[10] Justice has never yet been done to the founder of the Lancasterian system of education. Joseph Lancaster was a remarkable man who aroused the conscience of the nation, and even the dull intelligence of George III., to the imperative need of popular education.
[11] "The Melbourne Government: its Acts and Persons," by the Right Hon.
W. E. Gladstone, M.P. _The Nineteenth Century_, January 1890, p. 50.
[12] "The Corn Law of 1815 was a copy of the Corn Law of 1670--so little had economic science grown in England during all those years. The Corn Law of 1670 imposed a duty on the importation of foreign grain which amounted almost literally to a prohibition."--_Sir Robert Peel_, by Justin McCarthy, M.P., chapter xii. p. 136.
[13] _The Croker Papers_, edited by Louis Jennings, vol. iii. p. 35.
[14] _Life of the Prince Consort_, by Sir Theodore Martin, vol. i. p.
317.
CHAPTER VII
FACTION AND FAMINE
1846-1847
Peel and Free Trade--Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck lead the attack--Russell to the rescue--Fall of Peel--Lord John summoned to power--Lord John"s position in the Commons and in the country--The Condition of Ireland question--Famine and its deadly work--The Russell Government and measures of relief--Crime and coercion--The Whigs and Education--Factory Bill--The case of Dr. Hampden.
LORD STANLEY"S place in the "organised hypocrisy," as the Protectionists termed the last Ministry of Sir Robert Peel, was taken by Mr. Gladstone.
Sir Robert Peel resumed office in the closing days of December, and all the members of his old Cabinet, on the principle of bowing to the inevitable, returned with him, except the Duke of Buccleuch and Lord Stanley, who resolutely declined to have part or lot in the new departure which the Premier now felt called upon to make. The Duke of Wellington, though hostile to Free Trade, determined to stand by Peel; but he did not disguise the fact that his only reason for remaining in office was for the sake of the Queen. He declared that he acted as the "retained servant of the monarchy," for he did not wish her Majesty to be placed under the necessity of taking members of the Anti-Corn-Law League, or, as he put it, "Cobden & Co.," for her responsible advisers.
[Sidenote: THE QUEEN"S SPEECH]
The opening days of 1846 were full of political excitement, and were filled with all kinds of rumours. Wellington, on January 6, wrote: "I don"t despair of the Corn Laws," and confessed that he did not know what were the intentions of Sir Robert Peel concerning them.[15] Peel kept his own counsel, though the conviction grew that he had persuaded himself that in boldness lay the chance as well as the duty of the hour.
Peel, like Russell, was converted to Free Trade by the logic of events, and he determined at all hazards to avow the new faith that was in him.
Parliament was opened by the Queen in person on January 22, and the Speech from the Throne laid stress on the privation and suffering in Ireland, and shadowed forth the repeal of prohibitive and the relaxation of protective duties. The debate on the Address was rendered memorable by Peel"s explanations of the circ.u.mstances under which the recent crisis had arisen. He made a long speech, and the tone of it, according to Lord Malmesbury, was half threatening and half apologetic. It was a manly, straightforward statement of the case, and Sir Robert made it plain that he had accepted the views of the Manchester school on the Corn Laws, and was prepared to act without further hesitation on his convictions. One significant admission was added. He stated before he sat down that it was "no easy task to insure the harmonious and united action of an ancient monarchy, a proud aristocracy, and a reformed House of Commons."
New interests were, in fact, beginning to find a voice in Parliament, and that meant the beginning of the principle of readjustment which is yet in progress. A few days later the Prime Minister explained his financial plans for the year, and in the course of them he proposed the gradual repeal of the Corn Laws. Free trade in corn was, in fact, to take final effect after an interval of three years. Meanwhile the sliding scale was to be abandoned in favour of a fixed duty of ten shillings the quarter on corn, and other concessions for the relief not only of agriculture but of manufactures and commerce were announced. The principle of Free Trade was, in fact, applied not in one but in many directions, and from that hour its legislative triumph was a.s.sured. In the course of the protracted debate which followed, Disraeli, with all the virulence of a disappointed place-hunter, attacked Sir Robert Peel with bitter personalities and barbed sarcasm. On this occasion, throwing decency and good taste to the winds, and, to borrow a phrase of his own, "intoxicated with the exuberance of his own verbosity," and with no lack of tawdry rhetoric and melodramatic emphasis, he did his best to cover with ridicule and to reduce to confusion one of the most chivalrous and lofty-minded statesmen of the Queen"s reign.
