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English-Speaking Peoples (10): Recovery and Reform
History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Volume 4, Book 10
On Fridays starting September 30th, Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn and radio host Hugh Hewitt discussed Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples in the Hillsdale Dialogues segment of the Hugh Hewitt Show.
Following each discussion, the Churchill Project will offer companion pieces highlighting important episodes and themes in the book. Readers will note that our writers often focus on aspects of the books which the discussants may not. Such is the depth of Churchill’s History. All readers take what they prize most from this vast mine of political wisdom and understanding.
Page references (parentheses) are to Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, vol. 4, The Great Democracies (New York: Dodd Mead, 1958).
Recovery and Reform
In Book 10 of his History, Churchill catalogues the time between Napoleon’s defeat in 1815 and the migration of English-Speaking Peoples to Canada, South Africa and the Antipodes. During this time, Britain contended with social unrest in Ireland and growing political agitations among the British working class.
The post-Napoleonic era was defined by fierce resistance to reform. Britain had watched the French Revolution in horror, and was slow to acquiesce to any reform that might lead to it. Revolutions, it was thought, paved the way to the slaughter of elites.
The Tories, firmly in power, strongly resisted the principles of Revolutionary France, to which England’s governing class had long closed its mind. Robert Jenkinson became Prime Minister in 1812, and appointed men whose “sole aim in politics was an unyielding defence of the system they had always known” (5).
Avoiding the French experience
Churchill notes that Britain’s leadership was wary of reform out of grim experience. The French Revolution had similarly affected other European powers. Together, they were determined to prevent any further outbreak of revolution which might again throw their continent into war. Britain formed an alliance with three other great powers: Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Together, they agreed to intervene and suppress revolution wherever it appeared in Europe. Another reason for England’s lack of revolution was that the governing class “did not share the absolutist dreams that inspired, and deluded, the Courts of the autocrats” (7).
The London government avoided even moderate reform. The threat of the French Revolution still loomed. “Extremist Radical leaders came out of hiding and kept up a perpetual and growing agitation” (10). Their demands “began to take the shape of a political movement,” even though they were hardly represented in the House of Commons. Yet, if the governing class did not have much interest in reform, neither did the middle class. The latter was unable to support radicals whose tactics “were too much like those of the French Revolutionaries” (12).
One social demonstration threatened British authority. The “Blanketeers” marched from Manchester to London to present a petition against the government. Their leaders were arrested, and 11 people were killed in a protest at St. Peter’s Fields just outside Manchester, which came to be known as “the massacre of Peterloo.” In response, the government passed acts that limited the right to protest.
Monarchy and Ireland
Churchill sees Napoleon’s defeat as a “triumph for the Divine Right of Kings and the cause of monarchy” (14). But public opinion was still influenced by republican ideas . This made the “Victory Peace” a time of popular disturbances, when Britons paid attention to the Royal Family. Yet “the personal defects of the sovereign had little effect upon this deep-rooted tradition” of royalism (21).
Some historians argue there was no two-party system at this time in British politics. Whig fought Whig, and most of Parliament supported whoever was in power. Tory leader George Canning, Prime Minister in 1827, who “for a brief hundred days held supreme political power” until his death, thought the largest danger was Catholic Emancipation (33). Canning believed it “would imperil not only Protestantism in Ireland but the entire political system at Westminster” (25). “An honest despotic Government,” he believed, was the best solution for Ireland.
After Canning’s death, the next government supported “existing institutions, [and the] conviction that they alone stood between order and chaos” (35). This view was established through the French Revolution, but further developed after the growing rebellion in Ireland. Robert Peel, then serving as Home Secretary, had “long been the symbol of opposition to any concessions to the Catholics” (37).
Irish Protestants, on the other hand, wanted resolution on any terms. The government asked the King to choose between “either Catholic Emancipation or the systematic reconquest of Ireland.” The government was wary of Catholic influences. Prime Minister Wellesley wrote to the King that the Irish government has been “usurped by the demagogues of the Roman Catholic Association, who, acting through the influence of the Roman Catholic clergy, direct the country as they think proper” (37).
