Tarquin O’Flaherty continues his exploration of what it is about Western Society (Britain and her Empire in particular) that so excites the Australian Tory Education Minister Christopher Pyne

by TARQUIN O’FLAHERTY.

Up to the 18^th Century, political life in Britain remained simple, unchanged and, not to put too fine a point on it, uniformly corrupt.  Basically the country was ruled by an elitist, landowning aristocracy whose seats in Parliament were passed from father to son, or were simply a commodity to be bought and sold.  A thriving town, or a port might have been granted a Royal Charter which entitled it to send two members to Parliament.  If, over the years, the importance of that town or port diminished, as trade moved elsewhere, the Royal Charter did not move with it.  The landowners simply went on enjoying the right to those two Parliamentary seats.  The port town of Dunwich, in Suffolk was still sending two members to Parliament in the early 19^th Century, even after most of the town had collapsed into the sea.

The importance of owning land during this time cannot be overstated.  The more land you had the more power you had.  If your landholdings happened to include two or three Royal Charters then the ‘Parliamentary boroughs’ (boroughs with votes) on your property were referred to as ‘pocket boroughs’.  This literally meant that you as the landowner had these boroughs ‘in your pocket’.  Secret ballots did not exist then.  How you voted was open to scrutiny by your landlord.  Failure to vote for your landowner’s chosen man and you could find yourself quickly deprived of your tenancy.  Out of more than 400 elected members of Parliament about 140 were ‘pocket’ or ‘rotten boroughs’.  In lots of ‘rotten’ cases, because trade, commerce and population had moved elsewhere, this left so few voters that some members were voted into Parliament on less than one hundred votes, and in some cases, less than fifty!

The ‘Tory’ party (from the Gaelic; ‘toire’ to pursue, later; outlaw, lawbreaker, etc.) were always the henchmen, the cronies, the courtiers of the King.  The Whigs (reputedly the name deriving from the call of the Scottish drovers as they urged their animals on to market) were no real alternative to the Tories, but perhaps a tiny bit more tolerant.

In England, at least, people believed in ‘the divine right of kings’.  Traditionally power had rested with a land-owning aristocracy who believed absolutely in their own God-given right to rule.  Because of Magna Carta, individuals did have a court where grievances might be aired but basically the peasantry were just another commodity to be bought and sold.  In continental Europe, where the aristocracy ruled and there was no Magna Carta, a landowner could, with impunity, have any one of his peasants flogged to death.  There was no redress.

Alongside all this land-owning and peasant bashing and high faluting aristocratic ‘divine right’, another force was insidiously gathering pace.  It was of course, the Industrial Revolution.  The Tories were appalled.  Uncouth louts who owned no land at all became inexplicably rich and powerful.  How could anyone called ‘Arkwright’ for God’s sake, with not a single connection to either the King or the aristocracy suddenly, without so much as a by-your-leave, assume such importance?  It had to be stopped.  Huge taxes were imposed on the raw materials necessary to industrial production.  The Tories regarded the industrialists as absolute upstarts, beneath contempt really, a group who needed to be reminded who was really in charge.  The Whigs, with a better sense of the realities, and a reasonable idea of which way the wind was blowing, began to take on the idea of electoral reform.  The Whig idea of reform still maintained the idea of a ruling aristocracy, but with a Whig aristocracy instead of a Tory, and with the backing of the emerging middle-class.  Swirling all round this were people like Cobbett and Bentham, who wanted real reform and didn’t for a moment believe that the Whigs would deliver on their promises.

To add to this mix there was the constant fear of revolution.  Real, French Revolution style revolution.  After the Napoleonic Wars the ruling classes became very jittery each time there was a downturn in the economy.  Starving people rioted all over the country and uncontrolled mobs rampaged through the streets of London.  This was met by appalling, uncompromising savagery which simply could not be allowed to continue.  If real revolution was to be  avoided then concessions must be made, big concessions.

Right throughout the social scale there was movement for reform.  This so frightened political leaders that they became convinced that the only way to avoid real revolution and to save their own skins was massive compromise.

As if this wasn’t enough, Daniel O’Connell’s Catholic Association in Ireland was making things very difficult for the British.  This Association, founded in 1823, had been quashed in 1825 but three years later it was back on top.  In 1828 O’Connell was returned as the Member for Clare.  Because he was a Catholic he was not allowed to take his seat in Parliament.  This created such an agitation that either concession or all out war on Ireland became the grim choice.  Rather than risk even more disasters the British Government, in 1829, passed the Catholic Emancipation Act.  It is the general opinion of historians that without this Act, England would have lost control of Ireland.  This crucial piece of historic legislation ripped the Tory party asunder, so much so that, at the election of 1830, the Whigs were swept into power.

TO BE CONTINUED