Hunt turned against the Bill on 7 April in a crucial speech in Manchester.3 He accused the Government of deliberately framing a measure to bind together ‘the middle classes, the little shopkeepers and those people, to join the higher classes’ who would raise yeomanry and support a standing army; in this way they intended to ‘keep power out of the hands of the rabble’. It was the contemporary distinction between the people as rabble and the people as respectable individuals of the middling sort – except that Hunt, unusually, appeared to believe in the sacred rights of the rabble. Hunt suggested that the Government was bowing down before the illiberal determination of the Tories to avoid a ‘democratical House of Commons’.
A week later Hunt made a speech on the floor of the House.4 He did so in response to Sir Charles Forbes. The latter had been one of those who threatened never to sit in the House of Commons again if it became constituted according to the new Bill; now Forbes prophesied the decline of prosperity and destruction of property as a result of it: for why else was the country from one end to another ‘in a flame’? Joseph Hume, the familiar burly Radical figure who specialized in interjections – he had made 4,000 of these, together with short speeches, since 1820 – now pointedly answered Forbes: yes, the country was in a flame, but it was the fire of ‘illuminations’ (indicating the country’s joy at what was happening). Hunt’s denunciation of the Bill which followed, as something that did not go far enough, was pouring cold water on these flames. Hunt, unlike Forbes, reported disillusionment throughout the country; the people thought they were deluded by the Bill and would not actually be any better off. Yet even Cobbett, declaring his support for the Ballot in the Political Register in February, thought that Hunt was wrong to oppose the Bill.
The fact was that the Whig Government combined genuine enthusiasm on the subject of Reform with attitudes to matters like Universal Suffrage and the Secret Ballot which were very far from the ‘shoe-blacking’ ideals of Hunt. This distinction between the rabble and the people was at the heart of it. Where Universal Suffrage was concerned, the brilliant Macaulay, for example, argued that the poor, in a state of distress, lost their judgement, and in consequence would fall prey to evil flatterers; a monetary qualification for voting was therefore fully justified. It was an attitude of mind well expressed by The Times in the preceding December, when it denounced Universal Suffrage in these terms: ‘we are against all monopolies’. Universal Suffrage would introduce ‘the mass, and with the mass, the dregs of the existing population’. Parliament would be monopolized by ‘the numerical majority of the people’ – in other words, by the mob. Furthermore it would result in the virtual exclusion of all influence derived from property.5
The Secret Ballot was another subject on which contemporary attitudes fought with what would be seen later as enlightenment. There had been calls for it as early as the seventeenth century. Jeremy Bentham had mooted it in the late eighteenth century, and it had been the subject of a long article by James Mill in the Westminster Review in 1830.6 The genuine argument for a Secret Ballot was the need to terminate the fearful atmosphere of bribery and corruption which surrounded the polls. If the vote were to be secret, men could vote according to their convictions, not according to the orders of their masters – in other words their landlords or employers.
Edward Stanley had frankly criticized the idea of the Secret Ballot earlier in 1830 as depriving the higher orders of their legitimate influence. A further argument suggested that it was in fact more corrupt than open voting because the electors could happily take bribes from both sides.7 Sydney Smith as usual had an original take on the subject: he was against secrecy because people would want to know ‘who brought that mischievous profligate villain into Parliament. Let us see the names of his real supporters.’ At the discussions before Russell’s presentation of the Bill, Durham had, perhaps predictably, been in favour of the secret Ballot and Althorp also, although doubtful that it would actually take place. In contrast, the Whig grandees Lords Holland and Lansdowne had shown themselves remarkably indifferent to the subject. It had finally been struck out in view of the King’s professed dislike: ‘nothing should ever induce him to yield to it’.8 The need for William’s overall approbation was paramount.
The duration of Parliament was another question where Hunt’s proposal of Annual Parliaments was avowedly hostile to Whig thinking. Since the Septennial Act of 1716 this duration had been fixed at seven years. In his previous incarnation as a young reformer, Grey had been in favour of Triennial Parliaments, just as Durham was now; but since Russell was against this, there was a compromise of five years.
