England in 1780

Few writers can live solely from their writings. Thomas Love Peacock [1785-1866] was no exception. He began work as a clerk in a City office and in late 1818 took up a well-paid and responsible job at the India House where he worked for almost forty years. In taking his post with the East India Company, Peacock became a high-ranking civil servant and chose amateur status as a novelist. His writings, particularly Nightmare Abbey [1818] and Crotchet Castle [1831] ridiculed the poets of the Romantic Movement and political economists in their quest for scientific progress and 'the march of the mind'. Mr Crotchet lists certain great controversies he would like to see settled in his lifetime: "the sentimental against the rationale, the intuitive against the inductive, the ornamental against the useful, the intense against the tranquil, the romantic against the classical". Peacock, like other contemporary social critics, was trying to make sense of a Britain of increasing contrasts. Thomas Carlyle stated in Signs of the Times in 1829 that: "Were we required to characterise this age of ours by any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it, not an Heroical, Devotional, Philosophical, or Moral Age, but, above all others, the Mechanical Age. It is the Age of Machinery, in every outward and inward sense of that word; the age, which with its whole undivided might, forwards, teaches and practises the great art of adapting means to ends. Nothing is now done directly, or by hand.... Our old modes of exertion are all discredited and thrown aside...."

In his Autobiographical Fragments, probably written in the early 1820s, the poet John Clare expressed an alternative view:

My hopes of bettering my station with the world was agen and I started for Wisbeach [in Cambridgeshire] with a timid sort of pleasure and when I got to Glinton turnpike I turnd back to look on the old church as if I was going in to another contry. Wisbeach was a foreign land to me for I had never been above 8 miles from home in my life and I coud not fancy england much larger then the part I knew. At Peterboro Brig I got into a boat that carrys passengers to Wisbeach once a week and returns the third day a distance of 21 miles for eighteenpence.... one of my worst labours was a journey to a distant village name Maxey in winter afternoons to fetch flour once or sometimes twice a week. In these journeys I had haunted spots to pass as the often heard tales of ghosts and hobgoblins had made me very fearful to pass such places at night it being often dark ere I got there....

William Cobbett wrote of Sheffield in his northern tour of 1830:

The ragged hills all round this town are bespangled with groups of houses inhabited by the working cutlers. They have not suffered like the working weavers; for to make knives there must be the hand of man. Therefore, machinery cannot come to destroy the wages of the labourer. The home demand has been very much diminished: but still the depression has here not been what it has been, and what it is where the machinery can be brought into play....

 

The England of the 1780s was in some respects 'modern', an 'age of machinery' as Carlyle maintained. It was an England of rapid industrial change where a growing population was being drawn to the expanding towns and cities of the north and midlands. It was a land of canals and newly surfaced roads feeding economic growth. But it was also an 'old' country in which going to a different part of the country was viewed as going to a foreign land and where a belief in the supernatural remained. In the 1780s, the tensions between change and continuity were unresolved and in some ways they remained unresolved in 1846. These pressures were more obvious outside England. In Scotland, Wales and Ireland the distinction between innovation and tradition was starker and resistance to change often took on a strongly nationalist character. Attitudes to particular crops grown in Ireland illustrate this distinction. The cultivation of turnips was seen as innovative by many rural labourers and, perhaps more importantly, as an English innovation. Turnips were destroyed in the fields just as some believed they were destroying their lives. By contrast, the potato, introduced by the English in the seventeenth century, had become an accepted indeed essential part of Irish cultural, as well as dietary, life. It is not surprising that some nationalists of the Young Ireland movement were able to represent the potato famines of the 1840s as part of a deliberate policy of genocide by English government. For many contemporaries Britain was a country of opposing poles: improvement and resistance, modernity and tradition, change and continuity, Englishness and cultural and linguistic nationalism, north and south, rich and poor. As is always the case, reality was far less clear-cut and far more complex than the rhetoric suggested.

