How important were the great Reform Act and the repeal of the Corn Laws in the formation of the Liberal party?

The formation of the Liberal party and Victorian Liberalism in general has fallen out of favour in teaching. The proliferation of various parliamentary groupings and the fragmentation of traditional two-party politics, evident from the time of Pitt and Fox,[1] have meant that this period has been considered conceptually too hard to grasp for students, particularly of A-level. The various parliamentary groupings obviously pose problems for any chronology of the formation of the Liberal party. Historians of this period have traditionally cast pre-Gladstonian Liberalism as whiggish, intellectually slippery and reliant on a constant body of unpredictable Irish and radical MPs (with particular attention given to the Lichfield House Compact on February 18th 1835 based on the issue of appropriation). Recent historiographical trends however have been much kinder to earlier Whig-Liberalism. Newbould for example has suggested that the Whigs of the 1830s were far from the radical’s playthings and sought to cultivate a coherent, moderate strategy, propped up by Peelite support. Parry argues for the formation of a clear Liberal party in the period of 1835-41. Nonetheless, the constant interchanging of the terms “Whig,” “Whig-Liberal” and “Liberal” used so far should reveal the problems of putting a precise date on the formation of the Liberal party. Strictly in terms of nomenclature, the party’s formation must remain ambiguous. Though strict adhesion to contemporary nomenclature does not always provide the most obvious guidelines for historians for understanding contemporary politics,[2] ambiguous terminology can often cloud the certainty of historians over things like the formation of the Liberal party. Charles Dodd and Henry Stocks Smith could not agree over terminology. As far as historians are concerned, Taylor argues that the term “liberal” did not become in common use until the 1860s,[3] whereas Halévy’s shows that the term was in full use in the press during the 1837 and 1841 elections. Liberalism however was first and foremost a creed and as Parry sagaciously remarks above all “Liberals saw government as a matter of integrating and harnessing different classes and interest groups within the political nation.”[4] Liberal politicians would listen to the demands of their constituents, reflect upon them and then legislate accordingly. This view of the parliamentarian took place against a backdrop of an increasingly vocal public opinion, which could not be ignored, as Mackinnon identified in his pamphlet in 1828 “On the Rise, Progress and Present State of Public Opinion.” The best example of this is Sidmouth’s attempt in 1811 to introduce a bill to regulate the itinerant evangelical preaching of societies like the London Missionary Society. 336 petitions in 48 hours and the bill was dropped. Public opinion could no longer be ignored. In this essay then I will argue for the formation of a “liberal” model of politics, which sought to bind outdoor clamour to aristocratic leadership, whilst legislating also for the benefit of the moral development of the people. This was a traditional staple of the Grand Whiggery and it was only when it was realized that this had to be achieved through financial methods as well – a legacy of Peel’s – that it can be suggested the Liberal party was formed in earnest.

The most obvious place to begin in the study of the formation of the Liberal party, is the great Reform Act of 1832. The Tory honeymoon, which had lasted some fifty years, came to an end abruptly on 2nd November 1830. The Whigs had been reduced to an aristocratic rump. Liberal Toryism had courted public opinion successfully, with their emphasis on economic retrenchment – public expenditure was slashed, sinecures abolished – and a popular foreign policy under Canning, which attempted to prop up constitutional movements abroad without damaging the continental status quo. The Tories had even stolen their clothes and proved their responsiveness to outdoor clamour in the Catholic emancipation crisis. All that the Whigs could do was stand back and applaud. In fact this was their policy for most of the early nineteenth century and when Grey went into open attack on Wellington on 30 June 1830, largely due to his anger at his exclusion from office, this was no more beneficial to the Whigs. If there was one great turning point in nineteenth century British history then surely Wellington’s speech is the moment. The 1830 elections as Professor Brock has shown were curious insofar as no one seemed to demand reform, yet at the same time few seemed willing to oppose it. Clearly some sort of gesture was needed and Wellington dropped the ball. Four days after his speech, the Canningites agreed to support the Whigs in some measure of reform and on 15th November, they were joined by the Ultra Tories. Into office came the Whigs. Whether or not Mandler’s view of the 1830s and 1840s as a reassertion of Whig principles and his dichotomization of Tory commercial liberty and Whig institutional liberty is correct, after fifty years in exile, this is the moment when the Whigs came into office once more and immediately put forward a plan for reform. Holland House, which had nurtured so many members of the Grand Whiggery as well as other politicians outside the clique, most famously Russell, had certainly instilled in them the primacy of political liberty and the Foxite notion of the role of the aristocracy to serve the people. This gave the Whigs a great opportunity to reassert their leadership over the nation and political reform became one of the main foundations of the Liberal party.