The future might be with the Radicals – as true reformers must always believe – but for the moment the power of opposition was undoubtedly with the Tories; the question was just how much of it would be mounted in assault upon the Bill in the Commons and Lords. There was very little resignation to the inevitable in the Tory ranks and a great many predictions of fearful woe. It was at this point that the clever, eccentric Tory MP, Viscount Mahon produced his satirical piece A Leaf from the Future History of England.9
A Leaf had a melodramatic beginning as it purported to look back at 1831 in despair from the vantage point of history. At that point had begun ‘that famous English revolution, so fatal a disaster to that country, so useful a warning to others’.* A Leaf continued: ‘This unhappy restlessness was fanned by artful and designing men, and kindled into open flame by the second revolution in Paris.’ There was mockery of the date of Russell’s Bill, the first of March (‘not of April’), before Mahon settled into a series of ghoulish descriptions. He placed the new House of Commons, for example, in February 1832: ‘Instead of independent country gentlemen’, sometimes prejudiced, perhaps, or sometimes stubborn, but always upright and high-minded – there came in ‘a set of needy adventurers, cajolers and pot-companions of the multitude and still reeking with the fumes of their tavern popularity’. In this new Government, where Hunt would be Chief Secretary for Ireland, the post of Foreign Secretary had to be left vacant because no one understood French.
Where real-life politics were concerned, the atmosphere at Westminster grew increasingly tense, with the plottings at the London Clubs by both Whigs and Tories, the gossiping of the hostesses contributing the soprano voices to the choir of rumbling political basses. The Houses of Parliament went into recess for Easter shortly after the victory of 23 March and resumed sitting on 12 April. The Tory strategy was a matter of acute debate within their own circle: obviously one way to go was to propose amendments which would by degrees rob the Bill of any Radical character. Early on, an aged Ultra Tory MP, General Isaac Gascoyne, who had sat for thirty-five years through nine Parliaments, gave notice of one such amendment.10 Gascoyne had been a Coldstream battalion commander in Ireland in 1798, and fought with the Guards in Flanders; he had opposed such causes as the abolition of slavery and Catholic Emancipation. Now he gave notice of a specific amendment which would prevent any reduction in the present number of MPs in England and Wales (although Gascoyne, MP for Liverpool, did support the enfranchisement of Leeds and Manchester, which was a different matter).
Lord Wharncliffe, a Tory peer, suggested a different course of action: the Tories should demonstrate themselves as capable of taking the tiller again, and guiding the national ship to a safe harbour of moderate, necessary Reform. As James Stuart Wortley, Wharncliffe had been an MP until 1826, when he lost his Yorkshire seat and was created a peer. Intelligent and thoughtful, with independent views on matters like education and the controversial Game Laws, it was Wharncliffe in the House of Lords who had pressed forward the debate on the Reform Bill in terms of the figures and the Census. In their need to preserve the Bill itself, the Whigs proved accommodating to some changes: the number of MPs to be abolished, for example, was reduced by half, so that the new House would now contain 627 MPs; there were also minor changes consonant with the Bill remaining the whole Bill. But in the end, the crisis by which the Tories hoped to defeat the Government
was manufactured. A version of Gascoyne’s amendment was used, with Gascoyne himself as proposer and another Ultra Tory as seconder.
