The Whigs and the Press, 1800-50

Arthur Aspinall's book, Politics and the Press, c.1780-1850, where all studies of political journalism during that period must begin, overflowswith accounts ofwhig suspirations and complaints about the party's inability to manage the press.¹ Subsequent studies either reiterate these lamentations or harp on the aristocratic indifference and political ineptitude of the whig leadership. Stephen Koss's influential Rise and Fall of the Political Press attributed the party's 'failure' to 'limitations of Whig traditionalism' and plain 'incompetence'.² Ian Newbould's study of the whigs in the 1830s also embraces what may be called the dinosaur theory.³ Helpless, hapless, and behind the times the flawed Fox, meandering Melbourne, aloof Grey, and brittle Russell are portrayed as incapable of or uninterested in embracing techniques of press management required by a new political era.⁴ Whig agents employed to arrange matters with the newspapers during the 1830s, such as Denis LeMarchant, also complained: 'the Press has been treated with utter indifference, most of the Ministers agreeing in what one of them told me: "that the less we had to do with it the better" '.⁵ In addition the whigs, once in office, seemed reluctant to rescind the tory 'taxes on knowledge' against which they had railed when in opposition.

Three problems underlie this image of hand wringing, aimlessness, hypocrisy, and sloth. First, the whigs were no fools. Earl Grey was one of the most skilled politicians of the nineteenth century. By any standard Brougham, Holland, Grenville, Althorp, Russell, Melbourne, Stanley and Clarendon were able and successful men. Nor were magnates among the second echelon of whig parliamentarians such as the fifth Earl Fitzwilliam, the seventh duke of Bedford, the third Earl Fortescue, and the third earl of Bessborough out of touch bumblers. These were men devoted to the detailed management of their estates, which in some cases entailed the administration of great industrial enterprises, and there is no evidence that they disdained either hard work or middle class associates.⁶ The party's men of business, such as Edward Ellice and Joseph Parkes, were astute and keen to win.

The second problem is that the whig ideology impelled members of the party to march with the spirit of the times and pay deference to public opinion. Their deepest instinct was to listen for signs of danger and adapt to change. Thirdly, the whigs who came to achieve dominance in the party during the first half of the nineteenth century believed in the idea of human progress; peace, harmony, and prosperity were best promoted by the spread of literacy and the diffusion of knowledge. Newspapers were vehicles of public intelligence in every sense, and the whigs understood this. How then could they fail to accommodate themselves to the rise of a robust fourth estate empowered by dramatic technological innovation which brought the press by the end of our period to a commanding position in the body politic?⁷

LeMarchant figures heavily in Aspinall's and all subsequent analyses of whigs and newspapers. However, we hear little of Thomas Drummond, the peerless administrator and protégé of Lord Althorp. Much is said about the uneasy relationship between the whigs and The Times, but little attention has been paid to the political agenda of the whigs' spectacularly successful Penny Magazine. Previous accounts allowed one-sided evidence to distort our image of the interaction of aristocratic politicians and the press. Aspinall relied heavily on LeMarchant's version of events; yet Parkes believed, 'my washerwoman would do as well [managing the press] as Sir D. LeM[archant]'.⁸ A wider range of sources requires examination.

Only one historian, Ivon Asquith, has challenged the litany of whiggery's supposed lassitude in its relations with the press. He showed that the whig approach was more successful than has been assumed, yet even he focused on the complaints, arrogance, and ineptitude and accused the party of having 'failed' to gain effective and sustained control over a newspaper.⁹ The conventional view established by Aspinall that the whigs never came to terms with the press still holds the field. Moreover, most of the literature concerning the stamp duties and curbs on free speech reflect poorly on the whigs as well.

Aspinall's descriptions of whig caterwauling ignore the fact that similar litanies of exasperation are still commonly to be found in political headquarters today. Not only did the whigs in the first half of the nineteenth century face a journalistic world that no government or movement could control, but also an environment increasingly hostile to aristocratic leadership. Bracketed by the French revolution and the 'hungry forties', the first half of the century witnessed the unprecedented transformation of cities such as Manchester, and the whigs also met the implacable enmity of Tom Paine, Captain Swing and Irish nationalists. Technological advances in printing, papermaking, and distribution reduced prices and vastly increased the availability of print media. By 1830 a large majority of the adult population had gained access to some sort of newspaper.¹⁰ By the 1820s the owners of the great London dailies had become seriously rich.¹¹ Their editors promoted ever larger circulations to make the bosses even richer, and this rendered papers such as The Times independent of any possible restraint while journalists wrapped themselves in the mantle of a holy calling. The language of political debate became fiercer as the press gained prestige and power.¹² The 'torrent of newspapers' that amazed a foreign visitor, provoked the conservative King William IV to lament that England had become 'this unfortunately press-ridden country'.¹³

Much evidence exists to suggest the whigs understood that traditional methods of nobbling the press would no longer work, and that if the party was to survive and prosper a range of steps had to be adopted to disseminate their message, win public support, and counter damaging attacks. If one takes a broad view of this response to change, one sees that the whigs moved with more comfort and skill than those who have eyes only for the narrow spectrum of the London dailies or confuse the old Venetian oligarchy with nineteenth-century whiggism. The whig leadership showed itself ready to address their constituents, the political nation, and even the masses.

