A House Divided: A TL
- Thread starter Utgard96
- Start date
Worse still, General Elphinstone is in charge, and I'll have to reach for my Flashman:
Harry Flashman said:
Elphy was in charge of the Sikh war. With the way it went, it's unlikely any Governor-General remotely grounded in reality would put him in charge of any expedition against the Afghans. Of course, this is still the 1840s-era East India Company; they were hardly known for being grounded in reality.
Clive and Cornwallis had a vague sense of how to go about things for their own benefit, even if they wrought complete horror on the Indian people. No such luck with Dalhousie.
Not just that. The British East India Company got bankrupt a lot and had to get bailed out by the British government. I guess conquering an entire subcontinent is a difficult and costly process.
bruh screw you for bumping and getting all of our hopes up. it'll update when it updates, be patient
You... you....
Begone foul Necromancer - leave this place and never return. Your corruption is not accepted here.
If you don't leave we will start the Purge, and such witchcraft is best ended with FIRE!
Anyways in all seriousness, in casss like this mate, remember, it's better to pm the OP not bump the thread and annoy everyone else.
Can confirm that it's not. I'm returning to it in good time, I just haven't gotten around to writing very much on it lately. I am actively researching as we speak though.
#25: The First Duty of a Citizen
As a matter of fact...
A House Divided #25: The First Duty of a Citizen
“And so, inhabitants of these lands, I appear with confidence before you; give yourselves once more to your German fatherland, to an old German princely line, and call yourselves Prussians.”
***
From “Gott Mit Uns: The History of Prussia”
(c) 1996 by Rudolf Holzmann
London: Macmillan Publishers
The Congress of Vienna, in addition to ensuring that as much as possible of the old order could be restored, was additionally concerned with ensuring that as much of it as possible could be preserved indefinitely, and in particular that France would never again be able to threaten the remainder of Europe as it had under Napoleon. It was to this end that the Netherlands were granted everything down to Luxemburg, that the German Confederation was formed as a common forum for the German states, and most crucially for this work, that Prussia was expanded to include Westphalia and the Rhineland. Taken on its own, this grant of lands partially claimed by the French Republic and Empire was a powerful recognition of Prussia’s military prowess, but it would almost immediately create issues. For one thing, the new provinces were not geographically connected to the rest of Prussia. Nor were they really culturally connected to it – the Rhineland was Catholic, as was a large portion of Westphalia, and their economic structure was completely different from that of Prussia proper. Partly as a result of these factors, the two western provinces would never come to identify as fully Prussian, [1] and this would come to be a significant factor in the coming decades as Germany began to take shape…
…King Frederick William III, who had reigned since 1797 and shaped modern Prussia through his involvement in the Napoleonic Wars and ruled it with a firm hand in the twenty-five years since then, finally passed away of a fever in 1841, aged 70. [2] His most lasting legacies would be the abolition of serfdom, the union of the Prussian churches, [3] and of course, the addition of the Rhenish provinces to the realm. He was succeeded by his son, also named Friedrich Wilhelm, who ascended to the throne as Frederick William IV.
The new King of Prussia was altogether a new man, albeit by no means a liberal. A fervent devotee of the Romanticist movement, he believed in the social and political orientation of the Biedermeier era [4] toward Germany as a union of princes under the leadership of the Habsburg emperor, and that Prussia’s place was as a German principality – one of the foremost ones, but still firmly subordinated to an all-German structure. [5] This made him naturally inclined toward conservatism, although he had little time for the Prussianist movement that would arise in the latter portion of his reign. His Romantic sensibilities also showed in a sentimentality that many of his contemporaries thought unworthy of a monarch, particularly a Prussian monarch. He’d rather make concessions to liberalism than see bloodshed on the streets of Berlin, and this would come to be significant… [6]
…It took until 1847 for Prussia to gain a legislature in any proper sense of the word. Prior to then, there had existed Landtage, or assemblies of estates, on the provincial level only. Including local nobles who held seats by right as well as representatives of local cities, the estates had only a consultative function. The King retained the sole right to issue laws and raise taxes. However, by the State Debt Law of 1820, all new debt incurred by the government needed the approval of “the estates of the realm”. For aforementioned reasons, [7] no single such body existed, and as such, the government studiously avoided incurring debt, which for the most part was successful due to the limited scope of government at the time. When debt was unavoidable, the estates of the different provinces were simply all called together in Berlin to approve the debts.
Enter the railways. When they first arrived in Germany in 1834, [8] they were greeted with a healthy dose of scepticism, but as the British rail network slowly increased in scope through the following years, their power to link disparate regions together gradually became clear. For Prussia, a state sundered in two, this was particularly urgent, and the King decided that the state should take an active role in railway construction in order to provide for the needs of the military in an efficient manner. This would require the issuing of bonds, and for that, the consent of the estates was necessary. They were convened for the first time in 1842, and Friedrich Wilhelm IV declared that a “standing committee” would be formed to handle all similar matters in future. The idea of a kind of “semi-parliament” existing solely at the King’s pleasure was too much for many of the liberals among the provincial nobility, and the committee immediately voted to disown its own proceedings and disband.
The impasse was not resolved until 1847, by which time several of the mainlines envisioned by the King and his civil servants had already been built with private capital. However, there remained a need for an Eastern Railway, the Preußische Ostbahn, to link Berlin with the seaport of Danzig and the ancient royal capital of Königsberg. Anxious that work should begin as soon as possible, and requiring a bond issue of 20 million Taler, the King agreed to the demands of liberals by explicitly calling together a United Landtag, which at this stage was effectively the same as the old standing committee but with a more official-sounding name.
If the King had meant to achieve a speedy resolution of the bond issue by calling the United Landtag together, he would receive the opposite. In his throne speech to the Landtag on 17 April, he declared that “the purpose [of the assembly] is not to express opinions or to bring ideologies of the time into account. That is wholly un-German, and what’s more, wholly impractical. It necessarily leads to irreconcilable conflict with the Crown, which shall rule by the law of God and that of the land, as well as its own best judgment, but cannot and will not rule by the will of the majority.” [9]
This view was immediately challenged by the assembly, which leaned toward French-style moderate liberalism, [10] and regarded this as the best opportunity to advance the constitutional question. In the course of the debate on the Ostbahn, the Landtag voted nearly unanimously for the construction of the line, but on the financing side, only 179 of the 617 members voted for the government’s proposed bond issue. Members spoke of the need for increased oversight of state finances, and called for the Landtag to be given permanent standing in law in exchange for approving the bonds. Frederick William disagreed, and for several days it appeared as though he would dissolve the Landtag even if it meant failing to secure the bond issue.
However, while generally conservative in methods as well as beliefs, the King was not impossible to sway. In particular, he would usually listen to his trusted advisers, and held a great reverence for the mood of the Berlin mob which would compel him to concede political points sooner than see his people fight against their King. It was with the foreknowledge of this that the brothers Gerlach, [11] future founders of the Prussian Conservative Party and very much radical conservatives in the Peelite mould, [12] drew their plan. In a letter to the King sent on the 12th of June, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach advised Frederick William that “the mob and the liberals cry out for a representation… in the end, the only way of silencing their calls is to give them one”, and that furthermore, “the United Landtag with its guarantee of a voice for the traditional estates of Your Majesty’s realm will serve this function better than the elected National Assembly that would be the result of a liberal revolution”.
