UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY Class s'vwn Book M56h Volume \ c^T . 1 Je 06 - 10 M ~\ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/historyofengland01mart Standard Histories for Every Library. UNIFORM IN STYLE. Mill™ TwhTchis P add!d By EDWARD GIEB0N - SlSS^acxs-s H to the : ^dicSn A of jaS the £%&**” JVUVS CiESAR A New Edition with the Author’s last correct * a , 688, By David Hume. is Prefixed a short account of his life, written “ S el7w7trrV° Which 6 vols., crown, 8vo, cloth, extra, per set no . “ ® If# Wltb steel Portrait, half calf, gilt, per set, $18.00. ’ * * ee P» library style, per set, $9.00 gre SS CaU ° es which fr °“ time to Thomas Babinoton ^ crOTA^^a^^Fd 0 -? 88101 ^ ° F JAMES Ir - By crown 8 to, with a stfel portran C,„t e.f ’ W,th S ° Inde *' 5 ™ls' ^ st y le - P er set, $7.50; half calf, gilt, $15.00. ' **' *** ^ $5 '° 0 ! shee P- Iibrar 7 effor n tV nd -fn n ^ r “’ *•** wfthoueh? U o r n h r maffe to Macaulay. Steady effort, or without outward sign of if hVS gh u- 0nt , lnues to flow; and without ppi t“~ CENTU E /tO F ThTcrI^ OP THE XIXth _ a t n yiVstooTtV?a! 1 f, I g ntw2.oo eqUel *° the last twenty yearS bee°n ^““eiteM^ely r^ln'Eng" T’’ k £ ri f ten within “ Miss Martineau’s i n( w„ • 7 ead ln Et >gland.”-.Ata7 quarterly. affair g s h i s b l°n ngi n g to the Bherll'sctfooYofpoliHciTer Vie 61- T??® 7, ?reater : and, ? q in Lf ^ e , n . erall y candid and impartial CSn - . T °. f stat ®smen and public deZlf n reshl ?X C ? ntrasfc to the vSs W7f AH^n SeSty 7 Ie I s laden with meaning g a pIaoe ,n every pubiic •»* and wefi THE History of England FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE XIXth CENTURY TO THE CRIMEAN WAR. BY HARRIET MARTINEAU. VOL. I. PHILADELPHIA: PORTER & COATES, 822 Chestnut Street. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by Walker, Wise, and Company, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. O G? ) 'hi SG j?^ V-l CONTENTS. 0 a F U> r~ 77 £ Page Preface to the American Edition 1 BOOK I. 1790 — 1800. Balancing System 11 Russia 12 Austria 13 Prussia 14 England 14 France 15 Minor European Powers 16 French Revolution 17 Napoleon Bonaparte 17 Made First Consul 17 Proposal of Peace 18 His Successes 20 Condition of England 21 Mr. Pitt 21 Sedition 22 Financial Difficulty 22 Mutiny 23 Irish Rebellion 23 The Royal Family 23 Land-owners 24 Tradesmen 24 Farmers 25 Agricultural Improvement 25 Cotton Manufacture 25 Operatives 26 Woollen Manufacture 26 Silk 26 Hardware 27 Condition of Middle Class 27 Of Industrial Classes 28 Military Liabilities 28 Severity of the Law 29 Health 29 Ireland 30 The Union 31 Temper of the Times 34 1801. Mr. Pitt 36 The Catholic Question in the Cabi- net 39 Proposed Change of Ministry 41 Illness of the King 43 The Northern Confederacy 45 English Fleet in the Baltic 46 Battle of Copenhagen 46 Armistice 48 Pacific Convention 49 Expedition to Egypt 50 Battle of Abookeer 51 Death of Abercromby 52 French Evacuation of Egypt 52 Mr. Pitt’s Resignation 52 Mr. Addington 53 Peace Negotiations 54 Preliminaries signed 54 Terms of the Treaty of Amiens ... 57 Definitive Treaty signed 57 1801 — 6. The Irish Union 59 Discontents of various Parties 59 Opinions of the Government 62 French Tampering 63 The Emmetts 64 Plot 64 Outbreak 66 Lord Kilwarden 67 Results 68 Coercion . . 69 Catholics stirred up 69 Currency Troubles 69 Duke of Bedford Viceroy 70 1801—4. Precariousness of the Peace 71 Bantry Bay Mutiny 72 Foreign Travel 72 Dissolution of Parliament 74 Weakness of the Premier 75 French Requisitions 76 Peltier 76 French Aggressions 77 King’s Message 78 Negotiation with Mr. Pitt 79 Stock Exchange Hoax 81 War declared 81 Holland 81 viii CONTENTS. Preparations for War The Prince of Wales The English in France First Naval Captures Loss of Hanover British Policy The Duke of Kent Position of the Heir Apparent .... Colonel Despard’s Plot Execution of Governor Wall Prorogation of Parliament State of Parties The Grenville Letter Royal Anxieties Meeting of Parliament Force of the Country The King’s Illness New Cooperation Last Days of the Addington Min- istry Debate on the Defence of the Country New Administration Position of Mr. Pitt Loss of West India Ships Incidents in France Solemn Ceremonials in London. . . 1804— 6. Napoleon Emperor Mr. Pitt as War Minister Additional Force Bill National Condition Continental Alliances The Catamaran Expedition Relations with Spain Seizure of Treasure Ships Reconciliation of Pitt and Adding- ton Declaration of War with Spain. . . Naval Administration Lord Melville Motion of Censure Lord Melville’s Defence His Impeachment Resignation of Lord Sidmouth . . . Catholic Question Prospects of the War General Mack’s Surrender The French at Vienna Nelson in the Mediterranean Roving the Seas Battle of Trafalgar Death of Nelson His Character Accession of Prussia to the League Battle of Austerlitz Austrian Treaty Mr. Pitt’s Illness His Death 1801 — 6. Arthur Wellesley in India Subsidiary System 146 The Mahrattas 147 Five Chiefs 147 Their Empire 149 The Mahratta War 149 Plan of the Campaign 152 General Wellesley in the Deccan . 152 Battle of Assye 153 Battle of Argaum 153 Colonel Murray in Guzerat 154 General Lake in Hindustan 155 Battle of Delhi 155 Restoration of the Mogul Sovereign 156 Battle of Laswarree 156 Lieutenant- Colonel Harcourt in Cuttack 157 Results of the Campaign 158 Salt Monopoly 158 Treaties 158 Wellesley’s Administration in In- dia 161 Lord Cornwallis Governor-General 161 His Death 163 1806 — 7. Meeting of Parliament 164 The King’s Dislike of Mr. Fox. . . 164 Alarming State of Affairs 165 All the Talents 167 The Catholic Question 168 Lord Grenville 171 Charles James Fox 171 Other Ministers 175 Opposition Rancor 175 First Difficulties 176 Military Administration 177 Financial 178 Negotiation for Peace 178 Reprobation of the Slave-Trade . . . 181 Wilberforce 183 Colonial Slave-Trade Prohibition . 184 Acquittal of Lord Melville 185 Mr. Fox’s Illness 187 Death of Lord Thurlow 187 Death of Mr. Fox 187 State of the War 188 Battle of Maida 189 The Cape regained 190 Buenos Ayres 190 Humiliation of Prussia 191 Dissolution of Parties 193 Dissolution of Parliament 193 Strength of the Cabinet 195 No Christmas Recess 196 Lord Howick 196 Mr. Canning 196 Mr. Perceval 197 Sir Samuel Romilly 197 Francis Horner 197 Others 197 Force of the Country 199 Financial Scheme . ." 200 Abolition of the Slave-Trade 201 Page 82 84 85 86 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 92 94 95 96 98 98 99 100 100 103 104 104 104 106 108 109 109 111 111 112 112 113 115 117 119 119 120 123 124 124 125 126 129 130 131 132 134 134 135 137 138 140 140 141 144 CONTENTS ix The Catholics Irish Act of 1793 Proposed Relaxations Cabals The King’s Retractation The Measure dropped The Ministry dismissed Portland Administration Offices in Reversion “No Popery” Cry Dissolution of Parliament “ The Short Administration ” . . . . BOOK II. 1807 — 9. The Portland Administration .... Mr. Perceval Aspect of Public Affairs Education Popular Maintenance Emigration Bequests of the Grenville Ministry Buenos Ayres Expedition Dardanelles Expedition Egyptian Expedition Napoleon and Prussia His Berlin Decree Battle of Eylau Apathy of England Professions of Russia Conference at Tilsit Treaty of Tilsit Secret Articles England and Denmark Seizure of the Danish Fleet Bombardment of Copenhagen .... Russian Declaration of War King of Sweden Swedish Alliance lost France and Portugal Opening of the Peninsular War . . Court of Spain and Napoleon .... Invasion of Portugal Departure of the Royal Family for Brazil Napoleon and the Spanish Bour- bons Invasion of Spain Tumult at Madrid The Court enticed to Bayonne. . . . Spanish Appeal to England Renunciation of Empire by the Bourbons Landing of British in Spain Successes of Sir A. Wellesley Convention of Cintra Aspect of European Affairs Meeting at Erfurth Battle of Wagram YOL. I. b Page Andrew Hofer 262 False Hopes of Spain 262 Sir John Moore’s Campaign 263 His Retreat 264 Battle of Corunna 267 Death of Sir John Moore 267 Gloomy Aspect of the War 268 The Walcheren Expedition 269 Naval Successes 274 Lord Collingwood 274 His Death 275 Troubles with America 275 Orders in Council 275 Charges against the Duke of York 277 His Resignation 280 Inquiry into Abuses 281 Quarrel between Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Canning 283 Their Duel 284 Changes in the Cabinet 284 Mr. Perceval Prime Minister 286 The Jubilee 287 Napoleon’s Divorce 287 His New Marriage 287 Gloom at Home and Abroad 288 Celebration of the 50th year of the Reign 289 1810 — 12. 0. P. Question 290 Opening of the Session 292 Mr. Peel 293 Adversity 294 Commercial Crash 294 Efforts at Reforms 295 Bullion Committee 296 Penal Law Reform 300 Condition of the Clergy 301 Dissenters’ Licenses Bill 302 Privilege Question 303 Parliamentary Censure of Burdett 306 Sir F. Burdett committed to the Tower 307 His Release 309 Weakness of the Government 311 Death of Windham 312 Death of the Princess Amelia .... 314 Insanity of the King 314 Meeting of Parliament 315 Repeated Adjournments 315 Proposition of a Regency 316 The Princes’ Protest 316 Restrictions on the Regent 318 Negotiations with Lords Grenville and Grey 318 The Ministry unchanged 320 The King’s Health 322 The Court 322 New Negotiations 323 Lords Castlereagh and Sidmouth in the Cabinet 323 Virtual Close of the Reign 324 Page 205 205 207 208 210 211 212 213 213 213 214 215 216 217 220 221 222 223 223 223 226 229 230 230 232 233 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 244 245 246 247 247 248 249 250 251 252 254 254 255 257 258 259 259 261 261 262 X CONTENTS. Page Mr. Perceval’s Death 326 Provision for his Family 328 1810 — 14. State of the Nation 329 Commercial Pressure 329 Crimes 331 Wages 331 Machinery 334 Frame-Breaking . . . . 334 Luddite Acts 335 Progress of Luddism 336 Lord Sidmouth Home Secretary. 338 Punishment of the Luddites 339 1809 — 14. Peninsular War 341 Sir A. Wellesley 341 Difficulties 341 Campaign of 1809 342 Expulsion of the French from Port- ugal 342 Difficulties 343 Talavera 344 Wellesley becomes Wellington . . . 344 Gloomy Close of the Year 346 Campaign of 1810 347 Loss of Cities 347 Wellington’s Defensive Policy . . . 348 Lines of Torres Yedras 348 Busaco 349 Retreat of the French 350 Grant for the Relief of the Portu- guese 350 Napoleon’s Present Supremacy. . . 351 Reaction approaching 352 The Guerrillas 352 Difficulties of the French 353 Of the British 354 Campaign of 1811 355 Albuera 355 Siege of Badajoz relinquished . . . 355 Campaign of 1812 355 Ciudad Rodrigo 355 Badajoz 355 Salamanca 359 Occupation of Madrid 359 Failure at Burgos 360 Evacuation of Madrid 360 Retreat 360 Northern Wars of Napoleon 362 Burning of Moscow 362 Napoleon’s Retreat 362 National Hope 363 Wellington Commander-in-Chief of Armies in Spain 365 Campaign of 1813 365 French retire Northwards 366 Vittoria 367 French evacuate Madrid 369 Failure at St. Sebastian 370 Page St. Sebastian taken 3^1 Wellington enters France 371 Pamplona taken 372 The Allies in France 373 Napoleon’s Treaty with Ferdinand 375 Its Rejection in Spain .-. . . 376 Intrigues in Catalonia 376 Campaign of 1814 377 Ferdinand at Home 377 Catalonia evacuated by the French 377 Bayonne invested 378 Bordeaux entered 378 Toulouse 379 Soult’s Retreat 379 News of Napoleon’s Abdication . . 379 Return of the Army 380 Of Wellington 380 1812 — 15. Relations with the United States . 381 Difficulty about a Government in England 383 Repeal of the Orders in Council . . 384 Declaration of War 384 First Blow struck 386 Employment of Indians 386 British Successes on Land 389 Losses at Sea 389 Extensive Blockade 390 Russian Intervention 390 Proposals of Peace 390 Capture of Washington 393 Commission at Ghent 395 Mississippi Expedition 396 Battle of New Orleans 396 Retreat of the British 398 Capture of Fort Mobile 398 Treaty of Ghent 398 1812 — 14. The Regent and his Family 399 The Princess Charlotte 400 The Prince of Orange 401 Her Flight to her Mother 401 Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg. . 401 Marriage 402 Irish Affairs 402 The Press 403 Mr. Perry 403 Mr. Cobbett 404 Mr. Scott 404 The Hunts 404 Printers’ Name Bill 405 Creation of Vice-Chancellorship.. 405 Attainder 406 High Treason Sentence 407 East India Company’s Charter . . . 408 Church Establishment in India... 409 Education 410 Bible Societies 411 Joanna Southcote 412 CONTENTS. xi New Plan of Finance Stock Exchange Fraud Extraordinary Weather Burning of the Custom-House. . . . 1813 — 15. Napoleon’s Renewed Efforts New Compact of Allies The Allies defeated Armistice Conference Austrian Declaration of War Battle of Dresden Succeeding Battles Sufferings of the French Napoleon’s Vacillation Remonstrance of his Marshals. . . . Retreat First Battle of Leipsic Second Battle Hanau Napoleon at Paris Independence of Holland pro- claimed The Allies cross the Rhine Congress of Chatillon Partial Success of Napoleon Treaty of Chaumont Bourbon Manifestations Capitulation of Paris Entry of the Allies Provisional Government Abdication of Napoleon Attempted Suicide Desertion of the Empress Departure for Elba Death of Josephine Return of the Bourbons Treaty of Paris London Gayety Wellington's Return Page Popular Misgivings 434 Distrust Abroad 435 Napoleon’s Return 435 Arrival in Paris 436 Treaty of Vienna 437 Constitutional Monarchy at Paris. 437 Napoleon proceeds to Belgium . . . 438 The British at Brussels 438 Quatre Bras and Ligny 438 Waterloo 439 Napoleon’s Return to Paris 441 Is carried to St. Helena 441 Capitulation of Paris 442 The News in England 442 Second Treaty of Paris 442 Wellington’s "Farewell 442 1801 — 15. Steam Navigation 443 Death of Boulton 444 Chain Cables 444 Steam-Carriages 444 Count Rumford 445 Plymouth Breakwater 445 Chelsea Hospital 445 Haileybury College 445 Tea 445 Joint-Stock Bread Company 446 National Isolation 447 Foreign Literature 447 The Literary Fund 447 Music 448 The Edinburgh Review 448 The Quarterly Review 449 Bentham 449 Science 450 Necrology. Men of Science 450 Artists 452 Authors 452 Travellers 454 Page 413 414 415 416 418 419 419 419 419 419 420 421 422 422 423 423 423 424 425 , 425 425 426 426 426 427 428 428 428 429 429 430 431 431 432 432 433 433 434 PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. I T is with much pleasure that I comply with the invitation of the American publishers of this History to join my efforts with theirs to make it worthy of a reappearance in a new coun- try. I will relate, in a few words, what has been done. In 1846, Mr. Charles Knight, whose praises need not to be cel- ebrated here, began the publication of this work, which he pro- posed to write, from end to end, himself. It was not long before he found that he had undertaken a labor too vast to be recon- ciled in any way with the other demands on his time and powers ; and he consigned his task to Mr. Craik, now a professor in the Queen’s College, Belfast. After a time, Mr. Craik also gave up, and the work seemed likely to stop at the end of the First Book ; but, on Mr. Knight’s stating the case to me, in great solicitude about his scheme and the work, I undertook to try what I could do. For some time I thought I must stop, too, — so overwhelm- ing seemed the subjects to be treated, and the material to be han- dled. I gained courage, however, as the work went on ; and I was enabled to complete it without pause. I began in the au- tumn of 1848, and the last pages were at press before the close of 1849. These dates are mentioned as showing the standpoint from which the work is written. I must be understood as having no concern in the First Book, except that in the latest edition I prepared the short chapter on the South- American Republics. The Indian chapter is by yet another hand. Mr. Knight’s portion extends from the beginning to that Indian chapter ; and Professor Craik wrote the rest of Book I. For all that follows I am responsible. VOL. t. 1 2 PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. As the work is now to be republished, after the lapse of years, it seems almost necessary to carry on the narrative to the end of the Peace. The only reason for closing it at the date of 1846 was that we had got no further in our experience. From the time (1854) that war had closed the period, it was absurd to stop at any earlier date. I have therefore added a sketch of the seven years which preceded the war with Russia ; and thus the American edition will possess a kind of completeness which has been wanting to the English one. There are many reasons why I earnestly desire that the edition intended for American readers should be as good as I can make it ; but the chief consideration is, that the privilege of a new country and a young nation in benefiting by the experience of the old may be somewhat lessened or increased by the way of telling the story of that experience. Tam anxious that any such advantage should not be weakened by fault of mine. Hence I have carefully corrected any mistakes that I could hear of, and have done my best with the supplementary chapter. The chief embarrassments and troubles of an old nation like the British are such as a young republic can never, or ought never, to suffer from. The most prominent feature in the domes- tic history of this long peace is the reform of antique institutions, and of abuses scarcely less old. For the United States there is no Catholic Question, no Irish Church or Scotch Church Ques- tion ; no difficulties between Church and State, or Church and Dissenters, or about National Education, on account of religious differences and claims. For the United States there is no such question of Representative Reform as convulsed Great Britain thirty-five years ago, because the Republic has not yet outgrown any of its principles of representation, as England had. For the United States there is no peril of exhaustion and decay by an inappropriate and corrupted Poor-law, such as that which was truly called the gangrene in the social life of England, which it was equally dangerous to remove and to let alone. The success with which the reform was at length accomplished may interest American readers ; but it is to be hoped that there will never be reason for any closer sympathy. In the same way the United States have no colonial troubles to manage, no conquered coun- tries — territories conquered centuries before the present genera- PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 3 tion saw the light — to elevate, to attach, and to make free and happy ; and the best friends of the Republic will ever pray that no generation of the citizens will in any age bequeath such an inheritance of difficulty and pain to its posterity. The United States have no such mass of heterogeneous and unsystematized Law as England still has to digest, consolidate, and arrange ; nor such anomalies of jurisdiction and administration to reconcile or abolish. The United States have no such relics of feudal times as the Game Laws ; no such associations in an irritable, unhappy, and perverse portion of the country as Orange Societies and Riband Societies and Whiteboys in Ireland. These are points in the History of modern England which Americans may read with a historical interest, and may perhaps study for their political or economical hearings ; but such phenomena can hardly serve as direct warning or instruction to a young nation. There are other experiences which may possibly be found more directly profitable. One of the gravest of the world’s doubts about young republics has always been, and still is, whether the latter are capable, in a secure and permanent way, of sustaining international relations. There have been difficulties enough in the relations of the United States with the Powers of Europe (especially while the Southern policy was dominant at Washington) to secure the reader’s atten- tion, perhaps, to the history of European transactions within the last half-century, in as far as they depend on, or have been gov- erned by, the treaties of 1815. Something may perhaps be learned of the real meaning, purpose, and use of the much defamed Bal- ance of Power, and of the admonition conveyed by its action, — of restraint on the strong, ambitious, and turbulent, and of sup- port and encouragement to weak and peaceful States. It is pos- sible that an accurate, however slight, survey of the disturbances in Europe, overt or precluded, within a most critical period, may show how a peace of forty years was preserved by the foremost European nation ; and may explain what England understands ind intends by her policy of non-intervention. The contrast be- . ween the two states which have chosen and professed an opposite policy, since the rise of the Second Empire in France, must be interesting study to the citizens of a republic which will have booner or later to choose between going out to the world’s wars 4 PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. or staying at home ; and the comparison between the France of Louis Philippe’s time, pacific in policy and corrupt at headquar- ters, and the France of the new Empire, during its first years, warlike and meddling in policy, and yet more corrupt at head quarters, cannot but be of deep interest to Americans. Yet more important must be the comparison between the course of aggressive governments and that of England, where every sort of improvement has gone on with accelerated speed, while old errors were left behind, and wiser methods adopted at home, amidst the leisure secured by respecting the independence of other nations abroad. From the standpoint of republican principle, it is yet more important that Americans should profit by the mistakes and suf- ferings of old countries in matters of domestic policy. In Europe it has been unavoidable that every state should pass through a Protectionist system to Free Trade. The manufacture and trade which grew up under the social system of the Middle Ages as- sumed a protective system to be a matter of course, — as it actu- ally was then. After infinite suffering from the operation of that system in England, in creating class interests and tyrannies, in degrading the working classes, pinching the middle class, en- dangering the safety of the higher, dividing nations which ought to have been friendly, and fostering lawlessness and brutality in one half of the poor, and pauperism and subservience in the other, — after having apparently exhausted all resources of the land, manufacture, and trade, and gaining no way in rendering the bulk of the nation intelligent, comfortable, and independent, the coun- try, through a few of its wisest men, turned into the path of free trade. From that hour it has been clear that the old nation is safe, in a way that it never was, and never could be, before. The rapidity of the rise of the laboring classes in intelligence, inde- pendence, and comfort is beyond the hopes of the most confident. With the smugglers, the perilous lawlessness has disappeared. Manufactures grow, and trade expands at a rate never before thought of ; so that under the severe trial of the American civil war, England can hardly be said to have suffered at all. Other manufactures have expanded in compensation for the temporary collapse of the cotton ; and our new commerce with France alone has nearly made up for the deficiency across the Atlantic. By PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 5 the same process, the reciprocating countries prosper in like man- ner; the natural result of untrammelled trading being that it benefits all the parties concerned, and injures none. If the adoption of the contrary system in the United States is justified on the ground that all young societies have a protec- tive system first, whatever they may finally think proper to do about throwing open their commerce, the reading of the English story in this book may prompt the question, why young societies should at our time of day pass through an experience of wrong and suffering of which History gives them warning. States have now no longer to work their way up from a dark and soli- tary beginning, as of old. For every new aspirant there is the full and free use of all discoveries in natural and mechanical science, made common by the full and free communication now established all round the world. Why should not the same bene- fit be derived from discoveries in political, social, and economical science and practice ? The newest States make a great early start by the use of the railroad, the telegraph, the steamboat, and agri- cultural and manufacturing improvements : why not avail them- selves of the discoveries of older peoples in regard to the self- corroding operation of an unchecked legal charity, and the in- finitely corrupting and disastrous effects of a Protective Commer- cial system ? In regard to the United States, something more is to be said, and is everywhere said. A democratic republic is the last place where a policy should be chosen, or in any way entertained, which directly operates in the creation of privileged classes at the expense of the commonwealth. The question of Protection or Free Trade is simply the question of preference of the interests of certain classes of producers or those of the community ; and a true republican policy would at once decide against granting privileges to certain groups of the citizens, at the expense of the rights of the whole number. The world is entitled to look to the one great democratic republic of our time for a full adoption of the broad democratic principle of unrestricted commerce, — of a commerce yielding revenue to the Government in a fair and easy way, by duties on exotic commod- ities, but guiltless of at once diminishing the revenue by reducing the means of the public, and conferring a monopoly on special classes of producers at the expense of the whole nation of con- 6 PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. sumers. There