Reform or Revolution? (1830 to 1832)

0:29 In July 1830, the people of France rose up and removed

0:34 their conservative and autocratic King,d establishing

0:36 in his place a new constitutional monarchy.

0:40 The July Revolution hit Europe like a thunderbolt, but it was not unique.

0:44 Next door in the Kingdom of the Netherlands,

0:48 the French-speaking population rose up against

0:50 the Dutch-speaking government because of, of all things,

0:54 a particularly moving opera performance.

0:56 Within a matter of days the people were armed,

0:58 and there were barricades on the streets of Brussels.

1:01 A month later, Belgium formally declared independence from the Netherlands.

1:07 It was civil war.

1:11 The King of the Netherlands responded to the crisis

1:17 by inviting the 5 Great Powers to intervene, but he received a tepid response.

1:22 The Great Powers each had their own problems at home.

1:25 Over in Northern Italy, there were significant Liberal revolts that were

1:31 inspired by the July Revolution in France.

1:34 Austria was genuinely afraid that their entire network of states

1:37 in Northern Italy was about to collapse, so they invaded.

1:41 Metternich, the Austrian architect of the post-war order,

1:44 wrote at this time “my most secret thought is that old

1:49 Europe is at the beginning of the end.” In the German Confederation,

1:54 internal divisions between liberal and conservative states were growing,

1:58 which led to confusion and dysfunction when trying to figure

2:02 out how to respond to the Liberal revolts across Europe.

2:06 Over in Poland, the Polish army sought to throw off their Russian

2:11 occupiers and re-establish the Kingdom of Poland

2:14 as a Liberal and independent power.

2:17 Russia responded with overwhelming force.

2:19 120,000 Russian soldiers marched in and crushed the Polish resistance.

2:24 To the complete horror of all of the other Great Powers,

2:29 Poland was fully annexed into Russia.

2:31 Something was going on in Europe, and whatever it was,

2:35 it was seeping into every Great Power.

2:38 Russia was having Poland problems.

2:40 Austria was having Northern Italy problems.

2:42 Prussia was having German Confederation problems,

2:45 France was obviously going through it,

2:47 as they had just overthrown their government.

2:50 Britain, much like France, was having its own internal problems.

2:54 Revolution was in the air.

2:56 Britain was the most powerful Great Power,

2:59 but it was in a unique position because it

3:02 was sitting atop a fragile empire spanning the entire globe.

3:05 An empire envied by every other Great and Non-Great Power.

3:10 If Britain fell to civil war, the empire would be largely undefended,

3:14 and every European state with a bit of ambition

3:17 would feel compelled to make their big move.

3:20 The prize was too great not to.

3:22 You know what you call it when several Great Powers

3:26 attack a bunch of overseas colonies at the same time?

3:29 World War.

3:30 If Britain fell to civil war,

3:33 a World War or a Great Power Conflict would likely consume Europe.

3:39 But we know that there was not a World War in the 1830s.

3:44 How did Britain manage to escape this fate?

3:47 It’s a long and complicated story,

3:51 but to begin we have to talk about the death of the King.

3:58 Britain’s King George IV died on June 26th, 1830,

4:02 just as France’s Charles X was preparing to issue the Four Ordinances,

4:08 which triggered the July Revolution.

4:10 The greatest thing that George IV ever did was die at the exact right time.

4:14 That’s a mean thing to say, but the people at the time were way meaner.

4:19 In their obituary, The Times described their dead King,

4:22 “the character of which rose little higher

4:25 than animal indulgence.” The people hated him.

4:29 He was a glutton and an ostentatious spender during bad economic times.

4:33 A couple of days later,

4:34 the paper couldn’t resist going back to get one last kick in, “there never was

4:40 an individual less regretted by his fellow creatures

4:44 than this deceased King.” Stop, he’s already dead!

4:48 George had 10 children, but none with his actual wife, (you had one job,

4:52 idiot) and so the Crown passed to his 64 year old brother William.

4:58 William IV was a Navy man, (boats!) energetic,

5:02 charismatic, he liked mixing it up with people,

5:05 which was a breath of fresh air after the long dark years under

5:09 his out of touch brother and their father the mad King George III.

5:14 Paradoxically though,

5:15 historian Edward Pearce describes him as “a man whose natural common sense was

5:21 warped by an ignorant and irrational fear of the working class.” He was,

5:27 after all, a 19th century monarch.

5:30 He liked people, but you know, the right kind of people.

5:38 The Conservative Prime Minister Liverpool had died in office

5:41 after almost 15 successful years at the helm,

5:44 as did his successor Canning after only 118 days in the big chair, R.I.P.

5:49 Now the Conservative Prime Minister was the Duke of Wellington,

5:53 the hero of Waterloo.

5:55 Yes the Conservatives had been remarkably successful in Britain ever

5:59 since the outbreak of the French Revolution 41 years ago,

6:03 but with peace, the Conservatives were kinda losing their mojo.

6:07 Historian Eric Hobsbawm argues that throughout the 1820s

6:11 Britain was increasingly caught up in anti-Revolutionary hysteria.

6:15 They were quite literally stuck fighting the last war,

6:20 which was increasingly producing political paralysis.

6:23 What does Hobsbawm mean by anti-Revolutionary hysteria?

6:26 The most striking example of this was the Peterloo massacre of 1819,

6:31 where the government completely overreacted to 60,000

6:35 peaceful protesters by ordering a cavalry charge.

6:39 The carnage was horrific, 500, 700 were injured, over a dozen killed.

6:45 The protesters were calling for Reform,

6:48 (more on this later,) but the Conservatives

6:50 sensed revolution around every corner.

6:52 There were incidents like this every year,

6:55 peaceful protest met with an overwhelming military response.

6:59 The Conservatives were losing touch.

7:03 Upon the death of the King, it was standard practice in Britain

7:13 to dissolve Parliament and call a new election.

7:16 Voting began on July 29th, which coincidentally was the same day that the French

7:21 Liberals were capturing Paris across the Channel.

7:23 They would overthrow the government and have

7:25 a new Liberal King within a few days.

7:28 As the British were voting,

7:30 the remarkable bravery of the French Liberals were on their minds.

