The Age of Elegance

by Arthur Bryant

  Because of these things the peasant's unquestioning patriotism and respect for his feudal superiors were being replaced by a growing sense of injustice. At the time of Waterloo the social cataclysm which befell him was still far from universal. In the north, where the competition of the industrial towns for labour kept up wages, its effects had been comparatively little felt. And everywhere the sufferings of the poor, in this tremendous and little understood revolution, were modified by the decency and kindliness of thousands of worthy men and women, whose sense of duty to their fellow-beings remained unaffected by opportunities of self-enrichment or by the new philosophy of laissez faire. Yet taking a broad view, while the horizon had lifted for the rich and strong, beckoning to an illimitable future of wealth and opportunity, for the poor it was fast darkening. The

  1 "Nothing would induce me to put up* boards threatening prosecution or cautioning one's fellow-creatures to beware of man-traps and spring-guns." Walter Scott, 8th Jan., 1825. Lockhart, V, 399. See Cobbett, Rural Rides, I, 110-11: Coupland, Wilberforce% 428-9; Cranboum Chase, 35-7, 39-41; Green, Stendhal, 183; Hammond, Village Labourer, 187-206; Woodward, 439.

  rulers of Christian England, and those who by their writings helped to form educated opinion, were blind to the changes which these new opportunities of enrichment had brought and were bringing, at an ever-increasing rate, to their poorer countrymen. They only saw their material manifestations—the new, neatly-hedged fields and smoking chimneys and the rising revenues of their estates and of the national Exchequer. They failed to see the hopelessness and hunger of the peasant deprived of his stake in the land and of the produce that had sustained his family. They failed to comprehend the agony of once independent countrymen imprisoned in the discipline of the factory and surrounded by the hideous squalor of the industrial town, or the mentality of children who grew up among these gloomy phenomena knowing no other. There was some excuse for their incapacity to realise the social consequences of the Industrial Revolution, since this, in the year 1815, was still in its lusty infancy and cradled in the most remote and unfrequented parts of the island. There was far less for their failure to understand the tragic social transformation wrought by the agricultural revolution at their park gates. They knew that by its means more food was obtained for their country and more rent for themselves. They turned a blind eye to its inability to produce the free and contented men and women who were the main source of England's wealth.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Years of Disillusion

  "The festal blazes of the war at an end, the sun of Peace is scarcely yet above the horizon; we must take care that during this cold and cheerless twilight the spoiler and assassin don't break in."

  Canning

  "Men of England, wherefore plough

  For the lords who lay ye low,

  Wherefore weave with toil and care

  The rich robes your tyrants wear?"

  Shelley (1819)

  YET it could be said in excuse of the rich that, while the war continued and prosperity with it, many poor men shared in that prosperity, and that when the war ended and the full force of depression fell on the landless poor, it was no longer in the power of the rich, struggling with lapsing leases and tumbling rentals, to help them. An observer of the English scene pointed out that a prodigal could not be generous. When rents and prices fell, the rich had to choose between reducing their extravagant but by now customary standards of living or allowing the poor to suffer. And, contrary to all expectation, prices fell even before the war ended. The cessation of Government buying to feed the armies and the opening of the European and American grain ports brought down agricultural profits with a run. The magnificent English harvests of 1813 and 1815, and that of 1814 in France, flooded the markets. Few farmers had saved money, for, unable to visualise anything but rising prices, they had reinvested everything in their land. The poorer soils that they had ploughed to satisfy wartime demand became economically unworkable with wheat prices dropping from 120s. a quarter—the 1813 level—to 76s. in 1815 and 53s. 6d. in the spring of 1816. The value of farming stock fell by fifty per cent.

