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THE EAST INDIA COMPANY.

The trading monopoly of the East India Company, though confined to China by the act of 1813, had been regarded ever since with great jealousy by the mercantile community. As the revised charter was now on the point of expiring, it was for the government to frame terms of renewal which might satisfy the growing demand for free trade. Their scheme, which few were competent to criticise, met with general approval, and the only determined opposition to it was offered in the house of lords by Ellenborough, who lived to come into sharp collision with the court of directors as governor-general. It was embodied in three simple resolutions, the first of which recommended the legislature to open the China trade without reserve, the second provided for the assumption by the crown of all the company's assets and liabilities but with the obligation of paying the company a fixed subsidy, while the last affirmed the expediency of entrusting the company with the political government of India. Grant, who moved these resolutions, as president of the board of control, had no occasion to defend the policy of setting free the China trade which no one disputed; but he undertook to show that it had declined in the hands of the company, and that private competition had already crept in on a large scale. He also dwelt on the advantage of bringing the political relations arising out of commercial intercourse more directly under the control of the government. His reasoning was sound, and the China trade rapidly developed, nor could he be expected to foresee the course of events whereby the government afterwards became embroiled with the Chinese empire, on the importation of opium, and other economical questions. As compensation for the loss of its exclusive privileges, the company was to receive an annuity of £630,000, charged on the territorial revenues of India.

The policy of continuing the company's rule in India for twenty years longer would have excited more earnest discussion in a session less crowded with legislative projects. The way had been paved for the concession of complete free trade in the eastern seas by the reports of select committees and parliamentary debates under former governments. The consumers of tea, numbered by millions, promised themselves a better quality at a lower price, and a keen spirit of enterprise was kindled by the idea of breaking into the unknown resources of China. But public interest in the administration of India was languid. It might well have appeared that a board sitting in Leadenhall Street was fitter to conduct shipping and mercantile operations than to govern an imperial dependency like British India. But the contrary alternative was almost tacitly accepted. The directors were "to remain princes, but no longer merchant princes," and Ellenborough complained that whereas "hitherto the court had appeared in India as beneficent conquerors, henceforth they would be mortgagees in possession". Perhaps the ministry shrunk from provoking the storm of obloquy which must have resulted from placing the vast patronage of the company in the hands of the crown. At all events, it was agreed, with little dissent, that under the new charter the company should nominally retain the reins of power, checked, however, by Pitt's "board of control," the president of which, in reality, shared a despotic authority with the governor-general of Bengal, who was hereafter to be in name what he had long been in fact, governor-general of India. The bill strengthened his council, and enabled him to legislate for all India.

At the same time Europeans were permitted to settle and hold land in India without the necessity of applying for a licence. Lastly, the principle was laid down, pregnant with future consequences, that all persons in India, without distinction of race or creed, should be subject to the same law and eligible for all offices under the government. Such was the last charter of the great company. It is interesting to observe that Grant, in admitting that the government of India under its sway had not been prone "to make any great or rapid strides in improvement," paid a just tribute to its eminently pacific character. "It excited vigilance," he said, "against any encroachment of violence or rapacity; it ensured to the people that which they most required – repose, security, and tranquillity." The immense annexations of territory and far-reaching reforms which have created the British India of the twentieth century were either most reluctantly sanctioned by the court of directors or have been carried out since its dominion was transferred to the crown. Irrevocable as they are, and beneficent as they may be on the whole, they have certainly imposed difficulties of portentous magnitude upon the rulers of India, nor would it be surprising if some native survivors of the olden days in far-off recesses of the country should remember with sad regret the paternal, though unprogressive, despotism of the sovereign company.

THE BANK CHARTER ACT.