The Great Reform Act was one of the founding principles of the Liberal party as it showed the ability of the parliament to represent different interests and legislate accordingly. It sought to increase the representativeness of parliament and in doing so increase popular acquiescence for parliament and bind the people to the legislature. Decline in reverence for parliament was a worrying aspect of the outdoor agitation of 1830-32, as radicals increasingly sought alternative means to express their discontent. Most Whigs certainly wished for a return to the kind of reverence that was common to the eighteenth century, which Linda Colley has demonstrated in her analysis of patriotism in the “long” eighteenth century.[5] Nevertheless, the Reform Act was far from a concessionary piece of legislation. Instead it “sought to reconcile the people to government by emphasizing the representativeness of parliament as the protector of interests and the expression of the national will”[6] This certainly, as Mandler, has shown played into Whig hands who valued institutional reform so highly and held parliament as the reconciler of all sectional interests. Whig obsession with parliamentary hegemony is perhaps best demonstrated by the parliament of 1836, which was designed to amaze. One of the most impressive features was certainly the eighteen bronze statues of barons and prelates signing the Magna Carta. The Whigs had their own model of parliamentary reform and it is wrong, as Southgate among others have done, to view the reform act as a piece of concessionary legislation. Indeed, it is one of the many idiosyncrasies of nineteenth-century historiography that for so long now reform has been seen as a concessionary measure, designed to pass power from land to town, and as a gradual step towards democracy by enfranchising a vague occupational body known as the “middle class.”[7] The reasons for this remain vague though most likely it is because of the startlingly lack of archival material concerning the Act so historians have instead often turned to the writings of polemicists, who viewed the act in these peculiar terms. Regardless, Professor Moore has shown that the Act was more curative. Increasing the ability of parliament to represent various different interests would cure any outdoor agitation. Ministers set boundaries geographically and socially so that it would provide representation for some interest. Indeed, the permanence of this idea of “representativeness” is an interesting phenomenon. In introducing a reform bill in 1854, Russell argued that it was necessary as the Reform Bill of 1832 had been too successful. Parliament had become nothing more than a great mix of various sectional pressures with no overall consensus possible. In 1832, rotten boroughs and freeman constituencies were abolished as they did not represent any interest and were merely a product of aristocratic coercion. Although, it is interesting that even though the disenfranchised boroughs went mainly to large cities, such was the Whig obsession with representing various interests that a few new boroughs were enfranchised on the basis of the various interests they represented, rather than their size. A prime example cited by Boyd Hilton in his epic book “A Mad, Bad & Dangerous People?” is that of Frome, with only an exiguous population of around 12,000 though the centre of the woolen industry in Somerset. Equally, Moore has shown in his analysis of the debates on Reform in parliament that desire to separate rural and urban interests, particularly urban penetration of the counties was common among the Whigs and ministers; a point which is frequently ignored, peculiarly so by Parry. Indeed, Whig ministers only accepted an amendment to the borough freeholder clause, which gave him a vote in the counties in some circumstances, as a corollary of the “Chandos” clause.[8] The Reform Bill then in terms of the formation of the Liberal party allowed the greater representation of various interests and in doing so bound the people to parliament. Perhaps the best testimony to its success is the change in radical discourse following reform, which according to Taylor began to appeal to the sovereignty of the Commons, rather than some vague ancient constitution and glorious revolution.