  Having undertaken leases on terms compatible only with wartime profits, farmers found themselves unable to pay their rents or to meet the interest on their loans and mortgages. The banks, fearful for the capital they had advanced, called in their money. Hundreds of tenants defaulted, and thousands sought rent remission. Rentals everywhere shrank, though to a level much higher than that of a generation before. The doors of the landed gentry were still guarded by armies of liveried retainers, their woods abounded with game, their wonderful horses shook the earth. But they were thrown into a flurry of anxiety and spoke of ruin, both national and personal.1

  Their representatives in Parliament tried to bolster up prices by legislation. For twenty years the Corn Laws, which from time immemorial had prevented the export of corn in domestic shortages and protected the home-grower during foreign gluts, had been abrogated by war and blockade. Now they had suddenly become a necessity if the farmer was to pay his rent, taxes, tithes and mortgage interest. On both sides of the House it was contended—though a few Whig enthusiasts for complete freedom of trade demurred—that the rising number of mouths to be fed necessitated more home-grown corn, even if it involved uneconomic tillage. To rely for part of the nation's food on foreign supplies was too risky; more than once during the war England had nearly starved. It seemed better that the people should pay more for their corn in fat years to be sure of it in lean. It was to their interest, too, it was argued, that prices should be stabilised—a traditional aim of the Corn Laws.

  But the workers of England, dreaming, after all that they had endured, of the traditional first-fruits of peace—a cheap loaf-viewed these landowners' arguments with suspicion. So did the northern manufacturers, seeking to effect cheap sales abroad through reduced wages at home—a policy impossible to enforce while food prices remained at their wartime level. Why, asked a Whig member of Parliament, should importation of foreign corn be feared, since none could take place without a corresponding export of British manufactures? A stock-jobber named Ricardo, who brought out a pamphlet on the beneficial influence of low corn prices on industrial profits, went further and maintained that dependence on foreign corn could never endanger Britain's safety, since no foreign Government

  1 One Scottish earl, forced to reduce his rents by a third, told a friend that he had abandoned his carriage-horses, paid off his chef and was no longer called "the great Lion of Galloway," but added that he found himself as happy as before. Earl of Galloway to Sir Arthur Paget, 27th Nov., 1815. Paget Brothers, 285-6. See also Alison, I, 82-3; Ashton, I, 377; Broughton, I, 81; Byron, Age of Bronze Colchester, II, 558-60, 584-5; Ernie, 174, 322, 318-21; Farington, VII, 215, 218; Halevy, II, 5; Howitt, 203-4; Smart, 406-9, 435-6". 445; Woodward, 58.

  would ever dare oppose the pressure of its farmers to grow for the British market. The House of Commons was flooded with petitions: one from Leeds bore 24,000 signatures, another from Bristol 40,000, others from Liverpool and Manchester 50,000 apiece. Despite, however, their reference to a select committee, a Bill excluding foreign corn until the price of native corn reached 80s. a quarter passed both Houses in March, 1815.

  Legislators were left with no illusions about the measure's unpopularity. The degree to which the landed interest had been weakened by the destruction of the peasantry now became apparent. Outside Parliament landowners and farmers found themselves almost alone; even the peasantry, having nothing left to gain from high food prices, were apathetic or against them. There was a feeling that they had feathered their nests during the war at the expense of the nation, and that they now wished to do so indefinitely. It was a resentment which later found expression in Byron's Age of Bronze:

  "Safe in their barns, these Sabine tillers sent

  Their brethren out to battle—why? for rent!

  Year after year they voted, cent per cent,

  Blood, sweat and tear-wrung milli
ons—why? for rent!

  They roared, they dined, they drank, they swore they meant

  To die for England—why then live? for rent!"

  At the time crowds surrounded Parliament, holding up halters and shouting, "No starvation!" "No landlords!" The house of the Minister who had introduced the Bill was sacked. The Lord Chancellor, with the help of three sentries from the British Museum, drove out the undersized, undernourished hooligans who broke into his Bedford Square dwelling, and Castlereagh, calmly walking home through the mob that was stoning his windows, unconcernedly closed his drawing-room shutters with brickbats flying about his head. Even Wilberforce, who spoke in the House of the danger of dependence on foreign corn, had to garrison his country pleasance in Kensington with a squad of soldiers.1

  The feeling against the Corn Laws was aggravated because industry was also in trouble. There was no repetition of the boom

