The Wilkes Revolution: Part 2
First Secretaries of the United Commonwealths of Britain (1776-2016)
Governments of the Second Republic (1821-1858)
1821-1832: Spencer Perceval (All-Whig Government: Common Whig/Republican Whig) [17] [18] [19]
1822: Thomas Babington Macaulay (Republican), Henry Fane ('Hardliner' Republican), Richard Birnie ('Social Agitator'), William Wesley-Pole (Irish), (German: in exile)
1824: Thomas Babington Macaulay (Republican), Richard Birnie ('Social Agitator'), Henry Fane ('Hardliner' Republican), William Wesley-Pole (Irish), (German: in exile)
1829: Charles Wentworth Dilke I (Republican), Robert Owen ('Social Agitator'), William Wesley-Pole (Irish), Harriet Arbuthnot ('Hardliner' Republican), (German: in exile)
1832-1834: Benjamin Durban (All-Whig Government: Common Whig/Republican Whig) [20]
1834-1838: Joseph Paxton (Republican/Republican Whig) [21]
1834: Benjamin Durban (Common Whig), Robert Owen ('Social Agitator'), John O'Donovan (Irish)
1838-1841: John Austin (Republican) [22]
1838: Robert Baldwin (Common Whig), William Allen ('Social Agitator'), Steven Vere (Irish)
1841-1842: John Stuart Mill (Republican) [23]
1842-1854: John Stuart Mill (Republican) [24] [25] [26]
1842: Thomas Baring (Common Whig), Charles Wentworth Dilke II ('Social Agitator'), Steven Vere (Irish)
1846: Laurence Peel (Common Whig), Charles Wentworth Dilke II ('Social Agitator'), Steven Vere (Irish)
1851: Henry Chetwynd (Common Whig), Charles Wentworth Dilke II ('Social Agitator'), Steven Vere (Irish)
1854-1856: Henry Chetwynd (Common Whig)* [27]
1856-1857: Samuel Whitbread (Republican)* [28]
1856: Henry Chetwynd/Laurence Peel (Common Whig), Francis Verney ('Social Agitator'), William Corcoran (Irish), Jean-Thomas Taschereau (Canadien)
1857-1858: Laurence Peel (Common Whig/'Cooperative Republican') [29]
1858-1860: Laurence Peel (Republican/Common Whig/'Cooperative Republican') [30]
1860-1862: Henry Charles Grey (Non-partisan - All-Party Government: Republican/Common Whig/Irish/Canadien/Other unaffiliated Independents) [31]
1860: [No election: All-Party Government opposed by 'Social Agitator' and unaffiliated hostile factions]
[17] The collapse of the Republican government had a profound effect upon the political system. As Buxton fell from office to be replaced as Republican leader by Thomas Babington Macaulay (son of the former short-term First Secretary Zachary Macaulay), Spencer Perceval and his Common Whigs formed an electoral alliance to form an 'All-Whig Government'. The war continued, although with the loss of Hanover the stalemate essentially continued with naval skirmishes. The intent of the All-Whig Government was to reform confidence in the republic following the continental defeat, and to reconstruct British military and economic power. As such, Britain almost immediately took a much more isolationist turn and at the Treaty of Ghent in 1822 Perceval acknowledged peace with the European powers, bring the Third Republican War to an end. As the Republican Party continued to fracture, Perceval called an election to cement his own premiership and the All-Whig Government was returned with a comfortable majority. This was largely down to the emergence of new Republican factions; whilst Macaulay led the rump party (in a way eerily similar to the Pitt leadership of the New Whigs after the revolution), the former military commander Henry Fane formed the retrospectively-entitled 'Hardliners' campaigning for the resumption of the war and the recapture of Hanover. Richard Birnie also led a new faction, for those angling to abandon expansionist Abolitionism and focus upon the forgotten working poor (who they regarded as having been abandoned by the revolution).
[18] With the transfer of the European financial hub to Amsterdam in the wake of the Third Republican War, it was clear that Britain had suffered a major set-back on the international stage. Forced to violently address secessionist riots in Quebec and concerned with by the continuing economic decline, Perceval called another election in 1824. The All-Whigs lost a sizeable number of seats and were left with a small working majority; foreign policy once again took priority as the United States fell into the First Civil War. New England declared itself independent from the government in Philadelphia as the southern states rebelling against new economic measures. The Commonwealths were pressured to reinforce their traditional ally, but instead - remembering the Great Betrayal - Perceval acknowledged the independence of New England and continued to trade with the southern rebellion. For the first time since their independence, the British Commonwealths and the United States were on the edge of war. Similarly, in Europe, the outbreak of the Austro-Ottoman War placed the largest autocratic powers back against each other. Maintaining a wary neutrality, Perceval continued to balance the books whilst encouraging employment during the naval upgrading programme and the expansion of the land forces.
