tion"; and on another occasion said that "Gentlemen on the other side of the House attempted to clamour down this taxation instead of arguing the question."1

Mr. Tierney remonstrated and said: "The voice which the country had raised against that execrable tax showed a proper and becoming spirit, and the noble lord called it clamour." At last, on the 18th March, the Chancellor of the Exchequer brought forward his motion for the continuance of the tax. He ignored the worth of the Petitions.

"The Petitions," he said, "contained only the sentiments of a very small proportion of the people. . . . The petitioners had only attended to the pressure upon themselves, which they were naturally anxious to remove, because they thought it no longer necessary."

"He was persuaded that such would not have been their judgment if they had had an opportunity of being fully acquainted with the whole matter, and of deliberating calmly and impartially upon the subject. He was the more convinced that the petitioners had not understood the subject, and had never coolly and impartially considered it, when he observed that almost all these Petitions contained the unfounded allegation that the Government and Parliament stood pledged that the tax should cease with the war." 8

As it happened, however, on this occasion it was the Chancellor of the Exchequer who was wrong. The Platform was in the right.

Lord Castlereagh expressed his views on the subject more fully: "He begged to be understood as speaking with all due deference of the Petitions which had been presented to that House upon the subject; but when he considered what ought to be the influence of those Petitions, no one would say that the deliberative faculties of Parliament ought to be so limited

1 See his disavowal of these phrases a month later, Parliamentary Debates, vol. xxxiii. p. 459.

2 Hansard, 1816, vol. xxxiii. p. 421.

3 The pledge was to be found in the 247th Section of the Property Tax Act: "Be it enacted that this Act shall commence and take effect from the 5th April 1806, and that the said Act, and the duties thereof, shall continue in force during the present war, and until the 6th April next, after the definitive signature of a treaty of peace, and no longer.”—See Brougham's Speech, Parliamentary Debates, vol. xxxiii. p. 450.

or paralysed by them, that the Legislature of the country was to look to the sentiments entertained beyond the walls of that House for the rule and guide of the course it had to pursue.1

"With respect to the Petitions generally, there was a great mass of them, and many of a most respectable description. But when he looked at them in the aggregate, and asked himself whether they could be considered as containing the sentiments of the whole people of Great Britain, he was compelled to give his negative to such a proposition. In fact, one-fourth of the counties of Great Britain had not petitioned at all. There were not more than nineteen Petitions from counties, out of nearly ninety of which Great Britain was composed.2 . . Full one-third of the Petitions presented came from two counties only-Devonshire and Middlesex,-a circumstance which was explained by the mode of obtaining them in separate parishes.

"The aggregate amount of Petitions was about 400, and 130 came from those two counties."

For once, and only once, these autocratic Ministers were to receive such a slap in their faces as would make their cheeks tingle for many a long day.

When the division came 201 members voted for the continuance of the tax, and 238 voted against it, and the Government was defeated by 37 votes. The result was almost as great a surprise as was the triumph of Dunning's celebrated motion on the increase of the influence of the Crown in 1780.

Such a crushing defeat, due mainly to the expression of the people's will through the Platform, might naturally have been expected to lead to the resignation of the Ministry. On many other occasions a less serious defeat has resulted in the resignation of Ministers; but unfortunately, on this occasion, though the defeat should have led to their dismissal, there was no party to take their place.

Lord Castlereagh, the leader of the Government in the House of Commons, declared that "their system for sustain

1 Hansard, vol. xxx. p. 443.

2 For the sake of effect Lord Castlereagh most disingenuously included Scotland in this calculation, but the Scotch counties were wholly in the hands of the Tories. They were much on a par in every respect with the rotten boroughs.

ing the credit of the country had been broken in upon," yet accepted their defeat, and the next night the Chancellor of the Exchequer emphasised the acknowledgment of their defeat by announcing their intention of giving up the war duty on malt, against which comparatively little outcry had been raised.

In examining the cause of this unexpected success of the Platform against a Ministry backed by their own dependents and the nominees of boroughmongers, the explanation is to be found in the additional aid which the Platform received on this occasion from some of the classes who usually stood aloof from it. The tax fell heavily on the country gentlemen and many of the wealthier classes. Anxious to get rid of it they joined the lower classes of the people in agitating against it; and the result was a fresh and distinct triumph for the Platform.

