Melbourne shared the general disapproval of Trades Unions. How could he do otherwise considering his fear of disorder and his belief in laissez-faire? So far from benefiting the oppressed poor, he thought they would only make their lot worse. Trades Unions, he told a manufacturer in 1833, were “inconsistent, impossible and contrary to the law of nature.” From the time he took office he had been sufficiently worried about them to appoint a commission under Nassau Senior, the Professor of Economics at Oxford, to investigate their activities. However, his anxieties were not strong enough to modify his natural bias towards liberty and inertia. And, when the commission came out with a report recommending drastic legislation to put the Trades Unions down, Melbourne opposed it. Apart from the fact that he was sure the House of Commons would never be persuaded to pass such a measure, he himself thought it unnecessary. He had already remarked to an anxious correspondent on the subject, “I recommend above all not being above measure disturbed by new evils and dangers, to which human society is always liable.” Trying to tamper with the inevitable working of economic law was so futile, he said, that it could not be long before even the stupidest working man would realize it; and then the Trades Union movement would collapse of itself.
When, however, it showed signs of spreading to rural England Melbourne’s mood began to change. His fear of revolution grew stronger, and his dislike of doing anything weakened. Men of his age could never forget that the French Revolution had started in the country. Though he was still against new legislation he began to wonder if everything possible was being done within the existing law to put the Unions down; and he consulted the crown lawyers on the subject. After foraging about, they discovered an Act passed at the time of the Nore Mutiny in 1799, but since pretty well forgotten, making it an offence to administer secret oaths. Trades Union Societies often took secret oaths: here was a new weapon against them. Melbourne instructed magistrates to take every opportunity to use it. “Perhaps you will be able to make an example by such means,” he wrote.
The result of his words was an episode which was to become famous in history. In March, 1834, it was discovered that a new Trades Union at Tolpuddle in Dorset had administered secret oaths, as part of its ceremony of admission. Accordingly several of its members were arrested. A Commission was sent down to try them, and they were condemned to the maximum penalty of seven years transportation. Before confirming the sentence, Melbourne asked the local magistrates what sort of men the prisoners were. They told him that they were thoroughly bad characters. Relieved that he could carry out his policy of making an example without doing any injustice to individuals, Melbourne confirmed the sentence. Meanwhile he told the local authorities not to penalise the prisoners’ families in any way; nor, he said, should employers take advantage of the sentence to dismiss workmen just because they belong to a Trades Union. Trades Unions remained perfectly legal if they did not administer secret oaths. Finally he warned farmers against trying to reduce wages below their just economic level.
In spite of these conciliatory gestures, however, the trial of the Dorset labourers produced a storm. Seven years transportation did seem a very severe punishment for breaking a law of which many people had forgotten the very existence. The whole working-class movement broke out in furious protest; it was supported by the radical intelligentsia and by an important section of the Press. Melbourne paid no attention. He would have been disinclined to do so, even if he had felt himself in the wrong; for he thought it in the last degree contemptible to yield to popular clamour. In fact he had never felt more in the right. It was the plain duty of any Government to discourage Trades Unions so far as it could do so legally. From all over the country he got letters telling him that agricultural workers were waiting to see what penalty was inflicted in Dorset before deciding whether or not to join a Union. Clearly it was a crucial moment. Now or never was the time to make an example. Melbourne’s firmness did not at first stop the protests. A petition demanding pardon for the labourers was signed by a quarter of a million people. On 21st April a crowd, thirty thousand strong, headed by a clergyman in full canonicals, marched down with it to Whitehall. Melbourne, smiling and unperturbed, watched them from the window of the Home Office. When the leaders asked leave to present the petition to him he refused to see them. If it were brought by a reasonable number of persons, he said, he would be willing to read it; but he was going to do nothing that might give the impression that he was overawed by a display of force. The procession dispersed and soon the violence of the agitation began to die down. More important, the Trades Union Movement received a check from which it took years to recover. Melbourne’s policy had proved triumphantly right. The existing law as it manifested itself in the trial of the Dorset labourers, turned out to be strong enough to make any further legislation unnecessary. Once again, as after the disturbances of 1830, the large majority of educated Englishmen united to congratulate the Home Secretary on the quiet effectiveness with which he had maintained the cause of order.
