pipe-clay, drill, and discipline,
and very little theory. ' Fire low, and hit 'em in the legs,
boys,' was the extent of the instruction given to recruits."
In vain did Sir John Burgoyne urge the Government to
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 125
construct ranges where the infantry could be systematically
taught the use of their firearms. Nothing was done, and as
late as 1852 it was considered sufficient for the Guards to fire
thirty rounds of ball once in every three years, which in
some of the battalions was expended in a very primitive
fashion. Behind the bull's-eye painted on a canvas target
was concealed a bottle, and every man who was lucky
enough to hit the unseen bottle at 100 yards' range
received a money prize ! On the eve of the Crimean war
the Horse Guards tardily realised the extreme importance
of musketry, and ordered that in future every man should
annually fire ninety rounds with the " Minie " rifle, which
had just been adopted for the army. Owing, however,
to official indolence in overcoming the "great difficulties
about ranges in this free country " which the War Office
had already begun to experience in 1854, many young
soldiers were sent to the Crimea who had never fired a shot
in their lives before they found themselves in presence of the
enemy. In 1855 the Minie rifle was superseded by the
Enfield, which, about ten years later, was converted into
the Snider, the first breech-loader with which the army
was provided.
While the men were not taught to use their rifles, their
officers were equally untrained to use their
brains. As a rule, neither officers nor men
knew anything beyond barrack-square drill :
but this the soldiers knew to perfection, and the thorough
discipline produced by its constant repetition stood them in
good stead during the dark days of the Crimea and the
Indian Mutiny. No steps were taken to teach young officers
tactics or fortification, reconnoitring or military sketching ,
and ambitious men like Lord Wolseley, who voluntarily
studied the theory and practice of his profession with equal
zest, were few and far between. As there were no autumn
manoeuvres and no camps of instruction (except Chobham,
in 1853), officers in England had no opportunity to learn the
practical and all-important details which can only be acquired
under canvas ; and most of the troops who landed in the
Crimea were so ignorant of everything connected with camp-
life that they did not even know how to cook their food in
the open air.
126 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832
Regiments serving abroad had a far greater chance of
learning the trade of war than their comrades
Chief campaigns i n the United Kingdom, for the army in
before the T v i j i / n ^ i
Crimea. India had been lully occupied, and in many
other parts of the world work had been found
for British bayonets. Want of space renders it impossible to
do more than mention the more important of these distant
expeditions. Two campaigns on the Irawaddy (1824-26,
1851-52) transferred much territory from Burmah to Great
Britain. The result of the third war against the Mahratta
robber tribes (1818) was to give permanent peace to Central
India. The hard-won conquests of Scinde (1843) and the
Punjaub (1849) rendered our frontier more secure against
aggression from Central Asia, and added to our population
splendid and warlike races, who are now among the most
loyal of our fellow-subjects in the East. Russian intrigues
involved England in a disastrous war with the Amir of
Afghanistan (1839-42), memorable for the annihilation of
our expedition in its retreat from Cabul (p. 117); when out
of 4,500 men who attempted to fight their way back to India,
but few survived to tell how a whole army had been cut to
pieces by the wild tribesmen of the Khyber Pass. In South
Africa the Kaffirs kept the garrison of Cape Colony frequently
employed upon the frontier in weary and inglorious warfare
(1819, 1829, 1834, 1850, 1853).
DURING the long wars of the French Republic and of
Napoleon, when Sir John Henslow, Sir
William Rule ' and Mr - Henr y Peake were
successive Surveyors of the Navy, our chief
improvements in naval architecture were copied from the
best of the very numerous prizes which we took from our
enemies. Indeed, we followed this plan for many years after
the peace. Thus, as late as 1845 we laid down at Devonport
a Sans Pareil designed upon the lines of the ship of the
same name which we took from the French in 1794;
although, it is true, we never launched the new vesssel as
a sailing line-of-battleship, but lengthened her a little while
she was still upon the stocks, and converted her to a screw
ship of 80 guns, launching her as such in 1851. But long
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 127
1846]
ere that day there had come into office a Surveyor who,
although he still occasionally reproduced the beautiful and
fast French models, was not content to be a mere imitator,
and was, in fact, a really great naval architect. This was
Captain Sir William Symonds, Kt., R.N., who held the office
from- 1832 to 1847. Born in 1782, he had reached the rank
of Commander when in 1825 he was permitted by the
Admiralty to construct a corvette upon lines which he had
ventured to recommend to the attention of the Government.
This ship, the Columbine, was so great a success, that as
a reward for the improvements which he had introduced,
her designer was posted in 1827, upon the
conclusion of an experimental cruise which
he made in her. But the Admiralty was
in a sluggish condition, and was not prepared to advance
further; and but for the Duke of Portland, who gave
Symonds an order to build him a yacht, and to embody in
her all such features as would conduce to speed and sea-
worthiness, the great designer might never have been in a
position to rebuild much of the old wooden navy for the
last time. The yacht Pantaloon, presently purchased by
the Admiralty and adapted as a 10-gun brig, was such a
striking triumph that Symonds was at once employed to
build the Vernon, 50, Vestal, 26, Snake, 16, and other men-
of-war, and was within a few months made Surveyor. In
that capacity he built in the ensuing fifteen years no fewer
than 180 vessels, all on the principle, more or less varied,
of the Pantaloon. His ships owed their superior speed
and stability chiefly to the improved form of their bottom,
which he made much less heavy and full than had previously
been usual. They were, moreover, broader, roomier, and
loftier between decks than their forerunners ; and in them
the sailing navy of England undoubtedly found its very
highest development. It is noteworthy that during his
period of office not one of his vessels foundered, although not
a few craft of other types did. Among his special glories
were the Queen, 110, and the Vernon, which has been already
mentioned. Another of his improvements was the intro-
duction of the elliptical, instead of the circular or still older
square stern. He also introduced a system under which the
masts, yards, cross-trees, etc., of men-of-war were classified
128 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832
into twenty " establishments " or sizes, instead of into eighty-
eight as before ; and which was so ordered that the spars
became interchangeable not only as between ship and ship
of the same class, but also (though, of course, for different
purposes) as between ship and ship of different classes.
But even while Symonds and his immediate predecessor,
Sir Robert Seppings, were bringing the sail-
in o m an-of-war to its highest perfection, the
use of sails was already doomed. Steam as
a means of propulsion for ships had been used for a con-
siderable period elsewhere, ere the Admiralty, ever a most
conservative body, consented to try its merits. At length
Marc Isambard Brunei (p. 203) succeeded in persuading their
Lordships that they were behind the times, and that the use
of steam must be countenanced even in the Navy. In con-
sequence the Comet, a paddle wooden steamer of 238 tons
and 90 horse-power, was built at Deptford in 1822, and
presently the somewhat similar vessel Monkey, of 212 tons
and 80 horse-power (I.H.P. 373), which had been built at
Rotherhithe in 1821, was purchased for the use of the service.
These and other early steam craft were either tugs, or what
would now be called special service vessels; and it almost
seemed as if the Admiralty were still determined to have as little
as possible to do with them, for their construction did not
come within the province of the Surveyor of the Navy; they
were all purchased, or built by contractors ; there was no
regular corps of engineer officers to manage their machinery,
the builders being expected to hand over with them the
necessary engine-room staff; and at first not so much as
the names of the vessels appeared in the official Navy List.
But the new power soon forced itself into recognition. In 1832
the Surveyor designed his earliest steamers, among which
were the paddle sloops Tartarus, 4 guns, 523 tons, 136 horse-
power ; Prometheus, 5 guns, 796 tons, 200 horse-power (and
her sisters Alecto, Ardent, and Polyphemus); and Gorgon,
6 guns, 1,111 tons, 320 horse-power. There were also the
Merlin, Medusa, Medina, Acheron, Volcano, etc., the earliest
of which was launched in 1834 and the latest in 1841. All
these were built of wood, and all had paddles as their
propellers.
In the meanwhile iron as a constructive material, and
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 129
1846]
the screw as a propeller, were attracting attention, in spite
of the fact that their adoption, and even the making of
experiments with them, were much opposed by the Navy,
and particularly by Sir W. Symonds, who, able designer
though he was, was full of unreasoning prejudices on the
subject, and prophesied all sorts of evils if such innovations
were made.
Iron lighters and similar craft were built in England quite
early in the century ; but no iron steam-
vessels were constructed until 1821. In 1820
Mr. Aaron Manby took out a patent in France for iron
steam-boats, and, with his friend Captain (afterwards Admiral
Sir) Charles Napier, formed a Company, and began to
construct the first boat at Horsley. She was not completed
until the end of 1821. She was then sent to London in
pieces, and put together in dock. Having taken on board
a cargo of linseed and iron castings, she was put under
the charge of Captain Napier, who navigated her from
London to Havre, and thence to Paris. Mr. Manby, whose
surname and Christian name had been given to the first
vessel, afterwards constructed another craft of much the same
kind at Horsley, and two more in Paris. From that time
little advance seems to have been made until 1832. In that
year the Alburkha, a little steamer of 55 tons, drawing only
thirty inches of water, was prepared for the Niger Expedi-
tion; and almost simultaneously a larger craft, the Lord
William Sentinels, was completed by Messrs. Maudslay, to
the order of the East India Company, for service on the
Ganges. She, however, was but 125 feet long and 22 feet
broad. In the year following, the Heine des Beiges was
launched by Mr. Fairbairn at Manchester for use on the
canal between Ostend and Bruges ; and a considerably larger
vessel, the Lady Lansdowne, was turned out by Mr. John
Laird, of Birkenhead, for the City of Dublin Steam Packet
Company. Although some of her forerunners proceeded to
their destination by sea, the Lady Lansdowne appears to
have been the first iron steamer deliberately constructed
with a view to occasional, if not regular, sea-service. She
measured 133 feet in length by 17 feet in breadth ; and
she had a depth in hold of 9 feet 6 inches, engines of 90
nominal horse-power, and a tonnage, according to builders'
J VOL. VI.
130 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832
measurement, of 148. In 1834 Mr. Laird built, and sent
across the Atlantic, the John Randolph. She was trans-
ported piecemeal, and was put together again upon the
Savannah river, where she was the subject of much curiosity,
no iron steamer having been previously seen on American
waters. These and other iron craft of about the same period
were all paddle or stern- wheel vessels ; nor was an iron screw
steamer of any kind built until 1838, when Mr. Laird
launched the little epoch-making craft Robert F. Stockton,
which was fitted with an Ericsson propeller. She proceeded
under canvas to New York, where for many years she was
employed as a tug. Still the iron warship was entirely
unknown. The first of the long series seems to have been
the armed paddle steamer Nimrod, built for the East India
Company by Mr. Laird in June, 1839. Exactly similar to
her was the Nitocris of the same year ; but both were small,
being but 103 feet in length. They were, in fact, only gun-
boats. Other vessels more worthy of the name of warships
were, however, launched from the same yard at the end
of the year. These were the paddle steamers Ariadne and
Medusa, of 432 tons, the Phlegethon, of 510 tons, and the
Nemesis, of 660 tons. The last-named, built, like the others,
for the East India Company, was armed with two 32-pounder
pivot guns. Although she drew but five feet of water, she
made the passage to India by way of the Cape of Good
Hope ; and subsequently, under the orders of Admiral Sir
William Hall, she rendered excellent service during the
operations in China. The British Admiralty did not possess
an iron steamer until 1840, when the paddle packet Dover
was launched for it at Birkenhead. In that year also it
acquired three small iron paddle gunboats ; but it hesitated
for many years ere it made up its mind that, for large craft
as well as for small, iron was a trustworthy material. In
1836 Mr. John Laird had proposed to construct an iron
frigate, for which he prepared plans ; but their Lordships
were timorous, and declined to accept the offer. In 1842
he actually built and launched an iron paddle frigate of
788 tons ; but the Government would have nothing to do
with her, and she was eventually disposed of to Mexico.
At length the Admiralty changed its views, the result being
the launch at Birkenhead in 1846 of the ill-fated BirkenJtrad;
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 131
1846]
the launch at Mr. Napier's Yard, Glasgow, in 1849 of the
Simoon; and of the Megcvra, at Messrs. Fairbairn's Yard,
Millwall. These ships were at first classed as steam frigates,
and armed as such ; but experiments made upon an iron
vessel called the Ruby induced the Admiralty to fear that
they would be torn to pieces by the effects of shot upon
them ; and in consequence the ships were ultimately used
as transports, their armament being greatly reduced. The
tonnage of the Birkenhead was 1,400; that of the Simoon,
1,980 ; and that of the Megcera, 1,395. The first-named was
fitted with paddles ; the two last had screws. The general
consequence was that up to the time of the Crimean War
Great Britain possessed no iron fighting ships of any con-
siderable size, iron being still regarded here as an unsuitable
material to withstand the racking effects of shot striking,
as they then did, at low velocities. The same views pre-
vailed in France, but they had been less stringently applied ;
for as early as 1846 France launched a large iron screw
corvette, La Reine Hortense, and the vessel seems never
during her career on the active list to have been relegated
to transport or other peaceful duties. But not until the
introduction of armour-plating as a defence for ships did iron
come into general favour, either in France or in England, as
a material for the construction of the hull of a man-of-war.
While its future still hung in the balance, another very
important improvement, the screw propeller, had been finally
adopted in lieu of the paddle, and still more of sail-power,
as the sole means of propulsion.
Early in the nineteenth century Dr. Shorter devised
a plan for driving vessels through the water
by means of a circular fan, somewhat propeller^
resembling the fan of the old-fashioned
smoke-jack. It does not appear, however, that he had any
idea of having his propeller worked by steam. A generation
later Mr. (afterwards Sir) Francis Petti tt Smith, who was
a farmer at Hendon and the son of the postmaster at Hythe,
turned his attention to the subject. In 1834 he constructed
a model which was propelled by means of a submerged
screw; in 1836 he took out a patent, and in 1838 he sub-
mitted his invention to the Admiralty. By that time Mr.
Smith and the celebrated Swedish engineer, Ericsson, had
j 2
132 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832
become collaborators in the undertaking. The screw was
applied to several small experimental craft, one of which,
though only 45 feet long and 8 feet broad, towed a barque
of 630 tons against a strong tide at a speed of nearly
4.5 knots ; and later towed the Admiralty barge, with their
Lordships on board, from Somerset House to Blackwall and
back at an average speed of about 10 knots. But their Lord-
ships, who included Vice- Admiral Sir Charles Adam, Rear-
Admiral Sir William Parker, and Captain Sir E. T. Troubridge,
curtly " declined to entertain the project " of fitting screws to
naval vessels. These officers, in common with other people,
appear to have been under the delusion that the screw was
useful only in smooth water. An American gentleman, who
had caused to be built for him the steamer Robert F. Stockton,
already alluded to, also approached the Admiralty, but met
with no better success, and recrossed the Atlantic in disgust.
But shipowners were less blind than the naval officials ; and
in 1840 the Archimedes, a vessel of between 200 and 300
tons, fitted with Smith's screw, was launched, made the tour
of Great Britain, and steamed without mishap to Oporto,
Amsterdam, and other places. Her performances at length
converted the obdurate Admiralty. In 1842 there was laid
down for the Navy at Sheerness Yard a sloop named the
Ardent. The Admiralty ordered her to be lengthened aft,
to be fitted with a screw, and to be re-named Rattler ; and
as such she was launched in April, 1843. She was 176 feet
long, 32 feet 8J inches broad, and of 888 tons ; and she was
given engines of 200 nominal horse-power. Her after-part
was of a form very unsuited to assist the work of the pro-
peller ; yet she was so much of a success that, from the day
of her trials, the future of the screw in the Navy was assured.
Its future in the mercantile marine had been earlier decided ;
and the construction within a short period of the ocean-going
screw steamers Bengal (2,250 tons), Simla (2,600 tons), Colombo
(1,900 tons), Himalaya (3,500 tons), and many more large craft,
soon proved that the value of the invention was as great
for big ships as for small. The form, pitch, number of blades,
and ' other details of the screw have undergone, and will
continue to undergo, modification ; bat the general principles
of the designs of Smith and Ericsson have been, and are likely
to be, retained throughout.
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 133
1846]
At first already existing vessels belonging to the Navy
were fitted with the screw, after having undergone lengthen-
ing and other modifications for the purpose. Several very
old ships of the larger classes were thus treated, including
the Ajax, launched in 1809 ; the Horatio, launched in 1807 ;
and the Nelson, launched in 1814. The first line-of-battle
ship that was designed ab initio for the screw was the
Agamemnon, of 50 guns. She was laid down at Woolwich
Dockyard in 1849, and launched in 1852 ; and she it was
that in 1857-58 was employed in the laying-down of the
original Atlantic Cable.
THE history of religious progress during this period is con-
cerned primarily with the Church of England.
From a purely historical standpoint the
importance of Roman Catholicism, save for
a brief moment, is practically negligible, while the promi-
nence of the different bodies of Protestant Dissenters is slight
when compared with their power in parts of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. This history can naturally be
considered from two standpoints (i.) the relations between
Church and State, and (ii.) the growth of the Oxford or
Tractarian movement.
I. The years succeeding 1833 brought nearer the
necessity for important reforms. In 1834
cv T) iT L r> i -n !* -j Church and State.
Sir Robert Peel, as Prime Minister, said:
" If by an improved distribution of the revenues of the Church, its
just influence can be extended and the true interests of the established
religion promoted, all other considerations should be made subordinate
to the advancement of objects of such paramount importance."
A Royal Commission to " inquire into the Revenues and
Patronage of the Established Church of England and Wales "
afterwards reported to the King on June 16th, 1835. The
report showed that the net revenues of the archbishoprics
and bishoprics of England and Wales were 160,292, of the
cathedral arid collegiate churches 208,289, of the separate
revenues of the individual members of the chapters 66,465,
of benefices (the number being 10,718, including sixty-two
sinecure rectories), 3,055,451. The average salary of a
bishop was about 6,000, but this was reached by the
134 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832
enormous revenues of some of the sees (such as Durham,
19,066), while others were under or just above 1,000, and
had to be supplemented by the holding of other appoint-
ments in commendam. Among benefices the greatest
inequality prevailed. While there were 1,629 under 100
a year in value, there were 134 of between 1,000 and 1,500,
32 over 1,500 and under 2,000, and 32 over 2,000 ; the
value of Stanhope, a parish covering a very large area of
thinly-populated country, being 4,813, with a population of
4,800. On this report was based an Act of Parliament passed
in 1836, which re-arranged certain dioceses, and appointed
an Ecclesiastical Commission to carry out
R Endowmen n ts 0f various recommendations chiefly of a finan-
cial nature. The revenues of the sees and
the chapters were readjusted on a more equitable basis. Two
new sees, Manchester and Ripon, were created. Later on,
many wholesome, or at least wholesale, reforms were effected
in the case of the capitular bodies. Bishop Blomfield of
London, a prelate of great vigour, desired to abolish 360 of
the cathedral prebends, and succeeded in taking away all
their revenues. The rearrangement of the incomes and
duties of the residentiary canons met with the strongest
opposition, both from Sydney Smith on its material and
Dr. Pusey on its intellectual and spiritual sides. The opposi-
tion was to some extent successful, and the cathedral bodies
were allowed to retain a staff and an income sufficient to
enable them to remain, or become, the mother churches of the
dioceses in provision for instruction, for the fullest dignity of
worship, and for the support of learning. " The cathedrals,"
said Pusey, " have been the nurseries of most of our chief
divines, who were the glory of our English name ; in them
these great men consolidated the strength which has been
so beneficial to the Church." These and similar reforms,
including a large step in the direction of the equalisation of
benefices, have been carried on by the Ecclesiastical Com-
missioners in the period since 1840. In 1838 the Tithe
Commutation Act was passed, which removed a considerable
grievance. Politically the period admitted to civil privileges
all those who stood outside the Church.
Later incidents in the relations of the Church to the State
may be conveniently summarised here. In 1852 Convocation,
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 135
1846]
which had remained in a state of suspended animation
since the reign of George I. (Vol. V., p. 405), again entered
upon formal discussion. "The old machinery which had
been unused for 135 years mainly, it must be confessed,
through the carelessness and want of information of the
clergy themselves was again put in motion. That the
Crown had long ago violently interfered to dismiss the Con-
vocation, and that there had never been since then any
desire or encouragement on the part of the State for the
clergy to meet in their synods, constituted in fact the whole
of the obstruction which had so long prevented the action
of Convocation."*
In 1850 the country was startled by the issue of a Papal
brief creating an archbishopric of Westminster and dividing
England into twelve Roman Catholic dioceses. An extra-
ordinary popular ferment ensued. Lord John Russell pro-
duced an Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, which was opposed
by Mr. Gladstone on behalf of the Church, which considered
it unnecessary and unwise to resist the aggression by
an appeal to the power of the State. The Bill was much
modified before it became law, and John Leech in Punch
happily sketched the . Prime Minister as " the boy Avho
chalked up ' No Popery ! ' and then ran away." In 1855 a
Royal Commission reported in favour of some very consider-
able changes in regard to the bishoprics and cathedral
chapters ; but no legislation resulted. Subsequent years, from
1860 onwards, were also marked by some serious contentions
as to the relation of the civil courts to the Church, and by
much discussion ending in the appointment, in 1867, of a
Royal Commission to consider the ritual adopted of recent
years in several churches, and the bearing upon it of the
rubrics of the Prayer Book and the laws of the land.
