История Великобритании

      In 1715 he started a rebellion against George I, who had by this time arrived from Hanover. But the rebellion was a disaster, and George's army had little difficulty in defeating the English and Scottish "Jacobites", as Stuart supporters were known. Because of the Tory connection with the Jacobites, King George allowed the Whigs to form his government.

      Government power was increased because the new king spoke only German, and did not seem very interested in his new kingdom. Among the king's ministers was Robert Walpole, who remained the greatest political leader for over twenty years. He is considered Britain's first Prime Minister.

      Walpole came to power as a result of his financial ability. At the end of the seventeenth century the government had been forced to borrow money in order to pay for the war with France. There was nothing new about this, except that because of the war the government's borrowing increased enormously. In 1694, a group of financiers who lent to the government decided to establish a bank, and the government agreed to borrow from it alone. The new bank, called the Bank of England, had authority to raise money by printing "bank notes". This was not an entirely new idea. For hundreds of years bankers and money dealers had been able to give people "promisory notes" signed by themselves. These could be handed on as payment to a third or fourth person. This way of making trade easier had been made lawful during the reign of Henry I, six hundred years earlier. The cheques we use today developed from these promisory notes.

      At a time when many people had money to invest, there was popular interest in financial matters. People wanted to invest money in some of the trading companies doing business in the West

      Indies, the East Indies or in other newly developing areas. The possibility of high profits, and the excitement this possibility caused, made the cost of a share in these trading adventures expensive/In 1720 the South Sea Company offered to pay off the government's national debt if it was given monopoly rights to trading in the South Seas. It raised money by selling shares which quickly rose in value with the increasing excitement. When people's confidence in the South Sea Company suddenly fell, so did the price of shares, and thousands of people who had invested their money lost' everything. Robert Walpole was able to bring back public confidence. He made sure that something like the "South Sea Bubble" could not happen again. This was the first step in making companies responsible to the public for the money which they borrowed by the sale of shares.

      In the other countries of Europe kings and queens had absolute power. Britain was unusual, and Walpole was determined to keep the Crown under the firm control of Parliament. He knew that with the new German monarchy this was more possible than it had been before.

       Walpole skilfully developed the idea that government ministers should work together in a small group, which was called the "Cabinet". He introduced the idea that any minister who disagreed deeply with other Cabinet ministers was expected to resign. From this basic idea grew another important rule in British politics: that all members of the Cabinet were together responsible for policy decisions. Walpole built on the political results of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. It was he who made sure that the power of the king would always be limited by the constitution.

      The limits to monarchy were these: the king could not be a Catholic; the king could not remove or change laws; the king was dependent on Parliament for his financial income and for his army. The king was supposed to "choose" his ministers. Even today the government of Britain is "Her Majesty's Government". But in fact the ministers belonged as much to Parliament as they did to the king.

      Walpole wanted to avoid war and to increase taxes so that the government could pay back everything it had borrowed, and get rid of the national debt. He put taxes on luxury goods, such as tea, coffee and chocolate, all of which were drunk by the rich, and were brought to Britain from its new colonies by wealthy traders. Tea had become a national drink by 1700, when 50,000 kg were already being imported each year. Walpole raised the government's income, but this had little effect on the national debt, and he became very unpopular.

      The most important of Walpole's political enemies was William Pitt "the Elder", later Lord Chatham. Chatham wanted Britain to be economically strong in the world, and he agreed with Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, who had written in 1728, "Trade is the wealth of the world. Trade makes the difference between rich and poor, between one nation and another." But trade also involved competition. Chatham had studied French trade and industry, and he was certain that Britain must beat France in the race for an overseas trade empire.

      In 1733 France made an alliance with Spain. Chatham feared that this alliance would give France a trade advantage over Britain through freer trade possibilities with the Spanish Empire in South America and the Far East. England had been trying unsuccessfully to develop trade with the Spanish Empire since the days of Drake. Once Chatham was in the government, he decided to make the British navy stronger than that of France or any other nation. He also decided to take over as many as possible of France's trading posts abroad.

