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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, History of the English People, Volume VIII
+(of 8), by John Richard Green
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8)
+       Modern England, 1760-1815
+
+
+Author: John Richard Green
+
+
+
+Release Date: May 20, 2008  [eBook #25536]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE,
+VOLUME VIII (OF 8)***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Paul Murray, Jacqueline Jeremy, Lisa Reigel, and the
+Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+(https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original maps and links to
+      images of the original pages.
+      See 25536-h.htm or 25536-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/5/3/25536/25536-h/25536-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/5/3/25536/25536-h.zip)
+
+      The index for the entire 8 volume set of _History of
+      the English People_ was located at the end of this
+      volume (Volume VIII). For ease in accessibility, it
+      has been removed and produced as a separate volume
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/25533).
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE
+
+by
+
+JOHN RICHARD GREEN, M.A.
+Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford
+
+VOLUME VIII
+
+MODERN ENGLAND. 1760-1815.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+MacMillan and Co., Ltd.
+New York: The MacMillan Co.
+1896
+
+First Edition, 1879; Reprinted 1882, 1886, 1891.
+Eversley Edition, 1896.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+   BOOK IX
+
+   MODERN ENGLAND. 1760-1815.
+
+
+     CHAPTER II
+                                                           PAGE
+     THE INDEPENDENCE OF AMERICA. 1767-1782                   1
+
+
+     CHAPTER III
+
+     INDUSTRIAL ENGLAND. 1782-1792                           45
+
+
+     CHAPTER IV
+
+     ENGLAND AND REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE. 1792-1801             97
+
+
+     CHAPTER V
+
+     ENGLAND AND NAPOLEON. 1801-1815                        144
+
+
+
+
+MAPS
+
+
+    I. THE COLONIES OF NORTH AMERICA AT THE
+           DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE        _To face p._ 1
+
+   II. EUROPE AFTER THE PEACE OF LUNÉVILLE, 1801         146
+
+  III. EUROPE AFTER THE PEACE OF TILSIT, 1807            158
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE COLONIES OF NORTH AMERICA at the Declaration of
+Independence]
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE INDEPENDENCE OF AMERICA
+
+1767-1782
+
+
+[Sidenote: Growing influence of public opinion.]
+
+The Chatham ministry marked a new phase in the relation of public
+opinion to the government of the State. In 1766 as in 1756 Pitt had been
+called into office by "the voice of the people" at large. But in his
+former ministry the influence he drew from popularity could only make
+itself effective through an alliance with the influence which was drawn
+from political connexion; and when the two elements of the
+administration became opposed the support of the nation gave Pitt little
+strength of resistance against the Whigs. Nor had the young king had
+much better fortune as yet in his efforts to break their rule. He had
+severed them indeed from Pitt; and he had dexterously broken up the
+great party into jealous factions. But broken as it was, even its
+factions remained too strong for the king. His one effort at
+independence under Bute hardly lasted a year, and he was as helpless in
+the hands of Grenville as in the hands of Rockingham. His bribery, his
+patronage, his Parliamentary "friends," his perfidy and his lies, had
+done much to render good government impossible and to steep public life
+in deeper corruption, but they had done little to further the triumph of
+the Crown over the great houses. Of the one power indeed which could
+break the Whig rule, the power of public opinion, George was more
+bitterly jealous than even of the Whigs themselves. But in spite of his
+jealousy the tide of opinion steadily rose. In wise and in unwise ways
+the country at large showed its new interest in national policy, its new
+resolve to have a share in the direction of it. It showed no love for
+the king or the king's schemes. But it retained all its old disgust for
+the Whigs and for the Parliament. It clung to Pitt closer than ever, and
+in spite of his isolation from all party support raised him daily into a
+mightier power. It was the sense that a new England was thus growing up
+about him, that a new basis was forming itself for political action,
+which at last roused the Great Commoner to the bold enterprise of
+breaking through the bonds of "connexion" altogether. For the first time
+since the Revolution a minister told the peers in their own house that
+he defied their combinations.
+
+[Sidenote: Chatham's withdrawal.]
+
+The ministry of 1766 in fact was itself such a defiance; for it was an
+attempt to found political power not on the support of the Whigs as a
+party, but on the support of national opinion. But as Parliament was
+then constituted, it was only through Chatham himself that opinion could
+tell even on the administration he formed; and six months after he had
+taken office Chatham was no more than a name. The dread which had driven
+him from the stormy agitation of the Lower House to the quiet of the
+House of Peers now became a certainty. As winter died into the spring of
+1767 his nervous disorganization grew into a painful and overwhelming
+illness which almost wholly withdrew him from public affairs; and when
+Parliament met again he was unable either to come to town or to confer
+with his colleagues. It was in vain that they prayed him for a single
+word of counsel. Chatham remained utterly silent; and the ministry which
+his guidance had alone held together at once fell into confusion. The
+Earl's plans were suffered to drop. His colleagues lost all cohesion,
+and each acted as he willed. Townshend, a brilliant but shallow
+rhetorician whom Pitt had been driven reluctantly to make his Chancellor
+of the Exchequer, after angering the House of Commons by proposals for
+an increase of the land-tax, strove to win back popularity among the
+squires by undertaking to raise a revenue from America. That a member of
+a ministry which bore Pitt's name should have proposed to reopen the
+question of colonial taxation within a year of the repeal of the Stamp
+Acts was strange enough to the colonists; and they were yet more
+astonished when, on its neglect to make provision for compensating those
+who had suffered from the recent outbreak in due conformity to an Act of
+the British Parliament, the Assembly of New York was suspended, and when
+Townshend redeemed his pledge by laying duties on various objects
+brought into American ports. But these measures were the result of
+levity and disorganization rather than of any purpose to reopen the
+quarrel. Pitt's colleagues had as yet no design to reverse his policy.
+The one aim of the ministry which bore his name, and which during his
+retirement looked to the Duke of Grafton as its actual head, was simply
+to exist. But in the face of Chatham's continued withdrawal, of
+Townshend's death in 1767, and of the increasing hostility of the
+Rockingham Whigs, even existence was difficult; and Grafton saw himself
+forced to a union with the faction which was gathered under the Duke of
+Bedford, and to the appointment of a Tory noble as Secretary of State.
+
+[Sidenote: His resignation.]
+
+Such measures however only showed how far the ministry had drifted from
+the ground on which Pitt took his stand in its formation; and the very
+force on which he had relied turned at once against it. The elections
+for the new Parliament which met in 1768 were more corrupt than any
+that had as yet been witnessed; and even the stoutest opponents of
+reform shrank aghast from the open bribery of constituencies and the
+prodigal barter of seats. How bitter the indignation of the country had
+grown was seen in its fresh backing of Wilkes. Wilkes had remained in
+France since his outlawry; but he seized on the opening afforded by the
+elections to return and offer himself as a member for the new
+Parliament. To the surprise and dismay of the ministers he was returned
+for Middlesex, a county the large number of whose voters made its choice
+a real expression of public opinion. The choice of Wilkes at such a
+moment was in effect a public condemnation of the House of Commons and
+the ministerial system. The ministry however and the House alike shrank
+from a fresh struggle with the agitator. But the king was eager for the
+contest. After ten years of struggle and disappointment George had all
+but reached his aim. The two forces which had as yet worsted him were
+both of them paralysed. The Whigs were fatally divided, and discredited
+in the eyes of the country by their antagonism to Pitt. Pitt on the
+other hand was suddenly removed from the stage. The ministry was without
+support in the country; and for Parliamentary support it was forced to
+lean more and more on the men who looked for direction to the king
+himself. At a moment when all hope of exerting any influence seemed
+crushed by the return of Chatham to power, George found his influence
+predominant as it had never been before. One force of opposition alone
+remained in the public discontent; and at this he struck more fiercely
+than ever. "I think it highly expedient to apprise you," he wrote to
+Lord North, "that the expulsion of Mr. Wilkes appears to be very
+essential, and must be effected." The ministers and the House of Commons
+bowed to his will. By his non-appearance in court when charged with
+libel, Wilkes had become an outlaw, and he was now thrown into prison on
+his outlawry. Dangerous riots broke out in London and over the whole
+country at the news of his arrest; and continued throughout the rest of
+the year. In the midst of these tumults the ministry itself was torn
+with internal discord. The adherents of Chatham found their position in
+it an intolerable one; and Lord Shelburne announced his purpose of
+resigning office. The announcement was followed in the autumn by the
+resignation of Chatham himself. Though still prostrated by disease, the
+Earl was sufficiently restored to grasp the actual position of the
+Cabinet which traded on his name, and in October 1768 he withdrew
+formally from the ministry.
+
+The withdrawal of Chatham however, if it shook the ministry, only
+rendered it still more dependent on the king; and in spite of its
+reluctance George forced it to plunge into a decisive struggle with the
+public opinion which was declaring itself in tumult and riot against the
+system of government. The triumph of Wilkes had been driven home by the
+election of a nominee of the great agitator as his colleague on a fresh
+vacancy in the representation of Middlesex. The Government met the blow
+by a show of vigour, and by calling on the magistrates of Surrey to
+disperse the mobs; a summons which ended in conflicts between the crowd
+and the soldiers, in which some of the rioters were slain. Wilkes at
+once published the letter of the Secretary of State with comments on it
+as a cause of bloodshed; and the ministry accepted the step as a
+challenge to combat. If his comments were libellous, the libel was
+cognizable in the ordinary courts of law. But no sooner had Parliament
+assembled in 1769 than the House of Commons was called to take the
+matter into its own hands. Witnesses were examined at its bar: the forms
+of a trial were gone through; and as Wilkes persisted in his charge, he
+was expelled as a libeller. Unluckily the course which had been adopted
+put the House itself on trial before the constituencies. No sooner was
+the new writ issued than Wilkes again presented himself as a candidate,
+and was again elected by the shire of Middlesex. Violent and oppressive
+as the course of the House of Commons had been, it had as yet acted
+within its strict right, for no one questioned its possession of a
+right of expulsion. But the defiance of Middlesex led it now to go
+further. It resolved, "That Mr. Wilkes having been in this session of
+Parliament expelled the House, was and is incapable of being elected a
+member to serve in the present Parliament"; and it issued a writ for a
+fresh election. Middlesex answered this insolent claim to limit the free
+choice of a constituency by again returning Wilkes; and the House was
+driven by its anger to a fresh and more outrageous usurpation. It again
+expelled the member for Middlesex; and on his return for the third time
+by an immense majority it voted that the candidate whom he had defeated,
+Colonel Luttrell, ought to have been returned, and was the legal
+representative of Middlesex. The Commons had not only limited at their
+own arbitrary discretion the free election of the constituency, but they
+had transferred its rights to themselves by seating Luttrell as member
+in defiance of the deliberate choice of Wilkes by the freeholders of
+Middlesex. The country at once rose indignantly against this violation
+of constitutional law. Wilkes was elected an Alderman of London; and the
+Mayor, Aldermen, and Livery petitioned the king to dissolve the
+Parliament. A remonstrance from London and Westminster mooted a far
+larger question. It said boldly that "there is a time when it is clearly
+demonstrable that men cease to be representatives. That time is now
+arrived. The House of Commons do not represent the people." Meanwhile a
+writer who styled himself Junius attacked the Government in letters,
+which, rancorous and unscrupulous as was their tone, gave a new power to
+the literature of the Press by their clearness and terseness of
+statement, the finish of their style, and the terrible vigour of their
+invective.
+
+[Sidenote: Parliamentary Reform.]
+
+The storm however beat idly on the obstinacy of the king. The printer of
+the bold letters was prosecuted, and the petitions and remonstrances of
+London were haughtily rejected. The issue of the struggle verified the
+forebodings of Burke. If, as Middlesex declared, and as the strife
+itself proved, the House of Commons had ceased to represent the English
+people, it was inevitable that men should look forward to measures that
+would make it representative. At the beginning of 1770 a cessation of
+the disease which had long held him prostrate enabled Chatham to
+reappear in the House of Lords. He at once denounced the usurpations of
+the Commons, and brought in a bill to declare them illegal. But his
+genius made him the first to see that remedies of this sort were
+inadequate to meet evils which really sprang from the fact that the
+House of Commons no longer represented the people of England; and he
+mooted a plan for its reform by an increase of the county members, who
+then formed the most independent portion of the House. Further he could
+not go, for even in the proposals he made he stood almost alone. The
+Tories and the king's friends were not likely to welcome proposals which
+would lessen the king's influence. On the other hand the Whigs under
+Lord Rockingham had no sympathy with Parliamentary reform. As early as
+1769, in his first political publication, their one philosophic thinker,
+Edmund Burke, had met a proposal to enlarge the number of constituents
+by a counter-proposal to lessen them. "It would be more in the spirit of
+our constitution, and more agreeable to the fashion of our best laws,"
+he said, "by lessening the number to add to the weight and independency
+of our voters." Nor did the Whigs shrink with less haughty disdain from
+the popular agitation in which public opinion was forced to express
+itself, and which Chatham, while censuring its extravagance, as
+deliberately encouraged. It is from the quarrel between Wilkes and the
+House of Commons that we may date the influence of public meetings on
+English politics. The gatherings of the Middlesex electors in his
+support were preludes to the great meetings of Yorkshire freeholders in
+which the question of Parliamentary reform rose into importance; and it
+was in the movement for reform, and the establishment of corresponding
+committees throughout the country for the purpose of promoting it, that
+the power of political agitation first made itself felt. Political
+societies and clubs took their part in this quickening and organization
+of public opinion: and the spread of discussion, as well as the
+influence which now began to be exercised by the appearance of vast
+numbers of men in support of any political movement, proved that
+Parliament, whether it would or no, must soon reckon with the sentiments
+of the people at large.
+
+[Sidenote: Publication of debates.]
+
+But an agent far more effective than popular agitation was preparing to
+bring the force of public opinion to bear directly on Parliament itself.
+We have seen how much of the corruption of the House of Commons sprang
+from the secrecy of Parliamentary proceedings, but this secrecy was the
+harder to preserve as the nation woke to a greater interest in its own
+affairs. From the accession of the Georges imperfect reports of the more
+important discussions began to be published under the title of "The
+Senate of Lilliput," and with feigned names or simple initials to denote
+the speakers. The best known reports of this kind were those contributed
+by Samuel Johnson to the _Gentleman's Magazine_. Obtained by stealth and
+often merely recalled by memory, such reports were naturally inaccurate;
+and their inaccuracy was eagerly seized on as a pretext for enforcing
+the rules which guarded the secrecy of proceedings in Parliament. In
+1771 the Commons issued a proclamation forbidding the publication of
+debates; and six printers, who set it at defiance, were summoned to the
+bar of the House. One who refused to appear was arrested by its
+messenger; but the arrest brought the House into conflict with the
+magistrates of London. The magistrates set aside its proclamation as
+without legal force, released the printers, and sent the messenger to
+prison for an unlawful arrest. The House sent the Lord Mayor to the
+Tower, but the cheers of the crowds which followed him on his way told
+that public opinion was again with the Press, and the attempt to hinder
+its publication of Parliamentary proceedings dropped silently on his
+release at the next prorogation. Few changes of equal importance have
+been so quietly brought about. Not only was the responsibility of
+members to their constituents made constant and effective by the
+publication of their proceedings, but the nation itself was called in to
+assist in the deliberations of its representatives. A new and wider
+interest in its own affairs was roused in the people at large, and a new
+political education was given to it through the discussion of every
+subject of national importance in the Houses and the Press. Stimulated
+and moulded into shape by free discussion, encouraged and made conscious
+of its strength by public meetings, and gathered up and represented on
+all its sides by the journals of the day, public opinion became a force
+in practical statesmanship, influenced the course of debates, and
+controlled, in a closer and more constant way than even Parliament
+itself had been able to do, the actions of the Government. The
+importance of its new position gave a weight to the Press which it had
+never had before. The first great English journals date from this time.
+With the _Morning Chronicle_, the _Morning Post_, the _Morning Herald_,
+and the _Times_, all of which appeared in the interval between the
+opening years of the American War and the beginning of the war with the
+French Revolution, journalism took a new tone of responsibility and
+intelligence. The hacks of Grub Street were superseded by publicists of
+a high moral temper and literary excellence; and philosophers like
+Coleridge or statesmen like Canning turned to influence public opinion
+through the columns of the Press.
+
+[Sidenote: Renewed strife with America.]
+
+But great as the influence of opinion was destined to become, it was
+feebly felt as yet; and George the Third was able to set Chatham's
+policy disdainfully aside and to plunge into a contest far more
+disastrous than his contest with the Press. In all the proceedings of
+the last few years, what had galled him most had been the act which
+averted a war between England and her colonies. To the king the
+Americans were already "rebels," and the great statesman whose eloquence
+had made their claims irresistible was a "trumpet of sedition." George
+deplored in his correspondence with his ministers the repeal of the
+Stamp Acts. "All men feel," he wrote, "that the fatal compliance in 1766
+has increased the pretensions of the Americans to absolute
+independence." But in England generally the question was regarded as
+settled, while in America the news of the repeal had been received with
+universal joy, and taken as a close of the strife. On both sides however
+there remained a pride and irritability which only wise handling could
+have allayed; and in the present state of English politics wise handling
+was impossible. Only a few months indeed passed before the quarrel was
+again reopened; for no sooner had the illness of Lord Chatham removed
+him from any real share in public affairs than the wretched
+administration which bore his name suspended the Assembly of New York on
+its refusal to provide quarters for English troops, and resolved to
+assert British sovereignty by levying import duties of trivial amount at
+American ports. The Assembly of Massachusetts was dissolved on a
+trifling quarrel with its Governor, and Boston was occupied for a time
+by British soldiers. It was without a thought of any effective struggle
+however that the Cabinet had entered on this course of vexation; and
+when the remonstrances of the Legislatures of Massachusetts and
+Virginia, coupled with a fall in the funds, warned the ministers of its
+danger, they hastened to withdraw from it. In 1769 the troops were
+recalled, and all duties, save one, abandoned. But with a fatal
+obstinacy the king insisted on retaining the duty on tea as an
+assertion of the supremacy of the mother country. Its retention was
+enough to prevent any thorough restoration of good feeling. A series of
+petty quarrels went on in almost every colony between the popular
+assemblies and the Governors appointed by the Crown, and the colonists
+persisted in their agreement to import nothing from the mother country.
+As yet however there was no prospect of serious strife. In America the
+influence of George Washington allayed the irritation of Virginia; while
+Massachusetts contented itself with quarrelling with its Governor and
+refusing to buy tea so long as the duty was levied.
+
+The temper of the colonists was in the main that of the bulk of English
+statesmen. Even George Grenville, though approving the retention of the
+duty in question, abandoned all dream of further taxation. But the king
+was now supreme. The reappearance and attack of Chatham at the opening
+of 1770 had completed the ruin of the ministry. Those of his adherents
+who still clung to it, Lord Camden, the Chancellor, Lord Granby, the
+Commander-in-Chief, Dunning, the Solicitor-General, resigned their
+posts. In a few days they were followed by the Duke of Grafton, who
+since Chatham's resignation had been nominally the head of the
+administration. All that remained of it were the Bedford faction and the
+dependents of the king; but George did not hesitate to form these into a
+ministry, and to place at its head the former Chancellor of the
+Exchequer, Lord North, a man of some administrative ability, but
+unconnected with any political party, steadily opposed to any
+recognition of public opinion, and of an easy and indolent temper which
+yielded against his better knowledge to the stubborn doggedness of the
+king. The instinct of the country at once warned it of the results of
+such a change; and the City of London put itself formally at the head of
+the public discontent. In solemn addresses it called on George the Third
+to dismiss his ministers and to dissolve the Parliament; and its action
+was supported by petitions to the same effect from the greater counties.
+In the following year it fought, as we have seen, a battle with the
+House of Commons which established the freedom of the press. But the
+efforts of the country failed before the paralysis of political action
+which resulted from the position of the Whigs and the corruption of
+Parliament. The deaths of Grenville and Bedford broke up two of the Whig
+factions. Rockingham with the rest of the party held aloof from the
+popular agitation, and drew more and more away from Chatham as he
+favoured it. The Parliament remained steady to the king, and the king
+clung more and more to the ministry. The ministry was in fact a mere
+cloak for the direction of public affairs by George himself. "Not only
+did he direct the minister," a careful observer tells us, "in all
+important matters of foreign and domestic policy, but he instructed him
+as to the management of debates in Parliament, suggested what motions
+should be made or opposed, and how measures should be carried. He
+reserved for himself all the patronage, he arranged the whole cast of
+administration, settled the relative places and pretensions of ministers
+of State, law officers, and members of the household, nominated and
+promoted the English and Scotch judges, appointed and translated bishops
+and deans, and dispensed other preferments in the Church. He disposed of
+military governments, regiments, and commissions; and himself ordered
+the marching of troops. He gave and refused titles, honours, and
+pensions." All this immense patronage was persistently used for the
+creation and maintenance in both Houses of Parliament of a majority
+directed by the king himself; and its weight was seen in the steady
+action of such a majority. It was seen yet more in the subjection to
+which the ministry that bore North's name was reduced. George was in
+fact the minister through the years of its existence; and the shame of
+the darkest hour of English history lies wholly at his door.
+
+[Sidenote: The Boston tea-riots.]
+
+His fixed purpose was to seize on the first opportunity of undoing the
+"fatal compliance of 1766." A trivial riot gave him at last the handle
+he wanted. In December 1773 the arrival of some English ships laden with
+tea kindled fresh irritation in Boston, where the non-importation
+agreement was strictly enforced; and a mob in the disguise of Indians
+boarded the vessels and flung their contents into the sea. The outrage
+was deplored alike by the friends of America in England and by its own
+leading statesmen; and both Washington and Chatham were prepared to
+support the Government in its looked-for demand of redress. But the
+thought of the king was not of redress but of repression, and he set
+roughly aside the more conciliatory proposals of Lord North and his
+fellow-ministers. They had already rejected as "frivolous and vexatious"
+a petition of the Assembly of Massachusetts for the dismissal of two
+public officers whose letters home advised the withdrawal of free
+institutions from the colonies. They now seized on the riot as a pretext
+for rigorous measures. A bill introduced into Parliament in the
+beginning of 1774 punished Boston by closing its port against all
+commerce. Another punished the State of Massachusetts by withdrawing the
+liberties it had enjoyed ever since the Pilgrim Fathers landed on its
+soil. Its charter was altered. The choice of its Council was transferred
+from the people to the Crown, and the nomination of its judges was
+transferred to the Governor. In the Governor too, by a provision more
+outrageous than even these, was vested the right of sending all persons
+charged with a share in the late disturbances to England for trial. To
+enforce these measures of repression troops were sent to America, and
+General Gage, the commander-in-chief there, was appointed Governor of
+Massachusetts. The king's exultation at the prospect before him was
+unbounded. "The die," he wrote triumphantly to his minister, "is cast.
+The colonies must either triumph or submit." Four regiments would be
+enough to bring the Americans to their senses. They would only be "lions
+while we are lambs." "If we take the resolute part," he decided
+solemnly, "they will undoubtedly be very meek."
+
+[Sidenote: American resistance.]
+
+Unluckily the blow at Massachusetts was received with anything but
+meekness. The jealousies between colony and colony were hushed by a
+sense that the liberties of all were in danger. If the British
+Parliament could cancel the charter of Massachusetts and ruin the trade
+of Boston, it could cancel the charter of every colony and ruin the
+trade of every port from the St. Lawrence to the coast of Georgia. All,
+therefore, adopted the cause of Massachusetts; and all their
+Legislatures save that of Georgia sent delegates to a Congress which
+assembled on the 4th of September at Philadelphia. Massachusetts took a
+yet bolder course. Not one of its citizens would act under the new laws.
