Perilous Question: Reform or Revolution? Britain on the Brink, 1832

by Antonia Fraser

  Words underlined the damage. To some she was becoming ‘Queen Addle-head’. Francis Place contrasted ‘the Queen with her spare form, her sour countenance and her straight, stiff German back’ with the jolly, good-natured King. There were references to ‘a nasty German frow’ in popular newspapers.4 Adelaide was not nasty – nor, for that matter, was she strictly speaking a frow – but she was German. Not unexpectedly, she had a German accent at which the press jeered in its captions.

  Yet for all their chauvinistic pettiness, perhaps the press were not entirely misdirected in their attacks. It is true that on one occasion early on, William had roared at his wife when she made some public comment: ‘Madam, English politics are not to be understood by any German.’5 But that was a mere husbandly explosion. The devotion of the King to the Queen, their happy conjugal private life, meant that the possibilities of private influence grew apace, parallel with the press attacks which enraged William. And there is evidence that Adelaide herself cautiously began to explore the possibilities open to the King other than creation: did he, for example, have the right to choose new Ministers?

  Lord Howe was her chosen emissary. On 20 January 1832 he showed the Duke of Wellington ‘in great confidence’ a letter he had received from the Queen. He added that she was not aware her former Chamberlain was taking this step, a statement which may be treated with polite scepticism. ‘Should you think it right to send me a few lines which might be shown to her and to the unfortunate master’ – Howe’s italics – he would welcome them. Otherwise he hoped the Duke would return the Queen’s letter untouched. ‘God knows whether the King is sincere or not,’ exclaimed Howe, ‘but is it not frightful to see him acting as he does, while at the same time he detests his agents.’6

  The Queen’s letter, dated 18 January, left her feelings in little doubt. Of the King she wrote: ‘his eyes are open and see the great difficulties in which he is placed; he sees everything in the right light.’ But she was afraid that he had the fixed idea that ‘no other administration could be formed at present amongst your [Wellington’s] friends’. The crucial question came next: ‘How far he is right I cannot pretend to say for I do not understand these important things, but I should like to know what the Duke of Wellington thinks.’ It was quite clear what answer the Queen wanted: a new administration was perfectly possible.

  Amid all these tensions in this agitating spring, most of those concerned were deeply apprehensive. Even the most diehard Tories could see that defeat of the Bill, if secured in the Lords, would raise as many problems as it solved. Macaulay managed to divert his sisters Hannah and Margaret with a bit of light-hearted fun on the subject of the Bill, which was obsessing everyone they knew. Adapting the well-known nursery rhyme beginning ‘Twenty pound will marry me’, and making the usual play with King William’s nickname, Macaulay declaimed:

  What though now opposed I be?

  Twenty peers shall carry me

  If twenty won’t, thirty will

  For I’m His Majesty’s bouncing Bill.7

  But then Macaulay, although idealistic, was also young and ambitious, and these were evidently good days for the young and ambitious, as such times of stress tend to be. They were less propitious for those actually in charge of guiding the bouncing Bill through Parliament.

  It was Lord Althorp who showed real signs of cracking. That jovial John Bull appearance had always concealed a far more sensitive nature than he chose to reveal, as witness his lifelong mourning for his young wife coupled with his refusal to remarry. As Leader of the House of Commons he was suffering from the intense bombardment of activity, talk, negotiation, speaking, working all day and very often all night. The concentration on the probable outcome of voting in the House of Lords meant that rumour and counter-rumour about personal predilections were the gossip of every person; then there were the Waverers such as Lord Harrowby, who were not above trading a vote for Reform for some subsequent amelioration. The secret desire of the unambitious Althorp to turn his carriage in the direction of his country home instead of Parliament, which he had confessed to his father, had hardly gone away.