Reinvigoration of local government was seen as the natural concomitant of reform of parliament and sought further to bind the people to aristocratic leadership. Changes in beer sales in 1830 and in the position of poaching in 1830 and 1831 respectively were all part of a general movement to remove arbitrary, discretionary government in place of a set of fixed principles and in doing so limit criticism of the Commons. The most obvious example of this is the changes made to the municipal corporations in 1835. Corporations, hitherto seen as a self-perpetuating oligarchy of merchants, who levied rates arbitrarily to fit their own ends, would be replaced by a more accountable style of local government, subject to election by local ratepayers, which in the Whig mind at least, would increase public acquiescence. This was only one object of reform however as part of the Whig-Liberal creed was their confidence in the ability of aristocratic legislative initiative to shape public behaviour. Any analysis of the Reform Act would lead to this conclusion and the reform of the corporations was no different. The regular auditing of accounts and corporation accountability to ratepayers were intended to help drive down expenditure and encourage individual independence. A more striking example of this is the Poor Law of 1834, viewed by posterity as one of those seminal acts that defined the mindset of an entire epoch. For this reason, it is not surprising that the secondary literature on the Poor Law is extremely vast. Perhaps part of the attention on the Poor Law is the obvious evangelical overtones with emphasis on the natural order designed by Providence, coupled with the apparent Benthamism, where it was envisaged that once the pre-1834 system had been eradicated, the strivings of both landlord and labourer could be undertaken for mutual benefice. Relief of poverty was taken out of the hands of the lenient parish vestries and local magistrates and placed into the hands of local guardians, elected by ratepayers. Ratepayer pressure it was envisaged would lead to a fall in poor relief expenditure – and indeed it did, with expenditure falling from £6.83m to £5.53m between 1830 and 1835.[9] Also implicit in the Act was the role of indoor relief. The stigma of the workhouse it was believed would deter labourers from pauperization unless it was absolutely unavoidable and encourage them to fend for themselves. Such a harsh system of relief surely, more so than anything, does discredit to the dominant view of Whig government in this period, that the Whigs, faced with irregular support to the Commons were subject to the whims of outdoor clamour. Rather, an analysis of local government reform reveals not only the importance of public acceptance of legislation, but also the ability of aristocratic leadership legislate as they saw fit for the moral good of the people.

The Whig-Liberal mindset is probably best understood however by its attitude towards religion and Ireland; two issues so often intertwined. Historiographical trends have tended to ignore the influence of these two. The reasons for it are difficult to fathom. Perhaps, it is because the Whig-Liberal government of 1835-41 is often treated dominated by radical and Irish thought and thus any reform on these two issues are seen as merely concessionary. This would certainly explain why economic concerns and laissez-faire individualism, the main legacy of Peel’s government, have come to dominate the historiography of the formation of Liberalism. Even Boyd Hilton, who views laissez-faire in terms of “moderate” evangelicalism, rather than Cobdenite cosmopolitanism,[10] fits this trend. However, the works of Parry and Brent have bucked the trend with their emphasis on religious reform. Ignoring religious as well as Irish reform would certainly be a mistake when the Whig-Liberal mindset is considered. It is one of the many paradoxes of nineteenth century British history that despite over fifty years in the political wilderness, the Whigs failed to develop any sort of complex. The reasons for this are manifold. Certainly the Grand Whiggery’s cosmopolitan lifestyle and the narrowing of this clique through the constant intermarriage between a few select families (such as the Gowers, Cavendishes and Cowper-Temples)[11] meant that they saw themselves as a privileged group within a privileged group. Whatever the reasons, the Whigs seemed more willing to blame their exclusion from politics on skullduggery, most usually on behalf of local Tory landowners but also curiously sometimes the monarch as well. When the Reform Act seemed to bind the various hitherto unrepresented interests to parliament, it was only natural that Whig confidence grew and they sought to legislate in other areas. Two such areas were religion and Ireland. Here the aims of Whig-Liberals were once again twofold: to increase the representation of various interests and in doing so harness public opinion to aristocratic leadership and also, to legislate for the moral improvement of the people. One such example is appropriation. This was seen as the natural concomitant of Stanley’s Irish Temporalities Act in 1833, which tried to make the church establishment more acceptable to a hostile Irish (mostly Catholic or Dissenting) population, by severely reducing its size and its finances. This obviously led to calls for the use of any surplus revenue for utilitarian, sectional purposes and Russell finally agreed to this when introducing his 1834 Tithe Bill. Parry actually sees the appropriation issue as the most important step in the formation of the Liberal party. Certainly the introduction of a body of committees investigating the issue led to the secession of Stanleyites, allowing the Whig-Liberals to pursue a purely “liberal” strategy. Most importantly however, and the point Parry makes, appropriation represented the aforementioned aims of Liberal government: to bind people to government by demonstrating its responsiveness, and also to improve the moral behaviour of the people – it was believed that appropriation would encourage a more conciliatory attitude to British rule in Ireland from the various Catholic priest-demagogues, who whipped up sectional hostility. Similar reform reveals the same aims. The lapsing of the Coercion Act in 1834, replaced by an established, and mostly Catholic police force, and the appointment of stipendiary justices in Dublin, to the chagrin of local Orangemen magistrates are two examples. Equally, with regards to religion, the same two aims are clear: the granting of a charter to London University with no religious profession required, the ending of Church of England monopoly over registration and ceremonies and the abolition of the Tithe - all in 1836 – are just a few examples. On a number of other issues, further reform was often frustrated by a conservative parliament. The most obvious examples are Russell’s attempts to introduce appropriation in the Irish church and his educational reforms in 1838 and 1839 respectively.