7:35 The British election of 1830 returned the following results:

7:39 333 seats for the Conservative coalition 291 seats for the Liberal coalition

7:46 34 seats for other groups It was a disastrous result for the Conservatives.

7:51 They lost 100 seats in the election,

7:55 and barely held onto power with a majority of just 8.

8:04 The Liberal coalition was led by a 66 year old aristocrat named Earl Grey.

8:10 Yes, that Earl Grey, the tea guy.

8:12 In November, King William IV opened Parliament.

8:15 He addressed the political instability across Europe,

8:19 and in particular the ongoing situation in Belgium.

8:22 The speech came off as unusually fearful and aggressive,

8:26 and he made it sound like Britain might

8:29 try to stabilize things by marching against Liberal Belgium.

8:32 This was new information, and it alarmed every Liberal Whig in Parliament.

8:38 Grey spoke up.

8:40 He criticized the King for “language directly opposite to the principal

8:44 of non-interference,” by which he meant, you know, peace.

8:48 He continued, “if danger is all around us… the way

8:52 to go is by securing the affections of your fellow subjects,

8:57 and by redeeming their grievances.

8:59 And, my Lords, I will pronounce the word- by reforming Parliament.” He

9:04 continued by warning the King that if they stayed on their present course,

9:09 the instability in Belgium and France

9:11 and beyond would eventually come home to Britain.

9:14 The British people had learned one important lesson by watching

9:18 the July Revolution play out across the Channel in France.

9:22 They learned that the whole thing was entirely preventable.

9:26 They learned that rampant authoritarianism makes the state more fragile,

9:31 and that proactive reform can actually stave off Revolution.

9:36 The Conservative Prime Minister Wellington responded to Grey’s speech,

9:39 and said that he disagreed with Grey’s analysis.

9:43 Referencing the domestic unrest of the last decade,

9:46 he accused the Whigs of whipping up the people for political gain.

9:50 An insane thing to say.

9:52 The Conservatives were in the habit

9:55 of ordering the military to attack peaceful protesters,

9:58 and that was the Whigs’ fault?

10:01 Insane.

10:01 The protests were happening for a reason.

10:04 The people were angry and demanding real

10:07 reform after 40 years of mostly Conservative rule.

10:10 The mood out in the country was real.

10:13 But Wellington didn’t want to see that.

10:16 He said that Reform opened the door to Revolution,

10:19 and that it was therefore his duty to resist Reform in any form.

10:23 This was a radical position to take, even for a Conservative,

10:28 and many of his fellow Tories were

10:30 surprised and worried at the government’s rigidity.

10:40 I need to explain what precisely I mean

10:43 by “Reform.” Obviously it meant modernization and liberalization,

10:46 but in the context of the early 19th

10:48 century it also had a much more specific meaning.

10:52 Reform with a capital R meant reforming the British electoral system.

10:58 We cannot proceed until you, dear viewer,

11:01 have a foundational understanding of the British

11:04 electoral system as it existed in 1830.

11:07 I know, I know.

11:09 I’ll make this as painless as possible.

11:12 If I had to put it simply, I would say that their electoral system

11:15 had not been meaningfully updated in 500 years.

11:18 They were literally operating under a Medieval set of rules.

11:23 To take the most egregious example, the constituency of Sarum,

11:27 which was just an unbroken stretch of wilderness,

11:31 sent 2 Members of Parliament to Westminster.

11:34 The MPs represented by some counts literally 7 people.

11:38 There had once been a Medieval city here,

11:40 but it had been abandoned in the 1200s.

11:44 But the British electoral system ignored that fact.

11:47 City or not, their political representation remained the same.

11:51 Another example was Dunwich, which had once been a large Medieval town.

11:56 Over the years, erosion had caused 90% of the town to fall into the sea.

12:02 But because of Britain’s Medieval electoral system,

12:04 Dunwich still got to elect 2 Members of Parliament.

12:09 This generated an astronomical amount of corruption.

12:12 For example, just 21 voters on the Isle of Wight, elected 2 MPs.

12:18 Every election, the local aristocrats collected huge bribes,

12:21 and then would go around and tell the 21 voters who to vote for.

12:27 After the election, the aristocrats would check the ballots

12:30 and punish anybody who did not vote as instructed.

12:33 This was an extreme example, but versions of this happened all over the country.

12:38 The corruption was so extreme in some cases

12:40 that the right to vote was rendered meaningless.

12:43 All of this was perfectly legal, by the way.

12:47 Aristocrats openly bragged about how their electoral

12:50 corruption generated a nice passive income.

12:53 And there was another issue.

12:55 The Industrial Revolution had fundamentally changed Britain.

12:59 The great northern industrial cities like Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds,

13:03 Glasgow, and others did not exist 500 years ago.

13:06 Or if they did they were tiny.

13:09 Now these cities were booming,

13:11 they were the economic engine driving Britain into the 19th century.

13:15 But they had nobody representing them at Parliament.

13:19 The uninhabited wilderness around the abandoned

13:21 city of Sarum had political representation.

13:24 The sea that swallowed the town of Dunwich had political representation.

13:28 But the million or so people in the great northern industrial cities did not.

13:33 Everybody knew that the system was broken.

13:36 That much was self-evident.

13:38 The problem was that all

13:40 of this corruption favoured the old Conservative aristocracy,

13:44 and there was no incentive for the Conservatives to change it.

13:49 This was the system that was being protested when

13:53 the British military attacked 60,000

13:54 peaceful protesters at the Peterloo Massacre.

13:58 Protests continued throughout 1820s.

14:00 It was the cause du jour,

14:02 it was the popular issue that was alienating the poor and the young,

14:07 turning them against the rich and the old.

14:10 But the Conservatives couldn’t see this.

14:12 They couldn’t see what was happening out in the country.

14:16 They saw protests and only thought of Revolution.

14:20 So when Lord Grey said that he had been a Reformer for his whole life,

14:24 this is what he was talking about.

14:27 Grey had been arguing for 40 years that Tory

14:30 political power was built upon a foundation of corruption.

