were to be the allies or
teachers of the manufacturing class which began to be decidedly
opposed to the squires and the old order.

In one very important economic question, the Utilitarians not only
approved a change of the law, but were the main agents in bringing it
about. Francis Place was the wire-puller, to whose energy was due the
abolition of the Conspiracy Laws in 1824. Joseph Hume in the House of
Commons, and M'Culloch, then editor of the _Scotsman_, had the most
conspicuous part in the agitation, but Place worked the machinery of
agitation. The bill passed in 1824 was modified by an act of 1825; but
the modification, owing to Place's efforts, was not serious, and the
act, as we are told on good authority, 'effected a real emancipation,'
and for the first time established the right of 'collective
bargaining.'[54] The remarkable thing is that this act, carried on the
principles of 'Radical individualism' and by the efforts of Radical
individualists, was thus a first step towards the application to
practice of socialist doctrine. Place thought that the result of the
act would be not the encouragement, but the decline, of trades-unions.
The unions had been due to the necessity of combining against
oppressive laws, and would cease when those laws were abolished.[55]
This marks a very significant stage in the development of economic
opinion.

IV. CHURCH REFORM

The movement which at this period was most conspicuous politically was
that which resulted in Roman Catholic emancipation, and here, too, the
Utilitarians might be anticipating a complete triumph of their
principles. The existing disqualifications, indeed, were upheld by
little but the purely obstructive sentiment. When the duke of York
swore that 'so help him God!' he would oppose the change to the last,
he summed up the whole 'argument' against it. Canning and Huskisson
here represented the policy not only of Pitt, but of Castlereagh. The
Whigs, indeed, might claim to be the natural representatives of
toleration. The church of England was thoroughly subjugated by the
state, and neither Whig nor Tory wished for a fundamental change. But
the most obvious differentia of Whiggism was a dislike to the
ecclesiastical spirit. The Whig noble was generally more or less of a
freethinker; and upon such topics Holland House differed little from
Queen's Square Place, or differed only in a rather stricter reticence.
Both Whig and Tory might accept Warburton's doctr