History of the Four Georges, and of William IV, Volume 4 — lxxviii. Still the Reign of Reform, Part 1

[Sidenote: 1836--The Universities of London] The movement for the diffusion of education among the people had been making steady progress during the reign of William the Fourth, and some of the most distinct and lasting memorials of that movement have come to be associated with the history of the reign.

One of these was the granting of a charter for the establishment of a great university which was to bear the name of the capital, and was to confer its degrees, its honors, and its offices without any conditions as to the religious profession of those whom it educated, and whom it taught and qualified by appointment to conduct the education of others.

The old Universities of Oxford and Cambridge were then directly associated with the State Church, and only gave the stamp of their approval and the right to teach to those who professed the religion established by law.

There had been growing up, for some time, a feeling in the community that there was need for a system of university teaching which should be open alike to the members of all creeds and denominations, and even to those who did not profess to subscribe to the doctrines of any particular creed, or to enroll themselves in the ranks of any particular denomination.

The institutions which are now known as University College, London, and the University of London are among the most remarkable growths of this movement.

After years of effort the charters for these institutions were granted by King William in 1836, and it is needless to say that University College has played a great part in the spreading of education among the middle and poorer classes throughout the country.

Henry Brougham was one of the most active promoters of the effort to bring the higher education and {262} its honors within the reach of all classes and creeds, and his name will always be distinctly associated with the rapid progress made in the spread of knowledge during the earlier part of the nineteenth century.

Brougham was one of the founders and promoters of the "Penny Cyclopaedia for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge," which delighted some of our grandfathers, amazed and bewildered others, and filled yet others with a holy horror at the daring effort to upset all the wholesome distinctions of ranks and classes by cramming the lower orders with an amount of knowledge wholly unsuited to their subordinate condition, and unfitting them for the proper discharge of the duties associated with that station in life to which it had pleased Providence to call them.

Brougham also took a leading part in the founding of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which was established by Sir David Brewster, Sir Roderick Murchison, and many other men famous in science and in letters in 1831. It has been holding its annual meetings in all the great cities and towns of these islands ever since, and is not likely to be interrupted in the continuance of its work.

The British Association was the subject of a good deal of cheap ridicule in its early days, and caricaturists, most of them long since forgotten, delighted in humorous illustrations of the oddities by which social life was to be profusely diversified when science was taught at popular meetings, and not merely men, but even women and young women, could sit in the public hall and listen to great professors discoursing on the construction of the earth and the laws which regulate the movements of the heavenly bodies.

The present generation has almost completely forgotten even the fact that the British Association was once a familiar and favorite subject for the pen and pencil of satirists.

"The schoolmaster is abroad" was an expression used by Brougham to illustrate the educational movement which was going on in his time, and which he did as much as any man could have done to set and to keep in motion.

King William himself, we may be sure, took only a very moderate interest in all these goings {263} on, but, at all events, he did not stand in the way of the general educational movement; and indeed he gave it a kindly word of patronage and encouragement whenever it seemed a part of his State functions to sanction the progress of science by his royal recognition.

[Sidenote: 1831--The press-gang] Among the many reforms accomplished in this reign of reform was that which effected the practical abolition of the system of impressment for the Navy, that system which had so long worked its purposes through the action of what was familiarly known as the press-gang.

The press-gang system had been in force from very remote days indeed, for it is shown by statute and by record to have been in operation before 1378. In 1641 the practice was declared illegal by Parliament; but Parliament might just as well not have troubled itself upon the subject, for the impressment of seamen went on just as if nothing had happened.

Whenever seamen were required to man the royal fleet in time of war, the press-gang instantly came into operation.

Its mode of action was simple and straight-forward, and consisted of the forcible arrest and complete capture of merchant seamen and fishermen, or stalwart young men of any kind, in seaport towns, who looked as if they had seen service on some kind of sailing craft.

The ordinary practice was that an officer and a party of seamen and marines landed from some ships of war in the harbor, and seized and carried off any number of men who seemed to them suitable for their purpose, and dragged them as prisoners on board war vessels, where they were compelled to serve until such time as their help might be no longer needed.

The literature of England, almost down to our own times, is diversified here and there by illustrations of the scenes which were created in our seaport towns by this practice.

Smollett has more than one animated picture of this kind.

The sea stories of Captain Marryat's days abound in such illustrations, and even romance of the higher order, and poetry itself, have found subjects for picturesque and pathetic narrative in the stories of young men thus torn from their families without a moment's {264} notice, and compelled to go on a ship of war and fight the foreign enemy at sea.

The pay of an able seaman in a ship of war was, in those times, very poor; the life was one of hardship, and there was little to tempt a young man of ordinary ways and temperament to enter the naval service of his sovereign.

The seaport towns and the towns on the great rivers were called upon by royal authority to supply a certain proportionate number of men for service in the Navy, and the local governing bodies did their best, we may be sure, by the offer of bounties and other encouragements, to induce young men to volunteer for the sea.