II. Such was the external history of the Church. The
internal was far more important and signifi-
cant. A new movement, starting from Oxford Movement*
and led by young tutors of the University,
inspired a new life into the Church. " On Sunday, July
14th [1833]," says Cardinal Newman, " Mr. Keble preached
the Assize sermon in the University pulpit. It was pub-
lished under the title of ' National Apostasy.' I have ever
* Archdeacon Perry, " History of the Church of England," 3rd Period, p. 307.
l;;<; SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832
considered and kept i In- day as the start of the religious
movement of 1S;>;>."* Recent attacks on the Clnuvh.
especially tin' suppression of the Irish bishoprics, seemed to
Keble to call for a solemn protest against what appeared likely
to become a. "direct disavowal of the sovereignty of God."
It was a solemn pronouncement, against, the "liberalism," in
its ant i religious aspect, which Newman so greatly dreaded.
In July a party of like minded men met, at Hadleigh Rectory,
at the request of tho Rev. Hugh James Rose. This was
followed by the formal ion of an "Association of Friends
of the Church" at Oxford: and in February, 1834, by the
presentation of an address to the Archbishop of Canterbury,
signed by 7,000 clergy, assuring him of their adherence to
the doctrine, government., and formularies of the Church.
A similar address signed by % 2o,000 laymen followed. The
men round whom the movement centred were Hugh James
Rose, William Palmer, John Koble, Richard Hurrell Fronde,
and John Henry Newman.
Hugh Rose was a Cambridge scholar of eminence, a literary
man of acknowledged power, and a parish priest of devoted
life. William Palmer was a learned man whose studies in
the history of liturgies and whose, valuable book on the
otlices of the Knglish Church were supported by a "compact
and defensible theory" of the "peculiar constitution of the
Knglish Church." John Keble had the highest University
reputation, was already famous as a poet, and was a man of
saintly lite and uncompromising adherence to principle.
Kit-hard Hurrell !' rondo was an impetuous and critical genius
in love with medievalism and abhorrent of the "defacements"
of the Knglish Reformation. John Henry Newman was poet,
preacher, philosopher, and endowed with a marvellous
attractiveness which soon gave to the movement its great
popular strength. Originally an Kvangelical, he had learnt
the doctrine of Apostolic succession, and from IV. Hawkins,
the" famous Provost of Oriel, that of tradition.
At first it was the adhesion of Keble which gave to
the new movement its greatest power. " Keble." says Dr.
Liddou. " unlike Newman, had been a High Churchman all
his life. His powerfully constructive mind grasped from
the beginning the strength of the Anglican position as
PROGRESS ANT) REACTION. 137
184G>
to Protestantism and Rationalism, as well as to the
vet unappreciated power of Romanism. He saw, as he
staled in one of the earliest Tracts, that the Apos-
tolical succession was the essential bond, recognised by
sixteenth and seventeenth century divines, associating the
Knglish Church through Reformation and Papal dominion
with that primitive Catholicism in which Anglicans laid
their foundations, and to which they had always appealed.
He was never conscious of being an innovator. And with
this firmness of conviction and principle he was able, in spite
of his retiring disposition, not only to strike heavy blows
in controversy, but on occasion to head protests and even
agitations." The strength of the party was completed by
the adhesion of Dr. Pusey, Regius Professor of Hebrew at
Oxford, whose vast learning and recognised position gave to
the associated friends at once "a position and a name."*
The intellectual origin of the party is not difficult to
trace. It arose partly from the long and
unbroken line of traditional teaching which
passed hack, through the great divines of the
Caroline age, behind the Reformation to the accepted theology
of the undivided Western Church. This was quickened into
new life by the renewed interest in the past evoked by the
genius of Walter Scott, and fostered by the playful satire of
Thomas Love Peacock. Medieval life and art were seen to
be not the rude offspring of a dark age, but to teem with
romanee and generous enthusiasm. The past was painted as
in many ways more simple, more generous, more beautiful,
and more Christian, than the present. A second influence, in
its wav no less powerful, was the new philosophy of Coleridge
and his school. He was "a great force in making men
dissatisfied with the superficiality so common a hundred
vears a^o in religion as in other matters: and in this, if in
no other way, he prepared the English mind to listen to the
Oxford teachers." f
I listorieally it will be seen that the Oxford Movement,
like all other similar movements in the past, brought into
special prominence a doctrine which the age had neglected.
The Oxford teachers were filled with a deep feeling of the
importance and the wide consequence of the Christian
* - Life of Pusey," i., p. 271. f Ibid. I, p. 254.
138 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832
doctrine of the Holy Catholic Church. It was this that
linked them to the great divines of the English Church. It
was this which gave the extraordinary motive force to the
movement now inaugurated. As conversion, assurance, and
individuality were the powerful and appealing principles of
the Evangelical revival, so the sense of inheritance and of
communion in one historic body belonged to the Tractarians.
The history of the movement can only be briefly sketched.
It acted first through the publication of a series of " Tracts
for the Times," which were first popular explanations and
appeals to the great theologians of the English Church, then
lengthy and learned treatises on the chief doctrines of the
Church which had seemed in recent years to be ignored.
They had a large sale and a wide and increasing influence.
Their work was aided by the issue of a number of pamphlets
on the chief religious and political questions of the day, and
by the influence of the poetry of Keble, of Newman, and of
Isaac Williams. But they were by no means universally
welcomed. The " high and dry," as well as the Evangelical,
school of Oxford dons were first cold, then bitterly opponent.
The powerful party led by the revered and beloved Dr. Arnold
regarded them with suspicion which gradually grew into
rancorous condemnation. " It is clear to me," wrote
Dr. Arnold to his friend and pupil Stanley, " that Newman
and his party are idolaters." A counter-move began about
the same time as the Tracts, from the Broad
The Rise of the Church party (as it came to be called), to
Broad Church Ti ,1 TT * .- i i
Party. remove all tests at the University, particularly
the signing of the Thirty-nine Articles by
undergraduates, a requirement introduced 250 years before
by Elizabeth's Puritan favourite, the Earl of Leicester.
Considerable influence in the direction of liberalism in
theology was also exercised by the very interesting personality
of the Rev. J. Blanco White, who in January, 1835, became
a Unitarian.* He was the real founder of the modern
Latitudinarian school in the English Church. Whately and
Hampden were in different senses his pupils; Arnold and
even Hawkins felt his positive influence, though less directly, f
In 1836 the divergence between the two parties was made
manifest by the strong opposition which greeted the appoint-
* See J. B. Mozley's " Essays." t Liddon's " Life of Pusey," i. 360.
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 139
1846]
ment of Dr. Hampden to be Regius Professor of Divinity at
Oxford. So strong was the opposition to this appointment,
from Evangelicals as well as High Churchmen, that the new
Professor was deprived by the University of a large part of the
rights and powers of his office. Gradually opposition to the
Tracts became systematised, and charges of " Romanising "
were freely made against their contents, especially after the
publication (after his death) of R. H. Froude's "Remains."
On the other hand, Dr. Hook, who was doing an extraordinary
work of evangelisation at Leeds, poAverfully defended the
Tracts.
In 1841 the opposition was brought to a head by the
publication of "Tract 90," in which J. H.
Newman, Vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford the
great preacher whose influence over under-
graduates, and through them over a larger field, was inspiring
and widespread argued that the Thirty-nine Articles do not,
historically or formally, contradict the formularies of the
Council of Trent, and are not in necessary or absolute
contradiction to the doctrines to which the Church of Rome
is (in 1841) necessarily committed. Similar attempts had
been made before, and there was nothing but the excitement
of the times to render the tract significant of anything more
dangerous than brotherly charity and a desire for the use of
accurate theological language. But four Oxford tutors at
once issued a protest against it, which was taken up by the
Heads of Houses. The Tracts were disowned by the
University authorities, and " Tract 90 " was condemned as
evading rather than explaining the Articles. A long and
exasperating controversy followed. Many of the bishops took
fright and condemned the Tracts. The powerful influence
of Mr. Keble and Dr. Pusey was exerted on behalf of Newman
in publications whose honesty and learning could not be
denied. Yet the tide turned strongly against the Tractarians.
In 1843 Dr. Pusey preached a sermon on the Eucharist before
the University, which was condemned with extraordinary
haste and some disingenuousness by the Heads of Houses,
and the author was suspended from preaching in his turn.
In 1843 Newman resigned his living of St. Mary's ; and after
two years' retirement at Littlemore, near Oxford, he was
received into the Church of Rome in October, 1845. In
140 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832-46
1841 by a State arrangement a bishop for the English and
German congregations in Syria was consecrated by the
Archbishop of Canterbury (Howley). The apparent recogni-
tion of Lutheranism and Calvinism implied in this, though
the English Church had given it no formal sanction, was
a severe blow to the Tractarians. In 1844 Mr. W. G.
Ward, Fellow of Balliol, perhaps the most original of
the Tractarian party, published "The Ideal
of a Christian Church," in which the Church
of England appeared to be compared disadvantageously with
the Church of Rome. The Heads of Houses determined on
a further condemnation of Tractarianism. The Convocation
of the University was summoned. Ward's book was con-
demned by 777 votes to 386. His degree was taken away by
569 to 511. A proposal to formally condemn "Tract 90"
was stopped by the veto of the Proctors Mr. Guillemard
of Trinity, and Mr. Church of Oriel. This was the crisis
of the movement. It was on February 13th,
1845, that the condemnation took place. In
September Ward became a Roman Catholic ; in October,
Newman. Many others followed. A new stage of the move-
ment began from that moment. Of the chief leaders, Pusey
and Kebie remained firm, and won ever-increasing influence
as the years went on. The cause was taken up and carried
on boldly by a crowd of enthusiastic spirits, of whom
some, it is true, deserted it as time went on, but the
greater number remained firm in the English Church.
Among these Manning, the Wilberforces, and Church, with
Gladstone and Roundell Palmer among laymen, exercised in
different ways a powerful influence on the theology and the
practical work of the English Church. The principle on
which these men acted, has been expressed by one who was
perhaps the wisest of them all :
" It was not the revival of the old Yia Media ; it was not the reassertion
of the superiority of the English Church ; it was not a return to the
old-fashioned and ungenerous methods of controversy with Rome one-
sided in all cases, ignorant, coarse, un-Christian in many. It was not
the proposal of a new theory of the Church its functions, authority, and
teaching, a counter-ideal to Mr. Ward's imposing * Ideal.' It was the
resolute and serious appeal from brilliant logic and keen sarcasm to
reality and experience as well as to history, as to the positive and sub-
stantial characteristics of the traditional and actually existing English
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 141
Church, shown iiot on paper but in work, and in spite of contradictory
appearances and inconsistent elements ; and, along with this, an attempt
to put in a fair and just light the comparative excellences and defects of
other parts of Christendom, excellences to be ungrudgingly admitted, but
not to be allowed to bar the recognition of defects." *
Such principles, with different expression, animated the
army of parish priests and University tutors who now carried
on the teaching of the Tractarians. Dr. Pusey, in spite of
censures and misrepresentation, continued to teach the
doctrines of the Continuous Church, and by active beneficence
and counsel aided in the founding of many new mission works
for dealing with the social and religious difficulties of the
time. Mr. Keble continued to write powerfully in favour of
the principles of the movement, and lived universally respected
in his country living of Hursley till his death in 1866.
If two men be selected as examples of the active work of
the period, they would naturally be Dr. Hook, whose labours
in the immense parish of Leeds gave an impetus to parochial
work throughout England, and Samuel Wilberforce, who was
consecrated Bishop of Oxford on November 30th, 1845. This
great prelate, endowed with many popular gifts, with untiring
energy and marvellous power of organisation and practical
work, may be said to have created a new conception of the
episcopal office. " According to him the bishop was to be as
much the mainspring of all spiritual and religious agency in
his diocese as a parochial clergyman is bound to be in his
parish." f No less was he prominent in the business of the
National Church, in Convocation, and Parliament, and in the
encouragement of the great extension of missionary effort.
That he was not always judicious, and that he had no claim
to learning, would be admitted ; but few would deny that he
was the greatest prelate of the age.
THE history of nineteenth-century Nonconformity may most
fitly begin with some account of the " Three
l-k i.' 4-l~ 11 A JOHN BROWN.
Denominations, as they were called, repre- The Free
sented by the three boards of Presbyterian, churches,
. . 1815-1885.
Independent, and .Baptist ministers, which
in 1727 were organised as a " General Body." From the
* Church, " Oxford Movement." pp. 366-7. t " Life of S. Wilberforce," i. 344.
142 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
time of the Revolution they had a sort of acknowledged
position in the State with the privilege of approaching the
Throne and presenting an address. Of these three the Pres-
byterians were at first the more numerous body, and were
accorded precedence. They traced their origin back to the
time of the Long Parliament, and are not to be confounded
with the present Presbyterian Church in England, which had
a recent origin from Scotland, and is one in doctrine as well
as in polity with the Church of the north. The older com-
munity, while retaining the name Presbyterian, gradually
drifted from their ancient theological positions
The Unitarians. , A a i
into Ananism or Socimamsm, preferring to
call themselves Unitarians, and had for their leaders men like
Dr. Priestley, Theophilus Lindsey, and Thomas Belsham.
Outside London they were in the early years of the nine-
teenth century strongest in Liverpool, Manchester, York,
Birmingham, Norwich, and Bristol. Elsewhere their hold
upon the people was but feeble. In 1830 their own organ,
the Monthly Repository, candidly reported : " Our chapels
are but thinly attended . . . Many of the old places
amongst us are in a pitiable state. Of our own knowledge we
can speak of some scores which scarcely show signs of life."
But while Unitarianism has never had powerful hold of the
common people, it has, on the other hand, well sustained its
reputation for culture and literary power, numbering among
its adherents Priestley, Aikin, and Roscoe, Mrs. Barbauld,
Joanna Baillie, and Crabb Robinson. Norwich Unitarianism
was brilliantly represented by the Taylors, Martin eaus, Starks,
and Aldersons, who were worshippers at the Octagon Chapel,
where also Mrs. Opie attended as a girl ; and at Birmingham,
the Hills, from whom came Sir Rowland, the Post Office
reformer, were prominent supporters of the Presbyterian
Meeting-house.
The Independents, the second of the Three Denomina-
tions, while agreeing with the Unitarians in
The Independents. ,. . ,V , , ,. ,. .
repudiating all btate control ol religion, were
at opposite poles from them in matters of faith and church
polity. With the Methodists they held firmly to evangelical
truth, but differed from them in maintaining the autonomy
of each separate church. Such church, they held, should
consist only of spiritual persons, and being so composed has
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 143
complete power of self-government, the officers and private
members together making one corporate ecclesiastical body,
not acknowledging any right of interference or control from
without. Gradually, in the course of the present century,
the descriptive name " Independent " has given place to that
of " Congregational," the older term of the two, and the one
that was used in the sixteenth century. It was indicative of
a growing feeling in favour of a closer combination of the
churches, which, without interfering with their cherished
freedom and right of self-government, should bring them
into closer fellowship with each other. Out of this feeling
arose the association of Independent churches known as the
Congregational Union of England and Wales,
formed in 1832. The following year the Tne congregational
Union adopted a declaration of faith, church
order, and discipline, not as having authority over the
churches, or as a standard to which assent should be re-
quired, but simply as a statement of the leading principles
held by the denomination. During the present century the
Congregationalists have made steady advance in numbers,
having now 4,594 churches and mission stations ; also in the
possession of improved church buildings and schools ; in the
development of their collegiate system for the training of
ministers ; in enlarged missionary operations both at home
and abroad ; and in the creation of various benevolent and
educational agencies for their people. Many of their minis-
ters, of whom there are nearly three thousand, have exerted
an intellectual influence on the community at large. Heads
of colleges, such as Dr. Pye-Smith, Dr. Vaughan, Dr. Halley,
and Henry Rogers have heen recognised leaders in the world
of thought; while preachers like Richard Winter Hamilton,
James Parsons, Dr. Raffles, John Angell James, Dr. Leif-
child, Thomas Binney, R. W. Dale, and Alexander Raleigh
acquired enduring reputation far beyond their own borders.
The Baptists, the third of the Three Denominations,
differ from the Congregationalists simply on
- .1 . i i 7. t- The Baptists,
the question 01 the mode and subjects 01
baptism. They also have corne into a brotherly federation
known as the Baptist Union, and have been growing in
numbers and influence as the century has proceeded. Like
their Congregational brethren, too, they have had names
144 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
among their ministers held in deserved honour by the
Universal Church : William Carey, the pioneer missionary ;
Robert Hall, the brilliant preacher; Andrew Fuller, Charles
Haddon Spurgeon, Alexander Maclaren, and many more
who have exercised a powerful formative influence over the
religious life of the community.
Passing beyond the historic denominations just referred
to, we come next to the powerful society known as Wesleyan
Methodism, which, born in the eighteenth century, went on
developing and consolidating in the nineteenth. Its internal
history is largely that of a struggle for greater freedom
and increased representation in the government of the So-
ciety on the part of the laity. Neither Wesley nor the
other early leaders in Methodism believed in democratic
government, and continued resistance on their part to the
introduction of the lay element into Conference led to one
secession after another, forming sister communities holding
the same doctrines, and having substantially the same polity,
but working with more of breadth and democratic freedom.
In one form or another the question of the place of the
people in the government of the church came to be agitated
till 1877, when the ministerial and lay elements were har-
monised by a system, of lay representation, which provided
a mixed Conference, consisting of about 240 ministers and
240 laymen, in whom the government was ultimately vested.
In spite of several secessions and occasional disasters
Wesleyan Methodism has shown marveUous vitality, elasticity,
and resource. In 1822-3 a great revival in Cornwall added
more than 2,000 members to the Society within a few
weeks. Ten years later Conference reported the accession
of 24,000 new members in one year in Great Britain and
Ireland, and nearly 2,000 more on their foreign stations.
Even when the Reform agitation of 1849 had entailed serious
discord and heavy lasses in numbers, the Society not only
soon rallied itself but rose stronger than before. In the
course of the following years enlarged congregations called
for enlarged church accommodation, week after week
bringing intelligence from almost every part of the Con-
nexion of new chapels erected or old ones increasing their
accommodation. At the centenary celebration of 1839 the
people raised for colleges, mission-house, and other build-
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 145
ings no less a sum than 230,000 ; at the jubilee of their
Foreign Missionary Society in 1863 they raised 250,000
more, and in 1878 a further Thanksgiving Fund of 290,000.
Their numbers in Society also, as well as their contributions,
in spite of secessions and fluctuations, rose steadily from
decade to decade ; so that while in 1816 they had in Great
Britain and Ireland a membership of 241,319, in 1843 that
membership had reached a total of 451,286 in other words,
had nearly doubled itself.
The principal offshoots from the Wesley an system are
the Methodist New Connexion and the
Primitive Methodists. The former of these
was a secession led by Alexander Kilham in The Methodist
-, hrr.hr i i ^ ^ New Connexion.
1797, in which there were two points at
issue : the relation of the Wesley an Society to the National
Church, and the place of the laity in the internal govern-
ment of the Society. At first the Methodist preachers were
not allowed to administer the sacraments, forasmuch as
Wesley regarded the community he had founded simply
as a Society connected with the Church of England; and
for the same reason services were not to be held in the
Methodist chapels at the same hours as those in the parish
churches. These restrictions were felt to be increasingly
irksome and inconvenient, and those who seceded with
Kilham contended for the right of the people to hold their
services at times convenient to themselves, irrespective of
the services in the National Church ; and also for their
right to receive the sacraments at the hands of their own
ministers, and in their own places of worship. These points
were conceded by Conference shortly after the death of
their founder, but the further constitutional question of
the place of the laity in the government of the Society
continued to be the subject of agitation for three-quarters
of a century longer. The seceding members of 1797 main-
tained the right of the people to a representation in the
district meetings and in the Annual Conference, and so to
have a voice in the government of the Society and in the
appropriation of its funds ; they claimed also on behalf of
the general body the right to vote in the reception and
expulsion of members, in the choice of local officers, and
in the calling out of candidates for the ministry.
K - VOL. VI.