[Sidenote: OUTCAST PROTECTIONISTS]
Disraeli"s audacity in attack did much to revive the drooping courage of the Protectionist party, the leadership of which fell for the moment into the hands of Lord George Bentinck, a n.o.bleman more renowned at Newmarket than at Westminster. Once saddled with authority, Lord George developed some capacity for politics; but his claims as a statesman were never serious, though Disraeli, in the political biography which he published shortly after his friend"s sudden death, gives him credit for qualities of mind of which the nation at large saw little evidence.
After long and tedious discussion, extending over some twenty nights, the Free Trade Bill was carried through the Commons by a majority of ninety-eight votes, and in the Lords it pa.s.sed the second reading by forty-seven votes. Croker--true to the dismal suggestion of his name--promptly took up his parable against Sir Robert. He declared that the repeal of the Corn Laws meant a schism in the great landed interest and broad acres, in his view, were the only solid foundation on which the government of the nation could possibly be based. He asked, how was it possible to resist the attack on the Irish Church and the Irish Union after the surrender of the Corn Laws? He wanted to know how primogeniture, the Bishops, the House of Lords, and the Crown itself were to be maintained, now that the leader of the Conservative party had truckled to the League. Sir Robert Peel, he added, had imperilled these inst.i.tutions of the country more than Cobbett or O"Connell; he had broken up the old interests, divided the great families, and thrown personal hostility into the social life of half the counties of England--and all to propitiate Richard Cobden. Such was the bitter cry of the outcast Protectionist, and similar vapourings arose in cliques and clubs all over the land. The abolition of the Corn Laws was the last measure of Sir Robert Peel"s political life, and he owed the victory, which was won amid the murmurs and threats of his own followers, to the support which his political antagonists gave him, under the leadership of Lord John Russell, who recognised both the wisdom and the expediency of Sir Robert"s course.
Meanwhile the dark winter of discontent which privation had unhappily brought about in Ireland had been marked by many crimes of violence, and at length the Government deemed it imperative to ask Parliament to grant them additional powers for the suppression of outrage. The measure met with the opposition alike of Lord John Russell and Daniel O"Connell.
The Government moved the second reading of the Irish Coercion Bill, and the Protectionists, who knew very well not only the views of Daniel O"Connell, but of Smith O"Brien, saw their opportunity and promptly took it. Lord George Bentinck had supported the Coercion Bill on its introduction in the spring, and had done so in the most unmistakable terms. He was not the man, however, to forego the mean luxury of revenge, and neither he nor Disraeli could forgive what they regarded as Sir Robert"s great betrayal of the landed interest. He now had the audacity to a.s.sert that Peel had lost the confidence of every honest man both within and without the House of Commons, and in spite of his a.s.surances of support he ranged himself for the moment with Russell and O"Connell to crush the Administration. The division took place on June 25, and in a House of 571 members the Ministry was defeated by a majority of 73. The defeat of the Government was so crushing that Whigs and Protectionists alike, on the announcement of the figures, were too much taken aback to cheer. "Anything," said Sir Robert, "is preferable to maintaining ourselves in office without a full measure of the confidence of this House."
[Sidenote: THE RUSSELL CABINET]
Lord John had triumphed with the help of the Irish, whom Peel had alienated; but the great Minister"s downfall had in part been accomplished by the treachery of those who abandoned him with clamour and evil-speaking in the hour of need. Defeat was followed within a week by resignation, and on July 4 Peel, writing from the leisured seclusion of Drayton Manor, "in the loveliest weather," was magnanimous enough to say, "I have every disposition to forgive my enemies for having conferred on me the blessing of the loss of power." Lord John was summoned to Windsor, and kissed hands on July 6. He became Prime Minister when the condition of affairs was gloomy and menacing, and the following pa.s.sage from his wife"s journal, written on July 14, conjures up in two or three words a vivid picture of the difficulties of the hour: "John has much to distress him in the state of the country. G.o.d grant him success in his labours to amend it! Famine, fever, trade failing, and discontent growing are evils which it requires all his resolution, sense of duty, and love for the public to face." Lord Palmerston was, of course, inevitable as Foreign Secretary in the new Administration; Sir Charles Wood became Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Sir George Grey, Home Secretary. Earl Grey"s scruples were at length satisfied, and he became Secretary to the Colonies; whilst Lord Clarendon took office as President of the Board of Trade, and Lord Lansdowne became President of the Council. Among the lesser lights of the Ministry were Sir J. C. Hobhouse, Mr. Milner Gibson, Mr. Fox Maule, Lord Morpeth, and Mr. (afterwards Lord) Macaulay. Sir James Graham was offered the Governor-Generalship of India, but he had aspirations at Westminster, which, however, were never fulfilled, and declined the offer. The Tory party was demoralised and split up into cliques by suspicion and indignation. Stanley was in the House of Lords by this time, Peel was in disgrace, and Lord George Bentinck was already beginning to cut a somewhat ridiculous figure, whilst n.o.body as yet was quite prepared to take Disraeli seriously. "We are left masters of the field," wrote Palmerston, with a touch of characteristic humour, "not only on account of our own merits, which, though we say it ourselves, are great, but by virtue of the absence of any efficient compet.i.tors."