  1 They were asked to join in family prayers. Coupland, Wilberforce, 408. See also Ann. Reg., 1815,4-5; Brownlow, 190; Colchester, II, 527-8; Croker, I, 63; Testing, 195; George IV, Letters, JL 43-4; Gomm, 346; Gronow, I, 220-1, 346; Smart, 90-1, 365, 372-89, 406-17, 441, 446-60; Woodward, 58-9.

  after the Peace of Amiens. The Government, which had been spending fifty millions a year supplying the Fleet and Army and almost as much in subsidising foreign States to buy British munitions and uniforms, went out of business. The bottom fell out of the armament market. The price of iron dropped from £20 to a ton and of copper from £180 to £80. Other commodities fell in proportion. Exports, after a brief hectic rise, declined by seven millions, those of foreign and colonial produce from twenty millions to scarcely ten. After so long and destructive a war the European nations were too poor to buy.

  This recession was turned into a disaster by the reckless way in which British exporters poured their wares into war-ravaged or underdeveloped countries that lacked the buying-power to absorb them. The fluctuating markets of the war had developed a gambler's spirit among the rough and adventurous men pioneering in mechanical production. The speculation that attended the opening of the South American market rivalled the folly of the South Sea Bubble of a century before. The Spanish colonies—now in revolt against the mother country—were deluged with improbable wares. The multiplying power of Britain's machines was not yet matched by the capacity of her merchants to forecast markets—a matter of great difficulty in days of slow communications—or of her customers to absorb goods. It was not even matched by the pockets of her people at home. From the moment the war ended a mounting shortage of purchasing-power developed in every department of national life. By 1816 two-thirds of the Shropshire blast furnaces had shut down. Steam-manufacturers, unable to meet their wage bills, either reduced wages or discharged hands. Needing not skilled men so much as machine-minders, of which the towns at their factory gates offered an inexhaustible supply, they felt under no obligation, economic or moral, to maintain their employees. Simultaneously the labour market was flooded by thousands of ex-soldiers and sailors who, being without any income whatever, contributed no consumer-demand but, by their competition for employment, forced down wages further.

  Finding itself short of money, the community turned on the Government and demanded reduction of taxation. If landowners, farmers and manufacturers could no longer enjoy war prices, they could no longer stomach war charges. So long as the war lasted, Britons had borne their burdens with patience. In 1815 a population of fourteen millions was contributing .£72,000,000 per annum or a fifth of the national income, as compared with the £19,000,000 paid in 1792 by one often millions.

  The charge fell on almost every commodity. It was said that the Government owned one wheel of every coach on the road.1 The price of glory, wrote Sydney Smith, was "taxes on the ermine which decorates the judge and the rope which hangs the criminal— on the poor man's salt and the rich man's spices—on the brass nails of the coffin and the ribands of the bride. . . . The schoolboy whips his taxed top, the beardless youth manages his taxed horse with a taxed bridle on a taxed road, and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine which has paid seven per cent into a spoon that has paid fifteen per cent, flings himself back upon his chintz bed, which has paid twenty-two per cent, and expires into the arms of an apothecary who has paid a licence of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death."

  Every year in his budget the Chancellor of the Exchequer rang the changes on these omnipresent imposts. The result was always the same. The subject paid from every pore, and the poor man, having no reserve after satisfying his bare needs, paid relatively most of all. Beer—his chief drink—contributed a sixth of the revenue; Cobbett, travelling to St. Albans on a hot day, reckoned that, in their exchange of beer for sweat, the haymakers in the Middlesex alehouses were contributing threepence halfpenny on every five-penny pot. The hardships suffered by the workers under this system —unguessed at by the rich—are described in Cooper's memoirs; of poor widows conspiring to outwit tax-collectors, who, knowing their straits, pursued them with indecent solicitations: of midnight removals of household goods to prevent distraint; "the curse upon taxes and the tax-gatherer was in the mouths of thousands." At St. Ives the populace celebrated the first Christmas of the peace by throwing a tax-collector out of the window.2

  Among those with the power to show resentment the most hated

  1 Even travel in the Margate hoy was taxed, every passenger paying 2s. on his 9s., us. or 13s. ticket. Sea-Bathing Places, 375. See Alison, History, I, 78-9; Austen, II, 293; Clapham, I, 245-6 319-20; Dowall, 239; Fowler, 219; Hammond, Town Labourer, 102; Simond, I, 51; II, 290; Smart, 4335 Woodward, 61, 324.