Once again posterity has not shared that satisfaction. As in 1830, one finds oneself brought up with a jarring shock against the contradictions of the period, the discrepancy between the civilized humanity of upper class private life, and the blood and iron harshness which was accepted as a necessary feature of the criminal law. What makes the story of the Dorset labourers especially distressing is that the victims themselves seem to have been undeserving of their fate. Prejudice or panic had led the local authorities to mislead Melbourne about their characters. So far from being criminals and revolutionaries, they were sober, respectable men enough, driven into lawless courses largely by ignorance and hunger and by the struggle to bring up their families on wages lately reduced to seven shillings a week. Melbourne was not to blame for not realizing their true characters. He was not there, and he had to trust to the reports of his subordinates. Moreover, all along he had done his best to follow his usual course of combining firmness with moderation. But it is true that the affair, like so many of his dealings with working class agitation, does curiously reveal his limitations. For all his superior breadth of vision, he did not see further into the lives of the poor than the average intelligent man of his circle, especially when his fear of revolution was aroused. The same fear united with his dislike of unnecessary trouble to move him from his characteristic attitude of impartial detachment. His letters show him a little over-ready impatiently to brush aside anything that might be urged on the labourers’ behalf. Further, his moral scepticism led him to adopt too exclusively a deterrent view of punishment. For some obscure reason retributive punishment is often looked upon as likely to be crueller than deterrent. The reverse is the truth. According to the retributive theory a man can only be punished as much as he deserves; which, unless he is accused of some unusually heinous crime, does not mean anything unbearably severe. The exponent of deterrent punishment, on the other hand, regards himself as justified in going to any lengths required to deter effectively: and in fact the most notorious persecutors ancient and modern have sought to justify their actions on deterrent grounds. Poor Melbourne was far from being a persecutor. All the same he did look on himself as the guardian of order rather than the instrument of ideal justice; and was too dominated by the determination to get the law obeyed at all costs to consider sufficiently whether he was in fact being morally just to the labourers.
However, it was not a matter about which he felt strongly, as subsequent events showed. For the story of the Dorset labourers did not end with the procession of April, 1834. As time passed and tempers cooled, more and more people began to doubt the justice of the sentence. A year later John Russell wrote to Melbourne asking him to pardon the labourers. Melbourne’s first impulse was to resist. He was sure the labourers deserved all they got, he said. Anyway, the matter was settled; why, oh why bring it up again? John Russell, however, his conscientiously held principles now vigorously in operation, returned to the attack. Melbourne began to think that resistance would involv
e more trouble than concession. Immediately he gave in. “I myself do not care what is done about the labourers,” he remarked with cheerful impatience.
As a matter of fact the affair occupied his mind very little. To him it was at worst a disagreeable episode in the ordinary routine of his Home Office work. Besides he had other and to him more important things to think about. The Reform Government tottering for so long, was now on the point of final collapse. It was the Irish question that finished it. Ever since 1830 it had threatened to do so. There had been a hope that Catholic Emancipation would pacify the Irish. And it is just possible that it might have done so, had it been followed by a policy of bold conciliation designed to satisfy the national and religious aspirations of the Irish people. But the Government were too frightened and too prejudiced to risk such a policy. Protestants, not Catholics, were still given the important jobs in Ireland; and they used them to maintain their ascendancy. The Irish, therefore, as discontented as ever, entered under the guidance of O’Connell on a fresh campaign; this time for the repeal of the Act of Union. They were able to do this the more effectively because they were now represented in the English Parliament; and were thus in a position to make difficulties for any Government there, if they were not given their way.
Meanwhile in Ireland O’Connell encouraged a new outbreak of violence and disorder. The Irish began burning, pillaging and rioting as merrily as in the days before Emancipation. Clearly any English Government must make up its mind to do something about Ireland. Either it must subdue her by force or try to win her over by concession. Here was yet another issue for the ministers to quarrel about. Quarrel they did—and far more bitterly than over home affairs! For Ireland raised, as home affairs did not, questions of religion and patriotism; two topics about which mankind has always been peculiarly unreasonable. Stanley and Grey both thought that the dignity of England would be fatally outraged if concessions were made, before law and order was restored. To Althorp and Durham, on the other hand, coercion unaccompanied by concession seemed an act of indefensible tyranny. The question of appropriating Church endowments raised another issue of principle. Since the Irish were overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, John Russell considered that they ought not to be made to pay high taxes, for keeping up the Protestant Church: some of the money should surely be appropriated for secular purposes. Stanley, an ardent Protestant, looked on such a proposal as a direct attack on the cause of true religion. With ministers thus divided and angry it was clear that the Irish question was a perpetual danger to the stability of the Government. At first Grey tried to tide things over by never mentioning it himself, and changing the subject if anybody else did. His efforts were vain. Inevitably Ireland cropped up. Whenever this happened, someone felt it their duty to make a conscientious stand on one side or the other. The result was a major political crisis. It was over Ireland that first Durham and then Stanley had in turn resigned.
Now in the spring of 1834, a new crisis loomed up. Stanley’s Coercion Act had run its course. Since Ireland was still unsettled, Wellesley the Lord Lieutenant wrote to Grey pressing that it should be re-enacted in toto, including some clauses forbidding public meetings, which were especially hated by the Irish. At this Brougham made one of his fatal interventions. The Arch-Fiend had begun to notice that he was unpopular. He fancied he might win some of the progressive Whigs to him, by setting up as a friend of Irish freedom. He therefore embarked on a secret intrigue with the new Irish Secretary Littleton, by which Wellesley was persuaded to write a second letter to Grey asking that the obnoxious clauses should be, after all, omitted from the Coercion Act. Brougham also arranged that O’Connell should be told of his services to the Irish in this matter; and by concocting some false version of the negotiations, tricked Althorp into giving his approval of his part in them. He had reckoned without Grey, who flatly refused to have the clauses touched. The Act was therefore introduced unchanged into the House of Commons. O’Connell rose and publicly accused Brougham, Littleton and Althorp of cheating him. The upright Althorp sat listening to this attack on his honour. “The pig is killed,” he said to John Russell; and he resigned. Overjoyed at last to find a decent excuse for retiring to Howick, Grey said he could not carry on the Government without him, and resigned too.