+Its Assembly met in defiance of the Governor, called out the militia of
+the State, and provided arms and ammunition for it. But there was still
+room for reconciliation. The resolutions of the Congress had been
+moderate, for Virginia was the wealthiest and most influential among
+the States who sent delegates, and though resolute to resist the new
+measures of the government, Virginia still clung to the mother country.
+At home the merchants of London and Bristol pleaded loudly for
+reconciliation; and in January 1775 Chatham again came forward to avert
+a strife he had once before succeeded in preventing. With characteristic
+largeness of feeling he set aside all half-measures or proposals of
+compromise. "It is not cancelling a piece of parchment," he insisted,
+"that can win back America: you must respect her fears and her
+resentments." The bill which he introduced in concert with Franklin
+provided for the repeal of the late Acts and for the security of the
+colonial charters, abandoned the claim of taxation, and ordered the
+recall of the troops. A colonial assembly was directed to meet and
+provide means by which America might contribute towards the payment of
+the public debt.
+
+[Sidenote: Washington.]
+
+Chatham's measure was contemptuously rejected by the Lords, as was a
+similar measure of Burke's by the House of Commons, and a petition of
+the City of London in favour of the Colonies by the king himself. With
+the rejection of these efforts for conciliation began the great struggle
+which ended eight years later in the severance of the American Colonies
+from the British Crown. The Congress of delegates from the Colonial
+Legislatures at once voted measures for general defence, ordered the
+levy of an army, and set George Washington at its head. No nobler figure
+ever stood in the forefront of a nation's life. Washington was grave and
+courteous in address; his manners were simple and unpretending; his
+silence and the serene calmness of his temper spoke of a perfect
+self-mastery. But there was little in his outer bearing to reveal the
+grandeur of soul which lifts his figure with all the simple majesty of
+an ancient statue out of the smaller passions, the meaner impulses, of
+the world around him. What recommended him for command was singly his
+weight among his fellow-landowners of Virginia, and the experience of
+war which he had gained by service in border contests with the French
+and the Indians, as well as in Braddock's luckless expedition against
+Fort Duquesne. It was only as the weary fight went on that the colonists
+discovered, however slowly and imperfectly, the greatness of their
+leader, his clear judgement, his heroic endurance, his silence under
+difficulties, his calmness in the hour of danger or defeat, the patience
+with which he waited, the quickness and hardness with which he struck,
+the lofty and serene sense of duty that never swerved from its task
+through resentment or jealousy, that never through war or peace felt the
+touch of a meaner ambition, that knew no aim save that of guarding the
+freedom of his fellow-countrymen, and no personal longing save that of
+returning to his own fireside when their freedom was secured. It was
+almost unconsciously that men learned to cling to Washington with a
+trust and faith such as few other men have won, and to regard him with a
+reverence which still hushes us in presence of his memory. But even
+America hardly recognised his real greatness while he lived. It was only
+when death set its seal on him that the voice of those whom he had
+served so long proclaimed him "the man first in war, first in peace, and
+first in the hearts of his fellow-countrymen."
+
+[Sidenote: Declaration of Independence,]
+
+Washington more than any of his fellow-colonists represented the
+clinging of the Virginian landowners to the mother country, and his
+acceptance of a military command proved that even the most moderate
+among the colonists had no hope now save in arms. The struggle opened
+with a skirmish between a party of English troops and a detachment of
+militia at Lexington on the nineteenth of April 1775; and in a few days
+twenty thousand colonists appeared before Boston. The Congress
+reassembled, declared the States they represented "The United Colonies
+of America," and undertook the work of government. Meanwhile ten
+thousand fresh English troops landed at Boston. But the provincial
+militia, in number almost double that of the British force which
+prepared to attack them, seized a neck of ground which joins Boston to
+the mainland; and though on the 17th of June they were driven from the
+heights of Bunker's Hill which commanded the town, it was only after a
+desperate struggle in which their bravery put an end for ever to the
+taunts of cowardice which had been levelled against the colonists. "Are
+the Yankees cowards?" shouted the men of Massachusetts as the first
+English attack rolled back baffled down the hill-side. But a far truer
+courage was shown in the stubborn endurance with which Washington's raw
+militiamen, who gradually dwindled from sixteen thousand to ten,
+ill-fed, ill-armed, and with but forty-five rounds of ammunition to each
+man, cooped up through the winter a force of ten thousand veterans in
+the lines of Boston. The spring of 1776 saw them force these troops to
+withdraw from the city to New York, where the whole British army,
+largely reinforced by mercenaries from Germany, was concentrated under
+General Howe. Meanwhile a raid of the American General Arnold nearly
+drove the British troops from Canada; and though his attempt broke down
+before Quebec, it showed that all hope of reconciliation was over. The
+colonies of the south, the last to join in the struggle, had in fact
+expelled their Governors at the close of 1775; at the opening of the
+next year Massachusetts instructed its delegates to support a complete
+repudiation of the king's government by the Colonies; while the American
+ports were thrown open to the world in defiance of the Navigation Acts.
+These decisive steps were followed by the great act with which American
+history begins, the adoption on the 4th of July 1776 by the delegates in
+Congress after a fierce resistance from those of Pennsylvania and South
+Carolina, and in spite of the abstention of those of New York, of a
+Declaration of Independence. "We," ran its solemn words, "the
+representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
+appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our
+intentions, solemnly publish and declare that these United Colonies are,
+and of right ought to be, Free and Independent States."
+
+[Sidenote: Saratoga.]
+
+But the earlier successes of the colonists were soon followed by
+suffering and defeat. Howe, an active general with a fine army at his
+back, cleared Long Island in August by a victory at Brooklyn; and
+Washington, whose force was weakened by withdrawals and defeat and
+disheartened by the loyal tone of the State in which it was encamped,
+was forced in the autumn of 1776 to evacuate New York and New Jersey,
+and to fall back first on the Hudson and then on the Delaware. The
+Congress prepared to fly from Philadelphia, and a general despair showed
+itself in cries of peace. But a well-managed surprise and a daring march
+on the rear of Howe's army restored the spirits of Washington's men, and
+forced the English general in his turn to fall back on New York.
+England however was now roused to more serious efforts; and the
+campaign of 1777 opened with a combined attempt for the suppression of
+the revolt. An army which had assembled in Canada under General Burgoyne
+marched in June by way of the Lakes to seize the line of the Hudson.
+Howe meanwhile sailed up the Chesapeake and advanced on Philadelphia,
+the temporary capital of the United States and the seat of the Congress.
+The rout of his little army of seven thousand men at Brandywine forced
+Washington to abandon Philadelphia, and after a bold but unsuccessful
+attack on his victors to retire into winter quarters on the banks of the
+Schuylkill, where the unconquerable resolve with which he nerved his
+handful of beaten and half-starved troops to face Howe's army in their
+camp at Valley Forge is the noblest of his triumphs. But in the north
+the war had taken another colour. Burgoyne's movement had been planned
+in view of a junction with at least a part of Howe's army from New York;
+a junction which would have enabled him to seize the line of the Hudson
+and thus cut off New England from her sister provinces. But Howe was
+held fast by Washington's resistance and unable to send a man to the
+north; while the spirit of New England, which had grown dull as the war
+rolled away from its borders, quickened again at the news of invasion
+and of the outrages committed by the Indians employed among the English
+troops. Its militia hurried from town and homestead to a camp with
+which General Gates had barred the road to Albany; and after a fruitless
+attack on the American lines, Burgoyne saw himself surrounded on the
+heights of Saratoga. On the 17th of October his whole force was
+compelled to surrender.
+
+[Sidenote: France and America.]
+
+The news of this calamity gave force to the words with which Chatham at
+the very time of the surrender was pressing for peace. "You cannot
+conquer America," he cried when men were glorying in Howe's successes
+over Washington. "If I were an American as I am an Englishman, while a
+foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my
+arms--never, never, never!" Then, in a burst of indignant eloquence he
+thundered against an outrage which was at that moment nerving New
+England to its rally against Burgoyne, the use of the Indian with his
+scalping-knife as an ally of England against her children. The proposals
+which Chatham brought forward might perhaps in his hands even yet have
+drawn America and the mother country together. His plan was one of
+absolute conciliation. He looked forward to a federal union between the
+settlements and Great Britain which would have left the Colonies
+absolutely their own masters in all matters of internal government, and
+linked only by ties of affection and loyalty to the general body of the
+Empire. But the plan met with the same scornful rejection as his
+previous proposals. Its rejection was at once followed by the news of
+Saratoga, and by the yet more fatal news that this disaster had roused
+the Bourbon Courts to avenge the humiliation of the Seven Years' War.
+Crippled and impoverished as she was at its close, France could do
+nothing to break the world-power which was rising in front of her; but
+in the very moment of her defeat, the foresight of Choiseul had seen in
+a future straggle between England and her Colonies a chance of ruining
+the great fabric which Pitt's triumphs had built up. Nor was Pitt blind
+to the steady resolve of France to renew the fight. In every attempt
+which he had made to construct a Ministry he had laid down as the
+corner-stone of his foreign policy a renewal of that alliance with the
+Protestant States of North Germany against the House of Bourbon which
+could alone save England from the dangers of the Family Compact. But his
+efforts had been foiled alike by the resistance of the king, the timid
+peacefulness of the Whigs, and at last by the distrust of England which
+had been rooted in the mind of Frederick the Great through the treachery
+of Lord Bute.
+
+[Sidenote: Death of Chatham.]
+
+The wisdom of his policy was now brought home by the coming of the
+danger he had foreseen when the foresight of Choiseul was justified by
+the outbreak of strife between England and America. Even then for a
+while France looked idly on. Her king, Lewis the Sixteenth, was averse
+from war; her treasury was empty; her government, scared by the growth
+of new movements towards freedom about it, and fearful of endangering
+the monarchy by the encouragement these would receive from a union with
+the revolted Colonies, still doubted whether America had any real power
+of resisting Britain. It was to no purpose that from the moment when
+they declared themselves independent, the United States called on France
+for aid; or that Franklin pressed their appeal on its government. A year
+in fact passed without any decisive resolution to give aid to the
+colonists. But the steady drift of French policy and the passion of the
+French people pressed heavier every day on the hesitation of their
+government; and the news of Saratoga forced its hand. The American
+envoys at last succeeded in forming an alliance; and in February 1778 a
+treaty offensive and defensive was concluded between France and America.
+Lord North strove to meet the blow by fresh offers of conciliation, and
+by a pledge to renounce for ever the right of direct taxation over the
+Colonies; but he felt that such offers were fruitless, that the time for
+conciliation was past, while all hope of reducing America by force of
+arms had disappeared. In utter despair he pressed his resignation on the
+king. But George was as obstinate for war as ever; and the country,
+stung to the quick by the attack of France, backed passionately the
+obstinacy of the king. But unlike George the Third, it instinctively
+felt that if a hope still remained of retaining the friendship of the
+Colonies and of baffling the efforts of the Bourbons, it lay in Lord
+Chatham; and in spite of the king's resistance the voice of the whole
+country called him back to power. The danger indeed which had scared
+Lord North into resignation, and before which a large party of the Whigs
+now advocated the acknowledgement of American independence, only woke
+Chatham to his old daring and fire. He had revolted from a war against
+Englishmen. But all his pride in English greatness, all his confidence
+in English power, woke afresh at the challenge of France. His genius saw
+indeed in the new danger a means of escape from the old. He would have
+withdrawn every soldier from America, and flung the whole force of
+Britain into the conflict with France. He believed that in the splendour
+of triumphs over her older enemy England might be brought to terms of
+amity which would win back the Colonies, and that the English blood of
+the colonists themselves would be quickened to a fresh union with the
+mother country by her struggle against a power from which she had so
+lately rescued them. Till such a trial had been made, with all the
+advantages that the magic of his name could give it in England and
+America alike, he would not bow to a need that must wreck the great
+Empire his hand had built up. Even at this hour there was a chance of
+success for such a policy; but on the eve of Chatham's return to office
+this chance was shattered by the hand of death. Broken with age and
+disease, the Earl was borne to the House of Lords on the seventh of
+April to utter in a few broken words his protest against the proposal to
+surrender America. "I rejoice," he murmured, "that I am still alive to
+lift up my voice against the dismemberment of this ancient and noble
+monarchy. His Majesty succeeded to an Empire as great in extent as its
+reputation was unsullied. Seventeen years ago this people was the terror
+of the world." He listened impatiently to the reply of the Duke of
+Richmond, and again rose to his feet. But he had hardly risen when he
+pressed his hand upon his heart, and falling back in a swoon was borne
+home to die.
+
+[Sidenote: England against Europe.]
+
+How well founded was Chatham's faith in the power of Britain was seen in
+the strife that now opened. From the hour of his death England entered
+on a conflict with enemies whose circle gradually widened till she stood
+single-handed against the world. At the close of 1778 the Family Compact
+bore its full fruit; Spain joined the league of France and America
+against her; and in the next year the joint fleets of the two powers
+rode the masters of the Channel. They even threatened a descent on the
+English coast. But dead as Chatham was, his cry woke a new life in
+England. "Shall we fall prostrate," he exclaimed with his last breath,
+"before the House of Bourbon?" and the divisions which had broken the
+nation in its struggle with American liberty were hushed in the presence
+of this danger to its own existence. The weakness of the Ministry was
+compensated by the energy of England itself. For three years, from 1779
+to 1782, General Elliott held against famine and bombardment from a
+French and Spanish army the rock fortress of Gibraltar. Although a
+quarrel over the right of search banded Holland and the Courts of the
+North in an armed neutrality against her, and added the Dutch fleet to
+the number of her assailants, England held her own at sea. In her
+Eastern dependency, where France sought a counterpoise to the power of
+Britain in that of the Mahrattas, freebooters of Hindoo blood whose
+tribes had for a century past carried their raids over India from the
+hills of the Western coast, and founded sovereignties in Guzerat, Malwa,
+and Tanjore, the tenacity and resource of Warren Hastings, the first
+Governor-General of British India, wrested victory from failure and
+defeat. Though the wide schemes of conquest which he formed were for the
+moment frustrated, the annexation of Benares, the extension of British
+rule along the Ganges, the reduction of Oudh to virtual dependence, the
+appearance of English armies in Central India, and the defeat of the
+Sultan of Mysore, laid the foundation of an Indian Empire which his
+genius was bold enough to foresee. Even in America the fortune of the
+war seemed for a while to turn. After Burgoyne's surrender the English
+generals had withdrawn from Pennsylvania, and bent all their efforts on
+the Southern States, where a strong Royalist party still existed. The
+capture of Charlestown and the successes of Lord Cornwallis in 1780 were
+rendered fruitless by the obstinate resistance of General Greene; but
+the United States remained weakened by bankruptcy and unnerved by hopes
+of aid from France.
+
+[Sidenote: America and Ireland.]
+
+Hardly a year however had passed when the face of the war in America was
+changed by a terrible disaster. Foiled in an attempt on North Carolina
+by the refusal of his fellow-general, Sir Henry Clinton, to assist him,
+Cornwallis fell back in 1781 on Virginia, and entrenched himself in the
+lines of York Town. A sudden march of Washington brought him to the
+front of the English troops at a moment when the French fleet held the
+sea, and the British army was driven by famine in October to a surrender
+as humiliating as that of Saratoga. The news fell like a thunderbolt on
+the wretched Minister, who had till now suppressed at his master's order
+his own conviction of the uselessness of further bloodshed. Opening his
+arms and pacing wildly about the room, Lord North exclaimed, "It is all
+over," and resigned. At this moment indeed the country seemed on the
+brink of ruin. Humiliating as it was, England could have borne fifty
+such calamities as the surrender at York Town. But in the very crisis of
+the struggle with America she found herself confronted with a danger
+nearer home. The revolt of one great dependency brought with it a
+threatened revolt from another. In Ireland, as in the Colonies, England
+had shrunk from carrying out either a national or an imperial policy.
+She might have recognised Ireland as a free nationality, and bound it to
+herself by federal bonds; or she might have absorbed it, as she had
+absorbed Scotland, into the general mass of her own national life. With
+a perverse ingenuity she had not only refrained from taking either of
+these courses, but she had deliberately adopted the worst features of
+both. Ireland was absolutely subject to Britain, but she formed no part
+of it, she shared neither in its liberty nor its wealth. But on the
+other hand she was allowed no national existence of her own. While all
+the outer seeming of national life was left, while Ireland possessed in
+name an army, a Parliament, a magistracy, the mass of the Irish people
+was as strange to all this life as the savages of Polynesia. Every
+Catholic Irishman, and there were five Irish Catholics to every Irish
+Protestant, was treated as a stranger and a foreigner in his own
+country. The House of Lords, the House of Commons, the magistracy, all
+corporate offices in towns, all ranks in the army, the bench, the bar,
+the whole administration of government or justice, were closed against
+Catholics. The very right of voting for their representatives in
+Parliament was denied them. Few Catholic landowners had been left by the
+sweeping confiscations which had followed the successive revolts of the
+island, and oppressive laws forced even these few with scant exceptions
+to profess Protestantism. Necessity indeed had brought about a practical
+toleration of their religion and their worship; but in all social and
+political matters the native Catholics, in other words the immense
+majority of the people of Ireland, were simply hewers of wood and
+drawers of water for Protestant masters, for masters who still looked on
+themselves as mere settlers, who boasted of their Scotch or English
+extraction, and who regarded the name of "Irishman" as an insult.
+
+[Sidenote: Irish Government.]
+
+But small as was this Protestant body, one-half of it fared little
+better as far as power was concerned than the Catholics. The
+Presbyterians, who formed the bulk of the Ulster settlers, were shut out
+by law from all civil, military, and municipal offices. The
+administration and justice of the country were thus kept rigidly in the
+hands of members of the Established Church, a body which comprised
+about a twelfth of the population of the island, while its government
+was practically monopolised by a few great Protestant landowners. The
+rotten boroughs, which had originally been created to make the Irish
+Parliament dependent on the Crown, had by this time fallen under the
+influence of the adjacent landlords, whose command of these made them
+masters of the House of Commons while they themselves formed in person
+the House of Peers. To such a length had this system been carried that
+at the time of the Union the great majority of the boroughs lay in the
+hands of a very few families. Two-thirds of the House of Commons, in
+fact, was returned by a small group of nobles, who were recognised as
+"parliamentary undertakers," and who undertook to "manage" Parliament on
+their own terms. Irish politics was for these men a mere means of public
+plunder; they were glutted with pensions, preferments, and bribes in
+hard cash, in return for their services; they were the advisers of every
+Lord-Lieutenant and the practical governors of the country. The results
+were what might have been expected. For more than a century Ireland was
+the worst governed country in Europe. That its government was not even
+worse than it was, was due to its connection with England and the
+subordination of its Parliament to the English Privy Council. The Irish
+Parliament had no power of originating legislative or financial
+measures, and could only say "yes" or "no" to Acts laid before it by
+the Privy Council in England. The English Parliament too claimed the
+right of binding Ireland as well as England by its enactments, and one
+of its statutes transferred the appellate jurisdiction of the Irish
+Peerage to the English House of Lords. Galling as these restrictions
+were to the plundering aristocracy of Ireland, they formed a useful
+check on its tyranny. But as if to compensate for the benefits of this
+protection, England did her best from the time of William the Third to
+annihilate Irish commerce and to ruin Irish agriculture. Statutes passed
+by the jealousy of English landowners forbade the export of Irish cattle
+or sheep to English ports. The export of wool was forbidden lest it
+might interfere with the profits of English wool-growers. Poverty was
+thus added to the curse of misgovernment; and poverty deepened with the
+rapid growth of the native population, a growth due in great part to the
+physical misery and moral degradation of their lives, till famine turned
+the country into a hell.
+
+[Sidenote: The Volunteers.]
+
+The bitter lesson of the last conquest however long sufficed to check
+all dreams of revolt among the native Irish; and the outbreaks which
+sprang from time to time out of the general misery and discontent were
+purely social in their character, and were roughly repressed by the
+ruling class. When political revolt at last threatened English
+supremacy over Ireland, the threat came from the ruling class itself.
+Some timid efforts made by the English Government at the accession of
+George the Third to control its tyranny were resented by a refusal of
+money bills, and by a cry for the removal of the checks imposed on the
+independence of the Irish Parliament. But it was not till the American
+war that this cry became a political danger. The threat of a French
+invasion and the want of any regular force to oppose it compelled the
+Government to call on Ireland to provide for its own defence, and in
+answer to its call forty thousand volunteers appeared in arms in 1779.
+The force was wholly a Protestant one, commanded by Protestant officers,
+and it was turned to account by the Protestant oligarchy. Threats of an
+armed revolt backed the eloquence of two Parliamentary leaders, Grattan
+and Flood, in their demand for the repeal of Poynings' Act, which took
+all power of initiative legislation from the Irish Parliament, and for
+the recognition of the Irish House of Lords as an ultimate Court of
+Appeal. But the Volunteers were forced to bid for the support of the
+native Catholics, who looked with indifference on these quarrels of
+their masters, by claiming for them a relaxation of the penal laws
+against the exercise of their religion and of some of their most
+oppressive disabilities. So real was the danger that England was forced
+to give way. The first demands were in effect a claim for national
+independence. But there were no means of resisting them, for England was
+without a soldier to oppose the Volunteers, while she was pressed hard
+by the league of Europe and America against her. In the face of such a
+rising close at home, it became plain even to the most dogged of Tories
+that it was impossible to continue a strife across three thousand miles
+of sea; and to deal with the attitude of Ireland became even a more
+pressing need of the Ministry which followed that of Lord North than the
+need of dealing with America.
+
+[Sidenote: End of the war.]
+
+The blow which had shattered the attempt of England to wield an
+autocratic power over her Colonies had shattered the attempt of its king
+to establish an autocratic power over England itself. The Ministry which
+bore the name of Lord North had been a mere screen for the
+administration of George the Third, and its ruin was the ruin of the
+system he had striven to build up. Never again was the Crown to possess
+such a power as he had wielded during the past ten years. For the moment
+however there was nothing to mark so decisive a change; and both to the
+king and his opponents it must have seemed only a new turn in the
+political game which they were playing when in March 1782 the Whigs
+returned to office. Rockingham was still at the head of the party; and
+on Rockingham fell the double task of satisfying Ireland and of putting
+an end, at any cost, to the war with the United States. The task
+involved in both quarters a humiliating surrender; for neither Ireland
+nor America would be satisfied save by a full concession of their
+claims. It needed the bitter stress of necessity to induce the English
+Parliament to follow Rockingham's counsels, but the need was too urgent
+to suffer their rejection. The Houses therefore abandoned by a formal
+statute the judicial and legislative supremacy they had till then
+asserted over the Parliament of Ireland; and from this moment England
+and Ireland were simply held together by the fact that the sovereign of
+the one island was also the sovereign of the other. The grant of
+independence to the one great dependency made it easier to recognise the
+freedom of the other. Rockingham in fact took office with the purpose of
+winning peace by a full acknowledgement of the independence of the
+United States, and negotiations were soon entered into for that purpose.
+
+[Sidenote: The Peace.]
+
+But America was bound by its league with the Bourbon Courts to make no
+peace save one common to its allies, and from its allies peace was hard
+to win without concessions which would have stripped from England all
+that remained of her older greatness. With the revolt of Ireland and the
+surrender of Cornwallis the hopes of her enemies rose high. Spain
+refused to suspend hostilities at any other price than the surrender of
+Gibraltar; while France proposed that England should give up all her
+Indian conquests save Bengal. The triumph of the Bourbons indeed seemed
+secure. If terms like these were accepted the world-empire of Britain
+was at an end. Stripped of her Colonies in America, stripped of her rule
+in India, matched on the very ocean by rival fleets, England sank back
+into a European State, into the England of the first Georges. And yet
+there seemed little chance of her holding out against the demands of
+such a league as fronted her at a moment when her military power was
+paralysed by the attitude of Ireland. But the true basis of her
+world-power lay on the sea. It was by her command of the sea that such
+an empire could alone be possible; nor was it possible so long as she
+commanded the sea for all the armies of the Bourbon powers to rob her of
+it. And at this moment the command of the seas again became her own. On
+the 16th of January 1780 Admiral Rodney, the greatest of English seamen
+save Nelson and Blake, encountered the Spanish fleet off Cape St.