The bank charter act of 1833, having been superseded by that of 1844, fills a less important place than it otherwise would in the history of legislation on currency. The bill was founded, however, on the report of a secret committee which embraced Peel as well as Althorp and several other members of high financial repute or great experience in the city. Since the subject of it was familiar to a large section of members engaged in business, and touched the pockets of bankers all over the country, it was discussed in the house of commons far more earnestly than the bill renewing the charter of the East India Company. In the end two provisions were dropped, which directly encouraged the increase of joint stock banks. The rest were passed, and contained important modifications of the banking system as it then existed. The main privileges of the Bank of England were continued, in spite of a strong opposition and of protests against the one-sided inquiry said to have been conducted by the secret committee. These privileges embraced the exclusive possession of the government balances, the monopoly of limited liability, then refused to other banks, and the right, shared by no other joint stock bank, of issuing its own notes. Though private London banks might have legally exercised this power they did not actually do so, and nearly all of them deposited their reserves with the Bank of England.

Another part of the scheme, which even Peel condemned, was thus briefly stated in a preliminary resolution: "That, provided the Bank of England continued liable, as at present, to defray in the current coin of the realm all its existing engagements, it was expedient that its promissory notes should be constituted a legal tender for sums of £5 and upwards". In other words, country bankers would no longer be compelled to cash their own notes, or pay off their deposits in gold, but might use Bank of England notes instead, above the value of £5. The Bank of England, however, and all its branches, remained liable to cash payments, as before, so that, as Baring argued, only one intermediate stage was interposed between the presentation of a country note and the exchange of it for specie. Peel's objection, which did not prevail, chiefly rested on the danger of the Bank of England closing its branches in its own interests, in order to check the demand for cash. Though his fears were not literally realised, experience disclosed the danger of country banks multiplying unduly, and, by their over-issue of notes, causing a severe drain upon the Bank of England for gold. For the present, however, the critics of the measure were less concerned in forecasting such remote consequences than in protesting against the charge to be made by the bank for managing the public debt. This charge was, in fact, to be reduced by £120,000 a year, but one-fourth part of the advances made by the bank to the public (or £3,671,700) was to be paid off, and the proposed remuneration was denounced as exorbitant. Althorp hardly denied that it was a good bargain for the bank, though he persuaded the house of commons to endorse the arrangement, rather than incur the dislocation of national finance and commercial business certain to ensue if the bank should withdraw from its connexion with the government and use its vast influence for its own interest alone.

LEGAL REFORMS.

Two great law reforms close the series of important remedial measures passed in the first session of the reformed parliament – a session, be it remembered, which embraced all the furious and protracted debates on the Irish coercion act and the Irish Church temporalities act. The first of these was Brougham's valuable bill constituting a permanent "judicial committee of the privy council," and transferring to it the judicial functions theoretically belonging to "the king in council," but practically exercised by committees selected ad hoc on each occasion. Charles Greville, to whose memoirs all historians of this period are greatly indebted, and who in 1833 was clerk of the council, was inclined to disparage the proposed change as one of Brougham's fanciful projects, designed to gratify his own self-importance.¹¹⁶ Even Greville, however, saw reason to modify his view, and the new court has ever since commanded general respect, except from those high Churchmen who resented its assumption of the appellate jurisdiction in ecclesiastical causes, formerly vested, along with a similar jurisdiction in admiralty causes, in the king in chancery, and exercised by a "court of delegates," usually consisting of three common law judges and three or four civilians selected ad hoc.

The essential defects of such a court were fully stated in the report of a very strong commission, including six bishops, appointed in 1830. Probably the expediency of reforming the jurisdiction of the privy council for the purpose of hearing these ecclesiastical appeals may have suggested to Brougham the idea of constructing a standing appellate tribunal within the privy council, for the purpose of hearing all appeals that might come before that body. Accordingly, after carrying a bill in 1832 whereby the privy council, as such, took over the powers of the "court of delegates," he introduced the general bill whereby the judicial committee was created, and under which it still acts. It was to consist of the lord chancellor, with the present and past holders of certain high judicial offices, and two privy councillors to be appointed by the sovereign; to whom prelates, being privy councillors, were to be added for ecclesiastical appeals. The system thus founded, and since developed, is capable of indefinite expansion, in case still closer relations should be established between Great Britain and the colonies.

