The Long Eighteenth Century

by Frank O'Gorman

  The pressures of war were also largely responsible for the Luddite movement. In 1811 and 1812 a wave of machine-breaking swept three industrializing areas of the country, beginning in the east Midlands, then moving on to the West Riding of Yorkshire and then to parts of Lancashire. Machine-breaking was a traditional means of lower-class protest. In 1811–12 it became a last resort when orderly protest had failed to persuade Parliament either to enact new or to utilize existing legislation affecting working and living conditions. The Luddism of the early nineteenth century was a reaction to industrialization, to mechanization and to exploitation. It was a protest not only against low wages but also against the high rents of the frames of the Nottinghamshire framework knitters and the looms of the handloom weavers of Lancashire. In Yorkshire Luddism was a protest of the skilled croppers against the introduction of new machinery such as the gig mill and the shearing frame. More generally Luddism was a protest, especially in the lace trades of Nottinghamshire, against the declining status of old crafts and the inferior quality of goods now mass produced. The scale of Luddism should not be underestimated. In Nottinghamshire well over 1,000 frames were destroyed in over 100 raids. There was also a powerful political element in Luddism, especially in Yorkshire and Lancashire. Luddism only appeared in Yorkshire after the croppers had failed to persuade the authorities to enforce Tudor legislation against both the use of machinery in their industry and against the use of unapprenticed labour. Although it is impossible to distinguish fact from rumour and exaggeration, there is evidence of political activity in the industrial towns of the West Riding. The old clandestine organization of the radical underground reappeared there and, to a lesser extent, in south-east Lancashire, where food rioting was often confused with Luddism. In some places there are traces of quasi-military oath-taking and drilling, and there were a few attacks on militia depots, but these were unusual. Luddism, however, was not a revolutionary movement. Had it been so it would have remained tiny and ineffective. In fact, Luddism had widespread popular support; it was embedded in local communities and rooted in local problems. Parliament was sufficiently alarmed to make machine-breaking a capital offence in 1812 but it took more than that to suppress Luddism. It took considerable military force. Two thousand soldiers were stationed in Nottinghamshire to break Luddism in the county, and at one time there were 15,000 troops in Yorkshire. Even then, Luddism was a long time disappearing. In Nottingham a committee of framework knitters promoted a parliamentary bill to regulate the trade. When it failed to pass the House of Lords in July 1814, frame-breaking resumed and continued intermittently in the county until 1816.

  This wartime phase of radicalism perhaps lacks the ideological freshness of the radicalism of the 1790s. Indeed, many reformers professed support for the war against Napoleon, which could easily be construed as a war endangering English liberties. Nevertheless, it confirmed many of the reformers’ suspicions concerning the corruption of the regime, and it did something to stir the middling orders out of their unthinking loyalism. Furthermore, it unquestionably acted as a stimulant to the cautious MPs of the reforming wing of the Whig Party. After 1812, however, the excitement generated by the reformers, Dissenters and Luddites slowly subsided. The murder of the Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, in 1812 horrified moderate opinion, while the recurrence of Luddite disturbances continued to arouse fears for the preservation of social stability. However, the repeal of the Orders in Council and the improved economic prosperity of the last three years of the war did much to lower the political temperature. As the climax of the Napoleonic wars approached, patriotic opinion once more rallied behind the throne.