140 SOOTAL ENGLAND.
A much more important community arising out of
secession was that of the Primitive Method-
T M e et P hoSsts Ve ists > which took its rise in 1807 - Tw o
earnest-minded men in Staffordshire, Hugh
Bourne and William Clowes, joined the Methodists, and
caught the spirit of revival. They had read of American
Camp Meetings, and resolved to hold a similar gathering
at Cop Mow, or Congleton Edge, an elevation of millstone
grit dividing Staffordshire from Cheshire. The scene was
memorable from the excitement produced ; other meetings
followed, and the excitement spread. Methodist preachers
disapproved of the proceedings, and Conference passed a
minute to the effect that even supposing such scenes were
allowed in America, in its judgment they were highly im-
proper in England, likely to be productive of considerable
mischief, and were to be discountenanced. Hugh Bourne
took no notice of the inhibition thus pronounced, but went
on holding camp meetings as before; consequently, in the
following June he Avas expelled from the Society for
violating Methodist law. Undeterred by this excommuni-
cation, Bourne and Clowes instituted a society of ten
members, and met in class in 1808. In 1811, when their
membership did not number more than 200, they built a
chapel and determined to call, themselves Primitive Metho-
dists. With admirable self-devotion they went to work
among the poorest and most degraded of the people in
town and village. They had not a college-bred man among
them ; their preachers endured the sorest privations without
a murmur ; the world despised them, and as they heard them
preach and sing called them Ranters ; still they grew,
sweeping over England and penetrating everywhere. Like
the preaching friars of the Middle Ages, wherever they
found an opening they set up a service, and anything
was good enough for a pulpit a wagon or a cart, a chair
or a heap of stones. Driven from one place they escaped
to another, singing as they went. The persecution they
endured was disgraceful. The rabble knocked down the
preachers and threatened with oaths to take their lives.
This persecution, however, only furthered the movement :
congregations were gathered ; class-meetings were held in
which many who had lived abandoned lives told with tears
PJIOGRE8R AND RE ACT JON. H7
how (lod had lifted them out of the horrible pit and the
miry clay; and men who used to fight together sat down
at the love-feasts of the Society, and one after another told
the story of a life-time. It was a memorable movement.
The adherents were nearly all working people fisher-folk,
persons employed in mills, collieries, and mines, or as
labourers on the land and the Society grew in a wonderful
way. The ten members of 1808 have grown to 200,000 ;
they have 4,000 chapels and 16,000 local preachers, and the
good accomplished among the poorest and the lowliest,
among those to whom the consolations of religion are most
welcome, is simply incalculable.
Other less numerous communities, such as the Society
of Friends, the Moravians, the Irvingites,
the Plymouth Brethren, and the adherents
of the New Jerusalem or Swedenborgian
Church, can only be briefly touched upon in the space at
our disposal. The Society of Friends has in the course of
the period now under review steadily declined in numbers,
and was further weakened by the Hicksite controversy which
began in America in 1825, and in 1829 was creating anxiety
among the Quakers on this side of the Atlantic. Still, in
the manifestation of all the social virtues, and in the advance
of all philanthropic movements, they have/ exerted an in-
fluence out of all proportion to their numbers as a denomina-
tion. Honoured names have been among them William
Forster, the (lurneys of Eaiiham, Thomas Clarkson, the
Sturges, Benjamin Seebohm, John Dalton and William Allen,
Joseph Lancaster and Joseph Fox ; these and many more
have stood firmly for justice and righteousness, for the
advancement of science and freedom, and for the promotion
of education and Christian philanthropy.
The Moravians, or, as they describe themselves, the
Unitas Fratrum, the United Brethren, trace back for
centuries to John Huss and the Bohemian Reformation ;
but were as a denomination first established in this country
by Count Zinzendorf in 1732. In 1800 they had settle-
ments in Bedford, Bristol, Dukinfield, Bath, and Devonport,
these settlements being really small colonies, " the Brethren "
living together in village life, with schools and industrial
institutions, under the government of their own Church.
K 2
148 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
Their ecclesiastical polity is somewhat peculiar; for while
they have bishops, their government may be described as
Presbyterian rather than Episcopal, inasmuch as Synods,
provincial and general, are the ruling powers, the provincial
synod directing provincial affairs and legislating in detail
according to principles laid down by a General Synod.
While their numbers have been small, and their churches
not more than forty in this country/it is their great honour
to have been the pioneers in missionary enterprise in
Greenland, Labrador, the West Indies, South Africa, and
among the aborigines of Australia. At the beginning of
the century, out of 170 ministers 100 were missionaries,
and, taking their whole community, one in every sixty
members is a missionary as compared with one in 5,000 in
the other Protestant Churches generally. They had also
missions to the lepers before Pere Damien was born, for
in 1818 the Brethren undertook a settlement for these
unfortunate sufferers in the African valley of Hemel en
Aarde. They are not an increasing community; their old
congregations and their old settlements continue to exist,
but make but little progress.
The Catholic Apostolic Church, as the Irvingites desig-
nate their own community, took its rise out
of the ministry of Edward Irving, originally
of the Scottish Presbyterian Church. Described by De
Quincey as by many , degrees the greatest orator of his
time, and by Carlyle as " the freest, brotherliest, bravest
human soul mine ever came in contact with," he came to
the conviction that the phenomena connected with the
descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost might, if men had
faith, be repeated in our own time, and the miraculous
gifts of the primitive Church renewed. A new church,
necessitated by his great popularity, had been built for
him and opened by Dr. Chalmers in 1829, and in 1831
strange scenes were witnessed and supernatural voices
supposed to be heard. In 1833 he was excommunicated
by the Presbyterian Church, of which he Avas a minister,
and on his return to London he officiated as an angel in
the congregation of the Catholic Apostolic Church. This
Church, which was the outcome of Irving's peculiar views,
laid great stress on the Ecumenical Creeds of Christendom,
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 149
and held to the belief in our Lord's Second Coming before
the Millennium. It was mainly distinguished by its four-
fold ministry of apostle, prophet, evangelist, and pastor,
the apostle taking precedence of the rest, claiming to
confer the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands, to com-
municate to the Church mysteries revealed to himself, and
to decide matters of discipline and order. There were also
deacons to manage temporal affairs, while the payment of
tithes or tenths of property was the source of church
revenue. The system grew to be as churchly in its way as
the churches of the East and West, and as aesthetic in its
ritual. Seven congregations were commenced in London
made up of gathered converts, one of these taking high rank
in later years within the walls of the ornate cathedral built
in Gordon Square. The most distinguished of their ad-
herents was Henry Drummond, M.P., a man of bold
individuality, having the courage of his convictions. At
his seat of Albury Park, which was a gathering place for
students of prophecy, he built in his grounds a place of
worship for the new denomination, the decorations of which
were extremely rich, and in Avhich the chair of the angel,
or bishop, occupied by Lord Sidmouth, stood on the north
side of the chancel.
Between the years 1820 and 1830 a new form of religious
conviction and profession rose against the
formalism and ecclesiasticism of the time,
which came to be known as Brethrenism, and
from an early place of meeting, Plymouth Brethrenism. Mr.
Groves, a young man of ardent piety preparing for the Episcopal
ministry at Trinity College, Dublin, came to have doubts as to
the course he was taking, and in consequence gave up the
study of general literature, sacrificed his property, and cast
himself on Providence. He and some others of like mind
came to the conclusion that all existing ecclesiastical sys-
tems were wrong, that Christendom was in confusion, and
that the day of the Lord was at hand. They also held
that believers in Christ should frequently meet together to
break bread independently of any clerical ministration.
Mr. Groves had for his associate a man of the name of
Darby, of a narrow and sectarian spirit, which Groves was
not, and who proceeded to denounce and excommunicate
160 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
all who did not agree with himself. It is not easy to con-
vey any very distinct idea of the principles adopted by the
Brethren, they having published no confession of faith
and issued no declaration of ecclesiastical order. While
professing to take the New Testament as their rule, their
testimony was more negative than positive. They protested
against worldliness, and especially against Churchism,
esteeming Episcopalianism, Presbyterianism, and Independ-
enc}^ to be all alike wrong, the Establishment being Apos-
tacy, and Dissent no better. Their main positive manifesto
is that the Lord is at hand, and that till He comes the
Holy Spirit is the present sole and sufficient sovereign in
the Church.
Swedenborgianism may be said to have first come
within the circle of English ecclesiastical
Swedentoorgians ^ e as ^ ie ^ ew J emsa l em Church, about
1810, when a society was formed for circu-
lating Swedenborg's works. As far back, however, as 1754,
the Rev. J. Hartley, a Northamptonshire clergyman, pub-
lished treatises and translations on the subject, and the
Rev. John Clowes, of Manchester, who died in 1831, wrote
works in defence of the system, though he still remained
a clergyman of the Church of England. At the religious
census of 1851 the Swedenborgian places of worship had
a total of 11,465 sittings, and 4,846 persons in attendance.
The system rested on the peculiar claim of its founder to
have been in the spiritual world and to have talked with
angels face to face in their own habitations. His books
are the revelations of what was thus professedly com-
municated to him. This remarkable man of noble character
and educated mind presents a strange mixture of fanaticism
and cool reasoning. Holding to a mystic meaning in Scrip-
ture, of which he alone had the key, and to the idea that
everything in the world is full of correspondence*, he thought
that the true explanation of Scripture will proceed beyond
the literal to the spiritual, and recognise the correspondences
everywhere existing between the three worlds of Nature, of
the True, and of the Good.
The Salvation Army, though coming into existence
during the period covered by this volume, really received its
principal developments later than the year 1885.
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 151
1832-46]
SEVERAL years before the commencement of the period
whereon we now enter, the burst of song with
which the eighteenth century had closed and H. D. TRAILL.
r. i! Literature:
its successor opened was finally hushed, and A Brief Retrospect.
by 1832 it may almost be said that even its
echoes had died away. Byron had been eight years dead,
Shelley ten, and Keats eleven. Scott's muse had been silent
for well nigh twenty. The best that was in Wordsworth had
been uttered. Coleridge had almost wholly fallen silent, and
the genuine, if not very opulent, vein of poetry which his son
Hartley (1796-1849) had inherited was denied its full de-
velopment in a nature marred by weaknesses which were
themselves also, unhappily, paternal bequests. Poetry of
respectable, if of minor merit, is not wanting, it is true, to the
literature of this decade, but none of it, whatever its quality,
can be regarded as in any sense carrying 011 either the lyrical
tradition of the first three of the above-named poets or the
poetico-romantic tradition of the fourth. Their performances
were almost all in the nature rather of adventures in new direc-
tions than of progress along the path marked out by their
predecessors. In only one of them, Thomas Hood (1798-1845)
and in him only in those early pieces which public neglect
compelled him to abandon for the essentially inferior work of
burlesque verse is there to be noted any deliberate endeavour
to follow in the footsteps of the earlier masters. Of the two
other poets whose names, though held in very unequal
estimation in their life-time, deserve alike to be mentioned
even in a brief summary of this kind, one and the greater in
original genius lived too short and undisciplined a life to
justify any attempt to fix his place definitively in the litera-
ture of his age. But both the single work which Thomas
Lovell Beddoes (1803-49) produced in his short life of less
than fifty years and the series of works which were the yield
of Henry Taylor's (1800-86) long life of nearly ninety years
were dramatic in form. And though the latter attained to a
certain measure of reputation during the decade which we
are considering (his masterpiece, " Philip van Artevelde," was
not published till 1834), whereas the former remained in com-
plete obscurity for many years after his death, it cannot be
said that even Taylor himself was in any sense popular.
152 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
11832
Perhaps the only poet who, during this period, made any
deep impression on the public mind was the still living Philip
James Bailey, whose long philosophical poem of " Festus,"
published in 1839, preserves still such a measure of literary
life as to justify the republication of a " Jubilee " edition of it
eight years ago.
If the honours, such as they are, of popularity can be
claimed at all for any poetry, or so-called
P oetrv ' durin g the period in question, they
must be taken to have descended in the
female line, for probably the most widely read writers of
verse at that period were Felicia Hemans (1793-1835) and
Letitia Elizabeth Landon, better known to her contemporaries
under the initials " L. E. L." Profound mediocrity is the note
of both ladies, and their smooth and facile numbers varied
in the case of the former only by a few pieces of higher merit
would, in these days of abundant and admirable versification,
not infrequently rising to the level of genuine poetry, pass
quite unnoticed. That either of these two elegant but wholly
uninspired songstresses should have found acceptance by a
public in whose ears the music of Keats and Shelley was still
echoing is a melancholy proof of the essential worthlessness
of popular fame.
Poor, however, as was the quality of the verse produced
during these years, it must be admitted that
the first effaL ' tS 0> the new P et who was
destined to become the glory of his age
revealed no striking superiority of gift. In 1826 appeared the
small but now historic volume entitled, " Poems by Two
Brothers," a collection of weakly imitative lyrics, from which
no one certainly would have guessed the illustrious future
which lay before one of the joint authors, or the genuine,
though of course far slighter, poetic inspiration which was
to find utterance in the other. It is not now possible to
distinguish the share of Alfred Tennyson (1809-92) in this
early venture from that of Charles ; but the
fact is tbe less to be re g rette(i since tne dead
level of mediocrity is maintained uniformly
throughout, and in no one number of the volume can the
most sympathetic criticism detect the faintest individuality
of touch. There are echoes ol Byron and of Scott ; there is
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 153
1846]
even an echo of Moore ; but the unmistakable music of that
voice which was to charm two generations of Englishmen, and
to retain its sweetness and power unimpaired until, nearly
seventy years later, it was stilled for ever, is nowhere to be
heard. Never since Apollo took service with Admetus has
the godhead of an Immortal been so effectually concealed.
It was not till 1830 that Tennyson again broke silence,
nor can it be said that even in the volume
published by him in this year the promise
of his future greatness stood as yet assured.
For although in the collection entitled "Poems Chiefly
Lyrical " are to be found a few such masterpieces as
"Mariana/' "The Dying Swan," "The Merman," and "The
Mermaid," yet in the collection of poems published two years
later, when the poet was still only in his twenty- third year,
he reached a level of lyrical perfection, on which he stood side
by side, not only with Keats and Shelley, but with the greatest
English lyrists from the Elizabethan era downwards, and above
which he did not, as indeed it was inevitable that he should
not, rise during the sixty years of creative activity that still
remained to him. One has but to mention the names of
" The Lotos Eaters," of " (Enone," of " The Palace of Art,"
and of " The Dream of Fair Women," in order to remind
oneself how early the greatest, the most individual, and most
lasting triumphs of the poet were achieved. For of but one
among these four masterpieces can it be said that it shows
any lingering traces of that imitative stage through which
even poets of the most independent and original genius some-
times have to pass. " The Palace of Art " is no doubt strongly
reminiscent of Keats, but in " The Lotos Eaters " a note new
hi English lyrical poetry was struck, just as in " (Enone" the
young poet showed that the possibilities of the blank verse
measure had not been exhausted by Milton, and stamped it anew
with a rhythm of his own which is more fluent and flexible,
more varied and versatile though unfortunately, too, more
easily imitable and more copiously imitated than that of his
great predecessor. In 1842 Tennyson added to the list of his
published poems, among many others, his great philosophical
poem, " The Two Voices " ; the romantic, but in sentiment
slightly commonplace, " Locksley Hall " ; the two fine blank-
verse pieces, " Ulysses " and " Godiva " ; and the splendid
154 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
1832
fragment of the " Morte d' Arthur." His detractors in the
press were now silenced, and his rank as the foremost of
living English poets was assured to him.
Much behind him in reputation stood in those days a poet
who, in the closing years of his life, was to
" challenge an almost equal place. Robert
Browning (1812-89) was born three years after Tennyson,
and was about as much his junior on the Muse's calendar.
" Pauline," his first poem, appeared in 1833, a work which
has not, even now in the day of his fame, found many admirers,
and was followed two years later by " Paracelsus," a poem in
the dramatic form and of far more remarkable quality, ex-
hibiting, indeed, both in matter and manner, nearly all the
most characteristic points of its author's genius. Though as
profoundly and unpoetically analytic as anything that he ever
wrote, it is redeemed by passages of beauty which are
almost wholly wanting to the relief of " Sordello," published
in 1840, perhaps the harshest in expression and obscurest in
theme of all the poet's productions. It may be conveniently
dwelt upon for a moment longer here, as representative of an
aspect of Browning's poetry, which it retained almost unaltered
to the last. Perfect lucidity and simplicity, a sufficient
charm of music and imagery, and a passion and power of
dramatic insight unsurpassed, if equalled, either by prede-
cessor or contemporary, were often at his command and
were many a time displayed by him in his shorter lyrical
pieces. But during the whole of his sixty years of poetic
activity he habitually disdained to lend any of these attractions
to his longer blank-verse poems. To the last it was the poet's
whim to lead his reader into unlighted caverns of thought
strewn thickly with obstacles of language, and to leave him
to grope and stumble his way through them as best he might.
Up to the end of the period covered by this chapter
Browning had published scarcely anything unless we except
a few of the pieces appearing in the collection entitled " Bells
and Pomegranates," issued in parts between 1841 and 1846
which gave promise of his lyrical as distinct from his analytic
and philosophising powers ; and the accomplished poetess
whom he married in the year with which this period closes
had not then attained that fame which for nearly another
twenty years was to eclipse that of her husband. Between
PRO GUESS AND HE ACTION. 155
1846]
1832 and 1846 there were no poets, with the exception of the
female mediocrities above-mentioned and perhaps also Mr.
Philip James Bailey, who contested Tennyson's monopoly of
public attention as a poet. The name of Sir Aubrey de Vere
(1788-1846) is alone worthy of mention as a poet of true charm
and refinement ; for that of Ebenezer Elliott, the so-called
"Corn Law Rhymer" (1781-1849), though he probably had
more of the " root of the matter " in him than any man
living at that time save Tennyson and Browning, is almost
necessarily excluded by the self- chosen narrowness of his
themes and by their fiercely polemical treatment from any
prominent place in such a chronicle as this. One might
almost wish that the Corn Laws had been repealed twenty
years earlier, in order to see how it might then have fared
with Elliott's poetic development, were it not that in that
case he would probably never have sung at all.
The prose of this period was as remarkable in point of
accomplished work as its poetry was rich in
. L ,. . , / . Prose, 1832-1846.
promise ; for in the course of its fourteen
years it witnessed the rise almost to the full height of their
fame and perhaps quite to its summit in
. i. 4.1- * Macaulay.
one case of two of the greatest prose-writers
and one of the two greatest novelists of the century, in the
persons of Macaulay, Carlyle, and Dickens. The first of these
had already made his mark in periodical literature before the
period began. Macaulay (1800-59) was indeed a contributor
to the Edinburgh Revieiv in the second decade of the century,
and had already elicited the well-known and often-quoted
eulogy of Jeffrey on the novelty and brilliancy of his style. The
essay on Milton appeared in 1825, and thenceforward for the
space of twenty years Macaulay contributed to the great Whig
periodical a series of articles which, although, according to
the tradition then and still observed by the Revieiv, ostensibly
literary criticisms, were in many or most cases elaborate
biographical studies of statesmen, sovereigns, philosophers,
and men of letters, or comprehensive surveys of past periods
of history. They occasionally suffer in some measure from
the circumstances of their production ; and the manifest
intrusion of political bias (or, as in one famous case, of
downright personal animosity) into some of them detracts
from their value; but, excluding a few of the more or less
156 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832
" occasional " articles such as that on " Southey's Colloquies,"
"Croker's Boswell," "Gladstone on Church and State/' and
the celebrated onslaught on Mr. Robert Montgomery the
remainder may be safely ranked among the enduring monu-
ments of English literature. In the essays on Lord Bacon
and Sir William Temple, in the two brilliant sketches of the
elder Pitt and his contemporaries, and, above all, in the
magnificently dramatic presentment of the administration
and the trial of Warren Hastings, Macaulay's literary genius
with all its brilliant fervour of rhetoric, its consummate
mastery of intricate narrative, and its lucid, if too often pre-
judiced, analysis of character and motive is seen at the
height of its power. His activity of production was un-
interrupted even by those four years of official service in
India, during which he acquired that local knowledge and
that familiarity with Oriental life which stood him in such
good stead in the last-named essay ; he continued to display
it as untiringly after his return to India in 1838. Some four
or five years later, in 1842 and 1843, he made his first appear-
ance as a poet with the " Lays of Ancient
R me " a wor k which has been variously
judged by critics, but which, though not
attaining to and indeed not aiming at the simplicity of the
ancient ballad poetry, is animated, especially in its battle-
pieces, by a sustained ardour which it would not be easy to
match anywhere save in the romance poetry of Sir Walter
Scott.
After a short interval of Parliamentary and official work,
Macaulay lost, in 1847, his seat for Edinburgh,
Th Engiand7 f and a y ear afterwards published the first two
volumes of his " History of England," thus
invading a field at that time occupied almost solely by his
older contemporary a fellow- Whig, Henry Hallam (1777-
1859), one of the most learned and judicious, but also one of
the coldest and least inspiring, of writers. Its third and fourth
volumes appeared in 1855, and two years later its author was
raised to the peerage. He died in 1859, leaving this monument
of his genius uncompleted. The brilliancy of the essayist
displays itself with undirninished lustre in the historian ; and
there are passages in the history not surpassed even by the
most eloquent pages of the essays. But the constitutional defects
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 157
1846;
of the critic and biographer are still more conspicuous in the
writer of history. The vehement prejudices which occasion-
ally distorted his view of the philosopher or the man of
letters who had been the subjects of his study perpetually
disable him from dealing fairly with the statesman or the
policy with whom and with which it was now his business to
deal ; and though these prejudices never indeed betray him
into deliberate deviations from ascertained truth, they con-
stantly tempt him to exaggerate or to minimise the effect of
historical evidence, and what approaches nearer still to posi-
tive untruthfulness to build up a theory of the character and
motives of individuals upon the basis of a series of mere
presumptions which the reader is allowed, if not encouraged,
to mistake for facts.