Hitherto, the Whigs sought to define good government in constitutional and religious terms only. The main legacy of Peel to the Liberal party was to show members of Parliament that any future government had to be more reassuring on economic issues. This was the main legacy of his various economic reforms in 1841-46 though particularly of the repeal of the Corn Laws. Peel’s main achievements in this sphere were twofold: firstly, the implementation of a sound economic and fiscal policy – by introducing the income tax in 1842, Peel was able to reduce the annual deficit of £2.4million - and secondly, the creation of a policy, which at least feigned economic disinterest and in doing so, thus absolving the state from blame. This was achieved through tariff reform and the repeal of the Corn Laws. The two were obviously not mutually exclusive. For example, higher and more regular revenue yields following the implementation of an income tax allowed Peel to tinker with tariff reform. Import duties on all raw materials and finished articles were cut to five and twenty per cent respectively in 1842. Such was the success that Peel was able to go even further by removing all export duties and import duties on 430 articles. Recent historiographical trends have often portrayed Peel as a precursor of later Liberalism and in economic terms, there is certainly much evidence for this. Peel was not the flaccid moderate of the A-level textbooks. He had a strong view of executive government and the sovereignty of the church-state relationship. Nonetheless, he was probably much closer to later Liberals in economic terms than the Tories. Regardless, Peel’s repeal of the Corn Laws was a great boon to later Liberal government. Such was the ideological pull of protectionism among Conservatives, as Anna Gambles has shown in her analysis of the Tory periodicals Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and the Quarterly Review that the inevitable outcome of reform was Tory schism. 114 Tories voted with Peel and 241 against. The protectionists, led by Disraeli, distanced themselves from the majority of the Peelites, who slowly gravitated towards the Liberal party and in doing so bolstered Liberal parliamentary dominance. Had government voted in favour of Russell’s fixed duty of 8s per quarter in April 1841, or called Peel’s bluff over his threat to resign unless the Commons overturned their rejection of Ashley’s ten-hour amendment act, as he surely must have hoped for, the outcome of nineteenth-century British history could have been so much different. As it was, the only possible beneficiaries of Corn Law repeal were the Liberals. The ball was now firmly in the Liberal court, but they had to make sure unlike Wellington in 1830, they took the opportunity. Peel, as Hilton has shown in his highly influential article in 1879 for the Historical Journal, in repealing the Corn Laws, was motivated by a belief in the “natural order” of things;[12] a bizarre combination of Butlerian cosmology, evangelical individualism and Benthamite consequentialism. Free trade had placed Britain at the mercy of Providence and subject to his machinations. In doing so, they absolved the state from blame. This not only increased public acquiescence but would educate people, as the Poor Law had intended to do, to stand on their own two feet. “Whereas the Whigs had sought to establish the state’s openness primarily in constitutional terms, from 1846 onwards British opinion was led to judge politicians also by their distance from economic vested interests”[13] It was this more than anything that accelerated the transfer from Whiggism to out-and-out Liberalism.

