13. Fear of Revolution and Red Ruin (5)
The underlying idea which was at the base of all Wellington’s conceptions as to the state of the realm during the years of his political activity, was that revolution was possible—very possible—in England, if things were suffered to drift, and mere Whig parliamentarians, working for their party ends, were allowed to get hold of the helm of the State. Looking back at the troubles of 1820–37 across the long and tranquil reign of Queen Victoria, we find it hard to realize the mental outlook of many intelligent people, who believed in all honesty that “red ruin and the breaking up of laws” were at hand, and that any and every means—from the use of the bayonet to the abandonment of one’s own cherished political views—might have to be used to avert impending chaos.
But let us remember some of our own misgivings during the General Strike of May 1926. To regard the Tories of the post-war period 1815–32 as besotted alarmists is to do them wrong. There was much to justify their view of the state of affairs. They recalled, as a memory of their early youth, the state of London during the Gordon Riots. When they were grown men they had seen the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the mutinies of the Nore and Spithead, and the murderous if futile plot of Colonel Despard, the first revolutionary who invented the notion of a ‘’soviet of soldiers and workmen”—for this was precisely Despard’s scheme of organization. Though Great Britain had experienced no revolution in the French style, she had seen intermittent riot, sedition, and outrage, all through the first twenty years of the nineteenth century. In the lean days after Waterloo things had been worse than ever—as witness Peterloo and the Six Acts. I imagine that, though he seldom talked about it, the Duke had not forgotten that he had been within a measurable distance of assassination, when Arthur Thistlewood’s desperadoes planned their raid upon the Cabinet dinner at Lord Harrowby’s house in Grosvenor Square.
If one takes the trouble to wade through lists of forgotten incidents, whose record is preserved only in Annual Registers or contemporary political pamphlets, one ceases to regard the views of Wellington and Peel, or even those of Lord Eldon and Lord Sidmouth, with the pitying contempt bestowed upon them by the Liberal historians of the next generation.
Wellington, it must be confessed, had this obsession in the strongest form. In one curious letter he wrote that he had spent the better part of his life not merely in war, but in civil war. He was under the impression that the passing of the Reform Bill would lead to “revolution”, with massacres like those of Paris in 1792–3 thrown in. Even after the Bill had been passed, and the new Parliament was sitting, he expressed his views that the first stage of the movement was over, but that democracy in its worst form having been introduced, the destruction of the monarchy and the Constitution could not be long delayed. ‘The change in the position of the country may be gradual, it may be effected without civil war, and may occasion as little sudden destruction of private property as possible—but future changes will go on ad nauseam—a shame and disgrace to the public men of this day.” This was written as late as 1835. He sometimes envisaged the possible details of the English revolution, and allowed that if it became sufficiently wild and dangerous, he might be driven to take up the position of a military dictator.
At least this is the only rational meaning that I can attach to one observation to the effect that if the worse came to the worst the man should not be wanting. “My opinion is that a democracy once set going must sooner or later work itself out in anarchy”, he said, “and that some sort of despotism must then come to restore society.” From the very drastic and complete military arrangements which he made when preparing to face the Chartists, on the day of their proposed march on Westminster, I do not doubt that if Wellington had been in office, as Prime Minister or Commander-in-Chief, and faced by an open outbreak of organized insurrection, he would have suppressed it most effectively, with or without much bloodshed. But if he were not in office his scrupulous regard for legality would have made it almost certain that he would not resort to force, except in the single case of an actual attack on the Crown—in such case his loyalty would have overruled his legality. In the crisis of 1831–2 some Tories proposed to found “counter-associations”, “constitutional leagues”—practically what we should now call clubs of “Fascisti”. Even Sir Robert Peel dallied with the idea—“if the supporters of the Government are allowed to organize armed clubs for the purpose of attack—the only safety is in preparation for defence. I certainly, if necessity arises, shall form, and counsel others to form, quiet unostentatious associations for the purpose of self-defence against unprovoked aggression”.
The Duke pondered the matter, and finally refused to authorize the foundation of such societies: his point of view was that there was a Government in power responsible to the King: to use force, or threats of force, against such a Government, so long as it was legally constituted, was not permissible to the party which called itself the representative of order and legality. Yet Wellington believed that Lord Grey was letting loose the “red spectre”; that whatever the Whigs might intend, they would be swept away by forces which they could not control, and that “the Revolution would devour its own children”, as in the France of the Girondins and the Jacobins. But only when the King and the Two Houses should be attacked by open violence would it be permissible for private persons to intervene in arms.
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