14:34 He believed that if the electoral system was not Reformed,

14:38 the great northern industrial cities would rise up,

14:41 July Revolution style, and demand a seat at the table.

14:45 If that happened, the whole political order might be overthrown.

14:49 It was an existential crisis for the country.

14:53 Prime Minister Wellington, by resisting Reform in any form,

14:57 was making a ridiculous argument.

14:59 What, England’s second largest city was just going

15:02 to have no political representation at all not only today,

15:05 but 100 years from now?

15:06 Nonsense.

15:07 Grey was right.

15:08 It was only a matter of time.

15:11 Either Parliament got their act together and fixed this broken system,

15:15 or the people would rise up and fix it for them.

15:23 Wellington’s inflammatory words in opposition to Reform

15:26 elicited an immediate response from the public.

15:29 There were widespread protests across London.

15:32 Soldiers had to intervene to defend Wellington’s home,

15:35 which obviously became a focal point of the protests.

15:39 But unlike the protests of the past decade, these crowds took up a new chant.

15:45 “No Polignac,” a reference to the French Prime Minister that had just

15:48 been chased out of power by a Liberal uprising a few months ago.

15:53 They were calling Wellington the British Polignac.

15:56 Interesting.

15:57 Political insiders began to worry.

16:00 Wellington’s extreme unpopularity may endanger the monarchy.

16:04 The July Revolution was on everybody’s mind.

16:07 About a third of the Tories in Parliament approached the Whigs,

16:12 and came to a non-specific agreement that some form of incremental reform

16:17 would be necessary in order to ensure the stability of the state.

16:22 On November 15th, the Whigs and the moderate

16:25 Tories brought forward an opposition motion

16:28 to begin the process of studying what Reform

16:31 in the United Kingdom would even look like.

16:33 To everybody’s surprise, the motion narrowly passed.

16:36 Prime Minister Wellington had clearly lost control of Parliament.

16:41 He resigned the next day.

16:43 Also, protesters got through the soldiers and set his house on fire.

16:48 Not a good day for ol’ Wellington.

16:53 With the backing of the moderate Tories, it was clear that the Whigs under Lord

17:00 Grey were the ones setting the legislative agenda.

17:03 The King asked him to become the next Prime Minister, and he agreed.

17:07 Grey knew that he had a monumental task ahead of him.

17:11 He was already 66 years old, and not in terribly good health.

17:15 From the very beginning of his term he complained of the immense burden

17:19 of the office and of the physical toll that the stress took on his body.

17:24 Grey’s first task as Prime Minister was not an easy one.

17:27 He needed to get the King on board with what needed to be done.

17:31 In the 1830s, the British King was still powerful

17:34 enough to kill legislation if he chose to do so.

17:38 It would probably provoke a constitutional crisis,

17:40 but theoretically he could do it.

17:42 If Grey was going to do something

17:44 big and difficult and controversial like Reform,

17:47 the Prime Minister and the King needed to be on the same page.

17:52 Grey wrote to the King.

17:54 “The perilous question is that of Parliamentary Reform,

17:58 and as I approach it, the more I feel all its difficulty.

18:03 With the universal feeling that prevails on the subject,

18:07 it is impossible to avoid doing something;

18:09 and not to do enough to satisfy public expectation would

18:13 be worse than to do nothing.” The King wrote back.

18:16 He spoke at length about the political chaos in France and Belgium,

18:21 which clearly weighted heavily on his mind.

18:24 He told Grey that even though he found the prospect of Reform disturbing,

18:29 he would support “reasonable reforms.” What did “reasonable reforms” mean?

18:34 Who knows!

18:34 But that wasn’t a today problem, that was a tomorrow problem.

18:39 Today, Grey had the green light from the King to proceed.

18:51 One thing that you need to know about

18:53 the British Parliament is that it was and is bicameral,

18:55 there’s the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

18:58 Prime Minister Grey was a member of the House of Lords,

19:01 and so he needed somebody else to take the lead in the House of Commons.

19:04 Grey selected rising star Whig politician John Russell

19:08 to take lead on writing the Reform Bill.

19:11 On March 1st of 1831,

19:13 Russell introduced his Reform Bill to the House of Commons.

19:17 During his speech he took great pains to portray the Whigs as pragmatic

19:23 centrists who were only doing the reasonable

19:26 thing of introducing modest and limited reform.

19:29 This was bull.

19:30 Russell was like Grey, a lifelong Reformer.

19:33 But as he continued,

19:34 he sharpened the argument that he wanted to use against the Conservatives.

19:38 He railed against at the vast stretches of wilderness

19:42 that enjoyed more political representation

19:44 than the great northern industrial cities.

19:46 Not only did it make no sense, but it was literally Medieval.

19:50 It was embarrassing for the country,

19:52 and it was embarrassing that the Conservatives would defend such a system.

19:56 Russell was bending over backwards to portray his bill as, to quote the King,

20:01 a set of “reasonable reforms,” but as the contents

20:04 of the bill began to be revealed to the House of Commons,

20:08 eyewitnesses say that the Conservatives looked like they were going to puke.

20:12 Some of the more radical Liberals let out surprised cheers.

20:16 The truth was that Russell’s Reform Bill

20:19 was way more radical than anybody was expecting.

20:22 Russell proposed a massive re-distribution of legislative seats across Britain.

20:29 All constituencies with less than 2,000 residents would lose both of their MPs.

20:34 No more political representation for uninhabited stretches of wilderness.

20:38 No more 21 voters on an island getting bullied by local aristocrats.

20:43 All that stuff would be a thing of the past.

20:46 These newly freed up seats would be

20:49 distributed across the great northern industrial cities,

20:51 finally giving the people in the booming north the right to vote.

20:56 It sounds simple, but like I said, these changes were radical.

21:00 These reforms alone would cause over 25% of the current MPs to lose their seats,

21:05 mostly in the south of England, mostly Conservatives.

21:08 That’s why the Conservatives looked so shaken,

21:11 and it’s why the radical Liberals were jumping for joy.

21:14 It went way further than anybody expected.

21:17 But it didn’t stop there.

21:19 One of the more annoying things about how the system worked now was that each

21:24 individual constituency got to set its own rules

21:27 for who did and didn’t get to vote.

