Robert Jenkinson, Second Earl of Liverpool: Guarantor of Britain’s Stability in a Turbulent Time

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Of the various curious objects that attracted the eye of Alexis de Tocqueville throughout his first go to to the UK within the early 1830s, none struck him extra vividly than the peculiar survival—in what may in any other case have been thought of essentially the most fashionable of Europe’s post-Napoleonic regimes—of a totally functioning, conventional, landed aristocracy. Furthermore, inequality of circumstances characterised not merely the shape but in addition the substance of early 19th century British society. Friends of the realm dominated at courtroom. Males of rank prevailed within the king’s authorities and over its consultant establishments. Not coincidentally, the territorial elite included a lot of the richest individuals within the realm. Excessive land values, low taxation, and primogeniture ensured that they continued to take action nicely into the 1880s.

However so, too, did a sure type of political prudence. Up to date legend had it that the German junkers would fortunately have dug their very own graves offered that they had first been granted a monopoly over the spades with which to take action. Against this, the British (anyway, the English) landed lessons have been greater than able to buying and selling away historic benefits for a continued affect in an ever-more-industrial and concrete society.

Tocqueville doubted whether or not even so pragmatic an perspective towards the realities of energy would assure the Anglo-Saxon ruling lessons perpetual immunity to the melancholy destiny of the ancien régime elsewhere. But by the top of his life (he died in 1859) the Frenchman had come to the prescient conclusion that the autumn of the British aristocracy may be delayed for at the least one other technology. Democracy in America (1835) spoke to the instant way forward for a lot of Continental Europe. However its classes want cautious qualification when utilized to the British case, at the least till the First World Conflict.

The survival of the 19th century British aristocracy was rooted within the financial information of life. Land lengthy remained Britain’s most dear capital useful resource, at the same time as agricultural manufacturing was changed by mineral extraction as essentially the most worthwhile means of exploiting it. Urbanization furnished rents that farmers might solely dream of. The landed lessons have been shrewd rulers, too. They not solely tailored to vary; they typically championed it themselves. Consider the Duke of Bridgewater and all these canals. Naturally, they seldom ruled apart from in their very own pursuits. However they normally took care to guard the property of others as nicely. Consider Robert Peel and the 1846 repeal of the Corn Legal guidelines.

Unfairly Ignored, and Even Extra Unfairly Derided

Few now recall the contribution of Robert Jenkinson, Second Earl of Liverpool, made to that remarkably profitable rearguard motion. That is very curious. Lord Liverpool was Prime Minister of the UK for 15 years, from 1812 to 1827. Nobody has held that workplace for longer since. Furthermore, he presided over a nation hire by social dislocation, even threatened by revolutionary fervor, for nearly a decade on both aspect of the top of the Napoleonic Wars. But he bequeathed a peculiarly secure kingdom to his successors. There was no “French Revolution” in England in 1830, and the Continental conflagrations of 1848 handed virtually unnoticed all through the British Isles. Few did extra to make sure that peaceful progress in the course of the years when it would simply have faltered. Few have subsequently been afforded much less credit score for the admirable legacy they left.

Extra curious nonetheless, Liverpool was typically derided by those that adopted. Benjamin Disraeli, his fellow Tory Prime Minister, dismissed him as “an arch mediocrity” who “presided fairly than dominated” over a cupboard of “comparable non-entities.” Lord Brougham and Harriet Martineau concurred. If contemporaries have been merciless, posterity has been charitable solely in its neglect. Charles Duke Yonge’s tombstone biography (1868) was largely ignored. Norman Gash’s Life (1984) has typically been derided as a lesser, later, work.  

A person with out sons, Liverpool was additionally a politician with out protégés. He nurtured no William Gladstone to proceed Peelite functions. Even in his lifetime, Liverpool’s desire for appearing as primus inter pares led others—notably the International Secretary Lord Castlereagh and the Duke of Wellington—to assert extra kudos for the successes of his governments at the same time as they attracted much less opprobrium for his or her inevitable failures.  

Till now. The phrase “revisionist” is way overused in historiographical dialogue, however William Anthony Hay’s Lord Liverpool: A Political Life absolutely deserves the outline. By the use of a affected person reexamination of all of the accessible proof, Hay’s new biography has cast a recent and convincing account that restores Liverpool to his correct function as a pivotal determine within the politics of early 19th century Britain. In so doing, Hay, an affiliate professor of historical past at Mississippi State College, has additionally enabled his fellow historians to reevaluate each the causes and the results of Britain’s post-Napoleonic dispensation. That one thing like  a European ancien régime survived in the UK all the way down to the 1880s has lengthy been understood in fashionable British historiography.  Now, eventually, we're capable of acknowledge the long-term roots of its peculiar longevity. Lastly, we will start to understand Liverpool’s important function in cultivating them.

