Nothing but the Bill

Richard West The 'Days of May', of exactly 150 years ago, were the nearest that Britain ever came to revolution. The cause of the agita- tion was the refusal of the House of Lords to pass the Great Reform Bill abolishing rotten boroughs and giving the vote to the new middle class. In the tumult and clamour of May 1832 the loudest and most effective voice in the cause of reform was our own Spectator, which had coined in the previous year the slogan that swept the country: 'The Bill, the whole Bill and nothing but the The power and influence of the Spectator at that time was startling and, to us, en- viable. One of the justifications used by Tories in blocking reform was the un- constitutional character of the demand for 'nothing but the Bill'. It did not allow for the checks and balances that the Lords were supposed to exert on such legislation. The Spectator was also often accused of abusing parliamentary freedom by telling its readers (or ordering them, as the Tories said) whom they should vote into Parliament.

'Who Will Be the Boroughmongers Under the New Constitution?' asked Blackwood's, a Tory monthly, in May 1831; then answered its own rhetorical question: 'The popular journals and the leading orators on the popular side in Parliament! One of them would return more members than are now named by any half-dozen of the great boroughholders in the House of Peers. Perhaps the number of members returned by those great new boroughmongers will stand thus: Times 72; O'Connell — 60 [the Irish MP]; Spec- tator — 37; Ballot — 35; Examiner — 32; Morning Herald — 22; Sun — 19; Scotsman — 13.' Alas, the Spectator never acquired even one pocket borough, although two of its recent editors have been members of Parliament. As a broker of of fice, its power was slim but it did play a part in getting through the Reform Bill.

The Spectator in its present form was established by Robert Rintoul in 1828, a time of social unrest and political fury. The development of industry and the railways had helped to produce a growth of popula- tion, especially in Ireland, and discontent with the established order. The new class of capitalists and manufacturers was jealous of the landed aristocrats. Radical socialists voiced the grievance of the urban Poor; radical Tories like Cobbett told of the misery of the rural poor in southern England and Ireland. The Church was con- sidered corrupt and repressive, the Royal Family depraved.

Although the Reform Bill agitation came largely from the industrial cities, especially Birmingham, that had no franchise, most of the violence came in the southern coun- tryside, where peasants, acutely lin" poverished by the enclosure of land, were further enraged by the introduction of fart]) machinery and by savage game laws.

'Dear Spectator', wrote W. Humphreys from Kent on 4 November 1830, 'Our little parish still continues in the greatest state of excitement. If the dogs bark, we fly to our fire-arms; if the kitchen chimney smokes more than usual, the alarm bell is rung. A poor beggar cannot exercise his honest call: ing, without being suspected of some evil intention . . . A man in a smock-frock with red whiskers was lately seen for a moment and disappeared. A hue and cry was raised after him ... Woe be to the man who in these times even looks at a corn-stack! Corn-stacks were burnt, farming machinery was broken, and culprits, if apprehended, were sentenced to hanging or Australia. The Spectator each week kept a chronicle of such crimes, and berated the judges and magistrates for their harshness: 'Does anY one hope that the wild beasts — "peasan- try" we may no longer call them — will bed quieted by imprisoning, transporting an hanging a few of them? As wolves, though starving, love liberty and life, so these p09„1 savages may be frightened by the treadinni and the gallows; but does the caging and braining of some wolves turn the rest?' (22 January 1831) The same issue of the Spectator expressed the response of Britain to the excitement in Europe, where the French had risen against, and kicked out the Bourbon monarchs and Poland was striving (in vain, as always) to rid herself of the Russians. 'The spectacle of Europe at this moment', said the Spec tator, 'is remarkable: the times are pregnant with doubt and uncertainty. The truthls, we are all in a transition state — proverbial- ly a condition of suffering. We are passing from the Divine Right of Kings to the Dy- ing Right of the People, and the countries of Europe are all in one or other of the stages of this process.'

Tories such as the Duke of Wellington claimed that demand for reform was a fad inspired by the revolution in France: peti- tions for reform had actually been decline for the last few years. Agitation

might quite as well have been directed into the Poor Law question, or tithes, or the Corn Law reform that so excited the next generation. The Duke had himself done

much to remove the grievances of his native Ireland, when he got the King to agree to

the emancipation of Catholics. But O'Con- nell, the Irish leader, simply turned his at- tention to parliamentary reform. The Bill eventually passed thanks to Irish and. Scot- tish votes turning a hostile majority of English members of Parliament.

The Duke and his colleague Sir Robert reel had also established a controversial Police force, which was most unpopular with the London mob. The Spectator was

reasonable on this matter: If a robbery or a riot

occur, the cry is "The police is useless, it gives no protection"; if an officer in at- tempting to detect a robbery or to prevent a

riot, takes the smallest liberty with the rob- ber or rioter, the cry is "The police is an un- constitutional force; it is hostile to the liber- ty of the subject". We oppose not — in- deed we contend for — any modification in the New Police which may make it more ef- ficient for the discovery and arrest of the knavish, and more courteous to the honest Part of the community' (6 November 1830).

when rioters broke the window-panes of

the Duke of Wellington's house, the Spec- tator said that the attack was the' work of Pickpockets (15 October 1831).

Although the Spectator won its only

defended libel case in this period, it could sink to

the very scurrility it claimedto

deplore. It published very amusing biographical notes on all those peers who had voted against the Reform Bill (5 November 1831). 'Earl of Radnor William Pleydell Bouverie. Sir Jacob Bouverie, the London; Lord Longford, was a merchant in Walpole and his peerage is said, by Horace BYvalPole to have cost him £10,000... 1..,aroo Carrington, Robert Smith: born. in 1.52. A man of very low, if not Jewish

Vgin; and created first an Irish, then an

Peer by Mr Pitt, in consequence of his wealth. He assumed, most impertinent- !Y, the title of "Carrington", to create the impression that he was connected with the ancient family of Smith, which formerly bore it, but with which he had no other af- finity than a common descent from Adam.' 8iThe Spectator kept up its support for the ll even in May 1832, when the King was Put under pressure to pack the Lords with ef°rming peers in order to counter the

Vast, enmity of the bishops and Tories.

Nast, menacing crowds assembled at Man- chester, Edinburgh and above all Birm- ingham — it was 'the year of Birmingham' The somehow the revolution never came. accept Duke of Wellington got the Lords to and the Bill if not quite the whole Bill, 4nd nothing but the Bill.

7:his is the first of two articles to mark the 150th anniversary of the Great Reform Bill.