Reform

On 27 March 1855, the Royal Commission released its report largely written by William Westgarth and John O’Shanassy. [1] In its three months of work, it had asked over 6,000 questions of elected representatives, diggers and camp officials. Though it had insisted on including events at Eureka in its brief, much to Hotham’s annoyance, its approach was discrete. It did not press Rede on his correspondence with Hotham, none of the Catholic priests were called and the contentious question of American involvement was largely ignored. It decided that the problems that caused the Eureka rebellion included a lack of political rights especially denying diggers the vote, their inability to buy land and the way the mining license was collected. Although the license was the trigger that led to the unrest, the Commission concluded that it was not the main cause.

 

The Commission recommended that the license be abolished and replaced with an export duty on gold of 2s 6p per ounce. [2] Bankers had assured Hotham in September 1854 that this would cause no major problems and he was prepared to agree to a low duty. The Melbourne Chamber of Commerce, though it disliked export duties in principle as taxes on exports, thought it expedient to accept it. [3] The next recommendation was the abolition of the Gold Commission and the appointment of wardens. With the abolition of the license, it suggested that two-thirds of the goldfield administration and half the police would not be needed. This reduction in the cost of managing the goldfields would lead to their net revenue being greater than before. It also recommended, largely at O’Shanassy’s insistence, that the diggers should pay an annual £1 miners’ right that would give them legal rights to their claims and entitle them, as annual leaseholders of Crown land, to the franchise. [4]

 

This charge would comprehend the registration of the miner, and the issue of a paper conveying his rights. The document may be taken out for the term of a year. The Commission agree in recommending a charge of £1. It is not intended that any active search be instituted by the authorities as to whether a miner has or has not taken out this qualification; but without it he has no right to the gold he may acquire, or to claims or digging ground he may take up and labor upon, and cannot be maintained in the possession of either. The Miner’s Right, as it is proposed to term this annual document, would be a means of distinguishing the well-disposed on the gold-fields…The miner’s right, as well as the licenses leviable on other classes of residents upon the gold-fields—a subject to be treated under its proper head—should qualify for the franchise. [5]

 

The report had considerable authority. Its members were sufficiently liberal to understand the diggers’ grievances and yet were closely associated with the government. This enabled its conclusions to be acceptable to both parties. Although he still believed that the gold license was right in principle, Hotham accepted the report and the government immediately introduced legislation in the Council. A Gold Export Bill was quickly passed not without opposition from squatters and radicals, who still maintained that diggers were too heavily taxed. [6] The Argus was highly critical of the legislation especially its right of search:

 

Before the new clauses were passed in the Customs Act on Thursday, the Gold Export Duty proposition was absurd, and now—it is monstrous as well. [7]

 

In practice, however, the new duty worked smoothly and simply and was helped by the rise in the price of gold. A second piece of legislation enlarged the Council by 12 members, 8 for the goldfields and 4 nominees, despite doubts whether the new members would take up their seats before the arrival of the new constitution. [8] A new Gold Fields Management Act was passed on 12 June 1855 legalising the miner’s right. [9] The Commission had recommended that diggers be selected to form Local Courts, but the government went further providing for a nominated chairman and elections every six months of members of a court by those with the miner’s right. The Local Courts were subject to the nominal supervision of the Council but in reality, were given complete control of the industry and regulated conditions on the goldfields.[10] ‘The nature of these courts was highly unusual and a remarkable democratic experiment’. [11]

 

The rapid legislative response pacified radical activity in the goldfields though suspicions of the government’s intentions remained until legislation was fully implemented. The Reform League remained active but a ‘national’ conference suggested in April 1855 appears not to have occurred. In Melbourne, the Age acted as a focus for political opposition to the government but no new party or organisation was formed. In the three months from April to June 1855, fewer than 1,000 diggers took out licenses but when the miner’s rights were issued from late June nearly 30,000 were issued by the end of July and over 50,000 by the end of the year.