is an aristocratic element in every nation ; and there is selfish greed, less or more, wherever men congregate. Thus may the existence and maintenance of a Protective policy in a democratic republic be accounted for. It needs but a little more knowledge on the part of the people at large to get rid of a mistake so perilous and so mischievous. If the question were so presented in its simplest form, any community would be satis- fied at once ; and the sufferings of nations which had, in old times, no opportunity of confronting the case so directly, may be a valuable warning to young states. In America, at this time, the consideration to purchasers of any commodity is (as in all communities everywhere), how to get the best article for then money. If, the quality being equal, the article can be made more cheaply at home than it can be offered from Europe, the domestic product will of course be preferred, and will need no pro- tection. If, on the contrary, the European producer can make his commodity so cheaply as to bear the cost of transport, and yet sell for a lower price than the American, the community ought not to be taxed by the imposition of a duty in order to sustain a native producer who cannot stand competition from abroad. This, if universally understood, and the amount of dis- guised taxation imposed on the citizens at large, to support fac- titious industries, if fully known, would put an end at once to a system everywhere pregnant with mischief to everybody, and especially inappropriate to the New World, after having been outgrown in the Old. The narrative of the penalties paid by England alone — to say nothing of those of France — may be a warning such as England would willingly yield to any comrade among the nations. The readers of this History will see what griefs were presented to Parliament : now agricultural distress ; now Spitalfields distress ; now Glasgow or Paisley or Yorkshire distress. Now it was Wool ; now it was Iron ; now it was Cot- ton; now it was Silk. There was always some “distress” or other, “ coming whining to Parliament.” At the same time, and from the same cause, there was a lawless population all round the coasts, living by smuggling ; and the same process cheated the revenue, robbed the manufacturers, and corrupted the peasantry. At the same time, and from the same cause, the public service and private fortune were injured to an incalculable extent. PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 7 Ships and houses were built of unfit timber ; and no commodity which could be protected was good of its kind. Everybody wore clumsy and bad shoes, and ugly and bad gloves, and in- ferior silks ; and articles which are now of the commonest conven- ience were then rarely seen. Before the claimants of protection would give up, they had suffered largely in their own fortunes. They expected ruin from free trade ; but they could no longer defer the emancipation of commerce. Something may be learned of the consequences within the period of this History. It will be seen that a new vigor was infused into the whole life of so- ciety from the hour when the Protectionist system was relaxed, with or without reciprocity abroad. It will be seen that the national revenue increased after every reduction of duties on commodities ; that the manufacturers flourished more under free competition than they ever had under special protection ; while the laboring classes at once earned more, and could buy more with their earnings. The improvement has gone on to the present hour ; and now England has been able to endure the suspension of much of her trade with America, without injury, and almost without consciousness. The development of a free trade with France and some other countries has compensated for the decline in another quarter. The revenue still increases without pause ; and what the enrichment of society generally is may be judged of by the condition of its laboring class. While we are far from having outgrown the deplorable consequences of the system which degraded the peasantry, sported with the for- tunes of the operatives, generated a gambling spirit in the trading classes, and established a permanent pauperism in the country, we now see a state of things infinitely better than ever existed in England before ; — and, as the surest token of the general elevation, a laboring class becoming gradually converted into a body of capitalists, — the quality of the labor improving in pro- portion to the elevation of the laborer. In all time to come, the thorough renovation of the frame and life of England, and her entrance upon a new period and higher character of national life, will date from the long Peace when she had opportunity to learn that her time was come for liberating her commerce, and com- mitting her domestic industry to its own energies. One illustration like this of what warning younger nations may 8 PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. take from our mistakes will suffice for any number of cases. An other instance is that of our old Taxation, in other departments than the Customs. This must henceforth be more interesting to Americans than it could be while they had no Debt worth speak- ing of, and therefore a very light taxation for national purposes. Our vicious old taxes may be of some use yet, after their death, if they can serve as warnings to new peoples. Again : there is the character and management of a large National Debt to be studied. Again: there is the vital subject of the Currency, which it concerns every republican citizen, at all times, to attend to, when there is a danger (and there always is a danger) of a too free resort to paper money for relief from any embarrassment. It seems to me that no thoughtful citizen of any nation can read the story of the years before and after Peeks Bill of 1819, extend- ing over the crash of 1825-6, without the strongest desire that such risks and calamities may be avoided in his own country, at any sacrifice. There are several countries under the doom of retribution for the license of an inconvertible paper currency ; and of these the United States are unhappily one. This passage of English history may possibly help to check the levity with which the inevitable “crash” is spoken of by some who little dream what the horrors and griefs of such a convulsion are. It may do more, if it should convince any considerable number of observers that the affairs of the economic world are as truly and certainly under the control of Natural Laws as the world of Matter without, and that of Mind within. There may be some use also in the study by Americans of questions which still perplex and trouble the old country, though such difficulties may not be possible in the American case, unless from very different causes. For instance, the Labor Question in England is perhaps the gravest remaining trouble. It is not the low condition of the agricultural laborers that chiefly afflicts good citizens ; for that condition is rising from year to year, and there is no reason why it should stop till science, creating a de- mand for skilled labor, can do no more for agriculture. Neither is it the amount of pauperism remaining to be dealt with ; for there is no longer a creation of pauperism at all corresponding with that which the grave absorbs. The ground of fear is that popular liberty is overborne by the Trades Unions of our days. PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 9 It seems to be so in every country where such combinations can take place ; and the anxious questions are the same in all such cases ; the questions how to protect the liberties of individual workers against the dictation and tyranny of leaders and pretend- ers of their own class ; and what are the chances of the class becoming informed and enlightened in regard to their legal and constitutional liberties in time to check the spirit of despotism in the few, and animate that of peaceful resistance to oppression in the many. At present, the Trades Unions of the United King- dom are its greatest apparent danger. They are an lmperium in Imperio , in which insufferable tyranny is exercised by working- men over their fellows, from which there seems to be no escape but by the gradual process of education. The laws provide protec- tion and remedy ; but recourse to that protection is prevented by the same oppression. It is remarkable that the one intolerable despotism which at this day exists in England is found, not in the Government, not in the land- owners, not in the old-fashioned rural districts, but in the modern democratic towns, — the des- potism of working-men over fellow-workers in their own class and their own trade. This is a peril which may occur in a republic, and especially if the employers possess the sort of monopoly created by a Protective system. There may be other difficulties and dangers in America from the heterogeneous char- acter of the laboring class there, under the influx of European immigration, and the inevitable emancipation of all the negroes in the country. It will be happy for both nations if they can learn from each other, and help each other in difficulties involv- ing both distress and peril. Every wise man in either country probably admits that the Labor Question — the problem of recon- ciling the rights and welfare of the employers and employed — is the most serious remaining to be solved, and that the chief practical anxiety in the case is about how soon and how effectu- ally the employed can become qualified to assert their rights and liberties in the face of, not only their employers, but their fellow- workmen. If the English questions which I have indicated as fit to warn and guide other nations should seem to be too exclusively of an economic quality, I can only say that it is not I, but the nature of the case which is answerable for this. Nations must have a 10 PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. character and live a life of their own ; and they cannot take their essential qualities from each other, nor modify them by each other. Economical lessons seem to be in fact the highest kind which can be made directly useful by the experience of the one party being studied by the other. It may be suggested, however, that eco- nomic questions involve both politics and morals, always and inex- tricably. A mistaken principle in the holding of land, in the basis of trade or manufacture, or in the construction and management of a monetary system, creates an amount of sin, of crime, of misery and disorder, which is altogether incalculable. Mutual counsel, by which such consequences may possibly be avoided, must be desired by the most eminent of moralists, and by the purest of patriots. This book was not written with a view to any other than native readers ; but if it should afford a single clear hint for the guidance of the course of any other polity, and espe- cially of that of America, it will be a fresh satisfaction to the lovers of the Old Country that her errors and sufferings may bear good fruit in saving some pain and sorrow to the New. HARRIET MARTINEAU. The Knoll, Ambleside, November 27, 1863. INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF THE PEACE. BOOK I. CHAPTER I. B EFORE the Nineteenth century opened, the inhabitants of Europe had entered upon a new period in the history of mankind ; a period which must be a conspicuous one Balancing to students of History through all future ages. — Dur- system, ing the greater part of the eighteenth century, the potentates of Europe, and the higher order of their subjects with whom they associated, had been satisfied that the height of political civiliza- tion had been reached, by such an adjustment of the Balance of Power as had never before been attained. The system appeared to be brought very near perfection. The solar system hardly seemed safer. The smaller states of Europe lived and moved among the larger as freely and securely as the lesser planets in their orbits, protected from absorption by the larger, by the bal- ancing principle which kept all in their places. It is true, there was a failure here and there, such as one does not see in the sys- tems of the sky. There was the partition of Poland, for one. The plea for the partition was, that Poland could not be sustained as a separate power, on account of her miserable distractions ; and that she must have been absorbed by some one State, de- stroying the universal balance, if she had not been portioned out among several. There were complaints in certain quarters, too, about the reductions of Austrian power, and the aggrandizement of Prussia : but, upon the whole, it was evident to the world at large that Europe presented the most advanced political condi- tion ever witnessed, in the spectacle of its Balance of Power. It was not merely that the physical forces of States were kept under a salutary restraint. This would have been a good thing, if it had been the only one ; but it was a gross kind of advan- 12 BALANCING SYSTEM. [Book I. tage, not above the aim of any age. It was a much higher good that international relations became more extended and refined : international morality was professed, and to a certain degree fos- tered ; wild tempers and immediate objects were subdued and postponed to ulterior considerations ; the weakest states became subjects of common protection, and the most out-lying countries of general observation ; the way was opened for commercial con- nections, and for mutual intercourses of every ameliorating kind ; and the States of Europe really appeared as securely settled in an advanced political civilization as any nomade tribes who have entered upon the cultivation of land, and built themselves a town, and actually experienced that the blessings of social organ- ization and impartial law are well worth the individual conces sions by which they are purchased. As such a community might be roused in the night by a volcanic eruption which should over- throw their city and scorch up their fields, so were the powers of Europe struck aghast by the explosion of the French OvGrtlirow v ^ ^ %/ ± ^ Revolution. They had overlooked something ; and their oversight cost them nothing short of the wreck of their system : just as the new settlers had omitted to look into the quality of the ground on which they were establishing themselves, and had no conception of the forces that might be acting under their feet. The something that the Monarchs and Statesmen of Europe left out of their calculations was that which will make the then incoming period conspicuous forever in the history of the world, and which made the best wisdom of courts and cabi- nets a painstaking and conscientious foolishness. The something that was overlooked was, that it would no longer answer to re- gard States only as units ; that the time had come for multitudi- nous Peoples to be considered too. A new unit had been introduced into the association by those Russia never-sleeping ushers, the centuries. Russia had de- sired to become a European power — a member of the confederation of European sovereigns. She need not have done so. She would have been very safe, for any length of time — invulnerable in her mantle of snows — unapproachable through her Lifeguards — the whole circle of storms. She might have wrought her despotic will forever in the wide world of her own territories, if she had kept her face to the East. But it so hap- pened that she turned westwards ; and that first glance west- wards may hereafter prove to have been the most tremendous event in human history. The transference of the seat of Rus- sian empire from Moscow to the coast of the Baltic is a strik- ing picture to us : but if it should be found hereafter that through Russia will have come that War of Opinion in Europe by which Oriental Despotism is finally to measure its force against Chap. I.] RUSSIA. — AUSTRIA. 13 the Western principle of Self-government by Representation, the minutest proceedings of Peter and Catherine in Russia will be- come as interesting as any incidents in the lives of Greek or Roman heroes. Generations yet unborn will watch wiih eager eyes the pulling down of Finnish huts in the marshes, to make way for palaces of stone ; and the last waving of the bulrushes and reeds, where trim gardens were henceforth to be ; and the first dimple in the surface of stagnant lakes, when the canals were ready to drain them away ; and the placing of block upon block, as the granite embankments rose along the Neva, raising it from a waste of fetid waters into a metropolitan river. This river may turn out to be our modern Rubicon ; and the stroke of Peter’s hammer on the ship-side at Saardam may send a louder echo through future generations than to the ear of our own time. This great empire, seeking admission among the European states, at first alarmed them ; and the audacious and aspiring cast of mind of Peter and Catherine justified such ap- prehension for the time. But it soon appeared that their effi- ciency beyond their own territory bore no proportion to their ambition, and that they were not likely to prove themselves po- tentates except within their own boundary. The sovereigns of Russia would have said, and often did say, that they were considering their people during the whole of their reigns. It is true that' they encouraged industry and commerce, and instituted prodigious works of improvement. But this was not the consideration of the Peoples of Europe which the prog- ress of time was rendering necessary, and for want of which the whole system broke up. It was for the glory of the State and country, in consideration of the unit and not of the aggregate, that the great works of Peter and Catherine were done. They were done at the expense of justice and kindness to individuals. They were done with ignorant and fatal precipitation. They were done in an impatient and boastful spirit ; and the people felt no gratitude where they were aware of no benefit. In as far as they shared the vanity of their sovere gn, they boasted and exulted in the sovereign’s glory ; but there was nothing done or doing for ihe Russian people which could render them of any use in the day of European convulsion. The same may be said in regard to the great and venerable empire of Austria. There was nothing on which the Emperor Joseph prided himself so much as on his re- us na ‘ forms. Yet, they were so done — with so much self-will and personal regards — that they exasperated those whom he pro- fessed to benefit. One of his reforms lost him the Belgian prov- inces of the empire ; and another alienated the affections of Hungary. Thus, while Austria in her reduced state was looked 14 PRUSSIA. — ENGLAND. [Book L upon as an unexceptionable unit in the Balancing System, there was nothing in the condition of her people which could for a mo- ment retard, or in any degree modify, the explosion which over- threw the arrangement. Austria lias been mentioned as in a reduced condition. She was reduced, not only by actual loss of dependencies, but, yet more, in regard to continental influence. There could have been no balance in Europe if Austria had retained, with all her vast territories, an undisputed supremacy of influence. Prussia was aggrandized, up to the point of rivalship. The partition of Po- land, in 1772, seems to have been acquiesced in more easily than it might have been, by other powers, on account of the strength it Pru sia g ave t0 Prussia. Prussia had indeed become a notable r * unit in the European system : but we have the Great Frederick’s own report of the state of his country and people a dozen years before the outbreak of the French Revolution. “ The nobility was exhausted,” he says, in the History he wrote of his own time, “ the Commons ruined, numbers of villages were burnt, and towns impoverished. Civil order was lost in a total anarchy : in a word, the desolation was universal.” He lent money to the towns, settled destitute people in the wastes, drained marshes, patronized manufactures, and, best of all, eman- cipated the peasants from hereditary servitude. Yet, his people were not happy ; nor did they love him. His military system was so severe that his soldiers hanged themselves in their misery ; and the whole country groaned under the burden of a standing army of 200,000 men. The appearance of activity and an improved financial condition throughout the north of Germany deceived observers who regarded States only as units : but it is now well known that under all the arrangements, and amidst all the enterprises of Frederick of Prussia there was no genuine civil liberty — nothing that could keep the weight of the people on the same side of the balance with the kings. As for the two leading States of Europe, France and England, their destiny in the moment of convulsion had been fixed long before — as all destiny is — and with more clearness than is common in political affairs. The English revolution England. a cen £ lir y Before had secured a better condition for the British nation, in regard to civil liberty, than was enjoyed by any other people in Europe ; and the transient oppressions exer- cised or attempted by panic-stricken or one-sided statesmen under the alarm of convulsion were of small account in comparison with the securities for constitutional freedom in the long run. No discontent of the British people certainly contributed to the European explosion which destroyed the Balance of Power. The insular position of England rendered her circumstances so Chap. I.J FRANCE. — STANDING ARMIES. 15 far different from those of other States as that she could never be suspected of aims of continental conquest. The imputations cast on her by her great rival were of arrogance in overbearing other people’s will and affairs ; insatiable rapacity about annex- ing islands and distant coasts to her dominions ; and a shopkeep- ing ambition to monopolize the commerce, and command the in- dustry, of the world. This was another way of saying that her function was to be mistress of the seas ; as her great rival was, beyond question, the most formidable warlike power on the con- tinental battle-field of ambition. As for France, she was, before the breaking out of the Revolution, very strong ; and she was spoken of as stronger than she was. Her population was above 25,000,000 ; but it was unhappy. Her authority and dominion over her neighbors were very imposing ; but there was discontent beneath ; and, when the conquests of the Revolution were made, and France claimed to be the ruling power from the Texel to the Adriatic, she was in fact weakened by her new conquests, which were no more really French than they had been before. Her great standing armies, by standing which she had been distinguished since Louis XIV. armies * augmented them to It prodigious extent, were a cause of weakness in one direction, while they were an element of vast strength in another. The institution of standing armies was a feature of an advanced social condition at the outset. It showed that the time had come for that division of industry under which the large majority of the inhabitants of a country pursued the business of their lives, contributing from the fruits of their labor to maintain a set of men to do the necessary fighting. The excitement and the horror of war were incalculably lessened by this arrange- ment, and the interests of peace were, in the first instance, remarkably promoted, by the tranquillity in which the greater part of the population and their employments were left. But then, this institution of standing armies became so oppressive as to be a main cause of revolutionary action in France and other countries. When Louis XIV. increased his forces, so as to exhibit to Europe the new spectacle of a standing army, at all times adequate to all contingencies, his neighbors began to muster armies which might keep his in check ; and thus the practice of expanding the military element went on through Europe, till Prussia, under the Great Frederick, had a peace-establishment of 200,000 men, and France, under the last Bourbons, of 500,000 men. The resident inhabitants felt this force to be at once a severe burden in point of cost, and an irksome restraint ; and they revolted against this, among other grievances. Thus, the machinery which was considered a means and proof of strength, and which was said to be provided for the maintenance of the 16 MINOR EUROPEAN POWERS. [Book I. Balancing System, — for the repression of overgrown power in one direction, and the support of oppressed weakness in another, — proved so heavy as to become in itself destructive of that which it assumed to preserve. While France was confident at home, and dreaded abroad, on account of her military preponder- ance, she was on the point of being put to her last shifts to pre- serve her place in Europe at all. It may be noted, in contemplating the position of the two great rival States, that England was more likely to find favor in the eyes of other continental powers than France, since her kind of supremacy involved little danger to her neighbors. F ranee, with her vast military resources, was a dangerous neighbor. The naval power of England might vex and harass the States, and cripple their commercial resources ; but it could not keep them always in peril of their lives. In the midst, therefore, of a gen- eral dislike of her “ arrogance,” England was more trusted and less feared than France, among the company of European States. As for the smaller powers — Holland was gained over from Minor Euro- the French to the English alliance, by the honest and pean Powers. skilful management of Lord Malmesbury, just before the breaking out of the French Revolution. It was of little con- sequence what Spain did. Spain was too essentially feeble to affect much the destinies of other States ; but her natural and political tendencies were to alliance with France. Portugal was feeble too : and she and Spain were always prone to quarrel ; and Portugal was our ally. Turkey was rescued from absorp- tion by Russia just before the death of Catherine ; and it could hardly now be called a power at all. Italy, also, was soon proved to be at the disposal of the greater potentates, having small inherent force. Sweden and Norway were not likely to give any trouble spontaneously ; nor did they seem in the way to require any especial protection. The Balancing System was not founded on treaties, or any sort of express compact. It was a product of Time, — a neces- sary stage of civilization, as we have said ; and the natural force by which States united to keep the strongest in check, and up- hold the weakest, appears indeed to have manifested itself, in its own season, as the counteracting and compensating forces of nature do, whether men call for them or not. In such cases, there is usually something involved which men overlook ; and in this case of the Balancing System there were elements of which kings and statesmen were wholly unaware. They were count- ing and placing their units, supposing all safe, not seeing that these units were aggregates, with a self-moving power. Kings were no longer what they had been. They must have Ministers who were not their own tools, but who bore some rela- Chap. I.] BONAPARTE FIRST CONSUL. 