21:30 In practice, this meant that in Conservative areas,

21:33 rich people were generally the only ones allowed to vote.

21:37 Russell proposed opening things up to the middle class

21:40 by standardizing voting across the country with a modest wealth qualification.

21:45 The radical Liberals kinda threw a fit when

21:47 they heard the part about the wealth qualification,

21:50 because that would exclude the poor.

21:52 But Russell and Grey insisted.

21:54 After all, they were still 19th century aristocrats.

21:57 They were interested in opening things up to the middle class,

22:01 not so interested in the poor.

22:03 Very un-groovy of them, but that’s how it was.

22:07 Russell had been speaking for over 2 hours,

22:10 and when he finished, there was pandemonium in the House of Commons.

22:14 The Tories accused him of pushing not for Reform, but Revolution!

22:18 They accused him of trying to dismantle the aristocracy.

22:22 Russell defended himself.

22:24 He was only trying to bring the British electoral system out of the Middle Ages.

22:29 That was all.

22:30 One Whig MP named Thomas Macaulay rose to speak in Russell’s defence.

22:35 He said, “our ancestors would have been amazed

22:38 indeed if they had foreseen that a city

22:41 of more than 100,000 inhabitants would be

22:44 left without representation in the Nineteenth Century,

22:47 merely because it stood on ground which in the Thirteenth Century,

22:51 had been occupied by a few huts.” He

22:54 told the Conservatives that Russell wasn’t pushing Revolution,

22:57 the status quo was inviting Revolution.

23:00 He warned them that if no action was taken, the aristocracy,

23:04 the country, and even the King himself would be in danger.

23:10 Debate began in the House of Commons, and it dragged on for weeks.

23:14 Day by day, Russell continued his fierce defence of the bill.

23:18 He repeatedly pointed to the July Revolution in France,

23:22 which was still fresh in everybody’s memory.

23:25 “How was it caused?”, he asked, “were Charles X and his ministers too ready

23:30 to come forward with plans of Reform?” No, obviously not.

23:35 Russell continued, “If the people were properly represented,

23:38 they would not make that Revolution.” Hey look

23:41 at that, John Russell just made my argument for me!

23:45 The lack of reform and the rising authoritarianism

23:47 in France in the 1820s made the state increasingly brittle,

23:51 and then in July of 1830, the state shattered.

23:55 Russell was arguing, and I completely agree with him here,

23:59 that Britain, by resisting Reform, was walking the same path.

24:03 The Conservative Tories started to get worried that their opposition

24:07 to the Bill wasn’t getting through to the public.

24:10 They changed tactics.

24:11 Of course they supported “reasonable reform!” Who wouldn’t!?!

24:16 It’s reasonable!

24:17 But why was Russell in such a rush?

24:19 Why was he trying to shove this giant

24:21 Bill down their throats without a robust debate?

24:24 This is a classic tactic.

24:26 Can’t criticize the policy, criticize the process.

24:29 You might ask yourself,

24:31 if the Conservatives didn’t like how Russell was doing things,

24:34 where was the Conservative Reform Bill?

24:36 My dear boy!

24:37 It didn’t exist of course!

24:39 But you already knew that, didn’t you?

24:42 The Conservatives response to the Reform Bill was to introduce

24:45 their own bill to pause all discussion of Reform for 6 months.

24:50 They said that they wanted time to study the issue.

24:54 A lie, obviously.

24:55 They could see that Russell’s arguments were

24:57 beginning to catch fire with the public, and wanted to put a stop to that.

25:07 Hmm.

25:08 Catch fire.

25:10 Hmm.

25:11 That’s foreshadowing.

25:13 The proposal to pause came up for a vote.

25:16 For many minutes you could hear a pin drop in the House

25:19 of Commons as the Speaker struggled to nail down an accurate tally.

25:23 But finally, the results were announced.

25:26 Those supporting a pause, 301.

25:30 Those against a pause, 302.

25:33 This is kinda getting ahead of ourselves,

25:34 but based on how the British people would respond to later events,

25:38 there’s no doubt in my mind that if the vote to pause had passed,

25:43 somebody would have tried to overthrow the government.

25:45 I don’t know if they would have succeeded, but they would have tried.

25:49 One vote from a completely different Britain,

25:52 and therefore a completely different 19th century.

25:57 Politics are so much fun, dude!

26:02 The Tories were obviously disappointed at the setback,

26:05 and so they adopted a new tactic.

26:07 They proposed an amendment to Russell’s bill

26:10 that would prevent the destruction of any constituencies.

26:14 It sounded innocuous enough,

26:15 but as we’ve already established it undermined the very foundation of Reform.

26:21 The whole project was centred around destroying over-represented constituencies

26:25 in the south and creating new ones in the booming industrial north.

26:30 If they couldn’t achieve this basic redistribution,

26:33 then the entire Reform effort would be reduced to nibbling around the edges.

26:38 The Conservatives argued that this amendment was

26:41 a very minor compromise that would make everybody happy.

26:44 What they weren’t saying was that it would destroy Reform.

26:49 On April 20th, the Conservative amendment came up for a vote.

26:53 Everyone knew that it would be close.

26:56 The final tally came in.

26:58 299 to 291.

26:59 It passed.

27:00 Russell, the mastermind behind the bill, was completely shattered.

27:14 Stinging with defeat, Grey met with his cabinet to consider their next move.

27:18 They all agreed that without the ability to destroy seats

27:22 in the south and create new ones in the north, Reform was dead.

27:26 The Prime Minister had clearly lost control of Parliament,

27:29 so he formally asked the King to dissolve Parliament and call a new election.

27:34 Grey also used backchannels to privately inform

27:37 the King that with the defeat of Reform,

27:41 the cabinet was extremely concerned about public unrest.

27:44 They felt that if they could immediately announce new elections,

27:48 then maybe the people on the streets wouldn’t resort to violence.

27:52 If, on the other hand, there was no peaceful way for the people

27:56 on the streets to express their frustrations,

27:58 then there was no predicting what they may do.

28:01 Exhibit 582 of elections being a release valve.