      War with France broke out in 1756. Britain had already been involved in a war against France, from 1743 to 1748, concerning control of the Austrian Empire. However, this time Chatham left Britain's ally, Prussia, to do most of the fighting in Europe. He directed British effort at destroying French trade. The navy stopped French ships reaching or leaving French ports.

      The war against France's trade went on all over the world. In Canada, the British took Quebec in 1759 and Montreal the following year. This gave the British control of the important fish, fur and wood trades. Meanwhile the French navy was destroyed in a battle near the coast of Spain. In India, the army of the British East India Company defeated French armies both in Bengal, and in the south near Madras, destroying French trade interests. Many Indian princes allied themselves with one side or the other. In defeating France, Britain eventually went on to control most of India by conquest or treaty with the princes. Many Britons started to go to India to make their fortune. Unlike previous British traders, they had little respect for Indian people or for their culture. So, while India became the "jewel in the Crown" of Britain's foreign possessions, British-Indian relations slowly went sour.

      Meanwhile, in 1759, Britain was drunk with victory. "One is forced to ask every morning what victory there is for fear of missing one," an Englishman said at the time. British pride had already been noticed by a Swiss visitor in 1727. The British have a very high opinion of themselves, he wrote, and they "think nothing is as well done elsewhere as in their own country". British pride was expressed in a national song written in 1742: "Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves, Britons never never never shall be slaves."

      But a new king, George III, came to the throne in 1760. He did not wish Chatham to continue an expensive war. In 1763 George III made peace with France. Britain did this without informing Prussia, which was left to fight France alone.

      For the rest of the century, Britain's international trade increased rapidly. By the end of the century the West Indies were the most profitable part of Britain's new empire. They formed one corner of a profitable trade triangle. British-made knives, swords and cloth were taken to West Africa and exchanged for slaves. These were taken to the West Indies, and the ships returned to Britain carrying sugar which had been grown by slaves. Britain's colonies were an important marketplace in which the British sold the goods they produced, from the eighteenth century until the end of the empire in the twentieth century.

      Wilkes and liberty

      George III was the first Hanoverian to be born in Britain. Unlike his father and grandfather he had no interest in Hanover. He wanted to take a more active part in governing Britain, and in particular he wished to be free to choose his own ministers. As long as he worked with the small number of aristocrats from which the king's ministers were chosen, and who controlled Parliament, it did not seem as if he would have much difficulty.

      Parliament still represented only a very small number of people. In the eighteenth century only house owners with a certain income had the right to vote. This was based on ownership of land worth-forty shillings a year in the counties, but the amount varied from town to town. As a result, while the mid-century population of Britain was almost eight million, there were fewer than 250,000 voters, 160,000 of them in the counties and 85,000 in the towns or "boroughs". Only 55 of the 200 boroughs had more than 500 voters. The others were controlled by a small number of very rich property owners, sometimes acting together as a "borough corporation". Each county and each borough sent two representatives to Parliament.

      This meant that bargains could be made between the two most powerful groups of people in each "constituency", allowing the chosen representative of each group to be returned to Parliament.

      It was not difficult for rich and powerful people either in the boroughs or in the counties to make sure that the man they wanted was elected to Parliament. In the countryside, most ordinary landowners also held land as tenants from the greater landowners. At that time voting was not done in secret, and no tenant would vote against the wishes of his landlord in case he lost his land. Other voters were frightened into voting for the "right man", or persuaded by a gift of money. In this way the great landowning aristocrats were able to control those who sat in Parliament, and make sure that MPs did what they wanted. Politics was a matter only for a small number of the gentry who had close connections with this political aristocracy. No one could describe Parliament in those days as democratic.

