George Eliot and the Reform of England

you must look to yourself

Here is a video of a lady reciting the Nicene Creed in Old English, as translated by Ælfric. Excellent stuff.

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This is the third part of a short series of pieces about Middlemarch. As well as these essays, I have a podcast available with Clare Carlisle, who wrote a really wonderful biography of Eliot. And if there is enough interest, I will run a Zoom session for paid subscribers too.

The first piece traced the major themes of Middlemarch. The second piece was about the origins of these ideas—their roots in German theology and in Spinoza, whom Eliot translated. This piece is about the historical context for most of Eliot’s novels.

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England reformed

Most of George Eliot’s novels are concerned with England during the first era of Reform. She wrote in the 1850s, 60s, and 70s, but her novels are set in the 1790s-1830s. She was looking back to the pre-Victorian era when liberalism, Parliamentary reform, and nonconformist religion were growing. She wrote movingly about the effects of these changes on ordinary people—their suspicions of hand-looms, their dislike of train lines, the powerful effect that a heartfelt preacher can have on a community—and about the way a new humanism emerged in this changing society.

She was not, as we so often are, convinced that political reform would lead to personal reform. Instead, her novels are about the confluence of political, religious, and cultural ideas. She writes about the need for everyone to tend to their own soul.

She wrote about these changes because the same sort of changes were happening in her own time. The continued rise of geology and then Darwinian evolution undermined religion; the cause of poverty, law-reform, and later on the national outcry about drug dens in London (depicted in The Mystery of Edwin Drood); and finally the need for further Parliamentary reform, long-delayed since the first changes in 1832—, all this made mid-nineteenth-century Britain a place of great change and uncertainty.

Eliot looked back to the last generation’s upheavals to explain her own times. It is no small choice that she made Dorothea explicitly a Puritan—Eliot saw continuity with the changes that had been happening in England since the early sixteenth century.

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Liberal Toryism in the 1820s

The Industrial Revolution provided a lot of the impetus for these changes. Trade and commerce were more and more important, and this was unsettling the old idea that the landed class should rule the country. In the 1820s, Lord Liverpool’s Trade Secretary lowered tariffs, allowed non-British ships to import goods to Britain, allowed colonies to trade with other countries, and abolished many customs duties.

At the same time, Robert Peel reformed the law, removing the death penalty for dozens of petty offences, stopping the use of irons and manacles, and ensuring women prisoners had women gaolers. He also consolidated the law: ninety-two statutes about theft became five.

There were other issues as well, not all of them so reforming. The Anglican church had neglected pastoral care, leaving room for the spread of other forms of religion, especially Methodism. Although Ireland had become part of the United Kingdom in 1800, Catholics were still barred from holding office, and no reforms could be passed (known as “Catholic emancipation”) because the king opposed them.

Finally Liverpool’s “liberal Tory” government looked to the abolition of slavery. On this they had the support of the Whigs. But the planters had a strong lobby. What was needed was Parliamentary reform.

In 1827, Liverpool resigned. He died the following year. There was no-one else to carry on his work as a liberal Tory, following in the steps of Pitt the Younger.

Further reforms would create more division than unity. Parliamentary reform was never a very Tory cause (too many landowners), but it was something the Whigs supported.

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Turbulent times

After Liverpool, and then Canning, the king (George IV) needed a new prime minister, and he wouldn’t countenance a Whig. So he brought in the Duke of Wellington. Far from the young hero of the wars, Wellington was now an ageing reactionary. Both he and the king agreed that nothing need be done about Catholic emancipation or Parliamentary reform. They met their nemesis in Lord John Russell.

Russell brought in a bill to repeal the Test Acts in 1828. These acts stipulated that only people who took Anglican communion could hold public offices, and that non-Anglicans could be fined. Nor could they attend Oxford or Cambridge university. The Tory party supported the Test Acts, but now they lost the vote.

This was the first step. Wellington and Peel now believed in the need for Catholic emancipation. But liberal Cabinet ministers resigned over issues on trade policy and because Wellington was hard to work with. Wellington replaced one of them with an Irish MP. Cabinet ministers had to seek re-election at this time, and the MP lost. The new MP was a Catholic, technically not allowed to take his seat in Parliament. Wellington and Peel decided to pass emancipation rather than exclude the MP.