28:04 The King was on the fence.

28:07 He was probably thinking that since a Conservative amendment had passed,

28:11 then maybe there was no need for an election,

28:14 maybe the next Prime Minister should just be one of the Conservatives.

28:18 Ultimately, the King decided that the Whigs were probably right,

28:21 nobody was in a position to lead this divided Parliament.

28:24 He may have come to this decision because a group of Conservatives

28:28 tried to influence him in a way that he found annoying,

28:31 but you know what, we count those.

28:34 The King announced his final decision in a written proclamation,

28:37 and said very explicitly that he hoped that this election

28:42 would clarify the issue of Reform once and for all.

28:49 The election campaign kicked off, and the Tories immediately got busy spreading

28:54 rumours that thousands of poor labourers were refusing

28:57 to work because the Reform Bill promised

29:00 that they would never have to work again.

29:03 Not true, obviously,

29:04 it was a Conservative fantasy meant to scare middle class voters.

29:10 The election results were announced on June 1st, and they were decisive.

29:14 Grey’s Liberal pro-Reform faction gathered around 380 seats,

29:19 while the Conservative anti-Reform faction got around 250 seats,

29:23 maybe a little less.

29:25 Before, Grey was trying to govern

29:27 with a Liberal minority in the House of Commons.

29:30 Now he would have a governing majority of 130 or 140 seats,

29:35 a result that blew even the most optimistic estimates out of the water.

29:44 A couple of months later,

29:45 a massive crowd of protesters marched through the streets of London

29:49 with the stated goal of presenting a pro-Reform petition to the King.

29:53 The numbers given for this are all over the place,

29:57 I’ve seen as low as 70,000 and as high as 300,000,

30:00 but either way, at the time it

30:02 was probably the largest protest in British history.

30:05 The King refused to meet with the petitioners

30:07 out of a concern for his personal safety,

30:10 a very legitimate concern I would argue,

30:12 but the crowd took it as an insult and started to get restless.

30:16 The police were instructed to pull back out

30:18 of fear that their presence might antagonize them further.

30:22 In an effort to defuse the tension, Prime Minister Grey reached out and offered

30:27 to meet with the leaders of the protest.

30:29 They agreed, but they came in hot.

30:32 They demanded that Grey force the King

30:35 to create enough Liberal lords to pass the bill.

30:38 Grey immediately got defensive and told them that the Prime

30:41 Minister couldn’t force the King to do anything.

30:44 They accused Grey of deliberately watering down

30:46 the Reform Bill in order to appeal to Conservatives,

30:50 which Grey as a lifelong Reformer found personally offensive.

30:54 They attacked Grey and the Whigs for coming to Reform late,

30:58 only after it had become politically popular.

31:00 This really upset Grey,

31:02 who had been down in the trenches fighting for Reform for 40 years.

31:07 The meeting went late into the night, and both sides left angry.

31:12 I would note, however, that Grey wanted to meet with the leaders because he was

31:16 afraid that the protest was going to turn into a riot.

31:22 There was no riot.

31:24 Mission accomplished.

31:25 Hot off of electoral success,

31:27 Russell introduced his Reform Bill to the House of Commons for the second time.

31:32 The Bill spent the entire summer snaking its way through committee,

31:36 and by early September it emerged relatively

31:39 unaltered thanks to the massive Liberal majority.

31:41 This should have been a cause for celebration- the Bill was one step

31:45 closer to passage- but the Reformers in the House were beginning to worry.

31:49 They had expected to pick up some

31:51 Tory support going through the committee process,

31:53 but they didn’t, the he Conservatives were holding firm.

31:56 They didn’t even try to influence or water down the bill.

32:00 That could only mean one thing.

32:02 Grey began to have secret discussions with his fellow Liberals,

32:06 brainstorming what they would do if the House

32:09 of Lords simply refused to pass Reform.

32:12 This was a tricky situation.

32:14 They could win all the elections they liked,

32:16 but if the House of Lords refused to pass the bill,

32:19 the House of Lords refused to pass the bill.

32:22 Together they could only come up with one solution,

32:24 and it was the same solution that the radical

32:26 protesters had approached Grey with months earlier.

32:29 The King had the power to appoint people to the House of Lords at will.

32:34 Theoretically, he could appoint enough Liberals

32:36 to assure the passage of the bill.

32:38 There was one catch though, and it’s what Grey told the protesters when

32:41 they brought it to him the first time.

32:43 Nobody could force the King to do this, he

32:46 had to come to this decision on his own.

32:49 Grey and his inner circle were still debating this issue when

32:53 the Reform Bill finally made it out of the House of Commons.

32:57 345 for Reform, 236 against.

32:59 It was a decisive victory for the Whigs, but it was a party line vote.

33:05 Bad sign.

33:06 Grey and the Whigs were not at all sure how

33:10 Reform would be received in the unelected House of Lords.

33:15 This was uncharted territory.

33:16 Surely the recent Whig election would count for something, right?

33:20 The House of Lords scheduled a vote on Reform almost immediately.

33:26 Uh oh.

33:28 199 against Reform, 158 for.

33:31 It was exactly as the Whigs had feared.

33:35 The House of Lords had unceremoniously taken the Reform

33:38 Bill out back and shot it in the head.

33:40 It’s what the Conservatives had been planning to do all along.

33:46 Reform was dead.

33:49 The reaction was immediate.

33:53 Crowds gathered outside of Parliament, and as the lords left the building

33:59 they were pelted with both objects and insults.

34:02 Over the next 4 days the homes

34:05 of several prominent lords were besieged by angry mobs,

34:09 and some were even stormed and looted.

34:11 Many members of the House of Lords chose to go into hiding.

34:16 The unrest quickly spread.

34:18 In Bristol, the homes of 45 wealthy families were stormed, looted,

34:24 and burned, as was the Mayor’s residence and the local prison.

34:27 The riots only ended when the British military got involved.

34:34 Dozens were killed, hundreds wounded.

34:39 The Bristol Riots were the most dramatic outburst of violence,

34:43 but it was by no means an isolated incident.

34:46 There were similar riots across the whole country.