In times of war, however, when sudden demands were made on the part of the Crown for the efficient manning of the Navy, these encouragements and temptations often failed to procure anything like the required amount of voluntary service, and then it was that the press-gang came into work to meet the demand by force.

[Sidenote: 1835--Resisting the press-gang] During the long wars which followed the outbreak of the French Revolution the press-gang had a busy time of it.

Vessels of war were in the constant habit of summoning merchant vessels to hand over a certain number of their seamen, and the merchant vessels were brought to just as if they had been the cruisers of the enemy, and were boarded by force, whenever force seemed necessary, and compelled to supply the requisite number.

It sometimes happened that the captain of a vessel failed to understand the meaning of the peremptory summons issued to him, and he was then promptly brought to an understanding of the situation by the shot of the war vessel and the appearance of an armed boarding party on his own decks.

Nor was it even a very unusual event for the captain of the merchant vessel to offer a resistance, and then there was a regular sea-fight between the British war ship and the British merchantman, in which, of course, the latter was very soon compelled to acknowledge the validity of the royal warrant.

In the ordinary course of things, however, the captain of the war vessel sent an officer and a party of men on shore, and their business was to make any captures they {265} pleased, in that part of the town where men fit for service at sea were most likely to be found.

There are stories told, and told on historic evidence as truth, about young husbands thus captured and thrown into prison to await their removal to some war vessel off the coast, and whose wives or mothers could devise no better means for their rescue than to obtain an interview with them in the prison, and there contrive so to mutilate the hands of the captives through the bars of the cell as to render them unfit for service in the Royal Navy.

Sometimes, when it became known that the press-gang was about to visit that part of the town where seafaring men were likely to be found, the population of the quarter rallied in defence of their townsmen, and offered just such resistance to the emissaries of the naval authorities as they would have offered to an invading enemy.

Streets were barricaded; from the high windows of houses stones were hurled down and volleys of musketry were fired;

crowds of armed men, and even sometimes of armed women, met the invaders in the street itself and disputed their progress inch by inch.

In the lower quarters of Portsmouth and other seaport towns such scenes were of frequent occurrence.

The whole system had among its other harmful effects a very damaging influence on the Navy itself and on its discipline.

The press-gang was not very choice in making up its contributions of recruits for the fleet.

No great pains were taken with a view to obtain certificates as to character and conduct.

Those who formed the recruiting expedition were only too ready to seize any strapping young men whom they found loitering about the streets and lanes of the lower quarters in a seaport town.

These strapping young men often turned out to be rising young men of the criminal classes, but their limbs and muscles made them like some of Falstaff's recruits, "good enough to toss--food for powder," and they were promptly swooped upon and carried off to serve in his Majesty's Navy.

Such captives as these, when put on board a vessel of war and compelled to serve as seamen there, had the influence which might have been expected from them over the habits of the whole crew.

{266} The severest and even the most savage methods of discipline were often found necessary to force such men into habits of obedience and into anything like decent conduct.

Flogging then, and for long after, prevailed in the Navy and in the Army, and one of the most familiar arguments in favor of keeping up that form of discipline was found in the fact that in many cases the new recruits might have corrupted the habits of a whole ship's company if they had not been compelled by frequent floggings to obey orders, submit themselves to rules, and conduct themselves with decency.

For a long time a strong feeling had been growing up among philanthropists and reformers of all kinds against the practice of impressment and against the discipline of the "cat," as the flogging instrument was commonly termed.

The philanthropists and the reformers generally were met by the old sort of familiar argument.

They were told that it would be utterly impossible to man a navy if the press-gang were to be abolished, and equally impossible to keep the Navy up to its work and in decent condition if seamen were no longer liable to the punishment of the lash.

The innovators were asked whether they knew better how to raise and maintain an efficient Navy than did the naval authorities, on whose shoulders rested the responsibility of defending the shores of England from foreign invasion.

Those who made themselves conspicuous by their advocacy of what were then beginning to be called humanitarian principles were roundly accused of want of patriotism, and it was often suggested that they were anti-English in their sentiments and their instincts, and were persons who would probably, on the whole, rather welcome the foreign invader than lend a hand to drive him back.

The spirit of humanity and of reform was in the air, however, and in the reformed Parliament there were many men who had as good a gift of eloquence as the best of their opponents, and who could not be frightened out of any purpose on which they had set their minds and hearts.

In 1835 the Government of Lord Melbourne brought in a measure for the abolition of the press-gang {267} system and for limitation of compulsory service in the Navy to a period of five years.

This measure not only had its own direct and immediate beneficial effects, but it also did much to prepare the way for the abolition of flogging.

Many years, indeed, had to pass before this latter reform could be accomplished, but it was clear that, when the manning of the Navy no longer brought with it its captures from the criminal classes, the time was coming for the gradual adoption of a system of discipline more in accordance with the principles of humanity and the character of a noble service.

As we have seen in all previous experiences of reform, the forebodings of the anti-reformers proved to be utterly false alarms in regard to the manning and the discipline of the Navy.

