The French Revolution left its mark on reform and radical movements within Britain during the early half of the 18th century. In March 1815, a Corn Law was enacted, prohibiting the import of foreign Corn until the domestic product reached 80 shillings per bushel, it was enacted at the behest of wealthy land owners and did not reflect an adequate understanding of economics and the price of Corn overshot, it was protested in legislation and riots in the streets of London in the 1830s & 1840s. It took the the Irish Potato Famine, which can be likened to a genocide and adoption of a free trade ideology to suspend and repeal the Corn Laws in November 1845 by Robert Peel. It cost Robert Peel his career but once through any remaining talk of revolution according to the French model was put aside. Reform and the liberties that we take for granted were gained during this period and were generally opposed by the landed gentry. The terms we use to describe eras of time are problematic, they mean different things to us than to the people described. The people we describe as "the Victorians" started to call themselves Victorian around 1851 with the Great Exhibition, as the name suggests, an exhibition of technology and art to show the British Empire's material progress, it was a kind of looking glass, allowing them to see their difference from the past, Victorian meant progress in natural philosophy, technology and morality, the term scientist was first used in 1833, an adaptation from the word artist. It was describing an awareness of something new and probably meant something similar to the term "modern". Revolution along the French model was not going to happen because the middle class concerns were addressed, they were "in times when reform bills, steam boats, rail roads, penny postage and free trade, to say nothing of the ratification of civil and religious liberties have been possible facts" (147 : 2017). It is significant to remember how quickly the radical utopian ideological factions of the French Revolution became subsumed by the emerging professional middle class, Robsperrie's faction managed to send the radical Herbertists to the guillotine and the Jacobins, for all their use of capital punishment as a means to maintain a constant state of revolution did, compared to the Herbertists represent a less radical government. At least this is how the histories read anyway.
The initial attempt by the French to form a constitutional monarchy with Louis XVI as represented by the Legislative Assembly was viewed with sympathetically, after all, Britain had already gone through its "Glorious Revolution of 1688" and came out with a Parlimentary system, but with the breakdown of diplomatic relations and the bloodthirsty radicalism of the Convention the government of William Pit and the National Convention were at war. Indigenous British attempts at reform became unpatriotic.
The authorities tolerated Thomas Paine's Rights of Man in 1791 which was surprising given the role his book Common Sense (1776) played in inspiring the American Revolution. The Rights of Man became a best seller but with the publication of part 2 in May 1792, Louis XVI had been executed in September 1971, the reaction of conservatives was more pronounced. A royal proclamation against seditious writings was issued on the 21 of May 1792, which held that loyal subjects were to resist subversion and magistrates were to uncover all who wrote, published and distributed seditious works (304 : 2017). Consequently Thomas Paine fled to France on the 14 of September 1792, to be welcomed by Girondists and elected into the National Convention, which had its own subsequent political consequences as the Jacobins gained ascendancy.
By the 6th of December 1792 a loyalist organization called the "Association for the Preservation of Liberty and Property Against Republicans and Levellers" had been endorsed by the Lord mayor of London and associated livery companies. It had been established by John Reeves (306 : 2017) and with the endorsement of the authorities had spread into taverns and overtime became a nation wide network, disseminating antiradical propaganda including Hannah Mores work Village Politics (1792), a journal that appealed to peoples religious attachments and ideas of Britishness (309 : 2017).
Reform became a reality in Britain during the 1830s and 1840s, it was a back and forth process, Tories such as Robert Peel became reformers and Whigs sometimes opposed reform till in the end the terms became meaningless, there were factions and from the 1870s people started using the terms conservative and liberal. Peter Ackroyds (2018) The History of England : Volume 5, "Dominion" covers the period from the end of the Regency to the end of the Victorian period, starting with the Tory government of Lord Liverpool with George IV as monarch in 1815 to the end of the Victorian era, January 1901 with the death of Queen Victoria and in power a Conservative government lead by Robert Gascoyne-Cecil. It is a time where government was done by "pen & ink" (115 : 2018) and the names of the elite and powerful are etched on the maps of the English Commonwealth. Ackroyd manages to impart some personality to these figures while giving a sense of the volatility of the cabinets formed. Examples of esteemed personages of this period include Arthur Wellesley who had a Tory political career post Field Marshal at the Battle of Waterloo (1815) or Viscount Palmerston who as a Whig/ Liberal influenced British foreign policy, was involved in ending the Crimean War, oversaw the execution of gunboat diplomacy in the Second Opium War, passed the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 and is considered the first Liberal Prime Minister from 1859. The books last chapter describes the significance of Oscar Wilde, the author of those occasional risque plays and books that one would find in university libraries and the book examines the virtues and hypocrisies of the period. The book ends on a small sombre page describing the death of Queen Victoria (1901) and the passing of an age.
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