The next day, General Ernst von Pfuel, [13] military commander of Berlin, advised the King that radical clubs were increasing in activity, and that dismissing the Landtag might lead to an outbreak of street violence. It has never been made clear to what extent the Gerlach brothers were coordinating with Pfuel, but all three men shared the same basic view of the universe, and much like his London counterpart Lord Anglesey, [14] Pfuel was a mild-mannered commandant who was inclined to support concessions over violence. With this in mind, the possibility opens up for the three to have joined forces in defence of the Landtag, but it’s also eminently possible that their goals simply aligned in a serendipitous manner.
Either way, the King was brought round. On the 15th, he declared to his ministers that he was going to promulgate a law to hold the Landtag once every three years, and to establish an election framework for the lower estate, which was to be composed of representatives of the cities and provinces. With this promise formally transmitted to the Landtag, it voted by a narrow margin – several of its most prominent liberals abstaining in disgust – to approve the bond issue for the Ostbahn…
…The election system ultimately settled upon was a somewhat idiosyncratic one. Virtually everyone in politics regarded universal suffrage as fundamentally unsound, even before the “mob rule” that struck London and Vienna in 1849, but there was also a sense that the lower classes ought to be represented in some form. To this end, an indirect election system was implemented, with each representative being chosen by an assembly of electors chosen, in turn, by the people. For rural districts, these would be elected in three classes determined by taxation levels – the population of a district would be sorted from the highest-paying to the lowest-paying residents, and lines would be drawn at thirds of the total amount of tax paid. Within each class, there would be equal suffrage, but while the third class would almost always outnumber the other two by a significant amount, it would nevertheless only choose a third of the electors. [15] For the districts of cities, each city could freely decide on its method of choosing electors; most opted to hold elections according to the rural franchise, some opted for an equal but restrictive franchise, a few (mainly in the Rhineland) attempted to institute universal suffrage only for this to be cracked down on, and a large number decided not to hold elections but simply to let their own councils nominate electors – usually themselves… [16]
***
Excerpts from a discussion at fc/gen/uchronia, labeled “Prussia in 1849”
***
[1] This was true IOTL as well – there was a strong movement for a separate free state in the Rhineland during the Weimar Republic.
[2] This is a year later than OTL, but otherwise the exact same death.
[3] That is, the Lutheran and Reformed churches. Even Prussia was never crazy enough to try to coerce the Catholic Church into a union.
[4] The German name for what’s known in France as the Restoration and in Britain, very roughly, as the Regency period.
[5] This belief of his had an enormous effect on the OTL German 1848 revolution (it’s what caused him to reject the offer to become Emperor of the Germans – he believed such a title had to come from the consent of the other German rulers rather than an assembly of the people), and will come to be significant ITTL as well, albeit not necessarily in the same way.
[6] This was also the case IOTL. When riots broke out in Berlin in March of 1848, he despised their pan-Germanist aims, but rather than send in the army and have to watch his people get shot down, he almost immediately conceded the establishment of a National Assembly and delegate elections to the Frankfurt Parliament.
[7] The law was adopted during the reform period of the 1810s, when serfdom was abolished and a number of liberal reforms enacted – it’s likely that its drafters assumed Prussia would get a proper legislature within a short period of time, but the reform process was cut short by royal decree before that could happen.
[8] Same as OTL, as is the location – linking Nürnberg (Nuremberg) and Fürth in Bavaria.
[9] This is taken straight from Friedrich Wilhelm’s throne speech to the United Landtag IOTL.
[10] It’s very likely that this would’ve said “English-style Whiggery” had the book been from OTL. Basically, aristocrats who despised the masses and regarded “democracy” as a bad word, but nonetheless believed in constitutional government because of its stability and predictability.
[11] Leopold von Gerlach was a General of the Prussian infantry who served as the King’s adjutant and advisor on military matters. His five years younger brother Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach was a judge, book publisher and newspaperman who co-founded the Neue Preußische Zeitung (also known as the Kreuzzeitung because of the prominent Iron Cross adorning its letterhead), the conservative newspaper of record in Berlin from 1848 until 1939. The two brothers were generally aligned in conservative, monarchist, Prussia-over-Germany views, but in common with Otto von Bismarck and many other Prussian conservatives of the generation following them, believed that the conservative state should always bend rather than break.
[12] “Radical conservatism” here in the sense of supporting incremental reform in order to keep the fundamentals of society operating, rather than in the sense of particularly hardline conservatism.
[13] That’s pronounced like “fool” but with a hard P at the start.
[14] The former Lord Uxbridge, of “losing his leg at Waterloo” fame. We’ll find out what makes him a household name in TTL’s Britain in the next chapter.
[15] This is the exact same system, the so-called Dreiklassenwahlrecht, which was used to elect the entire lower house of the Prussian Landtag from 1850 until 1918 IOTL.
[16] ITTL, due to Frederick William’s love for traditional corporatism and the fact that he gets to design the constitution more freely, the cities and rural areas are represented separately in the Landtag, and the cities are given deference to their own traditional customs.
A House Divided #25: The First Duty of a Citizen
“And so, inhabitants of these lands, I appear with confidence before you; give yourselves once more to your German fatherland, to an old German princely line, and call yourselves Prussians.”
***
From “Gott Mit Uns: The History of Prussia”
(c) 1996 by Rudolf Holzmann
London: Macmillan Publishers
The Congress of Vienna, in addition to ensuring that as much as possible of the old order could be restored, was additionally concerned with ensuring that as much of it as possible could be preserved indefinitely, and in particular that France would never again be able to threaten the remainder of Europe as it had under Napoleon. It was to this end that the Netherlands were granted everything down to Luxemburg, that the German Confederation was formed as a common forum for the German states, and most crucially for this work, that Prussia was expanded to include Westphalia and the Rhineland. Taken on its own, this grant of lands partially claimed by the French Republic and Empire was a powerful recognition of Prussia’s military prowess, but it would almost immediately create issues. For one thing, the new provinces were not geographically connected to the rest of Prussia. Nor were they really culturally connected to it – the Rhineland was Catholic, as was a large portion of Westphalia, and their economic structure was completely different from that of Prussia proper. Partly as a result of these factors, the two western provinces would never come to identify as fully Prussian, [1] and this would come to be a significant factor in the coming decades as Germany began to take shape…
…King Frederick William III, who had reigned since 1797 and shaped modern Prussia through his involvement in the Napoleonic Wars and ruled it with a firm hand in the twenty-five years since then, finally passed away of a fever in 1841, aged 70. [2] His most lasting legacies would be the abolition of serfdom, the union of the Prussian churches, [3] and of course, the addition of the Rhenish provinces to the realm. He was succeeded by his son, also named Friedrich Wilhelm, who ascended to the throne as Frederick William IV.
The new King of Prussia was altogether a new man, albeit by no means a liberal. A fervent devotee of the Romanticist movement, he believed in the social and political orientation of the Biedermeier era [4] toward Germany as a union of princes under the leadership of the Habsburg emperor, and that Prussia’s place was as a German principality – one of the foremost ones, but still firmly subordinated to an all-German structure. [5] This made him naturally inclined toward conservatism, although he had little time for the Prussianist movement that would arise in the latter portion of his reign. His Romantic sensibilities also showed in a sentimentality that many of his contemporaries thought unworthy of a monarch, particularly a Prussian monarch. He’d rather make concessions to liberalism than see bloodshed on the streets of Berlin, and this would come to be significant… [6]
…It took until 1847 for Prussia to gain a legislature in any proper sense of the word. Prior to then, there had existed Landtage, or assemblies of estates, on the provincial level only. Including local nobles who held seats by right as well as representatives of local cities, the estates had only a consultative function. The King retained the sole right to issue laws and raise taxes. However, by the State Debt Law of 1820, all new debt incurred by the government needed the approval of “the estates of the realm”. For aforementioned reasons, [7] no single such body existed, and as such, the government studiously avoided incurring debt, which for the most part was successful due to the limited scope of government at the time. When debt was unavoidable, the estates of the different provinces were simply all called together in Berlin to approve the debts.