Robert Banks Jenkinson was born, and to a point at all times remained, a toddler of the 18th century. This was not least as a result of he was at all times his father’s son. His household, nevertheless, was not one in every of timeless wealth and energy. The Jenkinsons have been provincial gentry. Charles, Robert’s father, inherited no fortune. He made his means by politics and marriage, however above all, by way of public workplace. The elder Jenkinson turned head of the Board of Commerce in 1784, and eternally after remained business fixer to Prime Minister William Pitt the Youthful. Charles groomed his son for the same political profession. He hoped from the primary for nonetheless higher issues. That meant a very good training (Charterhouse and Christ Church, Oxford), early entry to the Home of Commons (by the age of 20), and speedy nomination to the Indian Board (aged 23). Thereafter, Robert Jenkinson was not often out of administrative authority. He served as International Secretary, House Secretary, and Conflict Secretary earlier than changing into, in succession to Spencer Perceval in 1812, the top of His Majesty’s authorities.

Containing the Unfold of the Jacobin Spirit

Nobody born in 1770 might have lived apart from within the shadow of the French Revolution. Robert Jenkinson’s life was largely formed by that calamity. He was current in Paris on the time of the storming of the Bastille. Its violent (and dishonorable) denouement left him with an enduring distaste for the rule of the mob. He was instrumental in securing the Peace of Amiens between Britain and France 13 years later. Napoleon’s cynical repudiation of this 1802 treaty quickly afterwards satisfied Jenkinson by no means to belief that adventurer once more. Above all, he noticed from the primary the inevitable hyperlink between revolutionary Jacobinism on one aspect of the Channel and incipient social unrest on the opposite. No much less did he admire the impossibility of peaceable coexistence between an ideologically and militarily rebel French overseas coverage after 1793, and the pragmatically restricted geopolitical guidelines of the erstwhile worldwide order. Put one other means, he understood sooner than most and higher than many who the French Revolution was one thing that merely needed to be defeated. He spent a lot of his early grownup life on the forefront of British and allied efforts to take action.

By the point these succeeded, the Second Earl Liverpool was already British Prime Minister. That mentioned, he noticed the Congress of Vienna as a possibility to make peace for the longer term, not as a possibility to return Europe to a legendary previous. He opposed Tsar Alexander’s “Holy Alliance” and regarded the Bourbons as little higher than the Stuarts. He was keen to face down the unconventional problem that confronted Britons, notably on the time of the Cato Avenue Conspiracy, however he by no means supposed to inaugurate a reactionary regime at house. The truth is, he strove to dismantle a lot of the fiscal-military state and to curb the corruption that went with it. He restored the Corn Legal guidelines merely as a method to ensure provide. In all different respects, his most popular financial insurance policies mirrored the “Liberal Toryism” that he had imbibed in his youth.

Blazing the Path that Peel and Gladstone Adopted

All of this concerned a respectful studying of the Scottish economists, particularly Adam Smith. However above all, it meant a practical financial coverage. The objectives on which this pragmatic statesman stayed centered have been to advertise home development and lift dwelling requirements. However the underlying splendid was to pursue a disinterested administration that ensured the final good by observing a studious neutrality between all pursuits, “every [conceived] as hyperlinks in an ideal social chain, all linked and dependent upon one another for his or her mutual welfare,” concurrently sustaining the commonweal while maximizing personal initiative and particular person liberty. This was a really perfect of British authorities—aristocratic actually, even autocratic from time to time, but in addition public-spirited and frugal—that lasted into the final quarter of the 19th century. Peel and Gladstone are extra related to this splendid than is Liverpool. However they adopted his lead as a lot as they invented the doctrine for themselves.

Liverpool’s world was seemingly swept away by the “confessional disaster” of 1828 to 1832. The specter of civil unrest in Eire prompted Wellington to enact Catholic Emancipation. This, in flip, provoked Reform. Below the multi-denominational structure and party-dominated politics that adopted, Liverpool’s dedication to a “blended regime’” of king, lords, and commons shortly got here to look an anachronism, and his protection of Anglican exclusivity was contemptuously dismissed as narrow-minded intolerance.

Neither judgement is truthful. Rather more survived than the Victorians ever acknowledged. “Balanced authorities” might need been lifeless by the point Walter Bagehot eulogized The English Structure (1867), however most working towards British politicians continued to consider in it for lengthy afterwards. Daniel O’Connell’s Irish insurgency might need destroyed the confessional Anglican state eternally; but Liverpool had believed in it extra as a car for non secular latitudinarianism than doctrinal bigotry. In any occasion, its passing triggered as many issues because it solved.

How Liverpool would have coped with the challenges of the post-1832 world won't ever be recognized. He was incapacitated by a stroke in 1827, and died in 1828. He might need been felix opportunitate mortis. However his fame suffered a close to everlasting eclipse. He turned the consultant of one other, inferior, age. The Victorians might afford to despise him. We now haven't any such excuse.

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