There were two shared paradigms of Liberal government throughout this period. One was the responsiveness of ministers to whatever public opinion was clamouring for. However, this does not mean that Liberal politicians were demagogues. An ideal Liberal politician would be kind, responsive and intuitive to the needs of his constituents, but at the same time would be firm and able to distinguish between “real” and “immature” public opinion. The Liberal MP would often have to legislate despite public opposition. This is the second point to be made: that Liberals believed that once public opinion was harnessed to government, it could legislate accordingly without fear of rebuff if their legislative initiatives would benefit the people in some way. The Reform Act increased the representation of previously ignored interests and bound the people to aristocratic leadership. This played into the hands of the Whigs as institutional reform, as Mandler has shown, was the main preoccupation of the Grand Whiggery. The Whigs were only given this opportunity thanks to a miscalculation of the longevity of public clamour for some form of concessionary reform. It is a sobering thought that the fall of the ancien régime and the formation of the Liberalism, which became the dominant ideology of nineteenth century Britain, rested on the decision of one man not to consider even reform an open question. If there is one main issue with Mandler’s work however it is his overemphasis on organic political reform, as Whigs were willing to demonstrate their responsiveness and inculcate certain behaviour. Here, we should point to religious, Irish and local government reform. However, if the main issue with Mandler’s work is his firm distinction between Whigs and Liberals, then the main problem with Parry’s work is his ability at times to confuse Whigs and Liberals. Throughout his work, he suggests a love of laissez-faire individualism to be a common theme of Whig-Liberalism even though political economy, which may have been a common topic of conversation among the Bowood circle, was rarely discussed at Holland House. Rather, the Whigs were never too sure on economic issues and Peel’s legacy was that any future Liberal government could no longer ignore economic issues. The Whigs were still stuck in an outmoded definition of vested interests in non-economic terms. Decay and corruption were common contemporary themes – a common iconographic image at the time for example was a shipwreck – and in order to portray an image of vitality, the Liberals now had to display responsiveness in economic issues. Of course, once again the Liberals were rather fortuitous. Contrary to Parry therefore, I would argue that the Liberal party did not develop in full until after 1846. The Liberals now had to prove that they could take the initiative and if there is one man that did so it was Palmerston. Palmerston was able to cultivate an air of economic frugality and retrenchennt through various reforms such as the 1861 Public Accounts Act and 1866 Exchequer and Audit Departments Act. At the same time however, particularly through foreign policy, he was able to unite the people and crucially the press too to constitutional issues. Such was the spell he held over the nation that he was able to portray the bully-boy tactics of Don Pacifico in 1850 and the bombardment of Canton in 1856 in a good light. If the Reform Act had shown the importance of binding the people to aristocratic government through constitutional reform, then the repeal of the Corn Laws did the same for economic reform. The Liberals had to be more reassuring on this issue and economic reform became a staple of Liberal policy. Contrast this to Althrop’s failed attempt to lead an opposition in his rooms in Albany over a policy of taxation government and retrenchment. Economic issues were deemed insignificant. Liberalism was therefore a post-1846 phenomenon. If it is necessary to pin down one moment (and it is difficult to do so), when Liberalism finally emerged from its Whig cocoon then surely Palmerston’s cabinet of 1859, which was a combination of Liberals (Palmerston, Grey, Wood and Lewis), Whig-Liberals (Russell), Peelites (Gladstone, Herbert and Cardwell) and radicals (Villiers and Milnor Gibson) under the umbrella of responsiveness in not only constitutional and religious matters, but also economic ones, is that moment.
[1] This point is particularly acrimonious, as most historians do not view the formation of two-party politics until much later. Boyd Hilton for example argues that this occurred around the 1820s. However in response I would point to the partisan atmosphere of the 1784 election, where, according to poll book analysis, plumping was commonplace.
[2] For example, Pitt always referred to himself as an “independent” Whig, but very few historians cast him in the traditional Whig mould. Also, the word “Tory” was only ever used pejoratively until the Reform Crisis though I have personally never heard of the 1820s mentioned as a period of “liberal” Whiggism.
[3] M. Taylor, the Decline of British Radicalism, 1847-60 (1995), p24
[4] J. Parry, The Rise & Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain (1993), p3
[5] L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (1992), p50-52
[6] Op.cit, J. Parry, p73
[7] For example, “the line drawn for the exercise of the franchise was precisely made to include all members of the middle and upper classes and to exclude all wage-labourers.” D. Thompson, The Chartists, p5
[8] The “Chandos” clause led to the enfranchisement of the £50 tenant-at-will in the counties as the system of leasing was no longer the norm in the counties. The Whigs however, led by Althorp, viewed this as dangerous as they were subject to landlord influence and saw them as no more than opulent serfs. Urban penetration of the counties was seen as a counterpunch to the potential influence of pernicious landlords.
[9] Op.cit, J. Parry, p126
[10] See for example, Peel: A Reappraisal, Historical Journal (1979)
[11] Though interestingly according to Mandler, the influence of the Howards seemed to wane by the nineteenth century
[12] Interestingly however, perhaps with one eye on Thatcher, posterity has tended to cast Peel incorrectly as optimistic in the benefits of free trade, particularly to commerce.
[13] Op.cit, J. Parry, p165