Franchise and Free Trade
Outlines Of British History Part II By F.W.Tickner , D.Lit.,B,Sc.
The cause of Parliamentary reform in Britain was fought by the Whigs under the leadership of Lord Grey, who had been connected with every reform movement since1785 , and Lord John Russell, and the Tory followers of Canning supported their efforts; but the old-fashioned Tories, whose leader was the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, were totally opposed to all measures of reform. His Ministry fell, however, in November 1830, and was succeeded by a combination of Whigs and Canningites under Lord Grey. In 1831 this Ministry introduced a Reform Bill, which was carried in the Commons by a majority of one vote. The Government dissolved Parliament on the question of reform, and was returned to office with a Whig majority. A second Reform Bill was passed by the Commons, but rejected by the Lords; and its rejection caused a great deal of excitement. There was rioting in many of the large towns, and much damage was done. At Nottingham the Castle, the residence of the Duke of Newcastle, was burned down; at Bristol also, the damage was very serious.
Meanwhile, a third Reform Bill was introduced in December 1831, and passed through the Commons with a large majority.
But the majority of the Lords were still opposed to the Bill, and there were hints that it would be rejected. The
supporters of the Bill threatened to .abstain from the payment of all taxes, and there was fear of revolution.
Lord Grey asked the King, William IV, to promise to create enough new peers to get a majority in the Lords; but
the king refused and the Ministry resigned office. Wellington, however, was unable to form a Ministry, for feeling
in the country was strongly in favour of reform, and the king was forced to recall Lord Grey and to promise to
create the necessary peers. The threat of the new peers, however, was sufficient. In June 1832, when the Bill came
before the Lords again, Wellington and his supporters abstained from voting and the Bill was passed.
It was by no means a revolutionary measure of reform. Fifty-six "rotten" and "pocket" boroughs were completely disfranchised; thirty boroughs lost one
member each. Twenty-two large towns, such as Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds, were given two members; twentyone
others were given one member each. The ninety-four county members were increased to one hundred and fifty-nine.
The conditions governing the right to vote were also changed. In the towns all householders who paid £10
a year in rent were given a vote; in the counties all holders of the old forty shilling franchise were allowed
to keep their votes; in addition, all copy holders and long lease holders, and tenants paying a rent of £50
a year were made voters also.
This was a very modest measure of reform indeed, but it was, nevertheless, a very important one, for it marked
the end of the control of national affairs by the aristocracy and landed gentry. Power now passed into the hands
of the middle classes, whose numbers had been very largely increased by the Industrial Revolution. But the Radicals,
who had looked forward to this step as only a beginning, were disappointed, for the Whigs who had carried the reform
were quite content to rest on their oars for a time, and many years went by before a second Reform Bill made further
extensions of the franchise.
It was sufficient, however, that a change had been made, and made so peaceably too; and it is interesting to see
what work was done by the first Reformed Parliament, which followed the passing of the Bill. One of its first acts
was to emancipate the slaves in the colonies, and to compensate their owners to the tune of £20,000,000 It
passed a Factory Act, improving the conditions of labour of women and children in the factories; it voted a small
sum of money to help voluntary societies, which were doing something to provide schools and elementary education
for the children of the poor. All this was in 1833, and in the next year a Poor Law Amendment Act changed the whole
system of poor relief which had grown up by alterations in Elizabeth's Poor Law Act of The most important of these
alterations had been the Act of Settlement of 1662, of which we have already spoken; permission for parishes to
join together in Unions and build larger workhouses, 1723; and an Act of Parliament of 1783 which permitted the
Guardians of the Poor and Justices of the Peace in the union areas to let the able-bodied poor take what work they
could get in the parish, and then add to their wages enough poor relief to enable them to live.
In 1795, as a result of this permission, the Justices of Berkshire, meeting at Speenhamland, were faced by the
difficulty of the increasing cost of food as a result of the war, and the inability of the wages of the agricultural
labourer to keep pace with this increase in the cost of living, and they decided to make a scale of relief to bring
wages up to the amount necessary for subsistence. This "dole" was made to depend upon the number of persons
in a family and upon the price of bread - that is, it was increased if the price of bread rose. When bread was
one shilling a gallon, a single man had three shillings and sixpence, and a married couple four and sixpence, and
an extra one and sixpence was allowed for every child under seven. The framers of the scheme meant well, but its
results were quite disastrous. The farmers could now pay insufficient wages, for the poor-rate would and did make
up the deficiency; and there was a danger that the agricultural workers would all become paupers, and lose their
self-respect. Also the finding of the money for the poor-rate reduced some parts of the country to bankruptcy,
for in many areas the poor-rate rose to an alarming extent.
