CHAPTER TWO.

The year 1832 not only marked the beginning of a new phase in Hayward's life but was a turning point in British history as well. It was the year of the Reform Bill.

The torturous question of Parliamentary Reform had been smouldering beneath the troubled surface of domestic politics for years. Every so often it would give an ominous bubble which threatened to break into an eruption, but each time it was conveniently smothered by one convenient crisis or another. The fear of war, the fear of revolution, the fear of bankruptcy, the fear of the Vatican, the fear of the sinful Caroline sitting on the throne with her dubiously moral husband; there was certainly no lack of diverting fears in post-Waterloo England. But it couldn't last; the dangerous spirit of liberalism which was making alarming progress on the Continent had begun to capture the phlegmatic imagination of the English and the conservative smoke screens were wearing extremely thin. The crisis had to be faced sooner or later.

When it did break it broke so suddenly that it threw both its supporters and its opponents into a panic. In June 1830, George IV, rounded off his official reign by dying, with uncharacteristic neatness, at the end of the decade he had initiated when he ascended the throne. In the general election which followed his death, the Whigs, after fifteen years of exile, unexpectedly found themselves with a majority in the Commons. Their new-found popularity was due, largely, to the rather peculiar events that had been taking place across the Channel. The French, also, had just lost a king, but unlike their patient neighbours they had not waited for him to die. With typical Gallic tempetuosity they had kicked him off his throne and placed in his stead the unromantic figure of the frock-coated, umbrella-swinging 'Citizen King' - Louis Phillipe. And, for once, a French revolution had been accomplished so quickly and so efficiently that order had been restored almost overnight. To those Englishmen who had slept with a loaded pistol beside their beds since the original French revolution, this second essay in the overthrow of established order was looked upon as the writing on the wall. Its very suddenness was seen as a sinister omen. Delay could be dangerous and something had to be done. The Whigs had always paid lip service to Parliamentary Reform now, rather to their surprise, they were given an opportunity to do something about it.

Lip service was one thing; actual Reform was another. Although the leader of the Whigs, Lord Grey, made the acceptance of a Reform Bill a condition of his forming a Ministry, he hastened to assure his more timid supporters that the Bill would be such as to "afford sure

ground of resistance to further innovation." All that was to happen was that certain rotten boroughs, where a handful of electors surrounded by bribery and corruption could return a disproportionate number of representatives to Parliament, were to hand over their power to more thickly populated constituencies; some new constituencies were to be created and a certain section of the middle-class were to become enfranchised. Compared with the hysterical excitement it caused it was an extremely mild measure. But in the early nineteenth century when 'democracy' was a dirty word, and 'the sanctity of property' was the key to sweet reasonableness, even the supporters of the new Government began to have misgivings about the monster they were creating.

The Tories had no doubts about it at all. They fought to the last ditch. Even when the Bill had, at last, been forced through the apoplectic Lords and the elections for the Reformed Parliament had begun, they were still convulsed in agonised screams. It was these screams that brought many of their wavering supporters back to their ranks and among the repentant turn-coats was the temporarily de-liberalised Mr. Hayward.

Like the rest of the country the Inns of Court were a-buzz with speculations about the political uproar. Both the Reformers and the anti-Reformers had their judicial advocates, and as the time for the elections drew nearer so the opposing counsels grew more heated. Unrestricted by the formalities of court procedure the briefless baristers welcomed the chance to give full vent to their forensic skill. As soon as they could rid themselves of their bother-some legal distractions, the young lawyers of the Inner Temple would hurry to their chambers to argue their judgless cases. Hayward, in all the glory of his new stuff gown, was in his element. Not only did the prospect of endless arguments please him but, having thrown in his lot with the opposition, he was, for once, able to fulminate with all the passion of a Tory extremist. It must have been a welcome relief. For years he had drifted haphazardly in the undecided no-man's land of the Canningites; now, at last, he was free to bang away at a really outsized party-prejudiced drum. He had no doubts about the honesty of his position. The great Canning himself had consistently opposed the idea of Parliamentary Reform, so despite the reactionary stand of some of his allies, Hayward could hardly be accused of deserting his original ideals. It was true that since Canning's death, in 1827, a great many Canningites had drifted closer and closer alliance with the Whigs but, as far as Hayward was concerned, it was they, and not he, who were deserting the floundering ship.

