CHAPTER VIII

THE REVIVAL OF THE PLATFORM

It is somewhat hard to realise in the present day, when the Platform is so great a power in the land, how completely nonexistent it was as a factor in political life, as the nineteenth century dawned upon the country. Events of world-wide importance were occurring abroad; mighty movements were beginning at home; but the Government had closed the avenues to discussion, and the people were compelled to silence. Matter enough had they for thought; problems enough to perplex them; grievances and sufferings enough to make them cry out; but the articulate voice came not, was not permitted to come; and though the Press, trammelled and terrorised, acted to some extent as a vehicle for the expression of the thoughts of the people, the public voice, as spoken from the Platform, was dumb.

Meetings had ceased, speeches had ceased, petitions to Parliament even had fallen into abeyance. The last spark of public discussion or criticism died out with the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in 1801 and its attendant legislation.

Though public liberty in England was at this low ebb it was not quite so low as in Scotland. That country was in far deeper political silence and darkness. In later years she was to take her place alongside England in the struggle for political progress and enlightenment; but at this period her condition afforded an example of the depths which political torpor and submission could reach in a country nominally enjoying the blessings of freedom.

An admirable description of the political state of Scotland at this period has been given by Lord Cockburn.1

"The Tory party," he says, "engrossed almost the whole

1 Memorials of His Time, by Henry Cockburn. Edinburgh, 1856.

wealth and rank and public office of the country, and at least three-fourths of the population. Jacobinism was a term denoting everything alarming and hateful, and every political objector was a Jacobin. .

"The chief object at which our discontented aimed was Parliamentary reform. But this and other home-bred ends were hid by a cloud of foreign follies, which the Tories exhibited as demonstrations that the correction of domestic abuses was a pretence, and Jacobinism the truth. On this foundation they represented the whole lower orders as hostile to our institutions.

"The real Whigs were extremely few. converted some, and terror more.

Self-interest had We had no free polit

ical institutions whatever. . . . There was no free, and consequently no discussing Press.

"Nor was the absence of a free public Press compensated by any freedom of public speech. Public political meetings could not arise, for the elements did not exist. I doubt if there was one during the twenty-five years that succeeded 1795. Nothing was viewed with such horror as any political congregation not friendly to existing power. No one could have taken a part in the business without making up his mind to be a doomed man. No prudence could protect against the falsehood or inaccuracy of spies; and a first conviction of sedition by a Judge-picked jury was followed by fourteen years' transportation. As a body to be referred to, no public existed. Opinion was only recognised when expressed through what were acknowledged to be its legitimate organs, which meant its formal or official outlets. Public bodies, therefore, might each speak for itself; but the general community as such had no admitted claim to be consulted or cared for. The result, in a nation devoid of popular political rights, was that people were dumb, or if they spoke out, were deemed audacious."

Lord Cockburn looked on the trials of Muir and Palmer, Gerrald, Skirving, and Margarot, and the manner in which they were conducted, as the turning-point in modern Scotch history. He said: "I fear that no impartial censor can avoid detecting throughout the whole course of the trials, not mere casual indications of bias, but absolute straining for convictions. . .

"If, instead of a Supreme Court of Justice, sitting for the trial of guilt or of innocence, it had been an ancient Commission appointed by the Crown to procure convictions, little of its judicial manner would have required to be changed. When the verdicts were returned, the Court had to exercise a discretionary power in fixing upon the sentence; which discretion ranged from one hour's imprisonment to transportation for life. Assuming transportation to be lawful, it was conceded not to be necessary; and it was not then, nor at any time, used in England as a punishment of sedition. At that time it implied a frightful voyage of many months, great wretchedness in the new colony, an almost complete extinction of all communication with home, and such difficulty in returning, that a man transported was considered as a man never to be seen again. Nevertheless, transportation for a first offence was the doom of every one of these prisoners.

"All this was approved of no doubt, not only by the Tories, but by Parliament, advised by the Lord Chancellor. But this never satisfied judicious men, and it can neither silence nor pervert history.