  The return to peace in 1815 created severe economic dislocation which found expression both in political and in economic protest. The demobilization of regular and volunteer forces, the immediate decline in government orders and the resulting rapid rise in unemployment created scenes of pitiful distress. For example, the great iron works of Shropshire, South Wales and Scotland lost their armaments orders and threw surplus labour onto the markets. The industrial recession coincided with a poor harvest in 1816. According to one tradition, one in five of the population was on poor relief in Birmingham. If this were not enough, the passage of the Corn Law of 1815 aroused fury among the labouring classes. This act, by which no foreign corn could be sold in Britain until the domestic price had attained 80s. a quarter, had as its object to protect the landed interest against falling prices. (By the new year of 1817 the price had reached 100s. per quarter.) Its consequence was to keep the price of bread unnecessarily high. It showed that there was one law for the rich, landed classes – protection and thus, security – and another for the poor – the free market, and thus poverty and insecurity. The Corn Law aroused bitter resentment in London, which in March 1815 was hit by a series of riots which came close to paralysing the city. As a consequence of all these economic problems, the extent of post-war radical agitation was entirely unprecedented, fuelled as it was by the sharpness of class antagonism. In the north of England in particular, the growth of factories was producing a huge social as well as economic chasm between the labouring classes and their masters. In Lancashire and Yorkshire particularly, political agitation for reform was difficult to distinguish from economic agitation for shorter hours or for better wages. Interestingly, in harsher times it tended to be the political objective that was uppermost; in better times, the labouring classes tended to concentrate on their economic objectives.

  These were not merely years of economic distress and political resentment. These were years of intense politicization affecting the masses as well as the middle classes. These were the great years of the radical press. Newspapers such as the Leeds Mercury, edited by the Dissenter, Edward Baines, rallied the merchants and manufacturers against the Corn Law of 1815 in particular and against ‘old corruption’ in general. Similar, though less distinguished, papers included the Sheffield Independent (founded in 1819) and the Manchester Guardian (1821). Even more striking was the mass circulation of working-class journals. Cobbett’s Political Register attained a circulation of 40,000–50,000 per issue, no doubt in part because of its price reduction from 5d to 1d. in 1816. Thomas Wooler’s Black Dwarf (1817–24) was possibly even more savage in its condemnation of the establishment (or ‘The Thing’ as Cobbett liked to describe it) than Cobbett himself was. Similarly, William Sherwin’s Weekly Political Register (1817–19) was widely read in the London area. When it was taken over by Richard Carlile in 1819 it became a more powerful, and more distinguished, radical journal.

  In the summer of 1816 Burdett appealed to the Hampden Club to organize reform petitions to present to Parliament. He was concerned lest machine-breaking frightened the middle classes and thus set back the cause of reform, and hoped to yoke working-class radicals to his peaceful parliamentary strategy. His appeal did not go unanswered. Union clubs sprang up everywhere, in towns and villages, in pubs and chapels, in homes and workplaces throughout the country. The radical leaders even found it possible to work together. In January 1817 a conference of seventy radical leaders met at the Crown and Anchor tavern in London. In spite of their differences, they agreed upon a campaign of mass petitioning. It was an outstanding success. No fewer than 700 petitions to Parliament were forthcoming from over 350 places in support of Burdett’s motion of 20 May 1817 for a select committee on parliamentary reform. Although the motion was lost, and lost badly by 77 votes against 265, it had been the most spectacular radical mobilization of public opinion for over two decades. The geographical distribution of the petitions reflects that of radical opinion in general. Although Wales and Ireland were not involved, Scotland was in the vanguard of the movement. Again, although East Anglia and the West Country made a paltry showing, the north-west of England, Yorkshire and the East Midlands, with some support from London, were more solid for reform.

  The same tactics were repeated in 1818 and with very similar consequences. Although no fewer than 1,570 petitions were raised, many of them had only
a score or more of signatures on them. In May, Sir Robert Heron’s motion for triennial Parliaments was lost by 117 to 42. Petitions alone would not be sufficient to overcome the resistance of Parliament. So in 1819 the radicals devised one of their happiest initiatives, the holding of ‘elections’ in the great industrial towns for their ‘legislative attorneys’, a tactic that kept the reform pot boiling throughout the first half of the year. On 12 July a meeting to elect a ‘legislative attorney’ was held in Birmingham, and another was planned for Manchester. On 16 August tens of thousands of workers from Manchester and the surrounding areas gathered in St Peter’s Fields to listen to ‘Orator’ Hunt. The magistrates, anxious for the preservation of peace, instructed the local yeomanry to arrest him. This led to still greater disorder and the intervention of the cavalry in which eleven people were killed and over 400 injured. In some ways, the aftermath of ‘Peterloo’ was almost as important as the ‘massacre’ itself. There was an immediate national outcry among radicals and a flurry of mass meetings throughout the country to protest against the government. But what did such meetings actually achieve? What were the radicals to do after Peterloo? It was impossible for them to challenge the government further without resorting to direct revolutionary action and, for all his wildness in words at times, Hunt was not prepared do so. As the reformers considered their strategy after Peterloo, the momentum slowly evaporated, and the energies of radicals were deflected in other directions.