Once a Canningite always a Tory. There was nothing he enjoyed more than defending an unpopular, dogmatic point of view. His reputation as the unremitting opponent of the Radicals had given him a special political prominence among his legal associates and his rooms

now became a favourite battle field for the opposing factions. Every
afternoon groups of grey-wigged young lawyers, their black gowns
bellying out behind them, could be seen hurrying across the quiet,
shadowy courtyards of the Inner Temple towards Pump Court. Unfort-
imately no detailed record of the lively scenes that must have been
played out in Hayward's fusty chambers has survived. All that remains
is the echo of one particular afternoon gathering, but that echo was
to prove so loud that it reverberated throughout Hayward's life.

The trouble was started by a story which was repeated in Hayward's
chambers during one of the usual, heated, political arguments. It
was told, apparently, with the intention of exposing the sinister
designs of the Radicals, who were strenuously supporting the Reform
movement. Like all such stories it was grossly exaggerated and not
particularly relevant to the subject under debate. Shorn of all its
later trappings, in fact, it amounts to little more than a trivial
piece of political gossip. It is only by remembering the emotional
atmosphere in which it was told that one can appreciate the undying
fury it was to unleash.

In the early twenties, it appears, the young John Stuart Mill
had agreed to distribute some pamphlets giving practical instructions
on birth control. These pamphlets (written, rather belatedly, by Francis
Place, the father of fifteen children) had been privately published
as an answer to the alarming increase of population among the indust-
rial poor. Surrounded by the prevailing poverty of the London slums,
the idealistic young Mill had taken his mission so seriously that he
was led to committ the only indiscreet act of his sober life. Together
with an anonymous friend, he had scampered about London throwing the
pamphlets, much to the alarm of somewhat startled kitchen maids, down
area steps. As was to be expected, the pamphleteering pair were
eventually caught in the act and hauled before a scandalised magist-
rate. Exactly what happened to them after that is uncertain. There
were several versions current at the time as to the punishment meted
out to them by the outraged arm-of-the-law, but it seems fairly cert-
ain that whatever sentence they did receive it was considerably
modified by their youth and social standing.

Shocking as the affair was in the eyes of Britain's most upright
and fertile fathers, it did not create any great scandal at the time.
Somehow it was kept out of the papers and the little sensation it did
arouse quickly died down. It would probably have been forgotten
altogether had Thomas Moore not decided to perpetuate it with a pun:

"There are two Mr. M**ls, too, whom those who like reading
What's vastly unreadable, call clever;

And whereas M**l senior makes war on <u>good</u> breeding,
M**l junior makes war on all <u>breeding</u> whatever."

It was probably the vague naughtiness of Moore's verse, rather than
the incident itself, that kept the story in circulation among the

political scandalmongers.

When Hayward was taxed with telling this story in his rooms, he tried to evade the issue by saying he could not recall the particular occasion in question. He admitted that he had heard the story one evening at dinner and agreed it was possible that he had repeated it but he refused to be any more specific. This, to put it charitably, was a rather heavy handed peice of diplomatic subterfuge. It was not the story itself that was being questioned, but the distorted version of it that had issued from Pump Court - and that version had a distinct Haywardian flavour about it. Not satisfied with the arrest of Mill and his friend the number of Radicals involved in the incident had been enlarged to include the bane of Hayward's debating career - John Arthur Roebuck. And it was the presence of Roebuck in the police cell that was so difficult to explain away; for he had been in Canada at the time.

The incident first reached Roebuck's ears when he returned to London for a brief respite during a hectic election campaign at Bath. Not only had he been experiencing great difficulty in persuading the sedate voters of Bath to accept him as an apostle of light, but his task had been made doubly difficult by a series of vicious, personal slanders that his opponents were circulating among the electors. Already enraged by the frustration of having to defend his character as well as his principles at the hustings, he was furious when he heard of the new and unexpected attack that was being launched against him in London. Without waiting to obtain full details of the story he went haring round to Pump Court to demand an explanation from Hayward.

Considering the nature of the call and the temper of the caller, this first interview seems to have been conducted with amazing restraint. Hayward was alone when Roebuck burst in upon him and appears to have taken the wind out of his angry visitor's sails by receiving him with all the conventional ease of a polite host. Having listened patiently to Roebuck's garbled accusations, he coolly admitted the injustice of the rumours but denied that he, solely, was responsible for them. Not being too sure of his facts Roebuck reluctantly accepted this denial and left, rather sheepishly, after Hayward had given his word to contradict the story if it were ever told in his presence. "We parted amicably - that is, on terms of politeness, for we were never more than formal acquaintance," says Hayward euphemistically.