A History of the Four Georges and of William IV Volume IV Part 12

His speech, however, was distinctly a declaration in favor of some comprehensive scheme of munic.i.p.al reform, and might fairly have been regarded rather as a help than as a hinderance to the purposes of the Government. The example set by Sir Robert Peel had naturally much influence over the greater number of the Conservative party, and only some very old-fas.h.i.+oned Conservatives seemed inclined to make a stand against the measure. Mr. Grote seized the opportunity to introduce a motion for the adoption of the ballot in munic.i.p.al elections, but it is hardly necessary to say that he did not secure support enough on either side of the House to win success for his proposition. The Bill pa.s.sed through the House of Commons without any important change in its character, but it met with very serious maltreatment in the House of Lords. The majority of the peers did not see their way to compa.s.s the actual rejection of the Bill, especially after the liberal and statesmanlike spirit in which Sir Robert Peel had dealt with it; but they set themselves to work with the object of rendering it as nearly useless as they could for the purposes which its promoters had in view.

Lord Lyndhurst led the opposition to the Bill, and he could, when he so pleased, become the very narrowest of Tories, while he had ability and plausibility not included in the intellectual stock of any other Tory then in the House of Lords. Under this leaders.h.i.+p the Tory peers so disfigured and mangled the Bill that before long its own authors could hardly have recognized it as the work of their hands. The peers not only restored all, or nearly all, the abuses and anomalies which the measure as it left the House of Commons had marked for utter abolition, but they even went so far as to introduce into their version of the Bill some entirely new and original suggestions for the creation of abuses up to that time unknown to the existing munic.i.p.al system.

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The Bill thus diversified had, of course, to go back to the House of Commons, and it is hardly necessary to say that the House of Commons could not, as the Parliamentary phrase goes, agree with the Lords'

amendments. Peel once again took a statesmanlike course, and strongly advised the House of Lords not to press their absurd and objectionable alterations. In the House of Lords itself the Duke of Wellington, acting as he almost always did under the influence of Peel, recommended the Tory peers not to carry their opposition too far, and before long Lord Lyndhurst, who was by temperament and intellect a very shrewd and practical man, with little of the visionary or the fanatic about him, thought it well to accept Wellington's advice, and to urge its acceptance on his brother Conservatives. Lord John Russell recommended the House of Commons to accept a compromise on a few insignificant details in no wise affecting the general purposes of the measure, in order to soothe the wounded feelings of the peers and enable them to yield with the comforting belief that after all their resistance had not been wholly in vain. The struggle was over, and on September 7, 1835, the measure became law in the same shape, to all practical purposes, as that which it wore when it left the House of Commons after its third reading there, and thus secured for Great Britain and Ireland the system of munic.i.p.al government which has been working to this day.

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CHAPTER LXXVIII.

STILL THE REIGN OF REFORM.

[Sidenote: 1836--The Universities of London]

The movement for the diffusion of education among the people had been making steady progress during the reign of William the Fourth, and some of the most distinct and lasting memorials of that movement have come to be a.s.sociated with the history of the reign. One of these was the granting of a charter for the establishment of a great university which was to bear the name of the capital, and was to confer its degrees, its honors, and its offices without any conditions as to the religious profession of those whom it educated, and whom it taught and qualified by appointment to conduct the education of others. The old Universities of Oxford and Cambridge were then directly a.s.sociated with the State Church, and only gave the stamp of their approval and the right to teach to those who professed the religion established by law.

There had been growing up, for some time, a feeling in the community that there was need for a system of university teaching which should be open alike to the members of all creeds and denominations, and even to those who did not profess to subscribe to the doctrines of any particular creed, or to enroll themselves in the ranks of any particular denomination. The inst.i.tutions which are now known as University College, London, and the University of London are among the most remarkable growths of this movement. After years of effort the charters for these inst.i.tutions were granted by King William in 1836, and it is needless to say that University College has played a great part in the spreading of education among the middle and poorer cla.s.ses throughout the country. Henry Brougham was one of the most active promoters of the effort to bring the higher education and {262} its honors within the reach of all cla.s.ses and creeds, and his name will always be distinctly a.s.sociated with the rapid progress made in the spread of knowledge during the earlier part of the nineteenth century.