1

The whigs spoke to electors through letters published as advertisements in provincial papers, and, even more directly, via handbills and broadsides printed as single sheets with whose speed and frequency newspapers could not compete. Anyone who has read through the run of a provincial paper during the first half of the nineteenth century¹⁴ will know that during elections, even uncontested ones, and at other appropriate times, parliamentary candidates used paid advertisements regularly to state their platforms and to counter their opponents. One recent study estimated that as many as a third of a million broadsides were circulated in Newcastle-under-Lyme, a town of less than 8,000 people in which 600 to 1,000 could vote between 1790 and 1832.¹⁵ Of course, not all these handbills were published by whigs, but through such means the party was able to reach, on a massive scale, all qualified voters and many of those who even after 1832 did not enjoy the franchise but who participated in political meetings, rituals, and elections.

Another method of unfiltered, direct access to the political nation used frequently and with considerable skill by the whigs was the political pamphlet. Such publications varied in length from reprinted speeches or 'letters' to the book length On Financial Reform published by Sir Henry Parnell in 1830, which proved a blueprint for future government fiscal policy. Lord Brougham was a prolific pamphleteer but aristocratic whigs such as Sir James Graham and Earl Fitzwilliam also wrote celebrated pieces. Russell, Althorp and others regularly promoted publications written to further party interests. In 1833 Grey's cabinet concocted the lengthy and hugely successful 'Reform Ministry and the Reformed Parliament', which constituted an unprecedented public relations triumph.¹⁶

The whigs actively promoted serious political journals that were aimed primarily at the political élite and prosperous members of the middle classes. After some initially faltering starts in earlier decades¹⁷ two weekly magazines came to serve whig interests effectively for much of the period. R. S. Rintoul founded The Spectator in 1828 and managed its operations for the next 30 years. He was not at the beck and call of the party leadership and tended to support advanced 'Durhamite' positions, but he remained in the whig/Liberal fold. The key whig manager of the press, Joseph Parkes, supplied Rintoul with articles.¹⁸ The party whip, E. J. Stanley, noted that though its writers did not necessarily love the whigs, the staff at The Spectator hated the tories and provided useful attacks. Albany Fonblanque's Examiner, which enjoyed a wider readership than The Spectator, was more thoroughly whiggish in opinion, and in the 1830s became 'an organ of the ministry'. The whig grandees remained delighted with its output. Eventually, the editor was given a post at the board of trade in 1847. Ellice and LeMarchant worked closely with Fonblanque. The latter noted 'how admirably he [Fonblanque] was fighting our battles'.¹⁹

The doyen of whig publications was the great and majestic quarterly founded in 1802, The Edinburgh Review. It came to produce a 'continuous Whig barrage'. Party policies were laid out; new concepts of advanced economic thinking were explained; it 'gave the public final verdicts in portable form'.²⁰ Efforts on the right, Blackwoods and The Quarterly Review, and on the left, The Westminster Review, failed to dent theEdinburgh's pre-eminence. When J. S. Mill left the Westminster in 1840 to write for the Edinburgh, he told the editor he was determined 'to gain the ear of the liberal party generally, instead of addressing a mere section of it'.²¹ The Edinburgh enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with the party in the 1820s and 30s, and remained the chief repository of whig opinion until the later nineteenth century.²²

The whigs made no active attempt to shape their image through some other forms of media but knew that they benefited from attacks on their opponents published free of charge to the party treasury. For example, political caricatures were aimed largely at the same audience as the Edinburgh or the Examiner. They were expensive. To keep up with production, one whig minister spent £24 in a single year on political prints alone.²³ This was a golden age of sophisticated cartoons, and many of them contained savage attacks on the tories. During the height of the post-war agitation after 1815 and during the Reform Bill crisis, some caricatures reached very wide audiences, and usually portrayed the whigs, especially in the 1830s, in a very favourable light.²⁴

The newly emerging mass market for Sunday papers had by the 1840s created a popular press of a new kind. Some directly supported the whig cause while others were more radical, but, again, they usually helped to batter the tories.²⁵

The whigs did not have much direct influence over the ever expanding provincial press, most of which published weekly.²⁶ However, an increasing majority of the papers throughout the half-century under consideration were reform orientated and whiggish.²⁷ When steam presses came into use by the bigger regional papers in the 1820s and 30s, very large circulations accrued to the Manchester Guardian, Leeds Mercury and Birmingham Herald.²⁸ Whig grandees were alert to the importance of cultivating contacts with the editors and owners of the reforming papers in their neighbourhoods. A good example of this is the attention whigs paid to Edward Baines, whose Leeds Mercury was the accepted leader of the English provincial press. R.S. Milnes of Fryston, Walter Fawkes of Farnley and the fifth Earl Fitzwilliam were interested in making Baines feel welcome and supported in their circle. He was repeatedly invited to the great shrine of Rockingham atWentworth Woodhouse, and despite his dissenting, middle class, radical background came to acknowledge Grey and Althorp as his political leaders.²⁹ In Edinburgh several whig papers emerged, of which the most important was the Scotsman. Whig ministers cultivated contacts with it, while in Glasgow a whiggish Chronicle also flourished.³⁰

