Striving for a world transformed by justice and peace - a TL from 1827

[pipisme]

Continuation of the Disraeli's dinner party. Benjamin Disraeli said that there needed to be a board of education headed by a president who would be a member of the cabinet. [1] In reply to Thomas Wakley's question as to whether he would want that position, Disraeli said that he would gladly accept it if the Prime Minister created such a post and offered it to him. He continued: elementary education, up to the age of 11 inclusive, must be provided for all children. There should be religious and non-religious schools. Harriet Taylor asked him if such education should be compulsory and if it should be free. Disraeli replied that it should be compulsory for parents to send their young children to school, unless they were educating them at home. He said that elementary education should be free, but schools should have the right to charge fees. No child should be deprived of the right to an elementary education if its parents could not afford school fees.

[1] In OTL and this TL a committee of the Privy Council was appointed in 1839 which would be responsible for education policy. The members of the committee were the Prime Minister and other senior members of the cabinet. So in 1853 in OTL and this TL there was no government minister solely responsible for education.

[stevep]

Originally Posted by pipisme

Continuation of the Disraeli's dinner party. Benjamin Disraeli said that there needed to be a board of education headed by a president who would be a member of the cabinet. [1] In reply to Thomas Wakley's question as to whether he would want that position, Disraeli said that he would gladly accept it if the Prime Minister created such a post and offered it to him. He continued: elementary education, up to the age of 11 inclusive, must be provided for all children. There should be religious and non-religious schools. Harriet Taylor asked him if such education should be compulsory and if it should be free. Disraeli replied that it should be compulsory for parents to send their young children to school, unless they were educating them at home. He said that elementary education should be free, but schools should have the right to charge fees. No child should be deprived of the right to an elementary education if its parents could not afford school fees.

[1] In OTL and this TL a committee of the Privy Council was appointed in 1839 to supervise the distribution of government grants in the area of education. The members of the committee were the Prime Minister and other senior members of the cabinet. So in 1853 in OTL and this TL there was no government minister solely responsible for education.

pipisme

Gods! This could be a huge step forward, especially since there is still a strong interest in technical education at this point. Need to get pass the religious dispute and the influence of laisse faire, both in terms of minimising government spending and in non-interference with families. However would radically change the development of Britain and probably avoid much of the Victorian decline.

Steve

[pipisme]

Based on events in OTL, the cabinet will appoint a Commission on Education which will issue its report after three or four years. After another two or three years, if the cabinet accepts the report, an Education Act will be on the statute book, subject of course to Parliamentary approval.

More from the Disraeli's dinner party. Barbara Leigh Smith raised the issue of female prostitution. She said that thousands, perhaps of tens of thousands of women, sold themselves in London. [1] Such a monstrous evil only flourished because men, respectable men, availed themselves of the services of these women.

Marian Evans said:

I agree with you, Barbara. If an married man who is not able to obtain physical satisfaction from his wife, or an unmarried man, uses a prostitute to satisfy his physical desires, society does not condemn him. But a married woman whose husband is unable or unwilling to satisfy her physically, or an unmarried woman, must suffer in silence. Women, married or single, have physical, sexual desires and longings, which clamour to be fulfilled. Women are at least as much capable as men of enjoying sexual pleasure.

At this point, in order to change the subject, Mary Labouchere interrupts Evans and turns to Thomas Huxley:

Tell me Mr. Huxley, how is Mr. Charles Darwin and his study of barnacles.

Huxley embarks on an account of Darwin and his research on barnacles. Henry Labouchere asks him:

Mr. Huxley, do female barnacles suffer from unfulfilled sexual desires?

Laughter from the men and Marian Evans, while the other women tried to be disapproving and not to laugh.

The conversation then turned to the novel Villette by Charlotte Bronte which had been published the previous year. Marian Evans declared that it was "a wonderful book, surpassing Jane Eyre." [2]

After some more conversation on cultural matters, the Disraeli's guests said their farewells and left. Sarah Disraeli was the last to leave.

[1] According to the book Ins and Outs of London by W.O'Daniel, published in 1859, there were about 55,000 prostitutes in London. See http://www.victorianlondon.org/crime...rostitutes.htm.