Brougham was one of the founders and promoters of the "Penny Cyclopaedia for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge," which delighted some of our grandfathers, amazed and bewildered others, and filled yet others with a holy horror at the daring effort to upset all the wholesome distinctions of ranks and cla.s.ses by cramming the lower orders with an amount of knowledge wholly unsuited to their subordinate condition, and unfitting them for the proper discharge of the duties a.s.sociated with that station in life to which it had pleased Providence to call them.

Brougham also took a leading part in the founding of the British a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science, which was established by Sir David Brewster, Sir Roderick Murchison, and many other men famous in science and in letters in 1831. It has been holding its annual meetings in all the great cities and towns of these islands ever since, and is not likely to be interrupted in the continuance of its work.

The British a.s.sociation was the subject of a good deal of cheap ridicule in its early days, and caricaturists, most of them long since forgotten, delighted in humorous ill.u.s.trations of the oddities by which social life was to be profusely diversified when science was taught at popular meetings, and not merely men, but even women and young women, could sit in the public hall and listen to great professors discoursing on the construction of the earth and the laws which regulate the movements of the heavenly bodies. The present generation has almost completely forgotten even the fact that the British a.s.sociation was once a familiar and favorite subject for the pen and pencil of satirists. "The schoolmaster is abroad" was an expression used by Brougham to ill.u.s.trate the educational movement which was going on in his time, and which he did as much as any man could have done to set and to keep in motion. King William himself, we may be sure, took only a very moderate interest in all these goings {263} on, but, at all events, he did not stand in the way of the general educational movement; and indeed he gave it a kindly word of patronage and encouragement whenever it seemed a part of his State functions to sanction the progress of science by his royal recognition.

[Sidenote: 1831--The press-gang]

Among the many reforms accomplished in this reign of reform was that which effected the practical abolition of the system of impressment for the Navy, that system which had so long worked its purposes through the action of what was familiarly known as the press-gang. The press-gang system had been in force from very remote days indeed, for it is shown by statute and by record to have been in operation before 1378. In 1641 the practice was declared illegal by Parliament; but Parliament might just as well not have troubled itself upon the subject, for the impressment of seamen went on just as if nothing had happened.

Whenever seamen were required to man the royal fleet in time of war, the press-gang instantly came into operation. Its mode of action was simple and straight-forward, and consisted of the forcible arrest and complete capture of merchant seamen and fishermen, or stalwart young men of any kind, in seaport towns, who looked as if they had seen service on some kind of sailing craft. The ordinary practice was that an officer and a party of seamen and marines landed from some s.h.i.+ps of war in the harbor, and seized and carried off any number of men who seemed to them suitable for their purpose, and dragged them as prisoners on board war vessels, where they were compelled to serve until such time as their help might be no longer needed.

The literature of England, almost down to our own times, is diversified here and there by ill.u.s.trations of the scenes which were created in our seaport towns by this practice. Smollett has more than one animated picture of this kind. The sea stories of Captain Marryat's days abound in such ill.u.s.trations, and even romance of the higher order, and poetry itself, have found subjects for picturesque and pathetic narrative in the stories of young men thus torn from their families without a moment's {264} notice, and compelled to go on a s.h.i.+p of war and fight the foreign enemy at sea. The pay of an able seaman in a s.h.i.+p of war was, in those times, very poor; the life was one of hards.h.i.+p, and there was little to tempt a young man of ordinary ways and temperament to enter the naval service of his sovereign. The seaport towns and the towns on the great rivers were called upon by royal authority to supply a certain proportionate number of men for service in the Navy, and the local governing bodies did their best, we may be sure, by the offer of bounties and other encouragements, to induce young men to volunteer for the sea. In times of war, however, when sudden demands were made on the part of the Crown for the efficient manning of the Navy, these encouragements and temptations often failed to procure anything like the required amount of voluntary service, and then it was that the press-gang came into work to meet the demand by force.