On 20 April the Government was indeed defeated – there was a majority of 8 for Gascoyne’s amendment, in other words against the Bill. The critical vote was taken even later on this occasion, approaching five o’clock in the morning. The lawyer Francis Jeffrey, who had recently entered Parliament for the first time in his late fifties after a distinguished career as Lord Advocate for Scotland, gave a vivid description of the scene thereafter: ‘It was a beautiful, rosy dead calm morning when we broke up a little before five’... and I took three pensive turns along the solitude of Westminster Bridge, admiring the sharp clearness of St Paul’s and all the city spires soaring up in a cloudless sky, the orange and red light that was beginning to play on the trees of the Abbey, and the old windows of the Speaker’s house, and the flat green mist of the river floating upon a few lazy hulks on the tide, and moving low under the arches. It was a curious contrast with the long previous imprisonment in the stifling roaring House, amidst dying candles and every sort of exhalation.’11
Nobody could be absolutely certain at this point what would happen next. The Government had indicated in advance that they might seek a dissolution if defeated – but that could be interpreted as a mere threat. William IV had expressed himself so firmly only a few weeks ago that from outside there could be no assurance on the subject. The royal Court, as ever, with its fundamental Tory bias, was the source of disquieting stories from the Whig point of view. John Wilson Croker heard on 29 March that the Duke of Gloucester, a profoundly right-wing figure, had told his cousin the King that the effect of Reform would be to deprive him of his crown. ‘Very well, very well,’ replied William ‘pettishly’. At which Gloucester added with relish: ‘But, Sir, Your Majesty’s head may be in it.’ The House of Commons was also a rumour factory. Typically, Le Marchant overheard someone else saying that William had promised his rabidly Tory brother the Duke of Cumberland on no account to dissolve; and that Sir Charles Wetherell had been authorized to say so in the House of Commons.12 There was nothing to substantiate this; but people who wanted to believe it were glad to do so.
The next day, Althorp as Whig leader was defeated in the House of Commons on a bill for supplies, and as a result supplies were refused. This upset the Government plans: it had been hoped to get this bill through before going for a dissolution and the vital election which would follow it. The Opposition, on the contrary, were now keen for the Government to admit that they were seeking dissolution. Then they could promptly defeat them on a motion against it; thus there would be no dissolution and no General Election. It was, in short, a war of nerves.
In the meantime, extensive backstairs lobbying had continued. It is possible, as has been suggested, that the Whig Lord Chamberlain, the Duke of Devonshire, was the key voice in the King’s ear at this point. ‘Hart’, as he was known after his original courtesy title of Hartington, son of Georgiana, was an important member of the Whig cousinhood. He had recently come out strongly for Reform in a striking speech at a city meeting in Derby, adjacent to his enormous, widespread estates.13 How bad the present system had been for the image of the aristocracy! He reflected on the irony of a situation where the Duke’s connection with his fellow countrymen was stronger through his Knaresborough burgage tenures – a form of enfranchisement based on rented land which meant that seats could be bought and sold like the land itself – than through ‘the cordial and independent body . . . I now see before me, the yeomen of the county of Derby’. Devonshire’s influence was obviously important. But there was also a general Whig campaign to inform the King of the Tory sneers on the subject of his prerogative. It was being questioned by some Tories whether the King really did have the right to dissolve Parliament against the wishes of the majority.
Another crucial character in this crisis – and in various crises which lay ahead – was Sir Herbert Taylor, the King’s private secretary, and thus the conduit for his correspondence with the Prime Minister. In an age when royal servants occupied an important but largely unsung position, hung as it were between the heaven of the monarchy and the earth of its subjects, Taylor was supremely well qualified to fill the position. He was devoted to the interests of his royal masters but quietly interpreted these interests as encompassing those of the country as a whole, which would benefit from a popular, respected monarchy.
The son of a Kentish clergyman, Taylor had been educated abroad for ten years. He emerged as an excellent linguist, which enabled him to work for the Foreign Office for a period before joining the Army; there he encountered George III’s second son, Frederick Duke of York. In 1795, at the age of twenty, Taylor became his ADC, and later his private secretary; Taylor rose by degrees to the rank of lieutenant-general in the Coldstream Guards, of which the Duke of York was Colonel. All these were excellent preparatory diplomatic and military experiences for the next vital appointment: as private secretary to George III in 1805.14
In this delicate position, Taylor won golden opinions for his tact and discretion, also his wisdom; later he became private secretary to Queen Charlotte. After her death in 1818, other positions of trust of a mainly military nature followed, including that of military secretary to the Duke of Wellington. Not all his missions were straightforward. It fell to Taylor, for example, to negotiate financially between the Duke of York and his mistress Mary Anne Clarke and it was Taylor too who helped suppress scandalous allegations about the parentage of Thomas Garth, illegitimate son of Princess Sophia. At the death of George IV, Sir Herbert was actually Surveyor-General of the Ordnance of the United Kingdom and Adjutant-General of the Forces when he was seconded to be private secretary to the new (and inexperienced) King.