      However, there was one MP, John Wilkes, who saw things differently. Wilkes was a Whig, and did not like the new government of George III. Unlike almost every other MP, Wilkes also believed that politics should be open to free discussion by everyone. Free speech, he believed, was the basic right of every individual. When George III made peace with France in 1763 without telling his ally Frederick of Prussia, Wilkes printed a strong attack on the government in his own newspaper, The North Briton. The king and his ministers were extremely angry. They were unwilling to accept free speech of this kind. Wilkes was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London and all his private papers were taken from his home.

      Wilkes fought back when he was tried in court. The government claimed it had arrested Wilkes "of state necessity". The judge turned down this argument with the famous judgement that "public policy is not an argument in a court of law". Wilkes won his case and was released. His victory established principles of the greatest importance: that the freedom of the individual is more important than the interests of the state, and that no one could be arrested without a proper reason. Government was not free to arrest whom it chose. Government, too, was under the law. Wilkes's victory angered the king, but made Wilkes the most popular man in London.

      The ruling class was not used to considering the opinions of ordinary people. Between 1750 and

      1770 the number of newspapers had increased. These were read by the enormous number of literate people who could never hope to vote, but who were interested in the important matters of the times. They were mainly clerks, skilled workers and tradesmen. Improved roads meant that a newspaper printed in London could be reprinted in Liverpool two days later.

      Newspapers in their turn increased the amount of political discussion. Even working people read the papers and discussed politics and the royal family, as foreign visitors noticed. "Conversation" clubs met in different towns to discuss questions like "Under what conditions is a man most free?", or whether secret voting was necessary for political freedom. The fact that ordinary people who had no part to play in politics asked and discussed such questions explains why John Wilkes was so popular. His struggle showed that public opinion was now a new and powerful influence on politics.

      Wilkes's victory was important because he had shown that Parliament did not represent the ordinary people, and that their individual freedom was not assured. As a result of his victory people began to organise political activity outside Parliament in order to win their basic rights. Politics were no longer a monopoly of the landowning gentry. Newspapers were allowed to send their own reporters to listen to Parliament and write about its discussions in the newspapers. The age of public opinion had arrived.

      Radicalism and the loss of the American colonies

        In 1764 there was a serious quarrel over taxation between the British government and its colonies in America. It was a perfect example of the kind of freedom for which Wilkes had been fighting. The British government continued to think of the colonists as British subjects. In 1700 there had been only 200,000 colonists, but by 1770 there were 2.5 million. Such large numbers needed to be dealt with carefully.

      Some American colonists decided that it was not lawful for the British to tax them without their agreement. Political opinion in Britain was divided. Some felt that the tax was fair because the money would be used to pay for the defence of the American colonies against French attack. But several important politicians, including Wilkes and Chatham, agreed with the colonists that there should be "no taxation without representation".

      In 1773 a group of colonists at the port of Boston threw a shipload of tea into the sea rather than pay tax on it. The event became known as "the Boston Teaparty". The British government answered by closing the port. But the colonists then decided to prevent British goods from entering America until the port was opened again. This was rebellion, and the government decided to defeat it by force. The American War of Independence had begun.

      The war in America lasted from 1775 until 1783. The government had no respect for the politics of the colonists, and the British army had no respect for their fighting ability. The result was a disastrous defeat for the British government. It lost everything except for Canada.

      Many British politicians openly supported the colonists. They were called "radicals". For the first time British politicians supported the rights of the king's subjects abroad to govern themselves and to fight for their rights against the king. The war in America gave strength to the new ideas of democracy and of independence.

      Two of the more important radicals were Edmund Burke and Tom Paine. Paine was the first to suggest that the American colonists should become independent of Britain. Burke, who himself held a mixture of both radical and conservative views, argued that the king and his advisers were once again too powerful, and that Parliament needed to get back proper control of policy.