This was the system that was cleared away by the Reformed Parliament, after it had received the report of a Commission
that had been appointed to look into the matter. Under the new system that now replaced it, out-door relief was
done away with, except for the old and feeble. If an able-bodied person required help, he had to enter the workhouse.
Also the relief that was given was always to be such as to make anyone receiving it prefer to work for wages, if
he could get work. This measure was very successful, but it met with a great deal of opposition, especially in
the north of England, and it caused the Government to become unpopular in many areas.
Nor was the Government very popular in other ways, though it had been elected by a majority of 486 to 172; and
in 1834 it broke down upon a question relating to Ireland, and was replaced by a new Whig Ministry, under Lord
Melbourne, who had been in his earlier days a Canningite Tory. He lost office, however, almost at once, and a Tory
Government came into power, under Sir Robert Peel, who tried to reform the Tory party as a Conservative party.
When a general election took place in 1835, Peel was defeated and Melbourne came back to power. His Government continued the work of reform by a Municipal Reform Act,
1835, which gave all men paying the poor-rate and borough rate a vote in the election of the government of the
borough, and instituted new Town Councils to carry on that government. It was more than time that such measures
were passed; the government of the towns had been practically unchanged since the Middle Ages, and had fallen into
the hands of a few persons in each town who were ruling corruptly in their own interests.
One other matter that had engaged the attention of successive Governments since 1815 was the question of Free Trade.
From the fifteenth century onward taxes had been placed upon almost all articles of import and export in order
to protect British manufacturers and farmers from foreign competition. We have already spoken of the tax on imported
corn; this was only one of a thousand taxes of a similar kind, which were placed upon almost all imported manufactured
goods and raw material. But now manufacturers were very doubtful whether these taxes did help the development of
trade; and many of them came to the conclusion that they were really very serious hindrances, and no help at all.
William Pitt was in favour of the removal of these trading restrictions, but the war with Napoleon stopped all
movements in the direction of freedom of trade.
After the war the manufacturers and shippers began to work for the removal of the duties; but the farmers and landowners
were very anxious to see their particular Corn Laws retained. In 1820 the merchants of London petitioned Parliament
to remove the taxes; and in 1823, Mr. Huskisson, the President of the Board of Trade, began to reduce the duties
on many imported raw materials and manufactured articles. He also took away the worst features of the Navigation
Acts, and started free trade between Ireland and Great Britain. The results of his action proved very good for
trade; but for a time no further reductions were made, because everybody was interested, for the moment, in the
fight for the first Reform Bill.
After 1832, however, the Free Trade struggle was renewed; and in 1842 and 1845 Sir Robert Peel, who was then Prime
Minister, took off many duties altogether, and reduced the others very considerably. But the one set of duties
which still remained untouched was the set connected with food supplies, for the farming interest was strong enough
to resist all attempts to interfere with these. Now, however, the manufacturers of Lancashire had also become a
very strong section of the community, and they were very much interested in cheap food, because cheap food meant
better workers and lower wages than could otherwise be the case. There was, therefore, a great demand throughout
the country for the repeal of the Corn Laws, and an Anti-Corn Law League was formed in London, 1836, and in Manchester,
1838. Two Lancashire manufacturers, Richard Cobden and John Bright, came forward as leaders of the movement for
repeal, and their strenuous work and the work of many others who helped them convinced many people of the need
for repeal.
But Sir
Robert Peel himself was as yet unconvinced,
when in 1845 there was a wet autumn and a consequent bad harvest. lt was followed by a sharp rise in the price
of bread, and there was much distress in the country. Worse still, the potato crop failed in Ireland, and famine
was inevitable there unless measures were taken to prevent it. Peel saw that repeal was inevitable, and brought
in a Bill for the purpose. Some of his Conservative followers objected strongly, but with the help of the Whigs
or Liberals, as they were now beginning to be called, the Corn Laws were abolished. They were the last stronghold
of those who supported protection, and in a few years Britain had become in all respects a free trade country.
Duties were no longer imposed to help trade or agriculture; what ever duties were placed upon imports and exports
were imposed for revenue purposes; that is, to find the money necessary to carry on the government of the country.
