[In the following review, Butler examines the principal themes of Halévy's study of England from 1841 to 1852, including the triumphs of free trade and the middle class.]

When Professor Élie Halévy brought out the third volume of his well-known history in 1923, it was his intention to complete the work in four more volumes, of which the next to appear would be entitled ‘La politique libre-échangiste (1841-1865)’, and the last would bring the story down to 1895. The volumes, however, which in fact appeared next, in 1926 and 1932, were not those contemplated in 1923 but the two parts of an epilogue covering the years 1895-1914. In the second of these volumes the author declared his impatience to return to the task of writing the history of ‘cette grande époque au cours de laquelle le peuple anglais s'abandonna à la magnifique illusion d'avoir découvert dans la liberté temperée—non seulement pour lui-même mais pour tous les peuples, s'il en était, qui auraient la sagesse de suivre son exemple—le secret de l'équilibre moral et de l'équilibre politique’. His death in 1937 thus seemed to leave unfilled the whole wide gap between 1841 and 1895. He had, however, written a substantial part of the first of the expected volumes, which he hoped to publish in 1938, and he had assembled and arranged his notes for other chapters of this volume, as well as, to a much lesser extent, for later volumes. Madame Halévy and her husband's friends decided that he had left enough to make possible and to justify publication, and the arduous task of producing the book was entrusted to Professor Paul Vaucher, the author's friend and collaborator. By so deciding they have deserved the gratitude of all students of nineteenth-century England, and Professor Vaucher is to be congratulated on the skill with which he has performed what Madame Halévy in her preface describes as a task at once modest and perilous, requiring devotion no less than sympathy. ‘Il s'agissait, partout ou Élie Halévy n'avait pas eu le temps d'exprimer lui-même sa pensée, de parvenir à la saisir exactement d'après le classement des notes et les indications du manuscrit, de la traduire fidèlement sans y mêler de pensée étrangère, et pourtant de la rendre pleinement intelligible et vivante pour le lecteur.’ The book remains a fragment but it is none the less a substantial further contribution to our understanding of Victorian England.

The volume now published comprises three books, the first two of three chapters each, the third of one only. The first book deals with Peel's ministry of 1841-6; the titles of the chapters are Les années difficiles (1841-1843); Les années heureuses (1844-1845); ‘La révolution de 1846’. The first and third chapters had been completed by the author. Chapter ii, consisting of 14 pages only, has been for the most part put together from his notes; by a convenient device here and throughout the volume the portions so put together are printed in italics. The second book, covering the years 1846-52, consists of the author's first draft only: chapter i, which deals with the social legislation of 1847, the economic crisis and the Spanish marriages, is complete; chapter ii, concerned with the repercussions of the Continental revolutions of 1848 and with the end of Chartism is mainly so; chapter iii, covering the period 1848-52, contains considerable portions in italics, but the section on Ireland is from the author's pen. We miss, however, any treatment of the revolution in colonial policy represented by the grant of responsible government and any but incidental reference to foreign policy after 1848; there is consequently no account of the Don Pacifico debate, which would have offered a splendid field for a display of the author's skill in handling great issues on the border-line of politics and morals. The third book was to have comprised a survey of England in 1852, on the same lines, apparently, if not on the same scale, as books ii and iii of the famous first volume of the history. But Halévy never wrote the first two chapters which were to have dealt with the Wealth of the Nation and the Classes respectively; we have only a few sentences and among them his conclusion: ‘L'Angleterre, loin d'être le pays où la richesse est le plus inégalement distribuée, est le pays où la classe moyenne est la plus forte. Part de vérité: richesse énorme, misère extrême. Mais c'est l'intervalle immense qui est rempli par l'immensité des classes moyennes.’ Chapter iii on ‘Les Croyances’ is nearly complete, with its survey, of the church, the catholics and the protestant dissenters; but the section on rationalist thought is in italics, and we are told that the author had intended to add one on the contest between Christianity and Science in the old universities. The concluding section, which discusses Science and Religion, Religion and Ethics, Religion and Politics is tantalizingly short, and we end with thoughts on the relations between liberalism and the stability of British institutions on the one hand and between liberalism and protestantism on the other.

