1830] WELLINGTON'S POSITION 1417 administration. Throughout the last session of the reign Wellington had occupied a position which could not long be maintained. There Review of was no doubt that an earnest effort might immediately Wellington's have driven his administration from office. He had broken with the old high Tories by the Catholic Emancipation and by his financial policy. He had quarrelled with the Canningites by insisting upon the resignation of Huskisson. He had indeed made some approaches towards the Whigs, and admitted both His isolated Scarlet and Lord Roslin to office, but his views rendered position. it impossible that any real union with them should be thought of. He thus stood absolutely alone, allowed to remain in office chiefly because men thought him the only minister fit to deal with the vacillating and unprincipled King, and because a speedy change on George's death was expected. Consequently the session was passed in somewhat meaningless discussions, and in attacks to which the arbitrary and self-confident character of Wellington laid him open. Though the settlement of Greece was finally completed, his foreign policy, as we have seen, which seemed to aim at little else than at keeping things exactly as they were, met with little approbation. Attacks against the press in which he engaged seemed at once somewhat to lower his dignity, and to give openings for the assaults of the Liberals. His financial measures, although he effected a saving of upwards of a million in the payment of the Civil Service, diminished but little the weight of taxation, while continued disturbances in Ireland, and widespread discontent and misery among the working-classes, especially in the silk trade, threw gloom over all the country. IT Character of T was perhaps fortunate that George IV. was succeeded by a man of very different character, whose simplicity and geniality speedily made him as popular as his brother had been the reverse. The little care with which he preserved the outward forms of dignity shocked the older Tories; the freedom with which he admitted men of both parties to his table and his Court seemed to promise a reign conducted on constitutional principles and without party bias on the part of the Crown. The popularity 1830] EFFECTS OF THE JULY REVOLUTION 1419 of the King was at the time of great importance, because the excitement of the days of July in France spread rapidly over Europe, especially in Belgium and Poland, and met with great sympathy in England. Had an unpopular monarch been upon the throne the Crown might easily have been involved in the quarrel with the people. Effect of the July Revolution in Belgium In Belgium the revolutionary spirit assumed the form of a national desire on the part of the French-speaking Belgians to sever themselves from the Dutch kingdom to which they had been attached by the Treaties of Vienna. and Poland. There was good ground for their discontent. The King of the Netherlands, a clever but injudicious man, had failed to fulfil his engagements, and had ruled entirely in the interests of the Dutch part of his kingdom. The liberty of the press granted by the constitution had been superseded by a royal ordinance, intended to be temporary, but still remaining in force; a judicial system by which the judges were the nominees of the Crown had superseded the enactments of the constitution, by which the judges were elective and irremoveable; the King had twisted the clause recommending to his care the interests of education to mean that education should be entirely in the power of the Crown; the French language had been proscribed in all public acts, and business had to be carried on in Dutch; an undue proportion of the taxes was laid upon Belgium, and Protestants were chiefly employed both in public and educational offices, though absolute equality of religions had been guaranteed. There is no need to explain the grievances of the Poles. Destroyed as a nation, divided recklessly among their powerful neighbours, it was only too natural that they should at once accept any hope of freedom. Effect of the in England. In England the Revolution in France met with universal sympathy and admiration. Among those classes which of late years had been in a constant state of discontent, it was July Revolution accepted as an example to be at once followed. But the orderly and self-restrained manner in which the change in France had been effected had a far different and more important effect than this. It seemed to show the possibility of great and thorough changes being carried out without the excesses which had hitherto accompanied revolutions, and had frightened the well-to-do middle classes from any co-operation with the more eager and innovating working-men. It seemed possible that the great question, which had been alme crushed by the French wars and by the lengthened tenure of by the Tories, might be revived and brought to a successful conclusion without opening the flood-gates of social anarchy. Parliamentary reform was at once taken up by the Whigs and by the great middle class of England, who determined