Страница 57 из 87
Calvinism has been seen as responsible for turning Scotland into a dour and miserable place full of killjoy misanthropes whose greatest fear is that somewhere someone is happy! While this is an unfair caricature, the Calvinist emphasis on prayer and reflection laid the basis for the ‘dreich’ (dreary) Scottish Sunday where everything was shut down, including pubs and shops. It took until 1972 before pubs were allowed to open on Sunday in Scotland.
Political Radicalism
As a result of the Enlightenment, by the end of the 18th century, the Scots realised that the superstitions, the dogmas of faith, and the acts of kings and queens were less important – less formative of social life – than such things as modern manufacturing, commerce and international trade. But the Enlightenment figures were close to the elite in Scottish society, too close to act politically on their liberal beliefs. Indeed, most were dependent on the patronage of the nobility. For example, Adam Smith was supported by the duke of Buccleuch while writing his
Wealth of Nations
(1776); others were given places in the universities and in public office by their noble patrons.
They were all staunch defenders of the Hanoverian state. That world would be shaken to the core both intellectually and politically by the emergence of political radicalism in the 1790s.
Political management
The political system in Britain in the 18th century was the plaything of the ruling elite. Tiny groups of men were responsible for the election of members of Parliament (MPs). Edinburgh had only 33 electors! Elections were managed through bribery and corruption (see Chapter 12).
The system of political management emerged under the duke of Argyll in the first half of the 18th century, but was perfected after 1780 with the appointment of Lord Advocate Henry Dundas (later Lord Melville), ‘King Harry the Ninth’, as his successor. Dundas bestowed not only political favours in Scotland on his supporters but also the spoils of empire (see ‘Empire and Diaspora’, earlier in this chapter). He did his job for the Tory government by delivering all 45 seats in Scotland! To the ruling class, he was a hero; others saw it differently.
Apart from the issue of delivering parliamentary seats, the English were not interested in Scotland. When they were, it was usually to complain about Scotsmen on the make in London, or Scottish politicians, such as the earl of Bute, prime minister from 1762 to 1763. In spite of ending the Seven Years’ War with France and the political dominance of the Whigs, Bute proved deeply unpopular in England mainly because of his nationality. He was the subject of written, verbal and physical attacks. So fierce were these attacks that he resigned after spending only 11 months in office. ‘Scotophobia’ was rife in 18th-century London.
Before the 1790s, there were few challenges to the ruling power, but power could never simply be taken for granted. A number of campaigns were initiated in England against corruption in government by the radical MP John Wilkes, a noted Scotophobe. In Scotland, the Convention of Royal Burghs criticised the political system in 1784. But these organisations were only interested in shaping government policy or desiring a slight change in the franchise that would favour them. They weren’t out to fundamentally change the political system in Britain by making it more democratic.
The spread of Enlightenment philosophy obviously created an enthusiasm for change, but it needed a spark to turn this growing awareness into a genuinely popular movement that could command support from across a broad spectrum of society. That came in 1789 with the revolution in France.
The impact of the French Revolution
It would be hard to minimise the impact of the events in France on Scottish/British politics in this period.
The great Edinburgh Whig lawyer Henry Cockburn recognised some years later that: ‘everything was co
Politics in Britain were never the same after 1789. The slogan of the Revolution – ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’ – set the ideological battleground for reform and anti-reform for the next 60 years.
Oddly enough, the ruling classes were initially in favour of the revolution. The abolition of feudal privilege and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in France seemed consistent with struggles fought in 17th-century Britain. The revolution, therefore, enjoyed widespread support even with the monarchy. Among the governing classes, only the arch conservative thinker Edmund Burke viewed the events in France with distaste, calling it ‘abominable sedition’.
As you may expect, radicals and non-conformists were delighted at the news of the revolution – it seemed to usher in a new era of reform. Josiah Wedgwood, the pottery manufacturer, called it ‘the wonderful revolution’. Robert Burns, then a customs official, sent guns to the Paris Convention. The poet William Wordsworth, in Paris at the time, revelled in: ‘A time when Europe rejoiced, France standing on top of golden laws, and human nature seeming born again’.