This broke the Tory party, which largely existed to uphold institutions including the church. Irish mob violence made it look like Wellington was caving under pressure. He had already lost the liberals, now Wellington lost the conservatives in his party.

So now the conservatives took up reform. The country was largely made up of English Protestants, who would oppose Catholic emancipation. So a more representative House of Commons might give the conservative members what they wanted—no Catholics in public office. As the issue gained momentum, liberals joined in the cry for reform too, an issue they had long been committed to. By 1832 more than a hundred political unions had been set up across the country to debate the issue.

Unrest was rising because of economic factors, too. 1825 saw the first modern financial crisis. After that, harvests failed. Unemployment rose in the north, as did food prices, while machines were broken in the south. The French had another revolution in 1830. Andrew Jackson brought a new sense of democracy to America. Then the king died. A general election had to be called.

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Crisis, riots, and Reform

Now the Whigs took office, the first time they had seriously done so for a generation. They took over a country that was ready to change. Cities had grown. Trade had changed the power base. Voters no longer lived where the MPs were elected, and the economy was no longer as landed as it had been.

The new Prime Minister, Lord Grey, was against reform. He didn’t want annual Parliaments, the ballot, or universal suffrage. He, too, was a landowner. He appointed a mixed cabinet whose aim was to keep the ship steady. But he had promised some reform. And when it came the country went, in Wellington’s words, into a state of insanity.

The proposals were simple. The counties got more representation. Eleven large towns (Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, etc) would get two MPs each. And sixty rotten boroughs would be abolished. A rotten borough was one where there were either no voters, or so few, that the MP was essentially chosen by a landowner, not voted for at all. When Grey proposed to abolish sixty of them, the Tory party quite literally laughed in Parliament.

They did not get the last laugh. But it looked like they might.

The bill passed first reading by one vote. Then the government lost a finance vote. An election was called in 1831. This is the election that takes place in Middlemarch.

People called for “the bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill”. The windows of Wellington’s London house were smashed. The Whigs were returned with a smashing majority and the bill passed.

Only to be rejected by the Lords. Riots broke out across the country. More windows were smashed, but people were killed, and the Duke of Newcastle’s house was burned down. In Bristol it took three days for soldiers to get control of the mob. The king (William IV) promised Grey he would flood the Lords with new peers to pass the bill if needed.

The bill went back to the Commons and was adjusted. Then the Lords passed the bill but raised objections and amendments, causing the government to lose the vote. The king refused to appoint the necessary new peers. The Whigs were trapped. They resigned.

What could the king do? Wellington had no support. Not even Peel would go in with him now. Grey waited. The king eventually sent for him. Reform was now inevitable. The Tory Lords abstained and the bill passed.

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What this means for George Eliot

In Eliot’s novels, reform is far more than political. Her characters look to reform themselves and each other. More good is done by preachers than politicians, by those who run schools than those who solicit votes. She constantly uses metaphors of systems: webs and clockwork: both Felix Holt and Dorothea are heroes who look to do good in small ways in their community, rather than by trying to bring reform to the country.

Again and again, Eliot uses the world of 1832 to comment on the world of the 1860s. When she finally wrote a novel set in her own time, Daniel Deronda, she made all the same arguments, but they were more stark, more direct. Politics is not the great solving idea of society: culture, religion, the way people work together in their towns, the ideals that individuals strive for, the moral principles of ordinary life, whether we make good marriages, these are the things that make a society work.

This quotation from The Life of Saint Teresa could be imported directly into Eliot’s novels.

Let us endeavour always to look at the virtues and good qualities that we find in others, and to keep our own great sins before our eyes, so that we may see none of their failings. This is one way of working; and although we may not be able to manage it perfectly at once, we shall acquire one great virtue by it: we shall consider everyone else better than ourselves. Then, with God’s grace — which is always necessary, since when we do not have it all efforts are useless — we shall begin to progress. At the same time we must beg Him to grant us this particular virtue, which He denies to no one who makes efforts himself.

Eliot stands for Protestant, humanist values. She is, like Dorothea, descended, intellectually, from the Puritans. Politics cannot save you. We must make efforts ourselves.

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For most of this article I relied on Victorious Century by David Cannadine, but you may also want to look at Robert Tombs, Asa Briggs, Jonathan Parry, W.R. Brock, or the old Penguin history series.