+Vincent, and only four of its vessels escaped to Cadiz. At the opening
+of 1782 the triumphs of the French admiral De Grasse called him to the
+West Indies; and on the 12th of April a manoeuvre which he was the
+first to introduce broke his opponent's line, and drove the French fleet
+shattered from the Atlantic. With Rodney's last victory the struggle of
+the Bourbons was really over, for no means remained of attacking their
+enemy save at Gibraltar, and here a last attack of the joint force
+gathered against it was repulsed by the heroism of Elliott. Nor would
+America wait any longer for the satisfaction of her allies. In November
+her commissioners signed the preliminaries of a peace in which Britain
+reserved to herself on the American continent only Canada and the island
+of Newfoundland; and acknowledged without reserve the independence of
+the United States.
+
+[Sidenote: England and the United States.]
+
+The action of America ended the war; and the treaty of peace with the
+United States was a prelude to treaties of peace with the Bourbon
+powers. Their actual gains were insignificant. France indeed won nothing
+in the treaties with which the war ended; Spain gained only Florida and
+Minorca. Nor could they feel even in this hour of their triumph that the
+end at which they aimed had been fully reached. In half their great
+effort against the world-power of Britain they had utterly failed. She
+had even won ground in India. In America itself she still retained the
+northern dominion of Canada. Her West Indian islands remained intact.
+Above all, she had asserted more nobly than ever her command of the sea,
+and with it the possibility of building up a fresh power in such lands
+as Cook had called her to. But at the close of the war there was less
+thought of what she had retained than of what she had lost. She was
+parted from her American Colonies; and at the moment such a parting
+seemed to be the knell of her greatness. In wealth, in population, the
+American Colonies far surpassed all that remained of her Empire; and the
+American Colonies were irrecoverably gone. It is no wonder that in the
+first shock of such a loss England looked on herself as on the verge of
+ruin, or that the Bourbon Courts believed her position as a world-power
+to be practically at an end. How utterly groundless such a conception
+was the coming years were to show. The energies of England were in fact
+spurred to new efforts by the crisis in her fortunes. The industrial
+developement which followed the war gave her a material supremacy such
+as she had never known before, and the rapid growth of wealth which this
+industry brought with it raised her again into a mother of nations as
+her settlers built up in the waters of the Pacific Colonies as great as
+those which she had lost on the coast of America. But if the Bourbons
+overrated their triumph in one way, they immensely underrated it in
+another. Whatever might be the importance of American independence in
+the history of England, it was of unequalled moment in the history of
+the world. If it crippled for a while the supremacy of the English
+nation, it founded the supremacy of the English race. From the hour of
+American Independence the life of the English People has flowed not in
+one current, but in two; and while the older has shown little signs of
+lessening, the younger has fast risen to a greatness which has changed
+the face of the world. In 1783 America was a nation of three millions of
+inhabitants, scattered thinly along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. It
+is now a nation of forty millions, stretching over the whole continent
+from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In wealth and material energy, as in
+numbers, it far surpasses the mother country from which it sprang. It is
+already the main branch of the English People; and in the days that are
+at hand the main current of that people's history must run along the
+channel not of the Thames or the Mersey, but of the Hudson and the
+Mississippi. But distinct as these currents are, every year proves more
+clearly that in spirit the English People is one. The distance that
+parted England from America lessens every day. The ties that unite them
+grow every day stronger. The social and political differences that
+threatened a hundred years ago to form an impassable barrier between
+them grow every day less. Against this silent and inevitable drift of
+things the spirit of narrow isolation on either side the Atlantic
+struggles in vain. It is possible that the two branches of the English
+People will remain for ever separate political existences. It is likely
+enough that the older of them may again break in twain, and that the
+English People in the Pacific may assert as distinct a national life as
+the two English Peoples on either side the Atlantic. But the spirit,
+the influence, of all these branches will remain one. And in thus
+remaining one, before half-a-century is over it will change the face of
+the world. As two hundred millions of Englishmen fill the valley of the
+Mississippi, as fifty millions of Englishmen assert their lordship over
+Australasia, this vast power will tell through Britain on the old world
+of Europe, whose nations will have shrunk into insignificance before it.
+What the issues of such a world-wide change may be, not even the wildest
+dreamer would dare to dream. But one issue is inevitable. In the
+centuries that lie before us, the primacy of the world will lie with the
+English People. English institutions, English speech, English thought,
+will become the main features of the political, the social, and the
+intellectual life of mankind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+INDUSTRIAL ENGLAND
+
+1782-1792
+
+
+[Sidenote: England in the American War.]
+
+That in the creation of the United States the world had reached one of
+the turning-points in its history seems at the time to have entered into
+the thought of not a single European statesman. What startled men most
+at the moment was the discovery that England herself was far from being
+ruined by the greatness of her defeat. She rose from it indeed stronger
+and more vigorous than ever. Never had she shown a mightier energy than
+in the struggle against France which followed only ten years after her
+loss of America, nor did she ever stand higher among the nations than on
+the day of Waterloo. Her internal developement was as imposing as her
+outer grandeur. Weary and disgraceful indeed as was the strife with the
+Colonies, the years of its progress were years of as mighty a revolution
+for the mother country as for its child. The England that is about us
+dates from the American War. It was then that the moral, the
+philanthropic, the religious ideas which have moulded English society
+into its present shape first broke the spiritual torpor of the
+eighteenth century. It was then that with the wider diffusion of
+intelligence our literature woke to a nobler and larger life which
+fitted it to become the mouthpiece of every national emotion. It was
+then that by a change unparalleled in history the country laid aside her
+older agricultural character to develope industrial forces which made
+her at a single bound the workshop of the world. Amidst the turmoil of
+the early years of George the Third Brindley was silently covering
+England with canals, and Watt as silently perfecting his invention of
+the steam-engine. It was amidst the strife with America that Adam Smith
+regenerated our economical, Gibbon our historical, and Burke our
+political literature; and peace was hardly declared when the appearance
+of Crabbe, Cowper, and Burns heralded a new birth of our poetry.
+
+[Sidenote: The religious movement.]
+
+No names so illustrious as these marked the more silent but even deeper
+change in the religious temper of the country. It dates, as we have
+seen, from the work of the Wesleys, but the Methodists themselves were
+the least result of the Methodist revival. Its action upon the Church
+broke the lethargy of the clergy; and the "Evangelical" movement, which
+found representatives like Newton and Cecil within the pale of the
+Establishment, made the fox-hunting parson and the absentee rector at
+last impossible. In Walpole's day the English clergy were the idlest and
+the most lifeless in the world. In our own time no body of religious
+ministers surpasses them in piety, in philanthropic energy, or in
+popular regard. But the movement was far from being limited to the
+Methodists or the clergy. In the nation at large appeared a new moral
+enthusiasm which, rigid and pedantic as it often seemed, was still
+healthy in its social tone, and whose power showed itself in a gradual
+disappearance of the profligacy which had disgraced the upper classes,
+and the foulness which had infested literature ever since the
+Restoration. A yet nobler result of the religious revival was the steady
+attempt, which has never ceased from that day to this, to remedy the
+guilt, the ignorance, the physical suffering, the social degradation of
+the profligate and the poor. It was not till the Wesleyan impulse had
+done its work that this philanthropic impulse began. The Sunday Schools
+established by Mr. Raikes of Gloucester at the close of the century were
+the beginnings of popular education. By writings and by her own personal
+example Hannah More drew the sympathy of England to the poverty and
+crime of the agricultural labourer. A passionate impulse of human
+sympathy with the wronged and afflicted raised hospitals, endowed
+charities, built churches, sent missionaries to the heathen, supported
+Burke in his plea for the Hindoo, and Clarkson and Wilberforce in their
+crusade against the iniquity of the slave trade.
+
+[Sidenote: Howard.]
+
+It is only the moral chivalry of his labours that amongst a crowd of
+philanthropists draws us most to the work and character of John Howard.
+The sympathy which all were feeling for the sufferings of mankind Howard
+felt for the sufferings of the worst and most hapless of men. With
+wonderful ardour and perseverance he devoted himself to the cause of the
+debtor, the felon, and the murderer. An appointment to the office of
+High Sheriff of Bedfordshire in 1774 drew his attention to the state of
+the prisons which were placed under his care; and from that time the
+quiet country gentleman, whose only occupation had been reading his
+Bible and studying his thermometer, became the most energetic and
+zealous of reformers. Before a year was over he had personally visited
+almost every English gaol, and in nearly all of them he found frightful
+abuses which had been noticed half-a-century before, but which had been
+left unredressed by Parliament. Gaolers who bought their places were
+paid by fees, and suffered to extort what they could. Even when
+acquitted, men were dragged back to their cells for want of funds to
+discharge the sums they owed to their keepers. Debtors and felons were
+huddled together in the prisons which Howard found crowded by the
+legislation of the day. No separation was preserved between different
+sexes, no criminal discipline was enforced. Every gaol was a chaos of
+cruelty and the foulest immorality, from which the prisoner could only
+escape by sheer starvation or through the gaol-fever that festered
+without ceasing in these haunts of misery. Howard saw everything with
+his own eyes, he tested every suffering by his own experience. In one
+prison he found a cell so narrow and noisome that the poor wretch who
+inhabited it begged as a mercy for hanging. Howard shut himself up in
+the cell and bore its darkness and foulness till nature could bear no
+more. It was by work of this sort and by the faithful pictures of such
+scenes which it enabled him to give that he brought about their reform.
+The book in which he recorded his terrible experience and the plans
+which he submitted for the reformation of criminals made him the father,
+so far as England is concerned, of prison discipline. But his labours
+were far from being confined to England. In journey after journey he
+visited the gaols of Holland and Germany, till his longing to discover
+some means of checking the fatal progress of the Plague led him to
+examine the lazarettos of Europe and the East. He was still engaged in
+this work of charity when he was seized by a malignant fever at Cherson
+in Southern Russia, and "laid quietly in the earth," as he desired.
+
+[Sidenote: Trial of Hastings.]
+
+In Howard's later labours the new sentiment of humanity had carried him
+far beyond the bounds of national sympathy; and forces at once of pity
+and religion told more and more in begetting a consciousness of the
+common brotherhood of man. Even at the close of the American war this
+feeling had become strong enough to colour our political life. It told
+on the attitude of England towards its great dependency of India.
+Discussions over rival plans of Indian administration diffused a sense
+of national responsibility for its good government, and there was a
+general resolve that the security against injustice and misrule which
+was enjoyed by the poorest Englishman should be enjoyed by the poorest
+Hindoo. It was this resolve which expressed itself in 1786 in the trial
+of Warren Hastings. Hastings returned from India at the close of the war
+with the hope of rewards as great as those of Clive. He had saved all
+that Clive had won. He had laid the foundation of a vast empire in the
+East. He had shown rare powers of administration, and the foresight,
+courage, and temperance which mark the born ruler of men. But with him
+came rumours of tyranny and wrong. Even those who admitted the wisdom
+and glory of his rule shrank from its terrible ruthlessness. He was
+charged with having sold for a vast sum the services of British troops
+to crush the free tribes of the Rohillas, with having wrung
+half-a-million by extortion from the Rajah of Benares, with having
+extorted by torture and starvation more than a million from the
+Princesses of Oudh. He was accused of having kept his hold upon power by
+measures as unscrupulous, and with having murdered a native who opposed
+him by an abuse of the forms of English law. On almost all these charges
+the cooler judgement of later inquirers has acquitted Warren Hastings of
+guilt. Personally there can be little doubt that he had done much to
+secure to the new subjects of Britain a just and peaceable government.
+What was hardest and most pitiless in his rule had been simply a
+carrying out of the system of administration which was native to India
+and which he found existing there. But such a system was alien from the
+new humanity of Englishmen; and few dared to vindicate Hastings when
+Burke in words of passionate earnestness moved for his impeachment.
+
+[Sidenote: The Slave-Trade.]
+
+The great trial lingered on for years; and in the long run Hastings
+secured an acquittal. But the end at which the impeachment aimed had
+really been won. The attention, the sympathy of Englishmen had been
+drawn across distant seas to a race utterly strange to them; and the
+peasant of Cornwall or Cumberland had learned how to thrill at the
+suffering of a peasant of Bengal. And even while the trial was going on
+a yet wider extension of English sympathy made itself felt. The
+hero-seamen of Elizabeth had not blushed to make gain out of kidnapping
+negroes and selling them into slavery. One of the profits which England
+bought by the triumphs of Marlborough was a right to a monopoly of the
+slave-trade between Africa and the Spanish dominions; and it was England
+that had planted slavery in her American colonies and her West Indian
+islands. Half the wealth of Liverpool, in fact, was drawn from the
+traffic of its merchants in human flesh. The horrors and iniquity of the
+trade, the ruin and degradation of Africa which it brought about, the
+oppression of the negro himself, had till now moved no pity among
+Englishmen. But as the spirit of humanity told on the people this apathy
+suddenly disappeared. Philanthropy allied itself with the new religious
+movement in an attack on the slave-trade. At the close of the American
+war its evils began to be felt so widely and deeply that the question
+forced itself into politics. "After a conversation in the open air at
+the root of an old tree, just above the steep descent into the Vale of
+Keston," with the younger Pitt, his friend, William Wilberforce, whose
+position as a representative of the evangelical party gave weight to his
+advocacy of such a cause, resolved to bring in a bill for the abolition
+of the slave-trade. The bill which he brought forward in 1788 fell
+before the opposition of the Liverpool slave merchants and the general
+indifference of the House of Commons. But the movement gathered fresh
+strength in the country with every year; in spite of the absorption of
+England in the struggle with the French Revolution, it succeeded at last
+in forcing on Parliament the abolition of the traffic in slaves; and
+this abolition was followed a few years later by the abolition of
+slavery itself.
+
+[Sidenote: English manufactures.]
+
+Time was to show how wide were the issues to which this religious
+developement and the sentiment of humanity which it generated were to
+tend. But at the moment they told less directly and immediately on the
+political and social life of England than an industrial revolution which
+accompanied them. Though England already stood in the first rank of
+commercial states at the accession of George the Third, her industrial
+life at home was mainly agricultural. The growth of her manufactures was
+steady, but it continued to be slow; they gave employment as yet to but
+a small part of the population, and added in no great degree to the
+national wealth. The wool-trade remained the largest, as it was the
+oldest of them; it had gradually established itself in Norfolk, the West
+Riding of Yorkshire, and the counties of the south-west; while the
+manufacture of cotton was still almost limited to Manchester and Bolton,
+and though winning on its rival remained so unimportant that in the
+middle of the eighteenth century the export of cotton goods hardly
+reached the value of fifty thousand a year. There was the same slow and
+steady progress in the linen trade of Belfast and Dundee, and the silks
+of Spitalfields. But as yet textile manufactures contributed little to
+the national resources; nor did these resources owe much to the working
+of our minerals. The coal trade was small, and limited by the cost of
+carriage as well as by ignorance of any mode of employing coal in
+iron-smelting. On the other hand the scarcity of wood, which was used
+for that purpose, limited the production of iron. In 1750 only eighteen
+thousand tons were produced in England; and four-fifths of its iron
+goods were imported from Sweden. Nor did there seem any likelihood of a
+rapid change. Skilled labour was scarce; and the processes of
+manufacture were too rude to allow any large increase of production. It
+was only where a stream gave force to turn a mill-wheel that the
+wool-worker could establish his factory; and cotton was as yet spun by
+hand in the cottages, the "spinsters" of the family sitting with their
+distaffs round the weaver's hand-loom.
+
+[Sidenote: Canals.]
+
+But even had the processes of production become more efficient, they
+would have been rendered useless by the inefficiency of the means of
+distribution. The older main roads, which had lasted fairly through the
+Middle Ages, had broken down in later times before the growth of traffic
+and the increase of wagons and carriages. The new lines of trade lay
+often along mere country lanes which had never been more than
+horse-tracks, and to drive heavy wains through lanes like these was all
+but impossible. Much of the woollen trade therefore had to be carried on
+by means of long trains of pack-horses; and in most cases the cost of
+carriage added heavily to the price of production. In the case of yet
+heavier goods, such as coal, distribution was almost impracticable, save
+along the greater rivers or in districts accessible from the sea. But at
+the moment when England was just plunging into the Seven Years' War the
+enterprise of a duke and a millwright solved this problem of carriage,
+and started the country on a mighty course of industry which was to
+change both its social and its political character. Francis, Duke of
+Bridgewater, was a shy, dreamy man, whom a disappointment in love drove
+to a life of isolation on his estates in the north. He was the possessor
+of collieries at Worsley whose value depended on their finding a market
+at the neighbouring town of Manchester; and it was to bring his coal to
+this market that he resolved to drive a canal from the mine to the river
+Irwell. With singular good luck he found the means of carrying out his
+design in a self-taught mechanic, James Brindley. But in Brindley's mind
+the scheme widened far beyond the plans of the duke. Canals, as he
+conceived them, were no longer to serve as mere adjuncts to rivers; on
+the contrary, "rivers were only meant," he said, "to feed canals"; and
+instead of ending in the Irwell, he carried the duke's canal by an
+aqueduct across that river to Manchester itself. What Brindley had
+discovered was in fact the water-road, a means of carrying heavy goods
+with the least resistance, and therefore the least cost, from the point
+of production to the point of sale; and England at once seized on his
+discovery to free itself from the bondage in which it had been held.
+From the year 1767, when Brindley completed his enterprise, a network of
+such water-roads was flung over the country; and before the movement had
+spent its force Great Britain alone was traversed in every direction by
+three thousand miles of navigable canals.
+
+[Sidenote: Mineral developement.]
+
+To English trade the canal opened up the richest of all markets, the
+market of England itself. Every part of the country was practically
+thrown open to the manufacturer: and the impulse which was given by this
+facility of carriage was at once felt in a vast developement of
+production. But such a developement would have been impossible had not
+the discovery of this new mode of distribution been accompanied by the
+discovery of a new productive force. In the coal which lay beneath her
+soil England possessed a store of force which had hitherto remained
+almost useless. But its effects were now to make themselves felt. The
+first instance of the power of coal was shown in utilizing the stores
+of iron which had lain side by side with it in the northern counties,
+but which had lain there unworked through the scarcity of wood, which
+was looked upon as the only fuel by which it could be smelted. In the
+middle of the eighteenth century a process for smelting iron with coal
+turned out to be effective; and the whole aspect of the iron-trade was
+at once revolutionized. In fifty years the annual production of iron in
+Great Britain rose from under twenty thousand to more than one hundred
+and seventy thousand tons. During the fifty years that followed it rose
+to six millions of tons. Iron was to become the working material of the
+modern world; and it is its production of iron which more than all else
+has placed England at the head of industrial Europe. But iron was not
+the only metal which coal drew from the soil to swell the national
+wealth. The increase in its production was rivalled by that of lead,
+copper, and tin; and the "mining districts" soon gathered a population
+which raised them into social as well as economical importance.
+
+[Sidenote: The Steam Engine.]
+
+But it was not in its direct application to metallurgy that coal was
+destined to produce its most amazing effects. What was needed to turn
+England into a manufacturing country was some means of transforming the
+force stored up in coal into a labour force; and it was this
+transformation which was now brought about through the agency of steam.
+Engines in which steam was used as a means of draining mines had long
+been in use; but the power relied on was mainly that of the weight of
+the air pressing on a piston beneath which a vacuum had been created by
+the condensation of steam; and the economical use of such engines was
+checked by the waste of fuel which resulted from the cooling of the
+cylinder at each condensation, and from the expenditure of heat in again
+raising it to its old temperature before a fresh stroke of the piston
+was possible. Both these obstacles were removed by the ingenuity of
+James Watt. Watt was a working engineer at Glasgow, whose mind had for
+some time been bent on the improvement of the steam-engine; but it was
+not till the spring of 1765, amidst the political turmoil which
+characterized the early reign of George the Third, that as he strolled
+on a Sunday afternoon across the Green of Glasgow the means of effecting
+it burst on him. "I had gone," he says, "to take a walk on a fine
+Sabbath afternoon. I had entered the Green by the gate at the foot of
+Charlotte Street, and had passed the old washing-house. I was thinking
+upon the engine at the time, and had got as far as the herd's house,
+when the idea came into my mind that as steam was an elastic body it
+would rush into a vacuum, and if a communication were made between the
+cylinder and an exhausted vessel it would rush into it, and might there
+be condensed without cooling the cylinder. I had not walked farther
+than the Golf-House when the whole thing was arranged in my mind." The
+employment of a separate condenser, with the entire discarding of any
+other force in its action save that of steam itself, changed the whole
+conditions of the steam-engine. On the eve of the American war, in 1776,
+its use passed beyond the mere draining of mines; and it was rapidly
+adopted as a motive-force for all kinds of manufacturing industry.
+
+[Sidenote: The Cotton manufactures.]
+
+The almost unlimited supply of labour-power in the steam-engine came at
+a time when the existing supply of manual labour was proving utterly
+inadequate to cope with the demands of the manufacturer. This was
+especially the case in textile fabrics. In its earlier stages the
+manufacture of cotton had been retarded by the difficulty with which the
+weavers obtained a sufficient supply of cotton yarn from the spinsters;
+and this difficulty became yet greater when the invention of the
+fly-shuttle enabled one weaver to do in a single day what had hitherto
+been the work of two. The difficulty was solved by a Blackburn weaver,
+John Hargreaves, who noticed that his wife's spindle, which had been
+accidentally upset, continued to revolve in an upright position on the
+floor, while the thread was still spinning in her hand. The hint led him
+to connect a number of spindles with a single wheel, and thus to enable
+one spinster to do the work of eight. Hargreaves's invention only
+spurred the wits of a barber's assistant, Richard Arkwright, to yet
+greater improvement in the construction of a machine for spinning by
+rollers revolving at different rates of speed; and this in its turn was
+improved and developed in the "mule" of a Bolton weaver, Samuel
+Crompton. The result of these inventions was to reverse the difficulty
+which hampered the trade, for the supply of yarn became so rapid and
+unlimited as to outrun the power of the hand-loom weaver to consume it;
+but a few years after the close of the American war this difficulty was
+met by the discovery of the power-loom, which replaced the weaver by
+machinery. Ingenious however as these inventions were, they would have
+remained comparatively useless had it not been for the revelation of a
+new and inexhaustible labour-force in the steam-engine. It was the
+combination of such a force with such means of applying it that enabled
+Britain during the terrible years of her struggle with France and
+Napoleon to all but monopolise the woollen and cotton trades, and raised
+her into the greatest manufacturing country that the world had seen.