The place, however, of Macaulay, elevated as it is among
English men of letters, is less commanding
than his rank among those Avho have in-
fluenced the history, as well as enriched the
possessions, of our national literature. No writer of any age
not Dryden, or Johnson, or Gibbon has left a deeper mark
than Macaulay upon English prose. It is hardly too much
to say that his influence is visible, to an extent amounting
sometimes almost to actual mimicry, in nine out of every ten
men who followed the craft of literature during the period
immediately succeeding his death ; and though it has of late
been waning somewhat before the attraction of newer models,
it is still to be quite plainly traced. Macaulay 's style had, in
fact, that combination of individuality and adaptability which
is the secret of any great prose-writer's influence upon his
time. Accomplished, attractive, and even great as such a
writer may be, his style must have a new and personal stamp,
or it will not arouse the desire or beget the unconscious trick
of imitation ; yet with all its originality it must be such as
will adapt itself to the needs of many varieties of literary
temperament, many different degrees of literary power, and
to the capacities of all kinds of literary material, or the
imitator, unconscious as well as conscious, will, with or with-
out knowing, abandon it for some more useful model. Macaulay
may, as Professor Saintsbury thinks, have taken something
from Hazlitt in the formation of his style, and " not a little
from Gibbon" ; and undoubtedly there is a family resemblance
158 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832
in what has been irreverently called the " see-saw of the sen-
tence " in both writers. But Macaulay shortened the sentence,
sharpened the antithesis, and familiarised the language ; and
in so doing made it possible for a host of successors to culti-
vate point and epigram while avoiding the appearance of
sham and elaboration, and taught them to lend to rhetoric
which is in reality quite as artificial as Gibbon's an air of the
natural and sincere. At a time when the genius of English
prose, with the fascinating but dangerous models of De
Quincey and Wilson before her, might easily have run into
somewhat loose-zoned excesses of the luscious in phrase and
colouring, Macaulay gathered up her garments and girt her
loins. The reaction towards a greater restraint and austerity
of style which he thus set on foot was needed and was healthy,
and it has not yet quite spent itself even now, when Macaulay
has been nearly forty years in the grave.
Widely different in literary manner, and infinitely less
influential as a literary model, stands the
other famous essayist and historian, if either
name can be properly given to one whose essays were usually
poetic and satiric rhapsodies, and his history a series of brilliant
dramatic monographs, interspersed with prophetic sermon-
isings on the enigma of existence and the nature, lot, and
destiny of man. Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), the son of a
Scotch stonemason, was originally intended for the Church,
which he abandoned first for the drudgery of an ushership in
various Scotch provincial schools, and finally, after an interval
of private tutorship, for the less monotonous but more pre-
carious employment known to an elder generation as " writing
for the booksellers." Between his twenty-fifth and his thirty-
fifth years he did much miscellaneous work in the way of
translations and contributions to periodicals, but the first
production which brought him into notice was the strange
rhapsody, as it was then considered, to which he gave the
name of " Sartor Resartus," and which, under
Sartor Resartus." ^ form mdicated by itg sub . tit l e o f "The
Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh," is in fact a sort of
spiritual autobiography of Carlyle himself. Though accepted
courageously enough, and published in a serial form in their
miscellany by the conductors of Fraeer's Magazine, its
success, as may be imagined, was not immediate; nor was
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 159
184GJ
it until after the publication of another and more popular
work that it won its way to anything like general apprecia-
tion. But from the first it caught the attention of the few
independent critics and thinkers who were able to penetrate
through what seems to an unfamiliar eye its uncouth and
forbidding style to the core of wisdom, humour, and poetry
that lay within. In these qualities, apart or in combination,
it has been held by many and the opinion, though not in-
controvertible, is strongly founded to be richer than any
other of its author's works.
In the year 1837 appeared the " History of the French
Revolution," and by this work the place of
Carlyle in English literature was permanently Revolution "
fixed and obtained general recognition. The
dramatic vigour of its narrative, the vivid force of its por-
traiture, the reach and grasp of its generalisations, and the
brilliancy and power with which the historian's theory, in-
adequate and biassed as it may have been, of the great
catastrophe was supported, were irresistible. Later researches
have corrected many of Carlyle's statements of fact ; a wider
survey of the social and economic conditions of the revolu-
tionary France has revealed the limitations of his own
historical outlook, and his too narrow conception of the
causes of the events with which he was dealing; but the
supreme artistic value of this magnificent work remains
unimpaired. It remains, and will always remain, an im-
perishable monument of the power of literary genius in
enabling the average human imagination to realise, with
an intensity which would otherwise have been impossible
to it, one of the greatest and strangest dramas that have
ever been enacted on the human stage.
The lectures on "German Literature," on "The History of
European Literature," on " Revolutions," and
on " Heroes and Hero-worship," followed in
pretty rapid succession, and were followed by the collection
and publication of the " Miscellaneous Essays," the volume
on " Chartism," and the remarkable series of
political studies contained in the volume en- "Past and Present"
titled "Past and Present," and published in oiiver Cromwell."
1839. And in the last year but one of the
period with which we are dealing there appeared another, the
160 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832
third of the three great works which stand at the head of
Carlyle's productions, " The Letters and Speeches of Oliver
Cromwell " a pious, and to a considerable extent successful,
attempt to rehabilitate the memory of the great Protector,
which revealed in a fulness only to be surpassed in the vast
enterprise of his later life Carlyle's untiring industry in the
collection of materials and the singularly acute insight with
which in certain circumstances he could handle them.
In dismissing for the present this most powerful and
original of writers a word must be said
Car nteratire e * o ' the P lace which he occupies in English
letters. It is in no sense, as was Macaulay's,
that of a model and exemplar, or of a contributor to the
formative influences by which the future character of a
national prose is determined. On his first appearance
as a writer there were those who thought or rather
feared otherwise, and who augured the gravest danger
to English prose from the example and influence of
a style so "barbarous," as it seemed to them, so widely
deviant from accepted models, and so rebellious from
classical canons as was that of Carlyle. Time has shown,
however, that these fears were exaggerated, and that, as
might indeed have been expected, a literary manner so in-
capable of adaptation to the uses of the average writer in
whom alone one must mainly look for the influences of con-
temporary models would never be widely imitated except
for purposes of deliberate parody. Accordingly, while no one,
perhaps, has been so frequently or successfully parodied in
the course of the last half-century than the author of " The
French Revolution," there is no Avriter of his power and
popularity who has had fewer conscious or unconscious
imitators as distinct from parodists. Perhaps the reason is
that unconscious imitation of so marked a manner would be
difficult almost to the point of impossibility, and that to
imitate it consciously, and at the same time with a serious
intent, would be as nearly impossible for anyone having any
consciousness of the absurd. Carlyle, it is true, was himself
accused in his early days of being, so to speak, his own
imitator that is to say, of deliberately following out a de-
liberately invented scheme of literary eccentricity. His
peculiarities of manner, these accusers declared, were not
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 161
1846]
natural to him ; they were affected of set purpose as a means,
and an unworthy means, of arresting public attention. Ample
proof of this was to be found, they alleged, in the fact that in
his earlier pieces Carlyle wrote, as they put it, "just like any-
body else."
A fairer criticism, however, will lead one to the conclusion
that it was not his earlier manner as displayed in the
periodical to which he contributed at the outset of his career,
and for the readers of which he was bound (and no doubt
editorially reminded often enough) to put restraint upon him-
self but his later manner which was really natural to him.
If the style is the man, it is not in " The Life of Schiller," but
in " Sartor Resartus," that we must look for the real Carlyle.
It was in the style that he adopted, or rather mounted, for
himself in " Sartor " with its formless sentences, its abrupt
breaks and harsh inversions, its strange metaphors and its
fantastic vocabulary that he found the adequate, and doubt-
less the only adequate, expression of his rich and varied
genius. For him, as has been said in a recent study of his
literary characteristics for Carlyle, " with his throng of com-
manding faculties his fiery eloquence, his rugged pathos, his
grim and caustic humour, his unrivalled talent for word por-
traiture and picturesque description all struggling, some-
times almost simultaneously, to express themselves, there was
but one possible language the Carlylese. And whatever
may happen to the ' claim of style,' whatever may become
of the 'dignity of history,' we may be sure that so long as
eloquence and pathos, and humour, and vivid portraiture,
and picturesque description retain their power to move and
delight mankind, Carlyle's place in the admiration of
posterity will be secure." ,
Far foremost among the novelists of this period, and, in
certain respects, easily chief of all the writers
of fiction of the Victorian era, stands Charles
Dickens (1812-70), the greatest of whose works, with a single
exception, were published during the nine years with which
the period closes. " The Pickwick Papers," which, originally
commenced in 1836, grew rapidly under its author's hand
into a masterpiece of broadly farcical comedy, appeared
in its completed form in 1837, and was succeeded in the
following year by " Nicholas Nickleby." " The Old Curiosity
L VOL. VI. i
162 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832
Shop" and " Barnaby Rudge" made their appearance in
1840-41, and "Martin Chuzzlewit" in 1843. The first
work of this brilliant series established the popularity of
Dickens, and revealed his extraordinary gift of humour
to almost, if not quite, its full extent; but it can hardly be
said that the range and variety of his powers were demon-
strated until the completion of the series. There was nothing
in the boisterous fun of " Pickwick," or even in the extrava-
gant, if droll, caricatures with which "Nicholas Xickleby"
abounds, to foreshadow the astonishing vigour of dramatic
narrative which animates the story of the Gordon Riots in
" Barnaby Rudge," or the mastery of genuine, if sometimes
recklessly unjust, satire which informs the American scenes in
" Martin Chuzzlewit." Still less are there any traces in the
earliest books of that purely literary quality which, in spite
of Dickens' extensive ignorance of, and, as it should seem,
profound contempt for, accepted literary models, no competent
critic can fail to recognise in the work of his prime.
Of his humour it is singularly difficult for criticism as
many unsuccessful attempts have proved
ra %?ckeSr f to ren der a strictly just account. In some
of its aspects it is as easy to undervalue as it
is in others to over-estimate it. Of all the greater humorists
of the world there is none whose humour, relatively to the
extraordinary width of its outlook, is so singularly lacking
in penetrative power. His wealth in this quality is indeed
ample, but it is laterally, not vertically, disposed. To compare
Sterne with Dickens is like comparing the owner of a small
but richly yielding mine with the proprietor of an immense
but light-soiled estate. The one sinks deep shafts into his
little plot of earth, while the other seems to have hardly more
than scratched the surface of his broad acres. It is this lack
of depth in the Dickensian humour which has led many in
their disappointment to dismiss it with too hasty disparage-
ment as " caricature." There is justice in the sentence, but
not complete justice ; for though caricature is almost in-
variably its basis, and in " Pickwick " forms its whole stuff
and substance, there is much more in its best examples than
mere exaggeration of the comic aspects of character at the
expense of proportion and truth. Still it remains the fact
that many, and those the most famous, of his humorous
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 163
1846]
portraits are not so much portraits of men as they are
idealised studies of incarnate " humours " in the sense in
which Ben Jonson uses the word. They have not the whole-
ness, the complete humanity of Falstaff or of My Uncle
Toby ; they are simply human vices, or human foibles
personified to the exclusion of every other human attribute.
There must have been more in Pecksniff than hypocrisy,
pomposity, meanness ; more in Mrs. Gamp than garrulity,
greed, dishonesty ; more, perhaps, even in Squeers than
brutality, ignorance, and impudent conceit ; yet this is all
of these characters that we are ever permitted to see. Realist
as Dickens supposed himself to be, and in his descriptive
method actually was, he is, dramatically speaking, an idealist
pure and simple. He drew not individuals, but types ; he dealt,
not with concrete realities, but with abstract qualities ; and
strange as it may seem, the characters of this prose humorist
must be viewed as we view the purely ideal creations of the
poet, if we would do justice either to him or to them. For it
is only by thus studying these characters that we can fairly
measure that inexhaustible wealth of comic imagination, that
unflagging zest and dexterity of humorous portrayal, which
carries captive the reader's judgment, and compels him for
the time to share their creator's belief in their existence.
Of the pathos of Dickens it is impossible to speak with
the same confident admiration. Much more
seriously and much more frequently than
his humour did it suffer from those remark-
able lapses of self-restraint, and that singular incapacity
of self-criticism, which make themselves felt at intervals
throughout the whole of his literary work. And whereas his
humour, even where through extravagance it overshoots its
mark, is almost always genuine to start with, his pathos, on
the other hand, is more than occasionally false. Like Sterne
before him, he succeeds best where he is least self-conscious
and deliberate in his appeals to the reader's sympathy. It is
where, like Sterne with his Maria, he "lays himself out" to
be pathetic, as with his little Nells and little Pauls, that his
failure is the most disastrous. But in his command of the
tragic and the terrible he has been rarely equalled. The
scene in which he places, and the atmosphere with which
he surrounds, his incidents of horror, are conceived and
L 2
164 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832
rendered with tremendous power, and it is in these, perhaps
more than in any other parts of his writings, that the con-
summate literary art of which he was the not always
sufficiently acknowledged master, is the most strikingly
displayed.
The greatest works of his greatest rival do not fall within
the period with which we are dealing his
masterpiece, as by many it is considered,
having been only commenced in serial form
in the year with which that period closes. It is best, there
fore, that detailed notice of him should be reserved for the
succeeding chapter. But though Thackeray (1811-63) was
hardly known to the public of the early 'forties otherwise
than as a writer of humorous sketches for the then infant
comic periodical press, we must not forget that to this
early phase in the development of his genius belongs that
most masterly study of the character of the unscrupulous
adventurer hardly even now appreciated at its full worth
which alone should have sufficed to give the author a leading
place not only among the novelists of his century, but among
the greatest analysts of human character and motive that the
modern world has produced. " Barry Lyndon " is a work
which Balzac himself at that date had hardly equalled, and
which certainly he never surpassed.
In 1843, however, the taste for such penetrating studies of
character had not arisen ; it had indeed to
Romance: be created in a large measure by Thackeray
Ln Tames. ai1 himself. Romance, except in so far as it had
been displaced by the novel of humour in
the hands of Dickens, was still, as was only natural during
the decade succeeding the death of Scott, the most popular
form of fiction, and Thackeray for some years to come had
still as is recorded in a well-known anecdote to endure
its most successful professor's jovial condolences on the
public neglect of his infinitely superior work. William
Harrison Ainsworth (1805-82) and G. P. R. James (1801-60)
were then at the height of their somewhat cheaply-earned
fame. The former, though inferior to his rival in strictly
literary merit if indeed that quality can be correctly
attributed to either of them is by much the more animated
and attractive writer of the two. In pure storytelling power,
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 165
1846]
in dexterous arrangement of dramatic situation, and in dash
and rapidity of action, he often shows himself, indeed, to be
no unworthy, if no conscious, imitator of Dumas ; as in fact
he also recalls that great romancer in his utter indifference
to the higher arts of characterisation, and his complete con-
tentment with a set of dramatis personcv possessing no more
life than is necessary to carry them through a series of
stirring adventures. James, a more avowed and obvious
follower of Scott, had also a faint touch of Scott's romantic
spirit ; but almost all his novels are of that one inadmissible
genre denned by the French critic as le genre ennuyeux.
And the intolerable slowness of their movement as individual
stories was hardly compensated by the speed with which
they followed one another from his too prolific pan.
A man of far wider culture, and of infinitely greater
versatility, was Edward Lytton Bulwer
(1803-73), afterwards raised to the peerage
under the title of Lord Lytton. Indeed, if versatility were
everything, and the power of writing well in many forms,
if supremely well in none, were to be taken as the test of
excellence, he would be beyond all competition the foremost
writer of his age. The fashionable novel, the novel of crime,
the ' historical novel, the romance of the supernatural, the
domestic novel, the novel of social satire, the novel of
speculative fantasy, the comedy, the melodrama, the historical
drama at each and all of these forms of imaginative writing
he tried his hand during his half -century of literary
activity, and in every instance with a success to which
"Pelham," "Paul Clifford," and "Eugene Aram," "The
Last of the Barons " and " The Last Days of Pompeii," " The
Caxtons " and " My Novel," " Kenelm Chillingly," " The
Parisians " and " The Coming Race," remain to testify in the
literature of the study, as do " Money," " Richelieu " and
" The Lady of Lyons " in that of the stage. It has been
said with truth that if literary honours were awarded on the
"marks" system so many for poetry, so many for prose,
fiction, essay, drama, and so forth and the scorer of the
highest aggregate to obtain the highest place, the author
of those picturesque romances which reminded their ad-
mirers of Scott, of those novels of humour and reflection
which were such dexterous imitations of Sterne, and of those
166 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832
plays which, with all their defects, still keep the stage, would
be easily first. But remarkable as is their technical excellence,
there is a lack of the genuine ring of genius about all of
them ; and all but one or two of them have now their portion,
like all other works of mere talent, however brilliant, among
the snows of yester-year.
One special department of romantic fiction remains to
be noticed, in recognition of the singular
P ower an( l stm * surviving popularity of the
writer who stands at the head of it, though
he had few or no notable followers in his own days, and has
not had many in ours. Frederick Marryat (1792-1848) was
not in his first youth when he began to write, but it may
be said that the whole of his previous life from early boyhood
had been passed in accumulating the materials for his fiction.
He retired from active service in the Navy about 1830, having
then already produced at least one, and perhaps having
written more than one, of the nautical novels which, or
rather the subsequent additions to their number, gained him
a popularity which he still retains. His skill in construction
is not great, and his style wavers, like the legs of the recently-
landed traveller, whenever he quits the sea for the shore.
But when afloat its breezy vigour and directness serve his
purpose admirably. His descriptions of storm and battle are
full of life and movement ; his naval characters are drawn
with a convincing reality of touch; and his humour is not
less rich and broad, while it is infinitely more good-natured,
than that of Smollett. A writer with many of the qualities
of Marryat, though also with others, which apparently only
advancing years developed, was Charles Lever (1806-72).
His stories of Irish life, and of military adventures, during
the period of the Great War, are as full of boisterous fun
as Marryat's, and not inferior to his in spirited draughtsman-
ship. Lever, however, was too rapid and reckless a writer
in his early days to have escaped publishing a good deal of
inferior matter, and perhaps the full measure of his gifts was
not displayed till near the close of his life, when, adopting an
entirely new style to suit the changed taste of the public, he
produced two or three novels abounding in quiet humour
and in penetrative studies of life and character.
One more novelist of unequal performance in many
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 167
1846]
respects, but as fertile of imagination as he was of political
resource, and with a literary touch as bril-
liant as his political genius, remains to be
noticed in Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beacons-
field (1804-81). The first work which brought him into
notice was one of remarkable cleverness and promise, but
flimsy in construction, flashy in style, and altogether de-
manding too much indulgence for the vanity and impertinence
of youth. Nevertheless it received at the time what it
demanded, and the success of " Vivian Grey " was repeated
in a series of romances published by their author in the
course of the 'thirties. But it was not till after his return
to Parliament in 1837, and his entrance therewith not only
into public life but into the best and most authoritative
political society, that he can be said to have " found himself"
as a novelist. For it was then that he made that unique
and fascinating addition to the literature of English fiction
the political novel, a form which has never since been
attempted with more than partial success, but which in his
hands became not only a vehicle for pungent social satire,
interspersed with acute and often profound reflections upon
history and politics, but also a complete and invaluable record
of the political issues and situations of the author's day.
THE artists who reached the maturity of their powers in the
later years before the Pre-Raphaelite revival
were not, on the whole, men of great distinc- R - H ]^ HES '
tion. The eldest and most accomplished of
these was Sir Charles Eastlake, a man of fine culture, elected
Academician in 1830, and President of the Royal Academy
twenty years later. He served the cause of art somewhat
poorly as a painter, but quite admirably as a historian and
critic. Something of the same sort may be
said of William Dyce, chiefly remembered Eastlake,
as a fresco painter, whose somewhat severe MacS.se.
manner is not without traces of that study of
the great Italian masters to which his youth was devoted.
The best of his life was spent in forwarding the cause of
the school of design, which, established in the first years
of her Majesty's reign, has had a remarkable develop-
168 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832
ment in our own day. A better remembered name is that
of the Irishman Daniel Maclise, who in his day which
may be fixed about 1840, when he was elected an Academician
had a prodigious vogue. He painted frescoes, huge dramatic
pieces, portraits, genre, everything. His talent may be fairly
gauged by his famous picture of " The Play Scene in
Hamlet," combining vigorous composition with extreme
staginess, while the texture is wooden and the colour un-
attractive.
Neither was portrait painting at this period in a much
more promising condition. Its principal practitioners were
Pickersgill, Grant, Macnee, and Boxall none of them, except
perhaps Boxall, artists of any originality. Genre was better
served by Thomas Webster, on whom, though
Thomas Webster. J . . ,, r . TETMI
a poor colounst, the mantle of wilkie to
some extent fell. The English schoolboy, particularly the
village schoolboy, has never been delineated with more spirit
or more humour. He was a prolific painter, too ; many of his
pictures such as " The Smile" and "The Frown," "The Boy
with Many Friends " and " The Village Choir " retain to the
present day a well-deserved popularity.
