The real impulse to Factory legislation came from two different quarters. The first was Tory philanthropy. The second was the industrial democracy which had worked for Parliamentary Reform, and had been left out of the Act of 1832. These last acted obviously from interested motives. Their own health and { 177} happiness were at stake, and their campaign on behalf of the children was only part of a general campaign for shorter hours and better conditions of labour. The Tory Evangelicals acted as Tory theorists. Robert Southey, Richard Oastler, Michael Sadler, whom Macaulay beat at Leeds in 1832, and Lord Shaftesbury, who succeeded Oastler as the Parliamentary leader of the movement, were Tories of a pronounced type. But they were philanthropists, they had no personal interest as manufacturers, and their Toryism left them logically free to employ the power of the State on behalf of their philanthropy. Their general readiness to dispose of the affairs of others was in this case wholly beneficial. Shaftesbury hated Catholic Emancipation, Free Trade, life peerages, the higher criticism, the Oxford movement, everything which during his lifetime tended to free the individual from the control of selfish interests and monopolies. But as he refused to allow a Catholic or a Tractarian religious freedom, or the common people political freedom, so he refused to allow a cotton-spinner economic freedom. To his narrow mind, no less than to his large heart, the legal protection of working people against economic tyranny is due. It must not be supposed that he found more favour with the ordinary Tory than with the ordinary Whig or Benthamite. It was only where philosophic Toryism was combined with the philanthropic instincts of Evangelical Christianity that there was any marked superiority in one party over another. Shaftesbury had to fight every step of his way, and he encountered indifference, if not opposition, wherever he turned.[218]
Apart from this lamentable neglect of economic reforms the Whigs of the Reform Bill made valuable contributions to the work of Liberalism. Something was done to abolish the cumbrous devices which made legal procedure unintelligible and costly, and the method of conveying land was simplified and { 178} cheapened.[219] A Bill to establish local courts for the recovery of small debts was introduced by Brougham, but abandoned. The reform of Parliament was followed by the reform of municipal corporations. The old close corporations were of the same type as the old close House of Commons. All were founded on monopoly, most were corrupt, and hardly any were responsible to the ratepayers whose affairs they administered. By an Act of 1835 the old system was destroyed, and the control of local government in towns was vested in bodies elected by the ratepayers.[220] The representative principle was thus asserted in local as in national affairs. The domination of the landed interest was further reduced. The old Game Laws had made the killing of game the exclusive privilege of landowners. No one else could kill game legally, and the law, sparing offenders of higher rank, was ruthlessly enforced by landowning magistrates against the poor. Between 1827 and 1830 more than 8,000 persons had been sentenced, some of them to transportation for life, for offences against this law. In 1831, before the passing of the Reform Bill, the Whigs altered the savage and partial Game Laws by permitting any one to kill game who obtained a licence from the Inland Revenue authorities.[221] After the election of the first reformed Parliament, a second attack on land was made. In 1807 the land of traders only had been made liable to the payment of his simple contract debts. Romilly had in vain attempted to { 179} make this provision impartial. But in 1833 the liability was extended to all classes, and the country gentleman was no longer allowed to evade the obligations which were imposed by law upon his social rivals.[222]