Industrial revolution, monarchical reform
Another effect of political life in Britain during the 19th century was the Industrial Revolution. “In the growing towns and cities,” Churchill notes, “industrial discontent was driving men of business and their workers into political action” (44). The French Revolution had stirred the middle class, but they were still “deeply law-abiding in their hunger for political power.” The economic dislocation of war further developed tensions. Peel, the Home Secretary, believed the solution to the unrest “lay in efficient administration and an enlightened commercial policy” (57). Later on, the political system was forced to contend with the problems of the working and middle classes.
In 1867, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli introduced a Reform Bill which redistributed seats in favor of large industrial towns. A million new voters were added to the electorate. Disraeli’s colleague, the Earl of Derby, longest-serving Tory leader, called this “a leap in the dark” (97).
Monarchical reform was needed following the excesses of George IV (57). Overindulgence of the French monarchy had sparked revolution. Queen Victoria, who came to the throne in 1837, steered clear of mirroring the French. This was largely accomplished by marrying Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg, an “upright, conscientious man with far-ranging interests and high ideals.” Together, they enjoyed “a happy family life, which held up an example much in accord with the desires of her subjects.”
India and South Africa
Britain’s idea of its place in the world was also undergoing reform. The Indian Mutiny of 1857 was seen as an “increasing gulf between the rulers and the ruled” (88). English people no longer saw themselves as redeemers meant to uplift the multitudes. Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859) “lent a fresh force to the belief in the forward march of mankind” (92).
A growing European population accelerated migration. Britain acquired southern Africa from the Dutch in 1814. Many Britons thought Cape Colony was “destined to become a permanent part of the British Empire, and the government “resolved to make it as English as they could” (109). They made English the official language, remodeled the justice system and replaced the currency. These decisions sparked conflict with the Boer settlers who had settled in the then-unpopulated Cape regions since the 17th century.
“British methods of government created among the Boers a more bitter antagonism than in any other Imperial country except Ireland,” Churchill explains (109). No grouping of peoples “has ever clung more tenaciously to its own culture and institutions than the Dutch.” When Britain outlawed slavery in 1833 the Boers, and some English settlers, were indignant. Boer leader Piet Retief led the Great Trek northward into areas populated by African tribes. “We quit this colony,” Retief declared, “under the full assurance that the English Government has nothing more to require of us.” The new lands “will allow us to govern ourselves without its interference in future” (111).
Australia and New Zealand
In 1788, 717 convicts arrived in Botany Bay, Australia. They “had neither the will nor the ability to fit themselves to the new land,” Churchill writes (115). An elected Legislative Council was granted to Australia in 1850. Melbourne was established as the capital of the Colony of Victoria in 1851. Western Australia obtained representative institutions in 1870, but was not self-governing until 1890. The gold rush of 1851 increased Australia’s population, which rose to over a million by 1861. Some £124 million in gold was extracted in the 1860s, and the economy boomed. A federal government came late to Australia because the widely separated settlements cherished self-rule.
Britain secured sovereignty over New Zealand in 1840, out of fear of French competition. Reform in New Zealand centered on responsible government and the relationship between central and provincial governments. In 1875, provinces were abolished. Local administration became the job of county councils, while federal powers were expanded.
The 19th century, Churchill writes, “was a period of purposeful, progressive, enlightened, tolerant civilisation.” Slavery was suppressed early by Britain and later—“at the cost of nearly a million lives”—in America. “The Industrial Revolution unleashed by the steam-engine and many key-inventions, led inexorably to the democratic age,” and the franchise was extended.
The new or second British Empire or Commonwealth “was based upon Government by consent, and the voluntary association of autonomous states under the Crown. At the death of Queen Victoria it might well have been believed that the problems of past centuries were far on the high-road to gradual solution” (viii).
The author
Zach Bauder is a Winston Churchill Fellow at Hillsdale College studying Politics and German. He is a junior from Seattle, Washington, and he is the President of the Young Americans for Freedom chapter at Hillsdale. Over the summer, he was a Field Coordinator for Congressional candidate Joe Kent in Washington’s third Congressional district.