In two departments, however, an advance can be noted in
this period. The painting of animals and
^6 P amtm S f tne sea vastly improved.
This was due mainly to two men, Edwin
Landseer and Clarkson Stanfield. The former of these came
of a family of artists ; his father and brother were engravers,
while another brother, Charles, was a painter of genre sub-
jects. He was not only a passionate lover and observer of
animals, but a scientific student of their anatomy. His
observation of character was, indeed, neither profound nor
intense, but it was thoroughly sympathetic, and he noted
movement and gesture admirably. " The Shepherd's Chief
Mourner" the faithful collie pressing lovingly against the
dead master's coffin perhaps his most famous work, has
been described by Mr. Ruskin as one of the most perfect
poems which modern times have seen. He was a master of
texture, too, and only the unfortunate defect in his feeling for
colour prevented him from being a great artist. He is never
better seen than in chalk studies of animals in motion.
Translated into the black and white of engraving, hi s
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 169
1846]
pictures have had, and will probably always have, an
amazing success. His career was long. He was an exhibitor
at the Royal Academy as early as 1817, when he was only
fifteen, and his best work was done prior to a severe illness
in 1851. He was elected an KA. as early as 1831, and in
1850 he was knighted. He worked for twenty years and
more after this, but these productions (which include the
lions in Trafalgar Square) belong to a later period.
Clarkson Stanfield arrived at distinction a few years later
than Landseer. An older man by nine years,
he was not elected an Academician till 1835.
He was a scene-painter by profession, and did
not quit that metier until 1829. He has been termed the
first purely marine painter that England produced, and this
in substance is a correct appreciation. Of course, there had
been earlier English painters of the sea. There had been
several painters of sea-fights, and of what one may call marine
genre. The splendour or terror of the sea enters into more
than one of Turner's masterpieces. But in Clarkson Stanfield
the sea is the predominant partner, and his pictures exist for
its sake. His knowledge of it was profound, and had been
gained in the severe school of experience, when, as a boy, he
had shipped before the mast. One work of Stanfield's alone
(we quote from " Modern Painters ") presents us " with as
much conscientious knowledge of sea and sky as, diluted,
would have lasted any of the old masters his life." He drew
the sea, too, as a figure-painter draws a model, with complete
confidence in the sufficiency of its beauty ; and though some-
what commonplace in feeling, missing its glories of colour,
its mystery and awe, he is never trivial or extravagant.
In the first quarter of the eighteenth century, architecture,
as a living art, had been laid to rest in the
grave of Wren. About the beginning of the
nineteenth century it seemed to show signs
of awakening ; but its awakening, after a sleep of three
generations, resembled that of a hypnotised subject, acting
first on the suggestion of a Greek, afterwards on that of
a Gothic, builder. The note of both movements was re-
production or mimicry rather than application or develop-
ment, and both owed a good deal to literature. The learned
170 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
publication of Dawkins and Wood had, as far back as 1750,
drawn attention to the glorious ruins of Palmyra, and Adam,
some ten years later, had made known to his countrymen
the imposing remains of Diocletian at Spalato. A similar
work in serial form, dealing with the architectural wonders
of Greece, published under the auspices of the Dilettante
Society, had also quite a fashionable vogue, so that when, in
1803, the arrival of the Elgin Marbles (p. 288) showed a tangible
Greece to English people, it was not unnatural that there
should have been an explosion of something like enthusiasm.
To reproduce a Greek or even a Roman building, or part of
a Greek or Roman building, on every pos-
sible opportunity, was recognised as the chief,
if not the whole, duty of the architect. But
as the necessities of life in our dark and rainy climate did
not usually permit the carrying out of whole buildings in
the Greek manner, these expensive adjuncts remained ad-
juncts, with no relation, or at any rate no intimate relation,
with the rest of the edifice. Men like Nash and Smirke and
Wilkins, preceded a few years only by Soane and Wyatt, and
followed a few years later by Tite and Burton and Basevi,
worked in this faith, and what they constructed remains with
us to this day. Such are the Bank of England, by Soane ;
London University and the National Gallery, by Wilkins ; the
British Museum, by Smirke; the Royal Exchange, by Tite;
and the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge one of the last
and best of the series by Basevi.
Not many neo-Pagan churches were built in the earlier
time of the revival, and perhaps it is fortunate. Of such, St.
Pancras, London, by Inwood, finished in 1822, is the typical
example. Everything there is copied, yet the architect was
not content simply to copy. Having transplanted his mag-
nified Erectheurn to Euston Square, he placed above the tall
Ionic portico a two-storied temple of the winds. With what
aim is uncertain ; but the effect is unfortunate. The little
temple, while crushing the portico and distracting the eye
from the imposing lines of the mass underneath, is in fact
perched up so high that its real elegance of form cannot
be discovered. So, too, the rich flanking caryatid porticoes,
handsome in themselves, are failures as they are placed,
coming as a surprise at the end of a long bare wall. The
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 171
church is not worth mentioning except for this, that it
shows that our classical copyists could not copy. Prob-
ably the best building of the class in England is St. George's
Hall at Liverpool, built by Elmes early in the 'forties, and
finished, as to the interior, by Cockerell, the tasteful designer
of the Taylor Institute at Oxford. The dimensions of the
building, 420 ft. by 140 ft., are exceptionally noble, nor less
exceptional is the consistency and simplicity of the colonnade
and the general beauty of the detail.
But if successful copying of Greek temples was shown to
be to some extent possible to the classic
architect, to the Gothic architect the copy-
ing of Gothic churches was not only possible
but easy. Original and copy belonged to the same country,
the same climate, the same religion. Transmutation was not
required, only translation. Oddly enough, however, it was for
lay purposes that the neo-Gothic style earliest commanded
popularity. James Wyatt spent something like a quarter of
a century and a quarter of a million of money, in building
a sham Gothic abbey for the author of " Vathek." It was
hailed as a discovery, and, in Fergusson's often-quoted phrase,
"nothing was thought of or built but Gothic castles, Gothic
abbeys, Gothic villas, and Gothic pigsties." The public
mind had to some extent been prepared for this by the
works of Britton and Rickman, the latter of whom was the
veritable founder of a school of archseolog}^ Finally the
younger Pugin, a man of genius both as architect and writer,
started something like a crusade in favour of the purer
forms that prevailed prior to the Reformation. In the dearth
of a living style of architecture, the fiery advocate of the
past triumphed on every side, and his Catholic churches (for
in his hatred of Protestant architecture he cast off the Pro-
testant religion) became models for imitation. Two great
advantages the Gothic architect certainly had over his
classical brother. He worked in the most adaptable instead
of the most intractable of styles. Windows, finials, buttresses,
panels, brackets, mouldings, models of every form and
for every purpose, were to be found in England by any
industrious seeker. It was cheap too ; for, if the outlines
and traceries are correctly copied, a good general effect can
be obtained with quite worthless details. All this made the
172 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
new Gothic popular with the intelligent architect and the
intelligent laity, while the tendency of the old Catholic
form of architecture to enhance the priest's ceremonial
importance helped to make it popular with the intelligent
clergy.
The great era of church restoration and extension was,
however, not yet. Before it came, chance decided that the
greatest lay building of the century, the Parliament House
at "Westminster, should also be Gothic. The old buildings
were destroyed by fire in 1834, and Parliament determined
that its new abode should be of the style in vogue. The
new building was begun in 1840, the architect being Sir
Charles Barry, the builder of that imitation of the Farnese
Palace known as the Reform Club-house. He was, in fact,
a student rather of the Renaissance than of the times of
the Plantagenets, and as a result his general design is
classical in feeling, while the details are Gothic. It is a build-
ing full of defects ; the Victoria Tower is too big ; throughout
there is want of accent ; the ornament is largely ineffectual,
and one feels that, after ah 1 , the whole thing is modern to the
core. But the grandeur arising from size the mass covering
eight acres the stately length of the terrace (exceeding 990
feet), and the real elegance of the central tower, make it, all
said and done, a very imposing edifice, perhaps "the most
successful attempt of the century to apply mediaeval archi-
tecture to modern life."
ENGLISH astronomy was, in 1815, passing through a stage
A M CLERKE ^ temporary decline. The great career of
Astronomy. ' the elder Herschel (1738-1822) had virtually
1815-1846. closec i ; that O f the younger Herschel (1792-
1871) had not yet opened. The excise duty on glass barred
the way to improvements in refracting telescopes ; and com-
petition seemed hopeless with the giant mirrors lying disused
at Slough. The promise of better things was
EngS^hAltronSiy. not ' nowever > absent. Stephen Groombridge
(1755-1832), a retired linen-draper, had nearly
completed the 50,000 observations from which his " Catalogue
of Circumpolar Stars " was constructed ; one of Troughton's
grand circles replaced at Greenwich, in 1812, Bradley 's super-
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 173
animated quadrant; and mathematical analysis, under the
motive power supplied by the enthusiasm of Herschel,
Babbage, and Peacock, was rapidly making its way at
Cambridge. A general revival was marked by the foundation,
in 1820, of the Astronomical Society of London, designed by
Dr. William Pearson (1767-1847), and powerfully promoted
by the indefatigable Francis Baily (1774-1844), who did more
than any man to render astronomy cosmopolitan by reducing
British and foreign practical methods to uniformity.
John Pond (1767-1836) was meantime labouring to re-
create official astronomy. He succeeded Dr. Nevil Maskelyne
as astronomer royal in 1811, and attained a degree of pre-
cision in the determination of star-places that has scarcely
yet been surpassed. His prolonged controversy with Dr.
Brinkley (1763-1835), astronomer royal for Ireland, regarding
certain alleged star-parallaxes, in which he took the negative,
and, as it has proved, the right side, strongly stimulated im-
provement; and Bessel's saying that the ne plus ultra of
modern refinements was reached in his later catalogues, has
been justified by Dr. Chandler's recent disengagement from
his " double-altitude " observations, not only of a minute
periodical variation of latitude, but of its epicyclical character.
Sir George Airy's (1801-92) energetic administration at
Greenwich lasted forty-six years from 1835 to 1881. It
was marked by a great widening in the scope of the inquiries
pursued. New departments of activity magnetic, meteoro-
logical, and spectroscopic were created; the study of the
constitution of the heavenly bodies was associated with that
of their movements ; and the step was definitively taken of
lifting our national astronomy to a higher plane than that
of mere practical utility.
During the first third of the century the southern hemi-
sphere was, so to speak, annexed. Observa-
tories were erected by the East India Company observations in
, .- , -i -N TT -, the Southern
at Bombay, Madras, and St. Helena ; and by Hemisphere.
Sir Thomas Brisbane at Paramatta, New
South Wales, where, on June 2nd, 1822, Encke's comet,
then invisible in Europe, was detected on its first calculated
return to the sun. Above all, the equipment at the Cape
of Good Hope of a royal observatory corresponding to the
Greenwich establishment, was accomplished in 1829, the
174 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
grandiose idea of universal dominion over the skies being
thus realised as a simple consequence of England's world-
wide mercantile and colonising energy. Fearon Fallows
(1789-1831), the son of a poor weaver at Cockermouth, was
the first Cape astronomer. He died July 25th, 1831, the
victim of accumulated misfortunes and mishaps, and was
succeeded by Thomas Henderson (1798-1844), subsequently
astronomer royal for Scotland. During his one year's exile
he worked with incredible diligence ; and his discussion at
home of the collected data brought to light, for the splendid
binary star a Centauri, an annual parallax of one second ot
arc, implying a distance of close upon twenty billions of miles.
This was the earliest authentic result of the kind obtained,
although its announcement, January 3rd, 1839, was slightly
anticipated by Bessel's regarding 61 Cygni.
Sir Thomas Maclear (1794-1879), came third on the
list of royal astronomers at the Cape, and
his re-measurement of Lacaille's arc of the
meridian was one of the most important geodetical operations
of the century. In this direction England took the lead of
other nations by the trigonometrical surveys of India,
England, and South Africa, usefully supplemented by the
pendulum-swinging experiments conducted in various parts
of the globe by Sabine, Foster, and Kater. These investi-
gations of the earth's figure may be associated with Baily's
elaborate determination of its mean density. Adopting and
improving Cavendish's method of 1798, he arrived in 1842
at the nearly exact conclusion that our globe weighs 5 '66
times more than if composed throughout of water.
Sidereal science made a fresh start when John Herschel
and James South combined, in 1821, to re-
measure Sir William Herschel's double stars.
Within two years 380 pairs had been tested for orbital motion,
in many cases unmistakable; then the colleagues separated,
South carrying on the work at Passy, and Herschel at Slough.
By 1833 the latter had discovered 3,347 new stellar couples,
and his sweeps at the Cape in 1834-8 yielded an additional
harvest of 1,200. During many ensuing years, however, the
subject received little attention in this country, except from
Admiral W. H. Smyth (1788-1865) and William Rutter Dawes
(1799-1868), perhaps because it had been virtually appro-
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 175
priated in Russia by Wilhelm and Otto Struve. Double stars
are indeed observed mainly that their mutual orbits may be
computed ; and this, because of the extreme smallness to which
their orbits are reduced by distance, is a very delicate matter.
It was immensely facilitated by Sir John Her-
schel's invention, described before the Royal
Astronomical Society, January 13th, 1831, of
a graphical method by which rigid numerical data are
moulded into harmony by the aid of the eye and hand, guided
by the instinctive judgment of common sense. This made
the practical beginning of stellar gravitational astronomy.
His " review " of the northern heavens was executed at
Slough during the years 1825-33 with a twenty-foot reflector
of his own construction. Its leading object was to call over
the roll of his father's nebulae, a large number of which could
be seen with no other instrument then existing, so that their
identification devolved upon him as a scientific duty, no less
than by inheritance. The outcome of his labours was a cata-
logue of 2,307 nebulae, 525 of them previously unrecorded.
Accompanied by a number of beautiful and character-
istic drawings, it was published in the " Philosophical Trans-
actions" for 1833. Stimulated by success, and conscious of
unexhausted powers, he determined to round off to completion
his " Survey of the Nebulous Heavens," and embarked for the
Cape with his family and instruments, November 13th, 1833.
His stay of four years at Feldhausen made an epoch in
southern astronomy. He discovered and catalogued 1,700
nebulae, his monographs of several of these wonderful objects
representing, in themselves, a formidable expenditure of toil ;
and his extensive, though not exhaustive, lists of the nebular
and stellar contents of the Magellanic Clouds still remain the
sole authority upon the subject. He, moreover, extended his
father's experiments on the construction of the heavens by
counting 70,000 stars in 2,300 gauge-fields ; established stellar
photometry on a firm basis ; and, by his description of the
threefold increase in the light of 17 Argus, December 16th,
1837, drew attention to that star's abnormal character. His
observations of the varying aspects of Halley's comet between
October, 1835, and May, 1836, are of permanent interest ; and
his study of the development of sun-spots at the maximum of
1837 led him to originate the cyclonic theory of their origin.
176 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
The detailed results of this brilliant expedition were collected
in a finely illustrated quarto volume published in 1847.
" Baily's Beads " were first expressly noticed by Francis
Baily during an annular eclipse of the sun on
May 15th, 1836. The phenomenon consists
in the breaking up into lucid points of the narrow solar
crescent left by the moon's advance, and is caused primarily
by the serrated nature of the moon's limb. Effects of irradia-
tion and bad definition then combined to complicate appear-
ances which optical improvements have since reduced to
comparative insignificance. Baily's vividly expressed wonder
at them may be said to have inaugurated the era of eclipse-
expeditions ; and he himself repaired to Pavia for the purpose
of observing the totality of July 8th, 1842, during which the
corona and prominences displayed themselves with such
startling splendour as to raise the problem of their nature to
the very first rank among those presented, at that time, to
students of the sun.
Very early in its known career the new planet Uranus
(discovered by William Herschel in 1781)
began to give trouble to computers of its
orbit. It was hoped that Bouvard's Tables,
published in 1821, would set things straight, but evidence of
continued recalcitrance was quickly forthcoming. The idea,
accordingly, that these persistent irregularities were due to
disturbance by an exterior body, formed itself in a few
sagacious minds ; and the Kev. T. J. Hussey even contem-
plated, in 1834, the possibility of assigning the position, at
a given epoch, of the hypothetical planet. This arduous
task was, indeed, far beyond his powers ; but in 1841 John
Couch Adams (1819-92), then an undergraduate of St.
John's College, Cambridge, laid his plans for grappling with
it. No sooner, in fact, had he taken his degree as Senior
Wrangler than he proceeded to carry them into execution ;
and on October 21st, 1845, he deposited at the Royal Obser-
vatory a paper containing a complete explanation of Uranus's
untoward behaviour through the gravitational action of a
body soon afterwards known as " Neptune." The " inverse
problem of perturbations " thus received its first solution.
Although Adams gave the orbital elements and place in the
sky exact, as it proved, to within about three lunar diameters
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 177
f the disturbing body, it was not until Leverrier had
announced a similar conclusion that a search was, by Airy's
request, instituted for it by Professor Challis at Cambridge.
And the pursuit was conducted in so leisurely a fashion
that the planet, observed on August 4th and 12th, 1846,
remained unrecognised pending the comparisons by which
alone, in the absence of a comprehensive star-map, it could
be sifted out from the multitude of surrounding stars. So
that the prize of* its visual discovery, on September 23rd,
fell to Galle of Berlin, acting on Leverrier 's instructions. In
justification of Airy's indifference, it should be added that
an inquiry addressed by him to Adams, early in the pro-
ceedings, regarding an essential point in his theory, was
unaccountably left unanswered. The attendant satellite of
Neptune was detected, October 10th, 1846, by William
Lassell (1799-1880), at Starfield, near Liverpool. He used
a reflector two feet in aperture, of exquisite definition, made
and equatorially mounted by himself.
The construction of this class of telescope has, from
Newton's time until now, been left mainly to British artists
and amateurs. The giant speculum finished by the third
Earl of Rosse (1800-67), in February, 1845, has since been
surpassed in light-power, but not in size. The reason of this
apparent anomaly is that the rnetal composing it is consider-
ably less reflective than silvered glass, the material of modern
reflectors; hence Dr. Common's five-foot gives brighter im-
ages than the Parsonstown six-foot mirror. The latter was
especially effective in the resolution occasionally fallacious
of nebulae into stars; and the opinion
gained ground that the process could be in-
definitely extended with the indefinite extension of telescopic
vision. Herschel's theory of the development of nebulae into
stars sank, accordingly, into discredit ; the distinction between
nebulae and clusters was regarded as a mere effect of distance ;
and thought ranged amid an archipelago of " island-universes"
almost infinitely beyond the bounds of the Milky Way.
The discovery, with the great reflector, of spiral nebulae
proved of more permanent importance. This remarkable
type of structure first disclosed itself, in April, 1845, in the
well-known shining vortex situated near the tail of the Great
Bear ; its prevalence was soon attested by further examples,
M VOL. VI.
178 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
and has been amply confirmed by photographic inquisitions.
The workings of a fundamental law of sidereal growth and
change are thus clearly illustrated to our sight, though very
dimly, as yet, to our apprehension.
To give a detailed account of the progress of physical science
during the nineteenth century would demand
a volume in itself; the rateat which Nature's
laws have been unfolded by philosophers,
some now passed away, some still living, has been so great
that a comparison of the condition of science at the beginning
of the century with the scientific knowledge of to-day,
together with its many and extensive applications for the
benefit of the public, show that the hobby of the few in 1800
has now become the occupation of the many.
Until the year 1800 our knowledge of electricity was
purely statical ; that is, the only sources of electricity then
known were friction machines of various kinds, induction
machines of the electrophorus type, and atmospheric dis-
turbances. The discovery of the electric pile
by Volta in the year 1800 furnished a source
from which a continuous supply of electricity could be ob-
tained. Yolta's pile was quickly followed by his cell, which
consists of a cup or cell of acidulated water into which dip
side by side a piece of zinc and a piece of copper. This
arrangement causes an " electromotive force " to be set up, so
that when the copper and zinc are connected by a wire an
electric current is sent from copper to zinc through the wire,
and from zinc to copper through the liquid. The effects
produced by the passage of electricity through bodies could
now be more easily observed. It was already known that an
electric discharge produced destructive effects on passing
through a body. Lightning conductors had been introduced
by Franklin to protect buildings and life from the terrible
consequences which had sometimes been observed during
thunderstorms. Buildings had been burnt, and people and
animals killed and their bodies sometimes charred by a
lightning flash, or a thunderbolt, but the discharge was so in-
stantaneous that there was not time to study the nature of the
process. Volta's cell, however, furnished a means of producing
s
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 179
a continuous supply of electricity. The spirit of investigation
was aroused, and every physicist directed his energies to find
out, if possible, the nature of electricity, and to investigate its
effects upon various forms of matter.