  2 Broughton, I, 94. See Bamford, II, 110-11; Cobbett, Rural Rides, I, 78; Colchester, II, 527-8; Cooper, 26-7; Halevy, II, 60; Simond, II, 140-1; Smart, 3, 31-6, 43-4, 53, 67, IOO-I, 112-15, 169-70, 277-81, 341-4, 360-2, 425.

  impost was the ten-per-cent Income Tax which Pitt had instituted in the hour of national peril. He had undertaken that this inquisitorial measure, as it was deemed by those who paid it, should be repealed as soon as the war ended. But the Government, faced with the charge, first of the American War and then of Napoleon's escape from Elba, and anxious to contribute some force to preserve international peace, struggled for more than a year before abandoning it. The Opposition was furious; so were the Government's supporters. The young Whig, Lord John Russell, declared that the tax's continuance would erase the last vestiges of British freedom. Why, it was asked, should the country's military establishment be six times greater than in 1792, especially as France was disarmed and Britain now allied to all Europe. Brougham accused Ministers of plotting to alter the character of the Constitution and make it a military state. The Foreign Secretary, who was regarded as the villain of the piece, was charged with having imbibed so many Continental customs as to have forgotten England was an island.

  On August nth, less than two months after Waterloo, the Prime Minister wrote to Castlereagh warning him that the financial situation was too grave for the nation to be able to shoulder further foreign commitments. The Navy and Army were the first to be pared. Within eighteen months 300,000 soldiers and sailors were turned adrift.1 A naval officer in charge of a Sussex coastguard station received sudden orders to discharge his men in the dead of winter, though they were on a hilltop miles from anywhere. The men who had fought their way from Torres Vedras to Toulouse were given neither pension nor medal; the finest army England had ever had was dismissed without regret or gratitude.

  Other wartime obligations were less easy to evade. Those who had fought England's battles could be relegated to a life of selling trinkets on the highways or sweeping the London streets,2 but not

  1 "We's all in mourning here for Mr. Nap," said the old tar to the "Oxonian" when he visited Portsmouth, "we've had no fun here since they cooped him up on board the Bellerophon and stowed him away at St. Helena. Where's all the girls and the fiddlers and the Jews and bumboat-women that used to crowd all sail to pick up a spare hand ashore? Not a sha
rk have I seen in the harbour, and all the old grog-shops with their foul-weather battens up and colours half-mast."—English Spy, II, 184.

  2 Officers of the Rifles, passing through Knightsbridge, were sometimes startled to see a tall, military-looking man picking up bones and to recognise through his rags one of the smartest and finest-looking men in theRegiment. See Anderson, 105-6,128-9; Bell, I, 20, 35, 80,114-15. 120, 149-50, 157-8, 193-4; Blakeney, 332, 364-7; Castlereagh, X, 477-9J Colchester, III, 247;

  those who had lent the State cash to pay them. It was the essence of the system of financing war by borrowing that faith must be kept with the public creditor; that is, with the rich investor. The war had raised the National Debt from £252,000,000 to £861,000,000: a "poisoned dart," Napoleon boasted, left in England's vitals. The annual interest was £32,645,618, half again as much as the total prewar national expenditure, and five times more than the poor rates about which so much fuss was made.

  This borrowing, added to every year and at rates lower at the end of the war than at its height, and the punctual discharge of interest, was regarded as a triumph of national strength and good faith. It profoundly impressed foreigners. So did the maintenance of "a paper currency not convertible into gold and therefore not liable to be withdrawn, and yet issued in such moderate quantities as satisfied the wants of man without exceeding them." Since Pitt's Government, by suspending cash payments, had given the privately-owned Bank of England—the principal proprietor of the National Debt— the right to issue paper currency unbacked by gold, there had been a huge increase in circulation. Yet it had been matched by the expansion in real wealth brought about by the machinery and improved farming which an enlarged currency had helped to buy into existence. "Without it Britain, under her free system, might not have defeated Napoleon.