[Sidenote: 1835--Resisting the press-gang]

During the long wars which followed the outbreak of the French Revolution the press-gang had a busy time of it. Vessels of war were in the constant habit of summoning merchant vessels to hand over a certain number of their seamen, and the merchant vessels were brought to just as if they had been the cruisers of the enemy, and were boarded by force, whenever force seemed necessary, and compelled to supply the requisite number. It sometimes happened that the captain of a vessel failed to understand the meaning of the peremptory summons issued to him, and he was then promptly brought to an understanding of the situation by the shot of the war vessel and the appearance of an armed boarding party on his own decks. Nor was it even a very unusual event for the captain of the merchant vessel to offer a resistance, and then there was a regular sea-fight between the British war s.h.i.+p and the British merchantman, in which, of course, the latter was very soon compelled to acknowledge the validity of the royal warrant.

In the ordinary course of things, however, the captain of the war vessel sent an officer and a party of men on sh.o.r.e, and their business was to make any captures they {265} pleased, in that part of the town where men fit for service at sea were most likely to be found. There are stories told, and told on historic evidence as truth, about young husbands thus captured and thrown into prison to await their removal to some war vessel off the coast, and whose wives or mothers could devise no better means for their rescue than to obtain an interview with them in the prison, and there contrive so to mutilate the hands of the captives through the bars of the cell as to render them unfit for service in the Royal Navy. Sometimes, when it became known that the press-gang was about to visit that part of the town where seafaring men were likely to be found, the population of the quarter rallied in defence of their townsmen, and offered just such resistance to the emissaries of the naval authorities as they would have offered to an invading enemy. Streets were barricaded; from the high windows of houses stones were hurled down and volleys of musketry were fired; crowds of armed men, and even sometimes of armed women, met the invaders in the street itself and disputed their progress inch by inch.

In the lower quarters of Portsmouth and other seaport towns such scenes were of frequent occurrence. The whole system had among its other harmful effects a very damaging influence on the Navy itself and on its discipline. The press-gang was not very choice in making up its contributions of recruits for the fleet. No great pains were taken with a view to obtain certificates as to character and conduct. Those who formed the recruiting expedition were only too ready to seize any strapping young men whom they found loitering about the streets and lanes of the lower quarters in a seaport town. These strapping young men often turned out to be rising young men of the criminal cla.s.ses, but their limbs and muscles made them like some of Falstaff's recruits, "good enough to toss--food for powder," and they were promptly swooped upon and carried off to serve in his Majesty's Navy. Such captives as these, when put on board a vessel of war and compelled to serve as seamen there, had the influence which might have been expected from them over the habits of the whole crew. {266} The severest and even the most savage methods of discipline were often found necessary to force such men into habits of obedience and into anything like decent conduct. Flogging then, and for long after, prevailed in the Navy and in the Army, and one of the most familiar arguments in favor of keeping up that form of discipline was found in the fact that in many cases the new recruits might have corrupted the habits of a whole s.h.i.+p's company if they had not been compelled by frequent floggings to obey orders, submit themselves to rules, and conduct themselves with decency.

For a long time a strong feeling had been growing up among philanthropists and reformers of all kinds against the practice of impressment and against the discipline of the "cat," as the flogging instrument was commonly termed. The philanthropists and the reformers generally were met by the old sort of familiar argument. They were told that it would be utterly impossible to man a navy if the press-gang were to be abolished, and equally impossible to keep the Navy up to its work and in decent condition if seamen were no longer liable to the punishment of the lash. The innovators were asked whether they knew better how to raise and maintain an efficient Navy than did the naval authorities, on whose shoulders rested the responsibility of defending the sh.o.r.es of England from foreign invasion. Those who made themselves conspicuous by their advocacy of what were then beginning to be called humanitarian principles were roundly accused of want of patriotism, and it was often suggested that they were anti-English in their sentiments and their instincts, and were persons who would probably, on the whole, rather welcome the foreign invader than lend a hand to drive him back. The spirit of humanity and of reform was in the air, however, and in the reformed Parliament there were many men who had as good a gift of eloquence as the best of their opponents, and who could not be frightened out of any purpose on which they had set their minds and hearts. In 1835 the Government of Lord Melbourne brought in a measure for the abolition of the press-gang {267} system and for limitation of compulsory service in the Navy to a period of five years. This measure not only had its own direct and immediate beneficial effects, but it also did much to prepare the way for the abolition of flogging. Many years, indeed, had to pa.s.s before this latter reform could be accomplished, but it was clear that, when the manning of the Navy no longer brought with it its captures from the criminal cla.s.ses, the time was coming for the gradual adoption of a system of discipline more in accordance with the principles of humanity and the character of a n.o.ble service. As we have seen in all previous experiences of reform, the forebodings of the anti-reformers proved to be utterly false alarms in regard to the manning and the discipline of the Navy. We have seen some foreign wars since the days of William the Fourth, and we have heard alarms of foreign invasion again and again. But the Navy, under its improved conditions, has never been in want of volunteers to man it, and the greatest lovers of peace have always proclaimed it to be the surest and best defence of the country. There were many leading men in the House of Commons since those days who persistently demanded a reduction in the Army on the very ground that England could safely defy any foreign foe so long as she had the bulwark of such a Navy.