+
+How mighty a force this industrial revolution was to exert on English
+politics and English society time was to show. By the transfer of wealth
+and population from southern to northern England, and from the country
+to the town, it was in the next fifty years to set on foot a revolution
+in both, the results of which have still to be disclosed. Of such a
+revolution no English statesman as yet had a glimpse; but already the
+growth of industrial energy and industrial wealth was telling on the
+conditions of English statesmanship. The manufacturer and the merchant
+were coming fast to the front; and their temper was more menacing to the
+monopoly of political power by the Whigs and the landed aristocracy whom
+the Whigs represented than the temper of the king himself. Already
+public opinion was finding in them a new concentration and weight; and
+it was certain that as the representatives of public opinion they would
+at last demand a share in the work of government. Such a demand might
+have been delayed for a while had they been content with the way in
+which England was governed. But they were far from being content with
+it. To no class indeed could the selfishness, the corruption, the
+factiousness, and the administrative inefficiency of the ruling order be
+more utterly odious. Their tone was moral, and they were influenced more
+and more by the religious and philanthropic movement about them. As men
+of business, they revolted against the waste and mismanagement which
+seemed to have become normal in every department of government. Their
+patriotism, their pride in England's greatness, alienated them from men
+who looked upon political eminence as a means of personal gain. Above
+all their personal energy, their consciousness of wealth and power, and
+to some extent the natural jealousy of the trader against the country
+gentleman, urged them to press for an overthrow of the existing
+monopoly, and for a fairer distribution of political influence. But such
+a pressure could only bring them into conflict with the Whigs whom the
+fall of Lord North had recalled to office. Though the Tories had now
+grown to a compact body of a hundred and fifty members, the Whigs still
+remained superior to their rivals in numbers and ability as well as in
+distinctness of political aim; for the return of the Bedford section to
+the general body of the party, as well as its steady opposition to the
+American war, had restored much of their early cohesion. But this
+reunion only strengthened their aristocratic and exclusive tendencies,
+and widened the breach which was steadily opening on questions such as
+Parliamentary Reform between the bulk of the Whigs and the small
+fragment of their party which remained true to the more popular
+sympathies of Chatham.
+
+[Sidenote: William Pitt.]
+
+Lord Shelburne stood at the head of the Chatham party, and it was
+reinforced at this moment by the entry into Parliament of the second and
+youngest son of Chatham himself. William Pitt had hardly reached his
+twenty-second year; but he left college with the learning of a ripe
+scholar, and his ready and sonorous eloquence had been matured by his
+father's teaching. "He will be one of the first men in Parliament," said
+a member to Charles Fox, the Whig leader in the Commons, after Pitt's
+earliest speech in that house. "He is so already," replied Fox. Young as
+he was, the haughty self-esteem of the new statesman breathed in every
+movement of his tall, spare figure, in the hard lines of a countenance
+which none but his closer friends saw lighted by a smile, in his cold
+and repulsive address, his invariable gravity of demeanour, and his
+habitual air of command. But none knew how great the qualities were
+which lay beneath this haughty exterior; nor had any one guessed how
+soon this "boy," as his rivals mockingly styled him, was to crush every
+opponent and to hold England at his will. There was only a smile of
+wonder when he refused any of the minor posts which were offered him in
+the Rockingham administration, and the wonder passed into angry sarcasms
+as soon as it was known that he claimed, if he took office at all, to be
+at once admitted to the Cabinet. But Pitt had no desire to take office
+under Rockingham. He was the inheritor of that side of his father's
+policy which was most distasteful to the Whigs. To him as to Chatham the
+main lesson of the war was the need of putting an end to those abuses in
+the composition of Parliament by which George the Third had been enabled
+to plunge the country into it. A thorough reform of the House of Commons
+was the only effectual means of doing this, and Pitt brought forward a
+bill founded on his father's plans for that purpose. But though a more
+liberal section of the Whigs, with Charles Fox at their head, were
+wavering round to a wish for reform, the great bulk of the party could
+not nerve themselves to the sacrifice of property and influence which
+such a reform would involve. Rockingham remained hostile to reform, and
+Burke, whose influence still told much upon Rockingham, was yet more
+hostile than his chief. Pitt's bill therefore was thrown out. In its
+stead the Ministry endeavoured to weaken the means of corrupt influence
+which the king had unscrupulously used by disqualifying persons holding
+government contracts from sitting in Parliament, by depriving revenue
+officers of the elective franchise (a measure which diminished the
+weight of the Crown in seventy boroughs), and above all by a bill for
+the reduction of the civil establishment, of the pension list, and of
+the secret service fund, which was brought in by Burke. These measures
+were to a great extent effectual in diminishing the influence of the
+Crown over Parliament, and they are memorable as marking the date when
+the direct bribery of members absolutely ceased. But they were utterly
+inoperative in rendering the House of Commons really representative of
+or responsible to the people of England.
+
+[Sidenote: The Coalition.]
+
+The jealousy which the mass of the Whigs entertained of the followers of
+Chatham and their plans was more plainly shown however on the death of
+Lord Rockingham in July. Shelburne, who had hitherto served as Secretary
+of State, was called by the king to the head of the Ministry, a post to
+which his eminent talents and the ability which he was showing in the
+negotiations for the Peace clearly gave him a title. But Shelburne had
+been hampered in these negotiations by the jealousy of Charles Fox, who
+as joint Secretary of State with him claimed in spite of usage a share
+in conducting them, and who persisted without a show of reason in
+believing himself to have been unfairly treated. It was on personal
+grounds therefore that Fox refused to serve under Shelburne; but the
+refusal of Burke and the bulk of Rockingham's followers was based on
+more than personal grounds. It sprang from a rooted distrust of the more
+popular tendencies of which Shelburne was justly regarded as the
+representative. To Pitt, on the other hand, these tendencies were the
+chief ground of confidence in the new Ministry; and, young as he was, he
+at once entered office as Chancellor of the Exchequer. But his tenure of
+this post was a brief one. The Shelburne Ministry in fact only lasted
+long enough to conclude the final peace with the United States on the
+base of their independence; for in the opening of 1783 it was overthrown
+by the most unscrupulous coalition known in our history, a union of the
+Whig followers of Fox with the Tories who still clung to Lord North. In
+Parliament such a coalition was irresistible, and the resignation of
+Shelburne at once made way for an administration in which both the
+triumphant parties were represented. But the effect on England at large
+was very different. Whatever new credit the Whigs had gained with the
+country during their long exclusion from office had been due to their
+steady denunciation of the policy and temper of Lord North's
+administration. That they should take office hand in hand with men whom
+they had for years denounced as the worst of Ministers shocked even
+their most loyal adherents; and the shock was the greater that a new
+seriousness in politics, a longing for a deeper and more earnest
+treatment of political questions, was making mere faction intolerable to
+Englishmen. But behind all this was the sense that something more than
+mere faction had really brought the two parties together. It was their
+common dread of the popular tendencies which Shelburne's Ministry
+represented, their common hatred of parliamentary reform, which hushed
+for the moment the bitter hostility between the followers of Rockingham
+and the followers of North. Yet never had the need of representative
+reform been more clearly shown than by a coalition which proved how
+powerless was the force of public opinion to check even the most
+shameless faction in Parliament, how completely the lessening of royal
+influence by the measures of Burke and Rockingham had tended to the
+profit not of the people but of the borough-mongers who usurped its
+representation. The turn of public opinion was quick in disclosing
+itself. Fox was the most popular of the Whigs, but he was hooted from
+the platform when he addressed his constituents at Westminster. Pitt, on
+the other hand, whose attacks on the new union rose to a lofty and
+indignant eloquence, was lifted by it into an almost solitary greatness.
+
+[Sidenote: Fall of the Coalition.]
+
+But in Parliament Pitt was as powerless as he was influential in the
+country. His renewed proposal of Parliamentary Reform, though he set
+aside the disfranchisement of rotten boroughs as a violation of private
+property, and limited himself to the disfranchisement of boroughs
+convicted of corruption, and to the addition of one hundred members to
+the county representation, was rejected by a majority of two to one.
+Secure in their parliamentary majority, and heedless of the power of
+public opinion outside the walls of the House of Commons, the new
+Ministers entered boldly on a greater task than had as yet taxed the
+constructive genius of English statesmen. To leave such a dominion as
+Warren Hastings had built up in India to the control of a mere Company
+of traders was clearly impossible; and Fox proposed to transfer its
+political government from the Directors of the Company to a board of
+seven Commissioners. The appointment of the seven was vested in the
+first instance in Parliament, and afterwards in the Crown; their office
+was to be held for five years, but they were removable on address from
+either House of Parliament. The proposal was at once met with a storm of
+opposition. The scheme indeed was an injudicious one; for the new
+Commissioners would have been destitute of that practical knowledge of
+India which belonged to the Company, while the want of any immediate
+link between them and the actual Ministry of the Crown would have
+prevented Parliament from exercising an effective control over their
+acts. But the real faults of this India Bill were hardly noticed in the
+popular outcry against it. It had challenged the hostility of powerful
+influences. The merchant-class was galled by the blow levelled at the
+greatest merchant-body in the realm: corporations trembled at the
+cancelling of a charter; the king viewed the measure as a mere means of
+transferring the patronage of India to the Whigs. But it might have
+defied the opposition of corporations and the king had it not had to
+meet the bitter hostility of the nation at large. With the nation the
+faults of the bill lay not in this detail or that, but in the character
+of the Ministry which proposed it. To give the rule and patronage of
+India over to the existing House of Commons was to give a new and
+immense power to a body which misused in the grossest way the power it
+possessed. It was the sense of this popular feeling which encouraged the
+king to exert his personal influence to defeat the measure in the
+Lords, and on its defeat to order his Ministers to deliver up the seals.
+The unpopularity of Shelburne stood in the way of his resumption of
+office, and in December 1783 Pitt accepted the post of First Lord of the
+Treasury. His position would at once have been untenable had the country
+gone with its nominal representatives. He was defeated again and again
+by large majorities in the Commons; but the majorities dwindled as a
+shower of addresses from every quarter, from the Tory University of
+Oxford as from the Whig Corporation of London, proved that public
+opinion went with the Minister and not with the House. It was the
+general sense of this that justified Pitt in the firmness with which, in
+the teeth of addresses for his removal from office, he delayed the
+dissolution of Parliament for five months, and gained time for that
+ripening of the national sentiment on which he counted for success. When
+the election of 1784 came the struggle was at once at an end. The public
+feeling took a strength which broke through the corrupt influences that
+commonly governed its representation. Every great constituency, the
+counties and the large towns, returned supporters of Pitt. Of the
+majority which had defeated him in the Commons, a hundred and sixty
+members were unseated. Fox hardly retained his seat for Westminster,
+Burke lost his seat for Bristol, and only a fragment of the Whig party
+was saved by its command of nomination boroughs.
+
+[Sidenote: Pitt's temper.]
+
+When Parliament came together after the overthrow of the Coalition, the
+Minister of twenty-five was master of England as no Minister had been
+before. Even George the Third yielded to his sway, partly through
+gratitude for the triumph he had won for him, partly from a sense of the
+madness which was soon to strike him down, but still more from a gradual
+discovery that the triumph which he had won over his political rivals
+had been won, not to the profit of the crown, but of the nation at
+large. The Whigs, it was true, were broken, unpopular, and without a
+policy; while the Tories, whom the Coalition had disgusted with Lord
+North, as it had estranged Fox from their opponents, clung to the
+Minister who had "saved the king." But it was the support of a new
+political power that really gave his strength to the young Minister. The
+sudden rise of English industry was pushing the manufacturer to the
+front; and the manufacturer pinned his faith from the first in William
+Pitt. All that the trading classes loved in Chatham, his nobleness of
+temper, his consciousness of power, his patriotism, his sympathy with a
+wider world than the world within the Parliament-house, they saw in his
+son. He had little indeed of the poetic and imaginative side of
+Chatham's genius, of his quick perception of what was just and what was
+possible, his far-reaching conceptions of national policy, his outlook
+into the future of the world. Pitt's flowing and sonorous commonplaces
+rang hollow beside the broken phrases which still make his father's
+eloquence a living thing to Englishmen. On the other hand he possessed
+some qualities in which Chatham was utterly wanting. His temper, though
+naturally ardent and sensitive, had been schooled in a proud
+self-command. His simplicity and good taste freed him from his father's
+ostentation and extravagance. Diffuse and commonplace as his speeches
+seem to the reader, they were adapted as much by their very qualities of
+diffuseness and commonplace as by their lucidity and good sense to the
+intelligence of the classes whom Pitt felt to be his real audience. In
+his love of peace, his immense industry, his despatch of business, his
+skill in debate, his knowledge of finance, he recalled Sir Robert
+Walpole; but he had virtues which Walpole never possessed, and he was
+free from Walpole's worst defects. He was careless of personal gain. He
+was too proud to rule by corruption. His lofty self-esteem left no room
+for any jealousy of subordinates. He was generous in his appreciation of
+youthful merits; and the "boys" he gathered round him, such as Canning
+and Lord Wellesley, rewarded his generosity by a devotion which death
+left untouched. With Walpole's cynical inaction Pitt had no sympathy
+whatever. His policy from the first was a policy of active reform, and
+he faced every one of the problems, financial, constitutional,
+religious, from which Walpole had shrunk. Above all, he had none of
+Walpole's scorn of his fellowmen. The noblest feature in his mind was
+its wide humanity. His love for England was as deep and personal as his
+father's love, but of the sympathy with English passion and English
+prejudice which had been at once his father's weakness and strength he
+had not a trace. When Fox taunted him with forgetting Chatham's jealousy
+of France and his faith that she was the natural foe of England, Pitt
+answered nobly that "to suppose any nation can be unalterably the enemy
+of another is weak and childish."
+
+[Sidenote: His statesmanship.]
+
+The temper of the time, and the larger sympathy of man with man which
+especially marks the eighteenth century as a turning-point in the
+history of the human race, was everywhere bringing to the front a new
+order of statesmen, such as Turgot and Joseph the Second, whose
+characteristics were a love of mankind, and a belief that as the
+happiness of the individual can only be secured by the general happiness
+of the community to which he belongs, so the welfare of individual
+nations can only be secured by the general welfare of the world. Of
+these Pitt was one. But he rose high above the rest in the consummate
+knowledge and the practical force which he brought to the realization of
+his aims. His strength lay in finance; and he came forward at a time
+when the growth of English wealth made a knowledge of finance essential
+to a great Minister. The progress of the nation was wonderful.
+Population more than doubled during the eighteenth century, and the
+advance of wealth was even greater than that of population. Though the
+war had added a hundred millions to the national debt, the burden was
+hardly felt. The loss of America only increased the commerce with that
+country, and industry, as we have seen, had begun that great career
+which was to make England the workshop of the world. To deal wisely with
+such a growth required a knowledge of the laws of wealth which would
+have been impossible at an earlier time. But it had become possible in
+the days of Pitt. If books are to be measured by the effect which they
+have produced on the fortunes of mankind, the "Wealth of Nations" must
+rank among the greatest of books. Its author was Adam Smith, an Oxford
+scholar and a professor at Glasgow. Labour, he contended, was the one
+source of wealth, and it was by freedom of labour, by suffering the
+worker to pursue his own interest in his own way, that the public wealth
+would best be promoted. Any attempt to force labour into artificial
+channels, to shape by laws the course of commerce, to promote special
+branches of industry in particular countries, or to fix the character of
+the intercourse between one country and another, is not only a wrong to
+the worker or the merchant, but actually hurtful to the wealth of a
+state. The book was published in 1776, at the opening of the American
+war, and studied by Pitt during his career as an undergraduate at
+Cambridge. From that time he owned Adam Smith for his master; and he had
+hardly become Minister before he took the principles of the "Wealth of
+Nations" as the groundwork of his policy.
+
+[Sidenote: Pitt and Parliamentary reform.]
+
+It was thus that the ten earlier years of Pitt's rule marked a new point
+of departure in English statesmanship. He was the first English Minister
+who really grasped the part which industry was to play in promoting the
+welfare of the world. He was not only a peace Minister and a financier,
+as Walpole had been, but a statesman who saw that the best security for
+peace lay in the freedom and widening of commercial intercourse between
+nations; that public economy not only lessened the general burdens but
+left additional capital in the hands of industry; and that finance might
+be turned from a mere means of raising revenue into a powerful engine of
+political and social improvement. That little was done by Pitt himself
+to carry these principles into effect was partly owing to the mass of
+ignorance and prejudice with which he had to contend, and still more to
+the sudden break of his plans through the French Revolution. His power
+rested above all on the trading classes, and these were still persuaded
+that wealth meant gold and silver, and that commerce was best furthered
+by jealous monopolies. It was only by patience and dexterity that the
+mob of merchants and country squires who backed him in the House of
+Commons could be brought to acquiesce in the changes he proposed. How
+small his power was when it struggled with the prejudices around him was
+seen in the failure of the first great measure he brought forward. The
+question of parliamentary reform which had been mooted during the
+American war had been coming steadily to the front. Chatham had
+advocated an increase of county members, who were then the most
+independent part of the Lower House. The Duke of Richmond talked of
+universal suffrage, equal electoral districts, and annual Parliaments.
+Wilkes anticipated the Reform Bill of a later time by proposing to
+disfranchise the rotten boroughs, and to give members in their stead to
+the counties and to the more populous and wealthy towns. William Pitt
+had made the question his own by bringing forward a motion for reform on
+his first entry into the House, and one of his earliest measures as
+Minister was to bring in a bill in 1785 which, while providing for the
+gradual extinction of all decayed boroughs, disfranchised thirty-six at
+once, and transferred their members to counties. He brought the king to
+abstain from opposition, and strove to buy off the borough-mongers, as
+the holders of rotten boroughs were called, by offering to compensate
+them for the seats they lost at their market-value. But the bulk of his
+own party joined the bulk of the Whigs in a steady resistance to the
+bill, while it received no effective support from the general opinion of
+the people without. The more glaring abuses, indeed, within Parliament
+itself, the abuses which stirred Chatham and Wilkes to action, had in
+great part disappeared. The bribery of members had ceased. Burke's Bill
+of Economical Reform had just dealt a fatal blow at the influence which
+the king exercised by suppressing a host of useless offices, household
+appointments, judicial and diplomatic charges, which were maintained for
+the purpose of corruption. But what was probably the most fatal obstacle
+to any pressure for reform was the triumph of public opinion to which
+Pitt owed his power. The utter overthrow of the Coalition, the complete
+victory of public opinion, had done much to diminish the sense of any
+real danger from the opposition which Parliament had shown till now to
+the voice of the nation. England, then as now, was indifferent to all
+but practical grievances; and the nation cared little for anomalies in
+the form of representation so long as it felt itself represented.
+"Terribly disappointed and beat," as Wilberforce tells us Pitt was by
+the rejection of his measure, the temper of the House and of the people
+was too plain to be mistaken, and though his opinion remained unaltered,
+he never brought it forward again.
+
+[Sidenote: Pitt's finance.]
+
+The failure of his constitutional reform was more than compensated by
+the triumphs of his finance. When he entered office public credit was at
+its lowest ebb. The debt had been doubled by the American war, yet large
+sums still remained unfunded, while the revenue was reduced by a vast
+system of smuggling which turned every coast-town into a nest of
+robbers. The deficiency in the revenue was met for the moment by new
+taxes, but the time which was thus gained served to change the whole
+face of public affairs. The first of Pitt's financial measures--his plan
+for gradually paying off the debt by a sinking fund--was undoubtedly an
+error; but it had a happy effect in restoring public confidence. He met
+the smuggler by a reduction of Custom-duties which made his trade
+unprofitable. He revived Walpole's plan of an Excise. Meanwhile the
+public expenses were reduced, and commission after commission was
+appointed to introduce economy into every department of the public
+service. The rapid developement of the national industry which we have
+already noted no doubt aided the success of these measures. Credit was
+restored. The smuggling trade was greatly reduced. In two years there
+was a surplus of a million, and though duty after duty was removed the
+revenue rose steadily with every remission of taxation. Meanwhile Pitt
+was showing the political value of the new finance in a wider field.
+Ireland, then as now, was England's difficulty. The tyrannous
+misgovernment under which she had groaned ever since the battle of the
+Boyne was producing its natural fruit; the miserable land was torn with
+political faction, religious feuds, and peasant conspiracies; and so
+threatening had the attitude of the Protestant party which ruled it
+become during the American war that they had forced the English
+Parliament to relinquish its control over their Parliament in Dublin.
+Pitt saw that much at least of the misery and disloyalty of Ireland
+sprang from its poverty. The population had grown rapidly, while culture
+remained stationary and commerce perished. And of this poverty much was
+the direct result of unjust law. Ireland was a grazing country, but to
+protect the interest of English graziers the import of its cattle into
+England was forbidden. To protect the interests of English clothiers and
+weavers, its manufactures were loaded with duties. To redress this wrong
+was the first financial effort of Pitt, and the bill which he introduced
+in 1785 did away with every obstacle to freedom of trade between England
+and Ireland. It was a measure which, as he held, would "draw what
+remained of the shattered empire together," and repair in part the loss
+of America by creating a loyal and prosperous Ireland; and, struggling
+almost alone in face of a fierce opposition from the Whigs and the
+Manchester merchants, he dragged it through the English Parliament,
+though only to see it flung aside by the Protestant faction under
+Grattan which then ruled the Parliament of Ireland. But the defeat only
+spurred him to a greater effort elsewhere. If Ireland was England's
+difficulty, France had been looked upon as England's natural enemy. We
+have seen how nobly Pitt rebuked prejudices such as this; but he knew
+that nothing could so effectively dispel it as increased intercourse
+between nation and nation. In 1787 therefore he concluded a Treaty of
+Commerce with France which enabled subjects of both countries to reside
+and travel in either without licence or passport, did away with all
+prohibition of trade on either side, and reduced every import duty.
+
+[Sidenote: England and Europe.]
+
+The immediate result of this treaty was a great increase of trade
+between France and England; and brief as its course was fated to be, it
+at once set Pitt on a higher level than any rival statesman of his time.
+But the spirit of humanity which breathed through his policy had to
+wrestle with difficulties both at home and abroad. No measure secured a
+warmer support from the young Minister than the bill for the suppression
+of the slave-trade; but in 1788 it was defeated by the vigorous
+opposition of the trading classes and the prejudice of the people at
+large. His efforts to sap the enmity of nation against nation by a freer
+intercourse encountered a foe even more fatal than English prejudice, in
+the very movement of which his measures formed a part. Across the
+Channel this movement was growing into a revolution which was to change
+the face of the world. That such a revolution must one day come, every
+observer who had compared the state of Europe with that of England had
+long seen to be inevitable. So far as England was concerned, the Puritan
+resistance of the seventeenth century had in the end succeeded in
+checking the general tendency of the time to religious and political
+despotism. Since the Revolution of 1688 freedom of conscience and the
+people's right to govern itself through its representatives in
+Parliament had been practically established. Social equality had begun
+long before. Every man from the highest to the lowest was subject to,
+and protected by, the same law. The English aristocracy, though
+exercising a powerful influence on government, were possessed of few
+social privileges, and hindered from forming a separate class in the
+nation by the legal and social tradition which counted all save the
+eldest son of a noble house as commoners. No impassable line parted the
+gentry from the commercial classes, and these again possessed no
+privileges which could part them from the lower classes of the
+community. Public opinion, the general sense of educated Englishmen, had
+established itself after a short struggle as the dominant element in
+English government. But in all the other great states of Europe the wars
+of religion had left only the name of freedom. Government tended to a
+pure despotism. Privilege was supreme in religion, in politics, in
+society. Society itself rested on a rigid division of classes from one
+another, which refused to the people at large any equal rights of
+justice or of industry.
+
+[Sidenote: France.]
+
+We have already seen how alien such a conception of national life was
+from the ideas which the wide diffusion of intelligence during the
+eighteenth century was spreading throughout Europe; and in almost every
+country some enlightened rulers were striving by administrative reforms
+to satisfy in some sort the sense of wrong which was felt around them.