It was Professor Halévy's intention in 1923, as has been said, to make his fourth volume cover the period 1841-65 and to devote his fifth to ‘England in 1860—its institutions, ideas and manners’. He changed his mind, his editor tells us, and decided to introduce his general survey at an earlier date because he considered that the revolution caused by the adoption of Free Trade was complete by 1852. Volume iv, we are now told, was to have been followed by two others, the first carrying on the story to 1865 and including a chapter on ‘the ideas of 1860’, the second and last devoted to Disraeli and Gladstone. Does this mean that the author had decided to compress the period from 1865 to 1895 into a single volume, or has Professor Vaucher forgotten that as late as 1932 the plan had been to close the volume on Gladstone and Disraeli at 1880 and to add a final volume on the decline of the liberal party?

With regard to volume iv it is possible only to pick out a few points on which Professor Halévy lays particular emphasis or on which his conclusions are of special interest.

The volume begins with the rival agitations of Chartists and assailants of the Corn Laws; the new Chartist organization is traced to Wesleyan models, the method of ‘agitation’ to O'Connell. We are cautioned against supposing that the agitators of the League were more moderate and less revolutionary than those of the Charter, and we are referred to an article in the Quarterly of December 1842 for evidence of the incitements to violence for which the former were responsible. The strike movement of 1842, in itself simply an outbreak of hunger and despair, was exploited by agitators of both brands, whose more extreme members worked in alliance. That the excitement did not lead to civil war was due to the good sense not of the leaders but of the English people as a whole, and, seeing that it did not lead to civil war, it did good in calling attention to the miserable condition of the workers in factories and mines and on the land. The flood of literature devoted to ‘the condition of the people’, says Professor Halévy, supplies evidence not so much of exceptional selfishness and callousness in liberal England (as foreign readers supposed), as of an exceptional regard for the working class.

Attention is next called to the temporary eclipse (in 1842-3) and gradual revival of the prestige of Peel, whose figure dominates the book. Applauded first as a financial wizard for his budgets (for which Sir James Graham is allowed due credit) and particularly for his budgets of 1844 and 1845, he stood out after his conversion and eventual defeat as the real leader not only of the nation at large but even of the house of commons, in which his group was in a minority, and of the whig ministry itself, which felt bound to consult him in the financial crisis of October 1847. The author argues that twice over the moderate tory policy of economic reform, derived originally from Adam Smith and applied in the 'twenties by Huskisson and Liverpool and in the 'forties by Peel, had justified itself, by the tranquility which ensued, as against the political radicalism of Bentham, Hunt, Cobbett, and the Chartists; and that consequently this liberal reformist policy might claim to be the true national policy of England (p. 275). Peel is his hero, and we miss the final ‘éloge’ which might have been expected had he been able to describe the episode of his hero's death.

Overshadowed by the towering forms of Peel and Cobden in home affairs and of Palmerston in foreign, Lord John Russell cuts a small figure. Professor Halévy finds in him something ‘mesquin’ and would certainly deny him the place assigned to him as late as 1890 by his biographer, Spencer Walpole, in ‘the little company of great statesmen who have promoted the nation's progress by their measures or increased its happiness by their policy’. Judged by this test the prime minister of the years 1846-52, despite his impulsiveness and amateurishness, deserves a higher rating than our author allows him. In this section of the book we find an admirable analysis of the two, or three, parties as they emerged from the 1847 election, a clear account of the economic crisis of that year and interesting comments on the beginnings of paternalism and bureaucracy. On the subject of the Poor Law of 1847 Professor Halévy recalls that even under the old unpopular law a large measure of out-relief had always been granted; with reference to the new board which superseded the three ‘pashas’ he writes (p. 159): ‘Du principe de la séparation des pouvoirs, où l'on veut trop souvent voir le principe essentiel de la constitution britannique, on revenait, aprês treize ans d'application, au véritable principe constitutionnel anglais: la confusion du pouvoir législatif et du pouvoir exécutif dans la personne d'un ministre responsable’. After a description of the final flare-up of Chartism in 1848, in which the parallel and contrast between events in England and on the continent are never forgotten, samples of English feeling as to contemporary socialism are taken from J. S. Mill, Carlyle, and the Christian Socialists. ‘On ne saurait exagérer l'importance du rôle joué par les socialistes chrétiens, après le premier mouvement de panique antifrançaise, pour apaiser, dans les âmes bourgeoises, la peur du socialisme, les réconcilier avec le socialisme, avec une certaine forme de socialisme’ (p. 248). And on the practical side we have the picture of the old Chartist (p. 258); ‘Il voyait se réaliser silencieusement sous ses yeux, avec la connivence des économistes politiques, une sorte de socialisme sans doctrine, qu'aucun faiseur de système n'avait inspiré, qui naissait spontanément de la necessité des choses. D'une part, lois pour la protection du travail dans les manufactures; progrès de l'hygiène municipale dans les grandes villes; progrès de l'éducation populaire. D'autre part, progrès du coopératisme. Tout cela aboutirait un jour, sous des formes qu'il était oiseux de vouloir prévoir, à quelque sorte de socialisme, peut-être même de communisme.’