Davy (p. 62), the director of the chemical laboratories at the
Royal Institution in Albemarle Street, which
Count Rumford had founded in 1800, was
one of the first in England to profit by Volta's
discovery. He applied the electric current to decompose,
by the process called electrolysis, various
/ . i jii-i- Electrolysis,
chemical compounds, and also by this means
discovered that some substances, previously thought to be
elements, were in reality chemical compounds. In this way
Davy discovered in 1807 the five metals potassium, sodium,
barium, strontium, and calcium. Davy's electrolytic re-
searches were only qualitative ; that is, he observed the
nature but not the amount of the electrolytic actions. It was
left to the illustrious Faraday, his assistant and subsequent
successor, to determine the quantitative laws which govern
the decomposition of substances by electrolysis.
To Davy is also due the discovery of the voltaic arc.
He found that if the two wires coming from
the terminals of a voltaic battery are brought
together and then parted a spark will show itself as they part ;
the spark he found to be brighter if dense charcoal points
were used to take the spark. The discovery was made, but,
owing to the difficulty of obtaining a sufficiently large electric
current, was not developed until the production of the voltaic
arc was rendered easier by the invention of dynamo-electric
machines. In the autumn of 1815 Davy invented the miners'
safety lamp which bears his name. Almost simultaneously,
and quite independently, George Stephenson the engineer
(p. 199) invented a safety lamp identical in principle with
Davy's, but somewhat different in detail. Both depend on
the principle that a white heat is necessary to ignite the in-
flammable gases which are found in coal mines ; so that
flame cannot pass through narrow metallic passages if the
metal is kept below a certain temperature.
Davy was riot a scientific recluse. He lived at a time
when a man of his calibre was much sought after. His
sition at the Royal Institution brought him into contact
M 2
180 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
with the leading men of the day. Fascinating as a man,
enthusiastic as a lecturer, and gifted with a ready flow of
language, he contributed to the advancement of science as
much by attracting large and influential audiences to his
lectures as by his valuable researches. For his services he
was created a baronet. He died in 1829, at the early age of
fifty-one.
A contemporary of Davy's, though a man of entirely
different type, was Thomas Young, who for
Thomas Young. . , , , . ' T
two years occupied the chair or Natural
Philosophy at the Royal Institution. Educated at the
Hunterian School of Anatomy and St. Bartholomew's Hos-
pital, and afterwards at Gottingen, he became qualified as a
medical practitioner in 1796. He had already been elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society for a treatise on the eye. He
entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1797, and did not
commence to practice as a physician until the year 1800. In
1801 he accepted the chair of Natural Philosophy at the
Royal Institution, but resigned after holding it for two years
in order to devote himself to the medical profession.
Prior to Young's time there were two theories of light,
Newton's corpuscular theory and Huv-
Theories of Light. , , TJ7 V, AT J . , J J
ghens Wave theory. No crucial test or
experiment had been devised to decide in favour of either.
Sound was known to travel by means of longitudinal aerial
undulations. Young discovered that two sound-waves could
destructively interfere and produce the phenomenon of beats.
His greatest work was the application of the principle of
interference to light. Placing a source of light behind a disc
of cardboard punctured with two small pin-holes very near
together, he observed a series of light and dark bands on a
white screen placed near the disc on the opposite side from
the source of light. The light proceeding from the two pin-
holes had produced interference phenomena, and the wave
theory was justified. The wave theory was not satisfactorily
completed, however, until Fresnel (1788-1827)
in Paris shortly afterwards theoretically ex-
plained the interference phenomena by supposing that lumin-
ous vibrations take place in an aU-pervading aether, and in
a direction at right angles to the direction of propagation
of the light. Fresnel still further justified the wave theory by
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 181
applying it to explain the phenomenon of polarisation of
light discovered by Mains at the beginning of the century.
As Foreign Secretary to the Royal Society, Young for-
warded to Fresnel the Rumford medal for his researches on
light. Fresnel died a few days afterwards, at the age of
thirty-nine.
Amongst Young's contributions to physical science must
also be reckoned his researches on elasticity. He was a
remarkable man in many ways, and up to his day ranked
second only to Newton as a natural philosopher. He was
proficient in chemistry, physics, medical science, mechanism,
and was more or less familiar with fourteen languages. He
was also an authority on Egyptian hieroglyphics. He died in
1829, three weeks before Davy.
At the beginning of the century it was known from
Coulomb's researches that two magnetic poles
Ll , T 4l f, T ,1 Electromagnetism.
acted upon each other with a force directly
proportional to the product of their strengths, and inversely
proportional to the square of the distance between them ;
and the same law was known to hold good for the force
exerted by two quantities of electricity upon each other.
This led many scientists to seek for relationships between
magnetism and electricity.
The first to bring to light a connecting link was Hans
Christian Oersted, of Copenhagen. Often had
he tried and as often failed. During the winter
1819-20 the discovery was made in the presence of a class of
students. While lecturing he suddenly thought of a new mode
of attacking the problem. Taking a wire joining the poles of
a battery, he placed it parallel to and above a compass needle.
Instantly the needle was deflected from its position, and the
discovery was made that a force exists between an electric
current and a magnet. He also found that on reversing the
direction of the current the needle was deflected in the
opposite way. The discovery was published in the summer
of the year 1820. In recognition of his work the Royal
Society awarded to Oersted the Copley Medal in 1820.
Oersted's discovery marks the birth of the subject of
electromagnetism. The beginning was made, and the sub-
sequent rapid development speaks volumes for the scientific
intellect of the period.
182 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
On September llth, 1820, Andre Marie Ampere, Professor
of Mathematics at the Ecole Polytechnique,
Paris, first heard of Oersted's discovery.
Immediately setting to work, he repeated Oersted's experiment
and devised and successfully performed many others. On
the 18th of the same month he announced the fundamental
principles of electromagnetism. In one week he had worked
at the subject both experimentally and theoretically ; he
discovered that a pivoted wire spiral carrying an electric
current behaved like a magnet and set itself in the magnetic
meridian ; he investigated the action of currents on currents,
predicting theoretically and verifying experimentally that two
parallel electric currents attract each other when they flow
in the same direction, and repel each other when they flow in
opposite directions ; also that two currents not parallel attract
each other if they both converge to or both diverge from the
apex of the angle formed by their directions, while they
repel each other if one of the currents approaches the apex of
the angle and the other recedes from it.
Ampere was the first to use the action of currents on
magnets as the principle on which to construct a galvan-
ometer, or current detector and measurer. In order to
increase the deflection of the needle by the current he bent
the wire carrying the current into the form of a rectangle and
pivoted the compass needle in the centre. Shortly afterwards
Schweigger improved Ampere's arrangement by winding many
turns of wire into a rectangular form. This improvement
rendered the instrument much more sensitive.
In 1820 Arago in France and Davy in England discovered
independently that steel wire was magnetised on placing it
inside a helix of wire carrying a current. Thus an electric
current was shown not only to influence a magnet, but also to
be capable of producing magnetism. This fact led Ampere to
form a theory of magnetism. He supposed
tbat ever y molecule of a magnet was itself a
magnet, and that the molecules owed their
polarity to electric currents circulating round them. This
was the first attempt to explain the properties of a magnet by
reference to its individual molecules. The idea of molecular
currents has, however, since been shown to be unnecessary for
the complete explanation of magnetic phenomena.
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 183
Not long after the discovery that an electric current is
capable of magnetising a piece of steel,
CI.L . ts t i -ii i W. Sturgeon.
Sturgeon in England produced an electro-
magnet. He found that by using soft iron instead of steel a
given current would produce much more intense magnetisa-
tion, though the effect ceased when the current was stopped.
He varnished the iron, bent it into the shape of a horseshoe,
and wound coils of naked wire in a spiral round it.
Although the theory of electromagnetism was so well
developed, the laws governing the flow of an electric current
along a conducting wire were not understood. In the year
1825, Ohm, afterwards Professor of Physics at
Munich, published his famous law. He showed
that the intensity of an electric current depends not only
on the battery power, or " electromotive force " as it is called,
but also upon the nature of the conducting wires. Different
wires of the same length arid thickness offered different
resistance to the passage of the current. This resistance
Ohm found to be an intrinsic property of the conducting
wire itself. Ohm's law as it is now expressed states that the
ratio of the electromotive force driving the current through a
conducting wire to the current itself is constant. This ratio
is defined to be the resistance of the conducting wire.
Although Ohm's discovery was of fundamental importance,
it was received with doubt and scepticism by most scientists,
and rejected altogether by many. The law was first recog-
nised by the Royal Society of London in 1841, sixteen years
after its publication in Poggendorff's " Annalen." In recogni-
tion of its merits Ohm was awarded the Copley Medal. Ohm
subsequently published his theory of the siren. He died in
July, 1854.
A new mode of generating an electric current was dis-
covered in 1821 by Professor Seebeck of
Berlin. He found that, if two wires of
different metals were joined together to form a closed circuit
and their junctions brought to different temperatures, an
electric current flowed round the circuit.
, . . , . Becquerel.
Becquerel, experimenting later on various
metals, formed a series of metals placed in such an order that
the current set up at the heated junction of any two goes
from the metal which follows to that which precedes in the
184 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
series. In later years the subject has been greatly advanced
by Professor P. G. Tait, of Edinburgh University.
Foremost among experimentalists was Michael Faraday
(p. 63), who became Davy's assistant at the
Royal Institution in 1813. Having charge of
the laboratories he had opportunities for conducting researches,
first under Davy's guidance, and afterwards on his own
account. He commenced his brilliant researches in electricity
in the year 1821, when he re-discovered Oersted's experiment.
This was followed by his discovery that a magnet will rotate
round a wire carrying an electric current, and that a wire
carrying a current will rotate round a magnet. The idea for
this experiment Faraday got -from Dr. Wollas-
ton (Vol. V., p. 550), who had unsuccessfully
tried to do the same experiment himself in Davy's laboratory.
Where Wollaston failed Faraday succeeded, and obtained the
first continuous motion electron! ague tically.
In 1823 Faraday published his work on the liquefaction
of gases. In the following year he was elected a Fellow of
the Royal Society, and in 1825 he was appointed director of
the laboratories at the Royal Institution.
In 1831 Faraday commenced a series of some of the
greatest discoveries of the present century. In 1825 Arago
had performed an experiment which puzzled the physicists
of the day. On rotating a disc ot copper underneath a
compass needle suspended horizontally, the needle was
observed first to deflect in the direction of the motion of
the disc and then to rotate itself, but always at a speed
slower than that of the disc. No one had explained why
it was that the compass needle rotated. Faraday thought
that the rotation was due to induced electricity in the disc,
but, although he repeatedly attempted to show experi-
mentally that this was the reason, he did not succeed until
August, 1831. He knew that magnetism could be produced
by electricity, and he set himself to discover whether
electricity could be produced from magnetism.
He took an iron rin g and woimd two spirals
of wire on it ; sending an electric current
round one spiral to magnetise the ring, he looked for an
electric current in the other. The first spiral was connected
with a battery and the second with a galvanometer, but
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 185
when the current was flowing round the one the galvan-
ometer failed to register any current in the other. At the
instant of breaking the battery circuit Faraday observed
that the galvanometer needle gave a kick, and again, but
in the opposite direction, on making the battery circuit. On
breaking or making the battery circuit an instantaneous
induced current flowed through the galvanometer circuit.
He saw that he was now in a position to explain the
Arago disc phenomenon ; induced currents were gener-
ated in the copper disc, and the action between these and
the needle caused the latter to rotate. To prove this he
mounted a copper disc so that it could be rotated be-
tween the poles of an electromagnet ; he connected the
centre of the disc and its edge with a galvanometer, and
on rotating the disc the galvanometer needle was deflected
showing the presence of induced currents. This disc of
Faraday's is the prototype of the modern dynamo. The
importance of the discovery of induced currents may be
gathered from the fact that now millions of pounds are
annually spent on their production.
Between the years 1831-34 Faraday devoted himself
to investigating the laws which govern
electrolytic action. He stated the results of
his researches in his three famous laws,
which are as follows : (1) The electrolytic action of a current
is equal at all points round the circuit; (2) the quantity
of gas disengaged in a minute is a standard measure of the
average strength of the current during that minute, and the
total quantity of gas evolved is the measure of the total
quantity of electricity that the current has conveyed round
the circuit ; (3) when the same current acts on many electro-
lytes the weights of the elements separated by electrolysis are
in proportion to the chemical equivalents of these elements.
The discovery of these laws has furnished us with our most
accurate method of measuring the strength of an electric
current, and all instruments intended for accurate measure-
ment of current are standardised by an electrolytic method.
Faraday's next work was the discovery of self-induction,
in 1834 He found that on making or
, , . , 7 . . Electric Induction.
breaking an electric circuit an dectromotwe
force is induced in the circuit itself. All electromagnetic
186 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
induction phenomena have been summed up by the Russian
physicist Lenz in the statement that " induced currents are
always generated in such a direction as tends to oppose the
motion that gives rise to them."
During the period 1835-38 Faraday devoted himself
to the study of electrostatic induction, and announced his
theory of a medium through which electrical attractions
and repulsions are transmitted at each point along a certain
definite direction. The medium he considered to be in a
state of strain, and he pictured it as being filled with what
he called " tube's of force." An electric current flowing
round a circuit causes the surrounding medium to be in
a state of strain, the amount of which he represented by
a number of these hypothetical tubes of force ; also, induced
currents are generated whenever a motion of these tubes
relative to a closed metallic circuit takes place. The amount
of the induced current he found to depend upon the nature
of the surrounding medium. He also showed that the
force exerted between two electrostatically charged con-
ductors varies with the separating medium. The separating
media, whatever non-conductors of electricity or insulating
materials they might be, he named dielectrics, and their
property on which the amount of electric action depended,
specific inductive capacity.
The wave theory of light had been placed on a firm
basis by the experiments of Young and Fresnel. Mains
had shown that light could be polarised, or, as explained
by the wave theory, have its vibrations constrained to one
plane by the interposition of various crystals or by repeated
reflection. Faraday in 1845 found that if such a polarised
beam of light is subjected to the action of a magnetic field
the plane of polarisation is rotated through an angle whose
magnitude depends upon the strength of the magnetic field,
and the direction of the rotation is the same as that in
which the current flows to which the magnetic field is due.
At a subsequent date Yerdet found that the amount of
rotation can be taken as a measure of the strength of the
magnetic field. This result is of great importance in the
theory of electricity. Just as Oersted's experiment showed
a relationship between magnetism and electricity, this
experiment of Faraday's pointed to a relationship between
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 187
electrornagnetism and light. It was left to Maxwell to
reveal the true nature of the relationship.
Another important work of Faraday's was the discovery
that some bodies exhibit properties exactly opposite to those
possessed by iron when placed in a magnetic field. Whereas
a freely suspended piece of iron sets itself in the direction
of the field, some bodies similarly suspended take up their
position of rest at right angles to the field. Bodies of the
iron type, as regards their behaviour under magnetising
influences, Faraday called paramagnetic, or simply magnetic
bodies ; those belonging to the other class, of which bismuth
is the most striking example, he called diamagnetic bodies.
To this new property of magnetism which he discovered
he gave the name diamagnetism.
Faraday had been appointed to succeed Davy as Professor
of Chemistry at the Royal Institution in 1833. In apprecia-
tion of his brilliant work the Queen in 1858 offered him
a house on Hampton Court Green, where he lived until
his death in August, 1867.
Faraday has justly been called the prince of experi-
mentalists. He presented no fewer than 158 scientific
memoirs to the Royal Society. Like many other important
scientific truths, his conception of a medium transmitting
electrical energy was viewed with scepticism by contemporary
scientists. Mathematicians had grown fond of their theory
of action at a distance which did not assume as necessary
any medium to act as a vehicle of energy. He was soon,
however, to have as an interpreter of his views one of the
greatest mathematical physicists of the age James Clerk
Maxwell.
Prominent among the physicists of his day was Charles
Wheatstone, Professor of Physics at King's
College, London. To him is due the first
attempt to measure the velocity of trans-
mission of electricity. By means of a revolving mirror he
found its rate of propagation to be 288,000 miles a second.
The method used has since been applied by Foucault to
determine the velocity of light. Wheatstone was also the
first to apply the method of spectrum analysis to the deter-
mination of the constitution of bodies.
The theory of light was materially supplemented by Sir
188 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
W. R. Hamilton, of Dublin. His investigations in mathe-
matics and mathematical physics have
Sir W. R. Hamilton. n -, , . f , . ., i /
placed mm foremost in the ranks or mathe-
maticians. His contributions to physics chiefly related to
geometrical optics. The work which may be regarded as
his masterpiece is the invention of an entirely new method of
mathematical analysis, a non- commutative algebra, called by
him Quaternions (1853). The method is extremely power-
ful, and particularly adapted to the solution of physical
problems.
In 1837, the year of the invention of the electric telegraph,
a young Manchester man, James Prescott
Joule ' then onl y nineteen years of age, began
to publish his researches on relations between
heat and energy. In 1840 he experimentally demonstrated
the law that the heating effect of an electric current is directly
proportional to the resistance of the circuit through which it
flows, and also proportional to the square of the current
flowing. In 1843 he presented his magnum opus to the
Royal Society. This was a paper "on the calorific effects
of magneto-electricity, and on the mechanical value of heat."
In this paper he showed that " an amount of energy equal to
772 foot-pounds will, if communicated to one pound of water,
raise its temperature one degree Fahrenheit," in other words,
he showed that a definite relation exists between heat and
energy, and that a given amount of energy can be converted
into a definite quantity of heat.
Joule's earlier papers show that the idea of a mechanical
equivalent of heat had for some time occupied his mind, yet,
in 1843, his announcement was far from being well received.
The leading physicists at first regarded it as the product of a
country youth's imagination. The first to appreciate Joule's
work was Sir William Thomson, who was six years his junior.
Others followed suit, and came to see that the country youth
had unfolded to them one of Nature's grandest laws. To
Joule, in England, and Von Helmholtz, in Germany, we owe
the discovery of the law of " Conservation of Energy," a law
which states that energy is in the same degree indestructible
and uncreatable as matter.
In the light of our present knowledge, Joule's work as a
whole, the original of his ideas, the importance and generality
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 189
1832-46
of his discoveries, and their effect on the scientific world
place him side by side with Newton in the history of physical
science.
THE progress of chemistry is the best proof that science has
no country. The history of English chemistry
cannot be understood without continually cieffitry"
referring to the discoveries of other lands.
At the time of which we write the atomic theory of Dalton
had already been confirmed by Gay-Lussac's discovery
and by Avogadro's explanation of it, by the researches of
Dulong and Petit on heat, and by those of Mitscherlich on
crystalline form. For the next few years the chief advance
in theoretical chemistry lay in the direction of determin-
ing the true formulae for chemical substances, and of
making these formulae express what is known as to the
properties it possesses. Water, as is well known, is ex-
pressed to-day by the formula H 2 a system of notation
introduced by Berzelius in 1832 it was written HO,
both these formulae indicating that in analysis one part of
hydrogen is found combined with, or is equivalent in com-
bining power to, eight parts by weight of oxygen. Gerhardt
and Laurent, two French chemists, were the first to definitely
grasp the distinction between molecular, atomic, and equiva-
lent weights, and thus to prepare the way for the develop-
ment of the atomic theory and restore the atomic weights
of Berzelius. An English chemist, Thomas Graham (1 SOS-
GO), gave important aid by his researches.
It was at this period (1832) generally agreed
that metallic oxides consisted of one atom of oxygen com-
bined with one atom of metal, and that they united with one
" atom " of acid to form neutral salts. Graham undertook
the study of the phosphoric acids, and demonstrated that the
" atom " of acid in these compounds combined with one, two,
or three "atoms" of water, replaceable by metallic oxides.
Liebig (1803-73) following up this line of argument, was at
last able to lay down the definition that acids are com-
pounds in which hydrogen is replaceable by metals a theory
which still, with modifications and additions, holds its ground.
An addition to the science was made by Faraday's discovery
190 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832
of the laws of electrolysis (p. 185), which furnished chemists
with a ready means of arriving at the chemical equivalents
of the elements, and Wohler's preparation of urea from
ammonium cyanide had broken down the imaginary barrier
which separated substances prepared in the laboratory from
those elaborated by living organisms. The field was thus
laid open, and students were not long wanting to culti-
vate it.
At this time there was in England no place at which a
student of chemistry could learn the first principles of
scientific investigation. It was not till 1837 that Graham
came to London as a Professor in what is now University
College; and, unquestionably, all who could do so went to
Giessen to the laboratories which Liebig had established
there, in imitation of Gay-Lussac. Among the more dis-
tinguished of his English students were Playfair, Williamson,
and Frankland. It is to Williamson that we owe the next
advance in chemical theory. Dumas had laid down a theory
of type, in which he asserted that the character of chemical
compounds depended on the number and arrangement of the
atoms rather than on the nature of these atoms, in opposition
to the theory of Berzelius, which regarded every compound
as formed of two radicles such as into which it would be
divided by electrolysis. Williamson's work on the relations
of ether and alcohol to each other and water, and Hofmann's
(1818-92) on the substances which he afterwards proved to
be derivatives of ammonia, served to erect a theory of types
on a firmer base. At first all compounds were referred to
these types, water and ammonia ; but later theories have
lessened its importance to teaching, and the danger of its
over-use.