[Sidenote: 1840--The new Houses of Parliament]

One great, solid, and picturesque memorial is destined to a.s.sociate the reign of William the Fourth with the history of English architecture.

We speak of the Houses of Parliament which stand on the banks of the river, and thus have the Thames on one side and Westminster Abbey on the other. The great range of halls, towers, and terraces, arches, squares, and court-yards, which, until comparatively recent days, were often described in common phrase as the New Houses of Parliament, owe their origin and their plan, although not their complete construction, to the reign of William the Fourth. On the evening of October 16, 1834, the old buildings in which the Lords and the Commons used to a.s.semble were completely destroyed by fire. The fire broke out so suddenly on that evening and spread with such extraordinary rapidity that many of those {268} who were engaged in occupations of one kind or another in various parts of the buildings had much difficulty in escaping with their lives. The flames spread so fast that in an almost incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time the two Houses of Parliament, and almost all the offices, residences, and other buildings attached to them, were seen to be devoted to hopeless ruin. For a while it seemed almost certain that Westminster Hall itself must be involved in the common destruction, and even the n.o.ble Abbey, with its priceless memorial treasures, appeared destined to become a mere ruin of shattered stones.

The arrangements for the extinguis.h.i.+ng of fires were rude and poor and inefficient in those days when compared with the systematized service which is employed in our own, and for a considerable time those who hurried to the spot, charged with the duty of combating the conflagration, appeared to do little better than get in each other's way and only give new chances to each fresh eruption. The tide in the river was very low, too, when the destroying work began, and it was hard indeed to bring any great body of water to bear upon the flames.

As the tide rose, however, it became easy to make more effective efforts. At last it was found that Westminster Abbey might be considered perfectly safe. So was Westminster Hall, that n.o.ble historical enclosure, the Hall which saw the trial of William Wallace, of Charles the First, of Somers, and of Warren Hastings, the hall which celebrated the coronation of so many kings, which boasts of being the oldest chamber in Europe held in continuous occupation up to the present day, the largest hall in Europe unsupported by pillars. It was preserved, to be the grand entrance and vestibule to both the Houses of Parliament. But the chambers in which, up to that day, the Lords and Commons had conducted their legislative work were utterly destroyed.

[Sidenote: 1834--Burning of the old Parliament Houses]

At first it was a.s.sumed, as is almost always the a.s.sumption in the case of any great conflagration, that the work of destruction had been the outcome of an incendiary plot, and for a while a wild idea spread abroad that some modern Guy Fawkes had succeeded where his predecessor had {269} completely failed. But it was soon made clear and certain that the whole calamity, if indeed it can be called much of a calamity, had been the result of a mere accident. A careless workman, aspiring to nothing more than a quick release from his labor, and not destined to the fame of the aspiring youth who fired the Ephesian dome, had brought about the ruin which bequeathed to England and to the world the vast and n.o.ble structure of Westminster Palace. The workman was engaged in burning up a number of the old, disused wooden tallies which once used to be employed in the Court of Exchequer, and he heaped too large a bundle of them on the fire. At an unlucky moment a flame suddenly blazed up which caught hold of the furniture in the room, and in another moment set the whole building on fire, and then created the vast conflagration which wrought so much destruction.