  A crisis came when Althorp felt he had shrunk from the prospect of future defeat in the Lords long enough. Unless there was an immediate creation of some sort, he was determined to resign. Lord Holland agreed with the need for immediate creation, without temperamentally feeling tempted to desert his friend Grey. Matters were not helped by Durham’s behaviour in Cabinet: he had reverted to his bad old ways. At the end of one long debate in Cabinet, wrote Lord Holland, after looking ‘as black as the night and preserving a sullen silence’, Durham very offensively asked if he might now be permitted to speak. At home among the ladies of the family, Durham behaved no better, disputing vigorously with his father-in-law.8

  According to Greville, the Duke of Richmond quarrelled with Durham, while ‘Melbourne damns him and the rest hate him. But there he is, frowning, sulking, bullying and meddling, and doing all the harm he can.’9 It is perfectly true that this disruption in the Cabinet by a passionate pro-reformer was highly unpleasant for all its members, in purely human terms. Yet Durham’s unruly but consistent behaviour had one important consequence: it undoubtedly prevented Grey from gracefully backsliding under the influence of Melbourne and Palmerston. He had not lost his affection, sympathy and even his respect for his son-in-law. Spoilt child as he might seem to be in many respects, on the issue of Reform Durham had never deviated and that was more than many of the Cabinet could boast. At this crucial moment, therefore, the wayward Durham supplied the iron determination of which Grey evidently stood in need.

  Althorp himself did not lack determination, but by March he was at the end of his tether. There was a troubling incident when he was found locking away his pistols for fear of having too easy access to them in a moment of madness. In a conversation with Sir John Hobhouse on the precise difficulties of the situation, he said:

  ‘I do not know whether I might not, to make matters easier, shoot myself.’

  ‘For God’s sake, shoot anybody else you like,’ replied Hobhouse robustly.10

  To politicians of the time, such threats of suicide would not have come across as pure histrionics; the point has been made that there had been three suicides, led by Castlereagh, in the last seventeen years.11

  Now Althorp reminded Grey of their conversation in 1830 in which he, Althorp, had told Grey that he would take office because Grey said he would not do so without him.12 ‘I have acted up to my word,’ declared Althorp, ‘and have sacrificed my happiness in doing so.’ Grey now had a choice: to create peers at once, or face up to Althorp’s resignation (leaving of course an ugly gap in the House of Commons, to say nothing of the blow to Whig morale). Rather touchingly, Althorp felt the need to resort to a letter to Lord Grey in declaring his intention. He gave the following explanation: ‘I do so because when I feel a decided opinion different from yours, I find it impossible in conversation with you to express it as strongly as I feel it. It is always the same with regard to my father.’ Then he went on to say that he felt his ‘honour and character’ so completely involved in the passing of the Reform Bill that he could not risk the calamity of rejection without making every effort against it. If the Bill was still rejected after creation, that was one thing, but to allow it to go forward without trying this expedient was intolerable to him.

  Grey also replied by letter, dated 11 March from Downing Street.13 It was an extremely long letter but the effective passage came at the end. If Althorp resigned, it would result in the breaking-up of the Government. Given that Grey had refused to come into Government without Althorp, ‘I should now find it still more impossible to go on, without you.’ Althorp’s sense of responsibility – that belief in ‘an honest and consistent discharge of public duty’ he had described at a reformers’ dinner in September – was too strong for him: ‘Honest Jack’ gave in. There was a further crisis a little later when Lord Durham threatened to resign, but in this case it was Althorp the conciliator who
persuaded him back.