17 tion to the people at large. In England, this had so long been a settled matter that nobody thought of questioning it. In France, the Bourbons never could clearly see it. They never saw, that, if it once became a matter of contest whether a European mon- arch and his tools should rule with or without a regard to the interests and needs of the people, the matter could end no other- wise than in the defeat of the despot. So the Rour- p rench Revo- bons were driven forth from France, as the Stuarts lution - had been from England ; and all the world waited with intense anxiety to see what would become of France in regard to the Balancing System. The matter was made clear, after some years of struggle, by a Corsican youth, who was an engineer, without pros- Napoleon pect, and without fortune, when the French Revolu- Bona P arte - tion broke out. By his military talents, and his genius for com- mand, he had risen, before the opening of our century, to such a point of eminence, that on his life seemed to hang the destinies of the world. In 1796 he crossed the Alps, leading the armies of France to the conquest of Italy, whence he compelled the Pope and the other Italian sovereigns to send the treasures of art to Paris. He there defeated five Austrian armies ; and showed his quality at home by wresting from the French Directory, and concentrating in himself, the entire control of the army. In 1798, he conquered Egypt, threatened India, and, in 1799, overran Syria, where, however, he was repulsed at Acre by the British under Sir Sidney Smith, and driven back upon Egypt. Return- ing to Paris, he carried all before him ; and the year closed on his appointment as First Consul for life. He was invested Made First with supreme executive authority. The first mention Consul, of his name in the published journal of the great British diplo- matist, Lord Malmesbury, occurs in November, 179 6. 1 “ Well brought up at L’Ecole Militaire — clever, desperate Jacobin, even Terrorist — his wife Madame Beauharnois, whose husband was beheaded — she now called Notre Dame des Victoires” On the 23d of August, 1799, he told his army in Egypt, by a short letter, “ In consequence of news from Europe, I have determined immediately to return to France.” “Early in October,” says our matter-of-fact Annual Register, 2 “ Bonaparte landed suddenly at Frejus, in Provence, like a spirit from another world.” Before the last sun of the century had set, he was the greatest potentate of the world. The wearied and worn people of France rested on him as the power which was to give them repose ; and the mag- nificent succession of his first acts seemed to justify their confi- dence. Social order was restored and maintained ; the public exercise of religion was reestablished ; and, by treaty with the 1 Lord Malmesbury’s Diaries, iii. 293. 2 Annual Register, 1799, p. 316. VOT.. I. 2 18 PROPOSAL OP PEACE. [Book L Pope, France was released from the control of the Holy See in spiritual matters. Parties were repressed, and their leaders were made subservient to the new ruler. Office and influence were freely thrown open to merit ; and the institution of the Legion of Honor invited civic desert from every rank and condition of life. The people were rid of the race of despotic and incapable Bourbon sovereigns ; and in their joy at having secured a ruler w ho was capable, and who professed popular objects, they were not too careful to inquire whether he might not prove a despot in another way. On the 25th of December, 1799, Napoleon addressed the fob Proposal of lowing letter to the King of Great Britain. 1 “ Called peace. by the w i s lies of the French nation to occupy the first magistracy of the Republic, I think it proper, on entering into office, to make a direct communication of it to your Majesty. — The war which, for eight years, has ravaged the four quarters of the world — must it be eternal ? Are there no means of coming to an understanding ? How can the two most enlightened nations of Europe, powerful and strong beyond what their independence requires, sacrifice to ideas of vain greatness the benefits of com- merce, internal prosperity, and the happiness of families ? How is it that they do not feel that peace is of the first necessity, as well as the truest glory ? These sentiments cannot be foreign to the heart of your Majesty, who reigns over a free nation, and with the sole view of making it happy. — - Your Majesty will see in this overture only my sincere desire to contribute efficaciously, for the second time, to a general pacification by a step, speedy, entirely of confidence, and disengaged from those forms which, however necessary to disguise the dependence of weak states, prove, in the case of strong ones, only a mutual desire to deceive. France and England, by the abuse of their strength, may still, to the injury of all nations, long retard the period of their own exhaustion : but I will venture to say that the fate of all civil- ized nations depends on the termination of a war which involves the whole world.” Such was the invitation to England to be at peace. But one of the conditions under which the European powers had entered into an alliance, and carried on war against France since the dep- osition of her princes, was that no one of them should make a separate peace. The answer from hmgland was not, therefore, a matter of choice ; and this Napoleon could not but have known. The greater his victories, and the more eminent his civic author- ity, the more necessary was it to the balance of power, and the security of the European nations, that all other countries should band themselves together against France, till unquestionable 1 Annual Register, 1800, p. 73. Chap. I.] NEGOTIATION DECLINED. 19 guaranties should be obtained that France would be quiet, and keep at home. The King of England, therefore, de- D u d clined negotiation. 1 In his reply, he said more than any statesman would now approve to enforce the restoration of the Bourbons ; but he declared distinctly that this should not be made an essential condition, as no foreign power could claim to dictate to any nation its mode of government. The essential con- dition would be, (whenever the time should arrive,) that France should give such evidences of stability at home and harmlessness abroad as might justify her neighbors in laying down their arms. The sovereign of Great Britain had the highest right to use a lofty tone with the new ruler of France, as the naval power of England had proved the only counterpoise to the military preeminence of France. While Napoleon had become lord of the Continent, England remained mistress of the seas. By various successes in the earlier years of the war, by the victory off Cape St. Vincent in February, 1797, and especially by the battle of the Nile, France had been kept in check, and more had been done for the main- tenance of the common cause against her than by the action of all other European powers together. The battle of the Nile, fought on the 1st of August, 1798, yielded the greatest victory then known in naval warfare. To destroy the French fleet in the Mediterranean had long been the first wish of Nelson’s heart. He did it now. Only a single frigate of the whole armament returned to France ; and Napoleon was left in Egypt, shut out from all communication with home. It was while the remem- brance of this great defeat, in the midst of so many successes, was fresh in his mind, that Napoleon addressed to George III. his invitation to peace : and it was while England was yet cheered with her victory, and making much of her great hero, that George III. sent his haughty reply. The war, as has been said, had lasted eight years. In 1792, the French Assembly had declared war against Austria, on the ground of her harboring French rebels, contrary to the faith of treaties. The poor king, Louis XVI., was then still living ; and one of the bitter things he had to endure was appearing to sanction a declaration of war against the friends who were at work for his rescue. Prussia and the King of Sardinia presently joined Aus- tria ; but Great Britain preserved a position of neutrality for yet a few months longer. After the execution of Louis in January, 1793, no further terms were to be kept with France, and in Feb- ruary, England and Holland were her proclaimed enemies. The successes of Napoleon justified his coming forward to propose peace, as soon as the government of France appeared to be set- tled in his person : but his making the proposition to England 1 Annual Register, 1800. State Papers, 204. 20 PEACE ENFORCED ABROAD. [Book I. alone shows that he could hardly have been sincere ; for no one of the great powers could make a separate peace. Yet he de- clared to the legislative body, at the close of their session, in March, 1800, that the French people desired peace, and their government also, and even more earnestly; but that the English government rejected it. A new army of reserve was immediately formed ; and forth went the great soldier to conquer again. By Napoleon’s the middle of June in this last year of the century, he successes. had gained the battle of Marengo, taking from the Austrians in one day all that they had regained in Italy since his former warfare there. His forces under Moreau in Germany were driving back the Austrians at every point; and by the mid- dle of July, the Emperor was helpless, — many of his strongholds in the hands of the French, and the road to Vienna open to them. He would have made peace, but could not do it without the con- sent of the other powers ; and Great Britain objected to some of the terms imposed by France. Before the end of the year, how- ever, the successes of Moreau in Germany, and of the French wherever they appeared, were such as to precipitate peacemak- ing wherever it could be had. On Christmas Day, 1800, the Emperor signed an armistice, by which he bound himself to agree to a separate peace, his allies giving their compassionate consent. It was clear that other powers must follow the same Enforced course ; and on the last day of the century, it was peace abroad, understood by British statesmen that England would presently be the only power standing out against this terrific France and her astonishing ruler. It is now that we begin to find in the records of the time, and in the correspondence of our fathers, those scattered assertions that such a man could not be long-lived, which show how vast was his power over the imagina- tion in the early years of his conquests. Our fathers were taken by surprise by the manifestation of the resources of France. By changing the natural course of her life, and calling forth all her strength of every kind for the maintenance of her new position against the assaults of the world, her ruler had made her appear able to confront the united opposition of the world — and even to drive back the world, and occupy the homes of nations wherever she pleased — except only in regard to England. France was now about to gain territory as far as the left bank of the Rhine from Auslria; and Parma, Tuscany, and Etruria from Spain; and alliance against the English from poor helpless Naples ; and peace on his own terms with Russia, Bavaria, and Portugal. While seeing the new century rise on this wonderful adventurer, now the foremost man of all the world, men discerned no hope but in the probable shortness of his life. Such energy as his, they said, always wore out the frame : he exposed himself in so Chap. I.] ALARM IN ENGLAND. 21 many battle-fields, that he would be taken off that way : he had also been nearly murdered, in the last month of the century, by a conspiracy in Paris ; and between the discontented and the mad, he would never be safe. And then, such a man leaves no successor. He was himself the greatness and the power of France ; for he had tranquillized her. She would easily be conquered when his day was over. Such were the consolations of the more hopeful. As for the timid, they had no hope, be- yond that of keeping quiet in their own island, letting destruction rage abroad. When, presently, it appeared doubtful whether they would be allowed to remain quiet in their own island, the consternation was such as Englishmen and their families had little dreamed of ever experiencing in so late an age of the world. In their school-days they had imagined what it must be to the people to see the approach of the Danes, or of the Normans, and to have their beloved country overrun by the foe ; but it had never occurred to them that such a thing could happen to them- selves. When, however, this Bonaparte had reduced to peace on his own terms all his foes abroad, it was thought and whis- pered that he would turn his face our way, and try the power of his presence in England, as in the countries which he had laid low. He had used his influence abroad to injure Great Britain by embroiling her with the northern powers, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. He wrought upon the Emperor Paul’s ambition to possess Malta, and on the jealousy and fears of the three Powers about the commercial and naval supremacy of England, till he suc- ceeded in making a rupture, most alarming to the government and people of Great Britain at such a juncture. During the last months of the century, the three great Baltic Powers were bound in a confederacy against England : the Danes were evading naval search, and supplying arms and stores to French vessels; Paul was burning British vessels in Russian ports, and sending the crews into the interior as prisoners ; and it was clear that a northern war was impending at the same moment that England was left alone in her resistance to France. We shall have to see what was thought and said and done by the brave and by the timid, by the wise and by the incapable, in this extraordinary exigence. Meantime, we must glance at the operation of these exterior relations on the interior condition of Great Britain, at the close of the century. Amidst the convulsions which broke up the Balancing System on the Continent, the British nation seemed exempted Condition of from dangers common to all other peoples — secured El ; s land - by its free constitution. It was an edifying sight, just before the French Revolution, to see the Prime Minister of England, Mr. Pitt, bringing forward the subject of 1 iam 22 PITT’S OPPRESSIVE POLICY. [Book I. parliamentary reform, — proposing to transfer the franchise from decayed boroughs to London, and to counties which had become populous ; -and to provide for the future disfranchisement of boroughs, as they should sink in the scale of proportion, to grow- ing manufacturing towns. Thus liberal and popular were the ideas of the great statesman up to 1785. But he took alarm at the French Revolution ; and, like other directors of public affairs in Europe, looked upon states as units, and turned away from the interests of the aggregate peoples. He became one of the despots of Europe — in point of despotism, one of the foremost. Hls pollL} ‘ He might have been justified for entering into the con- tinental war, diverse as were the opinions of the time as to the necessity of doing so. He might have been forgiven the bad con- duct of the war, by which England was drained of money that went to subsidize the weaker continental powers. Terrible as were the burdens of taxation and the derangements of commercial affairs at the time, and fearful as is the load of debt which he de- posited in the future by a method of warfare which brought no glory and did no effectual service, he might have been forgiven ; ~ for the times were such as wellnigh to set men’s judgments at defiance. But that for which he cannot be forgiven is his over- ruling of the civil liberties of Englishmen. All who doubted the wisdom of the war were regarded by Mr. Pitt’s government as seditious persons ; and imputed sedition was shunted down with a ferocity to the last degree unwise'in such times. Clergymen and other educated men in Scotland were doomed to transportation for speeches and acts of political license, such as always grows under persecution ; and attempts were made to bring others to the gibbet in England for constructive treason : attempts which, if not baffled by the sense and courage of the juries, would have been ground enough, in such a crisis, for such a revolution in England as would secure to men their constitu- tional rights. There was a suspension of the Habeas Corpus, a stringent Alien Bill; and finally, in 1796, the Seditious Meetings’ Bill, which was so oppressive and unconstitutional that Mr. F ox and the leaders of the Opposition seceded from the House of Commons when the Bill was committed. The fiercer the severity un the part of the government, the stronger grew the resentment of the people ; and “ the spread of revolutionary principles ” — the thing dreaded — was stimulated by tyranny at home far more than it could ever have been by mere example from abroad ; ex- ample which a little time was sure to convert into warning. In Financial the midst of all this turmoil, the Bank found her difficulty, resources exhausted. By 1797, the country was so drained of specie that the Bank could not go on, unless saved by some immediate intervention of government. So the Restriction Chap. I.] PEACE ANXIOUSLY WISHED. 23 Act was brought in, by which the Bank was relieved from the obligation to pay cash for notes. The government was actually alarmed for the provisioning of London, and for the means of paying the army and navy. In February and March, various anonymous letters from sailors had been received by the authori- ties, complaining of insufficient pay during years of high prices, and of other grievances ; and in April, when the Channel fleet at Spithead was ordered to proceed to sea, ship after ^ ship refused to weigh anchor ; and in a few weeks mu- * 11 tiny seemed to have deprived Great Britain of her naval defence — her best reliance. From port to port the mutiny spread, and at the Nore it seemed for a time unmanageable. The ministry advised parliament to grant the demands of the sailors ; and money was voted accordingly ; only the ringleader and a few del- egates of the mutineers being executed, to keep up Irish rebel- some appearance of authority. In the next year hap- lion - pened the terrible Irish rebellion. Such was the condition of af- fairs in the hands of the minister who distrusted the people the more as his difficulties increased ; and became the more severe with the growth of his difficulties and his distrust ; while Napo- leon was again abroad on his victorious course ; and on the Con- tinent all seemed lost. The time was now come for this continental adversity to tran- quillize: England. All other powers were prostrate ; and the people, as well as the government of England, was now engrossed by apprehension. The pressure from without was becoming seri- ous enough to still all within. By the opening of the century, the great minister and the people seem, by a sort of mutual consent, to have suspended hostilities in awe or hatred of the common foe. Mr. Pitt appears to have lost some of his constant dread of “ the spread of revolutionary principles ” in view of the stronger peril to the French themselves, as well as their neighbors, of the establishment of a military despotism : and the most liberal of English politicians were becoming almost as anxious for peace as the overtaxed and suffering people ; seeing that nothing more was now to be done on the Continent, and that it was not perfectly certain that our national existence would be preserved — 01 un- suspended (for no one supposed that Great Britain could remain permanently a province of France) — if we defied the conqueror to decisive war. For obvious reasons, one point of the question could not be publicly discussed. There were many who seriously doubted whether we could support a war. Dark and dreary was the state of affairs ; so dark and dreary that it was to be hoped Napoleon would not hear how bad it was. The King con’d not The royal be depended on for any kind of assistance. He was famil ?- 24 CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE. [Book L purely an obstruction, except to a few who wheedled him, in order to use his name in furtherance of their own objects. He had been insane, and might at any moment be so again. It is difficult now, in reading his letters, and records of his conversa- tion and behavior, to say whether he was ever quite rational, even up to the level of his originally small capacity. He was harsh and cruel to his eldest son, while ludicrously sentimental with those of his ministers who gratified him most by that mix- ture of flattery and pious profession which suited his taste. He was obstinate and prejudiced, weak and ignorant, before his ill- ness ; and he was, naturally, neither wiser nor more flexible now. Tt was a misfortune to have to manage him : it would have been folly to look to him for any sort of aid. — The Prince of Wales offered no resource of hope. He was at variance with his par- ent*, parted from his wife, deep in debt, querulous in his dis- content, and thoroughly provoking in his methods of political opposition. As for the Administration, we have seen what must have been its unpopularity. — As for the people, we are able to form a pretty accurate notion of their numbers and condition, though, strange to say, there had as yet been no Census. The first Census was Classes of the taken in 1801. As the first, it was not so well man- peopie. aged as it might have been ; but it so far affords guid- ance as that we may venture to say that the population of Eng- land, Wales, and Scotland, including the soldiers and sailors serving abroad, was about eleven millions. The proportion of this population employed in agriculture, in comparison with that employed in manufacture and commerce, was much greater than it is now. Since 1795 there had been a series of deficient har- vests ; and that of* 1800 was so bad that the price of wheat rose to 1155. 11 d. per quarter. To the middle classes, employed in manufacture and commerce, this was a cruel aggravation of their hardships, while taxation was becoming inordinately oppressive. The misery was felt also by the poorest class, as was shown by the swelling of the poor-rate to the then enormous sum of nearly four millions per annum, for the poor of England and Wales ; a sum truly enormous, in the eye of all times, for the relief of pau- perism in a population of 9,000,000, which was about that of England and Wales. But the land-owners were in a highly flourishing condiiion. With wheat at 1155. 11 d. per an -owners. q uarter ^ £} ie y h ac [ no g rea t reason to care for the defi- ciency in the harvest, in this last season of the century, and they lived in a style which abundantly asserted their prosperity. While the tradesman or manufacturer came in from his daily business depressed and anxious, unable to extend his r csmen. mar k e ^ on acc0 unt of the war or its consequences, Chap. I.] AGRICULTURE AND FARMERS. 25 pressed for poor-rate, threatened with an increased property tax, worried by the Excise in his business, warned of bad debts in his trade, and with bakers’ and butchers’ bills growing more formi- dable from week to week, the farmer was cheerful, and his land- lord growing grand. While the townsman was paying Is. 10c?. for the quartern loaf, and 2s. per lb. for butter, and the children were told they must eat their bread dry ; and there was a dinner of shell-fish or other substitute for meat once or twice aweek, and housewives were trying to make bread with potatoes, to v o a ^ Farmers save fiour, — the farmers kept open house, set up gigs, sent their children to expensive schools, and upheld Mr. Pitt and the war, their king and country. The landlords obtained Enclosure bills in great and increasing numbers ; and some of the more enlightened, looking beyond the present privilege of high prices which so swelled their rents, began to attend to suggestions for improving the soil. 1 It was in 1800 that we meet with men- tion of the first trial of bone manure. The farmers laughed, and declared they would let well alone, and not spend their money and trouble on new devices which they did not need ; but the philoso- phers were at work — such a man as Davy for one — and the best order of land-owners were willing to learn ; and thus provision was made for future agricultural improvement, and some Agricultural preparation for that scientific practice of agriculture improvement, which was sure to be rendered necessary, sooner or later, by the increasing proportion of the more enlightened manufacturing to the less enlightened agricultural population of the country. 