"These trials, sunk deep not merely into the popular mind, but into the minds of all men who thought. It was by these proceedings, more than by any other wrong, that the spirit of discontent justified itself throughout the rest of that age. It was to them that peaceful reformers appealed, for the practical answer to those who pretended to uphold our whole Scotch system as needing no change. . . . . This was the first time that Scotland had ever been agitated by discussions upon general principles of liberty. Neither the Union, nor the two Rebellions, nor even the Revolution, had any of this matter in them. The course of this, our first conflict of constitutional opinion, has been very distinctly marked. With no improvement in their public education, habits, or institutions; with all power in the hands of those with whom change was in itself an ultimate evil, and with reason superseded by dread of revolution, the cause of the people was put down, and could not possibly have been then raised up. The only hope was in the decline of the circumstances that had sunk it. What had to be waited for was-the increase of numbers and of wealth, the waning of the Revolutionary horror, the dying out of the

hard old aristocracy, the advance of a new generation, and the rise of new guides."

The picture is a graphic one, and Lord Cockburn was familiar with the subject he was writing about. The things to be waited for were slowly coming, not alone in Scotland, but in England also; but many a weary step had to be taken, many a sacrifice made, before the people were to secure the goal of their desires-their own government; and the brunt of the struggle had to be borne almost alone by England, until the Parliamentary Reform Act of 1832 gave Scotland free move

ment.

The existence of the Platform would have been almost completely forgotten at this time if it had not been for the occurrence of a general election. That event woke it in its electoral phase once more into life.

"The people of England," wrote Jean Jacques Rousseau in Le Contrat Social, "deceive themselves, when they fancy they are free; they are so, in fact, only during the interval between a dissolution of one Parliament and the election of another; for so soon as a new one is elected, they are again in chains, and lose all their virtue as people. And thus, by the use they make of their few moments of liberty, they deserve to lose it."1

One of these "few moments of liberty," shortened down from forty to fifteen days, came in 1802, Parliament being dissolved on the 26th of June. Possibly the fact that the voice of public opinion had been silenced made people keener about the elections, for there was an evident growth of political interest compared with recent years. The number of contests was larger than on any previous occasion, except 1784, and although they had little or no effect so far as party strength was concerned, they were very useful in reminding the people of the existence of the Platform, and familiarising them with it.

There were contests in six English counties, in two Welsh counties, and in sixty-two boroughs.2 In Scotland the democratic interest showed itself more alive and active than had

1 Book III. chap. xv.

2 The Register of Parliamentary Contested Elections, by H. S. Smith. London, 1842.

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been known for many years past.1 In England political feeling wakened up. The attention of the country is totally occupied with the elections," wrote Cobbett in his Political Register in July; "several of which are carried on with great warmth " —a fact readily to be believed when we hear that "the rioting during the election at Northampton lasted six days, and one of the candidates had to fly for his life," and that at Evesham "the whole of the last week was signalised by broken heads and bloody noses." 3

4

According to Cobbett, who at this early period of his political life was a Conservative, "The dissolution of Parliament has already furnished some of the seditious with an opportunity of venting their malice against the Government. . . The people have been told, in two factious Addresses in particular, that they are not represented in the House of Commons, and that until it be reformed it is in vain for them to hope for any good from that quarter."

Fox, who for nearly twenty-two years had represented Westminster, again stood for his old constituency, though he told his constituents he had for some years utterly despaired of rendering any useful service to them. The occasion is memorable for the clear declaration he made of his political creed. He said in one of his speeches to the electors: "My principles are short; they are the principles of the Constitution of Great Britain, as they have always been understood by the most enlightened patriots of this country. I can state them in two sentences. They are these-that in theory the Sovereignty is in the people, and that in practice all the constituted authorities ought to keep in mind the Sovereign under whom they hold their power."

Negatively also from this general election we learn something of interest. Addington, the Prime Minister," "visited his constituents at Devizes" and was re-elected, but no

1 Letter from Dundas to Addington, see Life of Lord Sidmouth, vol. ii. p. 72.

2 Hansard, vol. xxxvi. p. 1230.

8 See The Times, 7th July 1802.

4 Political Register, 1802, vol. i. p. 791.

5 See The Times, 7th July 1802.

See Life of Lord Sidmouth, vol. ii. p. 71.