spending more than the debt, was hard; and the injury was aggravated, the money was spent in 'special pleading'

-in putting a plain thing so as to perplex and mislead a plain man.' 'Lord Eldon and the Court of Chancery,' as Sydney Smith expressed it, sat heavy on mankind.' The existence of slavery in our colonies, strongly supported by a strong aristocratic and parliamentary influence, offended the principles of middle-class Christianity, and the natural sentiments of simple men. The cruelty of the penal law-the punishing with death sheep-stealing and shop-lifting-jarred the humanity of that second order of English society, which, from their habits of reading and non-reading, may be called, par excellence, the scriptural classes. The routine harshness of a not very wise executive did not mitigate the feeling. The modus operandi of Government appeared coarse and oppressive.

We seemed to pay, too, a good deal for what we did not like. At the close of the war, the ten per cent. income-tax was of course heavily oppressive. The public expenditure was beyond argument lavish; and it was spent in pensions, sinecures (them idlers' in the speech of Lancashire), and a mass of sundries, that an economical man of business will scarcely admit to be necessary, and that even now, after countless prunings, produce periodically financial reform associations,' administrative leagues,' and other combinations which amply testify the enmity of thrifty efficiency to large figures and muddling management. There had remained from the eighteenth century a tradition of corruption, an impression that direct pecuniary malversation pervaded the public offices;

an idea true in the days of Rigby or Bubb Dodington, but which, like many other impressions, continued to exist many years after the facts in which it originated had passed away. Government, in the hands of such a man as Lord Liverpool, was very different from Government in the hands of Sir Robert Walpole: respectability was exacted of actual money-taking there was hardly any. Still, especially among inferior officials, there was something to shock modern purity. The size of jobs was large if the Treasury of that time could be revived, it would be depressed at the littleness of whatever is perpetrated in modern administration. There were petty abuses, too, in the country-in municipalities-in charitable trusts—in all outlying public moneys, which seemed to the offended man of business, who saw them with his own eyes, evident instances confirming his notion of the malpractices of Downing Street. There are only five little boys in the school of Richester; they may cost 200l., and the income is 2,000l., and the trustees don't account for the balance; which is the way things are done in England: we keep an aristocracy,' &c. The whole of this feeling concentrated into a detestation of rotten boroughs. The very name was enough: that Lord Devour, with two patent sinecures in the Exchequer and a good total for assisting in nothing at the Audit Office, should return two members for one house, while Birmingham, where they made buttons, as good buttons as there are in the world, Sir,'-returned no members at all, was an evident indication that Reform was necessary. Mr. Canning was an eloquent man; but even he could not

say that a decaying stump was the people.' Gatton and Old Sarum became unpopular. The source of power seemed absurd, and the use of power was tainted. Side by side with the incipient Chartism of the Northern operative, there was growing daily more distinct and clear the Manchester philosophy, which has since expressed itself in the Anti-corn-law League, and which, for good and evil, is now an element so potent in our national life. Both creeds were forms of discontent. And the counterpoise was wanting. The English constitution has provided that there shall always be one estate raised above the storms of passion and controversy, which all parties may respect and honour. The King is to be loved. But this theory requires, for a real efficiency, that the throne be filled by such a person as can be loved. In those times it was otherwise. The nominal possessor of the crown was a very old man, whom an incurable malady had long sequestered from earthly things. The actual possessor of the royal authority was a voluptuary of overgrown person, now too old for healthy pleasure, and half-sickened himself at the corrupt pursuits in which, nevertheless, he indulged perpetually. His domestic vices had become disgracefully public. Whatever might be the truth about Queen Caroline, no one could say she had been well treated. There was no loyalty on which suffering workers, or an angry middle class, could repose: all through the realm there was a miscellaneous agitation, a vague and wandering discontent.

The official mind of the time was troubled. We have a record of its speculations in the life of Lord Sidmouth,

who more than any one perhaps embodied it. He had been Speaker, and was much inclined to remedy the discontent of the middle classes by naming them to the House.' A more conscientious man perhaps has never filled a public position. If the forms of the House of Commons had been intuitively binding, no one could have

6

obeyed them better: the 'mace was a counsel of per

In the Home

fection' to him; all disorder hateful. Office it was the same. The Luddites were people who would not obey the Speaker. Constituted authority must be enforced. The claims of a suffering multitude were not so much neglected as unappreciated. A certain illiberality, as we should now speak, pervades the whole kind of thought. The most striking feature is an indisposition, which by long indulgence has become an inability, to comprehend another person's view, to put oneself in another's mental place, to think what he thinks, to conceive what he inevitably is. Lord Sidmouth referred to the file. He found that Mr. Pitt had put down disaffection by severe measures. Accordingly, he suspended the Habeas-Corpus Act, passed six Acts, commended a Peterloo massacre, not with conscious unfeelingness, but from an absorbed officiality, from a knowledge that this was what 'the department' had done before, and an inference that this must be done again. As for the reforming ideas of the middle classes, red tape had never tied up such notions perhaps it was the French Revolution over again: you could not tolerate them.

Between such a dominant mind as this, and such a subject mind as has been described, there was a daily

friction. The situation afforded obvious advantages to enterprising men. Its peculiarity did not escape the shrewd eyes of John, Lord Eldon. 'If,' said the Conservative Chancellor, I were to begin life again, dn my eyes, but I would begin as an agitator.' Henry Brougham did so begin. During the war he had distinguished himself in the exposition of the grievances of the trading interest. Our Government had chosen a mode of carrying it on specially fitted to injure our commerce. 'Napoleon had said, that no vessel should touch a British port, and then enter a French one, or one under French control. The Orders in Council said, that no vessel whatever should enter any such port without having first touched at some port in Great Britain.' The natural results were the annihilation of our trade with the Continent, and a quarrel with the United States. The merchants of the country were alarmed at both consequences. Perhaps until then men hardly knew how powerful our trading classes had become. Meetings were held in populous places; petitions in great numbers-an impressive and important thing in those times were presented. Wherever foreign commerce existed, the discontent expressed itself in murmurs. forms of the House of Commons were far more favourable than they now are to an action from without; and this is not unnatural, since there had been as yet but few actions from without, and it had not been necessary to have a guard against them. The petitions, as has been said, were numerous; and on the presentation of each there was a speech from the member presenting it, trying to bring on a debate, and suggesting topics which

The