[2] In her letter to Mrs Cara Bray dated February 15 [1853], Marian Evans wrote "I have been reading Villette, a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre." In Selections from George Eliot's Letters edited by Gordon S. Haight, Yale University Press, 1985.

[pipisme]

The cabinet met on Tuesday 12 July 1853 and decided to ask Queen Victoria to create a hundred Liberal Peers to ensure a majority for the Reform bill, if the House of Lords did not pass it. The radicals in the cabinet, Disraeli and Labouchere, wanted the Queen to be asked to create several hundred new peers; to threaten to swamp the House of Lords as Earl Grey's government did in 1832 when the Lords refused then to pass the Reform bill.

The next day in his audience with the Queen, the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, presented his cabinet's request for the creation of a hundred Liberal Peers. He warned her that if the Reform Bill was not passed "there will be revolution in this country, ma'am." The Queen agreed to his request.

[stevep]

Originally Posted by pipisme

The cabinet met on Tuesday 12 July 1853 and decided to ask Queen Victoria to create a hundred Liberal Peers to ensure a majority for the Reform bill, if the House of Lords did not pass it. The radicals in the cabinet, Disraeli and Labouchere, wanted the Queen to be asked to create several hundred new peers; to threaten to swamp the House of Lords as Earl Grey's government did in 1832 when the Lords refused then to pass the Reform bill.

The next day in his audience with the Queen, the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, presented his cabinet's request for the creation of a hundred Liberal Peers. He warned her that if the Reform Bill was not passed "there will be revolution in this country, ma'am." The Queen agreed to his request.

pipisme

Excellent. Would rather prefer the hard-liners to refuse to pass the bill and have the queen forced to create the new peers. That would both moderate the balance in the Lords permanently and probably anger the queen and make her less friendly to the more conservative elements. However expect they will back down and the bill sounds like it will be a big improvement on OTL.

Steve

[pipisme]

On 19, 20 and 21 July 1853 the House of Lords debated the second reading of the Reform Bill. The Duke of Buccleuch, the Conservative leader in the Lords, and the Earl of Derby, his chief lieutenant, recommended that Conservative Peers abstained on the vote at the end of the debate to avoid the creation of Liberal Peers. Enough of them did abstain to ensure that the bill was given a second reading on 21 July by a majority of 181 votes to 157.

In the next two weeks the bill passed through its remaining stages in the Lords and received the royal assent on 5 August 1853. The effects of the Reform Act 1853 [or Representation of the People Act 1853 as it was officially called] were that all future elections would be by secret ballot; that around 65% of adult males would have the franchise; and that 76 seats would be taken from boroughs with small electorates to give 28 seats to boroughs with large electorates, 47 seats to the counties and one seat to the University of London, which did not have representation in the House of Commons. At a very rough estimate in the region of four million men now had the right to vote.

[pipisme]

The butterflies have caused a shuffling of the genders in the birth dates of the children born to John Winston Spencer Churchill, the Marquess of Blandford, and Lady Frances Anne Emily Spencer Churchill.

A girl child was born on 13 February 1849. She was named Fanny Octavia Louise, with the title of Lady. The son born on 29 January 1853 was named Randolph, with the title of Lord. So in this TL the birth dates of Lady Fanny and Lord Randolph have been swapped around compared to OTL.

[pipisme]

In February 1852 Sir Henry Bulwer, the British Ambassador to the United States, was appointed Ambassador to Constantinople. [1] A diplomat and writer he had been a Whig MP from 1830-1837. From 1835-1837 he and Disraeli were the two Whig members for the London constituency of Marylebone.

The year 1853 saw growing tension between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Whether it would lead to war between these two countries, and whether Britain would be involved in such a war remains to be seen.

[1] Here is the entry for Bulwer in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: http://press.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3935.

[pipisme]

In early September 1853 Henry Goulburn, the leader of the Conservative Party in the House of Commons, announced his resignation. He said that at the age of 68 it was time to make way for a younger man. At that time there was no overall leader of the Conservative Party, except when the leader in the Commons or the Lords was also Prime Minister.