2 It appears that at the opening of the century, 10,000 acres of raw, newly enclosed arable and pasture land would support 4327 per- sons ; while, thirty-five years later, the same quantity of similar land would maintain 5555 : and the fifteen years that have elapsed since the later date have witnessed a far more rapid ad- vance of improvement. It is a fact worth remembering that the first decided step in this direction, the first recorded application of bone dust as an introduction to the use of artificial manures, was made in the first year of our century, while the prices of agricultural produce were such as were then called “ unheard ol” In 1790, Arkwright’s inventions had been thrown open to the public, by the setting aside of his patents. At that cotton manu- time, our exports of manufactured cotton goods little facture - exceeded a million and a half. In 1800, they reached nearly to five millions and a half. This seems a sm ill amount to us now ; but the rate of increase during a season of war and trouble is remarkable. The time for flagging under the burdens and im- pediments of war was at hand, but was not yet foreseen by gov- 1 Progress of the Nation, i. p. 149 {note). 2 [bid. p. 178. 26 MANUFACTURES AND OPERATIVES. [Book I. eminent. Dr. Cartwright’s power-loom had been invented for thirteen years; but it was not brought into use till 1801. Even then, it was not for some years that the invention became easy to use, and duly profitable : so, in contemplating (he cotton man- ufactures at this period, we must remember, that, though the spin- ning was very perfectly done, the handloom weavers had the weaving business all to themselves. We have no records which can make us certain of the number of persons employed in the cotton manufacture at the opening of the century. What we do know is, that the mechanical inventions in which Arkwright led the way have added a permanent two millions to our population ; and that by the improvements of the last fifty years, less than half the number of hands can deal with the same amount of cot- ton as at the beginning of the century. The supposition has been offered that the number of cotton-spinners in 1801 was about 27,000 ;* but this is little more than conjecture; and then we know nothing of the number of weavers. But of the condition of this part of our industrial population we do know something. 1 2 We learn, by information laid before a Parliamentary Operatives. Q omm {^ee in 1833, that, at the beginning of the cen- tury, a cotton-spinner worked 74 hours in a week ; for which his clear earnings were 325. 6t7. We have seen what was then the price of bread, it is evident at a glance how inferior was the condition of an operative of that class then, in comparison with that of his successors, who work a shorter time, obtain higher wages, pay less for food, and have the advantage of this same cotton manufacture for cheap and cleanly clothing for themselves and their families. The money value of our woollen exports in 1800 was about 6,000,000/. ; 3 that is, doubled within a hundred years ; but, as the woollen price of wool had doubled also, it does not appear that manufacture, the manufacture was on the increase. The popula- tion of Bradford, in those days, was under 30,000 ; of Hudders- field, under 15,000 ; of Leeds, 53,000. 4 The city of Norwich, the chief seat of the bombazeen and camlet manufacture, was in a state of deep depression ; and for the first ten years of the cen- tury, the population scarcely increased at all. Yet the wear of woollen was much more general then than now, among the body of the people. Linen fabrics were expensive, and cotton not yet cheap. — The linen manufacture was on the increase ; but not g>ii to any striking degree. — As for silk attire, there were few out of the highest classes who could afford more than an occasional indulgence in it. A silk gown lasted a dozen years ; and its purchase was a serious event to a woman of the 1 Progress of the Nation, i. p. 229. Ibid. p. 190. 2 Ibid. p. 230. * Ibid. pp. 200, 201. Chap. I.J THE MIDDLE CLASS. 27 middle class. A good deal of silk was smuggled into the country ; and that which was manufactured at home was in the hands of a small population, who, while prizing their monopoly as their heart’s blood, were yet forever oscillating between high prosperity and the deepest distress. 1 Birming- ware ' ham and Sheffield were modest, middle-sized towns, when the century opened, — Birmingham having under 74,000 inhabitants, and Sheffield less than 46,000. The more languid manufactures grew under the protraction of the war, the heavier became the taxation : so that it requires some consideration to conceive how either capitalists or operatives lived in such times. There was less expenditure for amusement in those days. Travelling was seldom thought of by middle-class peo- condition of pie, except for purpose of business. Middle-class middle class - families in the provincial towns and in the country lived on for five or ten years together, without a thought of stirring. The number of that class out of London who had ever seen London was very small. Few who lived in the inland counties had ever seen the sea. Mountains and Lakes were read and talked of almost as Rome and the Mediterranean. Little money was spent in travelling. Scarcely any was spent on books, music, or pictures. Children and young people had cheaper schooling, and less of it, and fewer masters than now. The business of living was done at home, more than now ; especially the needle- work, to the serious injury of female health. The routine of liv- ing, in orderly families, was so established that it did not vary 20/. in amount for a series of years. To householders of this order, it was a bitter and exasperating thing to see millions upon millions voted for carrying on the war ; and hundreds of thou- sands lavished in rewards to military and naval officers ; the tone of government, and of too large a proportion of parliament being as if money was inexhaustible. From these middle classes, taxed in property and income, taxed in bread and salt, taxed in the house over their heads and in the shoes on their feet, com- pel. ed to take their children from school, and to lower the desti- nation of their sons, proceeded those deputations, and petitions, and demands, and outcries, in the closing days of the century, that the King would “ dismiss his weak and wicked ministers.” Such sufferers did not mince matters in those days, nor choose their terms with over-civility ; and certainly the records of the time give a strong and painful impression that the government regarded the people with little other view than as a taxable and soldier-yielding ma s, troublesome at best, but a nuisance when it in any way moved or spoke. To statesmen, the State, as a unit, was alTlnliirr and it is really difficult to find any evidence 1 Progress of the Nation, i. p. 293, 299. 28 MILITARY LIABILITIES. [Book L that the people were thought of at all, except in the relation of obedience. As for the operative class, their condition was often such as to Of industrial make the student pause, and ask if he can be reading classes. 0 f on ly fifty years ago. The artisan found that since he began life, the expenses of living had become fivefold or more. Meat, which had been 4 d. per lb. when he married, was now 9 d. Butter was trebled in price, and sugar doubled, and salt quad- rupled, and poor-rate quintupled. 1 The liability to military ser- Miiitary vice was forever impending. If he did not enroll liabilities, himself as a volunteer, to the sacrifice of much time and money, he was liable to be drawn for the militia ; and he must go soldiering, when required, or pay for a substitute. And the means for recruiting the regular army were put in force so variously and so stringently, that the wife and children lived in a perpetual dread that the mechanic or laborer would, some way or another, go for a soldier. The proportion was indeed very large. Besides the militia and volunteer forces, of which the militia alone consisted of 200,000 men at one time, the number of new soldiers raised in the first eight years of the war was 208, 388. 2 Of these, 49,000 had been killed, or had otherwise died of their service ; and 7 6,000 had been sent home disabled. Out of the population of that time, this was a very serious pro- portion : and so plentiful a sprinkling of maimed and sickly returned soldiers, and of the widows and orphans of those who had never returned, was enough to destroy all sense of domestic security among the industrial classes. They were told, and truly, how blessed their condition was in comparison with that of the inhabitants of the countries actually laid waste by the war. They were reminded, and properly, of their duty to the state, and the obligation they were under to contribute to its support. All this was very true : but not the less did those who lived near the coast dread the press-gang, and villagers everywhere abhor the recruiting party. In merely opening the Annual Registers towards the close of the century, we light upon notices of riots on occasion of enrolling the militia, and burning the muster-rolls and books at market-crosses ; of mutiny in the fleet ; of ad- dresses to the King about the oppressions of the war so tremen- dously worded as that magistrates rode in among the assemblage to stop the reading; and of one month (in 1797) 3 in which “ most of the counties, cities, and towns of the kingdom petitioned his majesty for the removal of ministers, and the consequent res- toration of peace.” — While the course of daily living was thus hard to the working man, and his future precarious, the Law 1 Annual Register, 1800. Chron. 94. 2 Ibid. Chron. 144. » Ibid. 1797. Chron. 18. Chaf. I.J HEALTH. 29 was very cruel. The records of the Assizes in the Chronicle of Events are sickening to read. The vast and absurd severity of variety of offences for which men and women were the Law - sentenced to death by the score, out of which one third or so were really hanged, gives now an impression of devilish levity in dealing with human life, and must, at the time, have precluded all rational conception, on the part of the many, as to what Law is, — to say nothing of that attachment to it, and reverence and trust in regard to it, which are indispensable to the true citizen temper. The general health was at a lower average, among all these distresses, than was even safe for a people who might, Health at any moment, have to struggle for their existence. The habit of intemperance in wine was still prevalent among gentlemen ; so that we read of one public man after another whose death or incapacity was ascribable to disease from drink- ing. Members of the Cabinet, Members of Parliament, and others, are quietly reported to have said this and that when they were drunk. The spirit decanters were brought out in the even- ings, in middle-class houses, as a matter of course ; and gout, and other liver and stomach disorders were prevalent to a degree which the children of our time have no conception of. During the scarcity, the diseases of scarcity abounded, of course. Hun- dreds ate nettles and other weeds ; and without salt, which was then taxed 155. per budiel. Thousands of families adulterated their bread. More meat, however, was eaten by laborers in ordinary times than now. It was more commonly considered a part of their necessary food : but when meat averaged 9 d. per lb., as it did in 1800, it was out of the reach of the laboring class. An address of Dr. Ferriar to the working people of Manchester in 1800 1 has been preserved, by which we see, not only how ripe was his wisdom in sanitary matters, but what were the sanitary conditions of the class and time. It is now believed that, at that period, the persons who daily washed from head to foot were extremely few ; yet Dr. Ferriar counsels par- ents so to wash their children, in cold water, before they send them to work in the morning : so that he was thinking of others than infants. He warns the people against damp cellars, broken windows, stagnant air in back-rooms, unaired bedclothes, wet feet, work on an empty stomach, and pollution from slaughter- houses, and other foul places. He joins with the warning against ale-house indulgence one which appears rather strange, — “ strolling in the fields adjoining to the town,” which he seems to think a rash exposure to cold. There was a notion abroad at that time that the worst peril to health was from “ catching 1 Sanitary Report of 1842, p. 462. 30 IRELAND. [Book I. cold,” and hence the popular treatment of fever — by heat and exclusion of air. The horrors of small-pox were the worst of the time. Well intended as was the introduction of Inoculation, and great as were its benefits to those properly submitted to it, it had the effect of enormously increasing the mortality from small- pox. Before, disease had come in a flood, every few years, and swept away thousands like a plague, diminishing in the intervals to a point almost below notice. After the practice of Inoculation became extensive, the infection was kept always afloat. The scourge was most fearful towards the close of the last century. 1 Ninety-two in every thousand deaths were from small-pox, in the last ten years ; and in all our streets and villages and hospitals were the blind and diseased and disfigured who had survived. This was a woe about to be removed. Dr. Jenner had made and published his discovery ; and Vaccination began to be prac- tised in 1800. Whatever improvements may hereafter take place in sanitary management, this date must always stand con- spicuous in the history of the national health. In the midst of all other perplexities and troubles, however severe, the condition of Ireland always remained the worst — the crowning affliction of the statesman. Before the end of the American war, Ireland had been cruelly neglected as to her means of defence, her protection and comfort. A handful of dismounted cavalry and of invalid soldiery was sent in reply to the request of port towns and populous districts to be furnished with the means of defence. The Irish then very naturally took measures for defending themselves ; and before the end of 1781, the Volunteers exhibited a force of 80,000 men. This force could now obtain wdiatever it pleased to ask ; and it asked and obtained the absolute independence and supremacy of the Irish parliament — under the same relations to the throne as the English parliament. Superficial observers, and few others, hoped that now all would go well in Ireland. This was called a final settlement ; and English people asked what more the Irish could possibly want. They wanted (what could not be had) a faithful parliament, a real representation. For want of this reality in their so-called representation, they were worse off after Lis settlement than before. While the numbers of Protestants in Ireland had been stationary, that of Catholics had been on the increase, till, from being two to one, they had now become four to one ; and yet their House of Commons was returned almost entirely by the Orange interest. It was believed that about three fourths of the 300 members were of the Orange party ; and not less than 100 were placemen or pensioners in the direct interest of the government. Such a scene of faction and 1 Companion to the Almanac, 1834, p. 32. Chap. I.] UNION PROPOSED. 31 jobbing has perhaps never been witnessed under the pretence of working at legislation. As might be expected, the unrepresented and oppressed had recourse to rebellion. They invited the French to come and annex them to France. The French came, and would have annexed Ireland to France, but for a series of acci- dents, and some miscalculation of the force required. In 1797, the government were warned that an insurrection was meditated. They did not believe it, though there were 500,000 men banded together in conspiracy ; and the militia who mounted guard in Dublin, and almost everywhere else throughout the island, would have let in the insurgents “with the greatest pleasure in life.” But by the following March, no one pretended to have any doubt of the danger. The towns were nearly empty of men ; and in the country, the cottages were full of women and children who could give no account of any men belonging to them. 1 In Dublin the name of every inhabitant was registered upon his door : the walls displayed government proclamations : there were prayers in the churches for life and safety : the theatre and other public exhibitions were closed : the prisons overflowed : the lawyers in the Courts and the members in the parliament House were in mil- itary uniform : a mournful satire on the “ final settlement ” of Ireland by means of an independent legislature. The outbreak was fearful. The mere cost of human life was not less than 70,000 lives, of which 50,000 were on the Irish side. And there was much else, besides the extinction of life, to make the Irish rebellion one of the most fearful and painful spectacles that the student of history can be compelled to look upon. As it was clear that Ireland could, in no case, be more mis- governed than by her present parliament, and it was probable that a British parliament, with all its shortcomings, both of knowledge and of will, would give the people some better chance of improving their state than they had at present, the proposal to unite the legislatures gained adherents from this time forward, till the proposition became affirmed by the London parliament in 1799. Mr. Pitt was sanguine about this being the shortest and easiest method of emancipating the Cath- olics ; and he allowed this view so far to influence his conversation and conduct as that the Catholics believed him pledged to procure their emancipation, if they assisted in carrying the Union ; and this in the face of the King’s declaration that he would favor the Union if it conduced to the stability of the Church : if otherwise, not. 2 The King was, probably, told that all fear of Catholic ascendency was put an end to by bringing the Irish representa- tion into a really supreme parliament ; while the Catholics might reasonably hope that their numerical superiority must become 1 Life of Curran, ii. p. 41. 2 Life of Wilberforce, ii. p. 325 32 THE UNITED KINGDOM. [Book L understood and recognized when the obstruction of the Protes- tant legislature in Dublin was done away. However this might be, there was a mistake. The Catholics believed themselves to be consenting to the Union on a vital condition which was not fulfilled ; and thus, as we shall see, did the Union turn out to be no more of a “ final settlement ” of Ireland than any preceding arrangement. Imputations of other kinds of inducement, charges of “ profli- gacy and corruption,” were freely thrown out in the Irish par- liament-house and elsewhere, in the first months of 1800: and from that day to this, the calmest approvers of the Irish Union have been observed to make reservations in regard to the means by which the assent of the Irish to the measure was obtained. Perhaps there was secret corruption : but it seems also probable that the surprising change of mind manifested by the Dublin parliament between the sessions of 1799 and 1800 might suggest suspicions of bribery, while in fact the members were only ex- hibiting another instance of the passion, short-sightedness, and consequent fluctuation, which too often characterized their proceed- ings. In 1799, the Irish parliament assented to the English parliamentary resolutions in favor of the Union by a majority of only one vote. In the next year, the majorities on the same side were large ; and in March, the two Houses agreed in an address to the King, assenting to the wisdom of the measure. Some members of both Houses, on both sides the Channel, im- plored the government to grant such delay as should be neces- sary for ascertaining the real feelings of the Irish nation on the subject : but this was refused by overwhelming majorities ; and the Act of Union received the royal assent on the 2d of July, 1800. By this act, Great Britain and Ireland were henceforth to constitute one kingdom, and to be called “ The United Kingdom” accordingly. 1 There was to be one parliament : and in this par- liament the spiritual peers of Ireland, and twenty-eight temporal peers, elected for life by the peers of Ireland, were to sit in the House of Lords, and one hundred members in the House of Commons. The Protestant churches of the two countries were to be united. The two countries were to be on equal terms as regarded trade and navigation and treaties with foreign powers. The laws and courts of both kingdoms were to remain unaltered. From the date of the Union, all Acts of Parliament were to ex- tend to Ireland, unless special exception were made. The suc- cession to the imperial crown was to be the same as heretofore to the two kingdoms. It was on the 2d of August, 1800, that the Irish Parliament met for the last time ; and there is something 1 Stephen’s Commentaries, i. pp. 94, 95. Chap. I.] OPINIONS ON THE UNION. 33 affecting to those who have lived to watch the course of Irish affairs, in reading, at the end of half a century, the happy an- ticipations of the Viceroy, that, under the protection of Divine Providence , 1 these un ted kingdoms would remain, in all future ages, the fairest monument of the reign in which their union took place. On the last day of the year and of the century, the King closed the last session of the British Parliament, which was now to become the Imperial Parliament. The occasion was indeed a mere adjournment for three weeks, as the House of Commons was in the midst of the business which at the time chiefly occupied the King’s mind, and which he was impatient for the legislature to resume, — the passing of measures restric- tive on the use of flour, on account of the scarcity. Early in the year, a bill had passed which forbade the sale of bread that had been baked less than twenty-four hours. Next, laws were made which bestowed bounties on the importation of corn and of fish ; subjected millers to supervision by the excise, and to a legal rate of profits ; and stopped the distilleries, to save the barley. Other measures of the same tendency were so in- teresting to the King and Ministry , 2 that we find no mention in the royal speech of the mighty event which was now to take place, except in a parenthetical kind of way — as a reason why there must be some delay about the Bread Bills, but no reason for the delay being a long one. But that the speech stands before our eyes complete in the records of the time, we could hardly believe that such could be the close of the series of Brit- ish parliaments, on the eve of the admission of the great Irish element. While there were some who objected to the Union altogether, as abolishing the nationality of Ireland, and who were convinced that nothing but British force and ministerial corrupt on could have carried the measure, there were other Irish patriots who entered protests against the incompleteness of the change. They would have had the Viceroyalty abolished ; and also all custom- houses on the opposite coasts of the Irish Channel ; and they would have transferred their two Houses of Parliament complete into the British Legislature. The King thought the Viceroyalty might be abolished : and probably every one now wishes there had been free trade, from the beginning, between the two coun- tries : but, as for other points, the political fusion must stop somewhere, if the Irish were to preserve anything distinctive at all, or to enter into the Union with any good will : and it is, in such cases, for an after-time to perceive and decide where the fusion should stop. As will presently appear, there was some- thing more pressing than this which had been neglected, and 1 Annual Reg. 1800. Cliron. 183. 2 Ibid. Chron. 178. VOL. I. 3 34 TEMPER OF THE TIMES. [Book I which made the subject of the Union the bitterest and the most disastrous that filled the minds of our statesmen for a long course of years. It is common to us to hear and to say that the temper of the Temper of times, fifty years ago, was warlike ; though, in fact, the the times. people were beginning to have, and to express, a pas- sionate desire for peace. To say that the temper of the times was warlike gives no idea, to us who can scarcely remember war-times, of the spirit of violence, and the barbaric habits of thought and life, which then prevailed. Everything seems, in the records, to have suffered a war-change. The gravest annalists, the most educated public men, called the First Consul “ the Corsican murderer,” and so forth, through the whole vocabulary of abuse. Nelson’s first precept of professional morality was to hate a Frenchman as you would the devil. Government rule took the form of coercion ; and popular discontent that of rebellion; and suffering ihat of riot. The passionate order of crime showed itself slaughterous ; the mean kind exercised itself in peculation of military and naval provisions. Affliction took its character from the war. Tens of thousands of widows, and hundreds of thousands of orphans, were weeping or starving in the midst of society ; and among the starving were a multitude of the families of employed sailors, who were sent off on long voyages, while their pay was three or four years in arrear. The mutiny, which spread half round our coasts, was a natural, almost a necessary consequence. Because it was “ suppressed,” it does not follow that the feelings connected with it were extinguished. In Wilberforce’s Diary we find an expression of strong regret that “ the officers do not love the sailors,” such being, he observes, the consequence of fear entering into such a relation — fear on the part of superiors. The sufferings from bad seasons, again, were aggravated by a tax- ation growing heavier every year, and money running shorter every day, — all on account of the war. The very sports of the time took their character from the same class of influences. The world went to see reviews, at which the King (when well) appeared on horseback. Then, there were illuminations for vic- tories ; and funerals of prodigious grandeur, when military and naval officers of eminence were to be buried in places of honoi. There were presentations of jewelled swords, in provincial cities as well as in London ; and, from the metropolitan theatre to the puppet-show, there were celebrations and representations of com- bats by sea or land. The inhabitants of towns came to their win- dows and doors at the tramp of cavalry ; ladies presented colors to regiments ; and children played at soldiers on the village-green. Prayers and thanksgivings in church and chapel — services ut- terly confounding now to the moral sense of a time which has Chap. I.] WARLIKE VIRTUES. 