One of their leaders tells us that his old employer called to him, as they marched through the streets, and said, anxiously, that he "hoped they intended no harm."
"No, no, my dear master," was the answer, "if any wrong or violence takes place, they will be committed by men of a different stamp from these."
The meeting had scarcely opened, however, and the chief speaker begun his address, when the magistrates ordered mounted soldiers to arrest the speaker, and to break up the meeting.
"Forward!" was the command; and as the trumpet sounded, the soldiers dashed into the struggling multitude of unarmed people. In ten minutes the vast crowd was scattered. To accomplish this, five or six persons were killed, and fifty or more were wounded.
This "Peterloo Massacre" caused great indignation among liberal-minded people. It led the government, on the other hand, to pass very severe laws against political meetings, against speaking or printing criticisms of the government, and against drilling private persons. The chief effect of all this was to show the leaders of the Whig party that, unless they joined with these "Radicals," in reforming the government and in taking it out of the hands of the Tories, either liberty would be lost, or there might be a revolution which would upset all social order and government.
The wisest of the Whigs, therefore, took up in Parliament the cause of reform, and soon their efforts began to be crowned with success.
The first great reforms were to repeal the laws which forbade anyone to be a member of Parliament except those who worshiped according to the Church of England. Protestant Dissenters had long been allowed to sit as members of Parliament, in spite of the law, but it was not until 1828 that this was made legal. The next year the laws which kept Catholics out of office were also repealed.
The repealing of the laws against the Catholics was chiefly the work of an Irish Catholic leader named Daniel O'Connell. He was a great public speaker, and with the aid of the Catholic priests he organized the small Irish voters, so that they no longer voted for candidates named by their landlords, but for men favorable to their own cause. The Tory party, the leaders of the Church of England, and perhaps a majority of the English people, were opposed to the Catholic claims, and raised the cry of "No Popery," and "Church and King." George III. had been led to believe that the oath which he had taken as King to "uphold the Church of England" forbade him consenting to laws favorable to the Catholics; and when Pitt had proposed such laws it had brought on one of George's fits of insanity. George IV. now held the same ideas, but people cared less for his opinions.
The question came to a head when O'Connell was himself elected to the House of Commons, in 1829. He was a catholic, and could not take the oaths which were required of all members of that body. But, if he were not admitted to Parliament, all Ireland would burst out into revolt. So, the King's chief ministers—the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel—used their influence to pass a bill which gave Catholics the same political rights as Protestants.
This was a wise step, but it angered their Tory followers and weakened their party. It made it easier for the Whigs, soon after this, to get control of the government and to pass a yet greater reform measure.
This was the reform of the representation in the House of Commons itself. Many of the members, in that body, represented what were known as "rotten boroughs"—that is, towns which never had much population, or which had so declined that they were no longer populous. Some places which sent representatives were mounds and ditches, without any inhabitants, or were towns which had years before been swallowed up by the sea. Sometimes they were called "pocket boroughs," because the lord of the land practically named the members himself—carried them around "in his pocket," so to speak. On the other hand, many of the great manufacturing towns, which had sprung up as a result of the Industrial Revolution, and no representative in Parliament. Some members of the House of Lords practically appointed as many as eleven members each in the House of Commons, while the great majority of the people, both in the towns and in the country, had no right of voting, even for a single member. Those who did have the right frequently sold their votes to the highest bidder, when they were not forced to vote as their landlords commanded them. It was generally known that seats in the House of Commons could be bought for a certain sum of money.
For a long time, all proposals to reform Parliament were successfully resisted. But when the Duke of Wellington, in 1830, declared, as head of the government, that these arrangements were the very best that could possibly be invented, his statement was too much even for his followers.
"What is the matter?" asked the Duke of a friend who sat by him, as loud murmurs arose in different parts of the House.
"Nothing," was the reply, "except that you have announced your own downfall."
So it proved, for, soon after this, Earl Grey became the head of a Whig ministry, in Wellington's place. The cause of Parliamentary reform was now taken up in earnest, and a Reform Bill was introduced in the House of Commons. It was bitterly opposed, and its fate was long doubtful. In a letter to a friend, the historian Macaulay, who was himself a member of the Commons, gives this description of the passing of the first vote in its favor:
"Everybody was desponding. 'We have lost it! I do not think we are two hundred and fifty; they are three hundred.' This was the talk on our benches. As the count of our number proceeded, the interest was insupportable. 'Two hundred and ninety-one, two hundred and ninety-two—' We were all standing up, and counting with the tellers. At 'three hundred' there was a short cry of joy; at 'three hundred and two,' another. We knew that we could not be severely beaten.
"First, we heard that they were three hundred and three; then that number rose to three hundred and ten; then went down to three hundred and seven. We were all breathless with anxiety, when one of our side, who stood near the door, jumped up on a bench and cried out—
" 'They are only three hundred and one!'
"We set up a shout that you might have heard to Charing Cross, stamping against the floor and clapping our hands. No sooner were the outer doors opened, than another shout answered that within the House. All the passages and stairs were thronged by people who had waited, until four o'clock in the morning, to know the result. I called a cab, and the first thing the driver asked was—
" 'Is the bill carried?'
" 'Yes, by one vote.'
" 'Thank God for it, sir!'
"And away I rode, and so ended a scene which will probably never be equated."
But the battle was not yet over. This House of Commons had to be dismissed, and a new one elected, before the bill finally passed the body. Then the House of Lords rejected it. The House of Commons then passed the bill a second time; and such an agitation broke out among the people that, in the end, the Lords gave way. In June, 1832, the great Reform Bill became law.
By its provisions, many of the small boroughs lost their representatives in Parliament, while the great manufacturing towns gained representation. At the same time the "franchise," or right to vote, was made more liberal, so that small farmers and shopkeepers secured the vote. Later laws, passed in 1867 and in 1884, further reformed the House of Commons, so that it is now practically as representative of the people as our Congress, and the right to vote is almost as general as with us.
The reform of Parliament caused a real revolution in the government, though a peaceful one. For fifty years the Tories had been in almost constant control. Now, for thirty-five years, the government was almost continuously in the hands of the Whigs, and they used the opportunity to pass many needed reforms.