+The attempts of sovereigns like Frederick the Great in Prussia and
+Joseph the Second in Austria and the Netherlands were rivalled by the
+efforts of statesmen such as Turgot in France. It was in France indeed
+that the contrast between the actual state of society and the new ideas
+of public right was felt most keenly. Nowhere had the victory of the
+Crown been more complete. The aristocracy had been robbed of all share
+in public affairs; it enjoyed social privileges and exemption from any
+contribution to the public burdens without that sense of public duty
+which a governing class to some degree always possesses. Guilds and
+monopolies fettered the industry of the trader and the merchant, and cut
+them off from the working classes, as the value attached to noble blood
+cut off both from the aristocracy. If its political position indeed
+were compared with that of most of the countries round it, France stood
+high. Its government was less oppressive, its general wealth was larger
+and more evenly diffused, there was a better administration of justice,
+and greater security for public order. Poor as its peasantry seemed to
+English eyes, they were far above the peasants of Germany or Spain. Its
+middle class was the quickest and most intelligent in Europe. Under
+Lewis the Fifteenth opinion was practically free, and a literary class
+had sprung up which devoted itself with wonderful brilliancy and
+activity to popularizing the ideas of social and political justice which
+it learned from English writers, and in the case of Montesquieu and
+Voltaire from personal contact with English life. The moral conceptions
+of the time, its love of mankind, its sense of human brotherhood, its
+hatred of oppression, its pity for the guilty and the poor, its longing
+after a higher and nobler standard of life and action, were expressed by
+a crowd of writers, and above all by Rousseau, with a fire and eloquence
+which carried them to the heart of the people. But this new force of
+intelligence only jostled roughly with the social forms with which it
+found itself in contact. The philosopher denounced the tyranny of the
+priesthood. The peasant grumbled at the lord's right to judge him in his
+courts and to exact feudal services from him. The merchant was galled
+by the trading restrictions and the heavy taxation. The country gentry
+rebelled against their exclusion from public life and from the
+government of the country. Its powerlessness to bring about any change
+at home turned all this new energy into sympathy with a struggle against
+tyranny abroad. Public opinion forced France to ally itself with America
+in its contest for liberty, and French volunteers under the Marquis de
+Lafayette joined Washington's army. But while the American war spread
+more widely throughout the nation the craving for freedom, it brought on
+the Government financial embarrassments from which it could only free
+itself by an appeal to the country at large. Lewis the Sixteenth
+resolved to summon the States-General, which had not met since the time
+of Richelieu, and to appeal to the nobles to waive their immunity from
+taxation. His resolve at once stirred into vigorous life every impulse
+and desire which had been seething in the minds of the people; and the
+States-General no sooner met at Versailles in May 1789 than the fabric
+of despotism and privilege began to crumble. A rising in Paris destroyed
+the Bastille, and the capture of this fortress was taken for the dawn of
+a new era of constitutional freedom in France and through Europe. Even
+in England men thrilled with a strange joy at the tidings of its fall.
+"How much is this the greatest event that ever happened in the world,"
+Fox cried with a burst of enthusiasm, "and how much the best!"
+
+[Sidenote: Pitt and Russia.]
+
+Pitt regarded the approach of France to sentiments of liberty which had
+long been familiar to England with greater coolness, but with no
+distrust. For the moment indeed his attention was distracted by an
+attack of madness which visited George the Third in 1788, and by the
+claim of a right to the Regency which was at once advanced by the Prince
+of Wales. The Prince belonged to the Whig party; and Fox, who was
+travelling in Italy, hurried home to support his claim in full belief
+that the Prince's Regency would be followed by his own return to power.
+Pitt successfully resisted the claim on the constitutional ground that
+in such a case the right to choose a temporary Regent, under what
+limitations it would, lay with Parliament; and a bill which conferred
+the Regency on the Prince, in accordance with this view, was already
+passing the Houses when the recovery of the king put an end to the long
+dispute. Foreign difficulties, too, absorbed Pitt's attention. Russia
+had risen into greatness under Catharine the Second; and Catharine had
+resolved from the first on the annexation of Poland, the expulsion of
+the Turks from Europe, and the setting up of a Russian throne at
+Constantinople. In her first aim she was baffled for the moment by
+Frederick the Great. She had already made herself virtually mistress of
+the whole of Poland, her armies occupied the kingdom, and she had
+seated a nominee of her own on its throne, when Frederick in union with
+the Emperor Joseph the Second forced her to admit Germany to a share of
+the spoil. If the Polish partition of 1773 brought the Russian frontier
+westward to the upper waters of the Dwina and the Dnieper, it gave
+Galicia to Maria Theresa, and West Prussia to Frederick himself. Foiled
+in her first aim, she waited for the realization of her second till the
+alliance between the two German powers was at an end through the
+resistance of Prussia to Joseph's schemes for the annexation of Bavaria,
+and till the death of Frederick removed her most watchful foe. Then in
+1788 Joseph and the Empress joined hands for a partition of the Turkish
+Empire. But Prussia was still watchful, and England was no longer
+fettered as in 1773 by troubles with America. The friendship established
+by Chatham between the two countries, which had been suspended by Bute's
+treachery and all but destroyed during the Northern League of Neutral
+Powers, had been restored by Pitt through his co-operation with the
+successor of Frederick the Great in the restoration of the Dutch
+Stadtholderate. Its political weight was now seen in an alliance of
+England, Prussia, and Holland, in 1789, for the preservation of the
+Turkish Empire. A great European struggle seemed at hand. In such a
+struggle the sympathy and aid of France were of the highest importance;
+and it was only as weakening her in face of such a crisis that Pitt
+looked on the Revolution with any fear. But with the treaty the danger
+passed away. In the spring of 1790 Joseph died broken-hearted at the
+failure of his plans and the revolt of the Netherlands against his
+innovations; Austria practically withdrew from the war with the Turks;
+and the young Minister could give free expression to the sympathy with
+which the French movement inspired him.
+
+[Sidenote: The French Revolution.]
+
+In France indeed things were moving fast. By breaking down the division
+between its separate orders the States-General became a National
+Assembly, which abolished the privileges of the provincial parliaments,
+of the nobles, and the Church. In October 1789 the mob of Paris marched
+on Versailles and forced both King and Assembly to return with them to
+the capital; and a Constitution hastily put together was accepted by
+Lewis the Sixteenth in the stead of his old despotic power. To Pitt the
+tumult and disorder with which these great changes were wrought seemed
+transient matters. In January 1790 he still believed that "the present
+convulsions in France must sooner or later culminate in general harmony
+and regular order," and that when her own freedom was established,
+"France would stand forth as one of the most brilliant powers of
+Europe." But the coolness and goodwill with which Pitt looked on the
+Revolution were far from being universal in the nation at large. The
+cautious good sense of the bulk of Englishmen, their love of order and
+law, their distaste for violent changes and for abstract theories, as
+well as their reverence for the past, were rousing throughout the
+country a dislike of the revolutionary changes which were hurrying on
+across the Channel; and both the political sense and the political
+prejudice of the nation were being fired by the warnings of Edmund
+Burke. The fall of the Bastille, though it kindled enthusiasm in Fox,
+roused in Burke only distrust. "Whenever a separation is made between
+liberty and justice," he wrote a few weeks later, "neither is safe." The
+night of the fourth of August, when the privileges of every class were
+abolished, filled him with horror. He saw, and rightly saw, in it the
+critical moment which revealed the character of the Revolution, and his
+part was taken at once. "The French," he cried in January, while Pitt
+was foretelling a glorious future for the new Constitution, "the French
+have shown themselves the ablest architects of ruin who have hitherto
+existed in the world. In a short space of time they have pulled to the
+ground their army, their navy, their commerce, their arts and their
+manufactures."
+
+[Sidenote: Pitt and France.]
+
+But in Parliament Burke stood alone. The Whigs, though distrustfully,
+followed Fox in his applause of the Revolution. The Tories, yet more
+distrustfully, followed Pitt; and Pitt warmly expressed his sympathy
+with the constitutional government which was ruling France. At this
+moment indeed the more revolutionary party in that country gave a signal
+proof of its friendship for England. Irritated by an English settlement
+at Nootka Sound in California, Spain appealed to France for aid in
+accordance with the Family Compact; and the French Ministry, with a
+party at its back which believed things had gone far enough, resolved on
+a war as the best means of checking the progress of the Revolution and
+restoring the power of the Crown. The revolutionary party naturally
+opposed this design; and after a bitter struggle the right of declaring
+war, save with the sanction of the Assembly, was taken from the king.
+With this vote all danger of hostilities passed away. "The French
+Government," Pitt asserted, "was bent on cultivating the most unbounded
+friendship for Great Britain," and he saw no reason in its revolutionary
+changes why Britain should not return the friendship of France. What
+told even more on his temper towards that country was a conviction that
+nothing but the joint action of France and England would in the end
+arrest the troubles of Eastern Europe. His intervention foiled for the
+moment a fresh effort of Prussia to rob Poland of Dantzig and Thorn. But
+though Russia was still pressing Turkey hard, a Russian war was so
+unpopular in England that a hostile vote in Parliament forced Pitt to
+discontinue his armaments; and a fresh union of Austria and Prussia,
+which promised at this juncture to bring about a close of the Turkish
+struggle, promised also a fresh attack on the independence of Poland. To
+prevent a new partition without the co-operation of France was
+impossible; and in the existing state of things Pitt saw nothing to
+hinder the continuance of a friendship which would make such a
+co-operation inevitable.
+
+[Sidenote: Burke and the Revolution.]
+
+But while Pitt was pleading for friendship between the two countries,
+Burke was resolved to make friendship impossible. In Parliament, as we
+have seen, he stood alone. He had long ceased, in fact, to have any hold
+over the House of Commons. The eloquence which had vied with that of
+Chatham during the discussions on the Stamp Act had become distasteful
+to the bulk of its members. The length of his speeches, the profound and
+philosophical character of his argument, the splendour and often the
+extravagance of his illustrations, his passionate earnestness, his want
+of temper and discretion, wearied and perplexed the squires and
+merchants about him. He was known nowadays as "the dinner-bell of the
+House," so rapidly did its benches thin at his rising. For a time his
+energies found scope in the impeachment of Hastings; and the grandeur of
+his appeals to the justice of England hushed detraction. But with the
+close of the impeachment his repute had again fallen; and the approach
+of old age, for he was now past sixty, seemed to counsel retirement from
+an assembly where he stood unpopular and alone. But age and
+disappointment and loneliness were forgotten as Burke saw rising across
+the Channel the embodiment of all that he hated--a Revolution founded on
+scorn of the past, and threatening with ruin the whole social fabric
+which the past had reared; the ordered structure of classes and ranks
+crumbling before a doctrine of social equality; a State rudely
+demolished and reconstituted; a Church and a Nobility swept away in a
+night. Against the enthusiasm of what he rightly saw to be a new
+political religion he resolved to rouse the enthusiasm of the old. He
+was at once a great orator and a great writer; and now that the House
+was deaf to his voice, he appealed to the country by his pen. The
+"Reflections on the French Revolution" which he published in October
+1790 not only denounced the acts of rashness and violence which sullied
+the great change that France had wrought, but the very principles from
+which the change had sprung. Burke's deep sense of the need of social
+order, of the value of that continuity in human affairs "without which
+men would become like flies in a summer," blinded him to all but the
+faith in mere rebellion and the yet sillier faith in mere novelty which
+disguised a real nobleness of aim and temper even in the most ardent of
+the revolutionists. He would see no abuses in the past, now that it had
+fallen, or anything but the ruin of society in the future. He preached a
+crusade against men whom he regarded as the foes of religion and
+civilization, and called on the armies of Europe to put down a
+Revolution whose principles threatened every state with destruction.
+
+[Sidenote: His failure in Parliament.]
+
+The great obstacle to such a crusade was Pitt: and one of the grandest
+outbursts of the "Reflections" closed with a bitter taunt at the
+Minister. "The age of chivalry," Burke cried, "is gone; that of
+sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of
+Europe is extinguished for ever." But neither taunt nor invective moved
+Pitt from his course. At the moment when the "Reflections" appeared he
+gave a fresh assurance to France of his resolve to have nothing to do
+with any crusade against the Revolution. "This country," he wrote,
+"means to persevere in the neutrality hitherto scrupulously observed
+with respect to the internal dissensions of France; and from which it
+will never depart unless the conduct held there makes it indispensable
+as an act of self-defence." So far indeed was he from sharing the
+reactionary panic which was spreading around him that he chose this time
+for supporting Fox in his Libel Act, a measure which, by transferring
+the decision on what was libellous in any publication from the judge to
+the jury, completed the freedom of the press; and himself passed in 1791
+a bill which, though little noticed among the storms of the time, was
+one of the noblest of his achievements. He boldly put aside the dread
+which had been roused by the American war, that the gift of
+self-government to our colonies would serve only as a step towards their
+secession from the mother country, and established a House of Assembly
+and a Council in the two Canadas. "I am convinced," said Fox, who gave
+the measure his hearty support, "that the only method of retaining
+distant colonies with advantage is to enable them to govern themselves";
+and the policy of the one statesman as well as the foresight of the
+other has been justified by the later history of our dependencies. Nor
+had Burke better success with his own party. Fox remained an ardent
+lover of the Revolution, and answered a fresh attack of Burke upon it
+with more than usual warmth. Till now a close affection had bound the
+two men together; but no sooner had this defence been uttered than the
+fanaticism of Burke declared their union to be over. "There is no loss
+of friendship," Fox exclaimed, with a sudden burst of tears. "There is!"
+Burke repeated. "I know the price of my conduct. Our friendship is at an
+end."
+
+[Sidenote: His success with the country.]
+
+Within the walls of Parliament however Burke as yet stood utterly alone.
+His "Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs," in June 1791, failed to
+detach a follower from Fox; while Pitt coldly counselled him rather to
+praise the English Constitution than to rail at the French. "I have made
+many enemies and few friends," Burke wrote sadly to the French princes
+who had fled from their country and were gathering in arms at Coblentz,
+"by the part I have taken." But the opinion of the people was slowly
+drifting to his side; and a sale of thirty thousand copies showed that
+the "Reflections" echoed the general sentiment of Englishmen. At this
+moment indeed the mood of England was singularly unfavourable to any
+fair appreciation of the Revolution across the Channel. Her temper was
+above all industrial. Men who were working hard and fast growing rich,
+who had the narrow and practical turn of men of business, looked angrily
+at this sudden disturbance of order, this restless and vague activity,
+these rhetorical appeals to human feeling, these abstract and often
+empty theories. In England it was a time of political content and social
+well-being, of steady economic progress, as well as of a powerful
+religious revival; and an insular lack of imaginative interest in other
+races hindered men from seeing that every element of this content, of
+this order, of this peaceful and harmonious progress, of this
+reconciliation of society and religion, was wanting abroad. The
+sympathy which the first outbreak of the Revolution had roused among
+Englishmen grew cooler in fact with every step which the Revolution
+took. While the Declaration of the Rights of Man roused France to a
+frenzy of enthusiasm, it was set aside as a dream by the practical
+islanders who based their rights on precedent and not on theory. The
+abolition of all social privileges on the 12th of August, the most
+characteristic step in the French Revolution, was met with grave
+disapproval by a people more alien from social equality than any people
+in Europe. Every incident in the struggle between the French people and
+their king widened the breach of feeling. The anarchy of the country,
+the want of political sense in its Assembly, the paltry declamation of
+its clubs, the exaggerated sentiment, the universal suspicion, the
+suspension of every security for personal freedom, the arrests, the
+murders, the overthrow of the Church, the ruin of the Crown, were
+watched with an ever-growing severity by a nation whose chief instinct
+was one of order, whose bent was to practical politics, whose temper was
+sober and trustful, whose passionate love of personal liberty was only
+equalled by its passionate abhorrence of bloodshed in civil strife, and
+whose ecclesiastical and political institutions were newly endeared to
+it by a fresh revival of religious feeling, and by the constitutional
+attitude of its Government for a hundred years.
+
+[Sidenote: The coalition against France.]
+
+Sympathy in fact was soon limited to a few groups of reformers who
+gathered in "Constitutional Clubs," and whose reckless language
+quickened the national reaction. But in spite of Burke's appeals and the
+cries of the nobles who had fled from France and longed only to march
+against their country, Europe held back from any attack on the
+Revolution, and Pitt preserved his attitude of neutrality, though with a
+greater appearance of reserve. So anxious, in fact, did the aspect of
+affairs in the East make him for the restoration of tranquillity in
+France, that he foiled a plan which its emigrant nobles had formed for a
+descent on the French coast, and declared formally at Vienna that
+England would remain absolutely neutral should hostilities arise between
+France and the Emperor. But the Emperor was as anxious to avoid a French
+war as Pitt himself. Though Catharine, now her strife with Turkey was
+over, wished to plunge the two German powers into a struggle with the
+Revolution which would leave her free to annex Poland single-handed,
+neither Leopold nor Prussia would tie their hands by such a contest. The
+flight of Lewis the Sixteenth from Paris in June 1791 brought Europe for
+a moment to the verge of war; but he was intercepted and brought back:
+and for a while the danger seemed to incline the revolutionists in
+France to greater moderation. Lewis too not only accepted the
+Constitution, but pleaded earnestly with the Emperor against any armed
+intervention as certain to bring ruin to his throne. In their conference
+at Pillnitz therefore, in August, Leopold and the king of Prussia
+contented themselves with a vague declaration inviting the European
+powers to co-operate in restoring a sound form of government in France,
+availed themselves of England's neutrality to refuse all military aid to
+the French princes, and dealt simply with the affairs of Poland. But the
+peace they desired soon became impossible. The Constitutional Royalists
+in France availed themselves of the irritation caused by the Declaration
+of Pillnitz to revive the cry for a war which, as they hoped, would give
+strength to the throne. The more violent revolutionists, or Jacobins, on
+the other hand, abandoned their advocacy of peace. Under the influence
+of the "Girondists," the deputies from the south of France, whose aim
+was a republic, and who saw in a great national struggle a means of
+overthrowing the monarchy, they decided, in spite of the opposition of
+their leader, Robespierre, on a contest with the Emperor. Both parties
+united to demand the breaking up of an army which the emigrant princes
+had formed on the Rhine; and though Leopold before his death assented to
+this demand, France declared war against his successor, Francis, in
+April 1792.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+ENGLAND AND REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE
+
+1792-1801
+
+
+[Sidenote: England and the Revolutionists.]
+
+That the war with Germany would widen into a vast European struggle, a
+struggle in which the peoples would rise against their oppressors, and
+the freedom which France had won diffuse itself over the world, no
+French revolutionist doubted for an hour. Nor did they doubt that in
+this struggle England would join them. It was from England that they had
+drawn those principles of political and social liberty which they
+believed themselves to be putting into practice. It was to England that
+they looked above all for approbation and sympathy, and on the aid of
+England that they confidently counted in their struggle with a despotic
+and priest-ridden Europe. Absorbed in the mighty events about them, and
+utterly ignorant of the real set of English feeling or the real meaning
+of Pitt's policy, they were astonished and indignant at his firm refusal
+of their alliance and his resolve to stand apart from the struggle. It
+was in vain that Pitt strove to allay this irritation by demanding only
+that Holland should remain untouched, and promising neutrality even
+though Belgium should be occupied by a French army, or that he
+strengthened these pledges by a reduction of military forces, and by
+bringing forward in 1792 a peace-budget which rested on a large
+remission of taxation. To the revolutionists at Paris the attitude of
+England remained unintelligible and irritating. Instead of the aid they
+had counted on, they found but a cold neutrality. In place of the
+sympathy on which they reckoned, they saw, now that they looked coolly
+across the Channel, a reserve passing into disapproval. The pen of Burke
+was denouncing the Revolution as the very negation of those principles
+on which English liberty rested. The priests and nobles who had fled
+from the new France were finding pity and welcome on English shores. And
+now that France flung herself on an armed Europe to win freedom for its
+peoples from their kings, England stood coldly apart. To men frenzied
+with a passionate enthusiasm, and frenzied yet more with a sudden terror
+at the dangers they were encountering, such an attitude of neutrality in
+such a quarter seemed like a stab in the back.
+
+[Sidenote: Their efforts in England.]
+
+But that this attitude was that of the English people as a whole was
+incredible to the French enthusiasts. Conscious as no Englishman could
+be conscious of the great evils they had overthrown, of the great
+benefits they had won for their country, they saw in the attitude of
+England only the sympathy of an aristocracy with the aristocracy they
+had struck down. The cries for a parliamentary reform which reached them
+across the Channel became in their ears cries of a people as powerless
+and oppressed as the people of France had been. They still clung to the
+hope of England's aid in the emancipation of Europe from despotism and
+superstition, but they came now to believe that England must itself be
+emancipated before such an aid could be given. Their first work
+therefore they held to be the bringing about a revolution in England
+which might free the people from the aristocracy and the aristocratic
+government which held it down. But this was far from being all the work
+they looked to accomplishing. The aristocracy which oppressed the people
+at home oppressed, as they believed, great peoples beyond the bounds of
+England itself. It was subjecting to its sway nation after nation in
+India. Its rule over Ireland was a masterpiece of tyranny. To rouse
+India, to rouse Ireland to a struggle which should shake off the English
+yoke, became necessary steps to the establishment of freedom in England
+itself. From the moment therefore that the opposition between the two
+countries declared itself, French agents were busy "sowing the
+revolution" in each quarter. In Ireland they entered into communication
+with the United Irishmen. In India they appeared at the courts of the
+native princes, and above all at the court of Mysore. Meanwhile in
+England itself they strove through a number of associations, which had
+formed themselves under the name of Constitutional Clubs, to rouse the
+same spirit which they had roused in France; and the French envoy,
+Chauvelin, protested warmly against a proclamation which denounced this
+correspondence as seditious.
+
+[Sidenote: The Coalition attacks France.]
+
+Such a course could only knit men of all parties together in a common
+resentment; and the effect of these revolutionary efforts on the friends
+of the Revolution was seen in a declaration which they wrested from Fox,
+that at such a moment even the discussion of parliamentary reform was
+inexpedient. A far worse result was the new strength they gave to its
+foes. Burke was still working hard in writings whose extravagance of
+style was forgotten in their intensity of feeling to spread alarm
+throughout Europe. He had from the first encouraged the emigrant princes
+to take arms, and sent his son to join them at Coblentz. "Be alarmists,"
+he wrote to them; "diffuse terror!" But the royalist terror which he
+sowed would have been of little moment had it not roused a revolutionary
+terror in France itself. At the threat of war against the Emperor the
+two German Courts had drawn together, and reluctantly abandoning all
+hope of peace with France, gathered eighty thousand men under the Duke
+of Brunswick, and advanced slowly in August 1792 on the Meuse. France,
+though she had forced on the struggle, was really almost defenceless;
+her forces in Belgium broke at the first shock of arms into shameful
+rout; and the panic, as it spread from the soldiery to the nation at
+large, took violent and horrible forms. At the first news of Brunswick's
+advance the mob of Paris broke into the Tuileries on the 10th of August;
+and at its demand Lewis, who had taken refuge in the Assembly, was
+suspended from his office and imprisoned in the Temple. In the following
+September, while General Dumouriez by boldness and adroit negotiations
+was arresting the progress of the Allies in the defiles of the Argonne,
+bodies of paid murderers butchered the royalist prisoners who crowded
+the gaols of Paris, with a view of influencing the elections to a new
+Convention which met to proclaim the abolition of royalty. The retreat
+of the Prussian army, whose numbers had been reduced by disease till an
+advance on Paris became impossible, and a brilliant victory won by
+Dumouriez at Jemappes which laid the Netherlands at his feet, turned the
+panic of the French into a wild self-confidence. In November the
+Convention decreed that France offered the aid of her soldiers to all
+nations who would strive for freedom. "All governments are our enemies,"
+cried its President; "all peoples are our allies." In the teeth of
+treaties signed only two years before, and of the stipulation made by
+England when it pledged itself to neutrality, the French Government
+resolved to attack Holland, and ordered its generals to enforce by arms
+the opening of the Scheldt.
+
+[Sidenote: France declares war with England.]
+
+To do this was to force England into war. Public opinion was already
+pressing every day harder upon Pitt. The horror of the massacres of
+September, the hideous despotism of the Parisian mob, did more to
+estrange England from the Revolution than all the eloquence of Burke.