35 leisure to see that Christianity is a religion of brotherly love — then met with a loud response which had in it a hard tone of worldly passion : and from church and chapel, the congregation took a walk to see the Sunday drill. Manufacturers and trades- men contested vehemently for army and navy contracts ; and the bankrupt list in the Gazette .showed a large proportion of de- pendents on army and navy contractors who could not get paid. If the vices and miseries of the time took their character from the war, there was a fully corresponding manifestation of virtue. From Pitt at the head, down to the humblest peasant or the most timid woman in the remotest corner of the kingdom, all who were worthy were animated by the appeals of the times, and magna- nimity came out in all directions. The courage was not only in the Nelsons and the Wellesleys : it was in the soul of the sailor’s love, and the gray-haired father of the soldier, when their hearts beat at the thought of battle and the threat of invasion. The self-denial was found all abroad, from the Pitt who could respect- fully support an Addington Ministry, and a Wilberforce who cur- tailed his luxuries, and exceeded his income by 3000/. in one year, to feed the poor in the scarcity, down to the sister who dis- missed her brother to the wars with a smile, and the operative who worked extra hours when he should have slept, — all sus- tained alike by the thought that they were obeying a call of their country. It was a phase of the national life which should be preserved in vivid representation, for its own value, as well as because it may be a curious spectacle to a future age. 36 MR. PITT’S FAULTS. [Book L CHAPTER II. The first days of the new century — not the first years or months, but the first days — present a picture of the faults and weaknesses of statesmanship, which will make it a wonder through all historic time that the British nation preserved its place in the world. After putting together the facts yielded by the various records of the time, and thus obtaining a clear view of the in- trigues, the selfishness, the ignorance, the foolishness, the mutual deceit and misunderstandings, of the parties on and about the throne, the student of history draws a long breath of thankful- ness and surprise that the nation should have escaped falling into a political chaos, and thus becoming an easy prey to foreign foes. Some parts of the story remain obscure ; but the greater portion has of late become sufficiently clear to explain and justify Lord Malmesbury’s exclamation in soliloquy , 1 “ We forget the host of enemies close upon us, and everybody’s mind thinks on one object only, unmindful that all they are contending about may vanish and disappear if we are subdued by France.” The chief obscurity is how such things as are now to be dis- closed could happen under the premiership of Mr. Pitt. r ’ 1 The mystery of the particulars of his conduct must remain ; but a careful study of the men involved with him seems to yield a general impression that Mr. Pitt’s chief fault was an undue self-reliance, leading him to a careless treatment of the King, a want of consideration to his colleagues, and a too easy trust that he could manage difficulties as they arose, by means of resources which had never yet failed him. His temper was so sanguine as to impair his sagacity throughout his whole career. He was always found trusting our allies abroad — not only their good faith and ability, but their good fortune. He was always found expecting that the Austrians would defeat Napoleon in the next battle ; believing that the plan of every campaign was admirable and inexpugnable ; immovably convinced that what he considered the right must prevail — not only in the long run, but at every step. If his fortitude of soul and sweetness of temper had not incessantly overborne his imperfection of judgment, his 1 Diaries, iv. p. 9. Chap. II.] CHARM INVESTING HIM. 37 career must have ended very early ; for his failures were inces- sant. Such a repetition of failures would not have been per- mitted to any man whose personal greatness and sweetness did not overbear other people’s faculties as much as his own. If it is impossible now to read his private letters, written in the dark- est hours of his official adversities, without a throbbing of the heart at the calm fortitude and indomitable hopefulness of their tone, it may be easily conceived how overpowering was the influ- ence of these qualities over the minds of the small men, and the superficial men, and the congenial men, and the affectionate idol- ators, by whom he was surrounded. If any of these doubted whether the Austrians would win the next battle, it was not till they went home and sank into themselves ; and then they did not tell him so. If any of them feared Napoleon more than they trusted plans of a campaign, it was not while his bright eye was upon them, and his eloquence of hope was filling their ears ; and when they relapsed into dread, they did not tell him so. The restless, suspicious, w T orrying, obstinate, ignorant mind of the half- insane King was laid at rest for the hour when they were to- gether ; and the charm which invested the minister made him for those hours the sovereign over his master. It was no wonder that all this did him harm and tended to impair still further his already weak sagacity. When he carried his accustomed meth- ods into the conduct of critical affairs of domestic politics, it could not be but that, sooner or later, he must find himself involved in some tremendous difficulty. He was always kept in the dark about one thing or another that it was important for him to know. Nobody ever hinted to him that he was wrong : nobody ever called him to account : there were none but party foes to show him the other side of any question. Holding his head high above the jobbers and self-seekers about him, and never looking down into their dirty tricks, or giving ear to their selfish crav- ings, except to get rid of them by gratifying them — too easily, no doubt, but with a heedless contempt ; resorting for sympathy and counsel to the best of his friends, and then -finding little but open-hearted idolatry, it is no wonder that he was unguarded, over-confident, and virtually, though not consciously, despotic. Despotic lie was throughout. His comrades, including the King, revelled in the despotism, on account of its charm. The suffering people felt the worst of the despotism without any of the charm. While this host of sufferers was growing restless under the burdens of the war, and some of them frantic under the repres- sion of their civil liberties ; while the Northern Powers were banding against us, to cut off our commerce and humble our naval pride ; while Napoleon was marshalling his 500,000 sol- diers on their coast, so that they could be seen from our cliffs on 38 PITT’S FEAR AND REMORSE. [Book I. a sunny day ; while the frame of the great minister was wearing down under the secret griefs and mortifications which he never breathed to human ear, he involved himself by his constitutional and habitual faults in a fog of difficulty, which darkened the opening of the new century, and poisoned his peace and his life. He scarcely abated the loftiness of his carriage in the midst of it ; he manifested a higher magnanimity than ever before ; his patience and gentleness almost intoxicated the moral sense of his adorers : he seemed to forget all cares in reading Aristoph- anes and reciting Horace or Lucan with his young friend Can- ning under the trees at sunset, or kept together parties of friends — ladies, children, and all — round the fireside till past midnight, by his flow of rich discourse ; but his spirit was breaking. He had learned what fear was : and it was a fear which brought remorse with it. No remorse for the slaughter of the war ; no remorse for the woes of widows and orphans ; no remorse for having overborne the Englishman’s liberty of speech and political action. About these things he appears to have had no sensi- bility. He had no popular sympathies ; though he certainly would have had, if the people had ever come before his eyes, or he had had that high faculty of imagination which might have brought them before the eye of his mind. To him, the people were an abstraction ; and he had no turn for abstractions. The nearest approach he made to entertaining abstractions was in acting for the national glory and international duty. His view was probably right, as far as it went: but it was imperfect — so imperfect, that he may be pronounced unfit for such a place as he held, in such times. His remorse was for nothing of this kind ; but for his having done that which caused a return of the King’s insanity, and, by that consequence, compelled him to break faith with the Catholics. He always denied — and every- body believes him — that any express pledge was given to the Catholics : but nobody denies that those of them who agreed to the Union did so under an authorized expectation that they might send representatives out of their own body to Parliament. This expectation he found himself compelled to disappoint, fie was not one to acknowledge the effect upon himself of such a difficulty as had arisen through his means : but all who loved him immediately saw, and those who opposed him soon learned, that the peace of his mind and the brilliancy of his life were overshadowed. But a short term of life remained : and that had much bitterness in it — so much that it was truly a bitter- ness unto death. He died broken-hearted. What he had now done was this: — In January 1799, 1 he declared, in the debate on the Union, that no change ought to 1 Life of Lord Sidmouth, i. p. 279. Chap. II.] CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 39 be made in the Test Acts until “the conduct of the Roman Catholics should be such as to make it safe for the government to admit them to further privileges, and until the temper of the times should be favorable to such a measure.” As months passed on, however, the minister saw more and more clearly how harmless such a proportion of Catholics as could be sent from Ireland would be in the British parliament, though their vast preponderance in their own island had prevented all thoughts of admitting them there to legislative offices. Mr. Windham, Lord Grenville, and many others of Mr. Pitt’s habitual associates, agreed with him in this ; and it is clear that they often talked The Catholic the matter over, and discussed the securities which Question in might be deemed sufficient, till they became so familiar- tiie Cabmet - ized with the subject as to grow careless and indiscreet. The Catholics knew what they were thinking about, and the King did not. That is, the King knew something of his minister’s opinion, from conversation with him in an ordinary way ; but Mr. Pitt neglected to give the due official intimation to the King, when the subject of admitting Catholics to parliament became one of official discussion. 1 When, at the beginning of 1801, the King was told by Lord Spencer that the subject had been under con- sideration so far back as the preceding August, he was deeply offended. This disrespectful carelessness of Mr. Pitt was a fair occasion for self-seekers and enviers to take advantage of the minister’s neglect and the Sovereign’s weaknesses. Lord Auck- land seems to have made the first move, — he who, after these efforts to displace Mr. Pitt, mentioned himself as thought of for Prime Minister, but who remained only a joint holder of the office of Postmaster-General with Lord Charles Spencer. 2 He and the Chancellor, Lord Loughborough, wrought together, in the autumn, with deep secrecy ; but such secrets cannot forever be hidden ; and the transaction is now well understood. In September, the Chancellor called on the Duke of Portland, and asked him what he thought of the plan for Catholic Emancipa- tion 3 at that time in discussion among the ministers Finding the Duke favorable to the measure, he proposed to leave with him a paper he had written, setting forth the anti- Catholic view. This paper reached the King on the 13th of December. 4 Mean- time, and in concert with this action of the Chancellor, Lord Auckland, also a member of the Administration, wrote (with strong injunctions of secrecy as regarded himself) to his brother- in-law, the Archbishop of Canterbury, telling him that he consid- ered it his duty to inform him that a measure was in contempla- tion which would be fatal to the Church ; 6 and to suggest to him 1 Life of Lord Sidmouth, i. p. 298. 2 Diaries of Lord Malmesbury, iv. p. 2. 8 Ibid, p 22. 4 Lif e 0 f Lord ISidmouth, i. pk 500. 6 Diaries, &c., iv. p. 17. 40 IRRITATION OF THE KING. [Book L that it was his duty, as Primate, to lay warnings before the King. The Archbishop consulted the Primate of Ireland and the Bishop of London, and then wrote the desired warning to the King, who was at Weymouth at that time. The King wrote a long remonstrance to his minister, which not only showed, but avowed, that he knew what was going on. After this, it would be absurd to say that the King was kept in the dark later than the autumn ; but there was still no such official communication as the importance of the subject required ; and the effect of the consequent irritation on the weak brain of the old man could be no matter of surprise to anybody. In September, Lord Castlereagh, then the young Chief Secre- tary for Ireland, brought over the scheme for Catholic emancipa- tion which was considered the best : and if, as there appears to be no doubt, this was “ the plan of Lord C which is freely handled in the Chancellor’s paper, the King must have known all about it at least for some weeks : 1 yet, at the levee on the 28th of January, the day after Mr. Pitt had laid the matter before him, the King said to Mr. Henry Dundas, then Secretary of State, “ What is this that this young lord has brought over, which they are going to throw at my head ? I shall reckon any man my personal enemy ” (and this he said also to Mr. Windham on the same day) “ who proposes any such measure. The most Jacobinical thing I ever heard of.” Dundas’s answer was, “ You will find among those who are friendly to that measure some whom you never supposed your enemies.” — The next day, January 29th, after Mr. Addington had been rechosen Speaker of the Commons, and while the swearing in of members was proceed- ing, the King wrote to the Speaker, to ask his intervention. 2 “ I wish he would, from himself, open Mr. Pitts eyes on the danger arising from the agitating this improper question, which may prevent his ever speaking to me on a subject on which I can scarcely keep my temper, and also his giving great apprehension to every true member of our church,” &c. It was not only his temper that the King could not keep. His wits were going. 3 lie called to General Garth one day at this time, to ride up close to him ; and said he had had no sleep the last night, and felt bilious and unwell : that the reason was that Mr. Pitt had ap- plied to him to emancipate the Catholics. On arriving at Kew, the General was desired to find the Coronation Oath in the library, and to read it aloud. The King, as usual, begging the question about the liberty of the Catholics being fatal to the Protestant religion, declared with vehemence that he would 1 Wilberforce's Diary, iii. p. 7. 2 Life of Lord Sidmouth, i. p. 286. 3 Ibid. p. 285. Chap. II ] MR. PITT WILL RESIGN. 41 rather beg his bread from door to door all through Europe than break his oath by consenting to the measure. Mr. Addington, whose genius was not for correct representa- tion, carried to the poor King a report of Mr. Pitt’s yielding, which filled his heart with joy for the hourJ But before night, the mistake was discovered by a letter arriving from the Minis- ter — calm, unbending, and decisive as to his opinion and inten- tions on the great question. This was on Saturday, Propose(i January 31st. When the Speaker waited on the change of King by appointment that evening, after the arrival mmlstry * of Mr. Pitt’s letter, he was greeted with a command to under- take the conduct of affairs. When he would have declined, the King said to him, very earnestly, “ Lay your hand upon your heart, and ask yourself where I am to turn for support if you do not stand by me.” Mr. Pitt’s comment, when his friend Ad- dington went to relate it to him, was, “ I see nothing but ruin, Addington, if you hesitate. ’ According to the King’s own account, it was on the next day, Sunday, February 1st, that Mr. Dundas waited on him to en- deavor to convey to him the ministers’ view of the matter in dis- pute ; and it is believed to have been on this occasion that the sovereign would not listen to their construction of the oath which he made his plea. When told tiiat the engagement related to the monarch’s executive, and not his legislative action, the King ex- claimed, “ None of your Scotch metaphysics, Mr. Dundas ! ” 3 — On the same day, Mr. Pitt sent in what he intended to be his letter of resignation, after he had held the Premiership for seven- teen years. His master’s attachment to him was so strong that, in his reply, he left as wide an opening as his troubled mind would allow for the minister to recede ; 4 but Mr. Pitt’s rejoinder was as unbending and explicit as before, and on the 5th his resignation was courteously accepted ; and Mr. Addington pro- ceeded to attempt to form an administration. The work was difficult; for the most capable of Mr. Pitt’s friends went out with him, — Mr. Dundas, Lord Grenville, Lord Spencer, and Mr. Windham. It was no ordinary occasion of changing the rul- ers of the empire. While inferior men — the self-seekers, who thought politics were ordained to fill their pockets and magnify their names — were hard to please, complaining that an income of 2000/. a year was too little, and striving to get poor relations and even their butlers and valets provided for in small offices, better men all over the kingdom saw that on this arrangement depended the allegiance (of the heart, at least) of Ireland, and 1 Life of Lord Sidmouth, i. p. 287. 2 Ibid p. 298. 8 Life of Mackintosh, i. p. 170. 4 Life of Lord Sidmouth, i. p. 289. 42 CHANGES IN THE MINISTRY. [Book I. the mighty question of peace or war with France, and with the banded powers of the North. The choice of ministers was re- stricted : for the new Premier was hedged in between the par- ties of Pitt and Fox ; and it was difficult to see how, if the King maintained his ground about the Catholic question, he could avoid choosing his most capable ministers from out of the ranks of Opposition. It would have been a hard task for a man of more ability than Mr. Addington. Mr. Pitt’s magnanimity came to the rescue. He offered to sustain the new minister with his whole .force ; and it came to be presently understood that he would be virtually minister, while retaining his independence on the Catholic question. The country therefore supposed that the decision was made for continued war. The King’s mind was, however, too much disturbed to subside. On the 6th of February, the day after Mr. Addington’s acceptance of office, the King read his coronation oath to his family, asked them if they understood it, and declared, 1 “ If I violate it, I am no longer legal sovereign of this country, but it falls to the House of Savoy.” The secret of the change of ministry was now oozing out, and causing intense excitement from its connection with the War ques- tion ; and the public agitation reacted on the King. On the 7th, Mr. Addington gave the customary dinner, as Speaker, to a large number of guests, who all secretly knew what was about to hap- pen. On the 8th, Mr. Pitt and his successor were observed to dine together without witnesses. On the 9th, all London was speculating on the arrangements. On the 10th, Mr. Addington resigned the Speakership, to which he had been elected a few days before; and on the 11th, the Attorney- General, Sir John Mitford, resigning his office for the purpose, succeeded to the Speakership. 2 A letter from the King to Mr. Addington, of that date, is clear and sensible ; the well-known letter which declares his opinion that the office of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland would be abolished after a time, though it was necessary at first to continue it, in order to extinguish the system of Irish jobbing, and to show that the Viceroy himself could only recommend to office, while the real patronage rested with the Imperial govern- ment. A note of the next day, however, exulting in the election of the Speaker, manifests strong excitement. On that day, the 12th, some mortification occurred in the resignation of Mr. Can- ning, then a rising young man whom the new Minister would have been glad to retain, on account of his brilliant abilities. Mr. Pitt urged his young friend to remain ; but it was Canning who had urged Mr. Pitt not to yield the point on which he went 1 Diaries of Lord Malmesbury, iv. p. 22. 2 Life of Lord Sidmouth, i. p. 303. Chap. II.] ILLNESS OF THE KING. 43 out of office, 1 saying that for three years past so many conces- sions had been made to the King’s prejudices, and so many im- portant measures overruled by them, that the government was materially weakened ; and it was high time, for the sake of the country, to make a stand against the evil influences which swayed the King. Resigning for such reasons as these, Mr. Canning was a great loss. The first hint we find of the recognition of Mr. Addington’s incapacity for his new position is in Mr. Can- ning’s promise to Mr. Pitt not to laugh at the appointment of the new Premier. Lord Malmesbury already saw the hollowness of the state of things, when such “ sneering ” went on in private, while public professions of support were made which seem to jus- tify the poor King’s almost ludicrous reliance on his obsequious new minister. On the loth, we find the King clinging to the hope that Mr. Pitt had been led on to his “rash step ” of advocating the cause of the Catholics, and that “ his own good heart ” now impelled him to make reparation in the form of support of his successor. On the same day, the King remained long in church, as it was the day appointed for a general fast. He caught cold ; and the next day wrote letters which show hurry and ninessofthe excitement. “ God forbid he should be ill ! ” writes Kin s- Lord Malmesbury on the 17th. It was a most critical point of time.' 2 Lord Colchester's diary reports that he never saw more trepidation in the House, more anxiety and concern on the ministerial side, or more eagerness in the opposition. And Mr. Pitt had not resigned. The painful interview with him was im- pending when the King was taken ill. On the 18th, the King was observed to talk very loud, and it became known that he had for some time used violent expressions about the Catholic question, saying that it might bring the advocates of emancipa- tion to the gibbet. In a few hours more, his madness could not be concealed ; and the immediate occasion was so clear that Mr. Pitt never recovered the shock. On the 23d, the poor King said, after some hours of moody silence, “ I am better now, but I will remain true to the Church.” No wonder Mr. Pitt was ill too ; “ very unwell — much shaken — gouty and nervous.” 3 The Prince of Wales took the matter more easily. While his father’s derangement was filling all minds with concern and dismay, he went to a concert at Lady Hamilton’s, and there said aloud to Calonne, the French ex-minister, 4 “ Have you heard that my father is as mad as ever?” Such was the Prince who must be Regei i, if the illness continued ; and it was another heavy anx- iety to Mr. Pitt. There was worse to come, however. That which finally broke his spirit about the Catholic question, and 1 Lord Malmesbury’s Diaries, iv. p. 5. 3 Diaries, iv. p. 20. 2 Life of Lord Sidmoutli, i. p. 313. 4 Ibid. p. 21. 44 DISPOSITION TO PEACE. [Book 1. made him surrender all care for his political honor on that press- ing subject, was a message from the King, sent by his physician in the first week of March . 1 “Tell him,” said ihe King to Dr. Willis, “ I am now quite well; quite recovered from my illness ; but what has he not to answer for who is the cause of my having been ill at all?” Hard and unreasonable as now appears this punishment of a statesman for a sincere and inevitable conviction — or, at most, for some carelessness in the management of the topic — it was too much for the courage of one already so shaken. Mr. Pitt wrote a submissive letter to the King, and pledged himself never to stir the subject more. The King was, however, not so well as he himself believed. For several weeks afterwards we find notices of his being indis- creet, sentimental, and restless ; of the Prince of Wales insinuat- ing that he was completely deranged ; of acute observers fearing that he would sink into fatuity ; of the Queen and Princesses appearing with swollen eyes and depressed countenances. And already, throughout this month of March, the new Premier — actually not yet in office, because Mr. Pitt had had no opportu- nity of resigning the seals — was planning a Peace, though no Disposition one could conceive how the venture was to be made to peace. 