The new Ministry began well. Lord John"s address to his const.i.tuents in the City made an excellent impression, and was worthy of the man and the occasion. "You may be a.s.sured that I shall not desert in office the principles to which I adhered when they were less favourably received. I cannot indeed claim the merit either of having carried measures of Free Trade as a Minister, or of having so prepared the public mind by any exertions of mine as to convert what would have been an impracticable attempt into a certain victory. To others belong those distinctions. But I have endeavoured to do my part in this great work according to my means and convictions, first by proposing a temperate relaxation of the Corn Laws, and afterwards, when that measure has been repeatedly rejected, by declaring in favour of total repeal, and using every influence I could exert to prevent a renewal of the struggle for an object not worth the cost of conflict. The Government of this country ought to behold with an impartial eye the various portions of the community engaged in agriculture, in manufactures, and in commerce. The feeling that any of them is treated with injustice provokes ill-will, disturbs legislation, and diverts attention from many useful and necessary reforms. Great social improvements are required: public education is manifestly imperfect; the treatment of criminals is a problem yet undecided; the sanitary condition of our towns and villages has been grossly neglected. Our recent discussions have laid bare the misery, the discontent, and outrages of Ireland; they are too clearly authenticated to be denied, too extensive to be treated by any but the most comprehensive means."
[Sidenote: EVER A FIGHTER]
Lord John had been thirty-three years in the House of Commons when he became for the first time Prime Minister. The distinction of rank and of an historic name gave him in 1813, when government by great families was still more than a phrase, a splendid start. The love of liberty which he inherited as a tradition grew strong within him, partly through his residence in Edinburgh under Dugald Stewart, partly through the generous and stimulating a.s.sociations of Holland House, but still more, perhaps, because of the tyranny of which he was an eye-witness during his travels as a youth in Italy and Spain at a period when Europe lay under the heel of Napoleon. Lord John was ever a fighter, and the political conflicts of his early manhood against the triple alliance of injustice, bigotry, and selfish apathy in the presence of palpable social abuses lent ardour to his convictions, tenacity to his aims, and boldness to his att.i.tude in public life. Although an old Parliamentary hand, he was in actual years only fifty-four when he came to supreme office in the service of the State, but he had already succeeded in placing great measures on the Statute Book, and he had also won recognition on both sides of the House as a leader of fearless courage, open mind, and great fertility of resource alike in attack and in defence. Peel, his most formidable rival on the floor of the Commons, hinted that Lord John Russell was small in small things, but, he added significantly that, when the issues grew great, he was great also.
Everyone who looks at Lord John"s career in its length and breadth must admit the justice of such a criticism. On one occasion he himself said, in speaking of the first Lord Halifax, that the favourite of Charles II.
had "too keen a perception of errors and faults to act well with others," and the remark might have been applied to himself. There were times when Lord John, by acting hastily on the impulse of the moment, landed his colleagues in serious and unlooked for difficulties, and sometimes it happened that in his anxiety to clear his own soul by taking an independent course, he compromised to a serious extent the position of others.