to try whether they could not win it in some less objectionable form than it had assumed in the hands of radical demagogues. Position of Wellington's ministry. In the midst of this renewed excitement both on the Continent and in England, the ministry of Wellington, cut off from its old friends and disowned by those whose policy it had been enforced to adopt, stood as representative of the bygone system. The minister, though he had already so frequently yielded to the pressure of circumstances, was regarded as the friend of Polignac, the fallen French minister. His foreign policy read by this light seemed to be directed entirely to uphold the principles which had actuated the Tory Government at the time of the Vienna Treaty. He was known to be at heart an enemy of all change, and his conduct was therefore watched at this crisis with extreme anxiety. It was felt at the time, and has since been confessed, that his ministry during the last session had existed only by the toleration of its enemies. With the death of the King the chief necessity for retaining the Duke in his position had disappeared, and the time seemed to have arrived for sweeping away the Government, which was merely obstructive and bent at the best in keeping things exactly as they were. The dissolution which necessarily followed the accession of the new King afforded the Duke's enemies the opportunity they required. In the midst of much excitement, for the reformers had already begun to cover the land with associations, the elections took place, with a result disastrous to Government. There was a loss of at least fifty Government seats. While the Liberals made extreme and successful efforts in places where the elections were open, the Tory proprietors of boroughs, in their hatred to Wellington, whom they regarded as their betrayer, brought in antiministerial nominees. The temper of the people was shown by the election of Brougham, voluntarily and without expense, to the representation of Yorkshire, by the loss of their seats by two brothers and a brother-in-law of Peel, undoubtedly the most important member of the Government after the Premier, and by the fact that of the eighty-two representatives of English counties not more than twenty were ministerial. Such a change no doubt offered much hope for the peaceful and parliamentary character of the constitutional advance which it seemed now impossible to avoid. 1830] THREATENING DANGERS 1421 O'Connell's agitation for But there were still great dangers threatening the country. In Ireland O'Connell was spending all his energies in Danger from preaching the necessity of repeal, and heaping fierce and unmeaning words of hatred upon the ministry. repeal, He had re-established the Association under the name of "The Friends of Ireland," and when the Irish Government declared this illegal, it assumed a new form as the Society of Irish Volunteers. The lower classes were in a state of wild excitement, and their belief in their leader was not checked by the inconsistency with which he now extolled the Revolution in Belgium and in France, though hitherto, in his love of Catholicism, the Catholic and Jesuit-loving Bourbons had been the main subjects of his praise; nor did even the want of courage with which he refused to give satisfaction for the insults he had heaped on Lord Hardinge injure him with his followers. In October it was found necessary in Tipperary to take means for suppressing an outbreak by the use of the soldiery. In England events bearing a strong resemblance to the opening of a revolution began to be visible. The breaking of machines both in manufacturing and agricultural districts, and worse than and from rickthat, in the South of England rick-burning, became con- burning. stant. No efforts and no rewards could arrive at a true knowledge of the perpetrators of this crime. The farmers were kept in a constant state of nervous anxiety. A certain number of people were apprehended and hanged on the charge, but any man was still liable to find his ricks, in spite of all his care, suddenly and mysteriously bursting into flames. In London, too, the old demagogues began to make their appearance. Hunt and Cobbett were again haranguing crowds and filling their minds with hopes of social equality. Meanwhile the ministry took no step to declare its intention, and made no advances towards strengthening itself by union with any other party. It seemed indeed possible for a moment that the Duke would again yield, readmit the Canningites to his party, and produce some very moderate reform. If such a plan existed, it disappeared after the death of Huskisson. On the 15th of September a num- Death of ber of guests, among whom were the Minister, were Huskisson. asked to attend the opening of the first great railway in England, running between Manchester and Liverpool. The train, in which the guests were, stopped for water at Parkside. Several gentlemen left their seats, and a mutual friend brought Huskisson to the carriage where Wellington sat to attempt a reconciliation. The door was open as the old friends greeted each other warmly. Suddenly a |