0 f mentioning it to the King. When once Mr. Pitt had yielded the Catholic question, there seemed to be no reason why he should not continue minister : and there is no doubt that it was the ardent wish of the King that he should ; and the wish also of all who feared a hasty and inglorious peace, such as the new Premier showed a disposition to make. But Mr. Addington, though he had so lately declared himself to be “a mere locum tenens for Mr. Pitt,” now showed an indisposition to go out ; and Mr. Pitt was quite as reluctant to come in. He was enfeebled and subdued for the time — wanted to go into the country and be quiet — and even encouraged Mr. Addington to make Peace, declaring — what was indeed true, and had been true for years past — that the finances of the country required it. After this, the Premier was so bent on peace that grave apprehensions were entertained about the sacrifices that he would make for the sake of it : and some even hoped, as a last chance for the national dignity, that Napoleon would assume his most overbearing man- ner ; a manner too overbearing to be tolerated even by an abject minister and an exhausted people. Before March was out, the court ladies were enabled to whisper that the Cape, Minorca, and Gibraltar — which Lord St. Vincent declared to be of no value — were to be given up. Others supposed that some mark of complaisance to the Emperor Paul of Russia would be re- quired ; that absurd tyrant whom all the world was beginning to 1 Diaries, iv. p. 34. Chap. II.] THE EMPEROR PAUL. 45 conclude to be crazy. In February, Paul bad ordered his cruisers to take all ships going to England. In March, he was moody and savage about England, and sequestrating British prop- erty as fast as he could lay hands on it, in prosecution of the quarrel about the right of search claimed and exercised by Eng- land, in order to prevent the supply of naval stores to the vessels of the enemy, — the Northern Powers all, at that time, The North _ leaning towards France. The hungry people within ernConfed- our island, suffering under an infliction of scarcity of ercLCy * several years’ duration, dreaded the closing of the Baltic ports, and the cutting off of the supply of corn from thence. Before the middle of March, a fleet was sent, under Sir Hyde Parker, to the Baltic, to back what was to be said by our representatives at the Northern Courts about the late treatment of the British in their ports, and on their seas ; and events occurred, even before the month was out, which settled the points of what the behavior of the English should be to the Emperor Paul, and what access they should have to the ports of the Baltic. In the preceding December, Paul had issued a challenge to the crowned heads of Europe, to settle their disputes The Emperor by single combat with him, each being attended by his PauL Prime Minister. To the English, the idea of their stout, elderly sovereign engaging in such a combat, within closed lists, with Mr. Pitt for his squire, was so ludicrous, that it settled with them the question of the Emperor’s sanity. A succession of whims, some of humor and some of cruelty, kept up the impres- sion. As the spring opened, his family became wretched, his subjects in despair, his enemies and allies perplexed and annoyed. As for himself, he grew suspicious and alarmed ; and it is be- lieved that if he had lived another day or two, he would have shut up his own sons in a fortress. On the night of the 21st of March, ten persons, who had resolved that such a state of things must be put an end to, by coercing the Emperor, or worse, supped together, and drank freely. It is thought that they did not intend to murder him when they went to his room ; but he was dead before they left it. The Empress Dowager was the only person who seemed to reprobate and resent the act. The next morning, the people were seen embracing in the streets, and shedding tears of joy ; and the intimations to foreign courts that a stroke of apoplexy had deprived Russia of her sovereign were received without any show of regret elsewhere than in London. While these things were going on at St. Petersburg, the Brit- ish fleet bound for the Baltic was preparing to venture the passage of the Sound, in order to seek a remedy at Copenhagen for the failure of our negotiations there. When Sir Hyde Parker 46 BATTLE OF COPENHAGEN. [Book I. was hesitating whether to proceed by the Sound, under the guns English fleet of Cronenburg Castle, or round by the Belt, Nelson, in the Baltic. the second in command, said, 44 Let it be by the Sound, or the Belt, or any way ; only lose not an hour.” By the Sound they went at last — on the 30th of March — before the death of Paul was known abroad. The guns of Cronenburg Castle did no harm, as no attack was made from the other shore, and the British fleet passed safely within a mile of the Swedish coast. This fleet consisted of eighteen sail of the line, accompanied by frigates and smaller vessels. The force of the hostile allies was much larger — numbering forty sail of the line or more ; but everybody knew that the higher naval skill of the British, and the union of their fleet under one command, must largely com- pensate for inferiority of force. When the time for attack was come, Nelson offered to go into action with ten ships of the line. His admiral gave him twelve, remaining at the entrance of the Sound with the rest. The channel was narrow and intricate, and the Danes had removed all the buoys ; but this was not an obstacle which could deter Nelson. He had the channel sounded, and new buoys placed, by daily and nightly diligence, till on the 1st of April his ships were ranged off the end of the shoal in front of Copenhagen, ready to advance the remaining Battle of two leagues as soon as the wind should serve. The Copenhagen. nex t morning the wind was fair ; but the pilots showed themselves unfit for their office. Nelson always after- wards said that it was the unequalled difficulty of the navigation which made the glory of the victory of Copenhagen. The mas- ter of one of the English vessels, Mr. Bryerly, undertook to lead the fleet, and removed from the Bellona to the Edgar for the purpose. By 10 o’clock the action began. The difficulties were many and great ; and no fewer than three of the ships presently grounded. The indecision and delays of Sir Hyde Parker had throughout been very trying to Nelson, who felt that on the immediate action of this fleet depended the issue of the quarrel between Great Britain and the Northern Powers. If the Baltic allies could be humbled at the outset of hostilities, war might be extinguished on one side, and our prospects much improved on the other ; for there was no doubt that the North- ern Confederacy was instigated by France. Seeing this, Nelson had found it hard to bear the loss of time and appearance of weakness caused by the indecision of his superior officer ; but he had more to bear this day. At the end of three hours, when the exterior defences of the Danes were not yet destroyed ; when he had not got access to their great ships ; when signals of distress were flying from the mastheads of three of the British ships, and the three which were sent as a reinforcement could not make Chap. II.] HOW NELSON OBTAINED VICTORY. 47 their way to the scene of action, Sir Hyde Parker signalled to discontinue the engagement. Nelson knew that this would be ruin, and felt that all might yet be well . 1 He resolved to diso- bey. In the mood of sublime jesting which heroes now and then manifest in moments of exigency, he put the glass to his blind eye, and turning towards the reserve, declared that he saw no such signal. He kept up his own — that for close action ; and, as he hoped, his comrades had their attention so closely fixed on his proceedings and orders as not to observe the signal of the Commander-in-chief. It was so with all except “ the gallant good Iiiou,” as Nelson called him. He was so placed as to be compelled to see and obey the order to retire. As he unwill- ingly withdrew his little squadron of frigates, sloops, and fire- ships, he exclaimed, u What will Nelson think of us ? ” But a fatal shot in a few moments ended his anguish. None of the other commanders were aware that they were fighting against orders. Before two o’clock, the Danes had nearly ceased firing ; and their exterior line of defence had surrendered. By assuming victory at this moment, Nelson obtained it. The truth was that the Danish line was uninjured; and that his own squadron was in great peril from the difficulty of the navigation. He really was deeply touched, at the same time, by the gallantry of the Danes who remained on board the surrendered vessels, who were fired upon at once by the batteries on shore and by the British ships ; by the latter on account of the refusal of the conquered to be boarded by the boats of the British. Nelson went to his cabin, and wrote that letter to the Crown Prince which he would not close with a wafer, because he chose to avoid all appearance of haste. He called for a candle, and made a large seal. This letter, sent with a flag of truce, declared that Vice-Admiral Nelson had orders to spare Denmark w hen resist- ance ceased ; 2 that the line of defence had surrendered ; but that, unless the firing on the part of the Danes was stopped, he should be compelled to burn his prizes, without being able to save the men, whom he had much rather consider the brethren than the foes of the British. In half an hour, an answering flag of truce arrived, and the firing ceased. The Crown Prince de- sired to know the object of the note he had received. The repiy was that humanity was Nelson’s object ; that he therefore con- sented that hostilities should be suspended ; that the wmunded Danes should be permitted to go ashore ; and that the rest of the prisoners should be removed from the surrendered vessels before they w 7 ere burned. In conclusion, Nelson declared that he should consider this the greatest victory he had ever gained, if it should lead to a reconciliation between England and Den- 1 Southey’s Life of Nelson, ii. p. 127. 2 Ibid. p. 135. 48 ARMISTICE AGREED ON. [Book I mark. He now turned over the negotiation to Sir Hyde Par- ker, and lost not a moment in extricating his ships from their perilous position. His own vessel and three more were aground on the shoal for many hours. As he left his ship, he observed that he might be hanged for fighting against orders ; but he did not care. Twenty-four hours’ truce were immediately agreed on; and this set him comparatively at ease. He went ashore to confer with the Crown Prince ; and the people received him with shouts and thanksgivings, on account of his humanity to the conquered. His plain-speaking to the prince, while only natural to him, was a better policy than any other man coul 1 have adopted. When asked why he had thus forced his way hither, and given battle, he said it was to crush the Northern Confederacy ; and he pointed to the minister Bernsdorf, who was present, and accused him of being the author of the Armistice Confederacy, and answerable for the mischief that with Den- had been done. In the course of five days, an armis tice of fourteen weeks was agreed on — the terms be- ing, of course, favorable to the British, without any new infliction on the Danes. The first object now was to get away safely. Sir Hyde Par- ker proceeded with the least injured ships, leaving Nelson to refit the others and follow. The dangers and delays were great from the character of the navigation ; and prodigious was the astonishment of the Baltic allies when the British fleet emerged from the dangerous channels into their great gulf. The Russian fleet was frozen up at Revel. The Swedish squadron, consisting of only six ships of the line, was at sea ; and the Commander- in-chief went in search of it. and found it. The Swedes had no chance, in the absence of their allies ; and their king had never liked the confederacy he was compelled to join : so there was no with Swe- difficulty in arranging an armistice in that quarter too. den * Before the British fleet could reach the Russian, a messenger from the Russian ambassador at Copenhagen over- took Sir Hyde Parker, with news of the death of Paul, and of the willingness of his successor, the young Alexander, to be at peace with England. Sir Hyde Parker thought the affair now virtually concluded, and turned homewards. Nelson was again grieved — grieved at a precipitation as imprudent, in his eyes, as the former delays. The negotiations with Russia had still to be transacted ; the wind was fair for Revel ; and there seemed no reason why the fleet should not remain in the Baltic, to keep the diplomatists to their business, and be on the spot in case of failure. He soon had it all his own way. On the 5th of May, Sir Hyde Parker received liis recall, and Nelson was appointed to the full command. Chap. II.] PACIFIC CONVENTION SIGNED. 49 After putting a watch upon the Swedes, he hastened to Revel, to bring the Russians to a separate account for the injuries which British subjects and property had undergone from the outrageous proceedings of Paul. But the delays of the late Commander-in- chief had afforded opportunity for the Russian vessels to get out, and repair to a safer place, where they could be protected by the batteries of Cronstadt. Messages of distrust passed between him and the Russian government ; and it was the end of the month before the Russian admiral, sent to sea after him, to offer amicable explanations, came to an understanding with withRus- hirn : but early in June, letters from St. Petersburg sia * reached him at Rostock, which granted all he wished. They declared that all the persons and property seized and seques- trated by the late Emperor were ordered to be given up ; that the late misunderstandings were a matter of pure regret ; and that a visit from himself would give great pleasure at the Court of Russia. Nelson was ill, and had already applied for leave to return home. His frame, exhausted by the wear and tear of his previous service, could not endure the climate of the Baltic ; and his return was a matter of life or death. So he could not accept the invitation from St. Petersburg, but returned home. The mode of h s return was characteristic. He thought it even now too soon to weaken the Baltic fleet by the withdrawal of a single frigate ; and though he always suffered grievously from sea-sick- ness in a small vessel, he chose to come home in a brig. He quitted the Baltic on the 19th of June. Two days pacific con- before, a pacific convention between Great Britain and vention ' Russia had been signed at St. Petersburg, 1 by which u unalter- able friendship and understanding ” were engaged for, and the needful specifications were made about the conduct of commerce, about the limits of the right of search, and about the mutual obligations of the parties, when either was at war with a third power. Sweden and Denmark were invited to join the conven- tion ; and they were very ready to do so. Thus terminated the quarrel with the Northern Powers ; and thus was the way to a peace with France made somewhat more open than it could have been while such a contest was proceeding. The two immediate causes of this pacification of the Baltic were the deatii of Paul and the vigor and daring of Nelson before Copenhagen. The sacrifice of life in that battle was called great ; but when it is looked at as the whole bloodshed of a war, it appears little enough. Of the British, 350 were killed, and 830 wounded (not mortally). Of the Danes, 1700 or 1800 were killed and wounded. The warfare, short as it was, was regarded with deep concern by all right-feeling men. 1 Annual Register, 1801. State Papers, p. 212. VOL. I. 50 EXPEDITION TO EGYPT. [Book I The Prince of Denmark was the nephew of our sovereign ; and the friendship of the two countries had been cordial till the entrance of Denmark into the Northern Conffderacy changed her into an enemy. We have seen what was the gentleness of Nelson’s tone, and what his reception when he went ashore. There was thenceforward a reciprocity of friendly offices. The Prince sent an affectionate letter to his uncle, George III., by the hands of Col. Stuart, the British military commander at Copenhagen, on the opening of the armistice ; and when the embargo was taken off Danish vessels in English ports, the expenses, both of the laying on and the removal, were defrayed by England . 1 As for the naval officers commanding in the Baltic, Sir Hyde Parker requested to be tried before a court-martial ; but his honor was not considered by the Admiralty so far com- promised as to justify such a proceeding . 2 Lord Nelson, from being a Baron, was made a Viscount. Dear as he had before Nelson’s been to the nation, he returned dearer than ever. It return. was no t on iy that th e cr itical battle of Copenhagen — his hardest-fought battle, as he called it — exhibited most re- markably all his finest characteristics ; it was yet more that his frustration of the Northern Confederacy disposed at once of a whole batch of enemies, while it mortified and enfeebled the arch-foe, Napoleon, and so brought nearer the prospect of peace, for which the people were sighing. Nelson found, on his return, that nobody wanted to hang him for gaining the victory of Co- penhagen contrary to orders. In another quarter a victory had been achieved which im- Expedition proved the chances of peace ; and it was the more to Egypt. gladly hailed because it happened when all England was looking for bad news. It was a great object to humble and overpower the French in Egypt, lest they should — as had nearly happened the year before — send strong reinforcements to Napo- leon. Sir Ralph Abercromby, with his small but well-condi- tioned army, had been sent out in January in the fleet under Admiral Lord Keith. While they were waiting in a bay of the coast of Karamania for the supply of horses which had been promised from Constantinople for the use of the cavalry and artillery, four French vessels, with some transports, evaded the British cruisers, and landed large quantities of ammunition and stores at the mouth of the Nile. Then, when the horses arrived from Constantinople, they were found to be such miserable beasts that only a few could be kept for the artillery and a handful of the cavalry ; and the rest were shot or sold for a dollar a head. The cavalry must serve as infantry. Next, it was found that the Turkish force would be all hindrance and no help to the 1 Annual Register, 1801, p. 116. 2 Ibid. Chron. 22. Chap. II.] BATTLE OE ABOOKEER. 51 British ; and in truth, instead of an effective ally, it proved to be ill-equipped, disorganized, and ravaged by the plague ; so that a junction with it was by no means to be desired. At the same time that the British were disappointed of this expected addition to their force, they discovered that the French army in Egypt was more than twice as large as had been supposed. It had been believed to have undergone a reduction, by various accidents, to about 14,000 men : whereas it had been raised by reinforcements to 30,000, with 1000 pieces of cannon. Sir Ralph Abercromby had not more than half this number, includ- ing the sick, and some unqualified reinforcements from Malta, and some useless followers. His effective force could not be reckoned at more than 1 2,000. The nation might well dread the next news from the Mediterranean. Another disappointment was not known at home, for it happened at the last moment. The Turkish ship of the line, which was to have brought aid, was dismasted by lightning. The British commanders defied not only all these fearful omens, but the warnings of the pilots, who declared, in the midst of storms which appeared to warrant what they said, that it would be madness to land in Egypt before the equinox. The landing was effected on the 7th Landing in of March, under prodigious difficulties. The soldiers were crouched down in the boats, with their arms unloaded, and were exposed to the fire, of cannon first, and then of musketry, till they could land, form, load, and push on. They pushed on, at the first possible moment — the first 2000 that landed ; and up the sandy hills they went, some with fixed bayonets, some even on hands and knees, but always driving the French before them, and securing the field-pieces of the enemy within the first half hour. During the next fortnight there was some fighting, and the fort of Abookeer surrendered to the British ; but the Battle of 21st was the decisive day. Before it was light, the Abookeer. French general, Menou, attempted to surprise the British, at- tacked both ends of their line, and succeeded in creating some disorder. A part of his force got to the rear of the British infantry, while it was still too dark for the attacked to distinguish friend from foe. The growing dawn soon set this right, how- ever. The French were from 12,000 to 14,000 in number, and the British 10,000. In a little while the French were dis- persed all over the field — the cavalry broken and dismounted — the infantry pelted with stones, when ammunition failed — and several hundreds who had penetrated into an inclosure which formed the nucleus of the battle were slain almost to a man. The whole was decided before ten o’clock. The misfortune of Sir Ralph Abercromby’s professional life was that he was ex- 52 THE FRENCH EVACUATE EGYPT. [Book I. tremely short-sighted. 1 He felt this most in its making him dependent on the officers about him. His friends felt it also in the danger to which it exposed him on the battle-field. He was always foremost in the fight ; and very often in the midst of Death of Sir P er ^ which the most courageous avoid by merely Ralph Aber- seeing where they are. On this day, he was sur- cromby. rounded by the French, in the thickest of the fight, and received first a sabre wound in the breast, and then a musket- ball in the thigh. He took no notice ; and several of his officers came to him for conference and went away again, without per- ceiving that he was wounded. It was the trickling blood which betrayed him at last. When all was secure, and the entire defeat of the French ascertained beyond doubt, the old hero sank, faint, into a hammock, and was carried to the admiral’s ship, where he died on the 28th — well aware, it is hoped, of the doom of the French in Egypt. They made no effectual defence, after the battle of Abookeer ; and when sea and land forces were concentrated against them, — forces from Turkey, from India, French from Syria, and from Great Britain, — they yielded at evacuation all points : and Egypt was cleared of them about the of Egypt. same time that the Northern Powers were signing o o their pacific convention. 2 Parliament voted a monument in St. Paul’s Cathedral to the memory of Sir Ralph Abercromby ; and his widow was made a peeress, with remainder to her two eldest sons, and a pension of 2000/. a year. Thus was the way partly cleared for the peace which political observers were convinced, so early as the opening of the spring, that Mr. Addington was resolved on. In March, before the recovery of the King had advanced far enough to admit of his receiving Mr. Pitt’s resignation, strong efforts were made to con- tinue Mr. Pitt in office ; but both he and Mr. Addington drew back from such an arrangement. Whether Mr. Pitt was too proud to return otherwise than by the entreaties of his sovereign, and Mr. Addington too well pleased with office to quit it so soon ; or whether it was understood between them that the new minister should make a peace which his predecessor could not consistently propose, was the great political riddle of the day. Mr. Pitt’s On the 14th of March, Mr. Pitt delivered up the seals. 8 resignation. Within a week after, elderly retired statesmen were in conference about the danger of an inglorious peace, — of conces- sions incompatible with the national dignity, — and of exciting in the people expectations of relief which could not be gratified, as any great reduction of military and naval force was a thing not to be thought of while Napoleon was still in the fulness of his 1 Journal of Sir John Moore, in Life. 2 Annual Register, 1801. Chron. 18. 3 Malmesbury Diaries, iv. p. 47. Chap. II.] PEACE ANTICIPATED. 53 pride and power. In the midst of the uncertainty, Mr. Fox was rising daily — lifted up by the heaving and panting desire of the nation for peace . 