The main plot of the book is the triumph of Free Trade and the middle class. But there is a sub-plot. Peel's was not the only sensational conversion of the autumn of 1845 and Newman shares the honours with him and Cobden. The problem which interested Professor Halévy more than any other, so his editor tells us, was that of the relative importance of material and moral forces in English society. In his brilliant first volume there was perhaps nothing more striking than the importance which he attached to the influence of the religious sects in preserving order amid the anarchy of the opening century. The same interest is displayed throughout the present volume. In the 'forties, it is claimed, the nonconformist bodies again exerted their influence on the side of stability and contributed to the failure of Chartism. But this time it was not by infusing the masses with a spirit of Christian resignation. It was rather that, in failing to extend their appeal beyond the middle classes, they had separated them, even the ‘très petite bourgeoisie’, from the working classes and deprived these of the educated leaders they required for their war against the rich. ‘Le petit bourgeois … ne connaît le monde ouvrier que trop bien; il en sort, ou son père en est sorti. Il en est sorti par le travil: deux fois “sauvé”, s'il fait par-dessus le marché partie d'une secte réligieuse, par sa foi en lui-même et par sa foi en Dieu, au temporel comme au spirituel. Que les autres suivent son exemple, et se “sauvent” comme lui. S'ils ne le font pas, c'est tant pis pour eux. Ils ont merité leur enfer’ (p. 376). The gap was further widened, we are told, by the fear aroused in middle-class minds by the spread of anti-Christian propaganda among the proletariat. In more intellectual circles the same leaven was working, but less crudely; a letter is quoted in which Mill explains to Comte that it is unwise in England to attack religion directly; anti-religious language was less resented than the thing itself (p. 386). Professor Vaucher says that the author had intended to pursue this matter further in his fifth volume; he had meant to analyse the philosophy which had become dominant in England about 1860 (p. ix): ‘une sorte de philosophie collective qu'on peut appeler la philosophie de la libérté, ou encore la philosophie du libre examen et de la libre concurrence’; its characteristic was that it was definitely non-Christian. And yet England took pleasure in considering herself the most Christian of the people of Europe. ‘Comment expliquer ce paradoxe?’

To return to volume iv, Professor Halévy shows his old skill in interweaving the political, economic, and religious strands. Spencer Walpole, by contrast, in the course of the six volumes in which he covers approximately the same part of the century as Halévy, devotes one detached chapter only to the religious side. The French historian's outlook may be illustrated from a passage in his conclusion, in which he tells us that perhaps the best way to understand the structure of English society about the middle of the century is to consider it under its religious aspect (p. 391).

