A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



events of the French Revolution revived Whiggism 

 for a time,"' but the reaction after the September 

 massacres completed the Tory victory; and the group 

 of leading Whigs vrho surrounded Roscoe had to 

 withdraw from public life."' In the first years of the 

 new century Whiggism held up its head again. 

 Roscoe was returned to Parliament in 1806,"° but 

 mainly on the ground of his local popularity, and the 

 votes which he cast against the slave trade and for 

 Catholic emancipation earned him an unpopularity 

 which expressed itself in riots on his return to Liver- 

 pool."' During the struggle on the slave trade ques- 

 tion, indeed, Liverpool had been absolutely committed 

 to the support of the party from which alone it had 

 any prospect of the maintenance of its most lucrative 

 traffic,"" while the inrush of Catholic Irish, having 

 produced already the characteristic Orangeism of the 

 Protestant population, formed another motive to 

 Toryism. Not even the unpopularity of the Orders 

 in Council sufficed to enable Brougham (who had 

 been mainly identified with the opposition to them) 

 to defeat Canning in the fiercely-fought election of 

 1 8 1 2,"' and Liverpool remained steadily Tory down 

 to the eve of the Reform Act. 



Alongside of its more unpleasant developments, 

 this period witnessed the rise of many promising 

 movements. The administration of the Poor Law *" 

 was undertaken with exceptional vigour and enlight- 

 enment, and while in other suddenly-grown industrial 

 and commercial towns the old administrative fabric of 

 the annual Easter vestry and the elected overseers 

 broke down completely, in Liverpool there was 

 gradually developed a system of government through 

 an annually elected committee, which regulated extra- 

 legally the work of the overseers with such success 

 that Liverpool has been described as the model urban 

 poor-law district of this period. The chief credit for 

 the successful establishment of this system, which had 

 assumed its final form by 1775, belongs to Mr. Joseph 

 Brooks, who as unpaid treasurer from 1768 to 1788 

 exercised almost absolute authority over the affairs of 

 the parish. It was under his direction that in 1770 

 the new workhouse in Brownlow Hill was erected ; *'" 

 it was on the whole so well administered that the poor 

 rates — in a town where poverty was more widespread 

 than in most others — never rose beyond 3/. g^/."* in 

 the £ even in the height of the Revolutionary war. 

 The committee, that is to say, kept itself free from the 

 extravagant and mischievous methods of indiscriminate 

 relief which were general throughout England from 

 1795 onwards. This remarkable success is mainly to 

 be attributed to the work of a group of public-spirited 

 citizens, among whom may be named Dr. Currie, the 

 friend of Roscoe.'" 



The Evangelical revival affected Liverpool deeply. 

 Wesley visited the town several times,'*' with con- 

 sideraljle effect, and within the Church of England the 

 Evangelical party became dominant in the town."' 

 This was a period of great activity in church building, 

 as will be seen later. It was also a period of con- 

 siderable activity in the provision of schools for the 

 poor,"' a movement which was carried on in Liver- 

 pool in the last twenty years of the century with a 

 concerted activity greater than was displayed in most 

 other towns. An eager charity, too, was born,"' the 

 expression of that new humanitarian spirit, born of 

 the Evangelical revival, of which another expression 

 was to be found in the movement for the abolition 

 of the slave trade. In Roscoe, William Rathbone, 

 Currie, Rushton, and others, Liverpool provided 

 some of the most vigorous apostles of this reform ; 

 their courage is the more noteworthy because the 

 popular feeling of the town was, naturally, intensely 

 strong on the other side. 



The period witnessed also a remarkable intellectual 

 revival. This showed itself in the wit and humour of 

 the numerous squibs issued during parliamentary elec- 

 tions,"" many of which still retain some of their salt ; 

 it showed itself in that keen interest in the history and 

 antiquities of the borough which produced no less 

 than four Histories of Liverpool between 1770 and 

 1823,"' and was still more profitably displayed in the 

 learning of Henry Brown"' the attorney, which illu- 

 minates the trials on the powers of the Town Council 

 in 1 79 1, in the researches of Matthew Gregson, 

 whose Portfolio of Fragments was published in 1819, 

 and above all in the monumental collections made by 

 Charles Okill, which are still preserved in the muni- 

 cipal archives and have formed the basis of all later 

 work on the history of the borough. But above all 

 these newborn intellectual interests were fostered by 

 the circle of illuminati which surrounded William 

 Roscoe, and of which no detailed account can here 

 be given.'" Roscoe himself wrote lives of Lorenzo 

 de' Medici and of Leo X which were hailed with 

 delight throughout Europe ; he produced also a great 

 monograph on the Monandrian plants, a good deal of 

 verse, and a large number of pamphlets, including 

 some very enlightened speculations on Penal Juris- 

 prudence ; he took a profound interest in the fine 

 arts, and himself did some etching ; he threw himself 

 into the movement for agricultural improvements ; he 

 corresponded with many of the leading men of his 

 day ; he formed a noble library and a fine collection 

 of pictures. His friend William Shepherd,"* Uni- 

 tarian minister of Gateacre, wrote a life of 

 Poggio Bracciolini which is still valuable. Dr. 

 James Currie,'" besides taking up poor-law admini- 



6« Life ofW. Rosm, i, 99 ff. ; Life of J. 

 Currie, paisim, 



«" Ibid. 



<H8 Poll-book and squibs of the elec- 

 tion. 



«« Life ofW. Roscoe, i, 392 ff. 



660 Cf. the addresses of the corporation, 

 on, and grants of freedom for, energy in 

 this cause — the defence of the slave trade; 

 Picton, Liv. Munic. Rec, ii, 220, 347, 

 &c. 



651 Poll-books and squibs of the elec- 

 tion ; Creevey Papers. 



652 The administration of the Poor Law 

 in Liverpool is the theme of an admirable 

 chapter by S. and B. Webb, Hist. Local 

 Govt, i, 130 ff. An edition of full extracts 



from the Vestry Minutes, with mtroduction 

 by W. L. Blease, is in preparation. 



668 Picton, Lto. Munic. Rec. ii, 160; 

 Vestry Minutes ».d. ; Brooke, Liv. in the 

 last Quarter of the x-viii Cent. 69, 70. 

 This building replaced one in College 

 Lane dating from 1732. 



66-i Vestry Minutes, April 1802 and 

 passim, 



6'6 W. W. Currie, Lj/e of James Currie, 

 passim. 



666 Tyerman, Life of Wesley, ii, 196, 

 274, 328, 566, &c. ; Wesley's Journal. 



667 See Morlcy's Life of Gladstone, i, 

 chaps, i, ii. 



668 Picton, Liv. Munic. Rec. ii, 284 ; 



34 



Brooke, Liv. in the last Quarter of the xviii 

 Cent. 380 ; Smithers, Liv. 243 ff. 

 669 See the list of charities below. 



660 See the Poll-books and Collections 

 of Squibs of the various elections, especi- 

 ally those of 1806 and 1812. An account 

 of these effusions is given by Picton, 

 Memorials, I, 347. 



661 By W. Enfield (1773), J. Wallace 

 (published anonymously, 1795), J. Corry 

 (known by the name of its first publisher, 

 Troughton, 1810), H. Smithers (1825). 



66!" For Brown, see G. T. Shaw in 

 Trans. Hist. Soc. (new ser.), xvi, 77. 

 666 Life of W. Roscoe, by his son, 2 vols. 

 664 Diet. Nat. Biog. 

 "6 W. W. Currie, Life of J. Currie. 



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