Lord Melbourne"s cynical remark, to the effect that n.o.body did anything very foolish except from some strong principle, carries with it a tribute to motive as well as a censure on action, and it is certain that the promptings to which Lord John yielded in the questionable phases of his public career were not due to the adroit and calculating temper of self-interest. His weaknesses were indeed, after all, trivial in comparison to his strength. He rose to the great occasion and was inspired by it. All that was formal and hesitating in manner and speech disappeared, and under the combined influence of the sense of responsibility and the excitement of the hour "languid Johnny," to borrow Bulwer Lytton"s phrase, "soared to glorious John." Palmerston, like Melbourne, was all things to all men. His easy nonchalance, sunny temper, and perfect familiarity with the ways of the world and the weaknesses of average humanity, gave him an advantage which Lord John, with his nervous temperament, indifferent health, fastidious tastes, shy and rather distant bearing, and uncompromising convictions, never possessed. Russell"s ethical fervour and practical energetic bent of mind divided him sharply from politicians who lived from hand to mouth, and were never consumed by a zeal for reform in one direction or another; and these qualities sometimes threw him into a position of singular isolation. The wiles and artifices by which less proud and less conscientious men win power, and the opportune compliments and unwatched concessions by which too often they retain it, lay amongst the things to which he refused to stoop.
[Sidenote: HIS PRACTICAL SAGACITY]
Men might think Lord John taciturn, angular, abrupt, tenacious, and dogmatic, but it was impossible not to recognise his honesty, public spirit, pluck in the presence of difficulty, and high interpretation of the claims of public duty which marked his strenuous and indomitable career. His qualifications for the post of Prime Minister were not open to challenge. He was deeply versed in const.i.tutional problems, and had received a long and varied training in the handling of great affairs. He possessed to an enviable degree the art of lucid exposition, and could render intricate proposals luminous to the public mind. He was a shrewd Parliamentary tactician, as well as a statesman who had worthily gained the confidence of the nation. He was ready in debate, swift to see and to seize the opportunity of the hour. He was full of practical sagacity, and his personal character lent weight to his position in the country.
In the more militant stages of his career, and especially when he was fighting the battles of Parliamentary reform and religious liberty, he felt the full brunt of that "sullen resistance to innovation," as well as that "unalterable perseverance in the wisdom of prejudice," which Burke declared was characteristic of the English race. The natural conservatism of growing years, it must be frankly admitted, led eventually in Lord John"s case, as in that of the majority of mankind, to the slackening of interest in the new problems of a younger generation, but to the extreme verge of life he remained far too great a statesman and much too generous a man ever to lapse into the position of a mere _laudator temporis acti_. Lord John did not allow the few remaining weeks of a protracted and exhaustive session to elapse without a vigorous attempt to push the principle of Free Trade to its logical issues. He pa.s.sed a measure which rendered the repeal of the Corn Laws total and immediate, and he carried, with the support of Peel and in spite of the opposition of Bentinck and Disraeli, the abolition of protection to sugar grown in the British Colonies.
Ireland quickly proved itself to be a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence to the new Administration. Lord John"s appointment of Lord Bessborough--his old colleague, Duncannon, in the Committee on Reform in 1830--as viceroy was popular, for he was a resident Irish landlord, and a man who was genuinely concerned for the welfare of the people.
O"Connell trusted Lord Bessborough, and that, in the disturbed condition of the country, counted for much. The task of the new viceroy was hard, even with such support, and though Bessborough laboured manfully and with admirable tact to better the social condition of the people and to exorcise the spirit of discord, the forces arrayed against him proved resistless when famine came to their aid. As the summer slipped past, crime and outrage increased, and the prospect for the approaching winter grew not merely gloomy but menacing. Peel had been turned out of office because of his Irish Arms Bill, and Bessborough was no sooner installed in Dublin than he made urgent representations to the Cabinet in Downing Street as to the necessity of adopting similar repressive measures, in view of the prevailing lawlessness and the contempt for life and property which in the disaffected districts were only too common. In August the crisis was already so acute that the Government, yielding to the fears of its Irish advisers, stultified itself by proposing the renewal of the Arms Bill until the following spring. The step was ill advised, and provoked much hostile criticism. Lord John did not relish the measure, but Lord Bessborough declared that Ireland could not be governed for the moment without it, and as he also talked of throwing up his appointment, and was supported in this view of the situation by Mr. Labouchere (afterwards Lord Taunton), who at that time was Chief Secretary, the Prime Minister gave way and introduced in the House of Commons proposals which were out of keeping with his own antecedents, and which he personally disliked. In speaking of Sir Robert Peel"s Coercion Bill in his published "Recollections," Lord John makes no secret of his own att.i.tude towards the measure. "I objected to the Bill on Irish grounds. I then thought, and I still think, that it is wrong to arrest men and put them in prison on the ground that they _may_ be murderers and housebreakers. They may be, on the other hand, honest labourers going home from their work." On the contrary, he thought that every means ought to be promptly taken for discovering the perpetrators of crime and bringing them to justice, and he also believed in giving the authorities on the spot ample means of dealing with the reign of terror which agrarian outrages had established.