2

Senior members of the party were convinced that the whigs must reach out directly to working-class readers who otherwise would remain mired in ignorance, or perhaps worse, be mislead by the radical illegal press. Their steps in this direction demonstrated both alertness to technological innovation and a flair for marketing. The secret of attracting a really broad audience of poorly educated people with little leisure time was to use pictures. Multi-cylinder stereotype steam printing became available in 1827, and within five years the whig grandees began to exploit its potential to reach beyond the traditional literate classes, and in so doing created the first genuinely mass-market publication in history.³¹

The Penny Magazine was launched in the critical year of 1832 by a whig satellite organization, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (S.D.U.K.). 'Knowledge is Power' was chosen as the S.D.U.K.'s motto by its founders, who included Henry Brougham, Lord John Russell, Viscount Ebrington, the earl of Kerry, Lord Nugent, Lord Dover, Viscount Althorp, Sir Henry Parnell and Thomas Spring Rice. Earl Fitzwilliam, the marquesses of Lansdowne and Westminster, and the dukes of Bedford, Somerset and Sutherland helped to finance society publications.³² Although middle class philosophical radicals were also involved in the S.D.U.K., the influence of the whig aristocracy was decisive in its policy making. Whig chancellors of the exchequer determined the society's positions on economics and financial policy, and whiggish pamphlets were issued under its name on the poor laws, political economy, wages and unions.³³

Five cabinet ministers served on the committee of management including the chairman (Brougham) and vice-chairman (Russell) when the Penny Magazine was launched. The magazine was affordable to a broad range of readers because whig influence was used to ensure the solicitor of stamps waived the stamp duty. Through it the whig aristocracy attempted to shape the political and social consciousness of the working classes.³⁴

Many of the S.D.U.K. publications were strictly practical tracts, and others had little impact. But with the Penny Magazine, the whigs produced a blockbuster. However, several controversies and a myth revolve around its story. Historians claim that the Magazine did not reach the lower working class, but some of the evidence that supports this view is of questionable value. Editors and friends of the illegal, unstamped press were contemptuous of the aristocratic sponsorship and bitter about losing circulation to the new publication that could produce a more appealing product for less money due to economies of scale, access to the latest technology, and privileged exemptions from taxation. The Penny Magazine was a key factor in the disappearance of the unstamped press in the later 1830s, and hence any comments on it drawn from radicals are highly suspect.³⁵ Recent research suggests that the Penny Magazine played a 'critical role' in the development of the first consumer mass market that would later expand further with the 'Sundays' in the 1840s. Some of its readers were shopkeepers, clerks, and even gentry, but there is evidence of a wide and faithful working class following. In the first year 200,000 issues were printed. It was purchased ten million times in 1833.³⁶ Although these numbers were not sustained once competitors emerged, at a minimum the journal was seen by 1,000,000 readers, and if copies were passed around in the same way that daily papers were shared, many millions must have seen some issues, perhaps nearly everyone in the country since even children and the illiterate could enjoy the illustrations.

It has also been alleged that Charles Knight, the editor, whose main interest may be assumed to have been financial success, controlled all policy decisions about contents.³⁷ However, Knight was himself liberally minded, and it is clear from the S.D.U.K. archives and the editor's own statements that the whig dominated committee of management was the ultimate arbiter of direction and content. Like Baines, Knight was not born into the charmed circle. He had begun as a provincial newspaper proprietor and printer, and perhaps, like Parkes, he was not always comfortable with whiggish moderation and aristocratic manners. However, like Baines and Parkes, he was accorded personal intimacy by a number of grandees and in the end accepted that dilatory as they could be, the whigs were headed in the right direction.³⁸

Both to justify escaping the stamp tax and because the market demanded it, much of the Penny Magazine's contents were purely encyclopedic in nature. However, some critics have found the contents so insipid, as Professor R.K. Webb commented, that they 'can only excite in the modern reader little but disgust'. The publication advocated 'a middle class Whig view of what the working class should read'. Other observers speak of 'mere pabulum', while contemporary radicals denounced the Penny Magazine as intended to 'cajole us into an apathetic resignation to [the élite's] iron sway'.³⁹

The anger and alarm of the radical journalists suggests that mere pabulum was not all that was being offered by the whigs. Modern historians like Webb have been swayed by anachronistic political assumptions and expectations. All early nineteenth-century publications contained some articles that today seem ridiculous. A selection of headlines from The Morning Chronicle, which was the major rival to The Times in the 1820s and 30s, edited by a formidably erudite man and read avidly by the whig élite, includes many stories about subjects the modern mind may find silly: 'The Late Melancholy Balloon Accident', 'Narrow Escape of the Queen of the Belgians', and 'Mysterious Occurrences'. So too the Penny Magazine published a magpie collection of articles on the dexterity of goats, mice in Iceland and the singular intelligence of cats. But a thorough reading reveals many fascinating and informative stories. Although the balance of coverage changed over time, the magazine published serious book reviews and digests of serious books. Topics covered included technology, agriculture, biography, archaeology, geology, history, museums, architecture, natural history, language, literature, statistics and fine, art all illustrated with high quality original etchings.