+But even while withdrawing our Minister from Paris on the imprisonment
+of the king, to whose Court he had been commissioned, Pitt clung
+stubbornly to a policy of peace. His hope was to bring the war to an end
+through English mediation, and to "leave France, which I believe is the
+best way, to arrange its own internal affairs as it can." No hour of
+Pitt's life is so great as the hour when he stood lonely and passionless
+before the growth of national passion, and refused to bow to the
+gathering cry for war. Even the news of the September massacres could
+only force from him a hope that France might abstain from any war of
+conquest and might escape from its social anarchy. In October the French
+agent in England reported that Pitt was about to recognize the Republic.
+At the opening of November he still pressed on Holland a steady
+neutrality. It was France, and not England, which at last wrenched peace
+from his grasp. The decree of the Convention and the attack on the Dutch
+left him no choice but war, for it was impossible for England to endure
+a French fleet at Antwerp, or to desert allies like the United
+Provinces. But even in December the news of the approaching partition of
+Poland nerved him to a last struggle for peace; he offered to aid
+Austria in acquiring Bavaria if she would make terms with France, and
+pledged himself to France to abstain from war if that power would cease
+from violating the independence of her neighbour states. But desperately
+as Pitt struggled for peace, his struggle was in vain. Across the
+Channel his moderation was only taken for fear, while in England the
+general mourning which followed on the news of the French king's
+execution showed the growing ardour for the contest. The rejection of
+his last offers indeed made a contest inevitable. Both sides ceased from
+diplomatic communications, and in February 1793 France issued her
+Declaration of War.
+
+[Sidenote: The Panic.]
+
+From that moment Pitt's power was at an end. His pride, his immoveable
+firmness, and the general confidence of the nation, still kept him at
+the head of affairs; but he could do little save drift along with a tide
+of popular feeling which he never fully understood. Around him the
+country broke out in a fit of passion and panic which rivalled the
+passion and panic over sea. The confidence of France in its illusions
+as to opinion in England deluded for the moment even Englishmen
+themselves. The partisans of Republicanism were in reality but a few
+handfuls of men who played at gathering Conventions, and at calling
+themselves citizens and patriots, in childish imitation of what was
+going on across the Channel. But in the mass of Englishmen the dread of
+these revolutionists passed for the hour into sheer panic. Even the bulk
+of the Whig party believed property and the constitution to be in peril,
+and forsook Fox when he still proclaimed his faith in France and the
+Revolution. The "Old Whigs," as they called themselves, with the Duke of
+Portland, Earls Spencer and Fitzwilliam, and Mr. Windham at their head,
+followed Burke in giving their adhesion to the Government. Pitt himself,
+though little touched by the political reaction which was to constitute
+the creed of those who represented themselves as "Pittites," was shaken
+by the dream of social danger, which was turning the wisest heads about
+him. For a moment at least his cool good sense bent to believe in the
+existence of "thousands of bandits" who were ready to rise against the
+throne, to plunder every landlord, and to sack London. "Paine is no
+fool," he said to his niece, who quoted to him a passage from the
+_Rights of Man_, in which that author had vindicated the principles of
+the Revolution. "He is perhaps right; but if I did what he wants I
+should have thousands of bandits on my hands to-morrow and London
+burnt." It was this sense of social danger which alone reconciled him to
+the war. It would have been impossible indeed for Pitt, or for any other
+English statesman, to have stood idly by while France annexed the
+Netherlands and marched to annex Holland. He must in any case have
+fought even had France not forced him to fight by her declaration of
+war. But bitter as the need of such a struggle was to him, he accepted
+it with the less reluctance that war, as he trusted, would check the
+progress of "French principles" in England itself.
+
+The worst issue of this panic was the series of legislative measures in
+which it found expression. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, a bill
+against seditious assemblies restricted the liberty of public meeting,
+and a wider scope was given to the Statute of Treasons. Prosecution
+after prosecution was directed against the Press; the sermons of some
+dissenting ministers were indicted as seditious; and the conventions of
+sympathizers with France were roughly broken up. The worst excesses of
+this panic were witnessed in Scotland, where young Whigs, whose only
+offence was an advocacy of parliamentary reform, were sentenced to
+transportation, and where a brutal Judge openly expressed his regret
+that the practice of torture in seditious cases should have fallen into
+disuse. But the panic soon passed away for sheer want of material to
+feed on. The bloodshed and anarchy of the Jacobin rule disgusted the
+last sympathizers with France. To staunch Whigs like Romilly, the
+French, after the massacres of October, seemed a mere "nation of
+tigers." The good sense of the nation discovered the unreality of the
+dangers which had driven it to its short-lived frenzy; and when the
+leaders of the Corresponding Society, a body which expressed sympathy
+with France, were brought to trial in 1794 on a charge of high treason,
+their acquittal told that all active terror was over. So far indeed was
+the nation from any danger of social overthrow that, save for occasional
+riots to which the poor were goaded by sheer want of bread, no social
+disturbance troubled England during the twenty years of struggle which
+lay before it. But though the public terror passed, it left a terrible
+legacy behind. The blind reaction against all reform which had sprung
+from the panic lasted on when the panic was forgotten. For nearly a
+quarter of a century it was hard to get a hearing for any measure which
+threatened change to an existing institution, beneficial though the
+change might be. Even the philanthropic movement which so nobly
+characterized the time found itself checked and hampered by the dread of
+revolution.
+
+Easy however as Pitt found it to deal with "French principles" at home,
+he found it less easy to deal with French armies abroad. The very
+excellences of his character indeed unfitted him for the conduct of a
+war. He was at heart a Peace Minister; he was forced into war by a panic
+and enthusiasm which he shared in a very small degree; and he was
+utterly destitute of his father's gift of entering instinctively into
+the sympathies and passions around him, and of rousing passions and
+sympathies in return. At first indeed all seemed to go ill for France.
+When the campaign of 1793 opened she was girt in along her whole
+frontier by a ring of foes. The forces of the House of Austria, of the
+Empire, and of the King of Prussia, pressed her to the north and the
+east; those of Spain and Sardinia attacked her in the south; and the
+accession of England to this league threatened to close the sea against
+her. The efforts of these foreign foes were seconded too by civil war.
+The peasants of Poitou and Brittany, estranged from the revolution by
+its attack on the clergy, rose in revolt against the government at
+Paris; while Marseilles and Lyons were driven into insurrection by the
+violent leaders who now seized on power in the capital. The campaign
+opened therefore with a series of terrible reverses. In spite of the
+efforts of General Dumouriez the French were foiled in their attack on
+Holland and driven, after a disastrous defeat at Neerwinden, from the
+Netherlands. At the moment when the Duke of York with ten thousand
+English troops joined the Austrian army on the northern border of
+France, a march upon Paris would have crushed the revolution. But the
+chance was lost. At this moment indeed the two German powers were far
+from wishing honestly for the suppression of the Republic and the
+re-establishment of a strong monarchy in France. Such a restoration
+would have foiled their projects of aggrandizement in Eastern Europe.
+The strife on the Rhine had set Russia free, as Pitt had foreseen, to
+carry out her schemes of aggression; and Austria and Prussia saw
+themselves forced, in the interest of a balance of power, to share in
+her annexations at the cost of Poland. But this new division of Poland
+would have become impossible had France been enabled by a restoration of
+its monarchy to take up again its natural position in Europe, and to
+accept the alliance which Pitt would in such a case have offered her.
+The policy of the German courts therefore was to prolong an anarchy
+which left them free for the moment to crush Poland, and which they
+counted on crushing in its turn at a more convenient time; and the
+allied armies which might have marched upon Paris were purposely
+frittered away in sieges in the Netherlands and the Rhine.
+
+[Sidenote: The revival of France.]
+
+Such a policy gave France all that she needed to recover from the shock
+of her past disasters: it gave her time. Whatever were the crimes and
+tyranny of her leaders, the country felt in spite of them the value of
+the Revolution, and rallied enthusiastically to its support. The
+strength of the revolt in La Vendée was broken. The insurrection in the
+south was drowned in blood. The Spanish invaders were held at bay at the
+foot of the Pyrenees, and the Piedmontese were driven from Nice and
+Savoy. At the close of the year a fresh blow fell upon the struggling
+country in the revolt of Toulon, the naval station of its Mediterranean
+fleet. The town called for foreign aid against the government at Paris;
+and Lord Hood entered the port with an English squadron, while a force
+of 11,000 men, gathered hastily from every quarter, was despatched under
+General O'Hara as a garrison. But the successes against Spain and Savoy
+freed the hands of France at this critical moment: the town was at once
+invested, and the seizure of a promontory which commanded the harbour, a
+step counselled by a young artillery officer, Napoleon Buonaparte,
+brought about the withdrawal of the garrison and the surrender of
+Toulon. The success was a prelude of what was to come. At the opening of
+1794 a victory at Fleurus, which again made the French masters of the
+Netherlands, showed that the tide had turned. France was united within
+by the cessation of the Terror and of the tyranny of the Jacobins, while
+on every border victory followed the gigantic efforts with which she
+met the coalition against her. The coalition indeed was fast breaking
+up. Spain sued for peace. Prussia, more intent on her gains in the east
+than on any battle with the revolution on the west, prepared to follow
+Spain's example by the withdrawal of her armies from the Rhine. It was
+only by English subsidies that Austria and Sardinia were still kept in
+the field; and the Rhine provinces were wrested from the first, while
+the forces of Sardinia were driven back from the Riviera and the
+Maritime Alps into the plain of Piedmont. Before the year ended Holland
+was lost. Pichegru crossed the Waal in midwinter with an overwhelming
+force, and the wretched remnant of ten thousand men who had followed the
+Duke of York to the Netherlands, thinned by disease and by the hardships
+of retreat, re-embarked for England.
+
+[Sidenote: Howe's victory.]
+
+In one quarter only had the fortune of war gone against the French
+republic. The victories of Rodney at the close of the strife with
+America had concentrated English interest on the fleet. Even during the
+peace, while the army was sacrificed to financial distress, great
+efforts were made to preserve the efficiency of the navy; and the recent
+alarms of war with Russia and Spain had ended in raising it to a
+strength which it had never reached before. But France was as eager as
+England herself to dispute the sovereignty of the seas, and almost
+equal attention had been bestowed on the navy which crowded the great
+harbours of Toulon and Brest. In force as in number of ships it was
+equal in effective strength to that of England; and both nations looked
+with hope to the issue of a contest at sea. No battle marked the first
+year of the war; but, as it ended, the revolt of Toulon gave a fatal
+wound to the naval strength of France in the almost total destruction of
+her Mediterranean fleet. That of the Channel however remained unhurt;
+and it was this which Lord Howe at last encountered, off Brest in 1794,
+in the battle which is known by the name of the day on which it was
+fought--The "First of June." The number of ships on either side was
+nearly the same, and the battle was one of sheer hard fighting, unmarked
+by any display of naval skill. But the result was a decisive victory for
+England, and the French admiral, weakened by a loss of seven vessels and
+three thousand men, again took refuge in Brest.
+
+[Sidenote: Break-up of the Coalition.]
+
+The success of Lord Howe did somewhat to counteract the discouragement
+which sprang from the general aspect of the war. At the opening of 1795
+the coalition finally gave way. Holland had been detached from it by
+Pichegru's conquest, and the Batavian republic which he set up there was
+now an ally of France. In the spring Prussia bought peace at Basle by
+the cession of her possessions west of the Rhine. Peace with Spain
+followed in the summer, while Sweden and the Protestant cantons of
+Switzerland recognized the republic. These terrible blows were hardly
+met by the success of the Austrian army in relieving Maintz, or by the
+colonial acquisitions of England. The latter indeed were far from being
+inconsiderable. Most of the West-Indian Islands which had been held by
+France now fell into British hands; and the alliance of Holland with the
+French threw open to English attack the far more valuable settlements of
+the Dutch. The surrender of Cape Town in September gave England the
+colony of the Cape of Good Hope, the nucleus of what has since grown
+into a vast southern settlement which is destined to play a great part
+in the history of Africa. At the close of the year the Island of Ceylon
+was added to our Indian dependencies. Both of these acquisitions were
+destined to remain permanently attached to England, though at the moment
+their value was eclipsed by the conquest of the Dutch colonies in the
+Pacific, the more famous Spice Islands of the Malaccas and Java. But,
+important as these gains were in their after issues, they had no
+immediate influence on the war. The French armies prepared for the
+invasion of Italy; while in France itself discord came well-nigh to an
+end. A descent by a force of French emigrants on the coast of Brittany
+ended in their massacre at Quiberon and in the final cessation of the
+war in La Vendée; while the royalist party in Paris was crushed as soon
+as it rose against the Convention by the genius of Napoleon Buonaparte.
+
+[Sidenote: Pitt's effort for peace.]
+
+But the fresh severities against the ultra-republicans which followed on
+the establishment of a Directory after this success indicated the
+moderate character of the new government, and Pitt seized on this change
+in the temper of the French Government as giving an opening for peace.
+The dread of a Jacobin propagandism was now all but at an end. In spite
+of an outbreak of the London mob, whose cries meant chiefly impatience
+of dear bread, but which brought about a fresh suspension of the Habeas
+Corpus Act and the introduction of a Bill "for the prosecution of
+seditious meetings," the fear of any social disturbance or of the spread
+of "French principles" in England was fast passing away from men's
+minds. The new constitution which France accepted in 1795 showed that
+the tendencies of the French themselves were now rather to order than to
+freedom. The old grounds for the struggle therefore had ceased to exist;
+while the pressure of it grew hourly more intolerable. Pitt himself was
+sick of the strife. The war indeed had hardly begun when he found
+himself without the means of carrying it on. The English navy was in a
+high state of efficiency; but the financial distress which followed the
+American war had brought with it a neglect of the army. The army was not
+only small, but without proper equipment; and the want of military
+experience among its soldiers was only equalled by the incapacity of
+their leaders. "We have no general," Lord Grenville wrote bitterly, "but
+some old woman in a red riband." Wretched, too, as had been the conduct
+of the war, its cost was already terrible; for if England was without
+soldiers she had wealth, and in default of nobler means of combating the
+revolution Pitt had been forced to use wealth as an engine of war. He
+became the paymaster of the coalition, and his subsidies kept the allied
+armies in the field. But the immense loans which these called for, and
+the quick growth of expenditure, undid all the financial reforms on
+which the young minister prided himself. Taxation, which had reached its
+lowest point at the outbreak of the contest, mounted ere a few years
+were past to a height undreamed of before. The debt rose by leaps and
+bounds. In three years nearly eighty millions had been added to it, a
+sum greater than that piled up by the whole war with America, and in the
+opening of 1796 votes were taken for loans which amounted to twenty-five
+millions more.
+
+[Sidenote: The dogged temper of England.]
+
+Nor was this wreck of his financial hopes Pitt's only ground for
+desiring a close of the war. From the first, as we have seen, he had
+been keenly sensitive to the European dangers which the contest
+involved; nor had he shown, even in his moment of social panic, the
+fanatical blindness of men like Burke to the evils which had produced
+the revolution, or to the good which it had wrought. But he could only
+listen in silence while the Marquis of Lansdowne, the Lord Shelburne of
+earlier days and the successor of Chatham as the advocate of a more
+liberal policy, met the rhetoric of Burke by a cool demonstration of the
+benefit which the recent change had brought to the mass of the French
+people, and by pointing to the profit which Russia was drawing from the
+struggle in the west. In their wide-reaching view of European affairs,
+in their justice to the revolution, Shelburne and Pitt stood alone.
+Around them men were hardened and blinded by passion. The old hatred
+between nation and nation, which Pitt had branded as irrational, woke up
+fiercer than ever at the clash of arms, for with it was blended a
+resentment that had smouldered in English breasts ever since the war
+with America at the blow which France had dealt England in that hour of
+her weakness, and a disgust which only slowly grew fainter at her
+overthrow of every social and political institution that Englishmen held
+dear. On the dogged temper of the nation at large the failure of the
+coalition produced little effect. It had no fear of fighting France
+single-handed, nor could it understand Pitt's suggestion that a time
+had come for opening negotiations with a view to peace. Public opinion
+indeed went hotly with Burke in his denunciation of all purpose of
+relaxing England's hostility against the revolution, a denunciation
+which was embodied in his "Letters on a Regicide Peace," the last outcry
+of that fanaticism which had done so much to plunge the world in blood.
+
+[Sidenote: The Irish danger.]
+
+But though Pitt stood all but alone, he was firm in his purpose to bring
+the war, if he could, to a close. What specially moved him was not the
+danger on the Continent, whether that danger sprang from French
+victories or from aggression in the east. It was a danger in the west.
+Vain as the expectations of the French revolutionists had proved in the
+case of England, they had better ground for their hopes elsewhere. Even
+before the outbreak of the war Pitt had shown how keen was his sense of
+a possible danger from Ireland. In that wretched country the terrible
+fruits of a century of oppression and wrong were still to reap. From the
+close of the American war, when her armed Volunteers had wrung
+legislative independence from the Rockingham ministry, Ireland had
+continued to be England's difficulty. She was now "independent"; but her
+independence was a mere name for the uncontrolled rule of a few noble
+families. The victory of the Volunteers had been won simply to the
+profit of "undertakers," who returned a majority of members in the
+Irish House of Commons, while they themselves formed the Irish House of
+Lords. The suspension of any effective control or interference from
+England left Ireland at these men's mercy, and they soon showed that
+they meant to keep it for themselves. When the Catholics claimed
+admission to the franchise or to equal civil rights as a reward for
+their aid in the late struggle, their claim was rejected. A similar
+demand of the Presbyterians, who had formed a good half of the
+Volunteers, for the removal of their disabilities was equally set aside.
+Even Grattan, when he pleaded for a reform which would make the
+Parliament at least a fair representative of the Protestant Englishry,
+utterly failed. The ruling class found government too profitable to
+share it with other possessors. It was only by hard bribery that the
+English viceroys could secure their co-operation in the simplest
+measures of administration. "If ever there was a country unfit to govern
+itself," said Lord Hutchinson, "it is Ireland. A corrupt aristocracy, a
+ferocious commonalty, a distracted Government, a divided people!"
+
+[Sidenote: Irish Emancipation.]
+
+The real character of this Parliamentary rule was seen in the rejection
+of Pitt's offer of free trade. In Pitt's eyes the danger of Ireland lay
+above all in the misery of its people. Although the Irish Catholics were
+held down by the brute force of their Protestant rulers, he saw that
+their discontent was growing fast into rebellion, and that one secret
+at any rate of their discontent lay in Irish poverty, a poverty
+increased if not originally brought about by the jealous exclusion of
+Irish products from their natural markets in England itself. One of his
+first commercial measures therefore, as we have seen, aimed at putting
+an end to this exclusion by a bill which established freedom of trade
+between the two islands. But though he met successfully the fears and
+jealousies of the English farmers and manufacturers he was foiled by the
+factious ignorance of the Irish landowners, and his bill was rejected by
+the Irish Parliament. So utterly was he discouraged that for the moment
+he ceased from all further attempts to improve the condition of Ireland.
+But the efforts which the French revolutionists made to excite rebellion
+amongst the Irish roused him to fresh measures of conciliation and good
+government. The hopes of some reform of the Irish Parliament had been
+fanned by the eloquence of Grattan and by the pressure of the United
+Irishmen, an association which had sprung up in Ulster, where Protestant
+dissenters, who were equally excluded with Catholics from any share in
+political power, formed the strongest part of the population. These
+hopes however were growing every day fainter. To the Irish aristocracy
+parliamentary reform meant the close of a corrupt rule which had gone on
+unchecked since the American war. But to the Irish Catholic it meant
+far more; it meant his admission, not only to the electoral franchise,
+but in the end to all the common privileges of citizenship from which he
+was excluded, his "emancipation," to use the word which now became
+common, from the yoke of slavery which had pressed on him ever since the
+Battle of the Boyne.
+
+[Sidenote: The United Irishmen.]
+
+To such an emancipation Pitt was already looking forward. In 1792, a
+year before the outbreak of war with France, he forced on the Irish
+Parliament measures for the admission of Catholics to the electoral
+franchise and to civil and military office within the island, which
+promised a new era of religious liberty. But the promise came too late.
+The hope of conciliation was lost in the fast rising tide of religious
+and social passion. As the dream of obtaining Parliamentary reform died
+away the United Irishmen of the North drifted into projects of
+insurrection and a correspondence with France. The news of the French
+Revolution fell with a yet more terrible effect on the Catholic
+peasantry, brooding over their misery and their wrongs. Their discontent
+broke out in social disorder, in the outrages of secret societies of
+"Defenders" and "Peep o' Day Boys," which spread panic among the ruling
+classes. It was only by sheer terror and bloodshed that the Protestant
+landowners, who banded together in "Orange" societies to meet the secret
+societies about them, could hold the country down. Outrages on the one
+side, tyranny on the other, deepened the disorder and panic every day,
+and the hopes of the reformers grew fainter as the terror rose fast
+around them. The maddened Protestants scouted all notions of further
+concessions to men whom they looked upon as on the verge of revolt; and
+Grattan's motions for reform were defeated by increasing majorities. On
+the other hand the entry of the anti-revolutionary Whigs into Pitt's
+ministry revived Grattan's hopes, for Burke and his followers were
+pledged to a liberal policy towards Ireland, and Lord Fitzwilliam, who
+came over as viceroy in 1794, encouraged Grattan to bring in a bill for
+the entire emancipation of the Catholics at the opening of the next
+year. Such a step can hardly have been taken without Pitt's assent; but
+the minister was now swept along by a tide of feeling which he could not
+control. The Orangemen threatened revolt, the Tories in Pitt's own
+Cabinet recoiled from the notion of reform, and Lord Fitzwilliam was not
+only recalled, but replaced by Lord Camden, an avowed enemy of all
+change or concession to the Catholics. From that moment the United
+Irishmen became a revolutionary society; and one of their leaders, Wolfe
+Tone, made his way to France, in the spring of 1796, to seek aid in a
+national rising.
+
+[Sidenote: France and Ireland.]
+
+It is probable that Tone's errand was known to Pitt; it is certain that
+Lord Edward Fitzgerald, another of the patriot leaders, who had been
+summoned to carry on more definite negotiations in Basle, revealed
+inadvertently as he returned the secret of his hopes to an agent of the
+English Cabinet. Vague as were the offers of the United Irishmen, they
+had been warmly welcomed by the French Government. Masters at home, the
+Directory were anxious to draw off the revolutionary enthusiasm which
+the French party of order dreaded as much as Burke himself to the
+channels of foreign conquest. They were already planning that descent of
+their army in the Alps upon Lombardy which was to give a fatal blow to
+one of their enemies, Austria; and they welcomed the notion of a French
+descent upon Ireland and an Irish revolt, which would give as fatal a
+blow to their other enemy, England. An army of 25,000 men under General
+Hoche was promised, a fleet was manned, and preparations were being made
+for the expedition during the summer. But the secret was ill kept, and
+the news of such an attempt was, we can hardly doubt, the ground of the
+obstinacy with which Pitt persisted in the teeth of the national feeling
+and of Burke's invectives in clinging to his purpose of concluding a
+peace. In October 1796 Lord Malmesbury was despatched to Paris and
+negotiations were finally opened for that purpose. The terms which Pitt
+offered were terms of mutual restitution. France was to evacuate
+Holland and to restore Belgium to the Emperor. England on the other hand
+was to restore the colonies she had won to France, Holland, and Spain.