Enter the railways. When they first arrived in Germany in 1834, [8] they were greeted with a healthy dose of scepticism, but as the British rail network slowly increased in scope through the following years, their power to link disparate regions together gradually became clear. For Prussia, a state sundered in two, this was particularly urgent, and the King decided that the state should take an active role in railway construction in order to provide for the needs of the military in an efficient manner. This would require the issuing of bonds, and for that, the consent of the estates was necessary. They were convened for the first time in 1842, and Friedrich Wilhelm IV declared that a “standing committee” would be formed to handle all similar matters in future. The idea of a kind of “semi-parliament” existing solely at the King’s pleasure was too much for many of the liberals among the provincial nobility, and the committee immediately voted to disown its own proceedings and disband.
The impasse was not resolved until 1847, by which time several of the mainlines envisioned by the King and his civil servants had already been built with private capital. However, there remained a need for an Eastern Railway, the Preußische Ostbahn, to link Berlin with the seaport of Danzig and the ancient royal capital of Königsberg. Anxious that work should begin as soon as possible, and requiring a bond issue of 20 million Taler, the King agreed to the demands of liberals by explicitly calling together a United Landtag, which at this stage was effectively the same as the old standing committee but with a more official-sounding name.
If the King had meant to achieve a speedy resolution of the bond issue by calling the United Landtag together, he would receive the opposite. In his throne speech to the Landtag on 17 April, he declared that “the purpose [of the assembly] is not to express opinions or to bring ideologies of the time into account. That is wholly un-German, and what’s more, wholly impractical. It necessarily leads to irreconcilable conflict with the Crown, which shall rule by the law of God and that of the land, as well as its own best judgment, but cannot and will not rule by the will of the majority.” [9]
This view was immediately challenged by the assembly, which leaned toward French-style moderate liberalism, [10] and regarded this as the best opportunity to advance the constitutional question. In the course of the debate on the Ostbahn, the Landtag voted nearly unanimously for the construction of the line, but on the financing side, only 179 of the 617 members voted for the government’s proposed bond issue. Members spoke of the need for increased oversight of state finances, and called for the Landtag to be given permanent standing in law in exchange for approving the bonds. Frederick William disagreed, and for several days it appeared as though he would dissolve the Landtag even if it meant failing to secure the bond issue.
However, while generally conservative in methods as well as beliefs, the King was not impossible to sway. In particular, he would usually listen to his trusted advisers, and held a great reverence for the mood of the Berlin mob which would compel him to concede political points sooner than see his people fight against their King. It was with the foreknowledge of this that the brothers Gerlach, [11] future founders of the Prussian Conservative Party and very much radical conservatives in the Peelite mould, [12] drew their plan. In a letter to the King sent on the 12th of June, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach advised Frederick William that “the mob and the liberals cry out for a representation… in the end, the only way of silencing their calls is to give them one”, and that furthermore, “the United Landtag with its guarantee of a voice for the traditional estates of Your Majesty’s realm will serve this function better than the elected National Assembly that would be the result of a liberal revolution”.
The next day, General Ernst von Pfuel, [13] military commander of Berlin, advised the King that radical clubs were increasing in activity, and that dismissing the Landtag might lead to an outbreak of street violence. It has never been made clear to what extent the Gerlach brothers were coordinating with Pfuel, but all three men shared the same basic view of the universe, and much like his London counterpart Lord Anglesey, [14] Pfuel was a mild-mannered commandant who was inclined to support concessions over violence. With this in mind, the possibility opens up for the three to have joined forces in defence of the Landtag, but it’s also eminently possible that their goals simply aligned in a serendipitous manner.
Either way, the King was brought round. On the 15th, he declared to his ministers that he was going to promulgate a law to hold the Landtag once every three years, and to establish an election framework for the lower estate, which was to be composed of representatives of the cities and provinces. With this promise formally transmitted to the Landtag, it voted by a narrow margin – several of its most prominent liberals abstaining in disgust – to approve the bond issue for the Ostbahn…
…The election system ultimately settled upon was a somewhat idiosyncratic one. Virtually everyone in politics regarded universal suffrage as fundamentally unsound, even before the “mob rule” that struck London and Vienna in 1849, but there was also a sense that the lower classes ought to be represented in some form. To this end, an indirect election system was implemented, with each representative being chosen by an assembly of electors chosen, in turn, by the people. For rural districts, these would be elected in three classes determined by taxation levels – the population of a district would be sorted from the highest-paying to the lowest-paying residents, and lines would be drawn at thirds of the total amount of tax paid. Within each class, there would be equal suffrage, but while the third class would almost always outnumber the other two by a significant amount, it would nevertheless only choose a third of the electors. [15] For the districts of cities, each city could freely decide on its method of choosing electors; most opted to hold elections according to the rural franchise, some opted for an equal but restrictive franchise, a few (mainly in the Rhineland) attempted to institute universal suffrage only for this to be cracked down on, and a large number decided not to hold elections but simply to let their own councils nominate electors – usually themselves… [16]
***
Excerpts from a discussion at fc/gen/uchronia, labeled “Prussia in 1849”
***
[1] This was true IOTL as well – there was a strong movement for a separate free state in the Rhineland during the Weimar Republic.
[2] This is a year later than OTL, but otherwise the exact same death.
[3] That is, the Lutheran and Reformed churches. Even Prussia was never crazy enough to try to coerce the Catholic Church into a union.
[4] The German name for what’s known in France as the Restoration and in Britain, very roughly, as the Regency period.
[5] This belief of his had an enormous effect on the OTL German 1848 revolution (it’s what caused him to reject the offer to become Emperor of the Germans – he believed such a title had to come from the consent of the other German rulers rather than an assembly of the people), and will come to be significant ITTL as well, albeit not necessarily in the same way.
[6] This was also the case IOTL. When riots broke out in Berlin in March of 1848, he despised their pan-Germanist aims, but rather than send in the army and have to watch his people get shot down, he almost immediately conceded the establishment of a National Assembly and delegate elections to the Frankfurt Parliament.
[7] The law was adopted during the reform period of the 1810s, when serfdom was abolished and a number of liberal reforms enacted – it’s likely that its drafters assumed Prussia would get a proper legislature within a short period of time, but the reform process was cut short by royal decree before that could happen.
[8] Same as OTL, as is the location – linking Nürnberg (Nuremberg) and Fürth in Bavaria.
[9] This is taken straight from Friedrich Wilhelm’s throne speech to the United Landtag IOTL.
[10] It’s very likely that this would’ve said “English-style Whiggery” had the book been from OTL. Basically, aristocrats who despised the masses and regarded “democracy” as a bad word, but nonetheless believed in constitutional government because of its stability and predictability.
[11] Leopold von Gerlach was a General of the Prussian infantry who served as the King’s adjutant and advisor on military matters. His five years younger brother Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach was a judge, book publisher and newspaperman who co-founded the Neue Preußische Zeitung (also known as the Kreuzzeitung because of the prominent Iron Cross adorning its letterhead), the conservative newspaper of record in Berlin from 1848 until 1939. The two brothers were generally aligned in conservative, monarchist, Prussia-over-Germany views, but in common with Otto von Bismarck and many other Prussian conservatives of the generation following them, believed that the conservative state should always bend rather than break.