34:49 In Paris, the wife of the British ambassador wrote an ominous letter,

34:53 saying that the British had just “made their own 25

34:58 July,” which of course is a reference to France’s July Revolution.

35:04 The breadth of the riots were proving to be a real problem.

35:07 There were only about 25,000 British soldiers on the entire island,

35:11 and while that may sound like a lot, most of them were already busy protecting

35:17 assets like government buildings and armories and ports,

35:20 meaning that practically speaking they could only deploy

35:23 to maybe 2 or 3 cities at once.

35:25 Dozens and dozens of cities and towns were just left to burn.

35:30 You might recall that with the July Revolution,

35:33 it only took 3 days for France to fall.

35:37 A British Revolution was now firmly on the table.

35:46 Back in London, the political class was deeply shaken by the violence.

35:51 Wealthy aristocrats, thinking only of the public good,

35:55 began stockpiling weapons and hiring private mercenaries to protect their homes.

36:00 The same idiots that had campaigned against

36:03 Reform were now preparing for civil war.

36:06 Was it worth it, fellas?

36:09 A radical left-wing London newspaper named Poor Man’s Guardian, amazing name,

36:14 ran a front page story titled “What will William

36:18 Guelph do?” Guelph was the family name of the King,

36:22 they were being deliberately disrespectful.

36:24 The article called on the King to create at least 100 Liberals

36:29 in the House of Lords to ensure the passage of the Reform Bill.

36:33 It went on to remind readers of the violence that Britain was seeing.

36:37 It was only a matter of time before one of the lords was killed.

36:41 The article went on to argue that the House

36:44 of Lords and the King were intrinsically linked.

36:47 As one went, so went the other.

36:49 The paper was dancing around it, but they were saying that it was only a matter

36:53 of time before the people rose up and killed the King.

36:57 The article concluded with this chilling statement about the British Monarch:

37:02 “he cannot safe himself; he must go sooner or later[...] so let him

37:07 do[...] some honest work before he goes.” The Times,

37:11 a much more mainstream paper, wrote the following.

37:14 “What have the Lords done?

37:17 They have done what they can never undo.

37:19 The House of Lords will never again be on the same

37:23 foundations in the confidence of the people.” Continuing later,

37:27 “the nation willed it, the Lords forbade it.

37:32 Will the nation give way or will the Lords?” Prime Minister

37:39 Grey took some time to take the temperature of the country,

37:43 and then informed the King that despite his defeat in the House of Lords,

37:47 he would not be resigning.

37:50 He would continue to fight for Reform.

37:57 Parliament re-opened about a month later, and in his speech,

38:00 the King spoke of the riots that had briefly taken hold of the country,

38:04 and then urged Parliament to take up the issue of Reform once more.

38:11 On December 12th, Russell introduced his Reform Bill for the third time.

38:16 Robert Peel, the heir apparent to the Conservative Tory faction, rose to speak.

38:21 The rest of the Tories watched closely.

38:24 He said that while he still opposed Russell’s bill,

38:27 he no longer opposed it because he believed

38:30 that Reform would bring about a Revolution in Britain.

38:32 He said that he was not opposed to all Reform,

38:35 and in fact many aspects of British life were in dire need of reform.

38:41 But, he said, this specific bill went to far.

38:44 Clearly the riots had spooked the Tories.

38:47 Peel was now saying that unlike Wellington, he was flexible.

38:52 And more importantly, he was telling his fellow Tories to back off.

38:56 The Conservatives listened.

38:58 The Bill sailed through its initial votes with even larger margins than before,

39:03 with dozens of Conservative abstentions.

39:06 Clearly the experience of having angry mobs try

39:08 to burn down their homes had an effect on them.

39:12 The Reform Bill passed out of the House of Commons with no difficulty.

39:17 355 to 239, similar to what it got last time.

39:20 But the problem remained with the House of Lords.

39:24 Grey and his allies were very worried.

39:27 If Reform went down in defeat again,

39:29 there was no telling how the country might react.

39:33 Grey felt that he had no choice but to urge the King to create

39:38 enough new Liberal peers in the House

39:40 of Lords to overwhelm the Conservative opposition.

39:43 Less than a year ago Grey was telling a group of protesters

39:46 that the Prime Minister couldn’t force the King to do this.

39:51 Well, the riots had changed things.

39:54 Everything was on the table now.

39:58 Creating Liberal lords to pass legislation had been done before,

40:01 but not in more than 100 years,

40:04 and back then only 12 new lords were needed to stabilize the government.

40:08 This time overriding Conservative opposition might require 40 or 50 lords.

40:12 Grey knew that the King wasn’t that keen on Reform to begin

40:17 with, there’s no way he would go for such a radical scheme.

40:21 At the beginning of the new year,

40:23 the King and Prime Minister Grey got together for a lengthy meeting.

40:27 Grey suggested that the King demonstrate his seriousness in the matter

40:31 of Reform by creating 10 or so Liberal peers.

40:34 You will notice Grey strategically picked slightly less

40:37 than the 12 created more than 100 years ago.

40:40 But obviously it was far less than the 40 or 50 needed.

40:44 Grey was hoping that the Conservatives would take this threat

40:48 seriously and there would be no need to go further.

40:52 The King was reluctant to create any peers at all,

40:55 but after talking it out with Grey,

40:57 he agreed to appoint the sons of some existing Liberal lords.

41:01 In the King’s mind, this would be less

41:03 bad because it would be just a temporary thing.

41:06 Over the years, as the sons inherited their father’s titles,

41:09 everything would return to normal.

41:11 Grey eagerly agreed with all of this.

41:15 Whatever you need to tell yourself, man.

41:18 As the discussion went on, the King said that if they

41:21 could agree to limit themselves to the sons of existing lords,

41:24 then he would be comfortable appointing more than Grey’s proposed 10.

41:29 They agreed on up to 21, although the King had some conditions.

41:34 First, no radicals, no agitators, no rabble rousers, Fine.

41:38 Second, this was to be a one-time deal.

41:42 The King didn’t want Grey coming back asking for more lords later.

41:47 Not fine.

41:48 Twenty-one was still far short of the 40

41:50 or 50 they would need to pass this thing.