[19] The defeat of Austria at the Siege of Belgrade in 1828 shook the European establishment to the core; few had expected Leopold VIII to suffer such a humiliating loss against what was viewed as an antiquated peripheral power, and the Emperor came under much pressure to abdicate. (The defeat was the first link of a chain of events that would led to the Great European Revolution twenty years later). Civil war in America came slightly later, and Perceval personally presided over the treaties that ended the war. The United States was essentially neutered as a major international player. With this in mind, Perceval called another election for 1829 and became the second sitting First Secretary to win a third consecutive government (although far behind the total six victories of Grey). 1829 was the last election in which the German exiles continued to have a role in Parliament, as the Electoral Reform Act in 1831 - a major constituency review in itself - eliminated the ability for MPs to stand 'in absentia' from their seats. The election was also notable for the fact that the 'Hardliners' were led by a woman, Harriet Arbuthnot, although in reality she was merely a prominent figurehead.
[20] Perceval, weary after a stressful decade in office, handed over the reigns of the All-Whig Government to an ally, Benjamin Durban, but the latter struggled to maintain the loyalty of his coalition partners. Pamphleteering against the government intensified, and under pressure before the 1834 election Durban announced his intention to seperate the factions of the Government and campaign as a seperate Common Whig. A poor political miscalculation, the election resulted in the first hung parliament in the history of the Commonwealths.
[21] After the 45 years of Republican government during the First Republic, few had expected the 13 years of Whig control under Perceval and Durban. However, the arrival of the moderate Paxton to the premiership cemented the Republican factions back into a single party once more. The European monarchies faced serious uprisings, and Paxton brought Britain out of neutrality once again to fund and endorse those fighting against the Bourbons and Habsburgs. Paxton allied himself with the Republican Whigs, who would endorse the government wholly following the beginning of the Second French Revolution in 1837. As the geopolitical situation on the continent continued to worsen, Paxton announced his intent to not contest the next election as First Secretary and endorsed his Secretary for Legal Affairs, John Austin, as his uncontested successor.
[22] Austin led the Republicans to a narrow majority in 1838, as the Western constituencies returned to the fold of the Whigs with the fear of war hanging over the country. Austria and Prussia went back into conflict in 1840, pressuring the already beleaguered French state to the point of collapse. As Louis XX desperately tried to resist the growing calls for his abdication, Austin came under pressure himself as the Abolitionists angled for war against their traditional enemy. A leader who would only feel comfortable in peacetime, the London Declaration in 1841 would push the First Secretary to resign as his Foreign Secretariat - independently from his advice - announced that the Commonwealths would sponsor any rebellion against the 'autocratic orders of Europe'.
[23] The main instigators of the London Declaration were the radicals in the government, who did not want Britain to miss an opportunity to hammer her advantage over the compromised European powers. Ironically, much of their confidence lay down to the financial prudence of the Perceval years; Britain now possessed a modern and efficient fighting force and used her significant industrial economy to mass-produce aid for the French rebels. The result was the beginning of the Fourth Republican War - the largest European conflict since the loss of Hanover - as France desperately sought to contain her internal chaos.
[24] Emboldened by the French actions, the Abolitionists took the country to a vote; this would continue a trend set in 1819 when Buxton called his wartime election, and the Wartime Election Act (passed in 1820) would make an election upon the beginning of a war a legal requirement for the sitting government. The collapse of the French monarchy during the pamphleteering season in early-1842 cemented support for the war as British and volunteer troops from all over moved into France to fight the Habsburgs. Unlike during the Third Republican War, Prussia endorsed the coalition in the west against Austria. The Central German campaigns through 1843 and 1844 were a slow grudge-match between the ideologies, but with Prussian courting the Russian czar into the war in 1845 the tide began to turn against Austria and her isolated allies.
[25] The 1846 election was largely an afterthought, and few seats changed hands as party loyalties thickened due to the wartime state of the country. The Fourth War entered the final stage as revolutionaries erupted in Vienna in 1848, overthrowing the imperial court and defenestrating the Holy Roman Emperor. Expecting the conflict to come to an end, Mill made triumphant speeches in the Commons celebrating the mutual spirit of the new European republican movement and lauding the success of the now-ongoing European Revolution. All down the spine of Italy the long-established principalities and city states ushered in new republican governments, and only the King of Sicily - hugging the bottom of the peninsula desperately - survived (with major constitutional concessions). However as the United States of Europe were declared in Wien and Paris (and acclaimed in London), the monarchs of Prussia and Russia - horrified at the consequences of their opportunism and terrified of the prospect of nationalism in their own countries - renegaded on the alliance and formed a new bloc in Eastern Europe fanatically opposed to the new USE. In the Commonwealths, the Republicans (and particularly the Abolitionists) were overjoyed at the creation of the new republican state on the continent regardless of the crisis it placed with diplomacy with the remaining European monarchies.