Within a decade, all this early enthusiasm would be spent, and the cause of reform would be transformed into a dangerous and discredited thing to uphold. Samuel Coleridge wrote, in marked contrast to Wordsworth’s stirring verse, that:
There was not a city, no, not a town, in which a man suspected of holding democratic principles could move without receiving some unpleasant proof of the hatred in which his supposed opinions were held by the great majority of people.
This was a remarkable testimony as to how far support for reform had been discredited. This poses the question: why did such early promise of a glorious age of reform end in disappointment and failure? The answer lies with the events in France, particularly the Terror, and the threat posed by the radicals to the power structure in Britain.
Much of the ideological justification for reform came from the work of the American Thomas Paine. In his remarkably successful
Rights of Man,
Paine addressed the anti-reform arguments of Edmund Burke in
Reflections on the Revolution in France
(1790). Whereas Burke roundly denounced the revolution, Paine championed the cause of universal suffrage and the sovereignty of the people; he also denounced the monarchy and the aristocracy as useless archaisms. Paine’s arguments made their mark, with more than 200,000 copies of his book sold; indeed, the works of Paine were found in every corner of Britain, from Cornish tin mines to the Scottish Highlands.
Although wary of Paine’s ideas and their influence on the lower classes, the authorities took no steps to ban his works. However, with the publication of the second part of
The Rights of Man
in a cheap edition, they became actively hostile. In part two, Paine linked political and social grievances and his ideas were taken up by radicals the length and breadth of Britain.
Show trials
The Scottish reform movement was orchestrated by the Friends of the People, composed of Whigs, gentry and artisans, with a membership of 10,000, half of whom paid subscriptions. Its most gifted leader, the lawyer Thomas Muir, was arrested for making a seditious speech in August 1793. His arrest and subsequent trial were as much aimed at the English reform movement as the Scottish societies. Muir was sentenced to 14 years’ transportation to Botany Bay in a scandalously biased trial, although he was rescued on the way by American sympathisers. Three cheers for the special relationship! Muir died in France in January 1799.
The lord chief justice clerk, Lord Braxfield, was heard whispering to a juror: ‘Come awa’, Mr Horner, come awa’ [and] help us hang ane o’ them damned scoondrels.’
A month later, the same fate befell T.F. Palmer, a Dundee Unitarian minister. Their real crime, as far as the judge was concerned, was not so much their radical beliefs and involvement in the reform movement; the issue was that they were educated men who could ‘be found among the villagers, manufactories, poor … for the purpose of sowing sedition and discontent’.
The savage sentences given out to Muir and Palmer in no way discouraged the Scottish reformers; if anything, it made them more determined. They pla
The leaders were arrested on charges of sedition. Although the proceedings themselves were moderate, the presence of delegates from the revolutionary United Irishmen and the use of French forms of address and organisation alarmed the authorities. The minutes of the meeting had been dated the ‘First year of the British Convention’ and delegates had addressed each other as ‘citizen’.
Skirving, the Scottish secretary, was arrested along with Margarot. At a subsequent trial, they were both sentenced to 14 years’ transportation. Skirving died one year after arriving in New South Wales. The sentences were fully supported by the Pitt government, so the verdicts were as much the responsibility of the English authorities as the Scottish judges. This was the signal for an even bigger crackdown on radical activity. In May 1794, all the leaders of the main radical organisation, the London Corresponding Society, were arrested, along with important provincial leaders, with more than 800 warrants for arrest issued.
The impact of suppression was mixed. But an act suspending ‘Wrongous Imprisonment’ (
habeas corpus
in England) was passed by Parliament in 1794 amid rumours of an imminent French invasion. In spite of the equivocal impact of government repression on the reform movement for certain individuals, it became a load too heavy to bear. Robert Burns, a supporter of the revolution, fearing for his livelihood, rode with the Loyalist Association (in England, Church-and-King Mobs), which had been set up to terrify radicals into inactivity.
Revolution is in the air
If the repressive measures were primarily designed to check the rise of conspiratorial and revolutionary groups, they failed miserably. The government’s actions forced the reform movement underground. Open organisations such as the Friends of the People were replaced by insurrectionary groups. The first sign of the new attitude were seen in Edinburgh in 1794, when Robert Watt, a former government agent, was arrested and hanged for plotting an armed uprising.