  The years after 1815 were marked by other forms of direct action spawned by the hardship of the times. Luddism sprang up again in the east Midlands in 1816. No sooner had that begun to disappear than rural areas of eastern England were racked with food rioting. In March 1817 the Manchester workers organized their ‘Blanketeers’ march. It took the unity of the local magistracy as well as a force of cavalry to ensure that most of them got no further than Stockport. The march of the Blanketeers was a genuine attempt, however poorly organized, to draw the attention of the nation to the distress of the masses. The ‘Pentrich rising’ of June 1817 could have been more dangerous had ‘Oliver the Spy’, W. J. Richards, not given advance warning of the rising to the authorities. The eventual rising of 300 stockingers and ironworkers from a handful of villages in north-east Derbyshire came to nothing, save the execution of Jeremiah Brandreth and two of his fellow leaders. Other manifestations of direct action had overly political overtones. In November and December 1816 three great radical meetings, seething with class resentment, were held at Spa Fields in London. Nothing like these had been seen in the capital since the great meetings of the LCS in 1795 and the government was alarmed, particularly so when after one of them, a group of extremists, looted gunsmiths’ shops and tried to storm the Tower of London. This conspiracy was led by Arthur Thistlewood and James Watson, who were motivated by the ideas of Thomas Spence. Freed on a technicality from these charges, they continued to plot, and in 1820 formulated a plan to assassinate the cabinet. This, the ‘Cato Street Conspiracy’ of February 1820, was infiltrated by spies and was easily frustrated. Thistlewood and four others were hanged and five others transported.

  Surprisingly, however, the great climax of the radical agitations of the post-war years came neither with Peterloo nor with Cato Street but with the affairs of Queen Caroline. With the death of George III in January 1820 and the accession of his son, George IV, the status of the king’s unwanted and discarded wife, Queen Caroline, became a matter of immediate public concern.20 The king’s hostile attitude towards his wife, from whom he had been separated for many years and who had been living on the continent, rendered her an object of public sympathy. Caroline was treated instantly as a victim of the establishment, a martyr of the corrupt executive. On her arrival in London in June 1820 she took up residence in the home of Alderman Wood, a prominent London radical. Immense public rallies in favour of the humiliated queen were held all over the country, which watched with fascination as the drama unfolded. The queen demanded that she be declared queen consort; the ministry instituted a public scrutiny of her conduct with a view to proving grounds for divorce. As the sordid spectacle continued, the ministry’s case began to run into difficulties and the bill was abandoned. On the other side, however, the opposition’s cause began to weaken when the queen accepted an annual pension of £50,000. At a time of widespread distress, such an action was bound to cause offence, and support for the queen’s cause began to subside. However, only her death in August 1821 put an end to the episode. The economic situation was already beginning to ease and the confidence of merchants to recover. As employment and wages rose and as the stock market boomed, discontent melted away.