1 We are told by Lord Malmesbury that he was “ quite paramount ” in parliament, and used very odd language there, hinting at parliamentary reform, and pointing out the na- ture of the constituency of Old Sarum, — “ which, in fact, con- sisted of an old encampment and two or three cottages.” ’ Odd language as this might appear to statesmen who in their contem- plation of politics overlooked the element of the people ; it ap- pealed relevant enough to the millions of sufferers from the pro- traction of the war, who felt that they had not, and could not obtain, any representation of their views and interests in parlia- Notices of M. Otto now occur more frequently. M. Otto was the agent of the French prisoners in England : a danger- Anticipations ous man in the eyes of some politicians, but nevertheless of P eace - often now dining with men in office, or in the friendship of the ministers. As it became known in whispers that Lord Hawkes- bury was the negotiator on the British side, and observed aloud that the Premier’s spirits were rising every day, elderly politi- cians became more and more alarmed ; for Mr. Adding- Mr . Addi ton was “ very weak,” and Lord Hawkesbury was no t0Q - match for M. Otto. Throughout the summer, however, the Pre- mier s spirits continued to rise. He was wont to call this the hal- cyon period of his administration. Abroad, our way was clearing in the Baltic and in Egypt. At home, he was powerfully sup” poited as yet by Mr. Pitt ; and his pious adulation was agreeable to the King, who commended him and visited him : and the Em- peror of Russia sent him a snuff-box and compliments ; and the people cried out more and more for the peace he was going to give them ; and there was, at last, an abundant harvest Talk ofia- once more. It is true, there was talk of an invasion va » ioa - from Boulogne ; and a great display of preparation was ordered ; and Nelson was sent against the French flotilla. But even Nel- son did not succeed ; and yet people were so little alarmed that the Duke of York could not visit the King at Weymouth, be- cause it was so difficult to keep the officers of militia at their posts, and to convince them of danger, that he dared not absent himself for a single day. Probably every one suspected, what the government would fain have kept secret, that negotiations for peace were going on all the while, and on a footing so favorable for Fiance, that it was not likely she should offer violence while she was on. the point of obtaining what she wanted by merely asking for it. I he Prince of Wales formally requested leave to expose himself in the defence of his country, and was desired 1 Malmesbury Diaries, iv. p. 44. 54 PRELIMINARIES SIGNED. [Book I. to keep himself quiet ; professional and commercial gentlemen punctually attended drill ; and Britons sang that they never would be slaves ; and foreign newspapers published all kinds of speculations as to the issue of the impending final conflict of the two great Powers of Europe ; and yet the Premier expressed in letters his grief and alarm because the public were by no means alarmed enough, and were sadly underrating the power and prow- ess of the foe. There was, in fact, an unreality, that time, about the threat of invasion and its reception, very unlike what was felt both before and after ; and the explanation was soon af- forded. In the middle of September, Ministers were rather grave ; Peace nego- and it was known among a few that Napoleon was nations. saucy, and Lord Hawkesbury embarrassed. On the 29th, the Premier was in such unusual spirits, that it might be supposed that all was settled. On the 30th, 1 one of the Ministers, conversing with an old political friend, went over all the affairs of Europe, including those of Great Britain, omitting only the subject of peace or war with France ; from which his experienced Preiimina- friend concluded that all was settled. On the next day, ries signed. the preliminaries were signed in London ; and the news was imparted to the Lord Mayor ; but to nobody else in London, though circulars were sent to many provincial towns. Whatever difference of opinion might be entertained about the fact of the peace, and its terms, it seems as if all reasonable men were at the time ashamed and concerned at the manner in which the fact was received. The King said as little as he could ; but there is a note to Lord Eldon which shows something of his state of feeling Reception by about it. 2 He speaks of the embarrassed situation of the King. the kingdom from its experiment of peace with a revo- lutionary country ; but hopes that with a large peace establish- ment, and the Seditious Meetings and Alien Acts, 64 the experiment may not be attended with all the evils that some persons expect.’’ Lord Eldon himself, though obliged, as Chancellor, to defend the peace in the Lords, wrote miserably to his brother about the state of mind he was in from anxiety about this matter. 3 By states- Mr. Windham would much have preferred invasion men - to this peace, even as he would take the chance of a pistol in preference to that of a dose of poison. Mr. Pitt was believed to have counselled and superintended the whole. The Premier and those of his comrades who agreed with him were in a state of childish exultation, which disgusted moderate men, who saw that the issue must for some time remain doubtful, and that there was, at best, much to regret as well as to appre- 1 Malmesbury Diaries, iv. p. 62. 2 Life of Lord Eldon, i. p. 398. 8 Ibid. p. 392. Chap. II] HOW THE NEWS WAS RECEIVED. 55 hend. As for the people, they were at first bewildered with joy, as might be expected when told to exult by those By tho in high places who were supposed to understand the P e °P le * prospects of peace, without having known much of the personal privations indicted by a state of war. The rise of Stocks, the firing of guns, processions, illuminations, and addresses, were all that the complacent Minister could have desired ; but the hap- piness did not last so long as he could have wished. The rejoic- ings began on the 10th of October. On the 12th took place the ratification of the preliminaries ; and on this occasion a scene was witnessed by half London 1 which the Ministers did not hear of till it was too late to interfere, and which heartily vexed the more able and moderate among them. The agent sent over by Napoleon was Col. Lauriston, a young man of Scotch descent. The people were in a frenzy of delight, unequalled, it is said, since the Restoration of Charles II. They crowded to the house of M. Otto ; and when the French officials came forth to repair to Lord Hawkesbury’s office, for the purpose of signing the rati- fication, the crowd took out the horses, and drew the carriage through the principal streets of the West End: waited while the business was transacted, and then drew the strangers hack again. Col. Lauriston gave ten guineas to the people to drink ; and the sanguine believed and said that the English hatred of Frenchmen was over forever. — So undignified an exhibition was painful enough to those who felt the terms of the peace to be humiliating to England ; but far more trying was the demonstration to a little company of comrades, then in London, of whom nobody B the seems to have thought, — the French emigrants. French emi- Some of the Princes were there ; and at the chapel grants ' and school at Somers Town the children of that unhappy family were taught that their adversity was only for a time ; that royal ideas and feelings must be nourished and cherished in them, in perpetual expectation of their return, by the generous aid of England, to throne and palace, and the enjoyment of the devotion of the penitent French people. And now, in the midst of all this, here was the government making peace with the usurper, without a thought of Bourbon grievances ; and here were the Londoners paying homage in the streets to the usurper’s agents, who were conducting the business ! To the exiles it seemed as if all hope of order and royal supremacy in the world was over ; and they eagerly seized on an omen of retribution, as they con- sidered it. A tremendous thunderstorm burst over London on the night of the illumination. The exiles, in their melancholy homes, were told what had happened at the Admiralty. 2 The 1 Annual Register, 1801, p. 277. 2 Ibid. Chron. 278. 56 SOLE HOPE OE THE EMIGRANTS. [Book I. Crown and Anchor were drenched ; the lights of the Crown were extinguished, while those of the Anchor shone out again. — It was more than the exiles could bear to remain in London ; and they removed to Holy rood, near Edinburgh, there to so’ ace them- selves with the only hope they could now lay to their hearts. The hope was that the unquestioned dictatorship of Napoleon was a preparation for their own return, even as the Protectorate of Cromwell preceded the Restoration of the Stuarts. Charles II. could not have been recalled during the existence of the Commonwealth, nor they during the term of the French Repub- lic. Napoleon was now their Cromwell, and they had only to watch for his downfall. They could hardly be angry with George III. ; for they knew he could not help himself or them. He probably accounted for the act to them as he did to others who sympathized with him : “ Do you know what I call the Peace ? ” he said to Lord Malmesbury : 1 “ an experimental peace ; for it is nothing else. I am sure you think so ; and per- haps you do not give it so gentle a name : but it was unavoida- ble. I was abandoned by everybody : allies, and all.” It was with Pitt that they were most offended. He had coolly declared reasons for superintending this peace which were galling to them. He believed Napoleon to have now satisfied his vast ambition ; he believed that it was the need and desire of F ranee to be tran- quil, and to enjoy her military glory, and to permit her extraor- dinary ruler to consolidate her power by the arts of peace. The irritated exiles had not to wait long for their triumph, as far as Mr. Pitt was concerned. Napoleon presently elected himself President of the Italian Republics, gained possession of Louis- iana and the Floridas across the Atlantic, and condescended to annex to France the island of Elba in the Mediterranean ; all within the space of a few weeks ; so that within half a year, 2 Mr. Pitt was prepared to acknowledge himself complete^ mis- taken, convinced now, as he had been formerly, that Napoleon was an insatiable plunderer, and an adventurer incapable of’ fidel- ity to engagements, and in every way unworthy of reliance. To the last, Mr. Pitt defended the peace on the ground of its neces- sity at home ; hut never more on the ground of possible amity with Napoleon. Before the meeting of Parliament, on the 29th of October, the terms of the peace had become more widely known and more calmly considered than during the first outburst of delight at the removal of the hardships of war ; and the consequence was that Ministers could not meet Parliament altogether so cheerfu ly as they would have done some weeks before. The result of the first 1 Diaries, iv. p. 65. 2 Ibid. p. 67. Chap. II.] TERMS OF TREATY OF AMIENS. 57 debate was the rise of a New Opposition, composed of a small number in each House of men and weight, and of ex- By Pariia- perience in office : the Grenvilles, Lords Fitzwiiliam ment - and Spencer, Mr. Windham, Mr. Elliott, and others. Mr. Fox rejoiced in the peace because it was necessary, and better terms could not have been obtained. Mr. Sheridan expressed a wide- spread feeling in the sentence, “ This is a peace which all men are glad of, but no man can be proud of.” On the whole, it is evident to the reader of the debates of that autumn, that, by all parties, the peace was considered a precarious one ; a breathing time secured for the benefit of the people of England, and the restoration of the finances. Depressing as was this conviction, it served at once to moderate the boastings of the makers of the peace, and to subdue the lamentations of those who were grieved and ashamed at the terms of the treaty. By these terms, 1 Great Britain gave up Egypt to the Porte, the Cape to Batavia, Malta to the Order of St. John Termsoft he of Jerusalem, and all the French colonies she had cap- treaty of tured to France ; and she acquired Ceylon in the East, Atmens * and Trinidad in the West. Even these humble terms were in peril many times before the Definitive Treaty was signed. In November, Lord Cornwallis was sent over to Paris, with great state, as Ambassador Plenipotentiary. On the other side were Talleyrand and Joseph Bonaparte, for whom together, and per- haps separately, Lord Cornwallis was no match, either in vigi- lance or experience. He found himself treated with suspicion, and sometimes with rudeness ; and it was no easy matter to sit by placidly, and witness the assumptions of Napoleon — as of the Presidency of the Italian Republics — while concluding on a peace which took for granted his quietude and moderation. Nothing but the determination at home to avoid war could have justified the prosecution of the treaty under such cir- Definitive cumstances ; but, as it was, the business came to a treaty conclusion at last, at Amiens, whither the negotiation Slgned ' had been transferred from Paris. There, the respective signa- tures concluded the Peace of Amiens on the 27th of March, 1802. On the preceding day, the Duke of York, meeting Lord Ma’mesbury in the street, asked for news. 2 “ Peace, sir, in a week, and war in a month,” was the reply : a reply which reached and pleased the King. At the next drawing-room, he told Lord Malmesbury that he believed the saying would prove a prophecy. Amidst the existence of such distrust, and its growing prevalence, the country could not enjoy much of' the blessings of peace. The people to whom it was most essential, 1 Annual Register, 1802, pp. 94-96. 2 Diaries, iv. p. 72. 58 DISTRUST. [Book I. and who had most joyfully hailed it, felt nothing of the confi- dence and repose which it had promised ; and few but the Min- ister remained smiling and complacent. In him, little change of mood was visible, for it took much to extinguish the smiles and complacency of Mr. Addington. Chap. III.] CATHOLIC DISCONTENT. 59 CHAPTER III. Next to the settling of our affairs with foreign Powers, the greatest subject of anxiety to the government was the . effect of the Union upon Ireland. When, on the first e mon ‘ day of the century, the bells of the churches rang, and the Park and Tower guns were fired as the new Imperial fag was hoisted, there were other feelings than of joy in the minds of the men about the throne, though a great object appeared to have been accomplished. On that day, the King met the Chancellor to receive from him the great seal, and see it defaced, and the new Imperial seal substituted. The Privy Council were sworn in anew ; and proclamation was made of the alteration in the style and title of the sovereign. The word Union was in every mouth ; but that state of the Catholic question which has been already described impaired the confidence of all who knew the circum- stances. No one doubted that the intimidation of the vice-regal government by the great dominant families was over ; and with it, much jobbing at Dublin, and much tyranny on their own estates. No one doubted that vast internal improve- Discontent ments would take place, by which peace and prosper- of the Cath- ity among the people would be promoted. But the ollcs * great religious quarrel was becoming more formidable than ever. By some means never explained, a paper was circulated among the Irish Catholics in the name of Mr. Pitt, in the issue of which he had no share whatever . 1 It appears to have been made up of parts of that “ Letter of Lord C ” which has been re- ferred to, and of statements drawn up by Mr. Dundas and oth- ers, never intended for publication. The “ Lord C ” was Castlereagh, but understood to be Cornwallis, the Viceroy ; and the rest was attributed to Mr. Pitt. This paper set forth the views and wishes and probable conduct of the Catholics in that style of freedom which might be expected in written communi- cations among public men of the same way of thinking ; and it was wholly improper for general circulation at a time so critical. The Catholics believed their cause secure, thus advocated (as they thought) by the Prime Minister and the Viceroy ; while at 1 Lord Malmesbury’s Diaries, iv. p. 30. 60 IRISH PEASANTRY. [Book I the same moment the Sovereign was stiffening himself immov- ably against all concession whatever. The danger from the wrath of the deceived Catholics must be great : and the Union opened under the gloom of this misunderstanding. This was not, however, the greatest danger, threatening as it Of the Re- was. The worst discontent of Ireland at this time was publicans. no t immediately connected with religious feuds. The insufferable oppressions which had caused and followed the rebel- lion of 1798 were resented as vehemently as ever; and those who had desired a republic before and an alliance with France, did not desire these things the less, but the more, for what had happened. The government was blind to this danger for nearly two years after the Union ; and the reason of this blindness was that the priests, who were always supposed to be all-power- ful with the people, were as fiercely opposed to France under Napoleon as the Protestant clergy could have been. Napoleon had humbled the pride and restricted the power of Rome, and the Irish priesthood resented this in a style which misled the government into taking for granted the loyalty of the Irish people. Because no Catholic rebellion was brewing, statesmen supposed that all was well. It is curious now to read the correspondence which passed between the governments in London and Dublin in 1801 and 1802, and compare it with the state of the country and the needs of the people. The fertile parts of Limerick, Cork, and Kerry, and elsewhere, Of the were separated by vast wildernesses, where no roads peasantry existed, and scarcely here and there a path. Swarms of people lived in these wilds, like rabbits in a warren. Not a plough or a cart was to be seen for many miles together ; and the weed-grown mud hovels of the inhabitants could scarcely have been discerned by the stranger, though a hundred might be with- in reach of his eye. But few strangers ventured there. The sol- diery and police could make no way ; and they knew that every man’s mind and hand were against them. Such districts were always the hiding-places of smugglers, thieves, and men in dan- ger from society ; and now, those who had outlawed themselves by their share in the rebellion of 1798 were harbored among the wilds. There was little commerce between the towns and the rural districts, to bind them together, and create mutual interests. The only produce of county Kerry was butter ; and that was carried to Cork on horseback. The proportion of inhabitants employed upon the land was more than double that so employed in England ; while the isolation of the class from the rest of the world was much greater : so that wrong ideas, once introduced among the rural multitude, were irremovable ; and the temp- tation to rule them as slaves or banditti was as strong to the Chap. III.] GOVERNMENT IN IRELAND. 61 land-owners and the government, as it was to hot-blooded and sanguine patriots to make them tools. Nothing had been done to remove from the minds of this portion of the population the dis- contents which had exp’oded in rebellion two years before ; and they did not know that they had anything to do with England but to hate her. The Shannon was flowing through the midst of the island, ready to open, with a little pains, to the custom of the world, 2,000,000 of acres of fertile land ; and nobody stirred to do it. The local authorities had decided and represented, in 1794, that the thing ought to be done ; but nobody was stirring to do it. 1 All that the rural inhabitants knew about England, or about society, was that it hunted down smugglers and the friends of the peasantry, and hanged or shot patriots, and set up churches here and there which the people had to pay for, but could not enter. The small manufacturing and commercial classes of that day were troubled in their own way. They had their political and religious grievances and prejudices, and their Irish tempera- ment and rearing, — all unfavorable to England. — And correspondence with the Irish exiles in France, Temptatl0n8, and solicitations from the tempters sent (as seems really to have been the case) by Napoleon to stir up rebellion, in order to oc- cupy England with a civil war, kept up a constant restlessness, excitement, and inability to acquiesce in any kind of settlement, which were, unfortunately, little understood or apprehended by the government. Lord Hardwicke was the first Viceroy after the Union ; and Mr. Abbott, afterwards Lord Colchester, was Chief The govern- Secretary. Lord Hardwicke arrived in Dublin in ment - May ; and for a considerable time was certainly well satisfied with the results of his government. He endeavored to moderate violence, and keep down tyranny wherever he saw it, and to do justice impartially ; and as he found the Protestants highly polit- ical, and the Catholics, for the most part, a quiet, money-getting sort of people, — like the Jews or any other class under perma- nent political disqualification, — he was naturally popular among the Catholics, and less liked by the noisy Protestants, who found themselves no longer what they were. He and the Secretary thought that while this was the case, all was well ; and they were always writing home that it was so. It is surprising to read their letters now ; and to observe how they endeavor to vary the expression of their assurance that all was quiet, — the people satisfied and happy in the new settlement, and every- thing sure to come right in the shortest possible time, while in- surrection was preparing in the towns, and the rural population 1 Porter's Progress of the Nation, i. p. 26. 62 WRONG IDEA FROM IRISH QUIETUDE. [Book L was too barbaric to enter into the question at all. 1 The govern- ment believed itself at leisure to occupy itself with military finances, and a system of checks upon military expenditure, and a discrimination between the offices of Lord-Lieutenant and Com- mander of the Forces ; and a distribution of forces, in case of a possible invasion by and by : and again, with a plan for enabling the University of Dublin to print Bibles and Prayer Books ; and again, with plans of greater weight, — for working the mines of Ireland, and improving its inland navigation. Next, the patron- age question occasioned so much disagreement, that Lord Ilard- wicke was on the point of resigning. Amidst the controversies and discussions on the arrangement of the executive powers and legislative business of Ireland, these rulers went on saying that all was well, and that nothing could be more rapid than the process by which the Union was producing its fruits. During this period, however, the coercion laws under which Ireland had smarted from the time of the rebellion were perpetuated : not only was the Act for the suppression of rebellion renewed in the spring of 1801, but that for the continuance of martial law. When English members of the House of Commons suggested that no country could attain a safe and wholesome condition which was under a perpetuated martial law, Irish members assured them that they did not understand Ireland : and this, again, could not tend to make the Irish in love with the English connection 2 By the autumn, when peace was agreed on, the Premier was himself disposed to disuse martial law in Ireland, and to promise its removal on the signature of the Definitive treaty. In 1802, it was not to be described (the ministers said) how Opinions of we ^ everything was going on. Not one member of the govern- parliament lost his seat in consequence of having ad- vocated the Union ; and therefore all Ireland must be satisfied with it. The effect of the presence of good soldiery from England was evident and remarkable ; their discipline was admired by the people ; and they seemed to spread quietness wherever they were stationed. This was probably true. In August, 1802, however, Lord Redesdale, the Irish Chancellor, 8 wrote a letter to the Premier, which indicates that the security and complacency of the vice-regal government were shaken at last. u When I first came to this country,” says Lord Redesdale, “ I was induced to form an opinion which I communicated to you, that it was approaching rapidly to a state of quiet. I am ex- tremely sorry to say that I fear I have led you into an error in that respect.” The letter goes on to intimate that, amidst the 1 Life of Lord Sidmouth, i. p. 433. 2 Ibid. p. 483. 3 Ibid. ii. p. 96. Chap. III.] .FRENCH EFFORTS IN IRELAND. 63 apparent tranquillity, there was deep disaffection among the lower orders ; and that it was only the fear of consequences which kept them from breaking out into rebellion. It needs in- deed only to glance at the chronicles of the time to perceive that, while the newspapers were boasting of the results of the Union, as shown already in an improvement of manufactures and com- merce, which would place the Irish high among the nations, the misery of the peasantry was such as to dismay the passing trav- eller, and the violence of the miserable such as to terrify those who saw the glance and heard the voice in which the threats were conveyed. From the time of the Peace of Amiens, men who had fled to France after the last rebellion began to drop back into French Ireland ; and there seems every reason to believe that tam P eri ng. Napoleon made use of them to excite a civil war, and afforded them aid in the attempt. An unusual number of Frenchmen was observed to have business in Ireland towards the close of 1802. They were sprinkled all over the island; and wherever they were, symptoms were observed of a secret understanding among the peasantry ; and night meetings in the wilds became more frequent. An odd circumstance caught the attention of the government about the same time. 1 The French relatives of a gentleman who died in Ireland during the war, desiring to have an attestation of the fact, sent documents to a party concerned, with instructions to authenticate them before the commercial agent of the French government in Dublin, M. Fauvelet. The reply was that, after the most careful search, no such person was to be found ; and yet M. Fauvelet was corresponding with his government in his official capacity, and dating his letters from Dublin at the time. 2 Moreover, a letter from M. Talleyrand to Fauvelet was intercepted, desiring him to obtain, from the officers of Customs and others whom he could converse with in his commercial character, answers to a set of enclosed queries, about the military and naval forces then present ; and also “ to procure a plan of the ports, with the soundings and moorings, and to state the draught of water, and the wind best suited for ingress and egress.” The date of this letter was November 17th, 1802. By the close of the year, the country was agitated by rumors of a descent upon Limerick ; and on the renewal of the war with France, it was felt that now, as before, Ireland was the way by which the enemy might best hope to humble England. Mr. Addington had probably no more cordial well-wisher than Napoleon ; not only on account of his general feebleness, but because he was understood to remain in office as an anti-Catholic Minister — as a Minister who made loyalty almost impossible to 1 Annual Register, 1802, p. 196. 