[12] “Radical conservatism” here in the sense of supporting incremental reform in order to keep the fundamentals of society operating, rather than in the sense of particularly hardline conservatism.
[13] That’s pronounced like “fool” but with a hard P at the start.
[14] The former Lord Uxbridge, of “losing his leg at Waterloo” fame. We’ll find out what makes him a household name in TTL’s Britain in the next chapter.
[15] This is the exact same system, the so-called Dreiklassenwahlrecht, which was used to elect the entire lower house of the Prussian Landtag from 1850 until 1918 IOTL.
[16] ITTL, due to Frederick William’s love for traditional corporatism and the fact that he gets to design the constitution more freely, the cities and rural areas are represented separately in the Landtag, and the cities are given deference to their own traditional customs.
Ah, I get to see the need for choo-choos giving rise to a timid attempt at getting some representation in Prussia! Excellent!
Did your recent trip help? I think I remember seeing references to Friedrich Wilhelm loathing losses of rioters' lives somewhere around the Brandenburger Tor.
Did your recent trip help? I think I remember seeing references to Friedrich Wilhelm loathing losses of rioters' lives somewhere around the Brandenburger Tor.
#26: Thy Generous Flame
A House Divided #26: Thy Generous Flame
“THE PRESENT STATE OF GREAT BRITAIN
Four Millions in Distress !!!
Four Millions Embarrassed !!!
One Million-and-half fear Distress !!!
Half-a-million live in splendid Luxury !!!
Death would now be a relief to Millions –
Arrogance, Folly, and Crimes – have brought affairs to this dread Crisis.
Only Firmness and Integrity
can save the Country!!!”
***
From "The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of British Politics"
(c) 1947 by Prof. Henry Goodwin (ed.)
Cambridge University Press
1849 GENERAL ELECTION: General election held in May-June 1849, triggered by the expiry of the Parliament elected in 1842. The unbroken seven-year parliament was widely criticised by Whigs, who believed it was allowed to carry on through multiple national crises solely because of the potential for Tory defeat if an election were called. These fears turned out to be entirely correct, as the Whigs swept to a comfortable majority in the House of Commons. Nevertheless, King Augustus allowed the incumbent Tory ministry, led by the Duke of Richmond, to continue, sparking the first phase of the events of 1849.
Whig: 361 (+117)
Tory: 247 (-136)
Irish Repeal: 41 (+12)
Radical: 9 (+7)
***
From “Great Britain 1830-1930: A Century of Upheaval”
(c) 1982 by Sophie Mathews
Oxford University Press
The King’s decision to retain the Duke of Richmond as Prime Minister despite more than three-fifths of the House of Commons being arraigned against the Tories caused nothing short of an explosion in popular discontent. The great mass of the British working class, who had been unmoved by the Chartist Rising, years of unrest in Ireland, and only vaguely simmering from even the rising prices of bread over the mid-to-late 1840s, could suffer in silence no longer. It had been a notion essential to their limited political knowledge that Britain was not like those absolute monarchies on the Continent, that if a government did not perform its basic responsibilities, it could be removed by the action of the governed. Now, that no longer seemed to hold true, and with that realisation, the entire house of cards that was moral-force radicalism came tumbling down. The 6th of June saw massive riots in Finsbury and Shoreditch, and despite the activation of the Middlesex yeomanry, the unrest carried on through the 7th and 8th, at which point it had spread across much of north London. Much the same situation prevailed in Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow, and the King, horrified at the bloodshed, finally consented to replace Richmond with Lord George Bentinck, [1] a conservative Whig who the King hoped might lead a “Canningite” ministry with Tories as well as Whigs in it.
By this point, however, the situation in the streets was beyond anyone’s control, and the crowds were shouting slogans such as “No King!” and “Down with the Guelph tyranny!”, most of which did not appear overly amenable to the restoration of stable conservative government. [2] With the Whigs in the Commons beginning to promulgate manifestoes against the King, and Radical clubs forming “workingmen’s councils” to shadow official corporations in several industrial cities, King Augustus, who had spent virtually his entire reign going against the tide of popular opinion, now finally caved. On the morning of the 10th, Buckingham Palace was abandoned by its principal resident, who boarded a ship at Gravesend the next day and set course for Vienna. The reign of “Bloody King Gus” was over.
Protest on Kennington Common, June 1849
In normal conditions, the Prince of Wales would immediately have been acclaimed as King George V; however, these were not normal conditions, and with a majority of Lords and Privy Councillors at their estates or otherwise unreachable on short notice, the Prince included, the Accession Council could not be convened to handle the proclamation. [3] Instead, the House of Commons voted to appoint a “Provisional Authority” composed of five trusted Whig grandees, two from the Lords and three from the Commons. to oversee what remained of the government. The members chosen were:
- Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne, former Prime Minister and member of the House of Lords, whose appearance on the Authority did much to lend it legitimacy;
- Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux, the eminent Scottish jurist who had been raised to the Lords to serve as Lord Chancellor in Lansdowne’s government; [4]
- Lord John Russell, the younger son of the Duke of Bedford, who was a junior minister in Lansdowne’s government and prominent in the early movement for Radical Reform; [5]
- Sir George Grey, former Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and member of a prominent Whig family who bridged the divide between the conservative and liberal factions of the Whig party; [6]
- and John Bright, MP for the City of Durham, a co-founder of the Anti-Corn Law League who was expected to serve as the Authority’s link to the Radical movement. [7]
The available members of the House of Lords voted to recognise the Authority after its formation on the 17th, and crucially, the pragmatic Lord Anglesey, [8] Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, agreed to submit the Army to its will. Matters would very likely have ended differently had the Duke of Wellington, who resumed the Forces position after his premiership, not died of a stroke earlier in the year… [9]
…With order restored in the streets of London, the Provisional Authority did not replicate the actions of so many other 1849 revolutionaries and take the old regime back. Instead, the veteran Whigs in the Authority, many of whom had been waiting their whole lives for a chance at significant reform, conferred with the Radical leadership through Bright, and it was decided that a Constitutional Convention should be called to determine what could be done to prevent another Augustine tendency from arising. It was given the momentous task of codifying the first-ever British constitution, and it was to be elected by the people in a sense truer than it had ever been for the House of Commons…
***
From “Éirinn go Brách: A History of Ireland in the United Kingdom”
(c) 1969 by Dr Cearbhall Ó Mairtín
Translation (c) 1971 by Pádraig Murphy
Dublin: Cló na Staire
By the time of the “June Days” in London, Ireland had already been simmering for over two years. The Great Famine was ravaging the land with no end in sight, the Corn Laws continuing to prevent any meaningful alternative source of food…
…The situation was not helped by the economic realities of the British tax code, which required landlords to pay rates [10] on behalf of tenant farmers only if the land leased was worth less than four pounds. Faced with an increasing number of smallholding tenants who, because of failed harvests, were unable to pay rent, landlords’ rate bills became increasingly more difficult to manage. The final solution to these problems, taken by an ever-increasing number of landlords over the course of the Famine, was to evict their tenants, consolidate their land into plots worth more than the limit for independent taxation, and lease them again to tenants who would be responsible for their own rate payment. Many thousand families were thus thrown out of their own derisory homes, although it is impossible to gauge exact figures…
Food riots in Dungarvan, County Waterford, 1846
…It would be doing a disservice to the British to argue that they did not try to help the Irish in their misery. Donation drives were held in 1847 and 1848, both in London and around the country, and many prominent figures contributed large amounts of money. The King donated £1,000, and the Duke of Richmond another £200; in total, the relief drive organised by Lionel de Rothschild and several other prominent City figures raised some £350,000 for the Irish people. [11] Nor were they alone; donations came from as far afield as the Ottoman Empire, where the Sultan sent an amount greater than that given by the King of England, [12] and from the United States, where the Choctaw Nation, themselves facing genocide at the hands of white settlers, raised over $100 to benefit the Irish cause. [13]