+As the English Minister had no power of dealing with the territories
+already ceded by Prussia and other states, such a treaty would have left
+France, as her eastern border, the line of the Rhine. But even had they
+desired peace at all, the Directors would have scorned it on terms such
+as these. While Malmesbury was negotiating indeed France was roused to
+new dreams of conquest by the victories of Napoleon Buonaparte. The
+genius of Carnot, the French Minister of War, had planned a joint
+advance upon Vienna by the French armies of Italy and the Rhine, the one
+under Buonaparte, the other under Moreau. The plan was only partly
+successful. Moreau, though he pushed forward through every obstacle to
+Bavaria, was compelled to fall back by the defeat of a lieutenant; and
+was only enabled by a masterly retreat through the Black Forest to reach
+the Rhine. But the disaster of Moreau was more than redeemed by the
+victories of Buonaparte. With the army which occupied the Riviera and
+the Maritime Alps the young general marched on Piedmont at the opening
+of the summer, separated its army from the Austrian troops, and forced
+the king of Sardinia to conclude a humiliating peace. A brilliant
+victory at the bridge of Lodi brought him to Milan, and drove the
+Austrians into the Tyrol. Lombardy was in the hands of the French, the
+Duchies south of the Po pillaged, and the Pope driven to purchase an
+armistice at enormous cost, before the Austrian armies, raised to a
+force of 50,000 men, again descended from the Tyrol for the relief of
+Mantua. But a fatal division of their forces by the Lake of Garda
+enabled Buonaparte to hurl them back broken upon Trent, and to shut up
+their general, Wurmser, in Mantua with the remnant of his men; while
+fresh victories at the bridge of Arcola and at Bassano drove back two
+new Austrian armies who advanced to Wurmser's rescue.
+
+[Sidenote: The Terror of Ireland.]
+
+It was the success of Buonaparte which told on the resolve of the
+Directory to reject all terms of peace. After months of dilatory
+negotiations the offers of Lord Malmesbury were definitely declined, and
+the English envoy returned home at the end of the year. Every hour of
+his stay in Paris had raised higher hopes of success against England in
+the minds of the Directory. At the moment of his arrival Spain had been
+driven to declare war as their ally against Britain; and the Spanish and
+Dutch fleets were now at the French service for a struggle at sea. The
+merciless exactions of Buonaparte poured gold into the exhausted
+treasury; and the energy of Hoche rapidly availed itself of this supply
+to equip a force for operations in Ireland. At the opening of December
+he was ready to put to sea with a fleet of more than forty sail and
+25,000 men; and the return of Lord Malmesbury was the signal for the
+despatch of his expedition from Brest. The fleet at Toulon, which was
+intended to co-operate with that at Brest, and which had sailed through
+the Straits of Gibraltar for that purpose, was driven into Port l'Orient
+by an English squadron: but contrary winds baffled the fleet which was
+watching Hoche, and his armament slipped away with little hindrance
+towards the Irish coast. Had it reached Ireland unbroken and under such
+a general, the island might well have been lost to the English Crown.
+But the winds fought against France, as they had fought against the
+Armada of Spain; and the ships were parted from one another by a gale
+which burst on them as they put to sea. Seventeen reached Bantry Bay,
+but hearing nothing of their leader or of the rest, they sailed back
+again to Brest, in spite of the entreaties of the soldiers to be
+suffered to land. Another division reached the Shannon to be scattered
+and driven home again by a second storm. Twelve vessels were wrecked or
+captured, and the frigate in which Hoche had embarked returned to port
+without having seen any of its companions. The invasion had failed, but
+the panic which it roused woke passions of cruelty and tyranny which
+turned Ireland into a hell. Soldiers and yeomanry marched over the
+country torturing and scourging the "croppies," as the Irish peasantry
+were termed from their short-cut hair; robbing, ravishing, and murdering
+at their will. The lightest suspicion, the most unfounded charges, were
+taken as warrants for bloodshed. So hideous were these outrages that the
+news of them as it reached England woke a thrill of horror in the minds
+of even the blindest Tories; but by the landowners who formed the Irish
+Parliament they were sanctioned in a Bill of Indemnity and protected for
+the future by an Insurrection Act. The terror however only woke a
+universal spirit of revolt. Ireland drank in greedily that hatred of
+England and of English rule which all the justice and moderation of
+later government has failed to destroy; and the United Irishmen looked
+with more passionate longing than ever to France.
+
+[Sidenote: The struggle for the Sea.]
+
+Nor had France abandoned the design of invasion; while her victories
+made such a design every day more formidable. The war was going steadily
+in her favour. A fresh victory at Rivoli, the surrender of Mantua, and
+an advance through Styria on Vienna, enabled Buonaparte to wring a peace
+from England's one ally, Austria. The armistice was concluded in April
+1797, and the final treaty which was signed at Campo Formio in October
+not only gave France the Ionian Islands, a part of the old territory of
+Venice (whose Italian possessions passed to the Emperor), as well as the
+Netherlands and the whole left bank of the Rhine, but united Lombardy
+with the Duchies south of the Po and the Papal States as far as the
+Rubicon into a "Cisalpine Republic," which was absolutely beneath her
+control. The withdrawal of Austria left France without an enemy on the
+Continent, and England without an ally. The stress of the war was
+pressing more heavily on her every day. A mutiny in the fleet was
+suppressed with difficulty. The news of Hoche's expedition brought about
+a run for gold which forced on the Bank a suspension of specie payments.
+It was in this darkest hour of the struggle that Burke passed away,
+protesting to the last against the peace which, in spite of his previous
+failure, Pitt was again striving to bring about by fresh negotiations at
+Lille. Peace seemed more needful than ever to him now that France was
+free to attack her enemy with the soldiers who had fought at Arcola and
+Rivoli. Their way, indeed, lay across the sea, and at sea Britain was
+supreme. But her supremacy was threatened by a coalition of naval forces
+such as had all but crushed her in the American war. Again the Dutch and
+Spanish fleets were allied with the fleets of France; and it was
+necessary to watch Cadiz and the Scheldt as well as Brest and Toulon. A
+single victory of the three confederates, or even such a command of the
+Channel as they had held for months during the war with America, would
+enable the Directory to throw overwhelming armies not only on the shores
+of England, but on the shores of Ireland, and whatever might be the
+fate of the one enterprise, there could be little doubt of the success
+of the other. The danger was real; but it had hardly threatened England
+when it was dispelled by two great victories. The Spanish fleet, which
+put out to sea with twenty-seven sail of the line, was met on the
+fourteenth of February 1797 by Admiral Jervis off Cape St. Vincent with
+a force of but fifteen; and driven back to Cadiz with a loss of four of
+its finest vessels. Disheartened as they were, however, their numbers
+still exceeded that of the force which blockaded them; and France
+counted with confidence on the fleet of Holland, which was ordered to
+join its own fleet at Brest. The aim of this union was to protect a
+fresh force in its descent upon Ireland, where the United Irishmen now
+declared themselves ready for revolt. But a yet sterner fortune awaited
+the Dutch than that which had fallen on the Spaniards. Their admiral, De
+Winter, who had quitted the Texel during a storm with eleven sail of the
+line and four frigates, fell in on the eleventh of October with a far
+larger fleet under Admiral Duncan off Camperdown. The Hollanders fought
+with a stubborn courage worthy of their old renown, and it was only when
+their ships were riddled with shot into mere wrecks that they fell into
+the hands of the English.
+
+[Sidenote: The Irish Rising.]
+
+The French project for an expedition to Ireland hung on the junction of
+the Dutch fleet with that of Brest, and the command of the Channel
+which this junction would have given them. Such a command became
+impossible after the defeat of Camperdown. But the disappointment of
+their hopes of foreign aid only drove the adherents of revolt in Ireland
+to a rising of despair. The union of the national party, which had
+lasted to some extent from the American war, was now broken up. The
+Protestants of Ulster still looked for aid to France. The Catholics, on
+the other hand, were alienated from the French by their attack on
+religion and the priesthood; and the failure of the French expedition,
+while it damped the hopes of the Ulstermen, gave force to the demands of
+the Catholic party for a purely national rising. So fierce was this
+demand that the leaders of the United Irishmen were forced to fix on the
+spring of 1798 for the outbreak of an insurrection, in which Lord Edward
+Fitzgerald, who had some small military experience, was to take the
+command. But while yielding on this point to the Catholic section of
+their party they conciliated the Protestants by renewed appeals for aid
+to the Directory. In spite of its previous failures France again
+promised help; and a division was prepared during the winter for service
+in Ireland. But the passion of the nation was too intense to wait for
+its arrival. The government too acted with a prompt decision in face of
+the danger, and an arrest of Lord Edward Fitzgerald with three of their
+chief leaders in February 1798 broke the plans of the insurgents. On the
+23rd of May, however, the day fixed for the opening of the revolt, the
+Catholic peasantry of the south rose in arms. Elsewhere their disorderly
+gatherings were easily dispersed by the yeomanry; but Wexford
+surrendered to 14,000 insurgents who marched on it, headed by a village
+priest, and the town at once became the centre of a formidable revolt.
+
+[Sidenote: Its failure.]
+
+Fortunately for the English rule the old religious hatred which had so
+often wrecked the hopes of Ireland broke out in the instant of this
+triumph. The Protestant inhabitants of Wexford were driven into the
+river or flung into prison. Another body of insurgents, frenzied by the
+cruelties of the royal troops, massacred a hundred Protestants in cool
+blood. The atrocities of the soldiers and the yeomanry were avenged with
+a fiendish ruthlessness. Loyalists were lashed and tortured in their
+turn, and every soldier taken was butchered without mercy. The result of
+these outrages was fatal to the insurrection. The Ulster Protestants,
+who formed the strength of the United Irishmen, stood sullenly aloof
+from rebels who murdered Protestants. The Catholic gentry threw
+themselves on the side of the government against a rising which
+threatened the country with massacre and anarchy. Few in fact had joined
+the insurgents in Wexford when Lord Lake appeared before their camp
+upon Vinegar Hill with a strong force of English troops on the 21st of
+May. The camp was stormed, and with the dispersion of its defenders the
+revolt came suddenly to an end. But its suppression came only just in
+time to prevent greater disasters; for a few weeks after the close of
+the rebellion the long-expected aid arrived from France. The news of the
+outbreak had forced the armament which was being equipped in the French
+ports to put to sea with forces utterly inadequate to the task it had
+set itself, but fresh aid was promised to follow, and the nine hundred
+soldiers who landed in August under General Humbert on the coast of Mayo
+showed by their first successes how formidable a centre they would have
+given to the revolt had the revolt held its ground. But in the two
+months which had passed since Vinegar Hill all trace of resistance to
+the English rule had been trodden out in blood, and Humbert found
+himself alone in a country exhausted and panic-stricken. He marched
+however boldly on Castlebar, broke a force of yeomanry and volunteers
+three times his number, and only surrendered when Lord Cornwallis, who
+had succeeded to the Lord-Lieutenancy, faced him with thirty thousand
+men.
+
+[Sidenote: French designs on India.]
+
+Of the threefold attack on which the Directory had relied for the ruin
+of England two parts had now broken down. Humbert's surrender and the
+failure of the native insurrection left little hope for future attack
+on the side of Ireland. The naval confederacy which was to rob England
+of the command of the seas had been foiled by the utter wreck of the
+Dutch fleet, and the imprisonment of the Spanish fleet in Cadiz. But the
+genius of Buonaparte had seized on the schemes for a rising against the
+English rule in Hindostan, and widened them into a project of all but
+world-wide conquest. At this time the strongest and most vigorous of the
+Indian powers was that of Mysore, at the southern extremity of the
+peninsula, where a Mussulman state had been built up by the genius of an
+adventurer, Hyder Ali. In the days when the English were winning their
+supremacy over the Carnatic, Hyder had been their chief difficulty; and
+his attack had once brought them to the verge of ruin. The hostility of
+his son Tippoo was even more bitter; but the victories of Lord
+Cornwallis had taught the Sultan of Mysore that he was no match for the
+British power single-handed; and his hopes, like those of the United
+Irishmen, were fixed upon France. He was striving to get aid from the
+Afghans and from the Nizam, but what he most counted on for the
+expulsion of the English from the Carnatic was a force of thirty
+thousand French soldiers. Letters requesting such a force were
+despatched by him to France in 1797. Buonaparte had already fixed on
+Mysore as a basis of operations against the British rule in Hindostan;
+and after dismissing as impracticable a project suggested to him on his
+return from Italy after the treaty of Campo Formio for a descent upon
+England itself, he laid before the Directory a plan for the conquest and
+occupation of Egypt as a preliminary to a campaign in Southern India.
+Utterly as this plan was foiled in the future, it was far from being the
+wild dream which it has often been considered. Both the Ministry and
+East Indian Directors were roused into anxiety by the first news of
+Buonaparte's expedition. The Earl of Mornington, Governor-General of
+British India, was warned of a possible attack from the Red Sea. Four
+thousand soldiers were hurried off to reinforce his army; while the
+English fleet watched anxiously in the Mediterranean. But so perfect was
+the secrecy with which the French plans were combined that Buonaparte
+was able to put to sea in May 1798 with a force of 30,000 veterans drawn
+from the army of Italy, and making himself master of Malta as he passed
+to land near Alexandria at the close of June.
+
+[Sidenote: The battle of the Nile.]
+
+The conquest of Egypt proved as easy and complete as Buonaparte had
+hoped. The Mamelukes were routed in the battle of the Pyramids; Cairo
+was occupied; and the French troops pushed rapidly up the valley of the
+Nile. Their general meanwhile showed his genius for government by a
+masterly organization of the conquered country, by the conciliation of
+his new subjects, and by measures for the enrolment of native soldiers
+which would in a short time have placed him at the head of a formidable
+army. Of his ultimate aim there can be little doubt; for he had hardly
+landed at Alexandria when he despatched the news of his arrival and
+promises of support to Tippoo. All chance however of success in his
+projects hung on the maintenance of communications with France. With
+Italy, with the Ionian Islands, with Alexandria in French holding, it
+was all but impossible to prevent supplies of men and arms from being
+forwarded to Egypt, so long as the French fleet remained in the waters
+of the Mediterranean and kept the English force concentrated by the
+necessity of watching its movements. But the French were hardly masters
+of Egypt when their fleet ceased to exist. The thirteen men-of-war which
+had escorted the expedition were found by Admiral Nelson in Aboukir Bay,
+moored close to the coast in a line guarded at either end by gunboats
+and batteries. Nelson resolved to thrust his ships between the French
+and the shore. On the morning of the 1st of August his own flag-ship led
+the way in this attack; and after a terrible fight of twelve hours, nine
+of the French vessels were captured and destroyed, two were burned, and
+five thousand French seamen were killed or made prisoners. "Victory,"
+cried Nelson, "is not a name strong enough for such a scene." Few
+victories indeed in history have produced more effective results than
+the battle of the Nile. The French flag was swept from the waters of the
+Mediterranean. All communication between France and Buonaparte's army
+was cut off; and his hopes of making Egypt a starting-point for the
+conquest of India fell at a blow. To hold Egypt itself soon became
+difficult, for a desperate revolt broke out at the news of Nelson's
+victory in the streets of Cairo, and a Turkish army advanced from Syria
+to recover the valley of the Nile.
+
+[Sidenote: France and Europe.]
+
+Secure against invasion at home as against rebellion in Ireland, secure
+too against the dangers that threatened her rule in India, and mistress
+of the seas, England was free in her turn to attack the assailant who
+had so long threatened her very existence. And in such an attack she was
+aided at this moment by the temper of the European powers, and by the
+ceaseless aggressions of France. The treaties of Basle and Campo Formio
+were far from being accepted by the Directory as a final settlement of
+the relations of France with Europe. Some faint remnant of the older
+dreams of freeing oppressed peoples may have lingered in the aid which
+it gave to the rising of the subject districts of Basle and Vaud against
+their Bernese masters in the opening of 1798. But mere greed of gold was
+seen in the plunder of the treasury of Berne, a plunder which served to
+equip the army that sailed with Buonaparte to the shores of Egypt, and
+to recruit the exhausted treasury of the Directory; and an ambition, as
+reckless as this greed, broke out in an attack on the mountain cantons,
+states whose democratic institutions gave no such excuse for hostility
+as had been afforded by the aristocracy of Berne. A French decree
+abolished the Swiss Confederation, and the independence of its several
+states, and established in their place an Helvetic Republic modelled on
+a plan sent from Paris, and placed under the protection of France. The
+mountain cantons rose against this overthrow of a freedom compared with
+which the freedom of France was but of yesterday; but desperate as was
+their struggle they were overwhelmed by numbers, and the men of Uri, of
+Unterwalden and of Schwytz bowed for the first time to a foreign
+conqueror.
+
+[Sidenote: Russia and France.]
+
+The overthrow of this immemorial house of freedom opened the eyes of the
+blindest enthusiast to the real character of the French aggressions.
+Even in the group of young English poets, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and
+Southey, who had clung till now to the dream of the Revolution, of a
+Europe freed and regenerated by the arms of the new republic, all belief
+in such a dream passed finally away. But the France of the Directory
+would have cared little for this alienation of the peoples, had it not
+been backed by the revived hostility of their kings. What England
+counted on in her efforts for a revival of the coalition was the
+resentment of Austria at the aggressions which the Directory had ever
+since the peace of Campo Formio been carrying on in Italy. In the
+opening of 1798 a French force entered Rome, set up a Roman republic,
+and carried off Pius VI. a prisoner to Siena; while the king of Sardinia
+was driven to admit French garrisons into his fortresses. Austria
+however was still too weak after her defeats to listen to Pitt's
+advances, had Pitt stood alone. But Russia was now about to take a new
+part in European affairs. Under Catharine the Second this power had
+availed itself of the war against France in the west to carry out its
+own projects of conquest in eastern Europe; and, as we have seen, Pitt
+had watched its advance at the opening of the Revolution with far
+greater dread than the movements in France. It was in fact the need
+which the two German states felt of balancing the Russian annexations in
+Poland by annexations of their own which had paralysed their armies on
+the Rhine and saved France at the moment of her greatest danger in 1793.
+It is probable that the Directory still counted on the persistence of
+Russia in a similar policy, and believed that Catharine would see in
+their attack on Egypt and the Turks only a fresh opportunity for
+conquests on the Danube. But the sudden greatness of France had warned
+Russia that its policy of selfishness had been carried too far. It had
+allowed the Republic to tower into supremacy over the Continent, and if
+once such a supremacy was firmly established it would prove a fatal
+obstacle to the Russian advance. France would again, as under the
+monarchy, aim at the restoration of Poland; she would again bar the way
+to Constantinople; and her action would be backed by the weight of all
+western Europe, which had been thrown into her scale by the policy of
+the very state she defied. To avert such a result it was necessary to
+restore that balance of the Continent by which France and the German
+powers held one another in check; and with a view to this restoration
+Russia suddenly declared itself an enemy of France. Catharine's
+successor, the Czar Paul, set aside the overtures of the Directory. A
+close alliance was formed with Austria, and while an Imperial army
+gathered on the Bavarian frontier Russian troops hurried to the west.
+
+[Sidenote: The Union with Ireland.]
+
+The appearance of this new element in the struggle changed its whole
+conditions; and it was with renewed hope that Pitt lavished subsidies on
+the two allies at the close of 1798. But his preparations for the new
+strife were far from being limited to efforts abroad. In England he had
+found fresh resources in an Income-Tax, from which he anticipated an
+annual return of ten millions. Heavy as the tax was, and it amounted to
+ten per cent on all incomes above £200 a year, the dogged resolution of
+the people to fight on was seen in the absence of all opposition to
+this proposal. What was of even greater importance was to remove all
+chance of fresh danger from Ireland. Pitt's temper was of too
+statesmanlike a mould to rest content with the mere suppression of
+insurrection or with the system of terrorism which for the moment held
+the country down. His disgust at "the bigoted fury of Irish Protestants"
+had backed Lord Cornwallis in checking the reprisals of his troops and
+of the Orangemen; but the hideous cruelty which he was forced to witness
+brought about a firm resolve to put an end to the farce of
+"Independence" which left Ireland helpless in such hands. The political
+necessity for a union of the two islands had been brought home to every
+English statesman by the course of the Irish Parliament during the
+disputes over the Regency. While England repelled the claims of the
+Prince of Wales to the Regency as of right, the legislature of Ireland
+admitted them. As the only union left between the two peoples since the
+concession of legislative independence was their obedience to a common
+ruler, such an act might conceivably have ended in their entire
+severance; and the sense of this danger secured a welcome in England for
+the proposal which Pitt made at the opening of 1799 to unite the two
+Parliaments. The opposition of the Irish borough-mongers was naturally
+stubborn and determined, and when the plan was introduced into the
+Parliament at Dublin, it was only saved from rejection by a single
+vote. But with men like these it was a sheer question of gold; and their
+assent was bought with a million in money, and with a liberal
+distribution of pensions and peerages. Base and shameless as were such
+means, Pitt may fairly plead that they were the only means by which the
+bill for the Union could have been passed. As the matter was finally
+arranged in June 1800, one hundred Irish members became part of the
+House of Commons at Westminster, and twenty-eight temporal peers chosen
+by their fellows for life, with four spiritual peers succeeding in a
+fixed rotation, took their seats in the House of Lords. Commerce between
+the two countries was freed from all restrictions, and every trading
+privilege of the one thrown open to the other, while taxation was
+proportionately distributed between the two peoples.
+
+[Sidenote: France and the Coalition.]
+
+While the Union was being pushed slowly forward, the struggle abroad was
+passing through strange vicissitudes. At the opening of 1799 the efforts
+of the new coalition were crowned with success in every quarter. Though
+Naples had been turned into a Parthenopean Republic at the close of the
+previous year, and the French supremacy extended over the whole
+peninsula, the descent of an Austrian army from the Tyrol at the end of
+March, and a victory of the Russian and Austrian forces at Cassano,
+compelled the French army to evacuate Southern Italy and Lombardy,
+while a fresh defeat at Novi flung it back on the Maritime Alps. A
+campaign conducted with more varying success drove the armies which
+advanced into Germany back over the Rhine. In Switzerland however the
+stubborn energy of Massena enabled his soldiers to hold their ground
+against the combined attack of Russian and Austrian forces; and the
+attempt of a united force of Russians and English to wrest Holland from
+its French masters was successfully repulsed. Twelve of the thirty
+thousand men who formed this army consisted of English troops; and Sir
+Ralph Abercromby succeeded in landing at their head, in seizing what
+remained of the Dutch fleet at the Texel, and in holding General Brune
+at bay when he advanced with superior forces. But Abercromby was
+superseded in his command by the Duke of York; and in another month the
+new leader was glad to conclude a convention by which the safe
+withdrawal of his troops was secured.
+
+[Sidenote: Buonaparte in Syria.]
+
+In the East however England was more successful. Even had Buonaparte not
+been baffled in his plans of a descent on Southern India from the basis
+of Egypt by the battle of the Nile, they would have been frustrated by
+the energy of Lord Wellesley. Mysore was invaded, its capital stormed,
+and Tippoo slain, before a French soldier could have been despatched to
+its aid. But foiled as were his dreams of Indian conquest the daring
+genius of the French general plunged into wilder projects. He conceived
+the design of the conquest of Syria and of the creation of an army among
+its warlike mountaineers. "With a hundred thousand men on the banks of
+the Euphrates," he said years afterwards, "I might have gone to
+Constantinople or India, I might have changed the face of the world."
+Gaza was taken, Jaffa stormed, and ten thousand French soldiers advanced
+under their young general on Acre. Acre was the key of Syria, and its
+reduction was the first step in these immense projects. "Once possessed
+of Acre," wrote Napoleon, "the army would have gone to Damascus and the
+Euphrates. The Christians of Syria, the Druses, the Armenians, would
+have joined us. The provinces of the Ottoman Empire were ready for a
+change, and were only waiting for a man." But Acre was stubbornly held
+by the Turks, the French battering train was captured at sea by an
+English captain, Sir Sidney Smith, whose seamen aided in the defence of
+the place, and after a loss of three thousand men by sword and plague,
+the besiegers were forced to fall back upon Egypt.
+
+[Sidenote: The Peace of Lunéville.]
