Page 47 - History 2020

EPISODE 5: AT THE HOTEL CECIL - DEMOCRACY VERSUS ARISTOCRACY

Bagehot, politicians Lord Palmerston, William Gladstone, Benjamin Disraeli, Lord
Salisbury, David Lloyd George

The tide of democracy and Victorian escapism
The theme we are considering is Victorian escapism. So far, we’ve seen how they
tried to escape from their industrial, urban present, into an imagined past, or an

imagined garden. But It wasn’t just the ugliness and greed of the Industrial
Revolution the Victorians tried to escape from, but also its main political
consequence: the approach of democracy. The Industrial Revolution recruited an
expanding population of working people into new factories and housed them in
rapidly expanding urban environments. They inevitably gained an increasing
consciousness of their collective identity and power. This merged with the political
waves created by the French Revolution, the American Revolution, and the victory of
parliamentary reform in Britain in 1832 to create a sense that the tide of democracy

was inevitable.

How did the Victorians deal with this? For a long time, most people accepted the
Whig Interpretation of History, the story that the genius of the British Constitution
was to reconcile freedom and change with order and stability. Britain’s historical role,
these historians suggested, was to show the world a peaceful, orderly path to
democracy. The reality was somewhat different. It is more accurate to say that, far

from confidently leading the march into the modern age of democracy, the Victorian
sought to delay, obstruct and deny it.

Bagehot on democracy
We’ve already seen that Bagehot, the leading Victorian expert on the British
Constitution, was no democrat. His view was typical of many Victorians: “the
principle of popular government is that the supreme power, the determined efficacy
in matters political, resides in the people – not necessarily or commonly in the whole

people, in the numerical majority, but in a chosen people, a picked and selected
people. it is so in England; it is so in all free countries.” As we saw, he was just about
prepared to accept extending the vote to workers, but only some of them, and in
ways which would dilute their impact. Excluding most workers from voting “is no
injustice” because “no one has a right to a political power which he will use to impair
a better man’s political power.” By “better” of course he means “the better classes,

the more instructed classes, the more opulent classes.” Bagehot’s elaborate and
slightly barmy proposals were how he tries to reconcile his elitist assumptions with
the growing recognition that democracy’s day may be dawning.
One man, more than one vote