[Sidenote: THE IRONY OF THE SITUATION]
If O"Connell had been at Lord John"s side at that juncture, England might have sent a practical message of good-will to Ireland instead of falling back on the old policy of coercion. O"Connell had learnt to trust Russell--as far, at least, as it was possible for a leader of the Irish people to trust a Whig statesman--and Russell, on the other hand, was beginning to understand not merely O"Connell, but the forces which lay behind him, and which rendered him, quite apart from his own eloquence and gifts, powerful. Unfortunately, the Liberator was by this time broken in health, and the Young Ireland party were already in revolt against his authority, a circ.u.mstance which, in itself, filled the Premier with misgivings, and led him to give way, however reluctantly, to the demand of the viceroy for repressive measures. Lord John was, in fact, only too well aware that force was no remedy. He wished, as much as O"Connell, to root up the causes which produced crime. Young Ireland, however, seemed determined to kick over the traces at the very time when the Liberator was inducing the Whigs to look at the question in a practical manner. Lord John knew, to borrow his own expression, that the "armoury of penal legislation was full of the weapons of past battles, and yet the victory of order and peace had not been gained." The Liberal party set its face against coercion in any shape or form, and the Government withdrew a proposal which they ought never to have introduced. This course had scarcely been taken when a new and terrible complication of the social problem in Ireland arose.
[Sidenote: THE IRISH FAMINE]
Famine suddenly made its presence felt, and did so in a manner which threw the privation and scarcity of the previous winter altogether into the shade. The potato crop was a disastrous failure, and, as the summer waned, the distress of an impoverished and thriftless race grew acute.
The calamity was as crushing as it was rapid. "On July 27," are Father Mathew"s words, "I pa.s.sed from Cork to Dublin, and this doomed plant bloomed in all the luxuriance of an abundant harvest. Returning on August 3 I beheld with sorrow one wide waste of putrefying vegetation."
A million and a half of acres were at the moment under cultivation, and the blight only spared a quarter of them, whilst, to make matters worse, the oat crop, by an unhappy coincidence, proved to a startling extent insufficient. The financial loss in that disastrous harvest, in the reckoning of experts, amounted to between fifteen and sixteen millions sterling. Fever and dysentery made fatal inroads on the dwindling strength of the gaunt and famished peasantry, and in one district alone, out of a population of 62,000 inhabitants, no less than 5,000 persons died, directly or indirectly, of starvation in the course of three months. "All our thoughts," wrote O"Connell, "are engrossed with two topics--endeavouring to keep the people from outbreaks, and endeavouring to get food for them." In many instances the landlords seemed robbed of the characteristics of ordinary humanity, for the ruthless process of eviction was carried on with a high hand, and old men and children were left unsheltered as well as unfed.
Property had neglected its duties, but, as usual, did not neglect its rights, and in that terrible crisis it overrode the rights of humanity.
Many of the landowners, however, manfully did their best to stay the plague, but anything which they could accomplish seemed a mockery amid the widespread distress. Readers of Sir Gavan Duffy"s "Four Years of Irish History" will recall his vivid description of the manner in which some of the landowners, however, saw their cruel opportunity, and accordingly "closed on the people with ejectments, turned them on the road, and plucked down their roof-trees," and also that still more painful pa.s.sage which describes how women with dead children in their arms were seen begging for a coffin to bury them. Relief committees were, of course, started; the Friends, in particular, busied themselves in practical efforts to cope with the distress, and Mr. W. E. Forster, who went to Ireland to distribute relief, declared that his wonder was, as he pa.s.sed from village to village, not that the people died, but that so many contrived to live.