There was no clear front-runner for the leadership post. However the extension of the franchise and its possible consequences in relation to Irish politics, meant that Henry Lowry Corry, [1] born in Dublin on 9 March 1803, and MP for Fermanagh from 1826, attracted widespread support. He was a younger son of the 2nd Earl Belmore. The Belmore family owned Castle Coole [2] in County Fermanagh. He was Master of the Mint [outside the cabinet] in Goulburn's government from 30 January 1846 to 6 July 1848. On 14 September, Lowry-Corry's fellow Conservative MPs chose him as their leader. Walter Francis Montagu Douglas Scott, 5th Duke of Buccleuch, continued to be the Conservative leader in the House of Lords.

[1] Here is his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: http://press.oxforddnb.com/view/article/6355.

[2] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Coole.

[pipisme]

In July 1853 Russia occupied the Ottoman provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia. Austria proposed a compromise, the Vienna note, finalised on 31 July, whereby the territory of Turkey would be secure, but that Russia had the right to take an interest in the rights of the Christian subjects of the sultan. This was accepted by Tsar Nicholas I but rejected by Sultan Abdul Medjid I. Instead he proposed an amendment, inspired by Sir Henry Bulwer, the British ambassador to Constantinople, "confirming in perpetuity all privileges granted to the Greek Church, and guaranteeing them in terms of a bond to which the four powers [ of Austria, Britain, France and Prussia] were witnesses." [1] This was accepted by the Tsar. In OTL he rejected the Ottoman amendment. However Russian troops did not withdraw from Moldavia and Wallachia.

[1] Quotation is taken from The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire by Lord Kinross.

[pipisme]

Although a compromise solution to the question of the protection of the Christians in the Ottoman Empire had been accepted by all the powers concerned, the continuing Russian occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia meant that the risk of war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire remained high.

[pipisme]

On 1 October 1853 Benjamin Disraeli wrote to Marian Evans [better known in OTL as George Eliot]. Here are extracts from that letter.

In my estimation only the wisest diplomacy and much goodwill on both sides will avert war between Russia and Turkey. Two days ago Sultan Abdul Medjid ratified the decision of his Grand Council for war with Russia. [1] I greatly hope there is no war between the Ottoman and Russian Empires, and if there were there is no reason why Great Britain should be involved.

If we are to believe the rumours at Westminster the Prime Minister [Lord John Russell] will dissolve Parliament this month and call a general election.

[1] This happened in OTL. See the book The Eastern Question 1774-1923: A Study in International Relations by M.S. Anderson, London: Macmillan, 1966.

[pipisme]

Because the Reform Act 1853 extended the parliamentary suffrage to all property-owning or renting adult males, and mandated elections by secret ballot, in September 1853 the Chartist Party dissolved itself. The majority of the Party, including William Lovett, its leader, crossed over to the Liberals, but a significant minority went over to the Commonweal Party. There were a kind of Tory Christian Socialists.

The Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, dissolved Parliament on 20 October 1853. The first contest in the general election was on 26 October. The last contest was on 19 November.

[stevep]

Originally Posted by pipisme

Because the Reform Act 1853 extended the parliamentary suffrage to all property-owning or renting adult males, and mandated elections by secret ballot, in September 1853 the Chartist Party dissolved itself. The majority of the Party, including William Lovett, its leader, crossed over to the Liberals, but a significant minority went over to the Commonweal Party. There were a kind of Tory Christian Socialists.

The Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, dissolved Parliament on 20 October 1853. The first contest in the general election was on 26 October. The last contest was on 19 November.

pipisme

This should be interesting with the new franchise and a secret ballot, which should significantly reduce the influence of the large landowners especially.

Wonder if the gathering war clouds will have any influence?

Steve

[pipisme]

The general election of October/November 1853 was held under the shadow of war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans and the Caucasus. On 27 October Omer Pasha, the Turkish Governor of Bosnia, crossed the Danube with a Turkish army. At the same time fighting broke out in the Caucusus. A Russo-Turkish war had begun and by 15 November British and French naval squadrons were at anchor in the Bosphorus. These events were as in OTL, but whether Britain or France will join in the war is an open question.

In the UK the electorate had increased to somewhere in the region of four and three quarter million. [1] This was a notional electorate of around 7,300 for each of the 654 constituencies, though of course the number of electors in each constituency varied greatly.

[1] In OTL the electorate was 5,708,030 for the general election of 1885 when the franchise was more or less the same as for the 1853 election in this TL. I have taken off roughly a miilion to allow for the increase in population between 1853 and 1885.