The marked difference that such co-operation caused was soon after to be exemplified, for even while this agitation was going on, another had begun, which, not alone, they did not join, but actually opposed; and the result was very different -this was the agitation for Parliamentary Reform. The question, though occasionally dormant, never for one moment sunk out of mind. It had been kept alive in Parliament by an occasional motion on the subject. Outside Parliament, no matter what subject engrossed the attention of the Platform for the time, the reform of the representation was invariably tacked on to it. Reform was the panacea for all evils, all distresses, the one cure for all official delinquencies. The recent agitations had given it a fresh impetus, and now a definite agitation for it commenced. "We are arrived," wrote Cobbett, "at a new era.1 Those sentiments of justice and humanity, and that love of freedom, which have been smothered for so many years past by the outcry against Jacobins and levellers, and by the dread of revolution and bloodshed, have never been wholly extinguished, and they now begin to be openly expressed." And Place, who was a close observer of contemporary events, has also left a record for us in his opinion of the state of things at this time.

"When Mr. Pitt came into power in 1784 there was no

1 Political Register, 30th March 1816, vol. xxx. p. 398.

1

public. . . only factions. The French Revolution produced a great change; it induced men to look beyond party squabbles, to inquire whether there was not something of much more consequence than the contest of the factions as to which of them should possess the power and emoluments of the Government, and they began slowly to detach themselves from the factions. The number which now began to think for themselves in respect to Government increased. Many men saw, or thought they saw, information was necessary to produce good government; they comprehended their own ignorance, and sought for information The number of such persons was at first small, but it was constantly increasing; and it was obvious to every thinking man that unless they could be retained in a state of comparative ignorance, the power of the Government would diminish, and that, too, in proportion to their number and their knowledge. . . . Much knowledge had been acquired during these thirteen or fourteen years; it was principally, and indeed almost wholly, confined to the younger portion of the community, and only to part of them; but the advance was obvious."

With the revival of the Platform in the agitation for economy and retrenchment on the termination of the war, it was but natural that the increased knowledge, self-reliance, and energy of some amongst the people, should at the same time endeavour to find voice through the Platform for the great object which they had most at heart-Parliamentary reform.

Political clubs also to a small extent revived. At the close of 1814 or the beginning of 1815, Major Cartwright, the veteran reformer, projected an association under the title of the "Hampden Club," with the object of working for Parliamentary reform. It was this club "which gave the tone to many places and revived the dormant desire for reform."

"With the decline of the éclat of the conquest of France, discontent returned with distress in redoubled force. The people looked to Parliament for relief, but a boroughmonger House of Commons was not disposed to attempt anything not likely to promote its own immediate views of interest. Retrenchment and reduction to any great extent would injure 1 Place, MSS., No. 27,809, p. 41.

VOL. I

U

ministerial influence. There was scarcely any one in the House to stand up for the people, and no one who had courage and industry sufficient to investigate and expose the base and pitiful conduct of ministerial agents."1

In May there were disturbances and riots in Suffolk-mobs, without a Platform, but with a banner, "Bread or Blood.' In Norfolk attacks were made on millers, and bakers' shops, and flour and bread was stolen. In the Isle of Ely alarming riots took place. The rioters were even designated as "insurgents," not suppressed without military, and powder, and ball, and loss of life, to be followed by a special Commission, and hangings, and transportation. In Bideford, in Durham, in Huntingdonshire, riots more or less grave occurred-all for

food. No meetings had been held here; there was no Platforming to be charged with incitements to riot; nothing but those worst of all causes-distress and hunger.

One meeting which looms out of this sad period explains clearly the system of government, against which the people, awakening from their long quiescence, were beginning to kick. Whilst England was in this state of dismal distress, whilst mobs were exchanging shots with the military in their struggles for bread, and were parading with "bread or blood" banners, and people were starving, and the Government at its wits' end for money, the marriage of a royal princess-the Princess Charlotte of Wales-took place to a German Prince, and Parliament, at the instigation of Ministers, passed an Act giving to the newly-married couple £60,000 for an outfit and £60,000 a year. It was true she was heir-presumptive to the throne, and that she was very popular, but the annual charge was a heavy one, and if her husband survived her, he was to receive an annuity of £50,000. A residence was also to be bought for them. A county meeting for Kent was convened, and held at Maidstone on the 17th of June, for the purpose of an address congratulating the royal family on this marriage.2 The speeches were interrupted with cries of "Send up a Petition for employment for the poor," and "We can't afford to keep foreigners," and other cries, and finally the meeting voted against the Address.

1 Place, MSS., No. 27,809, p. 13.

2 See Cobbett's Political Register, vol. xxx. p. 801, etc.