We have expressed a certain doubt as to whether the burning of the old Houses of Parliament is really to be regarded as a national calamity, and the doubt is founded partly on the admitted fact that the chambers which existed before the fire were quite unequal in size and in accommodation to the purposes for which they were designed, and partly on the architectural magnificence of the buildings which succeeded them. The Lords and Commons found accommodation where they could while preparations were in progress for the building of new and better chambers, and a Parliamentary committee was soon appointed to consider and report upon the best means of providing the country with more commodious and more stately Houses of Parliament. The committee ventured on a recommendation which was considered, at the time, a most daring piece of advice. The recommendation was that the contract for the erection of the new Houses of Parliament should be thrown absolutely open to public compet.i.tion. Nothing like that proposal had ever been heard of under similar conditions in English affairs up to that time. What seemed to most persons the most natural and proper plan--the seemly, becoming, and orderly plan--would have been to allow the sovereign or some great State {270} personage to select the Court architect who might be thought most fitting to be intrusted with so great a task, and let him work out, as best he could, the pleasure of his ill.u.s.trious patron. The committee, however, were able to carry their point, and the contract for the great work was thrown open to unrestricted compet.i.tion. Out of a vast number of designs submitted for approval, the committee selected the design sent in by Mr. Barry (afterwards Sir Charles Barry), the famous architect, who has left many other monuments of his genius to the nation, but whose most conspicuous monument, a.s.suredly, is found in the pile of buildings which ornament the Thames at Westminster.

[Sidenote: 1840--The seating capacity of the Commons]

Only the mere fact that the selection of the design for the new building was made during the lifetime of William the Fourth connects the reign of that monarch with the history of Westminster Palace. It was not until the reign of Queen Victoria had made some way that the towers of the palace began to show themselves above the river; but the new principle which offered the design for the work to public compet.i.tion, and the fact that Mr. Barry's design was chosen from all others, oblige us to a.s.sociate the building of the new chambers with the reign of a sovereign whose name otherwise was not likely to be identified with any triumph of artistic genius. We must not set down to any defects in the architect's constructive skill the fact that the new House of Commons was almost as inadequate to the proper accommodation of its members as the old House had been. The present House of Commons does not provide sitting accommodation for anything like the number of members who are ent.i.tled to have seats on its benches. Even if the galleries set apart for the use of members only, galleries that are practically useless for the purposes of debate, were to be filled to their utmost, there still would not be room for nearly all the members of the House of Commons. But at the time when the new House was built, the general impression of statesmen on both sides seemed to be that, if the chamber were made s.p.a.cious enough to give a seat to every member, the result would be {271} that the room would be too large for anything like practical, easy, and satisfactory discussion, and that the chamber would become a mere hall of declamation.

At that time almost all the business of the House, even to its most minute details of legislation, was done in the debating-chamber itself.

The scheme which was adopted a great many years later, and by means of which the shaping of the details of legislative measures is commonly relegated to Grand Committees, as the Parliamentary phrase goes, had not then found any favor with statesmen. The daily work of the House was left, for the most part, in the hands of the members of the Administration and the leading members of the Opposition, or, in cases where the interests of a particular cla.s.s, or trade, or district were concerned, to the men who had special knowledge of each subject of legislation. It was therefore argued, and with much plausibility, that to construct a chamber large enough to hold seats for all the members would be to impose an insupportable, and at the same time a quite unnecessary, strain upon the energies and the lungs of the comparatively small number of men by whom the actual business of the House had to be carried on. This argument was used with much effect, not many years before his death, by Mr. Gladstone himself, and there can be no doubt that it maintained itself against the many successive proposals which have been made from time to time for the enlargement of the representative chamber. In most other legislative halls, on the Continent or in the United States or in Canada, each member has his own seat, and finds it ready for his occupation at any time; but in the House of Commons on great occasions the ordinary member has to come to the House at the earliest moment when its doors are open, hours and hours before the business begins, in order to have even a chance of obtaining a seat during the debate, and a large number of members are fated, whatever their energy and their early rising, to sigh for a seat in vain. The question has been raised again and again in the House of Commons, and all manner of propositions have been brought forward and plans suggested for the {272} enlargement of the debating-chamber, but up to the present the condition of things remains just as it was when the new Houses of Parliament were opened in the reign of Queen Victoria.

[Sidenote: 1840--Ladies in the House of Commons]

Sir Charles Barry's design has the great advantage that it renders an increase in the size of the House of Commons possible and practicable without a complete reconstruction of all that part of the vast building which belongs to the representative chamber and its various offices.