The didactic nature of the magazine led to moralizing about frugality, temperance, industriousness, obedience, and forbearance. It supported established institutions and hierarchy. However, contrary to those who argue that it avoided partisan politics,⁴⁰ embedded throughout were articles endorsing the agenda advocated by the whigs: praise for technological innovation and the march of the intellect. The Penny Magazine wanted to vest more trust and power 'in the mass of the community'. It advocated universal literacy and the desirability of men rising by merit. Its biography section included ones of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. Its book reviews included Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and J.R.McCulloch's works, and it published a letter on political economy by Charles Poulett Thomsen (a whig minister) to Nassau Senior (a guru on whig economic policy).⁴¹ In fact, at times, one seems to be reading a watered down version of The Edinburgh Review. Moral lessons could turn into social critiques about the insensitivity of the rich towards the poor and the evils of an irresponsible aristocracy. It touted the success of the whig ministry in reducing the size of government bureaucracy and spending. There is overt praise for the Reform Act and extension of the suffrage. It praised the New Poor Law and printed an extensive analysis of the Municipal Corporation Report.⁴² The Penny Magazine heralded the whig message to the farthest and most benighted corners of the land.

3

Aspinall and his successors placed the heaviest emphasis, when discussing the whigs and the press, on the London dailies. Although his belief in the importance of subsidies and other control mechanisms has been shown to be exaggerated,⁴³ it is true that politicians put much store in what the big metropolitan newspapers had to say. As they grew in circulation and sophistication during the course of the first half of the century, The Times and The Morning Chronicle became titans locked in a seesaw battle for readers and reputation. A host of lesser papers followed in their wake. A key to their success in the world that watched and cared about Westminster was the extensive, and generally accurate reports of speeches in parliament. Both parties could talk directly to the public in this way. However, the whig Morning Chronicle initially paid more care to this process than its competitors. It was the first paper to use teams of reporters to record debates and for years its coverage was considered superior to that of The Times. Its compositors were sometimes given the notes on which whig speeches were based immediately after delivery and worked directly from them.⁴⁴ In The Morning Chronicle over half the space not taken up by advertisements was devoted to parliamentary debates, and during elections the coverage of speeches from the hustings was also extensive. Full accounts of county meetings and Foxite dinners were also characteristic of the Chronicle. No better means of issuing official party policy statements was available.

Neither the tories nor the whigs ever enjoyed confident and sustained control over the great daily papers. The owners and editors took their own political positions and cast aspersions on each other in a manner that suggests more than just business rivalry. The Times called the Chronicle 'the servile herald of falsehood' and the latter attacked the former on the grounds that it is 'necessary now and then to expose the monster in its hideousness, on the principle on which Spartans exhibited a drunken slave'.⁴⁵ Despite this deep antagonism and even though politicians did not have the means to make either paper bend to their will, the whigs enjoyed considerable advantages over their rivals in garnering support from both journals.

Throughout much of the period the owner of The Times, John Walter II, was a whig M.P., although he relinquished editorial control to Thomas Barnes in 1819. The latter condemned the Liverpool government after Peterloo and the passage of the Six Acts and drew the paper into line with the opposition whigs. There was some drift back towardsWellington (as there was within the party itself) in the late 1820s, in part because the duke embraced the whig policy of religious toleration. The paper also became a backer of the advanced whigs' policy of free trade. By the time Grey came to office, Barnes had become such a strong supporter of parliamentary reform that Lord Ellenborough called The Times 'the ministerial organ'. A breach with the whigs developed towards the end of Grey's tenure, prompted partly by Barnes's abhorrence for the New Poor Law and partly by chagrin at the revived whiggism of The Morning Chronicle.⁴⁶ The next editor, John Thadeus Delane, turned against the tories in 1843 as The Morning Chronicle began to fade in importance. The leading articles were generally liberal in tone during the Russell administration until just before the end of our period.⁴⁷ The diarist Charles Greville claimed that The Times was famous for 'its versatility and inconsistency' and even when Barnes supported the Reform ministry he was liable to criticize weaknesses such as Grey's nepotism while at times Delane 'abuses all parties'.⁴⁸ Yet, for much of the period, and almost all the time when The Morning Chronicle strayed from the whig camp, The Times supported whig measures and often whig men.

