16.1 Britain in the 19th Century

Queen Victoria, 1887 

        The experience of Britain in the 19th Century would see several interwoven themes: industrialization, political liberalization, and global imperialism.  Industrialization would become the  source of Britain’s great economic wealth and power.

            The Industrial Revolution that would change the world forever began with an "agricultural revolution" in England in the 1600s.  Changes in attitudes towards property saw the commonly-farmed open fields and pastures of the feudal manorial system being enclosed as plots of "private" property. With large fields being cut into private holdings, the need arose for new developments in agricultural technology.  The results were new farming methods (crop rotation) and machines (e.g., the horse-drawn seed drill, cultivator) that led to significant increases in agricultural production. Consequently, more food could be produced by less people, freeing people from dependence on the land for their livelihood. Many former farmers, unable to compete with their richer neighbors, mortgaged and often forfeit their lands to pay their debts.  Without their own lands, they either became tenant farmers on larger estates or migrated into towns and cities. There they became part of a growing labor force for a growing business, the textile industry.

            In the early 1700s the British textile industry began to expand in response to increased demand for finished cloth both from home and abroad. The domestic "cottage industry" wherein raw cotton was processed by hand into cloth in private homes was unable to meet the demand.  Inventive entrepreneurs, seeking greater efficiency, devised mechanical means of increasing productivity.  By the mid-1700s the invention of such machines as the flying shuttle, spinning jenny, and water frame loom marked the modest beginnings of British industrialization. 

            British economic expansion was enhanced by the right combination of what economists call the factors of production: land (the availability of natural resources); labor (availability of manpower); capital (surplus wealth that could be invested in business expansion); management (Britain had a commercial middle class with both capital and business expertise); and government (meaning a government willing and able to encourage and support industrial development).  By 1800 the British economy, driven by water-powered textile mills, had become the world's first industrial economy.  Industrial expansion was accelerated by the application of steam power to factory production. Britain had vast resources of iron and coal, the essential raw materials for industrial development. With the availability of steam power, mills no longer had to be located along river fall lines.  Small villages began to grow into factory towns. Towns rapidly expanded into major cities.  The overall wealth of the nation increased beyond comprehension.  The commercial middle class, as the owners of the new industries, rose to increased economic and social importance.  A new working class of urban industrial laborers came into existence. These were the people who worked the factories, mines, and mills.

            With the economic changes brought by industrialization came social change and demands for political change. For the next century Britain would experience political liberalization moving the country to democracy.  Unlike France and other European countries, wherein liberalizing forces came through revolution, the British experience was evolutionary. The middle class, holding significant economic and social influence, demanded a voice in government. There had been no significant change in the British political nation since the Landed Property Qualifications Act of 1710 made Britain a plutocratic oligarchy of wealthy landowners.   In 1828 the Test Act was repealed, allowing Catholics to hold government offices, and in 1829 the Catholic Emancipation Act gave Catholics the franchise under existing wealth qualifications.   In 1832 the Whig Party sponsored a Reform Bill calling for expansion of the franchise and an end to the corruptive abuses of the electoral system that had long existed. The bill would also give the new industrial cities representation in Parliament.  Although passed in the House of Commons, a Tory majority in the Lords threatened to kill the Bill.  When King William IV indicated that he would appoint enough new Whig Lords to secure passage (following the precedent set by Queen Anne in 1712), the Lords reluctantly approved the law.   The new law increased the electorate by 50 % to some 830,000 people.  With the Reform Act, parliamentary power in the House of Commons shifted from the landowners to the capitalist middle class. 

             Other issues affecting a parliamentary response included abolition of slavery, labor reform, the Corn Laws that placed high tariffs on imported grain, and the Poor Laws which provided relief for the unemployed.  Slavery in Britain and its empire was abolished in 1833.  A Factory Act (1833) and a Mines Act (1842) were passed, regulating respectively the hours worked by children in factories and women and children in mines.  A “Ten Hours Act” in 1847 restricted all labor by women and children in all industries to a maximum of ten hours a day and had a profound impact on British industry overall.  With women and children restricted to ten hour work days, most industries applied those same hours to men.  The effect was to create a ten hour work day for all.  Industrial (both working class and management) and land-owning interests clashed in debate over the Corn Laws that kept the prices of imported grain high.  An active Anti-Corn Law League, operating as would a modern political party, organized a sophisticated nationwide campaign that led to the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846.  Britain henceforth would commit itself to free trade in international commerce.  The C19 would see Britain assert its free trade policy through a vigorous foreign policy that occasionally required military intervention to keep foreign markets open to British commerce.  Responding to the plight of industrial workers affected by loss of wages or jobs as industry experienced its cycles of expansion and contraction, Parliament passed a Poor Law in 1834.   This law created a controversial system of workhouses for the unemployed.  The unemployed would receive relief only if they were willing to go into the workhouses, where living and working conditions were far less comfortable than out in the working world. 

            The 1840s saw agitation for dramatic political reform through the Chartist Movement.  Largely from the working class but with support from more liberal members of the middle class, the Chartists petitioned Parliament for reform.  Their petitions were signed by hundreds of thousands of people and delivered to Parliament.  Seen as radical revolutionaries, the Chartists demanded such changes as universal male suffrage, equal electoral districts, the secret ballot, annual elections to the Commons, and abolition of property qualifications for Members of Parliament. Their petitions were rejected by Parliament and the movement gradually lost its momentum. 

            In 1867 a second Reform Bill was presented by the Conservative (formerly Tory) Party that also extended the right to vote.  This Bill further reduced the wealth qualifications and enabled a large portion of the industrial working class to vote.  It did not, however, mean a shift of political power to the larger working class. This bill had a unique feature creating plural voting.  Those with university degrees, bank savings accounts worth ₤50 or more, or who owned government bonds qualified to cast additional ballots when voting.  Consequently, it was possible for one voter so qualified to cast four ballots.   As these “plural” qualifications were held by wealthier persons, the middle class retained its control of the Commons.  (Plural voting would remain part of the British electoral system until repealed in 1948).   The 1867 Reform Act expanded the electorate to 2.5 million new voters. A Secret Ballot Act was passed in 1872.  A third Liberal-sponsored Reform Law adopted in 1884 enfranchised all adult male agricultural workers meeting the minimum wealth qualifications set in 1867.  This law expanded the electorate to 5,700,000 - the vast majority of all adult males now possessed the right to vote. In 1885 the Redistribution Act created equal election districts. Under this law, each MP in the Commons represented 50,000 people.  The result was to give expanded representation to the industrial cities. 

           In the 19th Century the dominant figures in British political leadership and policy-making were the heads of the two major political parties.  Benjamin Disraeli led the Conservative Party (former Tories) and in his two terms as Prime Minister concentrated on foreign affairs and building the British Empire abroad.  Under the direction of William Gladstone, the Whigs reorganized themselves as the Liberal Party.  Four times Prime Minister, Gladstone concentrated on domestic and financial matters. Seeing the injustice of British policy towards Ireland, he would be unsuccessful in his efforts to secure passage of an Irish Home Rule Bill that would give Ireland greater autonomy.  Above party politics was the monarch.  Throughout most of the century, Britons knew no other monarch than Queen Victoria. She ruled from 1837 to 1901, the longest reign of any British monarch.  Victoria was beloved by her subjects.  Her tastes and thinking on the proper forms and conventions of society became the model for "Victorian" England.  In this way she dominated her age.  Her kingdom dominated the world.