The Russell Government met the crisis with courage, though scarcely with adequate understanding. Ireland remembered with bitterness their Arms Bill and their repressive measures. Public feeling ran high over some of their proposals, for the people resented Lord John"s modification of Sir Robert Peel"s plan by which the cost of public works was to be defrayed by the State and district in which employment was given. Lord John determined that the cost should be met in the first instance by Government loans, which were to be repaid with an almost nominal interest by the people of the district. This was interpreted to mean that Ireland was to bear her own burdens, and in her impoverished state was to be saddled with the financial responsibilities inseparable from so pitiable a collapse of prosperity. Bread riots and agrarian disturbances grew common, and the Government met them with rather more than becoming sternness, instead of dealing promptly with the land-tenure system which lay at the root of so much of the misery. At the beginning of the session of 1847 it was stated that 10,000,000_l._ would be required to meet the exigencies of the situation. Lord George Bentinck proposed a grant of 16,000,000_l._ for the construction of Irish railways, but Lord John made the question one of personal confidence in himself, and threatened resignation if it pa.s.sed. His chief objection to the proposal was based on the fact that seventy-five per cent. of the money spent in railway construction would not reach the labouring cla.s.ses. Lord George Bentinck"s motion was rejected by a sweeping majority, though at a subsequent stage in the session the Government consented to advance a substantial sum to three Irish railways--a concession which exposed them to the usual taunts of inconsistency.
[Sidenote: MEASURES OF RELIEF]
Measures were also introduced for promoting emigration to the colonies, and for the suspension of certain clauses of the Navigation Laws which hindered the importation of foreign corn. At one time during the distress there were no less than six hundred thousand men employed on public works in Ireland, and the Government found it no easy task to organise this vast army of labour, or to prevent abuses. Lord Bessborough urged that the people should be employed in the improvement of private estates, but Lord John met this proposal with disapproval, though he at length agreed that the drainage of private land should come within the scope of public works. It was further determined to lend money in aid of the improvement of private property, the operation of the Irish Poor Law was also extended, and in other directions energetic measures were taken for the relief of the prevailing dest.i.tution. Lord John was a keen observer both of men and of movements, and the characteristics of the peasantry, and more particularly the personal helplessness of the people, and the lack of concerted action among them, impressed him. "There are some things," he declared, "which the Crown cannot grant and which Parliament cannot enact--the spirit of self-reliance and the spirit of co-operation. I must say plainly that I should indeed despair of this task were it not that I think I see symptoms in the Irish people both of greater reliance on their own energies and exertions, and of greater intelligence to co-operate with each other. Happy will it be, indeed, if the Irish take for their maxim, "Help yourselves and Heaven will help you," and then I think they will find there is some use in adversity."
Lord John Russell"s Irish policy has often been misunderstood, and not seldom misrepresented, but no one who looks all the facts calmly in the face, or takes into account the difficulties which the famine threw in his path, will be inclined to harsh criticism. Lady Russell"s journal at this period reveals how great was her husband"s anxiety in view of the evil tidings from Ireland, and one extract may be allowed to speak for itself. After stating that her husband has much to distress him in the state of the country, these words follow: "G.o.d grant him success in his labours to amend it--famine, fever, trade failing, and discontent growing are evils which it requires all his resolution, sense of duty, and love for the public to face. I pray that he may, and believe that he will, one day be looked back to as the greatest benefactor of unhappy Ireland." When once the nature of the calamity became apparent, Lord John never relaxed his efforts to grapple with the emergency, and, though not a demonstrative man, there is proof enough that he felt acutely for the people, and laboured, not always perhaps wisely, but at least well, for the amelioration of their lot. He was a.s.sailed with a good deal of personal abuse, and was credited with vacillation and apathy, especially in Ireland, where his opponents, acting in the capacity of jurymen at inquests on the victims of the famine, sometimes went so far as to bring in a verdict of wilful murder against the Prime Minister. It is easy enough after the event to point out better methods than those devised at the imperious call of the moment by the Russell Administration, but there are few fair-minded people in the present day who would venture to a.s.sert that justice and mercy were not in the ascendent during a crisis which taxed to the utmost the resources of practical statesmanship.
[Sidenote: LORD CLARENDON IN IRELAND]
The new Parliament a.s.sembled in November, and a Committee of both Houses was appointed to take into consideration the depressed condition of trade, for symptoms of unmistakable distress were apparent in the great centres of industry. Ireland, moreover, still blocked the way, and Lord Clarendon, who had succeeded to the viceroyalty, alarmed at the condition of affairs, pressed for extraordinary powers. The famine by this time was only a memory, but it had left a large section of the peasantry in a sullen and defiant mood. As a consequence stormy restlessness and open revolt made themselves felt. Armed mobs, sometimes five hundred and even a thousand strong, wandered about in lawless fashion, pounced upon corn and made raids on cattle, and it seemed indeed at times as if life as well as property was imperilled. Lord Clarendon was determined to make the disaffected feel that the law could not be set aside with impunity. He declared that the majority of these disturbers of the peace were not in actual distress, and he made no secret of his opinion that their object was not merely intimidation but plunder. "I feel," were his words as the autumn advanced, "as if I was at the head of a provisional government in a half-conquered country."