The Morning Chronicle was more consistently a whig paper due to the opinions of two strongly whiggish owners: James Perry (1790-1821) and Sir John Easthope (1834-48). Though never subservient, Perry pursued what Brougham called a 'most laudable degree of compliance' with party policy, and this was when the Chronicle was a front rank paper while The Times still stood in the second echelon.⁴⁹ After his death The Morning Chronicle was sold to William Clement but continued under the same editor, John Black, whom Perry had appointed in 1817. Direct communication with the whigs ended for a time, and Black tended to be more radical in his views than much of the parliamentary delegation. He suffered from a chippy irritability about aristocratic manners and styles of life. He could antagonize even the more advanced grandees.⁵⁰ On the whole, however, he remained a supporter, but his tactless, longwinded and rather boring style led to a serious decline in readership, which is when The Times became the voice of the whigs. However, the reform struggle and the purchase of the paper by Easthope in the early 1830s helped revive the paper's circulation and influence. For a time its readership again surpassed The Times. Its pages were thick with panegyrics to whig ministers.⁵¹ J. C. Hobhouse could still refer to The Morning Chronicle as 'our newspaper' in 1840; but circulation declined again, and the paper fared even worse under a new editor, when The Times once more became the whig champion. By the time the Chronicle had become moribund, Easthope sold it to a group of unwary Peelites in 1848.⁵²

Like The Times, The Morning Chronicle often took a critical tone towards the party it supported. Black deeply disapproved of Russell's 'finality' speech about further parliamentary reform, and pressure for repeal of the corn laws aroused ire among the older generation of whigs. Perry was an ally and not a hireling. Easthope liked to assert his independence.⁵³ None the less, the Chronicle was a powerful source of support. It was never possible to speak for all whigs on all issues, but the party was remarkably well served by the two leading dailies.

The high tory, Sir Walter Scott, lamented in the 1820s that 'The whole daily press seems to me to have embraced democratical opinions without exception.' Indeed, the majority of the press for much of the time under consideration was anti-tory. In 1830 virtually all newspapers were in favour of parliamentary reform, although in the late 30s there was a movement away from whiggism. However, important support came not only from the two big papers but also from The Globe (later Globe and Traveller ) in the 1820s to the 1860s, The Morning Herald (1780s-1830s), The Evening Chronicle (founded by Easthope in 1837), and at times The Sun, The Courier and The Morning Post.⁵⁴

4

Another criticism made of the whigs during our period is that among those most directly concerned with public relations and party policy, only Palmerston operated in a recognizably 'modern' way in his relations with the press.⁵⁵ He was, indeed, a skilled spin master. Brougham is also accepted as an activist who wrote many pieces both for the quarterlies and dailies and leaked secrets copiously when in office, but his performance, particularly as lord chancellor, was so erratic that few would wish to hold him up as an example of a successful modern politician. As often as not, his pieces were attacks on colleagues, not opponents.⁵⁶ Both men were obsessive self-promoters more than party supporters. Palmerston was as likely to sing the praises of his own foreign policy over that of his cabinet colleagues or to down Lord John Russell as enhance party interests. Only Holland and Durham (another maniacal egotist and almost as determined a leaker) get occasional mentions as senior members of the party actively engaged with the press.⁵⁷ The impression is that the rest of the whig leaders were languid or incompetent.

In fact a number of whig peers, such as Lords Dover, Essex, Fortescue, Duncannon, Kinnaird, Althorp, Monteagle, Normanby and Clarendon (as well as lesser lights such as H. G. Bennet, Lord John Townshend, Sir Francis Vincent, J. C. Hobhouse, Charles Wood, Thomas Spring Rice and Charles Poulett Thomsen) wrote articles, corrected proofs, and communicated regularly with editors of journals and newspapers.⁵⁸

Lord Grey was close to Perry of the Chronicle. In 1820 he initiated the idea of a committee to superintend the press. When prime minister he provided documents used for his speeches in the house of lords to The Morning Chronicle and made sure his intermediaries with the press knew 'the tone to be taken in the [whig] papers'. He also used his influence to urge cabinet ministers to write chapters for the widely circulated 'Reform ministry' propaganda pamphlet.⁵⁹

Lord John Russell wrote several articles for the Edinburgh and composed book-length political tracts promoting the whig view of history and international relations. After entering government he cultivated a relationship with Easthope and in the 1840s wrote to the owner of The Morning Chronicle regularly about a wide range of policy and press issues. He explained government and party positions and puffed pamphlets. As his rival Palmerston's press campaign accelerated and the Chronicle waned, Russell skillfully shifted loyalties to Delane of The Times and continued to search for support elsewhere.⁶⁰ It wasRussell who arranged the job for Fonblanque of The Examiner at the board of trade in 1847. That he was not as self-focused and manipulative as Palmerston (and his wife was far less adept at cultivating the press than Lady Palmerston) does not mean he was unaware of its importance or slothful in advancing party interests.