[26] Euphoria with the European Revolution in 1848 led to the Republicans strengthening their majority in 1851 as Mill pointed to the seemingly-unstoppable rise of democracy all over the world. His third electoral victor was his largest, but many in the Republicans seemed uncertain as to the role of Britain in relation to the European Union. Most called for Britain to remain a seperate republican entity, but to use her naval strength to re-establish herself as the world power for the first time since the Revolution. Others, a minority, called for Mill to endorse the EU and bring Britain in as a senior founding member using the solidarity gained during the Fourth War. Fundamentally, Mill was a hardliner Abolitionist and proud of his role in securing European democracy. With this in mind, he moved to bring the Commonwealths into alignment as a member of the USE; whilst the USE was essentially a supranational idea, nationalism of some sort made a complete union of the constituent states impractical. This was certainly the case in Britain, as in an unexpected twist the Commons voted down the Mill Proposal. Disappointed, Mill resigned from the First Secretary position and in a further insult to the 'brainchild of Europe' enough dissident Republicans neglected to vote on his replacement, allowing the government to fall to a minority Common Whig administration. It was the first time that the Common Whigs (the descendant of the 'Charybdis' and New Whigs) had governed as a single entity since the Revolution.
[27] The enthusiasm of the Whigs for office was short-lived, as the Prussia-Russia alliance struck out at the USE in the winter of 1856. As the Wartime Election Act demanded, Chetwynd called an election.
[28] Public opinion flipped back in favour of the Republicans, although for the first time their history they were only rewarded with a minority government. This was partly due to the rise of the Canadien Party, who had evolved from the separatist rebel groups of Quebec in the same way that the Irish cause had found favour in Parliament. Verney assisted his allies in Europe with great vigour, hoping to defeat the advancing armies and trigger revolutions as they had done in the Fourth Republican War - especially in the highly-disgruntled Polish minority areas of both the aggressor states. In reality, the Fifth War had a very different nature of the previous conflict; Prussia had a smaller but highly efficient army, whilst the Russians relied upon numbers and their vast territory to compensate for their largely-unmodernized force. The entry of Sicily - technically the Kingdom of Italy - to the war in the south complicated matters for the USE and soon the republicans were fighting along most of their eastern and northeastern borders. It was a difficult war, and after the struggles of the Bohemian Front the Whitbread government came under fire. When the First Secretary received word that a sizeable percentage of the non-Abolitionist faction were prepared to reinforce a Common Whig government, he resigned from the position and invited Laurence Peel (who had returned as Whig leader after a few years on the backbenchers) into his role as an act of faith.
[29] Peel initially took over a government divided on how the war should continue, and with a marginal majority with assistance from the 'Cooperative Republicans'. However, the defeat of Italy in the south freed up a sizeable percentage of British naval capability, and soon the Baltic became a British lake.
[30] With the tide turning in the favour of the USE and the Commonwealths, Peel received the backing of the rest of the Republicans - essentially forming an all-party government. The defeat of Frederick VI triggered the Prussian surrender and the end of the Fifth Republican War. The terms on Prussia were harsh - the Holy Roman Empire, existing in nothing but name, was formally abolished and the creation of a new Polish republic humiliated both the defeated powers. A few rebellious Russian armies fought on in the east, regardless of the peace, but soon it was clear that the last major monarchical powers (whilst retaining their autocracy) had been resoundingly hammered. Indeed, the Treaty of Warsaw established the new status quo for Europe; in Britain, the formation of the Peel government and the conclusion of the war set in motion the end of the Second Republic. With bipartisan feeling at a high and all parties accepting the public desire to integrate Britain into the USE, the Commons unanimously nominated Henry Charles Grey - son of the former First Secretary - to preside over a new Constitutional Convention with the goal to re-establishing the state of the Commonwealths in the new order.
[31] The last two years of the Second Republic were some of the most momentous in European history; having brought themselves into the USE, the Commonwealths were expected to adhere to jointly-agreed-upon Proclamations from the European Parliament in Vienna but retained major elements of autonomy. To counter this across the sizeable territorial possessions of Britain, smaller decentralized Parliaments were introduced to strengthen the role of regional (and in some cases national) democracy. To great acclaim in Dublin, an Irish Parliament accompanied new institutions in the Canadas, Quebec and the Caribbean. The only groups to resist the New Constitution Acts upon their declaration were the Social Agitators - who remained hostile to the idea of wide-ranging reform across Europe as many British still dwelt in poverty - and other smaller unaffiliated groups who opposed the perceived loss of sovereignty for the British people. Nevertheless, by the end of 1862 the new order was established and the Commonwealths entered into a new era of European integration and co-operation.
finally got it finished 