The British Association for the Advancement of Science,
founded in 1834 by a group of scientific men,
Liebig's Influence. , . J ' . L , .
early attained its reputation as a combination
of autumn junketing and serious work ; but it never wrought
better for English science than when it requested Liebig,
in 1837, to draw up a report on the state of knowledge in
organic chemistry. The report was not drawn up, but in
its place he published "Chemistry in its Application to
Agriculture and Physiology " (1840), a work in which the
close relation between the nutrition of plants and the
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 191
1846]
chemical composition of the soil and the air is finally es-
tablished. The effect of that work on English chemical
science is incalculable. A universal demand for schools of
chemical training was made, and even the older universities
opened laboratories. When, in 1842, Liebig visited this
country the enthusiasm grew, and English country gentlemen,
anxious for analyses of the soil of their farms, vied with
enthusiasts for science in subscribing to the Royal College
of Chemistry (1845-53).
The popular interest in chemistry led, however, to a more
enduring result. A class of students had
arisen round Graham capable and desirous of Th s<Siety! cal
engaging in original work, and in 1841 he
founded the Chemical Society, which has been associated
since then with every development of the science in this
country, and whose journal has been its chief organ, more
especially since 1871, from which year it has included full
abstracts of all papers appearing in other periodicals devoted
to the science. The sole survivor of the original members,
Lord Playfair, was Graham's pupil at Glasgow. An earlier
but abortive attempt had been made to found a Chemical
Society in 1832.
Liebig, on his return from England, summed up the
situation by saying that the fault of Englishmen was to look
exclusively to practical results, and this weakness led to the
fall of the first and greatest school of chemistry we have
had in this country. The post of Professor was offered to
Hofmann, one of the most brilliant of Liebig's pupils, and,
on his acceptance, he at once set to work. The list of his
students includes many of the best-known names of the
day, and their work at once began to appear in the Journal
of the Chemical Society ; but it is curious to read in the
reports of the college Hofmann's apologies for working on
such useless substances as aniline, etc. It was soon found im-
possible to fulfil the promises in the prospectus as to analyses
for the subscribers, funds fell off, and the Royal College of
Chemistry was absorbed into the School of Mines (p. 369).
But about this time another result of Liebig's work was
seen in the foundation by Sir John Lawes of the Agricultural
Station at Rothamsted (p. 416). He had carried on experi-
ments in the fields since 1837 with important results to
192 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832
agriculture, more especially those on the manuring of turnips
by superphosphates mineral phosphates dissolved in sul-
phuric acid and had taken out, as a result, a patent in
1842, which led to the foundation of an important chemical
industry, but it was not until 1843 that the systematic
work of the station began. From that time to the present
it has rendered incalculable service to the progress of agri-
culture in the field, in the feeding shed, and the labora-
tory. Experiments have been carried on with root and grain
crops grown continuously on the same plot with or without
the aid of manures ; on the rotation of crops, and on the
result of the feeding of animals in producing meat, milk, and
manure. To state concisely the main results of this work is
not easy. They have made clear the object, method, and
results of manuring, the scientific explanation of the rotation
of crops, and of the principles which underlie the production
of fat and of muscle in farm stock. It is characteristic of
English methods that the oldest, largest, and most successful
agricultural station in the world should be carried on by a
private person at his own expense. Sir Henry Gilbert, who
has been associated with Sir John Lawes in this work from
1843, was a pupil of Liebig.
THE public health at the beginning of the century was good,
in spite of the most neglected sanitary condi-
ti ons an d tne most systematic overcrowding.
Wages were high, and work was constant so
long as the war continued, but with the Peace of 1815 and the
bad season of 1816 came a reaction. Typhus and relapsing
fever appeared in the rookeries of London, and spread as an
epidemic through England. Relapsing fever disappeared about
1819, but typhus remained endemic ; and there was a second
epidemic in 1826-27, associated with the financial crisis of 1825.
The autumn of 1826 was marked by an outbreak of fever
which, from the account of the morbid appearances left to us
by the physicians who attended the cases, we now know to
have been typhoid. The disease was not then recognised as a
distinct fever, for it was not until 1849-51 that Sir William
Jenner drew particular attention to the distinctive anatomical
lesions which now make its recognition a matter of everyday
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 193
1846]
occurrence, and at the same time have led to its rational
treatment. The ten years from 1830-40 were particularly
unhealthy. Typhus, Asiatic cholera, small-pox, and influenza
spread over the country in epidemic waves. The cause of
these epidemics was not far to seek. Trade was getting worse
and worse ; the price of provisions rose steadily. Hygiene did
not exist, and as yet the State took no interest in the public
health. The poor, both in town and country, lived amongst
the most filthy surroundings, and under the most demoralising
conditions. Their standard of comfort was very low, and
overcrowding was the rule rather than the exception. The
sanitary condition of the wealthy classes was not much better,
for the broad principles of drainage were less understood than
they had been in Nineveh, and were certainly not as good as
they were in Rome under Augustus. In Rome, at any rate
we know that the sewers were cleansed occasionally, for the
magistrate, under whose auspices such a work was accom-
plished, would afterwards descend the newly-cleansed channel
in a boat ; but no one ever heard of the sewers in this country
being surveyed by any municipal authority. The sanitary
appliances were of the rudest description ; cesspools were
frequent, and were usually placed in the basement of the
houses ; the water-supply was abominable ; the streets were
badly paved, badly lighted, and badly guarded.
The unhealthy decade was not without its uses. It
brought home to the Government the shame-
(. , . i-ii o, T i i i State Medicine.
ml manner in which the btate had hitherto
neglected an important part of its duties. The appearance of
Asiatic cholera at Sunderland in 1831 had led to the forma-
tion of a Board of Health, and the new system of registering
births, deaths, and marriages came into force upon 1st July,
1837. The care of the public health, hygiene, or the science
of State medicine was still unknown, and there was no sanitary
measure upon the statute books at the time of the Queen's
accession. The foundation of the science was laid in 1838,
when (Sir) Edwin Chadwick, as Secretary to the Poor Law
Commissioners, addressed a letter to Lord John Russell, the
Home Secretary, pointing out that preventible disease was a
cause of pauperism. The State further acknowledged its
duties in relation to the prevention of disease when in 1840 it
rendered penal the inoculation of small-pox, and established a
N VOL. VI.
194 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832-46
system of gratuitous vaccination. It made further progress in
the same direction when it began to consider the dangers
attending burials within the limits of the various towns, though
the practice was not prohibited until 1852. It was not until
1846 that a temporary Act for " the Removal of Nuisances and
the Prevention of Epidemic Diseases " enforced the first and
most elementary sanitary regulations. A still more important
Act was passed in the same session, enabling local authorities
to establish public baths and wash-houses. Lord Morpeth's
" Health of Towns Bill," which may be looked upon as the
foundation of State medicine in England, was introduced into
Parliament in 1847 ; but, as it failed to pass the Commons, it
was re-introduced in the following session, when it received
the Royal Assent on the last day of August, 1848. Its provi-
sions were at first carried out by a central Board of Health,
then (1858) by the Privy Council, and since 1872 by the Local
Government Board. Sanitary legislation, at first confined to
towns, was extended to the rural districts in 1872, and local
sanitation is now administered by the " District Councils "
under the Local Government Act of 1894.
THE mining and metallurgical industries of the United
Kingdom assumed a position of prime
H. c. JENKINS, importance in the trade of the country at
Mining and Metal- , r , . . . , TO. Vt
lurgy, 1815-1846. the beginning of the century. This they
have maintained, so that in later years they
have become an index of the national prosperity.
At the opening of our period, metal was daily displacing
wood as a material for articles of common use. The inventive
skill of men such as Arkwright, Watt, and Maudslay (Vol. V.,
pp. 309, 460 seq., 599), had extended the use of the metals
beyond the sphere of artistic or philosophical applications to
that of durable and industrially useful machinery, possessing
a degree of accuracy of form and precision of movement
hitherto unknown in the purely mechanical arts, whilst New-
comen and Watt (Vol. V., pp. 316, 460) had given to the
world practical means by which the energy in fuel could
be utilised in setting this improved machinery in motion.
Thus manufacture was no longer limited by the resources
of hand labour or of animal power, or by the restraints of
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 195
place imposed by the use of water-power, while it was but just
released from the grave restrictions and burdens imposed by
the long French War.
For half a century the country had been experiencing
the benefits due to a few good roads and
canals made with the special object of trade Theconcen-
rri i i i i. i trationof
in view. The waggon had been displacing industry.
the pack-horse, and when it is stated that
each ton of goods carried on the backs of horses cost
a pound sterling for every twenty miles, it will be seen
how desirable some relief was from such an impost on
trade, because the economical manufacture of goods
by the aid of machinery, itself too ponderous to be
readily portable, involves a considerable amount of car-
riage both of the raw material and of the finished
product. At the beginning of the century, coal was one of
the articles in connection with which the need of cheap car-
riage was severely felt, and the success of the Wandsworth
and Croydon Tramway (1801 : p. 199) and other similar lines
led to the further replacement of stone by iron as the
material for roadways in the colliery districts. Several
inventors were meanwhile busy with attempts to utilise
the steam engine for the purpose of haulage. The new
form of road, or rather tramway, was seen to offer special
advantage to steam locomotion, on account of the more
perfect and rigid surface that it presented a surface that
was, moreover, nearly independent of meteorological
changes. But the mechanical engineers had some
difficulty in perfecting the locomotive engine, and by the
time that Stephenson in 1828 demonstrated its success,
industries on all hands had become so developed as
absolutely to necessitate the assistance of this new means
of transport to prevent their being crippled by cost of
carriage.
At the beginning of the century, Great Britain occupied the
fortunate position of having her mineral resources, as well as
the new engineering industries, in a better developed con-
dition than those of any other country. She had, moreover,
the command of the sea. These advantages the nation was
not slow to seize, with the result that very much of the
increase of trade came directly into our hands. Other
N 2
196 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
nations have now developed their resources, and are in some
branches, as in the case of the supply of railway material,
our keen competitors, though shipbuilding is still practically
a British industry. Thus on every hand large and increasing
quantities of the metals, chiefly iron, as well as of coal, were
then required, so that the rate of development of the coal and
iron trades was for many years phenomenal. It will be better,
for the sake of clearness, in a more detailed review to take
the iron trade first.
Crude cast or " pig " iron is the most widely used metal
at the present day in the industrial arts,
sometimes as the material out of which
articles may be formed by the operation of casting, but more
generally as the substance from which the purer forms
of the metal, such as steel or wrought iron, may be
obtained, and it is easy to trace by the trade in " pig " iron
alone the industrial progress that has taken place. But it
must be remembered that this large industry is absolutely
dependent on two others, coal mining, which indeed will be
seen to be of even greater importance than the iron trade,
and ironstone mining, which is of nearly equal importance
with it.
The annual production of "pig" iron has been steadily
increasing in Great Britain for several centuries. For the
year 1806 there were no less than 161 furnaces in existence,
producing 243,800 tons of pig iron. By the year 1827
the number of furnaces had increased to 284, and the annual
output to 690,000 tons, the South Wales and the Stafford-
shire districts each contributing about one- third of the total.
Except in Scotland, where raw coal was the fuel, the use of
coke in the furnaces had become almost universal (Vol. Y.,
pp. 312, 464), though singularly enough a solitary charcoal
furnace has been, and still is, worked at Backbarrow in Cum-
berland up to the present date.
In following the development of the industry it must be
remembered that the blast furnace producing
Furnace* cas ^ n * on ^ as ^ wo ^ unc tions to perform. It
has to reduce the ore first to the state of
metal. This is effected in the central and upper part of the
furnace by the united action of carbon and of carbonic
monoxide at moderately elevated temperature upon the ore,
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 197
which may be considered to be always an oxide of iron, for
when carbonate of iron is the ore it speedily becomes oxide
by the simple act of heating. The reduced metal, now in
a state of tine division, must then be melted, during which
operation it takes up carbon and becomes cast iron ; at the
same time the ash of the coke and the foreign matters from
the ore fuse, and can be withdrawn as a slag. It must be
further noted that the melting requires a very high tempera-
ture, such as is only attained at the base of the furnace where
the blast of air is admitted.
The very early iron furnaces did not produce cast iron,
save as an accidental product, but a steely wrought iron that
never melted but was picked out of the furnace after the
operation was finished. This peculiarity of their product was
due to the fact that the furnaces, which were comparatively
speaking very small, employed charcoal as fuel, and this had
great power of reduction, but the temperature attained was
insufficient to melt the iron, or to highly carburise it during
the few hours occupied by the operation. But in the case of
larger blast furnaces having cast iron as the intentional
product, in order to carry out the operation with as small an
expenditure of coke as possible, what is required is the attain-
ment of a very high temperature by the complete combustion
of the coke to carbon dioxide at the base of the furnace,
so as to get the highest possible temperature for the actual
melting, as well as a suitable though not excessive production
of reducing gases in the upper portions of the furnace. Up
to about the year 1828 a gradual improvement in the size
and shape of the furnaces was made, but without any radical
change in practice. In that year Neilson, it must be
admitted for somewhat absurd reasons,
thought it would be of advantage to feed all Us | 1 a f s f ot
kinds of furnaces with hot air, and he
obtained letters patent for the scheme. Heated air had,
however, been experimentally used by others at the Bradley
Iron Works as early as 1804 for blast furnaces, and its use
abandoned. But the use of heated air enables a high tem-
perature to be obtained without an excessive production of
reducing gases and consequent waste of fuel in the furnace,
and when Neilson's improvement was applied to the Scotch
blast furnaces, a notable saving of coal was effected, amount-
198 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
ing in many instances to a reduction of eight tons of pit coal
per ton of pig iron to about 5 J tons, and representing frequently
an economy of 1 sterling for that amount of product. In
English furnaces, where the coal was generally coked before it
was used, the saving naturally could not be so great, but it was
20 per cent. The production increased to 1,390,000 tons in
1840, when 490 furnaces were in existence in the country, and
402 of these were at work, the amount of coal required
diminishing to an average of about 3J tons per ton of iron.
In 1843 the rapid extension of the railway system caused
a large increase in the demand, and the pro-
duction was 2,000,000 tons in the year 1847,
increasing five years later to 2,700,000 tons,
when 497 furnaces were working out of a total of 655. The
increasing yield per furnace was due partly to an increase
in size, but partly to the attention now commencing to be
paid by the ironmasters to the study of the scientific
problems presented in the course of their work. Up to this
time the combustible gases, necessarily present in the upper
part of the blast furnace for the purpose of
reducing the ore to the metallic state, had
been invariably allowed to burn as they
issued from the mouth of the furnace, but in 1845-48 Budd
thought to utilise the gas by withdrawing it from the furnace
immediately below the top, and to burn it in his stoves
for the purpose of heating the air for the hot blast. He
found that he had enough gas and to spare, so that another
large economy could be effected. Soon after this the "closed"
top to the furnace was invented, and then
practically all these gases could be usefully
burnt, either in the hot-blast stoves or under the steam
ooilers, for the blast engines. Strange as it may seem, it was
many years before the use of the closed top became general,
yet in the end the advantages of its use have been universally
recognised, and the impressive, but useless and expensive,
spectacle of a quarter of the fuel employed burning in
absolute and injurious waste, is to be seen no more. At
about this date, also, the increasing size of the furnaces led
to the adoption of ironwork in their structural casing in
the place of brickwork or of masonry. Now the change is
complete, and only the fire-resisting part is made of brick.
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 199
The activity in the manufacturing industries has demanded
and, indeed, has mainly resulted from, a liberal
supply of fuel, large quantities of which are
required in the metallurgy of iron, whilst the steam engine is
used with the deliberate view of substituting the energy
derived from fuel for that derived from animal labour. Coal
had displaced most other forms of fuel in this country by
the beginning of the century, and this largely accounts
for the industrial activity itself, for it is computed that a
seam of coal two feet thick and an acre in extent will supply
as much energy as could be obtained by burning all the
trees that could be grown in the same sized piece of land
for ten thousand years.
TRAVELLERS between London and Brighton may notice to the
west of the line near Purley an embankment
long disused. Few, however, know that this T - c - FARRER.
/. i n IT,,- M < The Railway
is part of the first public " iron railway for system,
which an Act of Parliament was obtained in
this country, by name the " Surrey Iron Railway Company,"
formed in 1801, to carry coals from Wandsworth to Croydon
and Reigate, and to bring back stone and lime to be shipped
on the Thames. But though this and several other small
lines were formed at the beginning of the century, to be worked
by horse power only, it was not until the period that we are
now considering that the foundations of the present English
railway system were laid.
The early history of our railways is inseparably connected
with the picturesque personality of George Stephenson, who
was born in 1781 at Wylam Colliery, near Newcastle, of parents
too poor to afford him as a lad even the schooling necessary for
learning to read and write : the family of eight souls, indeed,
dwelt in one room of a cottage. He lived not only to realise
great wealth himself, but to see the face of England so much
changed by the invention which his own industry had the
chief share in developing, that it was actually cheaper to
use his own words for the poor man to go by steam than to
walk. The time was very favourable. The close of the French
war had opened the seas to English commerce. A vessel
moved by steam power was sailing on the Clyde by 1812 ;
200 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
another crossed the Atlantic in 1819. Between 1821 and 1824
Liverpool exports had increased from 71,000 to over 1,000,000
tons. The inland canal navigation companies were quite
unable to cope with the traffic that was pressing upon them.
They attempted to meet the difficulty by the most foolish and
unpopular of all measures that of a general raising of rates
for conveyance. And so we find that the first survey of a
railway between Liverpool and Manchester was made, prin-
cipally at the expense of Joseph Sandars, a Liverpool mer-
chant, in the year 1822, and the first prospectus issued
October 29th, 1824. It contained these words "It is
competition that is wanted, and the proof of this assertion
may be deduced from the fact that shares in the old Quay
Navigation, of which the original cost was 70, have been
sold as high as 1,250."
During all this time George Stephenson had been working
quietly at the improvement of his locomotive
The Locomotive. . . XT ,, * -, n TT , -, ,
engine in Northumberland. He had long
been convinced that steam power was destined to supersede
other modes of traction. As far back as 1769, a French
officer named Cugnot had constructed a steam locomotive,
which worked on ordinary roads in Paris. Trevithick, a
Cornishman, had also constructed a successful road locomo-
tive, which he exhibited in London in 1803, and a tramway
locomotive the first in Britain which worked upon the
Merthyr tram-road in 1804. Blenkinsop, of Leeds, followed
with another locomotive in 1811, to be used at his colliery
at Leeds in lieu of horses. Blackett, of Wylam, a village
near Stephenson's home, was at the same date constantly
experimenting ; and Stephenson, then an engineer at Killing-
worth, was as constantly following the experiments. At
Killingworth, Stephenson constructed in 1814, for Lord
Ravensworth, his first locomotive, " Blucher," and devoted
the next two years to improvements in design of both engine
and track ; and he had proved in practice on these coal roads
the superiority of locomotive over any other form of traction
by the date of the inception of the Stockton and Darlington
Railway.
This line was originally intended only for the conveyance
of coals and goods to be hauled by animal power or station-
ary engines ; and the first application, backed by Edward
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 201
Pease and many of the Quakers of Darlington, for power
to construct it, was made to Parliament in
1818. It was defeated by the Duke of The Stockton and
/ 11- Darlington
Cleveland, on the ground that it would in- Railway, 1821.
terfere with his fox-covers. In 1821, however,
the Bill passed, and in 1823 George Stephenson was ap-
pointed engineer. At his instigation, an amended Bill was
obtained, a clause of which gave the company power to work
the line by means of locomotive engines, and to convey
passengers the first Act in England to give such power. The
year 1823, therefore, may be looked upon as the real begin-
ning of the modern railway era in England. For sanction was
given by Parliament and it is necessary to note that such
sanction was, and is still, essential to undertakings of any
magnitude, because Parliament alone can compel any individual
in this country to part with his land against his will to a
line 40 miles long, and estimated to cost a quarter of a million
sterling.
From that day to this, moreover, though improvements
have been made in details of the locomotive, the principle
of George Stephenson's engine remains unaltered, and his
machine, which at the opening of the Liverpool and Man-
chester Railway in 1830 carried Huskisson's body, maimed
by a deplorable accident, at the then unheard-of speed of 36
miles an hour, has only been enabled to double that pace in
1885, while the reduction of fares during the same period
between the same places has only been from 4s. to 2s. 6d.
Great as was the success of the Stockton and Darlington
line, public attention was hot thoroughly
aroused until the project of the Liverpool Tne Liverpool
._., .* J if' and Manchester
and Manchester Railway came to the front in Railway.
1824. By a fortunate chance George Stephen-
son was appointed engineer, as he was strong enough to
withstand attacks of every kind. What these attacks were,
even among the most educated class, may be gauged by the
following words of a Quarterly reviewer of 1825, commenting
upon a proposed line to Woolwich, which was to go at twice
the speed of stage coaches :
" The gross exaggeration of the powers of the locomotive steam
engine . . . may delude for a time, but must end in the mortification
of those concerned. . . We would as soon expect the people of
202 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve's
ricochet rockets, as trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine, going
at such a rate. "We would back old Father Thames against the Woolwich
Railway for any sum."