41:53 But Grey thought that it was a miracle that the King was agreeing

41:57 to any of this, so he accepted his conditions and got to work.

42:05 By April 4th, the Reform Bill was being hotly debated in the House of Lords.

42:10 Grey went into the debate with those 21 Liberal appointments in his back pocket,

42:14 but for now, he held off using them.

42:17 He could only fire that gun once.

42:19 Maybe the threat alone would be enough.

42:22 But the public mood was shifting by the day.

42:25 The Times, not a radical paper by any means,

42:28 published a piece saying that if this attempt at Reform went down,

42:32 the King should create 70 or 80 Liberal lords.

42:37 The riots had clearly spooked everybody.

42:40 In the House of Lords, the former Prime Minister Wellington,

42:43 as always with his finger on the pulse of public opinion,

42:47 continued to stubbornly attack the Whigs,

42:50 saying that if they continued down the path to Reform,

42:54 then Revolution would become inevitable.

42:56 But Wellington was wrong, he had it exactly backwards.

43:01 The Conservatives in France spent 10 years killing any attempt at Reform,

43:05 and the result was the July Revolution.

43:08 The Conservatives in Britain had also spent

43:11 10 years killing any attempt at Reform,

43:14 and the result so far was rioting throughout the country.

43:17 It’s clear to me that Britain was stumbling blindly into Revolution,

43:23 but Wellington couldn’t see that.

43:27 Or perhaps he chose not to.

43:32 The Conservatives in the House of Lords tried every procedural

43:35 trick in the book to delay sending the Bill to committee, but ultimately failed.

43:40 In committee, the Conservative plan was to sabotage the bill

43:43 by adding a bunch of garbage amendments to it.

43:45 The Whigs were able to swat away most of the amendments,

43:49 but to Grey’s shock and surprise, a big one got through.

43:53 The Conservatives appealed to some of the more

43:56 cowardly Whigs that were worried about their jobs,

43:58 and successfully attached an amendment to the bill that would

44:02 delay the redistribution of constituencies to the north for 2 years.

44:06 Redistribution was the centrepiece of Reform,

44:09 they needed it to empower the great northern industrial cities.

44:15 Grey had been defeated for a third time.

44:20 The next day, Grey resigned as Prime Minister.

44:32 When the people learned of Reform’s defeat and Grey’s resignation,

44:37 protests erupted all across the great northern industrial cities,

44:41 including an estimated 200,000 protesting in Birmingham alone.

44:45 These protests were unprecedented in scale.

44:48 One prominent Reform pamphleteer wrote,

44:51 “every man you met seemed to be convulsed with rage.” The Times wrote,

44:56 of the undercurrent of Revolution that they were sensing out on the streets,

45:01 “every man without exception of age or calling,

45:08 asks his neighbour this question: what is to be done?” The King invited

45:18 Wellington to serve as his next Prime Minister,

45:21 but told him that for the sake of the country,

45:24 he expected Wellington to push some version of Reform,

45:28 Wellington told the King that this was one thing he would not do.

45:36 For the time being, Britain had no Prime Minister.

45:42 A couple of days later, when appearing in public,

45:45 the previously popular King William was booed and hissed.

45:49 Public opinion was turning once more, and this time it would not spare the King.

45:54 On the streets, a new slogan emerged from the protests.

45:58 “Stop the Duke, Go for Gold!” They

46:01 were talking about the Duke of Wellington obviously,

46:04 the face of the opposition to Reform.

46:07 The protesters advocated two actions.

46:09 First, they told people not to pay their taxes until Reform was passed.

46:14 Obviously this was illegal,

46:16 but what were they going to do, arrest a million people?

46:19 Second, they began telling people to protest the government

46:23 by withdrawing their life savings from the bank of England.

46:27 “Stop the Duke, Go for Gold.” You’re probably thinking

46:30 what I was thinking when I first read this.

46:33 “Oh, symbolic gesture.” No!

46:35 Oh no.

46:36 Within a matter of days,

46:38 25% of the total deposits in the Bank of England were withdrawn.

46:44 The maniacs, they actually did it!

46:47 They created a financial crisis!

46:49 As the protests grew and the financial situation deteriorated,

46:54 one Conservative Tory finally saw the writing on the wall.

46:58 He said in a speech that the King was only left with two choices.

47:03 Either let Grey come back as Prime Minister, or flee the country.

47:07 They were on the brink of Revolution.

47:10 Even the Conservatives could see it now.

47:13 The King folded.

47:14 He begged Grey to come back as Prime Minister.

47:18 Grey agreed to come back, but he had conditions.

47:21 Either the King had to agree to create up to 50 Liberal lords,

47:26 or the Conservatives had to agree to drop their opposition.

47:30 They couldn’t do this anymore.

47:32 The survival of Britain was at stake.

47:36 Reform had to pass.

47:38 The King told Grey that he would try to convince the Conservatives to back off.

47:42 But apparently this didn’t go very well because

47:45 within a few days he wrote to Grey

47:47 to tell him that he would begin to work on a list of 50 potential Liberal lords.

47:57 While all of this was going on, debate continued in the House of Lords.

48:02 The Tories said all kinds of things about Grey.

48:05 They accused him of personally orchestrating the violence on the streets.

48:09 They accused him of advocating Revolution in Britain.

48:12 They accused him of seeking to abolish the monarchy.

48:16 They accused him of trying to establish a democracy.

48:20 Okay that last one was kinda true, but still.

48:25 Grey took all of this in stride, but the man looked like death.

48:28 The stress of trying to push Reform for these 19

48:31 months had taken a profound toll on his body.

48:35 The man basically wasn’t sleeping, and was suffering from chronic headaches.

48:39 He rose to respond, but his voice was so

48:43 weak that his fellow lords struggled to hear him.

48:46 Half way into his speech his strength gave out and he had to sit down.

48:51 At this crucial moment a rumour began to spread in the House of Lords

48:55 that the King was preparing to name 50 or 60 Liberal lords to the body.

49:01 Who started this rumour?

49:03 Unclear, but my guess is that Grey had something to do with it.