  On 21 March there took place that fast instigated by the Government (not at the official request of the House of Commons as the evangelical Perceval, flourishing his Bible, had so urgently requested) to mark the epidemic of cholera. It was complicated in the first place by a renewed exhibition of fanaticism by Perceval himself. The debate on the third reading actually had to be adjourned because of the ‘temporary derangement’ of the MP, as Edward Littleton put it. He raved yet again about the ungodliness of the House, so that both Whigs and Tories walked out. The gallery was once again cleared of strangers, according to tradition. Still Perceval ranted on. Finally Perceval sat down, ‘exhausted by his own frenzy’.14

  Such days of national fasting and humiliation, taking place on a working day, dated in fact from the mid-sixteenth century and all kinds of rituals had developed around them.15 They were ordained either to implore God’s forgiveness and assistance, at a time when the nation was under threat, or to celebrate some triumph secured with God’s support.* In this case, prolonged sufferings over cholera were the cause: ‘particularly seeking God to remove from us that grievous disease’, as the official wording had it. Theatres were closed, churches were open (for specially designed sermons) and the shops, according to one commentator, ‘manage their shutters to hit the happy medium’. In the Royal Chapel, Bishop Blomfield drew attention to the failure of the rulers of society to ‘increase the comforts and improve the moral character of the masses’. But it was hardly to be expected, in view of the disrupted state of the nation, that this particular fast would go smoothly with the masses themselves.

  This was something laid down from above and in many quarters the requisite spirit of self-abnegation and humility was conspicuously lacking. Henry Hetherington in the Poor Man’s Guardian took the firm line that ungodliness was not the problem.16 ‘The Cholera has arrived among us,’ he wrote, ‘and this among other blessings, we have to lay at the door of our “glorious constitution” for it is a disease begotten of that poverty and wretchedness which are occasioned by the wealth and luxury of the few, to whom only the constitution belongs.’ The ‘fasting’ tradition of eating salted fish – allegedly a penitential dish but spiced up with egg sauce and mustard – he greeted with a mocking response. The rich and greedy smacked their lips at all this delicious cream, while the poor were on a perennial fast anyway.

  It was the political unions who raised the most obvious objections. The Birmingham Political Union took the strong line delineated by Hetherington: Reform, not fasting, was the solution to the nation’s woes. The National Union of the Working Classes had their own individual resolution: on the fast day or sooner, all sinecurists, placemen or extortionists, whether in Church or State, living in luxury, should give up their ill-gotten plunder. A suggestion of one member that a feast should be held on the fast day was not, however, adopted.

  The Union now embarked upon a prodigious march starting with a meeting in Finsbury Square. In essence it was a peaceful march and once again steps were taken to exclude drunken men (the bane of serious demonstrations). One rule book actually read: ‘No person shall be allowed to enter any meeting of the Union or Committee who may be intoxicated’ – the appearance of respectability was vital. The march gained strength as each street added numbers. Nor was it restricted to one sex: ‘Hundreds of women followed in its train, each attaching herself to her friend or husband.’17 Symbolic bread and meat were distributed to the poor, making the political point again that it was bodily sustenance not spiritual nourishment which was needed here. Inevitably the march degenerated and there were clashes with the police towards the end and some arrests. Nevertheless this march, like others in the provinces, attested to a strength of feeling in the ‘middling classes’ and the ‘lower orders’ which could scarcely be denied by their social superiors in Parliament.

  On 23 March, at one o’clock in the morning, the third reading of the Reform Bill passed in the House of Commons. Three days later, the Bill was formally presented to a packed House of Lords, hopefully for its endorsement. The second reading being set there for 9 April, the atmosphere of tension which had been mounting all year deepened further. The game was on. On 4 April The Times ran an advertisement for the impending performance of the brilliant young actress Fanny Kemble as Lady Macbeth – ‘her first appearance in the role’ – at the Covent Garden Theatre; unusually for Londoners, the impending real-life drama at Westminster seemed more compelling. In a strong leader in the same issue, the editor defended in advance the King’s right to create peers against Tories who might pretend he had no power to do so. The Tories had been adding to the House of Lords for seventy years, and now they were pretending that their King had no right to do the same! In a subsequent issue The Times suggested that seventy or eighty new peers might be needed if the Bill were defeated.18

