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By contrast, the Anti-Corn Law League, led by Richard Cobden and John Bright, met with success. It employed every device of propaganda, including the use of new media of communication, such as the Penny Post, which was introduced in 1840. The formula of the league was a simple one designed to secure working-class as well as middle-class support. Repeal of the Corn Laws, it was argued, would settle the two great issues that faced Britain in the “hungry forties”—securing the prosperity of industry and guaranteeing the livelihood of the poor. So enormous was religion’s influence on the league that when it identified the landlord as the only barrier to salvation, it meant religious as well economic salvation. Most Chartists were unconvinced by this logic, but, in a landed Parliament, Peel carried the measure against his own party.

John Bright.Photos.com/Jupiterimages

Peel and the Peelite heritage

Peel was the presiding genius of a powerful administration, strictly supervising the business of each separate branch of government; nevertheless, a substantial section of the squirearchy rebelled, roused by the brilliant speeches of a young politician, Benjamin Disraeli, who in his writings had already approached the “condition of England question” in a totally different style than that of Peel. The results of repeal were important politically as well as economically. As a result of the split, party boundaries remained blurred until 1859, with the “Peelites” retaining a sense of identity even after Peel’s premature death following a riding accident in 1850. Some of them, particularly Gladstone, eventually became leaders of the late 19th-century Liberal Party, which emerged from the mid-century confusion. The protectionists, most of whom abandoned protection after 1852, formed the nucleus (around Edward Stanley, earl of Derby, and Disraeli) of the later Conservative Party, but they were unable to secure a majority in any election until 1874. The minority governments they formed in 1852, 1858, and 1866 lacked any secure sense of authority. The Whigs, themselves divided into factions, returned to office in 1847 and held it for most of the mid-century years, but they were often dependent on support from radical and Irish colleagues. There was no time between 1846 and 1866, however, when extra-parliamentary agitation assumed the dimensions it had between 1838 and 1846.

Sir Robert Peel, detail of an oil painting by John Linnell, 1838; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London

Matters of religion helped divide the limited mid-Victorian electorate, with the Nonconformists (Dissenters) encouraging, from their local bases, the development of liberalism and with the Anglican churchmen often—but by no means universally—supporting the Conservative Party. Nonelectors’ associations (representing the disenfranchised) tried with varying degrees of success to keep radical issues alive, but party divisions remained based on customary allegiance as much as on careful scrutiny of issues, and there was still considerable scope for bribery at election times. The civil service might be pure, but the electors often were not. The Corrupt Practices Act of 1854 provided a more exact definition of bribery than there had been before, but it was not until a further act of 1883 that election expenses were rigorously controlled. It was then that, quite emphatically, parliamentary representation became not a matter of communities but of individuals, a process taken a considerable step further in 1872 with institution of electoral secrecy by the Ballot Act.

The prestige of the individual members of Parliament was high, and the fragmentation of parties after 1846 allowed them considerable independence. Groups of members supporting particular economic interests, especially the railways, could often determine parliamentary strategies. Nevertheless, contemporaries feared such interests less than they feared what was often called the most dangerous of all interests, executive government. Powerful government and large-scale “organic” reform were considered dangerous, and even those radicals who supported organic reform, like Cobden and Bright, were suspicious of powerful government.

Palmerston