Whig Liberalism

In England, in the post-1815 era the Tories with their power-base among the landed gentry dominated the House of Commons. Only about 6 per cent of the population had the voting franchise. This law had not been changed since the Middle Ages when the right to vote was tied either to land ownership or to representation of the boroughs (towns). Because of the enclosure movements, much of the British peasantry had been forced to sell off their land, becoming either rural or urban laborers with no voting rights. Thus, parliament became dominated by the gentry, either the descendants of the feudal "knights of the shire" or what some historians have called the "funded gentry," that is, bourgeois men who had bought pieces of property to which the right to vote was attached.

The gentry constituted the backbone of the Tory party, which in 1815 had passed the Corn Law placing tariffs on imported grain so as to protect their own economic interests against imports that had again become possible with the end of the war against Napoleon and the War of 1812 with the United States. The effect of this law was, however, the raising of bread prices which adversely affected the industrial working classes and other people at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. It was in protest against the Corn Law and other conservative measures that a demonstration was mounted at St. Peter's field in Manchester on 16. August 1819. It was put down by the a military unit that had been involved in the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo and because of the 11 deaths and hundreds wounded, became known as the "Peterloo Massacre."

Fearful of further protests that might accumulate into revolution, the Tory government passed the repressive Six Acts which provided for censorship, restrictions on the freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, etc. The acts were unpopular, but were redeemed in the eyes of many when the Cato Street Conspiracy that was aimed at murdering the cabinet was uncovered early the next year. Fortunately for England, there was an economic upturn in the decade of the 1820's that took the steam out of the protest movement for a time as did the coming to prominence of a group of younger, more reform-minded Tories, the best known of whom was Robert Peal.

In 1830, a combination of the movement of Peal and a few other liberal Tories to the need for electoral reform, combined with the specter of revolution that was raised by the revolutions in France and Belgium. Almost simultaneous to these revolutions was the death of King William IV which necessitated a new election. In the campaign, the Whigs ran on a program of reform. The principle problem that attracted their attention was the antiquated nature of the electoral franchise which gave too much representation to old jurisdictions which had become rotten boroughs or were pocket boroughs. After wining a majority, the Whigs introduced what became the Great Reform Bill in March of 1831. The extracts that follow are from the speech of the eminent historian and Whig MP, Thomas Babington Macaulay, delivered on 2. March 1831 in support of the reform. Note his justification of why reform was necessary and how he used the specter of revolution to make his case.

... I, Sir, do entertain great apprehension for the fate of my country. I do in my conscience believe that, unless the plan proposed, or some similar plan, be speedily adopted, great and terrible calamities will befall us.

... If, Sir, I wished to make ... a foreigner clearly understand what I consider as the great defects of our system, I would conduct him through that immense city which lies to the north of Great Russell Street and Oxford Street, a city superior in size and in population to the capitals of many mighty kingdoms; and probably superior in opulence, intelligence, and general respectability, to any city in the world. I would conduct him through that interminable succession of streets and squares, all consisting of well built and well furnished houses. I would make him observe the brilliancy of the ships, and the crowd of well appointed equipages. I would show him that magnificent circle of palaces which surrounds the Regent's Park. I would tell him, that the rental of this district was far grater than that of the whole kingdom of Scotland, at the time of the Union. And then I would tell him, that this was an underrepresented district. It is needless to give any more instances. it is needless to speak of Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, with no representation, or of Edinburgh and Glasgow with a mock representation.

... This is not government by property. It is government by certain detached portions and fragments of property, selected from the rest, and preferred to the rest, on no rational principle whatever.

... In fact, ..., the system was not in ancient times by any means so absurd as it is in our own age... We talk of the wisdom of our ancestors; and in one respect at least they were wiser than we. They legislated for their own times.... They framed a representative system, which, though not without defects and irregularities, was well adapted to the state of England in their time. But a great revolution [ed. comment commercial and industrial]. ... New forms of property came into existence. New portions of society rose into importance. ... Towns shrank into villages. Villages swelled into cities larger than the London of the Plantagenets....All history is full of revolutions, produced by causes similar to those which are now operating in England.... Such, finally, is the struggle which the middle classes in England are maintaining against an aristocracy of mere locality, against an aristocracy the principle of which is to invest a hundred drunken potwallopers in one place, or the owner of a ruined hovel in another with powers which are withheld from cities renowned to the furthest ends of the earth, for the marvels of their wealth and of their industry.

... We have had blood [ed. comment: Peterloo] New treason's have been created [ed. comment Cato Street Conspiracy] The Press has been shackled. The Habeas Corpus Act has been suspended. Public meetings have been prohibited. [ed. comment Six Acts].

Under such circumstances, a great plan of reconciliation, prepared by the Ministers of the Crown, has been brought before us .... It takes away a vast power from a few. [ed. comment: 500 men elected a majority of the House of Commons] It distributes that power through the great mass of the middle order.

... The danger is terrible. The time is short. If this bill should be rejected, I pray to God that none of those who concur in rejecting it may ever remember their votes with unavailing remorse, amidst the wreck of laws, the confusion of ranks, the spoilation of property, and the dissolution of social order.

The Great Reform Bill of 1832 after one earlier draft was defeated in committee. New elections were held and a Whig majority insured its passage in September 1831. This bill was vetoed by the House of Lords. Finally, another draft was passed after the King threatened to create enough new Lords to prevent a veto.

Source: Lady Trevelyan (ed.) Thomas Babington Macaulay, Works, vol. viii (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1879) pp. 12-25.

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