49:07 The Conservatives believed the rumour, and were officially freaking out.

49:13 Outside of the House of Lords,

49:15 Robert Peel called an emergency meeting of moderate Conservatives.

49:19 They agreed that 50 or 60 Liberal lords would spell disaster for their movement.

49:25 They would lose control of the House of Lords for a generation.

49:29 It wasn’t worth it.

49:31 The moderates all agreed to step out of the way of Reform.

49:40 On June 4th, Reform came up for a final vote in the House of Lords.

49:45 On that day, the moderate Tories found various

49:48 ways to be strategically absent from the chamber.

49:51 Seeing which way the wind was blowing,

49:54 many hard-line Conservatives decided to be strategically absent as well.

49:58 Perhaps they were thinking back to when

50:00 their homes had been targeted by rioters.

50:03 The final vote came in.

50:06 106 in favour, 21 against.

50:09 The Liberal Whigs won.

50:12 Reform would become law.

50:14 The British electoral system would leave the Middle Ages.

50:18 The great northern industrial cities would finally be represented in Parliament.

50:29 British politics would fundamentally change forever.

50:38 There were spontaneous public celebrations all across Britain.

50:42 The Times publicly called on the King

50:45 to come out and take part in the festivities,

50:48 but the King was so humiliated by how things had gone down that he refused.

50:52 In fact, he wouldn’t even appear publicly to give his royal assent to the Bill.

51:04 It’s important to stop and recognize the bullet that Britain dodged here.

51:09 There is no doubt in my mind that if Wellington had got his way,

51:14 there would have been a Revolution in Britain.

51:16 Revolution probably would have meant civil war,

51:19 and civil war probably would have meant World War, as other Great Powers would

51:24 have found Britain’s undefended colonies irresistible.

51:27 They were that close.

51:29 Reform saved the most powerful country on Earth from ripping itself apart.

51:36 Historian Munro Price writes that “in Britain,

51:40 the [unrepresentative electoral system] grew so unpopular that fear

51:45 of Revolution induced the party in office to amend it.

51:49 Whether or not Britain would actually have been plunged

51:52 into Revolution if the reform bill had been rejected is

51:56 imponderable,”- I’ve pondered it plenty- “but it can certainly be

52:00 strongly argued that it would have,”- oh hey that’s me!

52:04 “and that this imminent peril was only

52:07 averted by the bill’s passage.” Historian Eric Hobsbawm,

52:11 who I always trust when it comes to stuff like this, says

52:16 “something not unlike a revolutionary situation might have developed in 1831-2

52:21 but for the restraint of both Whig and Tory parties.” He’s being

52:26 a little bit kinder to the moderate Conservatives than I would be,

52:30 but sure, they get a tip of the cap

52:37 for being strategically absent when it really mattered.

52:42 On December 3rd, 1832,

52:44 the first general election under the new reformed electoral system began.

52:49 The first election with representation

52:51 for Britain’s great northern industrial cities.

52:54 The first election with representation for the middle class.

52:59 Here were the results.

53:01 460 Liberal Whigs and allies of the Liberal Whigs,

53:06 159 Conservative Tories, and 38 Irish Nationalists.

53:11 The Liberals won 70% of the seats in the House of Commons.

53:17 The most one-sided election in British history.

53:24 The 1830 July Revolution in France and the 1832

53:28 Reform Act in Britain were kind of twinned events, two sides of the same coin.

53:35 One ended with the government being overthrown, the other ended with Reform,

53:39 but both of them could be called Liberal Revolutions.

53:43 Reform stabilized Britain, and then Britain in turn stabilized Europe.

53:48 There was no World War in the 1830s,

53:52 and in fact Europe was allowed to peacefully transition into a new Liberal era.

53:58 It was an historic achievement,

54:01 and it would have been impossible without the leadership of Grey.

54:08 In Newcastle upon Tyne, there’s a monument to Prime Minister Grey,

54:12 built only 6 years after the Reform Act.

54:15 At its base it reads,

54:17 “This column was erected in 1838 to commemorate the services

54:22 rendered to his country by Charles, Earl Grey, K.G.

54:27 who, during an active political career of nearly half a century was the constant

54:32 advocate of peace and the fearless

54:35 and consistent champion of civil and religious liberty.

54:38 He first directed his efforts to the amendment

54:41 of the representation of the people in 1792,

54:44 and was the minister by whose advice, and under whose guidance,

54:49 the great measure of Parliamentary Reform was,

54:52 after an arduous and protracted struggle safely and triumphantly achieved

54:58 in the year 1832.” Opposite this, there’s a second inscription.

55:03 “After a century of civil peace,

55:06 the people renew their gratitude to the author of the Great Reform Bill.

55:13 1932.” As I’m writing this today,

55:16 we’re approaching two centuries of civil peace in Britain.

55:19 Not bad for a guy who by all accounts hated being Prime Minister.

55:24 Grey had taken an unstable Conservative country

55:27 and transformed it into a stable Liberal one.

55:32 No matter what happened next,

55:34 he was already a significant figure in British political history.

55:38 But in the aftermath of the crisis,

55:40 Grey quickly found that Reform opened up a whole new world of possibilities.

55:45 Certain moneyed and illiberal lobbying groups were

55:49 powerless in the face actual democratic legitimacy.

55:53 Now was the time for aggressive legislative action, long overdue.

55:58 It was the beginning of a new era.

56:08 It was clear that the immediate danger had passed,

56:11 but the question was how long could Britain remain a stable Liberal country?

56:16 The island was at peace, but what about the colonies?

56:20 The sad truth was that Britain’s Liberal Revolution stopped at the water’s edge.

56:26 The colonies were still as authoritarian as ever,

56:29 only held in check at the barrel of a gun.

56:33 Most British colonies were just one uprising away from revolution,

56:38 the status quo was not sustainable.

56:40 Grey’s job was only half done.

56:43 If he could take the Liberal Revolution one

56:46 step further and extend it out to the colonies,

56:50 then Britain would be able to remain a stable Liberal country not just today,

56:55 not just tomorrow, but for the rest of the century.

57:00 How could he do this?

57:02 By fully eradicating slavery in the British Empire.