But there were also the Protestant churches and mission houses, who set up soup kitchens across Ireland in the years of the Famine. These offered free nourishment for the starving children of Ireland, and all they asked in exchange was for the children to take instruction in the pure Protestant faith. Not much to ask, they might think; the people of Ireland, devoutly Catholic then as now, disagreed. Some of the less reputable ones even served meat soups on Fridays. The majority of church charity efforts did not make use of these practices, and the leadership of the Anglican Church in Ireland condemned those who did; nevertheless, families who took aid from Protestant churches continued to be derided as “soupers” for decades afterwards… [14]
…News of the situation in London in June of 1849 finally brought the Irish powder keg to the point of exploding. The first significant clash of arms happened on the 2nd of July, 1849, in the coal mining village of Ballingarry in Tipperary. A large group of rebels under the leadership of William Smith O’Brien had spent the previous week marching from village to village from Wexford through Kilkenny and into Tipperary. In Ballingarry, they met with some 45 armed police constables from Cashel, who had been sent out to apprehend the leaders of the march. The police retreated to a fortified position in the house of one Mrs McCormack, a resident of the village, and when O’Brien approached them to negotiate terms of surrender, a nervous constable opened fire. Minutes later, there was a general firefight erupting, and when the smoke cleared, O’Brien and several dozen other rebels lay dead. The “Battle of Ballingarry” ended as soon as the police were reinforced, but news of O’Brien’s martyrdom and the unprovoked attack of the constables would soon spread… [15]
…The green flag [16] was first raised over Dublin on the 14th, appropriately enough, and much as in London a month earlier, the tide of the mob soon proved overwhelming for Dublin Castle to handle. Dublin Corporation, while not the Nationalist stronghold it would later become, was nevertheless divided in its loyalty between Dublin Castle, their theoretical masters, and the people of Dublin whom they were supposed to be representing. [17] In the end, they declared for the Castle, ensuring the “Young Ireland Rebellion” would meet with a speedy end. In spite of this, however, unrest would continue to simmer through the end of 1849, and Ireland would not participate in the Constitutional Convention…
***
From “Ploughing the Sea: The British Revolution of 1849”
(c) 1974 by Arthur Smith
Manchester: Peterloo Press
The elections to the Constitutional Convention, held in mid-August of 1849, were far ahead of their time. The secret ballot was used for the first time, every adult male in Great Britain regardless of wealth had the vote, and all parts of the country were somewhat equally represented. The goal of the Chartists in the late 1830s had been equal single-member constituencies; this was still maintained as an aspiration by many radicals, but the rushed nature of the Convention meant there was broad agreement that it couldn’t be implemented immediately. Instead a different solution was found: the counties would be used as electoral divisions, each returning a set number of members according to its population. All parliamentary boroughs were disenfranchised and subsumed to their county divisions except for London, Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow, and several of the larger English counties were split along their Reform Act boundaries to provide more effective representation. [18]
The Radicals held high hopes for the Convention, and while the clubs did succeed in mobilising large numbers of urban working-class voters, the countryside (where a large majority of the people lived at the time) was another matter entirely. With Tories mostly refusing to contest the election, considering the Convention an illegitimate body as it had not been set up by royal order, the vast majority of rural voters voted for local notables of various stripes, some labelling themselves Whigs and some rejecting any designation and openly standing for nothing other than their local area. It’s difficult to say whether this proved that rural workers were less radical than urban ones or simply that, with the reach of the radical movement largely failing to encompass them, they preferred to vote for the devil they knew. Indeed, few constituencies outside the major cities were even seriously contested, the norm being about twelve candidates for every ten seats.
Westminster Hall, converted to serve as the Constitutional Convention's meeting place in 1849
So it was that the Convention that assembled in Westminster Hall on the 3rd of October 1849 was essentially composed of four groups. The most prominent backers of the Convention were the Radicals, who were members backed by the various Peterloo Clubs and other radical clubs around the country. They were generally favourably inclined to the complete reform of government, the abolition of the House of Lords, the implementation of universal suffrage in all elections and the disestablishment of the Church of England. A large subgroup advocated poor law reform in the form of either significant improvements in workhouse conditions or the wholesale return of outdoor relief, and members from the mining areas were often enthusiastic about improving working conditions. Similar divisions extended on the constitutional question, with some supporting the continuation of the monarchy under strict constitutional limitations, and a roughly equal group advocating the creation of a British republic.
More numerous, however, were the Whigs, whose good graces as the majority party in the House of Commons were what allowed the Convention to be called at all, but they shared only a few points with the Radicals. Both groups were agreed that there should be a constitution at all, and that it should include limits on royal authority and a “modernised” electoral system, but there was disagreement over precisely what this would entail. The Whigs nearly universally supported the monarchy, but there were divisions between those who essentially wanted the existing system retained with safeguards and those who wanted to recreate the monarchy as an institution expressly based on the will of the people, as had been done in France. Similarly, there was no agreement on who the monarch would be, with some preferring the Prince of Wales and others arguing that a new monarch, or even a new dynasty, should be found that could be better relied on to protect traditional British liberties.
The third group was the loosest by far, and was made up of various local notables who had stood under no particular description and represented only their own local interests. Generally, these leaned toward the conservative side, but more than a few were amenable to go along with Whig proposals in exchange for promises of economic support under the new system.
Finally, there were the Tories – the leaders of the Tory Party all boycotted the Convention and considered it a dangerous Radical idea, but that did not prevent a variety of local candidates standing for election under the Tory name and winning. There was generally little difference between the Tories in the Convention and the rightmost independents, both groups pressing for minimal change and benefits to their particular regions. The main difference was that the Tories generally openly admitted that they wanted to preserve the existing constitutional framework as well, and that allowing the Convention to go ahead with only Whigs and Radicals constituted a concession to the forces of radical reform.
In summary, although farther left than the House of Commons had ever been, and unshackled from the presence of any naturally-conservative upper house, the Convention was a far cry from the hopes and dreams of its creators. When the body entered into debate, this quickly became clear. The Radical delegates found themselves opposed by everyone else, as did the Tories and independents. The Whigs, for their part, were stuck in the middle – they rarely achieved majority support for their middle-of-the-road proposals, and the few points where they could reach an agreement with the Radicals were either so minor as to be insignificant or almost immediately scuttled by failure to agree on the details. The Convention would continue to debate without significant progress until late November, by which point events had overtaken it…
***
[1] IOTL, Bentinck (the grandson of former Prime Minister the Duke of Portland) was probably most famous as a patron of the races, who invented rules to prevent cheating and introduced the flag start for the first time at Goodwood Racecourse in 1844. He also took a sporadic interest in politics, serving as MP for King’s Lynn in Norfolk from 1828, first as a conservative Whig, then as a Conservative. He first took serious part in politics as an advocate of protectionism during the Corn Law debate and helping to bring down Robert Peel’s ministry. While walking on his estate in 1848, aged 46, he collapsed in the woods and died. As the likely cause was emphysema, however, I feel it’s easy enough to butterfly.
