2

THE DUKE LOSES GROUND.

from Paris to the towns of Britain. The inevitable ignorance of nearly all Britons as to the most recent business done in their Foreign Office made it impossible for the Liberal politicians of the towns to know that the Duke of Wellington was behaving quite fairly to the new and Liberal Government of France, and to the Flemings, who were trying to imitate the French. Party spirit forbade the Liberals in the House of Commons to recognise the Duke's honest and somewhat effective attempt at frugal management of the Treasury. The overrated wisdom of stockjobbers was brought to bear on him; when he checked the King's wish to go through a mob on his way to dine with aldermen, he thought in his simplicity that he was saving a good many heads from the staves of Mr. Peel's new police; it turned out that besides this he was giving the stock-jobbers a chance of gaining a few thousands of pounds at the expense of the timorous people who, believing that the King and the Duke were menaced by conspirators, hastened to sell their claims on the State. It is a compendious way of blaming a Minister to say that he has sent down the price of Consols; and those who have the trick of throwing phrases at fallen Cabinets have contrived for fifty years to speak of the fall of Consols in November 1830 as if it were a conclusive proof of Tory incapacity. It is more reasonable, though less brilliant, to say that the Tories must take their portion, which is no doubt a great portion, of the blame due to all the educated Britons for allowing the existence of that stupidity which used to break out

THE DUKE'S RESIGNATION.

3

in credulity and alarm. If the credit of the State fell when William IV. broke his dinner engagement with the Lord Mayor, it was because a certain fraction of the claims on the State, called the National Debt, was held by people who could sell them whenever they pleased, and because amongst these holders of stock there were some who were at the mercy of a rumour or a lie. The breeders of alarming rumours would be as numerous and active now as they were in the first thirty years of the century, if there were a sufficient mass of ignorance to operate upon. If the Tories had been allowed to indulge their worst habits there would still be fuel for the sparks of irrational

fear.

The Duke of Wellington lost supreme power, as he expected to lose it, because he offended his independent supporters by suddenly admitting Catholics to political places; and he provoked new and old adversaries by hastily exaggerating his faith in the representative system, which they thought a sham. Therefore it was right that he should yield his post; but let no one say that he damaged the State's credit, or injured any fellow-countrymen, except some helpless dupes of the stock-jobbers, by keeping the King out of the streets.

About the time of the Duke's retirement there were troubles in the shire of which he was the Lord-Lieutenant; and he, who had just been settling his country's posture in the moving scene of Europe, was one of many magistrates bound to be on the look out for rustic breakers of the King's peace. Some

parts of England lying south of the Thames were that autumn disturbed by a loose, headlong company of poor men rebelling against machinery. Starting from Kent, and traversing Hampshire, they stopped here and there to break the machines which were superseding the flail-machines which enabled one or two horses to do the work of many human arms. It was known to a few students that a thrashingmachine, like a wheelbarrow or a saw, was a help towards making the human race richer by giving it more command over nature. It was apparent to many practical men that they could by giving up the flail 'save some money;' the practical man is satisfied as soon as he can arrive at this expression, which seems to him ultimate. Benevolent people, who were not students nor money makers, thought it grievous to use a machine and throw men out of employment. Benevolent people approached the cottagers mainly through Sunday schools, and in the Sunday teaching there was no lesson to explain the temporary loss of employment caused by a machine as being only a drawback to the permanent advantage. The wellmeaning friends of the labourers could not meet their discontent except by preaching submission; in their best frame of mind they reserved their own sympathy; in moments of less self-restraint they favoured the resistance to art, and joined in lamenting the covetousness of improving farmers. They were almost disabled from arguing with the malcontents, because they did not feel sure that they were wrong in demanding employment.

For some thirty years it had been tolerably easy to keep in good humour or in sullen apathy the labourers of the southern shires, for they were in childhood coaxed into learning by heart a theological document part of which was intelligible to them-to wit, the part which set forth the duty they owed to their betters; and their betters requited them amply for learning this lesson by giving them, as of right, weekly stipends whenever they were not earning wages. Most of the South Britons who formed public opinion and held on to the tail of Government were established in the belief that between the Catechism of the Church and the doles of the parish overseer they could manage all rustics except poachers and smugglers. Townsfolk might be irritable and easy to beguile, but villagers, surely, were charmed against evil thoughts by being illiterate. It was a current maxim that a little knowledge was dangerous. So it is, when it is so little as not to create a consciousness of ignorance. But even the denial of book and pen, even the artificial enhancing of the price of newspapers, could not exclude the dangerous flying dust of knowledge. Ploughmen and thrashers learnt, without having the alphabet, that some hopeful change had in the summer taken place in France; and to them all the world that was not England was France. The world was jumping; people from the towns, hawkers and vagrants, spoke of Reform; what could Reform be, if it did not mean better wages? Wages were low; the rustics thought they were low because of machinery. A few out of many acted on this

6

ALARM OF THE SQUIRES.

notion, and the chant of legal freedom was transposed into the march of riot and arson.

No wonder the squires and the parsons were scared by this variety of anarchy. People of an historical turn of mind ran this little bead of crime along the string of generalizing memory till it lay close to things that had happened fourteen or twenty years ago-the crimes of the Luddites, who broke lace machines, the crimes of the Blanketeers, who started from Lancashire on a crusade. Others, who had more taste for inventing a case than for comparing maladies, pointed to the diffusion of useful knowledge as a remedy for such a disease as the hatred of machinery. There must have been a few good patriots who fitted the phenomenon of machine-breaking into a theory of state-holding; who connected the rustics' passion for custom with the falling Tory's prejudices, and expected the coming Whigs to reform Parliament with a view to scientific legislation fruitful of economic schemes.

All agreed that, through the ordinary action of magistrates and of skilled lawyers, the poor ignorant rustics must be chastised. Alarming as the outrages were to people wholly unaccustomed to war, there was not so much trepidation as had been caused in the Sidmouth times by less formidable movements.

The breakers of thrashing-machines began in Kent, troubled parts of Hants, Berks, and Wilts, and reached Cranborne Chase, on the edge of Dorset.1 Local

1 A Tory duke wrote to the Duke of Wellington that the part of the country in which he was residing was 'wholly in the hands of rebels.'