第14章 Reform Movements(2)

By degrees,however,peace brought back prosperity.Things settled down;commerce revived;and the acute distress passed away.The whole nation went mad over the wrongs of Queen Caroline;and the demand for political reform became for the time less intense.But it soon appeared that,although this crisis had been surmounted,the temper of the nation had profoundly changed.The supreme power still belonged constitutionally to the landed interest.But it had a profoundly modified social order behind it.The war had at least made it necessary to take into account the opinions of larger classes.An appeal to patriotism means that some regard must be paid to the prejudices and passions of people at large.When enormous sums were to be raised,the moneyed classes would have their say as to modes of taxation.Commerce and manufactures went through crises of terrible difficulty due to the various changes of the war;but,on the whole,the industrial classes were steadily and rapidly developing in wealth,and becoming relatively more important.The war itself was,in one aspect at least,a war for the maintenance of the British supremacy in trade.The struggle marked by the policy of the 'Orders in Council'on one side,and Napoleon's decrees on the other,involved a constant reference to Manchester and Liverpool and the rapidly growing manufacturing and commercial interests.The growth,again,of the press,at a time when every one who could read was keenly interested in news of most exciting and important events,implied the rapid development of a great organ of public opinion.

The effects of these changes soon became palpable.The political atmosphere was altogether different;and an entirely new set of influences was governing the policy of statesmen.

The change affected the Tory as much as the Whig.However strongly he might believe that he was carrying on the old methods,he was affected by the new ideas which had been almost unconsciously incorporated in his creed.

How great was the change,and how much it took the shape of accepting Utilitarian theories,may be briefly shown by considering a few characteristic facts.

The ablest men who held office at the time were Canning,Huskisson,and Peel.They represented the conservatism which sought to distinguish itself from mere obstructiveness.Their influence was felt in many directions.The Holy Alliance had the sympathy of men who could believe that the war had brought back the pre-revolutionary order,and that its main result had been to put the Jacobin spirit in chains.

Canning's accession to office in 1822meant that the foreign policy of England was to be definitely opposed to the policy of the 'Holy Alliance.'

A pithy statement of his view is given in a remarkable letter,dated 1st February 1823,to the prince who was soon to become Charles X.2The French government had declared that a people could only receive a free constitution as a gift from their legitimate kings.Should the English ministry,says Canning,after this declaration,support the French in their attack upon the constitutional government of Spain,it would be driven from office amid 'the execration of Tories and Whigs alike.'He thought that the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people was less alien to the spirit of the British Constitution than the opposite doctrine of the legitimists.

In the early days,when Canning sat at the feet of Pitt,the war,if not in their eyes an Anti-Jacobin crusade,had to be supported by stimulating the Anti-Jacobin sentiment,in later days,the war had come to be a struggle against the oppression of nations by foreign despots.Canning could now accept the version of Pitt's policy which corresponded to the later phase.

Englishmen in general had no more sympathy for despots who claimed a divine right than for despots who acted in the name of democracy --especially when the despots threatened to interfere with British trade.When Canning called 'the new world into existence to redress the balance of the old,'3he declared that English policy should resist threats from the Holy Alliance directed against some of our best customers,the general approval had special force among the Utilitarians.In the South American States Bentham had found eager proselytes,and had hoped to become a Solon,He had been consulted by the constitutionalists in Spain and Portugal;and he and his disciples,Joseph Hume in particular,had joined the Greek Committee,and tried to regenerate Athens by sound Utilitarian tracts.All English Liberals sympathised with the various movements which were more or less favoured by Canning's policy;but the Utilitarians could also see in them the opening of new fields already white for the harvest.

The foreign policy was significant,it proved that the war,whatever else it had done,had not brought back the old order;and the old British traditions in favour of liberty of speech and action would revive now that they were no longer trammelled by the fears of a destructive revolution.The days of July in 1830gave fresh importance to the reaction of foreign upon English politics.

II.LAW REFORM

Meanwhile,however,the Utilitarians had a far stronger interest in domestic problems.In the first place,in Bentham's especial province a complete change of feeling had taken place.