Though Irish affairs in those days were under the Home Office, Melbourne had taken little part in all these manoeuvres. His mind was even more divided over Ireland than over most things. His belief in tolerance had united with his own experience as Chief Secretary to make him for once genuinely in favour of a reform policy. But the results of Catholic Emancipation, though they had not exactly reversed his views, had cooled his enthusiasm. In spite of the fact that the Irish had been given what they asked for, there did not seem much prospect of tranquillity and stability in Ireland. “What all the wise promised has not happened,” he said, “and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.” He found this thought more depressing than surprising. Only too well did it harmonize with his general sense of the baffling irony of human affairs. Perhaps giving men what they wanted was the best way to make them discontented! If the men were Irishmen, he was pretty sure this was so. In dispassionate mood he meditated on the root causes of Irish discontent. “The dependencies and provinces of great monarchies,” he concluded, “have always been apt to grow too great and too strong to be governed by the mother state; and that, perhaps, exactly in proportion to the degree in which their true interest has been consulted and their prosperity has been allowed to develop itself.” This reflection reveals a far more searching vision into the nature of the forces governing political affairs than is vouchsafed to many professional statesmen. But it was a vision that left Melbourne—so far as Ireland was concerned—passive and fatalistic.
Over the immediate crisis preceding the collapse of the Government, Melbourne with occasional hesitations, backed Grey. After the troubles of the Reform Bill years, he was all against seditious persons being allowed to hold public meetings. Besides, he was very much annoyed with Brougham and Wellesley for trying to manage Irish affairs behind the Home Secretary’s back. He was not, however, so upset by the affair to be moved from his customary detachment. On the day the Government fell, an observer noticed that Lord Melbourne, going off to join a party of ladies on the river, wore an air of philosophical calm.
All the same, it turned out to be one of the most important days of his life. The departure of Grey did not mean the departure of the Whigs. For the Tories, though gaining in power, were not yet strong enough in the country to take on the Government. Much against his will, therefore, William IV had to find another Whig Prime Minister. Clearly, it had to be someone sufficiently on good terms with the differing sections of the party to have some hope of holding it together. This excluded Brougham and John Russell. Althorp would have done, or a great Whig magnate like Lord Lansdowne. But Lansdowne refused, and the King distrusted Althorp as too radical for his taste. Melbourne, on the other hand, was known to be on the right of the party: and the King, though he did not like him much, liked him better than he did his rivals. Accordingly on the following morning, when the Cabinet met to take formal leave of one another, Grey handed Melbourne a sealed letter. In it was a letter from the King asking him to come and see him to discuss the formation of a government under his leadership. True to form in this, the supreme decision of his career, Melbourne hesitated. He thought himself unlikely to enjoy being Prime Minister. It meant more work and responsibility and committees and deputations; it meant humouring the King and keeping Brougham in order; it meant less time than ever to read the early Christian Fathers and flirt with Mrs. Norton. And to what end? Melbourne had long ago given up the idea that governments could do much good. On the other hand he did not like to let down his friends and his party by refusing. Wavering and doubtful, he spoke his thoughts aloud to Tom Young. “I think it’s a damned bore,” he said. “I am in many minds as to what to do.” “Why, damn it all,” answered Young, “such a position
was never held by any Greek or Roman: and if it only lasts three months, it will be worth while to have been Prime Minister of England.” There are moments when a hair will turn the balance; “By God, that’s true,” exclaimed Melbourne. “I’ll go!”8
Thus casually, unexpectedly, through a transient combination of circumstances—a chance turn of the political wheel, a whim of William IV, an unconsidered remark of Tom Young, and without effort or inclination on his part—Melbourne at the age of fifty-five became ruler of England. The year before he had copied, into his commonplace book, a couplet of Voltaire’s.
“Mais Henri s’avançait à sa grandeur suprême
Par des chemins cachés, inconnus à lui-même!”
“The case with every great man,” Melbourne commented, “much of what is attributed to design is accident; the unknown cause leading to the unknown end.” As he wrote the words, was he peering into the dark mirror of the future to discern his own destiny?
* * *
8 We have this story second-hand from Greville. Hayward, who claimed to know Melbourne well, does not believe it. But it is in character.
Chapter Thirteen
Prime Minister
(1)
“Everybody wonders what Melbourne will do. He is certainly a queer fellow to be Prime Minister.” So wrote Greville in June, 1834: so thought a lot of people. In spite of his success as Home Secretary, Melbourne’s reputation, outside the circle of his immediate colleagues, was not of the sort that befits a Prime Minister. Queen Adelaide found his views on religion lax and his conversation disagreeably paradoxical. Many of her subjects agreed with her. To their solemn sensitive nineteenth century nostrils there was a disquieting whiff of the Regency about him. However, they could comfort themselves with the thought that his Government could not possibly last for long.
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