Taylor’s private correspondence with Grey during this period shows that he managed to bring royal diplomacy to a fine art. He was well aware of the need for secrecy over any possible dissolution, equally frank about his master’s distaste for the ‘obnoxious proposal’, yet somehow managed to maintain a private sense of the true interests of the monarchy. Nevertheless the most tactful secretary in the world might bring the royal horse to the water but still would not necessarily be able to make him drink.
The crisis deepened as the state of the country indicated very clearly to the Tories that they might fare badly at any General Election held in the current climate. Fortunately there was a convenient theory that the dissolution of Parliament could not take place in the middle of unfinished business: this made the need for Tory action in the House of Lords all the more acute. A plan was evolved by which Lord Wharncliffe would propose a vote against dissolution in advance. According to this theory, such a vote would take precedence over the admission of the Commissioners of the Crown (to secure the dissolution).
At a Whig Cabinet meeting on 21 April, the resolution was taken to ask the King for a dissolution despite the King’s adverse letter on the subject: ‘Nothing but an imperative sense of duty’ could have led them to propose a measure to which they were aware the King felt ‘strong objections’, ran the minutes of the meeting.15 * Yet public expectation had been raised high; as a result, the effect of a disappointment was ‘greatly to be feared, as likely to disturb the peace of the country’. In short, it was to prevent an agitation of ‘so formidable a nature’ that they had asked the King to dissolve Parliament. The King’s reply was indicative of the lifestyle of a Hanoverian monarch: he had to receive the Prince of Coburg, he replied, at eleven o’clock in the morning, but he would see his Prime Minister at eleven-thirty and hold a Council at twelve noon. ‘Everybody being in their morning dress’, this Council would concern the dissolution.
When they reached St James’s Palace the Ministers found a King hating dissolution as much as ever, in Brougham’s words, but hating even more the Tory interference with, or attempt to delay, the exercise of the royal prerogative. This is where the Duke of Devonshire and, one may suppose, privately, Sir Herbert Taylor had done their work.
Caught on the raw, King William fired up: ‘What! Did they dare meddle with the prerogative! He would presently show them what he could and would do.’ In his impulsive, even rash way, William agreed at once to go down to the House of Lords (where the actual dissolution of Parliament had to take place). The old sailor declared: ‘I am always at single anchor’ – that is, ready to sail.17
The royal cortège, however, was not always at single anchor. It was a question of the necessary traditional pomp for such an occasion, august yet daring. By his own account, Brougham now informed the King that he had taken the liberty – which he hoped the King would forgive – of summoning any Horse Guards that happened to be stationed close by, since the Life Guards, who were generally in attendance, were in a distant barracks. ‘Well, that was a strong measure,’ commented the King. (In the future, William would make Brougham’s action the subject of one of his repetitive jokes, which he at any rate found funnier each time he made them: with great good humour he would remind Brougham of his ‘high treason’ in ordering up the troops.)18 Now Brougham had to dash home to put on the ‘gold gown’ of the Lord Chancellor.
Durham had a slightly different version in his report to his wife Louisa. ‘All is right,’ he wrote in ecstasy. ‘The King has consented to a dissolution. Hurrah!’ It was Durham who, having jumped into Brougham’s coach, went to see the Master of the Horse, the Earl of Albemarle, who was having his breakfast.
‘You must have the King’s carriages ready instantly.’
‘The King’s carriages!’ exclaimed Albemarle. ‘Very well. I will just finish my breakfast.’