It is easy to a.s.sert that Lord Clarendon took a panic-stricken view of the situation, and attempts have again and again been made to mitigate, if not to explain away, the dark annals of Irish crime.
The facts, however, speak for themselves, and they seemed at the moment to point to such a sinister condition of affairs that Lord John Russell felt he had no option but to adopt repressive measures. Sir George Grey stated in Parliament that the number of cases of fatal bloodshed during the six summer months of 1846 was sixty-eight, whilst in the corresponding period in 1847 it had increased to ninety-six. Shooting with intent to slay, which in the six months of 1846 had numbered fifty-five, now stood at 126. Robbery under arms had also grown with ominous rapidity, for in the contrasted half-years of 1846 and 1847 deeds of violence of this kind were 207 and 530 respectively, whilst outrage in another of its most cruel and despicable forms--the firing of dwelling-houses--revealed, under the same conditions of time, 116 acts of incendiarism in 1847, as against fifty-one in the previous year.
The disaffected districts of Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary made the heaviest contribution to this dismal catalogue of crime; but far beyond their borders though with diminished force, the lawless spirit prevailed.
Mr. Spencer Walpole, in his standard and authoritative "Life of Lord John Russell," has shown, by an appeal to his correspondence with Lord Clarendon, how reluctant the Prime Minister was to bring forward a new Arms Bill. He has also made it plain that it was only the logic of events which finally convinced the Prime Minister of the necessity in any shape for such a measure. Mr. Walpole has also vindicated, at considerable length, Lord John from the familiar charge of having adopted in power the proposals which led to the overthrow of the Peel Administration. He lays stress on the fact that the Arms Bill, which the Government carried at the close of 1847 by a sweeping majority, was, to a noteworthy extent, different from that which Sir Robert sought to impose on Ireland twelve months earlier, and which the Whigs met with strenuous and successful opposition. In Mr. Walpole"s words, the new proposals "did not contain any provision for compensating the victims of outrages at the expense of the ratepayers; they did not render persons congregated in public-houses or carrying arms liable to arrest; above all, they did not comprise the brutal clause which made persons out of doors at night liable to transportation." The condition of Ireland was, indeed, so menacing that the majority of the English people of all shades of political opinion were of one mind as to the necessity for stern measures. Sir Robert Peel, with no less candour than chivalry, declared that the best reparation which could be made to the last Government would be to a.s.sist the present Government in pa.s.sing such a law. Perhaps still more significant were the admissions of Mr. John Bright. At the General Election the young orator had been returned to Parliament, not for a Sleepy Hollow like Durham, which had first sent him, but for the commanding const.i.tuency of Manchester, and almost at once he found himself in opposition to the views of a vast number of the inhabitants. He was requested to present a pet.i.tion against the bill signed by more than 20,000 persons in Manchester. In doing so he took the opportunity of explaining in the House of Commons the reasons which made it impossible for him--friend of peace and goodwill as he a.s.suredly was--to support its prayer. He declared that the unanimous statements of all the newspapers, the evidence of men of all parties connected with Ireland, as well as the facts which were placed before them with official authority, made it plain beyond a doubt that the ordinary law was utterly powerless, and, therefore, he felt that the case of the Government, so far as the necessity for such a bill was concerned, was both clear and perfect.
[Sidenote: JOHN BRIGHT AND IRISH AFFAIRS]
Mr. Bright drew attention to the fact that a.s.sa.s.sinations in Ireland were not looked upon as murders, but rather as executions; and that some of them at least were not due to sudden outbursts of pa.s.sion, but were planned with deliberation and carried out in cold blood. He saw no reason to doubt that in certain districts public sentiment was "depraved and thoroughly vitiated;" and he added that, since the ordinary law had failed to meet the emergency the Government had a case for the demand they made for an extension of their present powers, and he thought that the bill before the House was the less to be opposed since, whilst it strengthened the hands of the Executive, it did not greatly exceed or infringe the ordinary law. Mr. Bright at the same time, it is only fair to add, made no secret of his own conviction that the Government had not grappled with sufficient courage with its difficulties, and he complained of the delay which had arisen over promised legislation of a remedial character.