464 Chapter 24education, and the prime virtue of the citizen, is obedi-
ence.” His restrictions did not surpass the zeal of the
French. In 1816 the government expelled the entire stu-
dent body of their elite engineering school, the Ecole
polytechnique(including Auguste Comte, a founder of
sociology), for radicalism. Such attitudes also reached
England, where one M.P. denounced plans for more
schools by arguing that education only taught the
masses “to despise their lot in life instead of making
them good servants; instead of teaching them subordi-
nation, it would render them fractious[,]... insolent to
their superiors.”
The most severe Metternichian restrictions were
the political use of the police and judiciary. Modern po-
lice forces did not exist in 1815, but the revolutionary
era had taught many lessons about policing. Metternich
had observed the methods of the French police, such as
keeping files on suspects, organizations, or periodicals.
He and Count Joseph Sedlnitzky founded one of the
first effective police systems, using these bureaucratic
techniques. Sedlnitzky merged the police and postal
service, so letters could be read before delivery, and
used internal passports to limit the movement of people
and ideas within the empire.
In Britain, the counterrevolutionary policies of Lord
Liverpool’s government (1812–27) rivaled those in
more despotic states. A Habeus Corpus Suspension Act
denounced “a traitorous conspiracy” of radicals and au-
thorized the arrest of “such persons as his majesty shall
suspect are conspiring.” A Seditious Meetings Act re-stricted the right of assembly by requiring prior ap-
proval for meetings of fifty or more people. A set of re-
pressive laws, collectively called the Six Acts, forbade
the publication of anything the government considered
seditious, authorized arbitrary searches and seizures,
banned many political meetings, and taxed newspapers
to make them too expensive for most of the public. The
Liverpool government did not hesitate to use the
British army against workers, as it did during the Spa
Fields (London) Riot of 1816. This policy led to
tragedy at Manchester in 1819, when sixty thousand
workers assembled in St. Peter’s Fields to listen to re-
form speakers. The Fifteenth Hussars (heroes of the
battle of Waterloo) cleared the field with drawn sabers;
they killed eleven people, wounded more than four
hundred, and provided an ironic name for their hero-
ism: the Peterloo massacre (see illustration 24.2).
British conservatives used the judiciary as effec-
tively as the Austrians used the police. More than two
hundred crimes were punishable by death, and these
laws were often used for political effects, such as con-
trolling workers. In 1833 the courts taught a lesson to
workers by executing a nine-year-old apprentice for
stealing two pence (about four cents) worth of ink from
his master’s shop. British judges more often solved po-
litical problems by ordering the transportation of trou-
blesome people to penal colonies in Australia. Irish
nationalists and labor militants were especially liable to
receive such sentences. One of the first efforts to orga-
nize a labor union in Britain resulted in the transporta-Illustration 24.2
The Peterloo Massacre.Under the
provisions of the Six Acts, the British
government had the right to close politi-
cal meetings, by force if necessary. In the
most outrageous application of the law,
depicted here, British cavalry use sabres
to break up a meeting at Manchester in
- Note the crowd being attacked:
Both men and women are present, and all
are dressed very well.