The act for the abolition of fines and recoveries, though scarcely intelligible except to lawyers, was a masterpiece not only of draughtsmanship, but of honest law amendment. It swept away grotesque and antiquated forms of conveyance, which had lost their meaning for centuries, and which nothing but professional self-interest kept alive. Had it been followed up by legislation in a like spirit on other departments of law, the profits of lawyers and the needless expenses of clients might have been reduced to an extent of which the unlearned public has no conception. As it was, it simplified the process of selling land in a remarkable degree, though it left untouched the complications of title and transfer affecting real property, which no lord chancellor since Brougham has been courageous enough to attack in earnest, and which remain the distinctive reproach of English law. It is not without shame that we read in the king's prorogation speech, delivered on August 29, 1833, the assurance that he will heartily co-operate with parliament in making justice easily accessible to all his subjects. He adds that, with this view, a commission has been issued "for digesting into one body the enactments of the criminal law, and for inquiring how far, and by what means, a similar process may be extended to the other branches of jurisprudence". Seventy years have since elapsed, yet this royal promise of codification is not even in course of fulfilment. On the other hand, Brougham's scheme for establishing local courts in certain parts of the kingdom was destined to bear ample fruit in the next reign. It was described by Eldon as "a most abominable bill," and, being generally opposed by the law lords, was rejected by a small majority, but it was the germ of the county courts, which have since done so much to bring justice within the reach and the means of poor suitors.

Notwithstanding its legislative exploits, the whig government was declining in popularity at the end of 1833, and was beginning to discover how vain it is to rely on political gratitude. Other reforming governments have since undergone the same bitter experience, the causes of which are by no means obscure. No reform can be effected without "harassing interests," and the sense of resentment in the sections of the community thus harassed is far stronger and more efficacious than any appreciation of the benefits reaped by the general public at home, or by mankind at large. Again, the expectations excited by the agitation of such a question as parliamentary reform are far beyond the power of any legislature to satisfy. Grey and his colleagues were too well aware of this, and Stanley, for one, manfully championed the government measures on their own merits, disdaining to flatter the radicals, but his discretion was not equal to his valour, and every debate brought into stronger relief the more statesmanlike capacity and moderation of Peel. There was no tory reaction, but a growing distrust of heroic remedies for national disorders, and a growing faith in the possible development of a liberal policy in a conservative spirit. Even the Duke of Wellington found himself restored insensibly to popular favour, and was again received in the streets with marks of public respect.

ALTHORP'S THIRD BUDGET.

Of all the ministers, no one enjoyed a greater share of confidence both in and out of parliament than Althorp. He was not a great financier, but he was an honest and prudent chancellor of the exchequer, a free-trader by conviction, and incapable of those artifices by which a plausible balance-sheet may be made out at the cost of future liabilities. Yet his budgets of 1831, 1832, and 1833 undoubtedly helped to shake the credit of the government. The first had been far too ambitious, and became almost futile, when the proposed tax on transfers was abandoned, and the timber duties left undisturbed. The second was modest enough, and was saved from damaging criticism by the absorbing interest of the reform bill. Considerable reductions were made in the estimates, the revenue yielded somewhat more than had been expected, and Althorp was enabled to present a favourable account in 1833. He anticipated a surplus of about a million and a half, out of which he was prepared to abolish certain vexatious duties and to decrease others. But the country gentlemen, headed by Ingilby, member for Lincolnshire, insisted on a reduction of the malt duty by one-half, while the borough members, headed by Sir John Key, clamoured for a repeal of the house tax and window tax. The former motion was actually carried against the government by a small majority, but its effect was annulled, and the latter motion was defeated, by a skilful manœuvre. This consisted in the proposal by Althorp of a counter-resolution, declaring that, if half of the malt tax and the whole tax on windows and houses were to be taken off, it would be necessary to meet the deficiency by a general income tax. Such a prospect was equally alarming to the landed interest and the householders, whose rival demands were mutually destructive, the result being that Althorp's amendment was carried by a large majority, and the government escaped humiliation, though not without some loss of prestige.

