ABSTRACT
The french revolution left england profoundly conservative. For 26 years England's governing classes were obsessed by its terrors and its wars. It made them fearful of change. In 1815 they were satisfied with Lord Liverpool's Tory government. It was a government that had defeated Napoleon, a government that would please the most reactionary squire and lordly earl. The austere Castlereagh, staunch friend of Metternich and staunch opponent of parliamentary reform, was both foreign secretary and leader of the Commons; the narrow-minded Lord Sidmouth, long a favorite of country squires, ruled at the Home Office with unswerving severity; the mediocre Lord Vansittart muddled through at the Exchequer; the Duke of Wellington, manly and imperturbable, sat in the Cabinet; and, most reassuring of all, the Lord Chancellor was the 64-year-old Lord Eldon, as unyielding against reform as he was stout in defense of that establishment, which, even more than the French Revolution, gave strength to conservatism. It was a most privileged establishment, one based on the fact that 1 percent of England's families owned 80 percent of the land, that their sons attended and clerical brothers dominated the public schools and universities, and that these families enjoyed universal deference. These families also counted the Church of England, Parliament, the law courts, local government, high civil and military office, and the very government of the realm quite as much their exclusive preserve as the hares and partridges and bucks that the Game Laws said they and they alone could hunt.