 

The Local Courts were elected in July and at Bendigo, Denovan and Benson were among the leaders elected. [12] On the 14 July 1855, just eight months after the Eureka rebellion, 9 members of the mining community, including Raffaelo Carboni and H. R. Nichols, were elected unanimously at Bakery Hill to the Local Courts. The diggers’ control of the Local Courts was seen by the mining community as the ‘blood bought rights’ of the rebellion. The Legislative Council did not meet again until late in the year when 8 new mining members were elected. Peter Lalor and John Humffray were elected unopposed for Ballarat, Grant and Benson for Bendigo and in March 1856, the mining members were instrumental in obtaining compensation for those whose property was damaged or destroyed in Ballarat during the rebellion. The Commission of Enquiry also recommended that the squatters’ control of the land be broken and that diggers had the right to buy land. The resultant subdivision of land around mining sites led to the development of some of Victoria’s most important regional towns and cities. The ‘final curtain’ on the events of Eureka came on 31 December 1855, when Sir Charles Hotham, who had tendered his resignation in November, died of pneumonia, after catching a chill. [13] His successor, Sir Henry Barkly had the highest salary in the empire because the Colonial Office considered the post particularly difficult.[14]

---

[1] Anderson, Hugh, (ed.), Report from the Commission appointed to inquire into the Condition of the Goldfields, 1855, (Red Rooster Press), 1978. The Report was printed in Argus, 30 March 1855, pp. 4-5, 31 March 1855, p. 5, 2 April 1855, p. 6. 3 April 1855, p. 6. ‘The Gold-Fields Report’, Argus, 30 March 1855, p. 4, provides a critique of the document.

[2] ‘Council Paper: A Bill for Granting Duties of Customs upon Gold Exported from Victoria’, Argus, 5 April 1855, p. 6.

[3] ‘Chamber of Commerce’, Argus, 3 April 1855, p. 4.

[4] Connelly, C. N. ‘Miners’ Rights’, ibid, Curthoys, A., and Markus, A., (eds.), Who are Our Enemies? Racism and the Australian Working-class, pp. 35-47, and Fabey, Charles, Holst Heather, Martin, Sara, and Mayne, Alan, ‘A miner’s right: making homes and communities on the Victorian goldfields’, in ibid, Mayne, Alan, (ed.) Eureka: Reappraising an Australian Legend, pp. 201-219, especially pp. 200-207.

[5] Section 23 of the Report from the Commission appointed to inquire into the Condition of the Goldfields, printed Argus, 30 March, 1855, p. 6.

[6] ‘The Gold Export Duty Bill’, Argus, 5 April 1885, p. 4, pointed to complaints from Councillors of the haste displaying in jurying the second reading through the Legislative Council. The Bill received the Royal Assent on 20 April, ‘Legislative Council’, Argus, 21 April 1855, p. 4.

[7] ‘Gold Export Duty’, Argus, 21 April 1855, p. 4.

[8] ‘Enfranchisement of the Diggers’, Argus, 9 April 1855, p. 4,‘Legislative Council’, Argus, 12 April 1855, p. 5, 26 April 1855, p. 5, 1 May 1855, p. 4, 5 May 1855, p. 5, 9 May 1855, p. 4, 23 May 1855, p. 4. Royal Assent to the legislation was given on 22 May 1855. See also, ‘Nominee Representatives’, Argus, 9 May 1855, p. 4.

[9] ‘Legislative Council’, Argus, 13 June 1855, p. 4.

[10] Birrell, Ralph, ‘Eureka and the redefinition of company mining in Australia’, in ibid, Mayne, Alan, (ed.), Eureka: Reappraising an Australian Legend, pp. 184-188, considers the creation of the local courts and their subsequent development.

[11] Serle, p. 178.

[12] ‘Bendigo’, Argus, 13 June 1855, p. 6.