Though still often underestimated, Melbourne's image as a sleepy conservative has now largely been abandoned, but a reputation of aloofness from the press still clings to him. In fact even as a junior minister he paid attention to government relations with The Times. Once he became premier he cultivated close relations with The Globe. Amazingly, he got on well with the radical, hypersensitive Black of the Chronicle, who was made a welcome visitor at Downing Street during Melbourne's tenure. The prime minister also made sure government documents were put at Black's disposal and influenced the tone and content of articles. He also socialized with Easthope, and he maintained a connexion with the editor of The Edinburgh Review.⁶¹

The whigs were fortunate to possess a number of highly competent 'hands-on' managers of the press. These included the aristocratic whip, E. J. Stanley, Grey's brother-in-law, Edward Ellice, and the middle class Joseph Parkes. The latter two came from a different social sphere than the grandees, which helped to ease relations with men such as Black and Barnes.

Stanley was the scion of a great Lancashire family and served as a treasury secretary 1835 to 1841. In conjunction with Parkes he worked sedulously to inform, muzzle and spin, what he called 'framing' the news.⁶² The son of a vulgar parvenu, Edward Ellice inherited a fortune of £500,000 in 1805 and expanded it further through his own business acumen. He wed the prime minister's sister while his younger brother married Grey's illegitimate daughter by the duchess of Devonshire. He also owned a 100,000 acre estate in Scotland.⁶³ He was a clever and ruthless businessman, who built up a wide network of friends in the world of aristocratic politics and philosophical radicalism and was a strong supporter of the more liberal wing of the party. He could be pompous and self-important, and rubbed some whigs the wrong way.⁶⁴ But Holland thought highly of him and Coke of Norfolk appointed him one of the guardians of the second earl of Leicester.⁶⁵ Though he held only the relatively minor post of treasury secretary 1830-32 and was only briefly in the cabinet in 1834, he always had Grey's confidence and from the 1820s through the 1840s wrote articles for The Morning Chronicle and paid close attention to whig relations with the press. This shrewd operator stood at the centre of a web of financial and political interests always moving towards the expansion and consolidation of whig power.

Ellice was particularly close to Joseph Parkes, who called him 'my patron'. They breakfasted together every Sunday morning when Ellice was in London hatching plots and planning strategy.⁶⁶ Ellice was assiduous in helping Barnes of The Times, and he and Delane became close in later years. The latter was regularly invited to Ellice's Highland fastness at Glenquoich. Ellice served as the midwife during Easthope's purchase of The Morning Chronicle and became a part owner. Subsequently he exercised direct influence through Parkes and Easthope on the content of the paper.⁶⁷

Among Ellice's concerns was to keep in contact with the party's junior press personnel, especially the private secretaries of Brougham, Althorp, and Melbourne - Denis LeMarchant, Thomas Drummond, and Thomas Young - who regularly wrote articles for the London papers. The remarkable Drummond is often overlooked.⁶⁸ He was a career soldier who came to Althorp's notice while serving on the boundary commission during the parliamentary reform drama. After serving as private secretary at No. 11 Downing Street, he went to Dublin under Duncannon where he was one of the most enlightened English administrators in nineteenth-century Ireland. One whig noted that Drummond was 'one of the best men of business' the party ever had. Not only was he in direct communication with Easthope and authored much of the 'Reform ministry' pamphlet, but also he supplied information and articles to The Globe, The Scotsman, and other papers.⁶⁹

The most substantial figure in whig press relations other than Ellice was Joseph Parkes of Birmingham: agent, wire-puller and fixer. He was the son of a provincial banker and factory owner who became a solicitor. Althorp first met him during the Reform Bill crisis and pulled him into the whig orbit. Parkes became the party's parliamentary solicitor in London from 1833 to 1847. He was active in utilitarian circles and was more radical than most whigs, but he was willing to work with and through them. Althorp, Melbourne, and Russell came to rely on his advice.⁷⁰ Parkes believed strongly in using newspapers to activate, shape, and concentrate public opinion, and became the key conduit between the grandees and many editors.⁷¹ Parkes was a constant visitor in Black's office at The Morning Chronicle in the 1830s and 40s. He helped set the editorial tone and moderate Black's suspicions of the grandees. He wrote leaders or gave Black the headings, and he even altered articles already set in type.⁷² Parkes helped Easthope purchase the Chronicle and like Ellice took a minority interest himself. He made sure the paper was 'stuffed with "Government articles" ', and manipulated the owner skillfully. After Black was sacked, he continued to give advice to the next editor. He was also in contact with many other newspapers and continued to write articles whether the whigs were in or out of office into the 1850s. He befriended Delane and corresponded with him about articles in The Times. He was involved in purchasing shares in The Courier and consulted with Ellice about other possible acquisitions.⁷³

The evidence adduced above suggests that the whigs were by no means indifferent to or inept in handling relations with the press. Grandees took an interest, although their principal function in office was to do the work of their departments and espouse government policy in parliament. However, they were well served by astute and vigorous supporters such as the press owners Perry and Easthope, members of the aristocratic inner circle like Ellice and Stanley, junior officials such as Drummond, and their political operative Parkes. The whigs rewarded Perry, Fonblanque, and Parkes with official posts and Easthope with a baronetcy. They socialized, despite Barnes's unconventional home life, with editors, sent them game, proposed them for clubs, and invited them to shoot on their estates.