In the opinion of many leading members of the House of Commons the number of representatives is needlessly large for the purposes demanded by an adequate and proportionate system of representation, and it is not difficult to foresee changes which might lead, with universal satisfaction, to a reduction in the number of members in the House of Commons. It may also be antic.i.p.ated that the system that relegates the details of legislative measures to the consideration of Grand Committees may be gradually extended as time goes on, and that thus the committee work of the House of Commons itself may grow less and less by degrees. In either case, or in both cases together, it might easily come to pa.s.s that the present debating-chamber would supply ample sitting room to all its members on every ordinary occasion, although it is hardly possible to understand how, on a night of great debate, with a momentous division impending, the present chamber could be expected to accommodate the full number of members ent.i.tled to claim seats there. At all events, it is hardly possible to imagine any condition of things arising which could call for any alteration in the construction of the representative chamber which would be likely to affect, in the slightest degree, the general character of that palace of legislation which was planned and founded during the reign of William the Fourth, was opened in the reign of Queen Victoria, and will bear down to posterity the name of its architect, Sir Charles Barry.

Before leaving this subject it is of interest to note that the question of providing accommodation for ladies desiring to listen to the debates in the House of Commons {273} was brought up more than once during the reign of William the Fourth. Miss Martineau, in her "History of the Thirty Years' Peace," makes grave complaint of the manner in which the proposal for the admission of ladies to hear the debates was treated alike by the legislators who favored and by those who resisted the proposition. The whole subject, she appears to think, was treated as a huge joke. One set of members advocated the admission of ladies on the ground, among other reasons, that their presence in the House of Commons would tend to keep the legislators sober, and prevent them from garnis.h.i.+ng their speeches with unseemly expressions. Another set stood out against the proposal on the ground that if ladies were allowed to sit in a gallery in sight of the members, the result would be that the representatives would cease to pay any real attention to the business of debate, and would occupy themselves chiefly in studying the faces and the dresses of the fair visitors, and trying to interchange glances with the newly admitted spectators.

The conditions under which ladies may be permitted to listen to the debates in the House of Commons form a subject of something like periodical discussion up to the present day. There is, as everybody knows, a certain number of seats set apart behind the Press gallery in the House of Commons for the accommodation of women, who are admitted by orders which members can obtain who are successful in a balloting process which takes place a week in advance. About twenty members only out of more than six hundred can win two seats each for any one sitting of the House, and no member can approach the ballot for at least a week after he has accomplished a success. The Ladies' Gallery holds only a very small number of women, and it is jealously screened by a gilded grating something like that through which the women of an Eastern potentate's household are permitted to gaze upon the stage from their box in the theatre.

It will perhaps be news to some readers to hear that this ladies'

gallery, such as it is, is technically not within the precincts of the House of Commons at all. It is not an {274} inst.i.tution of the House, nor does it come under the rules of the House, nor is it recognized by the authorities of the House. It is there, as a matter of fact, but it is not supposed to be there, and the Speaker of the House, who is omnipotent over all other parts of the chamber, has no control over the occupants of that gilded cage, and is technically a.s.sumed to be ignorant of their presence. The Speaker can, on proper occasions, order strangers "to withdraw" from all the other galleries set apart for the use of outsiders, but he has no power over the ladies who sit in the gallery high above his chair. It has even happened that when subjects had, as a matter of necessity, to be discussed in the House of Commons which the Speaker did not consider quite suitable for an audience of both s.e.xes, he has sent a private and unofficial intimation to the Ladies' Gallery that it would, in his opinion, be more seemly if its occupants were to withdraw. But on some occasions a few of the ladies declined to withdraw, and the Speaker had no power to enforce his advice, seeing that, technically, there was no Ladies' Gallery within his jurisdiction. Some time, no doubt, the House of Commons will adopt more reasonable regulations, and will recognize the right of women to be treated as rational creatures, as members of the community, as citizens, and allowed to sit, as men do, in an open gallery, and listen to the debates which must always more or less concern their own interests. It is a curious fact that the galleries and other parts of the House of Lords to which women have admission are open to the public gaze just as are those parts of the House in which male strangers are permitted to listen to the debates of the peers.