[13] ‘Death of His Excellency Sir Charles Hotham’, Argus, 1 January 1856, p. 4, details his illness and unexpected death. Although the Argus report suggests pneumonia, it had earlier reported on 26 December that he had ‘English cholera’.

[14] Knox, B. A., ‘Sir Henry Barkly, (1815-1898)’, ADB, Vol. 3, pp. 95-96.

New Review

Richard Brown, Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1830-1882, Authoring History, second edition, 2017, £20.37, paperback, ISBN 978-1540352231; Richard Brown, Three Rebellions: Canada, South Wales and Australia, Authoring History, second edition, 2016, £19.72, paperback, ISBN 978-1539455707

 

The opportunity to revise and update the original texts as both these publications move into their second editions testifies to the success of previous print and electronic editions in helping to create markets for some of the less well trodden pathways of modern British and world history which have rarely featured so prominently in texts aimed at students in tertiary and higher education. In both instances the significance of the selected themes is succinctly explained in new prefaces. The new edition of Famine Fenians and Freedom, 1830-1882 takes its overall length from 582 to 602 pages and is now offered as the second volume of a quartet on resistance and rebellion in the British Empire. It examines the Irish dimension in Britain’s Empire through attempts especially by Young Ireland and the Fenians to achieve Irish independence through rebellion and by the populist and parliamentarian constitutionalist Repeal association and campaign for Home Rule to the achievement of devolved government. The book looks at the nature and impact of the Great Hunger in its global context in Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia and explains why, how and whither the Irish emigrated and how they settled into their new communities. The cover features Fenians at the Battle of Ridgeway in 1866, a victory, which the accompanying text argues ‘occurred too late to have any significant effect on the Confederation process’ though ‘it did play a major role in emotionally connecting the Canadian public to the idea of Canada’. However, the reader is warned in a cryptic caption that the book’s cover illustration amounts to a far from accurate depiction, though it might have helped some readers had this intriguing caption been elaborated and more of its provenance been revealed.

 

 

By contrast, the riveting cover illustration of the companion volume, focusing upon three rebellions in Canada, South Wales and Australia is extensively contextualised. Unusually, we discover, that it was painted by Katherine Jane Ellice, the daughter-in-law of the local seigneur, a prosperous fur trader, who was taken prisoner by the Patriotes at Beauharnois, near Montreal, in November 1838. Ellice described her captors as ‘the most Robespierre-looking ruffians, all armed with guns, long knives and pikes’. Their expressions and weapons are vividly captured in the watercolour. Moreover, Brown’s gripping account of the action and its significance is characteristically engaging and stimulating. He concludes that the rebellions in the Canadas, South Wales and Victoria were each a failure of popular constitutionalism to deliver political change and the unwillingness of the authorities to concede that change was necessary.

 

As the relationship of the United Kingdom with Europe and the wider world is re-defined post-Brexit, some of the global themes hitherto neglected but explored here with such insight, rigour and enthusiasm may perhaps again appeal to a widening readership.

John A. Hargreaves

Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1830-1882

First book for 2017

Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1830-1882 is the second book in the Rebellion Quartet, a series looking at resistance and rebellion in the British Empire.  It examines the Irish dimension in Britain’s Empire, evident in Three Rebellions: Canada, South Wales and Australia, through attempts especially by the Young Ireland and Fenian movements to achieve Ireland’s independence through rebellion between 1830 and 1882 and by the populist and parliamentarian constitutionalist Repeal Association and campaign for Home Rule to achieved devolved government. 

Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1830-1882 focuses on the nature and impact of the Famine in its global Irish context in Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia. Why, how and where Irish emigrated and how they settled into their new communities. How different approaches to Irish nationalism evolved in Ireland, British colonies in Canada and Australia and in the United States and why it failed to achieve its objectives between 1830 and 1882 and the political character of the Irish diaspora. It also explores the nature and differences in the character of Irish rebellion in Ireland, mainland Britain, Canada and Australia in 1848 and during the 1860s looking especially at its military character and failure. The role played by individuals such as Daniel O’Connell, Thomas Davis, John Mitchel, John O’Mahony, James Stephens, John O’Neill, John Devoy, Michael Davitt, Isaac Butt and Charles Stewart Parnell.