[2] In spite of it all, understatement remains the British national sport ITTL.
[3] This being a British institution, there’s no actual quorum for convening the Accession Council, and it had frequently met in the past without significant portions of its membership (for instance, the Lord Mayor of London appears to have been absent from Queen Victoria’s accession), but nonetheless it’s made clear to The Powers That Be that This Isn’t The Proper Time.
[4] See #19 for details.
[5] Russell was the principal author of OTL’s Reform Act 1832, which is ironic as he was a member of an immensely powerful aristocratic family and initially represented the pocket borough of Tavistock in the House of Commons. In 1846, after Peel’s ignominious resignation, Russell was appointed to form a Whig administration which ended up lasting six years. He was notable for his small stature and his temper – William IV, who had a particular dislike of Russell, called him “that dangerous little Radical”. His most prominent nickname, “Finality Jack”, came from his repeated claims that the Reform Act would be a final measure, but he nevertheless continued to support other reform causes after its passage.
[6] Sir George Grey was the nephew of Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (who somehow hasn’t managed to appear in this TL yet – he was one of the most effective Prime Ministers the UK has ever had in terms of sheer volume of legislation, but tellingly, the British people mainly remember him for the bergamot-flavoured tea blend he patronised), as well as a prominent Whig politician in his own right – he was most notable as Home Secretary in Lord Russell’s government between 1846 and 1852, at which time he suppressed the violence coinciding with the 1848 revolutions in continental Europe. He was, however, politically a firm Whig and a supporter of Russell and the reform cause.
[7] Bright, a Quaker from Lancashire, is very much the odd man out in this group. He came from a relatively modest background (for a politician of his time – his father owned a textile mill), and would rise to Cabinet rank in Gladstone’s various ministries in the 1870s and 80s. He was a passionate advocate of the traditional Radical causes – free trade, equal universal suffrage, the disestablishment of the Church – and earned particular notoriety for opposing the Crimean War, which made him almost unique in Parliament at the time.
[8] Anglesey was previously the Earl of Uxbridge, in which capacity he earned renown as one of Wellington’s most trusted cavalry commanders. He notably lost his right leg at Waterloo, where it was put on display as a tourist attraction for many years. Like Wellington, he was sporadically active in politics after the war; unlike Wellington, he was known as a political moderate, taking part in Canning’s government as well as that of his former commander and later that of Lord Russell. In other words, exactly the sort of chap a Whig administration might want in charge of the army in a time of unrest. Well, aside from the whole “missing a leg” situation, that is.
[9] IOTL, Wellington lasted until 1852, at which point he was 83 years old and seriously frail. He very likely could’ve passed away sooner.
[10] Rates are a form of property tax, used in the United Kingdom to raise revenue for local government – in 1849, their primary purpose was to fund the poor law unions.
[11] This is slightly below what was raised IOTL – the figure there was some £390,000.
[12] IOTL, there’s a common legend that the Sultan offered to send £10,000 to the relief efforts, but was persuaded to mark it down to £1,000 to avoid embarrassing the British by sending a greater donation than that (£2,000) given by Queen Victoria. ITTL, partly because the King’s gift is smaller and partly because of festering wounds from 1839, he’s less worried about upsetting them.
[13] This happened IOTL.
[14] “Souperism” was an OTL phenomenon, although with the greater focus on Christian morality made by the TTL British government as opposed to the OTL Russell government’s laissez-faire approach, it’s more widespread ITTL.
[15] The Battle of Ballingarry happened IOTL, about a year earlier, and went much the same except that O’Brien survived by the skin of his teeth.
[16] OTL’s orange-white-green Irish tricolour was the creation of a Young Ireland group who visited France during its 1848 revolution, and were inspired by the example of the French Republic; ITTL, with no French 1848 revolution, it never sees the light of day.
[17] A clarification of terms. “Dublin Castle” is an umbrella term referring to the entire apparatus of British government in Ireland – the Lord Lieutenant, the Irish Office, the Army, the Royal Irish Constabulary, the courts, and so on. Dublin Corporation is the municipal body governing the city itself (since 2002 called Dublin City Council IOTL).
[18] This is broadly similar to the electoral system used for the Swiss National Council at the time IOTL, and a primitive version of that used for many British local government elections to this day.
“THE PRESENT STATE OF GREAT BRITAIN
Four Millions in Distress !!!
Four Millions Embarrassed !!!
One Million-and-half fear Distress !!!
Half-a-million live in splendid Luxury !!!
Death would now be a relief to Millions –
Arrogance, Folly, and Crimes – have brought affairs to this dread Crisis.
Only Firmness and Integrity
can save the Country!!!”
***
From "The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of British Politics"
(c) 1947 by Prof. Henry Goodwin (ed.)
Cambridge University Press
1849 GENERAL ELECTION: General election held in May-June 1849, triggered by the expiry of the Parliament elected in 1842. The unbroken seven-year parliament was widely criticised by Whigs, who believed it was allowed to carry on through multiple national crises solely because of the potential for Tory defeat if an election were called. These fears turned out to be entirely correct, as the Whigs swept to a comfortable majority in the House of Commons. Nevertheless, King Augustus allowed the incumbent Tory ministry, led by the Duke of Richmond, to continue, sparking the first phase of the events of 1849.
Whig: 361 (+117)
Tory: 247 (-136)
Irish Repeal: 41 (+12)
Radical: 9 (+7)
***
From “Great Britain 1830-1930: A Century of Upheaval”
(c) 1982 by Sophie Mathews
Oxford University Press
The King’s decision to retain the Duke of Richmond as Prime Minister despite more than three-fifths of the House of Commons being arraigned against the Tories caused nothing short of an explosion in popular discontent. The great mass of the British working class, who had been unmoved by the Chartist Rising, years of unrest in Ireland, and only vaguely simmering from even the rising prices of bread over the mid-to-late 1840s, could suffer in silence no longer. It had been a notion essential to their limited political knowledge that Britain was not like those absolute monarchies on the Continent, that if a government did not perform its basic responsibilities, it could be removed by the action of the governed. Now, that no longer seemed to hold true, and with that realisation, the entire house of cards that was moral-force radicalism came tumbling down. The 6th of June saw massive riots in Finsbury and Shoreditch, and despite the activation of the Middlesex yeomanry, the unrest carried on through the 7th and 8th, at which point it had spread across much of north London. Much the same situation prevailed in Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow, and the King, horrified at the bloodshed, finally consented to replace Richmond with Lord George Bentinck, [1] a conservative Whig who the King hoped might lead a “Canningite” ministry with Tories as well as Whigs in it.
By this point, however, the situation in the streets was beyond anyone’s control, and the crowds were shouting slogans such as “No King!” and “Down with the Guelph tyranny!”, most of which did not appear overly amenable to the restoration of stable conservative government. [2] With the Whigs in the Commons beginning to promulgate manifestoes against the King, and Radical clubs forming “workingmen’s councils” to shadow official corporations in several industrial cities, King Augustus, who had spent virtually his entire reign going against the tide of popular opinion, now finally caved. On the morning of the 10th, Buckingham Palace was abandoned by its principal resident, who boarded a ship at Gravesend the next day and set course for Vienna. The reign of “Bloody King Gus” was over.