Dix ans plus tôt, la décomposition de la majorité envoyée au Parlement par les premières élections générales faites sous le réegime du Reform Act avait ramené les conservateurs au pouvoir. Et les préoccupations religieuses n'avaient pas été etrangères à ce retour. L'Église était comme le symbole de la majorité nouvelle qui soutenait, dans le nouveau Parlement, le ministère de Sir Robert Peel. L'espoir du parti, c'était le jeune Gladstone, qui venait de se poser-en défenseur intransigeant de l'union indissoluble do l'Église et de l'État. Mais il était apparu bientôt, aux yeux de Sir Robert Peel lui-même, que la victoire conservatrice de 1841 avait reposé sur un malentendu, qu'elle avait été un mouvement de réaction contre un radicalisme démocratique qui n'était pas redoubtable, et un mouvement de marche vers un haut toryisme, dont le pays ne voulait pas. C'est ainsi que l'histoire de l'Angleterre s'était acheminée vers la double crise de 1845. A l'intérieur de l'Église, tension croissante due aux progrès accompli par le nouveau parti du High Church; désertion de l'Église romaine; affaiblissement consécutif du parti de la Haute Église au sein de l'Église anglicane, cet affaiblissement s'opérant au bénéfice non de l'évangélisme mais du libéralisme. Progrés du doute et du scepticisme; naissance, sous le nom de Broad Church, d'un latitudinarisme; déclin, pareillement, du zèle évangélique dans les sectes; et désagrégation de la grande secte wesleyenne. En même temps, à l'intérieure du gouvernement, rupture entre la grosse majorite du parti conservateur et la grosse majorité du Cabinet, sous la conduite de celui qui avait contribué à donner au parti ce nom nouveau pour le moderniser, et [Illegible Text] trouvait cependant trop moderne pour imposer à un parti irreductiblement tory son autorité modératrice. … Désarroi politique, comparable au désarroi spirituel que nous venons de dire; et peut-être celui-là le simple décalque de celui-ci.

But the fact remained that in 1848, amid the chaos of revolution and reaction on the Continent, England alone had maintained the stability of her institutions. They were free institutions, and might that not be the secret of their stability? And if so, might not a coalition of freedom-loving groups under Peel's successor provide a better basis for a stable government than the conservative cabinet of 1841? What the policy of this new government would be was uncertain.

Une seule chose était assuréc: la polarisation de la formation des partis au Parlement, de la formation de la conscience publique en dehors du Parlement, se faisait dahs le sens de la liberté. Contre la réaction cléricale, l'Augleterre s'affirmait à la fois protestante et libérale; mais libérale plus encore que protestante; et, bien que portée toujours à ne pas séparer les deux vocables, moins disposée que bien des fois dans le passé à définir le libéralisme pas le protestantisme; disposée plutôt à se declarer protestante parce que le protestantisme lui parassait la forme du christianisme la plus favorable au développement de la liberté intellectuelle comme de la liberté politique.

To this concluding passage Professor Vaucher adds a footnote showing that in an earlier version the author had written contrariwise: ‘L'Angleterre se sent protestante, et libérale parce que protestante’. In another place (p. 71) he does not attempt to pronounce which was cause and which was effect. The new spirit of Scottish Dissent in the 'forties, he suggests, was more political than theological. ‘Esprit tellement pénétré de liberalisme, commercial aussi bien que politique, que ce libéralisme finissait par paraître exprimer l'essence même du dogme chrétien.’

The passages quoted may suffice to indicate that the present volume displays the same qualities which have made its predecessors a classic. We have here the same careful research, the same balanced judgement, the same determination not to outrun the evidence or to shirk a difficulty, the same exclusion of the non-essential, the same breadth of view, and, as we have seen, the same ability, without forcing parallels or causal connexions, to relate together the various aspects of English life. We find too the capacity which, owing perhaps to lack of interest or sympathy, some of the greatest French historians, even Albert Sorel, did not possess; the capacity to understand and appreciate the springs and modes of action of what a French journalist of 1842, quoted in this book, called ‘ce peuple si voisin de nous géographiquement, et si éloigné sous le rapport moral’. We are deeply in debt to Professor Halévy for this final instalment of his laborious and masterly endeavour to explain our history not only to his own countrymen but to ourselves, and to Madame Halévy and Professor Vaucher for making the volume available.

Among trifling misprints or slips the following may be mentioned: p. 9, 1. 2, perpétré for perpétué; p. 19, note, Henry George Grey for Earl Grey; pp. 41, 45, Klaïbar and Khyba; 134, Surlei for Sutlej; p. 249, eaux et forêts for Woods and Forests; p. 327, note 3, about for above; p. 383, note, Lyall for Lyell. On, p. 62, note 1, the page reference to The Age of the Chartists (226) should perhaps be 195. There is no index.