5

None of this, however, acquits the whigs of the charge of hypocrisy over their failure, once in office, to repeal the stamp duty and other 'taxes on knowledge' so that freedom of the press could become fully mature. They have also been criticized for continuing to use the powers of government to repress free speech after 1830.⁷⁴

There can be no question that leading whigs fought hard against the repression imposed by the Liverpool administration. Even the aged anti-reformer fourth Earl Fitzwilliam was humiliatingly dismissed from the lord lieutenancy of the West Riding for his criticism of the government.⁷⁵ It was clear that both their belief in liberty and faith in free trade were offended by taxes that were used to discourage wide participation in the political process. The Edinburgh Review called freedom of the press 'the foundation of all intellectual light, and the source of all that is great among mankind'. Parnell denounced taxation on paper and news as 'a great obstacle . . . in the way of the progress of knowledge, of useful and necessary arts, and of sober and industrious habits'.⁷⁶

It is true that once in office the whigs did not immediately repeal the repressive legislation enacted by their predecessors and even continued to prosecute some new offenders under its provisions. However, it must be remembered that when they came to power a serious and destructive insurrection was under way in rural areas that no respecter of property and civic peace, irrespective of party or class, could tolerate. Secondly, they placed as their chief priority the passage of parliamentary reform, which they believed was fundamental to all future reforms. The battle to pass this bill became one of the longest, most dramatic, all consuming, and difficult parliamentary struggles faced by any government in the nineteenth century. Thirdly, Lord Althorp, the chancellor of the exchequer and the most liberal member of the cabinet and a major force in the S.D.U.K., was confronted with a large deficit, exacerbated by unexpected opposition to transfer taxes on stocks that he had intended to generate replacement revenue. The taxes on newspapers, paper and advertisements produced over one million pounds, one-fiftieth of all state expenditure.⁷⁷ He still faced a deficit in 1832 of over £700,000. So Althorp's 1831 plans for an immediate first step in reducing the advertisement tax to 1s. and the stamp tax from 4d. to 2d. was aborted. Then the abolition of slavery in the empire in 1833 produced an unplanned expenditure of £12,000,000 for compensation to owners to facilitate rapid manumission.⁷⁸

These factors made immediate reductions in the 'taxes on knowledge' impossible, although it is true that more conservative whigs, such as Lansdowne, were not displeased by this outcome. On the other hand, Russell and Holland were for moving faster, and after the passage of the Reform Act Althorp was determined to begin, despite premature leaks about his plans that gave the conservatives a chance to manoeuvre against him. In the best whig gradualist manner he reduced the advertisement tax from 3s. 6d. to 1s. 6d. and abolished the pamphlet tax, which cut £63,814 from the revenue.⁷⁹ In 1834 the almanac duty was repealed, but the confused political situation made it difficult to go further that year. Grey bowed out and Melbourne had hardly moved into No. 10 before he was dismissed.

When the whigs regained office in 1835, the new chancellor of the exchequer, Spring Rice, found that he still could not afford to give up the £1,353,000 'knowledge tax' income. Holland, who denounced the stamp tax as 'unwise as well as odious', felt Rice's reluctance was 'injudicious' but acknowledged that the injury to the revenue would be great.⁸⁰ Only in 1836, with Melbourne now confidently in the saddle and the budget faring better, were the whigs able to act, and they did so decisively, taking the stamp tax down from 4d. to 1d. The Sunday papers benefited the most from this step; their readership was the most price sensitive, usually only able to afford one paper a week. A huge expansion in readership of many liberal and radical publications occurred rapidly among the working people. In 1835 there were 35,000,000 stamped newspapers; 15 years later the number was close to 100,000,000.⁸¹

Tories hated the popular press. Even the mild mannered Lord Liverpool said in 1819 that the press 'is really the root of the evil'.⁸² Serious attempts were made by his government to repress free speech, though without great success. One of the most serious problems confronting the reactionaries in power during the 1820s was the revision of the laws of libel enacted by the whig Fox in 1792 which allowed juries and not the government to define what was illegal. Also, caricatures remained free of restraints.⁸³ As Philip Harling has recently shown, even the despotic weapon of issuing ex officio informations (which in effect allowed imprisonment without trial) against individual journalists proved difficult to use.⁸⁴ Prosecutions that were carried forward often became forums for radical expression and disseminated the author's opinions more broadly than if they had been let alone.⁸⁵ The leading liberals in the whig party fought hard to resist the repression in the post-Waterloo period and succeeded in inserting an amendment into one of the Six Acts of 1819 that obliged the government to bring ex officio prosecutions to a speedy trial. Even the moderates in the party like the second Earl Spencer clung to Fox's Libel Act as a touchstone of liberty because they believed that juries ensured that 'the pulse of the publick' could be taken and heeded.⁸⁶