The first edition was well received by reviewers and this edition has given me the opportunity to revisit material originally researched and written between 2005 and 2009 taking account of the most recent research and publications. I have delved further into newspapers from Britain, Ireland and Australia and have added further references to them. I have also extended the starting point for the book back by a decade to 1830.

Reviewing 2016: A second stab

After Brexit came the election of Donald Trump as the US President.  If Brexit was a shock, Trump’s election was an earthquake…no one thought he would get the Republican nomination let alone win the election against the experienced if not popular Hilary Clinton.  The election campaign, especially its last weeks, was one of the most visceral I’ve ever seen with making promises that he will need to honour—though in some cases this is unlikely—with the FBI saying it was reopening investigations into Hilary’s private email server ten days or so before election day and then withdrawing from investigation a few days later when the damage to Hilary’s already fragile reputation was done.  With Hilary wining the popular vote but Donald gaining the electoral college votes and the presidency, the result was hardly a ringing endorsement of the processes through which American democracy functions.

 

 

One of the major criticisms of Trump in the election campaign is that he has little experience of Washington but this misses the point that it is precisely because he has no experience that he was elected.  His brand of authoritarian populism, his notion of ‘American First’ appealed to those Americans for whom globalism has paid no dividends and whose lives have been blighted by the impact of untrammelled global free trade and who see no real benefit from the United States acting as the arbiter of global affairs.  What Trump is is an extremely successful if ruthless businessman who tweets what he thinks and who had vast experience in running and particularly managing things and increasingly people believed that he had the skills necessary to bring an expanding federal state to heel by not being prepared to do things the way they’ve always been done.  For the electorate this is his greatest strength but it is also his greatest weakness as the whole panoply of the Washington establishment will be against him and will obstruct his changes.  For a US President to get his policies accepted by Congress, there needs to be a degree of consensus; without this he becomes a ‘lame duck’ with the Washington political elite—and it has inexhaustible patience and ability to ‘dig the dirt’--simply waiting for his term of office to expire. 

 

 

Reviewing 2016

2016, the year that the ‘commentariat’ got just about everything wrong!  It was supposed to be a victory for ‘remain’ and Hilary Clinton preparing for her inauguration as US President half way through next month…well, no.  Britain was supposed to make a further…if perhaps reluctant…commitment to the European Union with an economic meltdown if this did not occur as companies abandoned what would become the Titanic of economies; that voting leave would result inevitably according to David Cameron and other ‘remainers’ in leaving the single market and the customs union, something now denied by the ‘remoaners’ and especially the Liberal Democrats who respect the referendum result—remember it was advisory not binding--but want to have another just to make sure and perhaps a third one for two out of three!!  The irony is that, although three out of four people eligible to vote did so, the percentage was lower amongst younger votes, some of whom are now complaining that the ‘baby boomers’ have stolen yet another part of their inheritance.  Brexit was not expected to happen and neither side in the debate had made any real provision for this eventuality…any sensible government would have taken steps to plan for Brexit even if they didn’t expect it to happen.  And when it did, instead of staying on to help with the transition to a new Prime Minister and to sort out the mess of his own choosing, David Cameron simply quit within hours of the result…it was a bit like, ‘well you didn’t take my advice, so I’m off!!’  Almost a hissy fit!!!!!