  The radical challenge to the government of Lord Liverpool had been unprecedented. It had involved hundreds of thousands of people in many parts of Britain, and had launched a popular agitation that was quite unequalled; it had alarmed the government, terrified property-holders and politicized the lower classes. So impressive is this achievement that its ultimate failure demands explanation. The divisions in the post-war radical movement were crippling. The new working-class radicalism of Henry Hunt, with its appeal to factory workers, stood in direct contrast to the more traditional radicalism of Burdett, who appealed more strongly to small shopkeepers and tradesmen. Such differences were aggravated by the bitter antagonisms between the sturdy personalities of Burdett, Hunt, Cartwright and Cobbett. The movement was seriously weakened by physical and geographical differences; moreover, regional and provincial loyalties remained strong and communications still difficult in this pre-railway age. Although Cartwright’s tours and the journalism of Cobbett had done something to give a national orientation to post-war radicalism, the movement remained seriously fragmented and, thus, weakened. Nevertheless, the post-war radical movement had achieved the mass platform it had hitherto lacked. It had acquired the moral force and the popular backing with which to confront the forces of government, and to do so with confidence. Its ultimate tactic of conspicuous confrontation with the authorities created expectation, tension and, not least, drama and excitement in which all could participate. Such a confrontation did not only occur at the political and legal levels; it occurred also at the level of language, with radicals seeking to broaden the meaning of terms like ‘freedom’, ‘the people’ and ‘the constitution’, and loyalists to limit them. In the battle for the minds of men and women, such strategies were of great importance. What historians are coming to understand, moreover, is the extent to which radical leaders and organizers were able not only to create an attractive radical platform but also to produce compelling radical theatre. Radical leaders played upon the rich traditions of popular culture to make elaborate appeals to the people through the careful utilization of civic and national celebrations, through dinners and toasts, through the dazzling deployment of light and colour and the accompanying recitation of music, rhyme and stories. Radicalism was shot through with traditional practices such as burning in effigy (of opponents), chairing and hero-worship (of radical leaders) and, not least, by the use of symbols (such as the cap of liberty and the white hats of reform). One of the many explanations for the mass radicalism of these years is the ability of radical leaders to convey their messages in a lively and compelling manner to their potential supporters, and thus to expand the arenas in which political power was contested. In the end, however, the nerve of the government held, partly because it saw that it retained the confidence of the majority of property-holders and partly because its political and parliamentary position, although embarrassed on some occasions, was never seriously threatened. For the moment the castle had been saved, but a further siege was almost certain to occur in time.

  THE POLITICS OF WARTIME AND AFTER, 1789–1820

  After the Regency Crisis of 1788–9 the government of William Pitt was secure in the affections of the king, respected, if not loved, in the country and enjoying a comfortable majority in Parliament. The general election of 1790 quietly confirmed Pitt’s supremacy, renewing his majority of over 150. Yet th
at supremacy was not without its weakness. One, usually underestimated, was the possibility that if his brother, Lord Chatham, 21 were to die then Pitt would go to the Lords, from where his control of the administration would be much more tenuous than from the Commons. Pitt enjoyed a comfortable majority in the Lords but it belonged to the king rather than to the minister – about half the peers were amenable to George III rather than to William Pitt – and the ministry was weak in debating talent there. Pitt, furthermore, had only a limited personal following, usually estimated at about fifty. The source of his power was the support of the court and administration group of around 200. Even this was not always enough to give him a reliable majority, faced as he was with an opposition of over 130 which on certain issues could hope to recruit the support of a majority of the independent members. Pitt was not always sure or the independents; he was not a sociable man, rarely mixed with MPs and did not always know their opinions. It was his talents rather than his personality that kept him in office. Ultimately, however, his very vulnerability was his best security so long as the only real alternatives to him were Fox and the Prince of Wales. By 1789 Pitt had been in office for six years and had demonstrated his very real talents. He was blessed with the support of two political heavyweights, Henry Dundas, ‘the King of Scotland’,22 and his cousin, Lord Grenville, then speaker of the House of Commons.23 Pitt’s cabinet was not a particularly distinguished one at this time – the Foreign Secretary, Francis Osborne, Duke of Leeds, had been quietly and unspectacularly in his post since 1783 – without Dundas and Grenville it would have been notably lightweight.