Viscount Ebrington called the Six Acts 'the most alarming attack ever made by parliament upon the liberties and constitution of the country', and he singled out the Blasphemous Libel Bill for particular obloquy. Both old fashioned whigs such as the duke of Bedford and strongly evangelical, almost puritanical younger aristocrats such as Lord Althorp rallied to the assistance of the gross blasphemer, William Hone, when he was prosecuted ex officio for a radical publication employing religious imagery. And they continued to denounce lingering spasms of ex officio usage until they came into office.⁸⁷

Aspinall and others suggest that the whigs, once in power, actually prosecuted the radical press more vigorously than had the tories.⁸⁸ The new government did, in fact, carry out a few prosecutions against the unstamped press, but they made no attempt to increase the effectiveness of repressive legislation and its use all but disappeared under their rule. The trials, which did take place in 1831, were aimed at writers who advocated arson in print during the Swing disorders and, in the case of Cobbett, by the necessity of retainingWilliam IV's support for the Reform Bill during its early and delicate stages of birth. Once popular support for the bill assured its passage, the whig ministers refused the king's further requests for prosecutions, even when the queen was attacked in print.⁸⁹ The whigs did, for a time, pursue vendors of unstamped papers. However, much of this activity seems to have been initiated by low level bureaucrats in the stamp office and the Bow Street magistrates, and was encouraged by the payment of one pound bounties to informers. An unenthusiastic government in 1835 ended this system. After the three major prosecutions of 1831, the press was for all practical purposes free. Even some of the more disturbing effusions in print by the chartists were treated tolerantly by the whigs, and Russell refused to order prosecutions.⁹⁰

6

This paper is intended as a corrective to previous accounts of the whig party and its relations with the press distorted by a narrow focus on failure. To condemn the whigs for incompetence is seriously to misunderstand what was possible. A recent assessment of Palmerston and the press notes that even he, though very interested and skilled, could guide and shape but not control the press.⁹¹ Nor could a party with such wide diversity of opinions and personalities hope to send out a tightly controlled message.⁹²

It is true that many senior whigs distrusted journalists, even though progressively the latter were brought into social contact even with the grandees.⁹³ No doubt some of their feelings were bred by aristocratic arrogance. The sixth duke of Bedford complained that 'the proprietors of the daily press have large Capitals in the traffic and not an acre of land'. Without aristocratic conceptions of honour, journalists lacked self restraint.⁹⁴ Editors such as Barnes and Delane, however, were above all motivated by attracting customers and not political loyalties, which was an attitude repugnant not just to aristocrats, but even to men like Parkes, who noted: 'the press is far more unprincipled than Public Men'. Nor could any elected politicians look with favour on a man like Barnes, the unelected 'potentate of the Press', when he spoke of the 'just and fitting exercise of our increased power'.⁹⁵

But it is clear from whig correspondence that the leadership understood that politics was not confined to the chambers of the Commons and the Lords and that much could be learned about the state of public opinion from reading newspapers and that paying attention to what the most successful ones said was a political duty.⁹⁶ They also understood that every effort should be made to appeal as directly and widely as possible to the people, even the lower orders, to win the support of the middle classes and give a political education to the masses. They understood, as The Morning Chronicle put it, that 'without the middle classes [the whigs] are not much'.⁹⁷ But as literacy widened and public opinion fragmented, the whigs grasped that different types of media were required to reach all segments of the reading public. Restraints on free speech were removed and, when possible, they attempted to shape editorial statements in order to sway public opinion, however difficult that might be to define precisely.⁹⁸ Whigs never moved quickly, and they were devoted to the interests of their own class. To expect elephants to run with the speed and grace of gazelles is unrealistic and anachronistic. However, whigs also believed in progress and enlightenment. They were skilled politicians and principled ones, and in the 1830s and 1840s they largely overhauled the constitutional and fiscal structure of the country. Part of their success was due to paying attention to the press and exerting their influence with insight and imagination. As a whig minister noted, the press allowed the whigs to 'give a healthy tone to public opinion'.⁹⁹ They had no intention of becoming 'slaves of the low multitude', but the whigs believed, as they said in the Penny Magazine: 'The people will not abuse the power they have acquired to read, and therefore to think.'¹⁰⁰ Whigs welcomed pressure from below for reform because they believed that reform was inherently good. Reform did not come from kings and emperors but from 'the people'. As L. G. Mitchell recently noted: 'the Whig mission, historically defined, was to lead the people in their aspirations, to make contact with them, and to give practicality to their hopes'.¹⁰¹ The first half of the nineteenth century was a period of great peril to the established order. Danger was surmounted by skilled leaders of both parties and by a willingness of the whigs to adapt themselves to the spirit of the age, which included making effective use of the press.¹⁰²