We have seen some foreign wars since the days of William the Fourth, and we have heard alarms of foreign invasion again and again.

But the Navy, under its improved conditions, has never been in want of volunteers to man it, and the greatest lovers of peace have always proclaimed it to be the surest and best defence of the country.

There were many leading men in the House of Commons since those days who persistently demanded a reduction in the Army on the very ground that England could safely defy any foreign foe so long as she had the bulwark of such a Navy.

[Sidenote: 1840--The new Houses of Parliament] One great, solid, and picturesque memorial is destined to associate the reign of William the Fourth with the history of English architecture.

We speak of the Houses of Parliament which stand on the banks of the river, and thus have the Thames on one side and Westminster Abbey on the other.

The great range of halls, towers, and terraces, arches, squares, and court-yards, which, until comparatively recent days, were often described in common phrase as the New Houses of Parliament, owe their origin and their plan, although not their complete construction, to the reign of William the Fourth.

On the evening of October 16, 1834, the old buildings in which the Lords and the Commons used to assemble were completely destroyed by fire.

The fire broke out so suddenly on that evening and spread with such extraordinary rapidity that many of those {268} who were engaged in occupations of one kind or another in various parts of the buildings had much difficulty in escaping with their lives.

The flames spread so fast that in an almost incredibly short space of time the two Houses of Parliament, and almost all the offices, residences, and other buildings attached to them, were seen to be devoted to hopeless ruin.

For a while it seemed almost certain that Westminster Hall itself must be involved in the common destruction, and even the noble Abbey, with its priceless memorial treasures, appeared destined to become a mere ruin of shattered stones.

The arrangements for the extinguishing of fires were rude and poor and inefficient in those days when compared with the systematized service which is employed in our own, and for a considerable time those who hurried to the spot, charged with the duty of combating the conflagration, appeared to do little better than get in each other's way and only give new chances to each fresh eruption.

The tide in the river was very low, too, when the destroying work began, and it was hard indeed to bring any great body of water to bear upon the flames.

As the tide rose, however, it became easy to make more effective efforts.

At last it was found that Westminster Abbey might be considered perfectly safe.

So was Westminster Hall, that noble historical enclosure, the Hall which saw the trial of William Wallace, of Charles the First, of Somers, and of Warren Hastings, the hall which celebrated the coronation of so many kings, which boasts of being the oldest chamber in Europe held in continuous occupation up to the present day, the largest hall in Europe unsupported by pillars.

It was preserved, to be the grand entrance and vestibule to both the Houses of Parliament.

But the chambers in which, up to that day, the Lords and Commons had conducted their legislative work were utterly destroyed.

[Sidenote: 1834--Burning of the old Parliament Houses] At first it was assumed, as is almost always the assumption in the case of any great conflagration, that the work of destruction had been the outcome of an incendiary plot, and for a while a wild idea spread abroad that some modern Guy Fawkes had succeeded where his predecessor had {269} completely failed.

But it was soon made clear and certain that the whole calamity, if indeed it can be called much of a calamity, had been the result of a mere accident.

A careless workman, aspiring to nothing more than a quick release from his labor, and not destined to the fame of the aspiring youth who fired the Ephesian dome, had brought about the ruin which bequeathed to England and to the world the vast and noble structure of Westminster Palace.

The workman was engaged in burning up a number of the old, disused wooden tallies which once used to be employed in the Court of Exchequer, and he heaped too large a bundle of them on the fire.

At an unlucky moment a flame suddenly blazed up which caught hold of the furniture in the room, and in another moment set the whole building on fire, and then created the vast conflagration which wrought so much destruction.

We have expressed a certain doubt as to whether the burning of the old Houses of Parliament is really to be regarded as a national calamity, and the doubt is founded partly on the admitted fact that the chambers which existed before the fire were quite unequal in size and in accommodation to the purposes for which they were designed, and partly on the architectural magnificence of the buildings which succeeded them.

The Lords and Commons found accommodation where they could while preparations were in progress for the building of new and better chambers, and a Parliamentary committee was soon appointed to consider and report upon the best means of providing the country with more commodious and more stately Houses of Parliament.

The committee ventured on a recommendation which was considered, at the time, a most daring piece of advice.

The recommendation was that the contract for the erection of the new Houses of Parliament should be thrown absolutely open to public competition.

Nothing like that proposal had ever been heard of under similar conditions in English affairs up to that time.

What seemed to most persons the most natural and proper plan--the seemly, becoming, and orderly plan--would have been to allow the sovereign or some great State {270} personage to select the Court architect who might be thought most fitting to be intrusted with so great a task, and let him work out, as best he could, the pleasure of his illustrious patron.

The committee, however, were able to carry their point, and the contract for the great work was thrown open to unrestricted competition.

Out of a vast number of designs submitted for approval, the committee selected the design sent in by Mr. Barry (afterwards Sir Charles Barry), the famous architect, who has left many other monuments of his genius to the nation, but whose most conspicuous monument, assuredly, is found in the pile of buildings which ornament the Thames at Westminster.