2 Life of Lord Sidmouth, ii. p. 164. 64 THE EMMETT CONSPIRACY. [Rook L a vast majority of the Irish people. Napoleon himself however had alienated the Irish Catholics, as has been said, from the French alliance. The projected rebellion of 1803 was protestant and republican ; and hence it> inevitable failure. Disaffected as were millions of the Irish people, few of them put any trust in the French-Irish leaders who proposed to direct the prevalent discontent, or cared for a republican form of government. Hence the impotent character of the catastrophe, in comparison with the amount of political discontent. During the short peace of Amiens, some of the educated Irish, among whom was Curran, went to Paris, full of sympathy for the French republicans, and expecting to witness there such a state of things as they desired to see established in Ireland. Curran, for one, was grieved to the heart at what he saw. u Never was there a scene,” he wrote to his son in October, 1802, 1 “that could furnish more to the weeping or the grinning philosopher ; they might well agree that human affairs were a sad joke . I see it everywhere, and in everything.” Some few young men, however, were either not so disabused, or they hoped that they could manage things better in Ireland. Among these was one who is Relieved to have been admitted to consultation with Napoleon himself. The Court physician at Dublin, Dr. Emmett, who was now just dead, had had two sons, who were The Em- both implicated in the rebellion of 1708. Thomas, the metts - elder, escaped the gallows, and was now in America. Robert was under age, and was not pursued ; and it was he who now saw Napoleon, and became the head of the new conspir- acy. By his father’s death he obtained 2000/. or Plot " ** 3000/., which he devoted to his political purpose. His papers show that a rising was organized throughout Wick- low, Wexford, and Kildare, as well as in remoter districts; and that he had reason to rely on a very extensive support. The same papers show that he was aware at times, to the full extent, of the risk he ran ; and this indicates a fault in his honor which impairs the sympathy that would otherwise be commanded by the lot of one so young, so benevolent, and so ardent, cast into such times. He clandestinely obtained the affections of Curran s youngest daughter ; and deservedly therefore suffered under a restless misery of mind of which the records are very touching. 2 He thanks God for having given him a sanguine disposition ; declares that to this he runs from reflection ; and hopes that if he is to sink into the pit beneath his feet, it will be while he is gazing upwards at the vision of his hopes. He seems to have been so absorbed in his visions of a Platonic republic as never to have thought of the wretchedness to others that he might be 1 Life of Curran, ii. p. 206. 2 Annual Register, 1803, p. 303. Chap. III.] ITS LEADERS AND PROGRESS. 65 creating ; never to have had a moment’s remorse for renewing the horrors of the preceding insurrection ; never even to have considered that it was a grave offence to break up the order and security of social life, without being amply prepared to substi- tute something which might compensate for its temporary loss. But if he did not suffer as he ought from the pangs of conscience, he had not the peace of the calmly devoted ; and it was a mis- take to endeavor, as some do to this day, to make a hero of him, and to speak of him as noble. As he slept on his mattress in the depot where his pikes and gunpowder were stored, he was as much of a tool as they ; and the deep compassion with which we regard such a picture of Robert Emmett can have in it little mixture of respect. He never breathed to Miss Curran a hint of his purposes ; 1 and it was on the eve of the outbreak that he obtained her vows. — The other leaders were a fanatic, other lead- named Russel, an old half-pay officer, who was expect- ers - ing the Millennium, and desired to have a share in bringing it on ; and an agitator, named Quigley, who came over from France with a full purse. Emmett agitated in Dublin ; Russel in the North ; and Quigley in Kildare. An outlaw, named Dwyer, who, with a band of desperate men, infested the Wicklow moun- tains, promised his aid to Emmett, when the enterprise should be fairly begun. When he should see the green flag floating over Dublin Castle, he would bring his men down from their mountains, and overawe the city. It was at Christmas, 1802, that Emmett came over from France ; and the swearing in of the conspirators presently began. Some of the subordinates broke their oath, and gave information to the police as early as February; but the authorities were perplexed by the frequent changes in the plans of the conspirators, and were at last unpre- pared. — Lord Hardwicke thought that more mischief would be done by alarming the country than by letting a contemptible plot, as he considered this, come to a head. He satisfied himself that the North would not stir : 2 he believed, with Lord Rodes- dale, that the discontented in Limerick, though formidable as banditti, were of no account as rebels : he caused a force of soldiery to be sent into Kildare, to keep order there ; and he trusted to the strength of the Dublin garrison for the safety of the capital. This might be all very well ; but some incidents occurred before the outbreak which should have suggested im- mediate vigilance. On the 14th of July, the anniversary of the French revolu- tion, the orderly citizens of Dublin were surprised, 0 i t i* 7 -!! i r . Symptoms and rather alarmed, by the strength of demonstration on the part of the populace. The bonfires were very numerous 1 Edinburgh Review, xxxiii. 291. 2 Life of Lord Sidmouth, ii. p. 207. VOL. I. 5 66 THE RISING. [Book I and very large ; and a rabble rout, such as seldom came forth into the daylight of the principal streets, danced and sang and drank round them. These were too fair a specimen of poor Emmett’s forces. — On the 16th, an explosion in the midst of the city made the windows rattle, and many hearts quake. The gunpowder in Emmett’s depot in Patrick Street had blown up. The police found pikes, and preparations for the manufacture of gunpowder. — The conspirators believed that they had misled the police about how such things happened to be there; 1 and they were confirmed in their hope by the quiescence of the govern- ment ; and especially by the Viceroy remaining at his Lodge in the Park, guarded only by a sergeant and twelve men, and by the absence from town of almost every considerable member of the government. Still, it was necessary to expedite the rising ; or Emmett thought so. The French agents begged for delay, thinking the prospect desperate ; but Emmett pointed out that the militia would soon be embodied; and the haymakers and reapers now thronging into the neighborhood of Dublin, would be gone home. He did not consider that these country forces had no common interest with him. They cared for their religion, and he was Protestant. He wanted a republic; and they knew and cared nothing about such things. They might be ready for uproar ; but by no means for achieving a political revolution. One circumstance which determined the moment of rising was, that the Eve of St. James fell on a Saturday, this year. On the Eve of St. James, the people dress the graves in the church of St. James with flowers and green. Numbers would be abroad for this purpose ; and numbers more because it was market-day, when wages were paid and spent. On that Saturday, the 23d of July, the outbreak was to begin. It began; and within an hour, Emmett was a horror-struck fugitive. In the evening, the inhabitants of St. James’s Street saw some men distributing pikes among the peasantry who thronged the streets. 2 The residents put up their shutters, and barred their doors. If any messenger went to the barracks, half a mile off, where there were 4000 soldiers, no sol- dier or police appeared. Presently, at dusk, some horsemen gal- loped through the principal streets ; and the mob grew violent. A manufacturer, named Clarke, who employed many operatives, addressed the people on meeting them in his evening ride ; but they would not listen to him ; so he hastened to the Cast!*, to give the alarm. On returning, one of his own men brought him down from his horse by a shot, which was severe but not mortal. At this moment a rocket was sent up, and a cannon fired ; and at the signal, Emmett and his Central Committee came forth from the 1 Hansard, i. p. 740. 2 Annual Register, 1803, p. 504. Chap. III.] MURDER OF LORD KIL WARDEN. G7 depot. The leader drew his sword, and put himself at the head of the rioters, to go and take the Castle. But they would not go to the Castle, nor where they must meet the soldiery. They shot Colonel Brown, who was going to his post, cried out for plunder, mobbed the whisky shops, and proved themselves so ungovernable that Emmett and his comrades left them, and had no resource but to hide themselves among the Wicklow mountains. The rioters shot a corporal on guard at the debtor’s prison, and a dra- goon who was carrying a message, and an outpost of infantry, which they surprised. — One more murder they committed before they were put down. At about ten o’clock, they seemed at last willing to do what their leaders had required of them at first — to attack the Castle. They formed in a column, and had passed from St. James’s Street into Thomas Street, when the attention of some of them was attracted by the rapid driving of a carriage in their rear. Some knew the carriage to be that of the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Kii- Lord Kilwarden — the best of the Irish judges — warden, mild as he was upright. He was old; and he appears to have been so far shaken by the horrors of the preceding rebellion as to have been in constant fear of his life for the intervening five years. Till lately, he had never spent a night out of Dublin dur- ing all that time. Of late, he had gone out to his country-seat, nearly four miles from Dublin, from the Saturday till Monday ; and this he had done to-day. In the evening, reports arrived that an army of rebels was attacking Dublin. If he had remained quiet, all would have been well with him ; but his only thought was to take refuge in Dublin. He desired his daughter, and his nephew, a clergyman, to go with him. There were two ways to the Castle, after reaching the city. If he had gone by the bar- racks, he would have been safe ; but he decided for the shorter and more populous way by St. James’s and Thomas Streets ; and thus he drove into the very midst of the danger, while the inhab- itants of the other route heard nothing of the riot till the next morning. — When the carriage entered St. James’s Street at one end, the mob were leaving it at the other. They turned back, and seized upon the carriage. The Chief Justice declared his name, and begged for mercy; but the savages said they must kill the two gentlemen, sparing the lady. They dragged all three from the carriage, made a way through the whole length of their column for the frantic daughter to escape, and thrust their pikes through and through the bodies of the old man and his nephew, fighting with one another for precedence in the act. Miss Wolfe ran through the streets in the dark till she found herself at the Castle, where her appearance told the tale, frightfully enough. The military quickened their movements, and by half-past ten 68 FATE OF THE LEADERS. [Book I. were down upon the insurgents, who were dispersed without a struggle. Lord Kilwarden still breathed ; and he lived half an hour longer. Mr. Wolfe lay dead, some yards from the spot where the carriage was stopped. Some one said, within the hear- ing of the dying man, that the assassins should be executed the next day ; on which, the upright Judge exerted himself to speak once more. “ Murder must be punished/’ he said ; “ but let no man suffer for my death but on a fair trial, and by the laws of his country.” The number of lives lost otherwise than by murder does not Results appear to have been ascertained : 1 — nearly twenty, it is said, of soldiers and volunteers, and probably about fifty of the insurgents. An escaped prisoner of the rebels, who had been shut up in the depot after the explosion, showed the way ; and the lane leading to it was found strewed with pikes. Within, were stores of ball cartridges, hand-grenades, powder, some uniforms, and a batch of printed sheets, wet from the press, which bore the proclamation of the Provisional Government ; of those lost men who were now pressing on towards the Wicklow mountains, to hide themselves from pursuit. These ill-judging leaders pretended in their wandering to be French officers ; and the consequence was that the Catholic peasantry, who hated the French for the Pope’s sake, would have nothing to say to them. Poor Emmett might have escaped by sea, but he could not go till he had once more seen Sarah Curran. He stole back into Dub- lin, and was apprehended near her residence. It was not till now that her afflicted father knew of the attachment. 2 In letters, written immediately before his execution, Emmett acknowledged his misconduct in regard to the Currans. He met his death with composure. His epitaph is known to all as Moore’s mournful song, “ 0 ! breathe not his name.” Sarah Curran died of linger- ing heart-break. Most of the leaders of the enterprise were ap- prehended, and some hanged. Russel was executed. Quigley was exiled, after making a full confession. This rebellion is sometimes called insignificant ; or it is said to be rendered important only by the murder of Lord Kilwarden. But the truest and most intelligent friends of Ireland saw the matter very differently ; and the survivors of them hold their opinion to this day. This outbreak disclosed (by means of the documents that were seized in consequence) an amount and ex- tent of Irish discontent of which the most clear-sighted had before been unaware. The outbreak rudely checked the course of im- provement which had obviously made a fair start after the Union ; and the event and the documents together brought on a new’ 1 Annual Register, 1803, p. 308. 2 Life of Curran, ii. pp. 235, 238. Chap. IIL] RESULTS OF THE REBELLION. 69 series of Coercion Acts, under which few of the objects of the Union could go forward at all. On the 28th of July — at the earliest moment, in those days of a slow post — the King sent down a message to par- Coercion Lament, 1 notifying that insurrection had again appeared in Ireland, and expressing his reliance that parliament would take measures for protecting the innocent, and restoring tranquillity. Two bills were immediately brought into the Commons ; one for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus in Ireland, and the other for enabling the Viceroy to try the prisoners by martial law. Both bills were passed through all their stages in the Commons before ten o’clock the same night ; and in the Lords before eleven ; the standing orders, which would have caused delay, being suspended in consideration of the emergency. When par- liament reassembled on the 2 2d of November, the royal Speech announced that the Irish conspirators 2 had been brought to jus- tice ; and one of the earliest acts of the session was to renew the term of operation of the coercion bills of July. Year after year was the coercion continued ; and mournful was the state of the unhappy country where all was to have gone on well after the Union. — In 1803, Lord Redesdale, the Chancellor, wrote letters to Lord Fingall, about the Catholics, which by some means became public in January, 1804. 3 In these letters were contained insults to the Catholic body, doubts of the catholics loyalty of the most eminent Catholic gentlemen, and stirred u p* prejudices on the whole subject so injurious as to cause shame among friends of the government that the second functionary in Ireland should so feel and so speak about the great majority of the population of the island ; and at a moment, too, when, in con- sideration of the anxieties of the State, the leading Catholics had declined to urge their claims at present. The popular exaspera- tion was naturally strong. The Catholic question, before in abeyance, was revived in full force ; and it required all the popu- larity of Lord Hardwicke, and all the efforts of the Catholic lead- ers, to secure the quietness of the public meetings held through- out 1804. Then ensued grievous distress to all classes currency from the disappearance of the metallic currency. The troubles - Bank Restriction Act of 1797 had extended to Ireland; but there was not, as in England, any supervision of the issues of the Bank, or any check to private banking. The insecure state of the country caused a hoarding of the metals, at the very time that the island was flooded with paper money. Country banks gave out notes down to the value of half-a-erown ; a spurious coinage of flat morsels of silver was current for a time ; but it 1 Annual Register, 1803. Chron. p. 414. 2 Hansard, i. p. 2. 8 Ibid. ii. p. 151. 70 THE NEW VICEROY. [Book L was suddenly refused at the post-office, and other government offices ; and then tradesmen would not take it. The perplexity and distress of the people were extreme ; and military guards were set on the bakers’ shops, and other places of trade. 1 Be- fore the public peace was fatally broken, government provided a costly supply of dollars and halfpence in rolls, 2 and authorized silversmiths to issue silver tokens, and opened an office for the reception of depreciated money. At the same time, employers paid their workmen by orders on the baker or other tradesmen. Riot was thus obviated, though very barely ; but the manufactur- ing and commercial, and other social progress hoped for from the Union, was grievously retarded. In 1805, the continued suspension of the Habeas Corpus in Ireland was resolved on by large majorities in parliament, 3 though the tranquillity of the country was declared to be still on the in- crease under Lord Hardwicke. In 1806, when parliament had again rejected the petitions of the Catholics, and France was threatening, and all was going ill on the Continent, there was serious fear that Ireland would make Duke of Bed- common cause with France. But she had obtained a ford vice- ruler as mild as Lord Hardwicke, and yet more favor- roy * ing to the mortified classes of the Irish people, in the Duke of Bedford, who, by a change of ministry, became Lord Lieutenant. When a wild outlaw force committed ravage in the north, at the end of 1806, under the name of Threshers, 4 the Viceroy repelled all solicitations to obtain and use Insurrection Acts. He declared his belief that the existing law, properly administered, would suffice for the protection of society ; and he proved that, in that case, it was so. He did what one man could do ; but Mr. Pitt had died without seeing the Catholics righted. He left them sullen and discouraged ; more ready to ask than he to answer how far his expectations of salvation to Ireland from the Union had been accomplished. No one could say that Ire- land would not have been more wretched without the Union ; but neither could it be pretended that it had proved a cure for her woes. 1 Annual Register, 1804, p. 150. 2 Hansard, iv. p. 599. 3 Ibid. iii. pp. 336, 534. 4 Annual Register 1806, p. 263 Chap. IV.] DOUBTS CONCERNING PEACE 71 CHAPTER IV. It has already appeared that the first wild rejoicings at the promise of Peace gave way to misgivings before the treaty was actually concluded. Men in high places never had Precarious . much hope of a lasting peace with Napoleon; and ness of the when their doubts were necessarily manifested by their peace ' public acts, men in low places were at first exasperated, and then alarmed. Soldiers had expected to be sent to their homes, and never to leave them more ; sailors in all distant ports had watched for the signal to weigh for England ; merchants and tradesmen had calculated on the remission of war taxes ; and the laboring classes hoped they had heard the last of press-gangs, and recruit- ing parties, and balloting for the militia : and when disappoint- ment followed immediately on the announcement of peace, there was so much anger and fear, that it did not appear as if the national happiness had as yet gained much. The people were told to wait till the Definitive Treaty was signed ; and then, month after month passed on, and no news came of the conclu- sion of the business, while reports arose, almost every week, of impediments and misunderstandings abroad, and want of cordial- ity among statesmen at home, which made the future as doubtful as ever. — On the 16th of November, 1801, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Vansittart, announced to Parliament that it was thought necessary to continue, for three months longer, the military and naval establishments of the preceding year ; for which purpose upwards of eight millions would be required. The amount was to be raised by means of the land and malt taxes, and a fresh issue of Exchequer bills. The militia force was to remain at 36,000, till the Treaty was signed. In expecta- tion of this event, parliament adjourned from week to week, till the winter holidays were over ; and this method increased the suspense. News arrived that a considerable French fleet had collected, and had shipped 25,000 troops. It was declared that this fleet was only going to bring to order the island of St. Domingo ; but prudence required that such a force should be watched ; and a British fleet collected in Bantry Bay for the purpose, was ordered off to the West Indies, to the blank dismay 72 THE TREATY SIGNED. [Book I of the sailors. They asked what the peace was for, if not to send Bantry Bay soldiers and sailors home ; and they refused to go any- Mutiny. where but to England. A great impression was made on the minds of the poor fellows by their admiral’s (Admiral Mitchell’s) reply when the noise of the mutiny brought him on deck of the Temeraire, to know what was the matter. The Cap- tain told him that the men wanted to know where the ship was going ; when he replied, “ To hell, if she is ordered ; and we must go with her.” 1 The mutineers were tried at Portsmouth ; and when their doom was pronounced, one of them humbly and sorrowfully acknowledged the justice of his sentence; and the others solemnly exclaimed, “ Amen ! ” Twenty of the mutineers were found guilty, and eleven were hanged, in the midst of the preparations for departure to the West Indies. When expectation was almost worn out, in April, the news Signature of came at last ; and the illuminations and other rejoic- the Treaty. i n g S were renewed. The popular jealousy of France seems to have been as strong as ever, judging by what took place before the house of the French Minister, M. Otto, on the night of the illuminations. 2 The word Concord was exhibited in colored lamps over the door ; and the mob, reading this “ Con- quered,” began to riot, in resentment for any Frenchman saying that Britons were conquered. Moreover, the G. R. was not surmounted by a crown, as usual ; and England was not to be supposed republican : so M. Otto bestirred himself to give orders ; and presently, the crown appeared, and the word Amity was substituted for Concord. — The income tax was relinquished by the minister in the same month. — The last stroke was put to the convention with the Northern Powers ; and the people had by this time been told that the expense of the armistice had been 1,000,000/. per week. — The disbanding of the militia and fen- cible troops took place, and that of the regulars was soon to fol- low ; the Secretary at War declared the peace establishment to consist of 121,400 soldiers, which was presently announced to be reduced to little more than 70,000 ; and in June, it was made known that the French government had at length chosen an am- bassador to be sent to London, to begin the new era of peace. The ambassador, M. Andreossi, did not, however, arrive till November, nearly thirteen months after the signing of the pre- liminaries; and meantime, affairs had assumed an, aspect which made the public regard this arrival as nothing better than a symptom of hope that peace might possibly be preserved. One of the most important effects of the peace was that it Foreign opened opportunities of foreign travel to Englishmen, travel. a nd permitted an influx of new ideas, and an enlarge- 1 Annual Register, 1802. App. 554. 2 Annual Register, 1802, p. 181. Chap. IV.] FOREIGN TRAVEL. 73 ment of intellect and sentiment, more wanted then than it is now easy to conceive. The elderly people of our time can scarcely be- lieve now that they ever thought and felt as they were brought up to think and feel about foreigners and their respective countries, and about art and literature, and every subject on which we have now for above thirty years freely communicated with continental nations. We find, in the letters and diaries of fifty years ago, complacent notices of the good effects looked for from the new fancy of the opulent classes for seeing the beauties of our own island.