Still, though on this single point the success of the scheme did not fully correspond to the hopes of those who had framed it, it was one which did great honor to their ingenuity as well as to their philanthropy (Lord Stanley, as Colonial Secretary, being the minister to whose department it belonged). And the nation itself is fairly entitled to no small credit for its cordial, ungrudging approval of a measure of such unprecedented liberality. Indeed, the credit deserved was frankly allowed it by foreign countries. To quote the language of an eloquent historian of the period, "the generous acquiescence of the people under this prodigious increase of their burdens has caused the moralists of other nations to declare that the British Act of Emancipation stands alone for moral grandeur in the history of the world."[228] And, in respect of the personal liberty of the subject, it may be said to have completed the British constitution; establishing the glorious principle, that freedom is not limited to one part of our sovereign's dominions, to these islands alone, but that in no part of the world in which the British flag is erected can any sort of slavery exist for a single moment.
The abolition of the political authority of the East India Company, which took place some years after the time at which we have arrived, and which will be mentioned in a subsequent chapter, would make it unnecessary to mention the renewal of its charter, which took place at this time, were it not that the force of public opinion again made itself felt in some important limitations of its previous rights. The monopoly of the trade with China which the Company had hitherto enjoyed was resented as an injustice by the great body of our merchants and ship-owners, who contended that all British subjects had an equal right to share in advantages which had been won by British arms. The government and Parliament adopted their view, and the renewed charter extinguished not only that monopoly, but even the Company's exclusive trading privileges in India itself, though these, like the rights of the West India planters over their slaves, were purchased of it by an annuity for forty years, which was estimated as an equivalent for the loss of profit which must result to the proprietors of the Company's stock from the sudden alteration. It cannot be said that any constitutional principle was involved in what was merely a commercial regulation, or relaxation of such regulations. Yet it may not be thought inopportune to mention the transaction thus briefly, as one important step toward the establishment of free-trade, which, at the end of fifty years from the time when Pitt first laid the foundation of it, was gradually forcing itself on all our statesmen, as the only sound principle of commercial intercourse between nations. The laborious historian of Europe during these years finds fault with the arrangements now made, but only on the ground that they did not go far enough in that direction; that, while "everything was done to promote the commercial and manufacturing interests of England, nothing was done for those of Hindostan;"[229] that, "while English cotton goods were admitted for a nominal duty into India, there was no corresponding advantage thought of to the industry of India in supplying the markets of the country." The objection was not unfounded; but the system of which it complains was too one-sided to be long maintained, and in less than ten years a great financial reform had swept away the great mass of import duties, and so far had placed the Indian manufacturer on the same level with his fellow-subjects of English blood.
The disturbances which agitated the first years of the reign of William IV. were not caused solely by the excitement attendant on the passing of the Reform Bill. There had been extensive agricultural distress in England, which had shown itself in an outbreak of new crimes, the burning of ricks in the farm-yards, and the destruction of machinery, to which the peasantry were persuaded by designing demagogues to attribute the scarcity of employment. But statesmen of both parties were agreed in believing that a great deal of the poverty which, especially in the agricultural counties, had become the normal condition of the laborer, might be ascribed to the pernicious working of the Poor-law, which subsisted with scarcely any alteration as it had been originally enacted in the reign of Elizabeth. There was even reason to doubt whether the slight changes which had been made had been improvements. If they had been in the direction of increased liberality to the poor man who needed parish relief, and had to some extent lessened his discomforts, they had at the same time tended greatly to demoralize both him and his employer, by introducing a system of out-door relief, which, coupled with the practice of regarding such relief as a legitimate addition to wages, led the former to feel no shame at underpaying his workmen, and the workman to feel no shame at depending on the parish for a portion of his means of subsistence. It was not to be wondered at that under such a system the poor-rates gradually rose to the prodigious amount of seven millions and a quarter of money; or that the rate-payers began to clamor against such a state of things, as imposing on them a burden beyond their power to bear. It was evident that it was an evil which imperatively demanded a remedy; and accordingly one of the first objects to which Lord Grey's Cabinet turned its attention after the completion of the Reform Bill was the amendment of the Poor-law.
The scheme which in the spring of 1834 they introduced to Parliament was the first instance of the adoption in this country of that system of centralization which has long been a favorite with some of the Continental statesmen, but which is not equally in harmony with the instincts of our people, generally more attached to local government. But, if ever centralization could commend itself to the English mind, it might well be when a new law and a new principle of action were to be introduced, in the carrying out of which uniformity of practice over the whole kingdom was especially desirable. Accordingly, the government bill proposed the establishment of a Board of Commissioners to whom the general administration of the Poor-laws over the whole kingdom was to be intrusted. They were to have power to make rules and regulations as to the mode or modes of relief to be given, subject to the approval of the Secretary of State, that thus the establishment of one uniform system over the whole country might be secured. Power was to be given to unite several parishes into one union, and to erect large workhouses for the several parishes thus massed together;[230] and every union was to be under the management of boards of guardians, elected by the rate-payers of the different parishes, with the addition of the resident magistrates as ex officio guardians. Lord Althorp, who introduced the bill, admitted that such extensive powers as he proposed to confer on the Board of Commissioners were "an anomaly in the constitution," but pleaded the necessity of the case as their justification, since it was indispensable to vest a discretionary power somewhere, and the government was too fully occupied with the business of the nation, while the local magistrates would be destitute of the sources of information requisite to form a proper opinion on the subject. The commissioners alone, being exclusively devoted to the subject, and being alone in possession of all the information that could be collected, were really the only body who could fairly be trusted to form correct opinions on it.[231] The fact of the creation of such a board being "an anomaly," or, as it might rather have been called, a novelty in the constitution, does not seem an insuperable objection, unless it were also inconsistent or at variance with the fundamental principles of the constitution, and that can hardly be alleged in this instance. It is true that local management, whether its range were wide or narrow, whether covering the business of a county or limited to a single parish, had been the general rule; but, like every other arrangement for the conduct of affairs of any kind, that local management was inherently subject to the supreme authority and interference of Parliament. Nor, as the maintenance of this Parliamentary authority, as the supreme referee in the last resource, was provided for by the subordination of the commissioners for the approval of their regulations to the Secretary of State, does it seem that the arrangement now proposed and adopted can be said to have been inconsistent with constitutional principle. And the necessity for some change of that nature was clearly made out by the abuses which, undeniably, had been suffered to grow up under the old system.