  In political circles, there was canvassing of the uncommitted peers – known Waverers or potential Waverers – on all sides. Typical was the rueful entry of the Earl of Coventry in his Diary: ‘I never before was fully aware of the usefulness of indecision. It has raised me quite to importance. I have received more invitations to dinner this week than I have had for years, and my hand has been squeezed by men who long scarcely condescended to notice me.’19 Lord Coventry had voted against the Bill in October; he was hitherto best known for featuring as ‘a most profligate nobleman’ in the searing memoirs of the courtesan Harriette Wilson, published in 1825, but better things were evidently now hoped for from him, in every sense of the word. Francis Place had a cynical comment on the Peers as a class: he wrote that he had had communication with a considerable number on many occasions; and ‘true it is that I never knew one that as a politician, was not a mean shuffler’.20

  King William IV was certainly not a mean man – the people were not altogether wrong in their original perception of him as a bluff, honest fellow, basically on their side, in contrast to George IV. But his prolonged correspondence with his Prime Minister during this period was beginning to betray signs of something closely akin to shuffling. The King was displaying a certain ‘soreness,’ wrote Lord Holland, as a personal friend of William Duke of Clarence in the old days frequently at Court. Holland added an ominous rider: ‘some of us, that is in the Cabinet’ were beginning to wonder whether ‘the moment of separation’ was not approaching; by this Holland suggested a Government, foiled of its desire to effect parliamentary Reform by the means of creation, might find itself resigning.21

  On 5 April the King responded to a minute from the Cabinet with a long letter, full of emphases, dictated as usual to Sir Herbert Taylor. Prevarication was evident: ‘the hesitation which he feels and shows, to commit himself to the extent which is now required from him was not produced by any new view of the question’. On the contrary, the King was simply adhering to the principles he had stated all along. An extended recital of all his previous arguments followed. The conclusion was inconclusive: ‘what His Majesty cannot help feeling is, that all that is now connected with this question and with the measure submitted for his consideration and decision is speculative, and calculated to engage him and commit him in that which is uncertain in its nature, its extent and its issue.’22

  Poor Sir Herbert Taylor felt impelled to add a short note of his own apologizing for his terrible handwriting: the King had asked him, at eleven o’clock at night, to introduce an abstract of all the correspondence which had passed, connected with creating peers. He had to read the letters all over again, then make extracts and notes, then write this ‘formidable’ letter, and then copy it. ‘I was up the greater part of last night, having been at work all this day, and am quite knocked up.’23

  On 9 April Lord Grey rose to his feet in the House of Lords and, according to his devotee Sir Denis Le Marchant, opened the debate with ‘a very fine speech, admirably adapted to the occasion, being clear, dignified, and eminently prudent and persuasive’. Here was Lord Grey showing himself once again the awesome elder statesman; Macaulay, nearly forty
years younger, told Le Marchant: ‘taking into consideration the time of the night, or rather of day, the exhaustion of the subject, the length of the debate, and Lord Grey’s age, it was almost unparalleled.’ Understandably, Lady Grey was apprehensive in advance, as she told her daughter. She wrote again while Grey was still speaking. ‘Tuesday night – or rather Wednesday morning, one o’clock. Car [his family name] is not yet home, and I am in a state of extreme nervousness.’24

  The Prime Minister began by reminding his listeners of the Bill’s provenance: it came before their Lordships from the other House of Parliament ‘supported by a large majority of the House of Commons, and by an equally large and decisive majority of the people at large’. Moving on, Grey felt himself compelled to speak once again of ‘the great affection of the people for this measure’ and he emphasized that by the people, the term constantly invoked, he was not speaking of the mob, nor of ‘persons uninstructed and uninformed’. If the Duke of Wellington was going to persist in condemning all Reform, Grey was sure that few would support him in his desire ‘to place a ban and an interdict on the wishes of the people of England’. Towards the conclusion of his speech, declaring that all change was not necessarily revolution, he pointed to ‘the great affection of the people for this measure’. In modern terms, it would be called an appeal to democracy. But that was of course never a term Lord Grey would have used. He simply repeated the words ‘the people’, a concept which was carefully undefined – except by excluding the mob.