[Sidenote: 1835--The Orange a.s.sociations]

In the year 1835 the public mind of these countries was much surprised, and even startled, by the discovery, or what at least seemed to be the discovery, of a great and portentous plot against the established order of succession to the throne. This plot was declared to be carried on by the Orange societies which had for many years been growing up in Great Britain and Ireland, and throughout many of the colonies and dependencies. This Orange {275} organization began in the North of Ireland, and was originally intended to crush out the Catholic a.s.sociations which were then coming into existence all over Ireland for the political and religious emanc.i.p.ation of the Roman Catholics, and for strengthening the national cause in the Irish Parliament. There is so little to be said in defence, or even in excuse, of the Orange organization in its earlier years that it seems only fair to admit the possibility of its having been seriously intended, in the beginning, for the defence of Great Britain against an Irish rebellion fomented and supported by France.

The Orange a.s.sociations took their t.i.tle from the name of the royal house which had given William the Third as a sovereign to England, and the name of Orange was understood to ill.u.s.trate its hostility to all Jacobite plots and schemes, which were naturally a.s.sumed to have the countenance and the favor of England's foreign enemies. We have seen already, in the course of this history, how the Orange societies acted before the rebellion of '98 in Ireland, and how orange and green became the rival colors of those who denounced and those who supported every Irish national movement. When the rebellion was suppressed, and Grattan's Parliament was extinguished, the Orange a.s.sociations were not in the least disposed to admit that their work had been accomplished and that there was no further need for their active existence. On the contrary, they increased their efforts to spread their power all over the country, and, claiming for themselves the credit of having been a main influence in the suppression of the Irish rebellion, they appealed for the support of all loyal Englishmen to increase their numbers and strengthen their hands. Orangeism, which had at first only been known in Ireland, began to spread widely throughout Great Britain. Orange Lodges were everywhere formed; Orange Grand Masters were appointed; a whole vocabulary of Orange t.i.tles, pa.s.swords, and phrases was invented; a complete hierarchy of Orange officialism was created, and an invisible network of Orangeism held the members of the organization together. The Orange conspiracy, if {276} we may call it so, had been spreading its ramifications energetically during the later years of George the Fourth's reign, and had succeeded in obtaining the countenance, and indeed the active support, of many peers, of at least some bishops, and even of certain members of the royal family. The Duke of York, who at that time stood nearest in the succession to the throne, was a patron of the societies, and was invited to become Grand Master of the whole organization. The invitation would in all probability have been accepted if the Duke had not been a.s.sured, on the most authoritative advice, that a secret organization of such a nature was distinctly an illegal body. When the Duke died, and it seemed all but certain that the next King of England must be his brother William, Duke of Clarence, the Orange lodges transferred their allegiance to the Duke of c.u.mberland, who consented to become their Grand Master.

[Sidenote: 1835--Wellington and the British Crown]

The Duke of c.u.mberland, as we have already seen, was a Tory of the most extreme order; an inveterate enemy to every kind of reform and every progressive movement, a man who was not merely unpopular but thoroughly detested among all cla.s.ses who valued political freedom, religious liberty, and the spread of education. Soon after William the Fourth's accession to the throne a new impulse was given to Orangeism by the King's yielding to the demand for popular reform, and by the measures and the movements which began to follow the pa.s.sing of Lord Grey's Reform Bill. The Orangemen all over these countries then began to look upon the Duke of c.u.mberland as their natural leader, and there can be little doubt that in the minds of many of them, in the minds of some of the most influential among them, there was growing up the wild hope that the Duke of c.u.mberland might become King of England. The Orange lodges became a vast secret organization with signs and pa.s.swords, a mysterious political confraternity, the Grand Master of which was a sort of head centre, to adopt a phrase belonging to a more modern conspiracy, and performing, indeed, something like the part which Continental Freemasonry at one time {277} aspired to play. The Orange lodges in Great Britain and Ireland swelled in numbers until they had more than three hundred thousand members solemnly and secretly sworn to obey all the orders of the leaders. More than that, the emissaries of the Orange lodges contrived to make their influence widely felt in the Army, and it became clear afterwards that a large number of soldiers were sworn confederates of the a.s.sociation.

