How far was Lord Liverpool directly responsible for the discontent between 1815-1820? (24 marks)
Lord Liverpool can be seen as responsible for discontent firstly due to class legislation. When the Corn Laws were introduced, it guaranteed protection for wheat prices from foreign imports of grain, this was purely favoured for the large agricultural landowners.This legislation was soon hated by the industrial classes living in Britain’s fast growing towns who had to pay for higher bread prices. After the war, parliament voted to abolish income tax as it was based on your own income and the aristocracy were contributing to most of it. When it was repealed, the government placed indirect taxes on popular goods, this meant that the poor working classes were now paying much more for everyday essentials. Also, the Game Laws made poaching against your landowner punishable up to 7 years imprisonment or transportation, during this time poaching was the only legitimate way of supplementing your own family during economic difficulty. Class legislation provoked more discontent as it only benefitted the aristocracy and many people during this time suffered.
The wide spread discontent was also due to Lord Liverpool’s repressive policies, one of which being the suspension of Habeas Corpus, this could hold someone suspected of radicalism or anti government behaviour without trial for an indefinite period. Also the seditious meeting act denied unlawful meetings of more than 50 people and appointed the death penalty for mutiny in the armed forces. The Gagging Acts were soon put in place to suppress radical activity it was designed to speed up justice, crack down on malicious libel and control newspapers. This did very little to end discontent and instead caused riots in response to this, many people also felt that they had lost basic human rights due to these policies.
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Know It All " just because a person thinks they know it all, doesn't mean they can teach. In America, the land of the free, gives this privilege every year to many people. They get their Masters or even a PHD degree in college and think they can mold the minds of others. This is such a farce. The degree may give you the right to become a teacher or even a doctor, but it does not mean you will be a ...
Another reason for unrest is the constraining methods to handle radicalism.The governments use of force to uphold law and order depended on the armed forces in areas where the threat was the greatest. An example of this is the Peterloo Massacre where over 50,000 people were expected to converge on St Peters field to hear Henry Hunt speak on parliamentary reform. The outcome of this was chaos, the leaders were arrested, many people were injured and a few were killed by the soldiers, this caused an outcry across the country. The use of spies was also highly criticised as they watched potential threats and stopped them before they had the chance, as the Cato Street conspiracy was a plot to assassinate the cabinet, a government spy had before hand infiltrated the group, the leader and other conspirators were hanged and a few others were transported, the use of spies became more frequent as there was no law enforcers (e.g police) this made people feel like they had a lack of privacy. As well as this the use of punishments such as transportation and the death penalty for even small criminal offences were seen as being harsh and it made Liverpool and his Tory government even more unpopular.
On the other hand, discontent was out of Liverpool’s control to handle it. At the time the French Revolution was a stimulus for the economy, but as soon as it ended it led to a Great Depression. The main cause of discontent was unemployment which was particularly high because of the ending of the wartime contracts for industry and the demobilisation of soldiers. Many factories had closed because it had no use anymore and the economy was flooded by cheap foreign grain and goods, this led to a price drop in goods, therefore people found it very difficult to make profit.
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When the industrial revolution occurred, many farm labourers and hand loom weavers were made redundant by the new technology. This led to the outbreak of Luddism, mills were burned down, machines were destroyed, even the owners of the factories were attacked. Living and working conditions in the industrial towns and countryside were very poor and were very over crowded. Some rural workers responded by enclosure and the population pressure by moving towns, but this was no better as wages were just as worse and living conditions were terrible.This increased the growth of radicalism. Henry Hunt, William Cobbett and Major Cartwright all aimed for the reform of parliament but as no reform was introduced to help the population and the depression, outbreaks of violence began to occur. All this added to the burden on the poor, making it hard for people to provide everyday necessities to their families.
I think that discontent was due to Lord Liverpool, although unemployment and the introduction of new technology was out of his control, he still failed to deal with the consequences of the depression and the impact of urbanisation but instead acted in the interests of the aristocracy with repressive policies which were irrelevant to the needs of the rest of society.