Protest on Kennington Common, June 1849
In normal conditions, the Prince of Wales would immediately have been acclaimed as King George V; however, these were not normal conditions, and with a majority of Lords and Privy Councillors at their estates or otherwise unreachable on short notice, the Prince included, the Accession Council could not be convened to handle the proclamation. [3] Instead, the House of Commons voted to appoint a “Provisional Authority” composed of five trusted Whig grandees, two from the Lords and three from the Commons. to oversee what remained of the government. The members chosen were:
- Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne, former Prime Minister and member of the House of Lords, whose appearance on the Authority did much to lend it legitimacy;
- Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux, the eminent Scottish jurist who had been raised to the Lords to serve as Lord Chancellor in Lansdowne’s government; [4]
- Lord John Russell, the younger son of the Duke of Bedford, who was a junior minister in Lansdowne’s government and prominent in the early movement for Radical Reform; [5]
- Sir George Grey, former Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and member of a prominent Whig family who bridged the divide between the conservative and liberal factions of the Whig party; [6]
- and John Bright, MP for the City of Durham, a co-founder of the Anti-Corn Law League who was expected to serve as the Authority’s link to the Radical movement. [7]
The available members of the House of Lords voted to recognise the Authority after its formation on the 17th, and crucially, the pragmatic Lord Anglesey, [8] Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, agreed to submit the Army to its will. Matters would very likely have ended differently had the Duke of Wellington, who resumed the Forces position after his premiership, not died of a stroke earlier in the year… [9]
…With order restored in the streets of London, the Provisional Authority did not replicate the actions of so many other 1849 revolutionaries and take the old regime back. Instead, the veteran Whigs in the Authority, many of whom had been waiting their whole lives for a chance at significant reform, conferred with the Radical leadership through Bright, and it was decided that a Constitutional Convention should be called to determine what could be done to prevent another Augustine tendency from arising. It was given the momentous task of codifying the first-ever British constitution, and it was to be elected by the people in a sense truer than it had ever been for the House of Commons…
***
From “Éirinn go Brách: A History of Ireland in the United Kingdom”
(c) 1969 by Dr Cearbhall Ó Mairtín
Translation (c) 1971 by Pádraig Murphy
Dublin: Cló na Staire
By the time of the “June Days” in London, Ireland had already been simmering for over two years. The Great Famine was ravaging the land with no end in sight, the Corn Laws continuing to prevent any meaningful alternative source of food…
…The situation was not helped by the economic realities of the British tax code, which required landlords to pay rates [10] on behalf of tenant farmers only if the land leased was worth less than four pounds. Faced with an increasing number of smallholding tenants who, because of failed harvests, were unable to pay rent, landlords’ rate bills became increasingly more difficult to manage. The final solution to these problems, taken by an ever-increasing number of landlords over the course of the Famine, was to evict their tenants, consolidate their land into plots worth more than the limit for independent taxation, and lease them again to tenants who would be responsible for their own rate payment. Many thousand families were thus thrown out of their own derisory homes, although it is impossible to gauge exact figures…
Food riots in Dungarvan, County Waterford, 1846
…It would be doing a disservice to the British to argue that they did not try to help the Irish in their misery. Donation drives were held in 1847 and 1848, both in London and around the country, and many prominent figures contributed large amounts of money. The King donated £1,000, and the Duke of Richmond another £200; in total, the relief drive organised by Lionel de Rothschild and several other prominent City figures raised some £350,000 for the Irish people. [11] Nor were they alone; donations came from as far afield as the Ottoman Empire, where the Sultan sent an amount greater than that given by the King of England, [12] and from the United States, where the Choctaw Nation, themselves facing genocide at the hands of white settlers, raised over $100 to benefit the Irish cause. [13]
But there were also the Protestant churches and mission houses, who set up soup kitchens across Ireland in the years of the Famine. These offered free nourishment for the starving children of Ireland, and all they asked in exchange was for the children to take instruction in the pure Protestant faith. Not much to ask, they might think; the people of Ireland, devoutly Catholic then as now, disagreed. Some of the less reputable ones even served meat soups on Fridays. The majority of church charity efforts did not make use of these practices, and the leadership of the Anglican Church in Ireland condemned those who did; nevertheless, families who took aid from Protestant churches continued to be derided as “soupers” for decades afterwards… [14]
…News of the situation in London in June of 1849 finally brought the Irish powder keg to the point of exploding. The first significant clash of arms happened on the 2nd of July, 1849, in the coal mining village of Ballingarry in Tipperary. A large group of rebels under the leadership of William Smith O’Brien had spent the previous week marching from village to village from Wexford through Kilkenny and into Tipperary. In Ballingarry, they met with some 45 armed police constables from Cashel, who had been sent out to apprehend the leaders of the march. The police retreated to a fortified position in the house of one Mrs McCormack, a resident of the village, and when O’Brien approached them to negotiate terms of surrender, a nervous constable opened fire. Minutes later, there was a general firefight erupting, and when the smoke cleared, O’Brien and several dozen other rebels lay dead. The “Battle of Ballingarry” ended as soon as the police were reinforced, but news of O’Brien’s martyrdom and the unprovoked attack of the constables would soon spread… [15]
…The green flag [16] was first raised over Dublin on the 14th, appropriately enough, and much as in London a month earlier, the tide of the mob soon proved overwhelming for Dublin Castle to handle. Dublin Corporation, while not the Nationalist stronghold it would later become, was nevertheless divided in its loyalty between Dublin Castle, their theoretical masters, and the people of Dublin whom they were supposed to be representing. [17] In the end, they declared for the Castle, ensuring the “Young Ireland Rebellion” would meet with a speedy end. In spite of this, however, unrest would continue to simmer through the end of 1849, and Ireland would not participate in the Constitutional Convention…
***
From “Ploughing the Sea: The British Revolution of 1849”
(c) 1974 by Arthur Smith
Manchester: Peterloo Press
The elections to the Constitutional Convention, held in mid-August of 1849, were far ahead of their time. The secret ballot was used for the first time, every adult male in Great Britain regardless of wealth had the vote, and all parts of the country were somewhat equally represented. The goal of the Chartists in the late 1830s had been equal single-member constituencies; this was still maintained as an aspiration by many radicals, but the rushed nature of the Convention meant there was broad agreement that it couldn’t be implemented immediately. Instead a different solution was found: the counties would be used as electoral divisions, each returning a set number of members according to its population. All parliamentary boroughs were disenfranchised and subsumed to their county divisions except for London, Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow, and several of the larger English counties were split along their Reform Act boundaries to provide more effective representation. [18]
The Radicals held high hopes for the Convention, and while the clubs did succeed in mobilising large numbers of urban working-class voters, the countryside (where a large majority of the people lived at the time) was another matter entirely. With Tories mostly refusing to contest the election, considering the Convention an illegitimate body as it had not been set up by royal order, the vast majority of rural voters voted for local notables of various stripes, some labelling themselves Whigs and some rejecting any designation and openly standing for nothing other than their local area. It’s difficult to say whether this proved that rural workers were less radical than urban ones or simply that, with the reach of the radical movement largely failing to encompass them, they preferred to vote for the devil they knew. Indeed, few constituencies outside the major cities were even seriously contested, the norm being about twelve candidates for every ten seats.
Westminster Hall, converted to serve as the Constitutional Convention's meeting place in 1849
So it was that the Convention that assembled in Westminster Hall on the 3rd of October 1849 was essentially composed of four groups. The most prominent backers of the Convention were the Radicals, who were members backed by the various Peterloo Clubs and other radical clubs around the country. They were generally favourably inclined to the complete reform of government, the abolition of the House of Lords, the implementation of universal suffrage in all elections and the disestablishment of the Church of England. A large subgroup advocated poor law reform in the form of either significant improvements in workhouse conditions or the wholesale return of outdoor relief, and members from the mining areas were often enthusiastic about improving working conditions. Similar divisions extended on the constitutional question, with some supporting the continuation of the monarchy under strict constitutional limitations, and a roughly equal group advocating the creation of a British republic.