Steplienson himself, in evidence given before the Parlia-
mentary Committee, had to limit his expectations of the
speed of the locomotive to fourteen miles an hour. The
opposition, backed by the landed and canal interests, was
too much for the first Bill, and it was thrown out ; only to
be reintroduced and passed in the next year (1825).
Even now the directors were undecided as to the nature
of the power to be employed, and it needed the utmost
persuasion of their engineer to give a fair trial to the loco-
motive. Into the details of that remarkably interesting race
on October 6th, 1829, at Rainhill, between the three
locomotives, " Rocket," " Novelty," and " Sanspareil," wit-
nessed by some yet living, we have not space to enter, but
the prize of 500 was won by Stephenson's " Rocket," which
attained a speed of 29 miles an hour, and the power to be
employed for tractive purposes was finally settled. The
Liverpool and Manchester Railway now part of the L. and
N. W. system was opened on September 15th, 1830, in a
scene of great public excitement. The financial results
were highly satisfactory, the 100 shares shortly rising to
200, and the traffic increasing beyond the wildest dreams
of the promoters, so much so indeed that the whole of their
limited stock of engines was employed in passenger traffic,
a branch of business which had scarcely been considered in
the prospectus.
Meanwhile the first of the waves of speculation which
have occurred since at varying intervals, had swept over
this country. Railways seemed to offer such a fine security,
that we find a capital of nearly 22,000,000 was demanded
for them in 1824-25. Even though only about 220,000 was
actually paid up, the figure, considering that liability was
then unlimited, is highly remarkable. The great success
of the Liverpool and Manchester led to the foundation of
all the principal lines at present existing.
The Act of the London and Birmingham,
the first long line 112 miles in length
was passed in 1833. It had in the previous session (1832)
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 203
passed a second reading in the Commons by a majority
of 79, and also Committee and third reading by large
majorities, but had been rejected in the Lords, a rejection
which, says an early writer, stirred up a most indignant spirit
in the land. " There is a blindness which will not see, and
how shall it be expected that they should be able to calculate,
whose schooling has gone little beyond counting the feet of
a hexameter verse ? "
Notwithstanding similar opposition from Eton and Ox-
ford, the Great Western Bill passed in 1835,
both seats of learning managing to push the
line away, the first as far as Slough, the
second as far as Didcot. The Kev. Edward Coleridge was
asked whether the railway would not increase the trade of
Windsor. " Trade," said he ; " what trade has Windsor, except
Windsor soap, and that is made at Egham ? " The Act for-
bade any station on the G. W. R. within a certain distance
of Eton College. When the rails were perforce extended
to Eton and Oxford, clauses were inserted in the Acts * to
this day unrepealed compelling policemen to patrol the line
to prevent the access of Eton boys, and giving the officers of
the University of Oxford access at all times to the railway.
Similarly in the Eastern Counties Act,| a clause, still un-
repealed, forbade the company to run trains to Cambridge
at certain hours on Sundays on pain of forfeiting money to
Addenbrooke's Hospital. These instances are quoted to show
the strong opposition which was met with and had to be
conciliated, for in more modern Acts such clauses interfering
with public convenience for the sake of private institutions
are almost unknown, if we except the recent case { of Lord's
Cricket Ground, which almost prevented a new railway from
entering London.
The Great Western Railway demands attention for other
reasons than the opposition of the learned
bodies of Eton and Oxford. It is intimately
connected with the name of Brunei, its
engineer. A man of daring and ingenious mind, he was
quite deficient in the special faculty which George Stephenson
* Local Acts, 1835, c. 107, s. 100; 1843, c. 10 ; 1845, c. 184, s. 143 ; 1846,
c. 135, s. 24.
t 1844, c. 62 ; 1802, c. 223, s. 140. 1 1893, c. 1, s. 52.
'204 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
possessed, of giving due weight to the commercial side of
engineering. The gauge of the English railway had been
determined by the width of the coal tramroads near New-
castle to be 4 feet 8J inches. Stephenson saw from the first
the importance of keeping all English railways the same width.
When his friend Joseph Locke was constructing the Canter-
bury and Whitstable line, he came to ask Stephenson what
gauge he should adopt. " Make it of the same width as
mine," said George Stephenson, " though they may be a long
way apart now, depend upon it they will be joined together
some day." But to Brunei's mind the very fact of one system
being adopted was an inducement to experiment upon the
advantages of another. Other railways were of 4 feet
8 J inches gauge ; he persuaded his directors that 7 feet was
a better width. Other railways used cross sleepers ; his must
be longitudinal. Other lines had up and down stations on
each side of the line and the passengers crossed to them ; he
must have his stations on one side of the line only, while
the trains crossed instead of the passengers. Steam had
proved its success as a tractive power; Brunei maintained
that the atmospheric system was better for steep grades, and
tried it with disastrous effects on the South Devon line.
All these eccentricities experience has condemned, and no
sober investigator can doubt that time has shown Brunei
to have been completely wrong, and to have wasted large
sums of money. But from the historical point of view the
most astonishing fact is that not only Parliament and the
public, but even the directors of the Great Western Railway
themselves, should have had no inkling of the exchange
between the various parts of the kingdom which railways
were to produce. It was stated and firmly believed by the
advocates of the wider gauge, that the district which the
G. W. R-. served was entirely separate from the rest of
England, and therefore that the transhipment necessary for
goods would be infinitesimal. The idea that in fifty years
through expresses would be running from Glasgow to Ply-
mouth, or from Birkenhead to Bournemouth, entered their
heads as little as the necessity for through goods and coal
waggons from the West of England stations to and from the
London docks and other cities and ports, if their district
were to meet the competition of the rest of England on equal
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 205
terms. A clearer proof does not exist that the internal trade
of the country was in its infancy. The question of gauge was
not dealt with by Parliament until the year 1846, when an
" Act for Kegulating the Gauge of Railways " (9 & 10 Viet.,
cap. 57) was passed, fixing 4 feet 8J inches for future English
and Scotch, and 5 feet 3 inches for Irish, railways. This Act
was the outcome of the report of a " Gauge Commission " of
the previous year, which conducted a careful inquiry. The
experiments included very interesting tests of speed on the
broad gauge Great Western between Paddington and Didcot }
and narrow gauge Great North of England between York
and Darlington, in which the broad gauge attained an average
speed of over 50 miles an hour with a train of 80 tons, the
narrow gauge with a train of the same weight attaining 44
miles. On grounds other than those of speed, however, the
Royal Commissioners recommended the narrow gauge for
future railways. The wisdom of their view was confirmed when
the Great Western itself in 1892 converted the only remain-
ing broad gauge sections of its system to the normal width.
No very special incidents marked the passing of Bills for
our other great London lines, which occurred at the following
dates : London and Birmingham, 1833 ; London and Green-
wich, 1833 ; London and Southampton, 1834 ; London and
Croydon, 1835 ; Great Western, 1835 ; South Eastern, 1836 ;
Eastern Counties, 1836 ; London and Brighton, 1837 ; Great
Northern, 1846; London, Chatham and Dover, 1860; Mid-
land, 1863 ; Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire, 1893.
But the railway mania of 1836 and the subsequent panic
have been so overshadowed by the greater
mania and panic of 1845, that it is well to T
recall them. Almost all the projects of 1845
were mooted in 1836, and the crash which followed in 1837
was one of the worst known. " Consols fell 4 per cent. . . .
In Manchester and its vicinity 50,000 hands were unemployed
for six months. At Paisley 20,000 workmen were idle. At
Glasgow nearly half the labouring classes were idle." * Never-
theless all the great lines were being built, and as they opened
took the place of roads as the . real highways of the country.
The mails were sent by train between Manchester and Liver-
pool from 1830. Each succeeding year saw the death of
* Francis, vol. i., p. 301.
206 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
some celebrated coach with the extension of the rails. In
1841 died the Brighton, in 1842 the Glasgow and Edinburgh,
in 1843 the last Southampton coach. The Queen made her
first journey on the Great Western on June 18th, 1842 ; the
Prince Consort had used the line some time before this.
Parliament began to see that some general legislation was
necessary. The Kail way Regulation Act, 1840,
Legislation reciting that " it is expedient for the safety of
the public to provide for the due supervision
of Railways," handed over certain general powers of regulation
to the Board of Trade. This was followed by various Acts
intended to secure the safety of the public, the most im-
portant of which is the " Railway Clauses Act, 1845," in-
corporating the provisions usually introduced into each
private Railway Act into one General Act.
These Acts, however, did not give to a Government
Department any considerable powers. The reason is obvious
that in Great Britain alone, among European countries, no
penny of Government money had been contributed to railway
enterprise, and therefore there was no justification for claim-
ing the control exercised abroad. The powers of the Board
of Trade were until the year 1889 limited to securing
safety to the public, and they could only interfere before
lines were opened. In Parliament itself the railway interest
was so strong that the Act now known as " The Cheap Trains
Act, 1844" introduced by Mr. Gladstone in a speech in which
the remarkable words occur, " I would no more trust the rail-
way proprietor on railway matters than I would Gracchus
speaking of sedition," and backed by the arguments of Sir
Robert Peel is a mere skeleton compared to the Bill as
originally drafted. It did indeed attain one object that of
showing the railway companies the value of cheap fares ;
and it also gave Government the option of purchasing all
future railways in twenty-one years an option not exercised
owing to the adverse report of perhaps the most important
inquiry into railway matters ever made in this country the
Royal Commission of 1865-67, presided over by the late Duke
of Devonshire. We have said that the Act of 1844 taught
the railway companies the value of cheap fares. A con-
temporary says : " The third-class passenger down to 1845
had no legal status at all. Many companies would not carry
PROGRESS AND REACTION.
207
him at any price ; others put him in an open goods truck,
with movable seats placed across it, and charged him IJd. a
mile for the luxury too. He was conveyed with other unclean
animals by cattle trains, he was shunted about in his buffer-
less box for hours, and when at last he reached his destination
it was to see a notice that ' the company's servants are strictly
ordered not to porter for wagon passengers.' "
But in 1844 it was enacted that along every line one train
each way daily must be run at an inclusive speed of not less
than twelve miles an hour, conveying passengers in covered
carriages at a penny a mile. The companies soon began to
find that this cheap traffic, against the compulsory carriage
of which they had vigorously protested, was the most profit-
able branch of passenger business, and continuous improve-
ments were made in the speed and comfort of conveyance
from that date until 1872, when the voluntary action of the
Midland Kailway in admitting third-class passengers to all
trains without exception completed the revolution in travel.
Indeed, the figures were such as no sensible business men
could overlook.
The table of decennial figures given below, which is taken
from the Parliamentary returns, is perhaps the most remark-
able testimony that exists to the democratic tendenc} r of
the railway. The first row of figures viz. for 1845 is for the
year before the Cheap Trains Act came into force, when there
was no compulsion to convey third-class passengers. Between
L845 and 1890 the first-class receipts have just doubled,
rhereas the third-class receipts are 32 times as large.
GROWTH OF PASSENGER TRAFFIC UNITED KINGDOM.
NUMBERS.
RECEIPTS.
1st Class.
2nd Class.
3rd Class.
Mixed
Classes.
1st Class.
2nd Class.
3rd Class.
Mixed
Classes.
1845
1850
1860
5,474,163
7,734,728^
20,625,851
14,325,825
24,226,6681
49,041,814
13,135,820
3rd & Parly.
34,797,723
93,768,013
855,445
81,055
Season
Tickets.
47,894
1,516,805
1,969,246
3,170,935
1,598,115
2,594,817
3,944,713
651,903
3rd&Parl.
1,899,739
4,162,487
209,518
1,470
Season
Tickets.
272,807
1870
31,839,091
74,153,113
224,012,194
3,948,812
4,925.542
7,473,727
686,488
1880
38,767,926
65,034,870
500,082,229
502,174
3,944,033
3,530,391
14,830,961
1,456,274
1890
30,187,067
62,859,854
724,697,125
1,259,221
3,193,691
2,645,705
21,142,847
2,316,384
208 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
The railway mania of 1845 and the rise and fall of
Hudson, the " Railway King," have attracted,
The of e i C 845 ati0n P erna P s ' more attention than they deserve.
The existing railways had been doing well,
the London and Birmingham, the Grand Junction and the
York and North Midland paid 10 per cent., the Stockton and
Darlington, 15 per cent. But no one expected in 1844 the
wild speculation that was to follow in 1845 and 1846. In
1844 797 miles, in 1845 2,883 miles, and in 1846 4,790 miles
received Parliamentary sanction. The streets near the stock
exchanges were impassable, the gambling fever seized on all
classes. From a return made to the House of Commons, it
appears that among the dealers in railway undertakings were
900 lawyers, 364 bankers, 257 clergymen, 157 members of
Parliament. When the crash came in October, it involved
literally thousands in ruin. The collapse of 1846 and the
quiet decade which followed mark the end of the first
period of English railway history. The interest also shifted
from the construction of railroads to problems connected
with their working. It is true that in 1885 the mileage of
line in the United Kingdom is eight times that of 1845
the figures are accurately, 2,441 in 1845, 19,169 in 1885 but
the advance of engineering skill has made railroad building
merely a question of money.
The economic and social effects of the new power were
felt, and the interest shifted from engineering to that of
policy and rates. Cheaper steamships, combined with free
trade, and the extension of pioneer railways into the heart
of the American continent, enabled countries more favoured
than our own to send us corn at a price with which our
farmers could not compete. Labourers could leave their old
homes to seek for work in towns or in new countries.
As the competition of the sea influenced three- fifths of
British rates * the tariffs often appeared illogical, and pre-
sented anomalies real or apparent, which caused a strong
outcry from an industry now depressed, but once so powerful
and prosperous as that of British agriculture.
Many thought that the remedy was to be found in State
purchase and the adoption of an absolutely equal system
of rates. It was feared that the power of these " gigantic
* Vide Report of Joint Committee of 1872.
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 209
monopolies " as they were called, would be too great, and
between 1844 and 1881 no less than six
Royal Commissions or Select Committees Si toe stale
of Parliament examined into the general
question. Previous Committees had sat in 1836, 1839, and
1840. These six were a Committee of 1844 (Mr. Glad-
stone's); a Committee of 1846; a Commons Committee of
1853 (Mr. Gladstone's and Mr. Cardwell's); a Royal Com-
mission of 1865-67 (Duke of Devonshire's) ; a Joint Com-
mittee of 1872 ; a Committee of 1881-82. A Joint Committee
on Railway Rates also sat in 1892-93, and a House of
Commons Committee on the same subject in 1894.
From the Committee of 1844 onwards the general
principle of Parliament has been to declare that the
Companies have no special vested interest. " Nothing in
the nature of a vested interest "... says the 1844
report, " ought to be recognised by Parliament as attaching
to existing railways."
The engagement between the promoters and the public
" conveys to the promoters no right," says the Report of
1853, " that these privileges shall be exclusively maintained
when they cease to be consistent with the general advantage."
The Royal Commission of 1865-67 reports: "When a
railway company comes forward for additional powers,
Parliament shall take that opportunity of revising the
maximum rates of conveyance, as it may appear reasonable."
In this, as in all other departments of English history,
we find the vindication of the absolute supremacy of
Parliament. From the days of Sir Robert Peel, who in
the introduction in 1842 of a Bill to regulate railways,
stated, " I have reason to doubt very much whether all the
railway companies and railway proprietors in the country
would have the power to prevent Parliament from adopting
any effectual regulations they thought fit," to our own day,
England has seen no such difficulties between the State and
the Companies as those which led in America to the in-
stitution of the Interstate Commerce Commission.
Not that our Railway Commissions have attained in all
cases an unqualified success. Their history is curious. In
1840 and 1842 the Board of Trade was given certain powers
of control in the interests of public safety. In 1844 a
O VOL. VI.
210 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
separate Commission was appointed whose main duty was to
report upon new railway schemes. This impossible task
led to the jealousy of Parliament, and the first " Railway
Commission" died in a year. In 1846 another was appointed
with far less powers, which also died of inanition after five
years. The great Railway and Canal Traffic Act of 1854
the result of Gladstone's and Cardwell's Committee of
1853 virtually transferred railway litigation to the ordinary
Law Courts (the Court of Common Pleas), and in many
directions was a real success. It failed, however, in technical
questions, and the result of the Joint Committee of 1872 was
the passage of the " Railway Regulation Act, 1873." This
appointed a Railway Commission of three members, one a
railway man, one a lawyer (by the Railway and Canal Traffic
Act of 1888, 36 & 37 Viet., cap. 48, the lawyer is to be a
judge of the Superior Court), and one other, who were to
decide questions arising under the Act of 1854, and subse-
quent Acts. . On questions of fact its decision was to be final ;
on questions of law it was subject to appeal. This Commis-
sion, with some alterations in its duties and powers made by
the Act of 1888, has continued until now, and if it has not
satisfied all the expectations which were formed of it, has
at any rate been better than anything that has gone before.
With all the faults of our English system of purely private
enterprise tempered by competition, the controlling power of
Parliament, though frequently grumbled at, has never been
seriously denied by these gigantic corporations, whose capital
in 1895 exceeded that of the National Debt by more than 300
millions sterling. It is possibly for this reason that the
movement in favour of State Railways has made so little
progress in England. The waves of State Socialism have at
various times swept part or the whole of the railway system
of France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Belgium, and most other
countries into the net of the State, but in England alone,
hitherto, the movement has had no serious support. And as
long as the words of the last Committee of Parliament which
has reported on the question hold good, our present system
seems likely to remain unaltered. The words were as follows :
" Your Committee, in conclusion, reports that, on the whole of the
evidence, they acquit the railway companies of any grave dereliction of
their duty to the public."
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 211
1832-46]
IN the first four years of this period, the agricultural distress
in which the country was plunged after the
peace of 1815 continued with little or no R. E. PROTHERO.
i T ,, -. . , Agriculture,
abatement. Landlords with mortgages or 1832-1846.
rent-charges on their estates were ruined ;
tenants, farming on borrowed capital, became parish paupers ;
bankruptcies, seizures, executions, imprisonment for debt, were
still universally prevalent. Rents fell into arrear ; tithes and
poor rates remained unpaid ; labour-bills were reduced ; im-
provements were discontinued ; live-stock dwindled. Trades-
men, innkeepers, and shopkeepers, who depended on farmers
as their principal customers, were involved in the same ruin.
The failure of numerous country banks added to the distress
of rural districts. Misery bred discontent,
and discontent created disturbances which
were fostered by political agitators. While the
Luddites broke up machinery, " Swing " and his proselytes were
at work from Dorsetshire to Lincolnshire. Gangs of labourers
avenged the fancied conspiracy of farmers by burning stacks
and ricks, or by wrecking the shops of butchers and bakers.
It was on the clay farms that the distress was most acutely
felt. Here, even on large holdings, the use of manure was
almost discontinued ; less capital and less labour were ex-
pended on the soil ; wet seasons prevented the farmers from
getting on their land ; to make the rent, excessive cropping
was resorted to. Confidence between landlords and tenants
was destroyed, and recent experience created a profound dis-
trust of leases. In many cases the heavier soils were aban-
doned ; in nearly all the land was allowed to fall into miserable
condition. On the light soil of the Eastern Counties, farmers
had suffered comparatively little. The higher the farming, the
less had been the loss. The spread of drill husbandry, better
and more varied rotations of crops, the abundance of natural
manure provided by the practice of stall-feeding, and improve-
ment both in sheep and capital, enabled energetic tenants
to make farming pay, even in the midst of falling prices.
After 1836, signs of reviving prosperity became manifest.
The rapid growth of manufacture gave a
fresh impulse to agriculture. The new system
of the Poor Law lightened the crushinof burden of rates,
o 2
212 SOCIAL ENGLAND.
[1832
which fell from six and a quarter millions in 1834, to four
millions in 1837. The Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 en-
couraged landlords and tenants to invest their money in land,
without fear that tithe-owners would intercept the increased
profits derived from an outlay to which they had not them-
selves contributed. Wool, mutton, and beef rose in value ;
barley and oats sold briskly at enhanced prices. Farmers,
who were fortunate with their wheat in 1838 and 1839,
profited by the defective harvests, which in those years
were generally prevalent. Farming entered on a new era of
prosperity which, with certain fluctuations, continued down
to 1876.
In 1812 the Royal Society had adopted the motto of
" Science with Practice," and the general char-
The Growth of acteristic of agriculture during this period
Agriculture. is the adoption of this motto. Hitherto bucolic
life had been the pastime of the town, the
inspiration of poets, the relaxation of statesmen, the pursuit
of individual landowners. But, as a rule, farmers had neither
asked nor allowed scientific aid. From 1836 onwards, on a
larger and ever-increasing scale, capital and science, combined
with practical experience, applied their united forces to agri-
cultural progress. In 1838, the foundation of the Royal
Agricultural Society replacing the old Board of Agriculture,
which expired in 1819 marks at once the revival of pros-
perity, the general recognition by landlords of their territorial
duties, and the alliance of the man of science with the farmer.
It proclaims the acceptance of new conditions ; it indicates
the direction in Avhich agriculture was for the future to
advance. Farming ceased to depend for its advance on the
chance-directed discoveries of unlettered rustics ; henceforward
it enlisted in its servi 