It was perhaps to be expected that private members in the first session of the reformed parliament should be eager to gain a hearing for their special projects of improvement. So it was, but two only of these projects deserved historical mention. One of these was the abortive attempt of Attwood, the radical member for Birmingham, to reverse the policy of 1819 by inducing parliament to initiate the return to a paper currency. Cobbett actually followed up this failure by moving for an address praying the king to dismiss Sir Robert Peel from his councils, a motion defeated by a majority of 295 to 4.

CHAPTER XVI.
RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS AND POOR LAW REFORM

The year 1833, so fruitful in legislation, may be said to have witnessed the birth of a religious movement which has profoundly affected the character of the national Church. The neo-catholic revival, which afterwards took its popular name from Pusey but drew its chief inspiration from Newman, was in a great degree the outcome of the reform act and a reaction against the more than Erastian tendencies of the reformed parliament. In the early part of the century, as we have seen, personal and practical religion was mainly represented by the evangelical or low Church party, which did admirable service in the cause of philanthropy, as well as in reclaiming the masses from heathenism. The high Church party was comparatively inactive, but co-operated with its rival in opposition to catholic emancipation. The clergy, as a body, were hostile to reform, and the bishops incurred the fiercest obloquy by voting against the first reform bill, which had unfortunately been rejected by a majority exactly corresponding with the number of their votes.¹¹⁷ The democratic outcry against the Church became louder and louder, as the evils of nepotism, pluralism, and sinecurism were exposed to public criticism, and a growing disposition was shown to deal with Church endowments both in England and in Ireland, if not as the property of the state, yet as under its paramount control.

THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT.

The recent infusion of Irish Roman catholics into the house of commons, following that of Scotch presbyterians a century earlier, rendered it less and less fit, in the opinion of high Churchmen, to legislate for the Church of England, and every concession to religious liberty shocked them as a step towards "National Apostasy". This was, in fact, the impressive title of a sermon preached by John Keble, in July, 1833, before the university of Oxford. From this sermon Newman himself dated the origin of the Oxford or "Tractarian" movement, but its inward source lay deeper. Having lost all confidence in the state and even in the Anglican hierarchy as a creature of the state, a section of the clergy had already been looking about for another basis of authority, and had found it in theories of apostolical succession and Church organisation. The university of Oxford was a natural centre for such a reaction, and it was set on foot with the deliberate purpose of defending the Church and the Christianity of England against the anti-catholic aggressions of the dominant liberalism. It was not puritanism but liberal secularism which Newman always denounced as the arch-enemy of the catholic faith. For, as Wesley's sympathies were originally with high Church doctrines, so Newman's sympathies were originally with evangelical doctrines, nor were they ever entirely stifled by his ultimate secession to the Roman Church.

The later development of this movement, which had its cradle in the common room of Oriel College, belongs rather to ecclesiastical history, and to the reign of Queen Victoria. But from the first it rallied a considerable body of support. Many who were not influenced by the movement, shared its earlier aspirations. Shortly after the formation of an association, under Newman and Keble's auspices, seven or eight thousand of the clergy signed an address to the Archbishop of Canterbury, insisting upon the necessity of restoring Church discipline, maintaining Church principles, and checking the progress of latitudinarianism. A large section of the laity ranged themselves on the side of the revival, and meetings were held throughout England. The king himself volunteered a declaration of his strong affection for the national Church now militant, and prepared to assert itself, not merely as a true branch of the catholic Church, but as a co-ordinate power with the state. In the autumn of 1833, Newman and one of his colleagues launched the first of that series of tracts from which his followers derived the familiar name of Tractarians. From that day he was their recognised leader, yet he claimed no allegiance and issued no commands. He felt himself, not the creator of a new party, but a loyal son of the old Church, at last awakened from her lethargy. The spell which he exercised over so many young minds was due to a personal influence of which he was almost unconscious, but which spread from the pulpit of St. Mary's Church and his college rooms at Oriel over a great part of the university and the Church. It was broken some years later, when he gave up the via media which he had so long been advocating, accepted the logical consequences of his own teaching, and reproached others for not discovering that Anglicanism was but a pale and deformed counterfeit of the primitive Christianity represented, in its purity, by the Church of Rome.