[pipisme]

From a letter which Benjamin Disraeli wrote to his sister Sarah on 10 November 1853:

Now that most of the results are in it looks like we [the Liberals] will form the government again. I have been elected for the new St. Pancras constituency with a large majority. [1]

All my sympathies are with Turkey in its war with Russia. Suleiman the Maginificant sheltered the Jewish people when they were expelled from Spain in the 16th century, and that tradition of toleration still continues today.

It is the policy of the British government, together with France, Austria and Prussia to bring about a peaceful solution to the conflict in the Balkans. I hope with all my heart that Britain does not go to war against Russia. But if we do it will be for a just cause.

When this election is over the Prime Minister [Lord John Russell] will most probably make changes in his government. I would very much like to leave the Chief Secretaryship [for Ireland] for pastures new.

[1] Because of boundary changes Disraeli's constituency of Marylebone was divided into Marylebone, Paddington and St. Pancras. He stood for St. Pancras in the belief that it would be the safest Liberal seat of the three.

[pipisme]

Ireland was a significant issue in the general election. Because of the extension of the franchise to around 65% of adult males it was generally assumed that more candidates advocating the repeal of the Act of Union would be elected. The Conservatives accused the Liberals of being secret repealers and fought the election as the only sincere defenders of the union. They made much of the fact that their leader, Henry Lowry Corry, was an Irishman and MP for an Irish constituency.

The Liberal Party vehemently rejected Conservative claims that they were really repealers. But most Liberal candidates, including Lord John Russell and Disraeli, advocated disestablishment of the Church of Ireland. In those days political parties did not issue election manifestos, but it was generally understood that if the Liberals won the election they would introduce legislation to disestablish the Church of Ireland.

Women's suffrage was an issue at this election. Although dismissed as of no importance by most people, both men and women, it would become of major importance in later years.

On 26 February 1851 the Sheffield Female Political Association met in a
hotel in Sheffield and unanimously adopted a resolution in favour of campaigning for "the entire political enfranchisement of our sex". [1]

In late May 1853 an amendment proposed by William Lovett, on behalf of the Chartist Party, during the committee stage of the Representation of the People Bill to leave out the word 'man' and replace it by the word 'person' was defeated by 264 votes to 73 on a free vote. Disraeli voted in favour of the amendment.

During 1853 societies and association advocating votes for women were formed in all the major cities. On 5 October 1853 the National Women's Suffrage League was established.

[1] This also happened in OTL. See the book Women's Suffrage and Party Politics in Britain 1866-1914 by Constance Rover, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967.

[Archangel]

Keep it up, Pip!

[pipisme]

When all the results in the general election had been declared the number of seats obtained by each party were as follows: [July 1848 general election]:

Liberal: 334 [Whig: 276]
Conservative: 230 [311] *
Irish Freedom Party: 59 [Repeal Association: 39 and Irish Confederation: 3 ] **
Commonweal 35 [17] [Chartist: 10]
------------------
Total: 658 [656]
------------------
Liberal majority of ten over all other parties.

* In 1848 the Conservative total included 49 Grahamites or free trade Conservatives. In the newly elected Parliament they allied with the Whigs and later joined with them to form the Liberal Party.

** In March 1852 the Repeal Association and the Irish Confederation combined to form the Irish Freedom Party.

[pipisme]

After the general election the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, carried out a major reshuffle of his government on 22nd and 23rd November 1853. The members of the new cabinet are as follows:
Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury and Leader of the House of Commons: Lord John Russell
Lord Chancellor: Lord Cranworth
Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Lords: Earl Granville
Lord Privy Seal: The Marquess of Lansdowne
Chancellor of the Exchequer: Sir James Graham
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs: Earl of Aberdeen
Secretary of State for the Home Department: Sir George Grey
First Lord of the Admiralty: Sidney Herbert
Secretary of State for the Colonies: Earl Grey
President of the Board of Control [responsible for policy in respect of India]: Benjamin Disraeli
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: The Earl of Carlisle
Chief Secretary for Ireland: William Monsell
President of the Board of Trade: Henry Labouchere
Secretary of State for War: Sir Charles Wood
First Commissioner of Works: George Cornewall Lewis.