Some of the explanations which were afterwards given to account for the sudden spread of Orangeism might well appear incredible at first to an intelligent reader of our day not acquainted with this singular chapter of history. But it was afterwards made perfectly certain that a large number of credulous persons were prevailed upon to join the Orange ranks by the positive a.s.surance that the Duke of Wellington had formed the determination to seize the crown of England and to put it on his own head, and that the Duke of c.u.mberland was the only man who could save the realm from this treasonable enterprise. It seems hardly possible now to understand that there could have been one human creature in England silly and ignorant enough to believe the Duke of Wellington capable of so preposterous and so wicked a scheme. Lord John Russell has left it on record that when he visited Napoleon in his exile at Elba, the fallen Emperor, during the course of a long conversation, expressed his strong belief that Wellington would seize the crown of England. Lord John endeavored to convince him that such an idea went entirely outside the limits of sober reality; but Napoleon refused to be convinced, and blandly put the question aside with the manner of one who knows better but does not particularly care to impress his opinion on unwilling ears. One can easily understand how such an idea might come into the mind of Napoleon, who knew little or nothing about the actual conditions of English political and social life, and who had experience of his own to demonstrate the possibility of a great military conqueror becoming at once the ruler of a State.

But it seems hard indeed to understand how any sane Englishman could have believed that {278} the simple, loyal, unselfish Duke of Wellington could allow such an idea to enter his mind for a moment, or could see his way to make it a reality even if he did entertain it.

Yet it cannot be doubted that numbers of Englishmen were induced to join Orange lodges by the positive a.s.surance that thus only could they save the State from Wellington's daring ambition.

[Sidenote: 1836--Dissolution of the Orange lodges]

One of the princ.i.p.al instruments of the Orange organization was a certain Colonel Fairman, who held an important position in what may be called its military hierarchy, and was undoubtedly at one time intrusted by the Duke of c.u.mberland with the fullest authority to act as the emissary of the Grand Master to make known his will and convey his orders. Whether the Duke of c.u.mberland ever really entertained the project ascribed to him of seizing the crown for himself and shutting out the Princess Victoria can, in all probability, never be known as a certainty; but there can be no question that his actions often justified such a belief, and that many of his most devoted Orange followers looked up to him as the resolute hero of such a project to save England from Whigs and Liberals, and Roman Catholics, and mob orators, and petticoat government, and all other such enemies to the good old state of things as established by the wisdom of our ancestors and the Act of Settlement. The whole question was raised in the House of Commons during the session of 1835 by Joseph Hume, the consistent and persevering advocate of sound economic doctrine, of political freedom, of peace, retrenchment, and reform. Hume obtained the appointment of a committee to inquire into the whole subject, and the committee had no great difficulty in finding out that Colonel Fairman had been carrying on, with or without the consent or authority of his Grand Master the Duke of c.u.mberland, what must be called a treasonable conspiracy through the Orange lodges and even through Orangemen who were actually serving in the King's Army. In 1836 Hume brought up the question once again and obtained so much support from Lord John Russell, then acting as Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, that {279} an address was unanimously voted to the King calling on him to proclaim the condemnation of the Orange conspiracy.

The Duke of c.u.mberland disclaimed all treasonable purposes, and declared that many of the steps taken by Fairman and other Orange emissaries had been taken without his orders and even without his knowledge. Fairman disappeared from the scene when the crisis seemed to become too serious for his personal convenience, and one of the Orange emissaries, against whom a prosecution was to be inst.i.tuted, was removed by a sudden death from the reach of the criminal law. The Duke of c.u.mberland announced that he had already, of his own inspiration, ordered the dissolution of the Orange lodges. The King, in his reply to the address in the House of Commons, declared himself entirely in accordance with the resolutions of the House, and thus the whole conspiracy came to an end, and the Government thought it well to allow the subject to pa.s.s into obscurity without further action.

This was the end of the Orange organization, as it was known in the days of William the Fourth. At a later date Orangeism was again revived, but only in the form which it still maintains, by which it is now known to us all as a political a.s.sociation, openly avowing legitimate opinions and purposes, and as fairly ent.i.tled to existence as any political club or other such organization recognized in the movements of modern life. The treasonable conspiracy, like many another evil, died when it was compelled to endure the light of day.

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