Looking back at this movement across an interval of seventy years, we may well feel astonished that it satisfied the aspirations of inquisitive minds in contact with the ideas of their own times. For this was the age of Benthamism in social philosophy and "German neology" in biblical criticism. Though national education was in its infancy, a new desire for knowledge, and even a free-thinking spirit, was permeating the middle classes, and had gained a hold among the more intelligent of the artisans. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, established by Brougham, circulated a mass of instructive and stimulating literature at a cheap rate; popular magazines and cyclopædias were multiplying yearly; and the British Association, which held its first meeting at Oxford in 1832, brought the results of natural science within the reach of thousands and tens of thousands incapable of scientific research. The Bridgwater Treatises, which belong to the reign of William IV., are evidence of a widespread anxiety to reconcile the claims and conclusions of science with those of the received theology. Thoughtful and religious laymen in the higher ranks of society were earnestly seeking a reason for the faith that was in them, and pondering over fundamental problems like the personality of God, the divinity of Christ, the reality of supernatural agency, and the awful mystery of the future life. Yet the tractarians passed lightly over all these problems, to exercise themselves and others with disputations on points which to most laymen of their time appeared comparatively trivial.

THE CATHOLIC APOSTOLIC CHURCH.

To them Church authority was supreme, and every catholic dogma a self-evident truth. What engrossed their reason and consciences was the discussion of questions affecting Church authority, for example, whether the Anglican Church possessed the true note of catholicity or was in a state of schism, whether its position in Christendom was not on a par with that of the monophysite heretics, whether its articles could be brought into conformity with the Roman catholic doctrines expressly condemned by them, or whether its alliance with Lutheranism in the appointment of a bishop for Jerusalem did not amount to ecclesiastical suicide. Their message, unlike that of the early Christian or methodist preachers, was for the priestly order, and not for the masses of the people; their appeals were addressed ad clerum not ad populum; still less were they suited to influence scientific intellects. But their propaganda was carried on by men of intense earnestness and holy lives, few in number but strong in well-organised combination, and they carried with them for a time many to whom any "movement" seemed better than lifeless "high and dry" conformity. Herein consisted the secret of their early success. Their subsequent failure was inevitable when they were fairly confronted with protestant sentiment and with the independent spirit of the age. How their aims were taken up and partially realised in a new form by new leaders and through new methods, is an inquiry which must be reserved for a later chapter in the history of the English Church.

The strange religious movement which resulted in the foundation of the so-called Catholic Apostolic Church was of somewhat earlier date, and its author had already been disavowed as a minister by the presbyterian Church before the Tracts for the Times began to startle the religious world. The most brilliant part of Edward Irving's career falls within the reign of George IV., when his chapel in London was crowded by the fashionable world, and even attended occasionally by statesmen like Canning. According to all contemporary testimony he was among the most remarkable of modern preachers, and his visionary speculations in the field of biblical prophecy failed to repel hearers attracted by his wonderful religious enthusiasm. Compared with the adherents of the methodist or of the neo-catholic revival, his followers were a mere handful, and his name would scarcely merit a place in history but for the impression which he made upon men of high ability and position. What brought him into discredit with his own communion and with the public was his introduction into his services of fanatics professing the gift of speaking with "unknown tongues". These extravagances led to his deposition in 1832, and probably hastened his early death in 1834. But his creed did not die with him, and a small body of earnest believers has carried on into the twentieth century a definite tradition of the gospel which he taught.