 

 

So why did England and Wales vote for Brexit?  Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain, though in NI’s case by a small majority.  This in itself caused problems as Scotland then demanded some sort of accommodation with the EU to recognise that it did not vote to leave.  This raised significant constitutional issues that have yet to be resolved…how do you accommodate a devolved, but not federal, structure within a unitary constitution?  The result is that Scotland demands that it has a special status under devolution in relation to the referendum despite the fact that the UK as a whole voted for Brexit by a significant if not enormous majority.  We may still be a ‘United’ Kingdom in theory but in practice that is clearly no longer the case.  This explains why the current mantra is ‘Yes, we accept the result of the referendum and the will of the people….but!!!!!’  The metropolitan elite cannot understand it and, if some of the recent comments in the press are a good indicator, some are still in denial about it all…they’ll wake up from a bad dream and the referendum won’t have taken place.  It’s the Peasants Revolt all over again but this time the peasants have got what they want…or have they?  Just as Richard II and his ministers betrayed the peasants in 1381 so constitutional niceties, legal arguments, practical politics and the realities of negotiation from March 2017 may well see yet another betrayal…this is what we’ve negotiated and Parliament’s agreed so that’s it whether or not there’s control over free movement of people or complete severance from the EU…it’s economics silly!! 

The reality is that because there was little planning for Brexit, the whole thing is a mess.  Whoever allowed a referendum bill to go through Parliament that did not specifically make the result binding was really incompetent…I cannot believe that nobody noticed that.  A conspiracy theorist might well argue that this was deliberate so that government could twist its way out of taking account of the result if it was leave…though I tend to the cock-up theory of politics.  And of course it’s also a mess for the EU…it has as little an idea of what Brexit will mean in practice as the government.  Yes it’s all…well don’t expect an easy negotiation from us but it then has to get through all 27 countries and how do you do that successfully? No one knows.  It’s almost a back of the cigarette packet situation. Yes it would have been easier to stay within the EU…certainly my own view…but that’s not how the people voted.

The West’s blame and the West’s shame

Watching Newsnight yesterday evening was one of the worst examples of a political post-mortem I think I’ve ever experienced.  The subject was the imminent fall of Aleppo to the Russian supported government of President Bashar al-Assad that commentators think represents perhaps not the end of the civil war but the beginning of the end of the civil war.  Aleppo itself may not matter much on Moscow's strategic chess-board. But the defeat of the rebel opposition there underscores the extraordinary turn-around in President Assad's fortunes. Before Russia intervened President Assad was on the ropes, his military power crumbling; now it looks as if he’ll win.  The West’s response…a fiery exchange at the UN, with US Ambassador Samantha Power accusing Syria and its allies of contributing to ‘a noose around civilians’ asking  ‘Are you truly incapable of shame?’

She is, of course, right. The civil war has been characterised by a total indifference to the fate of civilians who have been subjected to unspeakable atrocities, a new barbarism.  But the West is also culpable.  Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003—either an unprovoked assault on an independent country that may have breached international law or something authorised by United Nation sanction—the West has completely failed to stabilise the region and arguably has made the situation worse.  By removing despicable dictators in Iraq and then in Libya, initiating regime change and then failing to provide the mechanism to create a stable future, the West has been guilty of gross stupidity.  The scenario seems to have been…remove dictator, establishing a western style democratic government, let the liberated people get on with this and then act surprised when it all falls apart.  What this shows…apart from the hubris of the West…is that you can’t simply transplant democracy to countries with no real tradition of liberal democratic institutions.  The same applies to the so-called ‘Arab Spring’---I remember commenting on my blog at the time that the 1848 European revolutions came to mind…things that shone brightly and briefly and were then snuffed out by the forces of reaction…and so it was.  The West encouraged political aspirations and then expressed surprise when things did not turn out as they believed they ought.  The West’s interference in the region has largely been disastrous.

As the bombs continue to fall on Aleppo and its people, we sit well fed in our warm, comfortable houses and wring our hands at the inhumanity of man.  We moralise.  We call for the war to end, for the evacuation of civilians, for the feeding of the people starved for weeks.  We give words…words…words.  But we do nothing.  In fact, words are all we can give as the West has effectively abdicated any responsibility it may have felt for Syria.  I am reminded of Sir Humphrey’s words on the principles of foreign policy…’perhaps there was something we could have done…but it’s too late now!’