      Ireland

      James II's defeat by William of Orange in 1690 had severe and long-term effects on the Irish people. Over the next half century the Protestant parliament in Dublin passed laws to prevent the Catholics from taking any part in national life. Catholics could not become members of the Dublin parliament, and could not vote in parliamentary elections. No Catholic could become a lawyer, go to university, join the navy or accept any public post. Catholics were not even allowed to own a horse worth more than £5. It was impossible for Catholics to have their children educated according to their religion, because Catholic schools were forbidden. Although there were still far more Catholics than Protestants, they had now become second-class citizens in their own land.

      New laws were passed which divided Catholic families. The son of Catholic parents who became Protestant could take over his parents' property and use it as he wanted. These actions put the Irish Catholic population in the same position as other colonised peoples later on. Hatred between the ruling Protestant settlers and the ruled Catholic Irish was unavoidable.

      By the 1770s, however, life had become easier and some of the worst laws against Catholics were removed. But not everyone wanted to give the Catholics more freedom. In Ulster, the northern part of Ireland, Protestants formed the first "Orange Lodges", societies which were against any freedom for the Catholics.

      In order to increase British control Ireland was united with Britain in 1801, and the Dublin parliament closed. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland lasted for 120 years. Politicians had promised Irish leaders that when Ireland became part of Britain the Catholics would get equal voting opportunities. But George HI, supported by most Tories and by many Protestant Irish landlords, refused to let this happen.

      Scotland

      Scotland also suffered from the efforts of the Stuarts to win back the throne. The first "Jacobite" revolt to win the crown for James II's son, in 1715, had been unsuccessful. The Stuarts tried again in 1745, when James II's grandson, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, better known as "Bonny Prince Charlie", landed on the west coast of Scotland. He persuaded some clan chiefs to join him. Many of these chiefs had great difficulty persuading the men in their clans to join the revolt. Some were told their homes would be burnt if they did not fight. Most clans did not join the rebellion, and nor did the men of the Scottish Lowlands.

      Bonny Prince Charlie was more successful at first than anyone could have imagined. His army of Highlanders entered Edinburgh and defeated an English army in a surprise attack. Then he marched south. Panic spread through England, because much of the British army was in Europe fighting the French. But success for Bonny Prince Charlie depended on Englishmen also joining his army. When the Highland army was over halfway to London, however, it was clear that few of the English would join him, and the Highlanders themselves were unhappy at being so far from home. The rebels moved back to Scotland. Early in 1746 they were defeated by the British army at Culloden, near Inverness. The rebellion was finished.

      The English army behaved with cruelty. Many Highlanders were killed, even those who had not joined the rebellion. Others were sent to work in America. Their homes were destroyed, and their farm animals killed. The fear of the Highland danger was so great that a law was passed forbidding Highlanders to wear their traditional skirt, the kilt. The old patterns of the kilt, called tartans, and the Scottish musical instrument, the bagpipe, were also forbidden. Some did not obey this law, and were shot.

      10.    Life in town and country

      Town life

      In 1700 England and Wales had a population of about 5.5 million. This had increased very little by 1750, but then grew quickly to about 8.8 million by the end of the century. Including Ireland and Scotland, the total population was about 13 million.

      In 1700 England was still a land of small villages. In the northern areas of England, in Lancashire and West Yorkshire, and in the West Midlands, the large cities of the future were only just beginning to grow. By the middle of the century Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield and Leeds were already large. But such new towns were still treated as villages and so had no representation in Parliament.

      All the towns smelled bad. There were no drains. Streets were used as lavatories and the dirt was seldom removed. In fact people added to it, leaving in the streets the rubbish from the marketplace and from houses. The streets were muddy and narrow, some only two metres wide. Around London and other larger towns a few vegetable growers took the dirt from the streets to put on their fields.

      The towns were centres of disease. As a result only one child in four in London lived to become an adult. It was the poor who died youngest. They were buried together in large holes dug in the ground. These were not covered with earth until they were full. It was hardly surprising that poor people found comfort in drinking alcohol and in trying to win money from card games. Quakers, shocked by the terrible effects of gin drinking, developed the beer industry in order to replace gin with a less damaging drink.