Far deeper and more lasting in its effects was the change wrought in current ideas by the almost unseen but steady advance of science in all its branches. During this epoch perhaps the most formidable enemy of orthodoxy was the rising study of geology, challenging, as it did, the traditional theories of creation. The discoveries of astronomy – the law of gravitation, the rotation of the earth, its place in the solar system, and, above all, the infinite compass of the universe – were in themselves of a nature to revolutionise theological beliefs more radically than any conclusions respecting the antiquity of the earth. But it may be doubted whether it was so in fact; at all events, theologians had slowly learned to harmonise their doctrines with the conception of immeasurable space, when they were suddenly required to admit the conception of immeasurable time, and staggered under the blow. The pioneers of English geology were careful to avoid shocking religious opinion, and Buckland devotes a chapter of his famous Treatise on Geology to showing "the consistency of geological discoveries with sacred history". His explanation is that an undefined interval may have elapsed after the creation of the heaven and the earth "in the beginning" as recorded in the first verse of Genesis; and he rejects as opposed to geological evidence "the derivation of existing systems of organic life, by an eternal succession, from preceding individuals of the same species, or by gradual transmutation of one species into another". But speculations of this order were utterly ignored by such religious leaders as Newman and Irving, whose spiritual fervour, however apostolical in its influence on the hearts of their disciples, was confined within the narrowest circle of intellectual interests.

POOR LAW.

The great event of parliamentary history in 1834, and the crowning achievement of the first reformed parliament, was the enactment of the "new poor law," as it was long called. No measure of modern times so well represents the triumph of reason over prejudice; none has been so carefully based on thorough inquiry and the deliberate acceptance of sound principles; none has so fully stood the conclusive test of experience. It is not too much to say that it was essentially a product of the reform period, and could scarcely have been carried either many years earlier or many years later. In the dark age which followed the great war, contempt for political economy, coupled with a weak sentiment of humanity, would have made it impossible for a far-sighted treatment of national pauperism and distress to obtain a fair hearing. After the introduction of household suffrage, and the growth of socialism, any resolute attempt to diminish the charge upon ratepayers for the immediate relief but ultimate degradation of the struggling masses would have met with the most desperate resistance from the new democracy. The philosophical whigs and radicals, trained in the school of Bentham, and untainted as yet by a false philanthropy, found themselves in possession of an opportunity which might never have recurred. They deserved the gratitude of posterity by using it wisely and courageously.

The irregular development of the poor laws, from the act of Elizabeth down to that of 1834, belongs to economic rather than to general history. It is enough to say here that in later years, and especially since the system of allowances adopted by the Berkshire magistrates at Speenhamland in 1795 had become general, the original policy of relieving only the destitute and helpless, and compelling able-bodied men to earn their own living, had been entirely obscured by the intrusion of other ideas. The result was admirably described in the report of a commission, appointed in 1832, with the most comprehensive powers of investigation and recommendation. The commissioners were the Bishops of London (Blomfield) and Chester (Sumner), Sturges Bourne, Edwin Chadwick, and four others less known, but well versed in the questions to be considered. A summary of the information collected by them, ranging over the whole field of poor-law management, was published in February, 1834. It astounded the benighted public of that day, and it still remains on record as a wonderful revelation of ruinous official infatuation on the largest possible scale. The evil system was found to be almost universal, but the worst examples of it were furnished by the southern counties of England. There, an actual premium was set upon improvidence, if not on vice, by the wholesale practice of giving out-door relief in aid of wages, and in proportion to the number of children in the family, legitimate or illegitimate. The excuse was that it was better to eke out scanty earnings by doles than to break up households, and bring all their inmates into the workhouse. The inevitable effect of such action was that wages fell as doles increased, that paupers so pensioned were preferred by the farmers to independent labourers because their labour was cheaper, and that independent labourers, failing to get work except at wages forced down to a minimum, were constantly falling into the ranks of pauperism.