More numerous, however, were the Whigs, whose good graces as the majority party in the House of Commons were what allowed the Convention to be called at all, but they shared only a few points with the Radicals. Both groups were agreed that there should be a constitution at all, and that it should include limits on royal authority and a “modernised” electoral system, but there was disagreement over precisely what this would entail. The Whigs nearly universally supported the monarchy, but there were divisions between those who essentially wanted the existing system retained with safeguards and those who wanted to recreate the monarchy as an institution expressly based on the will of the people, as had been done in France. Similarly, there was no agreement on who the monarch would be, with some preferring the Prince of Wales and others arguing that a new monarch, or even a new dynasty, should be found that could be better relied on to protect traditional British liberties.
The third group was the loosest by far, and was made up of various local notables who had stood under no particular description and represented only their own local interests. Generally, these leaned toward the conservative side, but more than a few were amenable to go along with Whig proposals in exchange for promises of economic support under the new system.
Finally, there were the Tories – the leaders of the Tory Party all boycotted the Convention and considered it a dangerous Radical idea, but that did not prevent a variety of local candidates standing for election under the Tory name and winning. There was generally little difference between the Tories in the Convention and the rightmost independents, both groups pressing for minimal change and benefits to their particular regions. The main difference was that the Tories generally openly admitted that they wanted to preserve the existing constitutional framework as well, and that allowing the Convention to go ahead with only Whigs and Radicals constituted a concession to the forces of radical reform.
In summary, although farther left than the House of Commons had ever been, and unshackled from the presence of any naturally-conservative upper house, the Convention was a far cry from the hopes and dreams of its creators. When the body entered into debate, this quickly became clear. The Radical delegates found themselves opposed by everyone else, as did the Tories and independents. The Whigs, for their part, were stuck in the middle – they rarely achieved majority support for their middle-of-the-road proposals, and the few points where they could reach an agreement with the Radicals were either so minor as to be insignificant or almost immediately scuttled by failure to agree on the details. The Convention would continue to debate without significant progress until late November, by which point events had overtaken it…
***
[1] IOTL, Bentinck (the grandson of former Prime Minister the Duke of Portland) was probably most famous as a patron of the races, who invented rules to prevent cheating and introduced the flag start for the first time at Goodwood Racecourse in 1844. He also took a sporadic interest in politics, serving as MP for King’s Lynn in Norfolk from 1828, first as a conservative Whig, then as a Conservative. He first took serious part in politics as an advocate of protectionism during the Corn Law debate and helping to bring down Robert Peel’s ministry. While walking on his estate in 1848, aged 46, he collapsed in the woods and died. As the likely cause was emphysema, however, I feel it’s easy enough to butterfly.
[2] In spite of it all, understatement remains the British national sport ITTL.
[3] This being a British institution, there’s no actual quorum for convening the Accession Council, and it had frequently met in the past without significant portions of its membership (for instance, the Lord Mayor of London appears to have been absent from Queen Victoria’s accession), but nonetheless it’s made clear to The Powers That Be that This Isn’t The Proper Time.
[4] See #19 for details.
[5] Russell was the principal author of OTL’s Reform Act 1832, which is ironic as he was a member of an immensely powerful aristocratic family and initially represented the pocket borough of Tavistock in the House of Commons. In 1846, after Peel’s ignominious resignation, Russell was appointed to form a Whig administration which ended up lasting six years. He was notable for his small stature and his temper – William IV, who had a particular dislike of Russell, called him “that dangerous little Radical”. His most prominent nickname, “Finality Jack”, came from his repeated claims that the Reform Act would be a final measure, but he nevertheless continued to support other reform causes after its passage.
[6] Sir George Grey was the nephew of Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (who somehow hasn’t managed to appear in this TL yet – he was one of the most effective Prime Ministers the UK has ever had in terms of sheer volume of legislation, but tellingly, the British people mainly remember him for the bergamot-flavoured tea blend he patronised), as well as a prominent Whig politician in his own right – he was most notable as Home Secretary in Lord Russell’s government between 1846 and 1852, at which time he suppressed the violence coinciding with the 1848 revolutions in continental Europe. He was, however, politically a firm Whig and a supporter of Russell and the reform cause.
[7] Bright, a Quaker from Lancashire, is very much the odd man out in this group. He came from a relatively modest background (for a politician of his time – his father owned a textile mill), and would rise to Cabinet rank in Gladstone’s various ministries in the 1870s and 80s. He was a passionate advocate of the traditional Radical causes – free trade, equal universal suffrage, the disestablishment of the Church – and earned particular notoriety for opposing the Crimean War, which made him almost unique in Parliament at the time.
[8] Anglesey was previously the Earl of Uxbridge, in which capacity he earned renown as one of Wellington’s most trusted cavalry commanders. He notably lost his right leg at Waterloo, where it was put on display as a tourist attraction for many years. Like Wellington, he was sporadically active in politics after the war; unlike Wellington, he was known as a political moderate, taking part in Canning’s government as well as that of his former commander and later that of Lord Russell. In other words, exactly the sort of chap a Whig administration might want in charge of the army in a time of unrest. Well, aside from the whole “missing a leg” situation, that is.
[9] IOTL, Wellington lasted until 1852, at which point he was 83 years old and seriously frail. He very likely could’ve passed away sooner.
[10] Rates are a form of property tax, used in the United Kingdom to raise revenue for local government – in 1849, their primary purpose was to fund the poor law unions.
[11] This is slightly below what was raised IOTL – the figure there was some £390,000.
[12] IOTL, there’s a common legend that the Sultan offered to send £10,000 to the relief efforts, but was persuaded to mark it down to £1,000 to avoid embarrassing the British by sending a greater donation than that (£2,000) given by Queen Victoria. ITTL, partly because the King’s gift is smaller and partly because of festering wounds from 1839, he’s less worried about upsetting them.
[13] This happened IOTL.
[14] “Souperism” was an OTL phenomenon, although with the greater focus on Christian morality made by the TTL British government as opposed to the OTL Russell government’s laissez-faire approach, it’s more widespread ITTL.
[15] The Battle of Ballingarry happened IOTL, about a year earlier, and went much the same except that O’Brien survived by the skin of his teeth.
[16] OTL’s orange-white-green Irish tricolour was the creation of a Young Ireland group who visited France during its 1848 revolution, and were inspired by the example of the French Republic; ITTL, with no French 1848 revolution, it never sees the light of day.
[17] A clarification of terms. “Dublin Castle” is an umbrella term referring to the entire apparatus of British government in Ireland – the Lord Lieutenant, the Irish Office, the Army, the Royal Irish Constabulary, the courts, and so on. Dublin Corporation is the municipal body governing the city itself (since 2002 called Dublin City Council IOTL).
[18] This is broadly similar to the electoral system used for the Swiss National Council at the time IOTL, and a primitive version of that used for many British local government elections to this day.
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A most exciting affair!
I really want to see how the British Revolution turns out. Chartists held some real sympathies with the colonized peoples - I recall reading a quote from a Chartist in support of the Indian Mutiny. If Chartists had a stronger voice on British affairs, rule of the colonies would look very interesting.
I really want to see how the British Revolution turns out. Chartists held some real sympathies with the colonized peoples - I recall reading a quote from a Chartist in support of the Indian Mutiny. If Chartists had a stronger voice on British affairs, rule of the colonies would look very interesting.