+
+Egypt indeed was more than ever their own, for their army had now
+penetrated to the cataracts of the Nile, and a Turkish force which
+landed near Alexandria was cut to pieces by Buonaparte in the battle of
+Aboukir. But the news of defeat at home and the certainty that all wider
+hopes in the East were at an end, induced him only a month after his
+victory to leave his army. With a couple of frigates he set sail for
+France; and his arrival in Paris was soon followed by a change in the
+government. The Directors were divided among themselves, while the
+disasters of their administration made them hateful to the country; and
+a revolution brought about by the soldiery on the 10th of November put
+an end to their power. In the new system which followed three consuls
+took the place of the Directors; but the system only screened the
+government of a single man, for under the name of First Consul
+Buonaparte became in effect sole ruler of the country. His energy at
+once changed the whole face of European affairs. The offers of peace
+which he made to England and Austria were intended to do little more
+than to shake the coalition, and gain breathing time for the
+organization of a new force which was gathering in secrecy at Dijon,
+while Moreau with the army of the Rhine pushed again along the Danube.
+The First Consul crossed the Saint Bernard with this army in the spring
+of 1800, and on the 14th of June a victory at Marengo left the Austrian
+army, which had just succeeded in reducing Genoa, helpless in his hands.
+It was by the surrender of all Lombardy to the Oglio that the defeated
+general obtained an armistice for his troops; and a similar truce
+arrested the march of Moreau, who had captured Munich and was pushing
+on to Vienna. The armistice only added to the difficulties of
+Buonaparte's opponents, for Russia, as anxious not to establish a German
+supremacy as she had been to weaken the supremacy of France, had
+withdrawn from the contest as soon as the coalition seemed to be
+successful; and Austria was only held back from peace by her acceptance
+of English subsidies. But though she fought on, the resumption of the
+war in the autumn failed to reverse the fortune of arms. The Austrians
+were driven back on Vienna; and on the second of December Moreau crushed
+their army on the Iser in the victory of Hohenlinden. But the aim of the
+First Consul was only to wrest peace from his enemies by these triumphs;
+while the expiration of her engagements with England left his opponent
+free to lay down her arms. In February 1801 therefore the Continental
+War was brought suddenly to an end by the Peace of Lunéville.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ENGLAND AND NAPOLEON
+
+1801-1815
+
+
+[Sidenote: The New Europe.]
+
+The treaty of Lunéville was of far greater import than the treaties
+which had ended the struggle of the first coalition. It was in effect
+the close of the attack which revolutionary France had directed against
+the Continental powers. With it expired the outer energy of the
+Revolution, as its inner energy expired with the elevation of Buonaparte
+to the First Consulate. The change that the French onset had wrought in
+the aspect of Europe had no doubt been great. In the nine years which
+had passed since the earlier league of the powers against her, France
+had won all and more than all that the ambition of her older statesmen
+had ever aimed at. She had absorbed the Netherlands. She was practically
+mistress of Holland, Switzerland, and Piedmont, whose dependent
+republics covered her frontier; while she had revived that union with
+Spain which had fallen for a time with the Family Compact of the House
+of Bourbon. But in spite of this growth the dread of French aggression
+was far less keenly felt by her neighbour states than in the early years
+of the war. What they had dreaded then was not so much the political
+reconstruction of Europe as the revolutionary enthusiasm which would
+have pushed this political reconstruction into a social revolution. But
+at the opening of the nineteenth century the enthusiasm of France had
+faded away. She was again Christian. She was again practically
+monarchical. What her neighbours saw in her after all these years of
+change was little more than the old France with a wider frontier; and
+now that they could look upon those years as a whole, it was clear that
+much of this widening of her borders was only a fair counterbalance for
+the widened borders of the states around her. If France had grown great,
+other powers had grown in greatness too. If France had pushed her
+frontier to the Rhine and established dependencies across the Rhone and
+the Alps, Russia during the same period had annexed the bulk of Poland,
+and the two great German powers had enlarged themselves both to the east
+and the west. The Empire had practically ceased to be; but its ruin had
+given fresh extension and compactness to the states which had profited
+by it. The cessions of Prussia had been small beside her gains. The
+losses of Austria had been more than counterbalanced in Italy by her
+acquisition of Venice, and far more than counterbalanced by
+secularizations and annexations within Germany itself.
+
+[Illustration: EUROPE after the PEACE OF LUNÉVILLE, 1801]
+
+[Sidenote: France and Britain.]
+
+Although therefore the old Europe and its balance of power had passed
+away, the new Europe which had taken its place presented a balance of
+power which might be regarded as even more effective; and the peace of
+Lunéville was in reality the recognition on both sides of a European
+settlement on the basis of such a balance. But in the mind of Buonaparte
+it was far more than this. It was the first step in an entire reversal
+of the policy which Revolutionary France had pursued in her dealings
+with the world. It was a return to the older policy of the French
+monarchy. Under the guidance of the revolutionists France had striven
+for supremacy among the states of Europe. But for such a supremacy the
+First Consul cared comparatively little. What he cared for was what
+Choiseul and the statesmen who followed him cared for, the supremacy of
+the world. And he saw that with every year of war on the Continent such
+a supremacy grew more distant than ever. The very victories of France
+indeed were playing into the hands of England. Amidst all the triumphs
+of the revolutionary war the growth of the British Empire had been
+steady and ceaseless. She was more than ever mistress of the sea. The
+mastery of Holland by the French had only ended in the removal of one of
+the obstacles to such a mastery by the ruin of the Dutch navy, and the
+transfer of the rich Dutch colonies to the British crown. The winning of
+Egypt had but spurred her to crush the only Mussulman power that could
+avert her rule over southern India. But her growth was more than a
+merely territorial growth. She was turning her command of the seas to a
+practical account. Not only was she monopolizing the carrying trade of
+the European nations, but the sudden uprush of her industries was making
+her the workshop as well as the market of the world. From the first the
+mind of Buonaparte had been set on a struggle with this growing
+world-power. Even amidst his earliest victories he had dreamed of
+wresting from England her dominion in the East; and if his Egyptian
+expedition had done nothing for India, it had secured in Egypt itself a
+stepping-stone for further efforts. But now that France was wholly at
+his disposal, the First Consul resolved to free his hands from the
+strife with the Continent, and to enter on that struggle with Britain
+which was henceforth to be the task of his life.
+
+[Sidenote: Pitt's position.]
+
+The significance then of the Peace of Lunéville lay in this, not only
+that it was the close of the earlier revolutionary struggle for
+supremacy in Europe, the abandonment by France of her effort to
+"liberate the peoples," to force new institutions on the nations about
+her by sheer dint of arms; but that it marked the concentration of all
+her energies on a struggle with Britain for the supremacy of the world.
+For England herself the event which accompanied it, the sudden
+withdrawal of William Pitt from office which took place in the very
+month of the treaty, was hardly less significant. To men of our day the
+later position of William Pitt seems one of almost tragic irony. An
+economist heaping up millions of debt, a Peace Minister dragged into the
+costliest of wars, he is the very type of the baffled statesman; and the
+passionate loyalty with which England clung to him through the
+revolutionary struggle is one of the least intelligible passages of our
+history. But if England clung to Pitt through these years of gloom, it
+was because then more than ever she saw in him her own representative.
+His strength had lain throughout in his reflection of public opinion:
+and public opinion saw itself reflected in him still. At the outset of
+his career the set of opinion had been towards a larger and more popular
+policy than of old. New facilities of communication, new industrial
+energy, and a quick accumulation of wealth, as well as the social
+changes which followed hard on these economical changes, all pointed
+forward to political progress, to an adaptation of our institutions to
+the varied conditions of the time. The nation was quivering with a new
+sense of life; and it faced eagerly questions of religion, of
+philanthropy, of education, of trade, as one after another they
+presented themselves before it. Above all it clung to the young minister
+whose ideas were its own, who, alien as his temper seemed from that of
+an innovator, came boldly to the front with projects for a new
+Parliament, a new finance, a new international policy, a new imperial
+policy, a new humanitarian policy. It was this oneness of Pitt's temper
+with the temper of the men he ruled that made him sympathize, in spite
+of the alarm of the court, with the first movements of the revolution in
+France, and deal fairly, if coldly, with its after-course. It was this
+that gave him strength to hold out so long against a struggle with it.
+
+[Sidenote: Pitt and the War.]
+
+But as the alarm deepened, as the nation saw its social, political, and
+religious traditions alike threatened, the bulk of Englishmen swung
+round into an attitude of fierce resistance. The craving for
+self-preservation hushed all other cravings. What men looked for in Pitt
+now was not the economist or the reformer, but the son of Chatham, the
+heir of his father's courage, of his father's faith in the greatness of
+England. And what they looked for they found. Pitt was no born War
+Minister; he had none of the genius that commands victory, or of the
+passionate enthusiasm that rouses a nation to great deeds of arms. But
+he had faith in England. Even when she stood alone against the world he
+never despaired. Reading him, as we read him now, we see the sickness
+and the gloom of his inner soul; but no sign betrayed it to the world.
+As the tempest gathered about them, men looked with trust that deepened
+into awe on the stately figure that embodied their faith in England's
+fortunes, and huddled in the darkness round "the pilot that weathered
+the storm." But there were deeper and less conscious grounds for their
+trust in him. Pitt reflected far more than the nation's resolve. He
+reflected the waverings and inconsistencies of its political temper in a
+way that no other man did. In the general swing round to an attitude of
+resistance, the impulse of progress had come utterly to an end. Men
+doubted of the truth of principles that seemed to have brought about the
+horrors of the Revolution. They listened to Burke as he built up his
+theory of political immobility on the basis of an absolute perfection in
+the constitution of things as they were. But even in this moment of
+reaction they still clung unconsciously to a belief in something better,
+to a trust that progress would again be possible, and to the man who
+reflected their trust. Like them, Pitt could understand little of the
+scene about him, that seething ocean of European change where states
+vanished like dreams, and the very elements of social life seemed to
+melt in a mist; his mind, like theirs, was baffled with doubt and
+darkness, with the seeming suicide of freedom, the seeming triumph of
+violence and wrong. But, baffled and bewildered as he was, he never
+ceased to believe in liberty, or to hope that the work of reform which
+he had begun might yet be carried into effect.
+
+It was as the representative of this temper of the people at large, of
+its mingled mood of terror at the new developements of freedom and yet
+of faith in freedom itself, of its dread of progress and yet its hope of
+a time when a larger national life should again become possible, that
+Pitt had gathered the nation round him from the opening of the war. Much
+indeed of the seeming weakness and uncertainty of his statesmanship
+throughout the struggle sprang from the fidelity with which he reflected
+this double aspect of national opinion. He has been blamed for fighting
+the French Revolution at all, as he has been blamed for not entering on
+an anti-revolutionary crusade. But his temper was that of the nation as
+a whole. He shrank from the fanaticism of Burke as he shrank from the
+fanaticism of Tom Paine: his aim was not to crush France or the
+Revolution, but to bring the struggle with them to such an end as might
+enable England to return in safety to the work of progress which the
+struggle had interrupted. And it was this that gave significance to his
+fall. It was a sign that the time had come when the national union which
+Pitt embodied must dissolve with the disappearance of the force that
+created it; when resistance had done its work, and the arrest of all
+national movement had come to an end with the attitude of mere
+resistance from which it sprang; when in face of a new France and a new
+French policy England could again return to her normal political life,
+and the impulses towards progress which had received so severe a check
+in 1792 could again flow in their older channels. In such a return Pitt
+himself took the lead; and his proposal of Catholic emancipation was as
+significant of a new era of English life as the Peace of Lunéville was
+significant of a new settlement of Europe.
+
+[Sidenote: Catholic Emancipation.]
+
+In Pitt's mind the Union which he brought about in 1800 was more than a
+mere measure for the security of the one island; it was a first step in
+the regeneration of the other. The legislative connexion of the two
+countries was only part of the plan which he had conceived for the
+conciliation of Ireland. With the conclusion of the Union indeed, his
+projects of free trade between the two countries, projects which had
+been defeated a few years back by the folly of the Irish Parliament,
+came quietly into play; and in spite of insufficient capital and social
+disturbance the growth of the trade, shipping, and manufactures of
+Ireland has gone on without a check from that time to this. The change
+which brought Ireland directly under the common Parliament was followed
+too by a gradual revision of its oppressive laws and an amendment in
+their administration; while taxation was lightened, and a faint
+beginning made of public instruction. But in Pitt's mind the great means
+of conciliation was the concession of religious equality. In proposing
+to the English Parliament the union of the two countries he pointed out
+that when thus joined to a Protestant country like England all danger of
+a Catholic supremacy in Ireland, even should Catholic disabilities be
+removed, would be practically at an end. In such a case, he suggested
+that "an effectual and adequate provision for the Catholic clergy" would
+be a security for their loyalty. His words gave strength to the hopes of
+"Catholic emancipation," as the removal of what remained of the civil
+disabilities of Catholics was called, which were held out by his agent,
+Lord Castlereagh, in Ireland itself as a means of hindering any
+opposition to the project of Union on the part of the Catholics. It was
+agreed on all sides that their opposition would have secured its defeat;
+and the absence of such a Catholic opposition showed the new trust in
+Pitt which was awakened by the hints of Lord Castlereagh. The trust had
+good grounds to go on. After the passing of the bill Pitt prepared to
+lay before his Cabinet a measure which would have raised not only the
+Irish Catholic but the Irish Dissenter to a perfect equality of civil
+rights. He proposed to remove all religious tests which limited the
+exercise of the franchise, or which were required for admission to
+Parliament, the magistracy, the bar, municipal offices, or posts in the
+army or the service of the State. An oath of allegiance and of fidelity
+to the Constitution was substituted for the Sacramental test; while the
+loyalty of the Catholic and Dissenting clergy was secured by a grant of
+some provision to both on the part of the State. To win over the
+Episcopal Church to such an equality measures were added for
+strengthening its modes of discipline, as well as for increasing the
+stipends of its poorer ministers, while a commutation of tithes was
+planned as a means of removing a constant source of quarrel between the
+Protestant clergy and the Irish people.
+
+[Sidenote: Pitt's resignation.]
+
+But the scheme was too large and statesmanlike to secure the immediate
+assent of the Cabinet; and before that assent could be won or the plan
+laid with full ministerial sanction before the king, it was communicated
+through the treachery of the Chancellor, Lord Loughborough, to George
+the Third. "I count any man my personal enemy," George broke out angrily
+to Dundas, "who proposes any such measure." Pitt answered this outburst
+by submitting his whole plan to the king. "The political circumstances
+under which the exclusive laws originated," he wrote, "arising either
+from the conflicting power of hostile and nearly balanced sects, from
+the apprehension of a Popish queen as successor, a disputed succession
+and a foreign pretender, a division in Europe between Catholic and
+Protestant Powers, are no longer applicable to the present state of
+things." But argument was wasted upon George the Third. In spite of the
+decision of the lawyers whom he consulted, the king declared himself
+bound by his Coronation Oath to maintain the tests; and his obstinacy
+was only strengthened by a knowledge that such a refusal must drive Pitt
+from office. George was weary of his minister's supremacy. He was
+longing for servants who would leave him more than a show of power, and
+he chose his ground for a struggle with all the cunning of his earlier
+years. It was by his command of public opinion that Pitt had been able
+to force his measures on the king. But in the question of Catholic
+Emancipation George knew that opinion was not with his minister, but
+with himself. On this point his bigotry was at one with the bigotry of
+the bulk of his subjects, as well as with their political distrust of
+Catholics and Irishmen. He persisted therefore in his refusal; and it
+was followed by the event he foresaw. In February 1801, at the moment of
+the Peace of Lunéville, William Pitt resigned his office into the hands
+of the king.
+
+[Sidenote: The Addington Ministry.]
+
+It was with a sense of relief that George found himself freed from the
+great minister whose temper was so alien from his own. But it was with a
+yet greater sense of relief that he saw him followed into retirement not
+only by Lord Grenville, but by nearly all the more liberal section of
+the ministry, by men like Windham and Lord Spencer, the representatives
+of the "Old Whigs" who had joined Pitt on the disruption of their party
+through the French Revolution. Such a union indeed could hardly have
+lasted much longer. The terror which had so long held these Whigs in
+their alliance with the Tories who formed the bulk of the administration
+was now at an end; and we have already seen their pressure for a more
+liberal policy in the action of Lord Fitzwilliam as Lord-Lieutenant of
+Ireland. But the question of Emancipation finally brought about a
+restoration of the natural position of parties; and from this moment the
+old Whigs, who accepted Lord Grenville as their head, fell into alliance
+with the more revolutionary Whigs who had remained faithful to Fox. The
+Whig party thus became again a powerful element in English politics,
+while in face of the reunited Whigs stood the Tories, relieved like
+themselves from the burthen of an alliance which grew hourly more
+distasteful. The bulk of the old Ministry returned in a few days to
+office with Mr. Addington at their head, and his administration received
+the support of the whole Tory party in Parliament.
+
+Without the walls of Parliament however the nation looked on such a
+change with dismay. Addington was regarded as a weak and narrow-minded
+man; and the favour with which the king welcomed him was clue to a
+consciousness of their common bigotry. Of Lord Hawkesbury, who succeeded
+Lord Grenville in the conduct of foreign affairs, nothing was known
+outside the House of Commons. It was with anxiety that England found
+itself guided by men like these at a time when every hour brought darker
+news. The scarcity of bread was mounting to a famine. Taxes were raised
+anew, and yet the loan for the year amounted to five-and-twenty
+millions. The country stood utterly alone; while the peace of Lunéville
+secured France from all hostility on the Continent. And it was soon
+plain that this peace was only the first step in a new policy on the
+part of the First Consul. What he had done was to free his hands for a
+decisive conflict with Britain itself, both as a world-power and as a
+centre of wealth. England was at once the carrier of European commerce
+and the workshop of European manufactures. While her mines, her looms,
+her steam-engines, were giving her almost a monopoly of industrial
+production, her merchant ships sufficed not only to spread her own
+products through the world, but to carry to every part of it the
+products of other countries. Though the war had already told on both
+these sources of wealth, it was far from having told fatally. It had
+long closed France indeed to English exports, while the waste of wealth
+in so wide a strife had lessened the buying power of Europe at large.
+But in Europe the loss was to some extent made up for the moment by the
+artificial demand for supplies which war creates; the home market still
+sufficed to absorb a vast quantity of manufactures; and America, which
+was fast growing into the most important of English customers, remained
+unaffected by the struggle. Industry had thus suffered but little loss,
+while commerce believed itself to have greatly gained. All rivals save
+one had in fact been swept from the sea; the carrying trade of France
+and Holland alike had been transferred to the British flag, and the
+conquest of their wealthier settlements had thrown into British hands
+the whole colonial trade of the world.
+
+[Illustration: EUROPE after the PEACE OF TILSIT, 1807]
+
+[Sidenote: League of Neutrals.]
+
+To strike at England's wealth had been among the projects of the
+Directory: it was now the dream of the First Consul. It was in vain for
+England to produce, if he shut her out of every market. Her carrying
+trade must be annihilated if he closed every port against her ships. It
+was this gigantic project of a "Continental System" that revealed itself
+as soon as Buonaparte became finally master of France. From France
+itself and its dependencies in Holland and the Netherlands English trade
+was already excluded. But Italy also was shut against her after the
+Peace of Lunéville, and Spain not only closed her own ports but forced
+Portugal to break with her English ally. In the Baltic Buonaparte was
+more active than even in the Mediterranean. In a treaty with America,
+which was destined to bring this power also in the end into his great
+attack, he had formally recognized the rights of neutral vessels which
+England was hourly disputing; and in her disregard of them he not only
+saw the means of bringing the northern powers into his system of
+exclusion, but of drawing on their resources for a yet more decisive
+blow. He was set upon challenging not only England's wealth but her
+world-empire; and his failure in Egypt had taught him that the first
+condition of success in such an enterprise was to wrest from her her
+command of the seas. The only means of doing this lay in a combination
+of naval powers; and the earlier efforts of France had left but one
+naval combination for Buonaparte to try. The Directory had been able to
+assail England at sea by the joint action of the French fleet with those
+of Holland and of Spain. But the Spanish navy had been crippled by the
+battle of Cape St. Vincent, and the Dutch fleet destroyed in the victory
+of Camperdown. The only powers which now possessed naval resources were
+the powers of the North. The fleets of Denmark, Sweden, and Russia
+numbered forty sail of the line, and they had been untouched by the
+strife. Both the Scandinavian states resented the severity with which
+Britain enforced that right of search which had brought about their
+armed neutrality at the close of the American war; while Denmark was
+besides an old ally of France, and her sympathies were still believed to
+be French. The First Consul therefore had little trouble in enlisting
+them in a league of neutrals, which was in effect a declaration of war
+against England, and which Prussia as before showed herself ready to
+join.
+
+[Sidenote: Russia's designs.]
+
+Russia indeed seemed harder to gain. Since Paul's accession she had been
+the moving spirit in the confederacy which had only been broken up by
+the victory of Marengo. But the spirit of revolutionary aggression which
+had nominally roused Paul to action, had, as the Czar believed, been
+again hushed by the First Consul. Buonaparte had yielded to his
+remonstrances in preserving the independence of Naples and Sardinia; and
+with Italian subtlety he now turned the faith in French moderation which
+these concessions created in the mind of Paul into a dread of the
+ambition of England and a jealousy of her sovereignty of the seas. But
+his efforts would have been in vain had they not fallen in with the
+general current of Russian policy. From the first outbreak of the
+Revolutionary struggle Russia, as we have seen, had taken advantage of
+the strife among the Western nations to push forward her own projects in
+the East. Catharine had aimed at absorbing Poland, and at becoming the
+mistress of European Turkey. In the first she had been successful, but
+the second still remained unaccomplished when her empire passed to her
+son. For a time Paul had been diverted from the task by the turn of
+affairs in Western Europe, where the victories of the French Republic
+threatened an utter overthrow of the powers opposed to it, which would
+have foiled the plans of Russia by bringing about a European union that
+must have paralysed her advance. The Czar therefore acted strictly in
+the spirit of Catharine's policy when he stepped in again to feed the
+strife by raising the combatants to a new equality, and when he withdrew
+his armies at the very moment that this was done. But successful as his
+diversion had been, Paul saw that one obstacle remained in the way of
+his projects upon Turkey. Pitt had never hidden his opposition to the
+Russian plans. His whole policy at the outbreak of the Revolution had
+been guided by a desperate hope of binding the powers again together to
+prevent the ruin of Poland, or of hindering it by a league of England
+and France alone. Foiled as he had been in these efforts, he was even
+more resolute to check the advance of Russia on Constantinople. Already
+her growing empire in India was telling on the European policy of
+England; and the security of Egypt, of Syria, of Turkey at large, was
+getting deemed to be essential to the maintenance of her communication
+with her great dependency. The French descent on Egypt, the attack on
+Syria, had bound Britain and Turkey together; and Paul saw that an
+attack on the one would bring him a fresh opponent in the other.
+
+[Sidenote: The League broken up.]
+
+It was to check the action of Britain in the East that the Czar now
+turned to the French Consul, and seconded his efforts for the formation
+of a naval confederacy in the North, while his minister, Rostopchin,
+planned a division of the Turkish Empire in Europe between Russia and
+her allies. Austria was to be satisfied with the western provinces of
+the Balkan peninsula; Russia gained Moldavia, Bulgaria, and Roumelia as
+far as Constantinople; while Greece fell to the lot of France, whose
+troops were already on the Italian shores, at a day's sail from the
+Illyrian coast. A squabble over Malta, which had been blockaded since
+its capture by Buonaparte, and which surrendered at last to a British
+fleet, but whose possession the Czar claimed as his own on the ground of
+an alleged election as Grand Master of the Order of St. John, served as
+a pretext for a quarrel with England; and at the close of 1800 Paul
+openly prepared for hostilities. In October he announced an armed
+neutrality; in December he seized three hundred English vessels in his
+ports, and sequestrated all English goods found in his Empire. The
+Danes, who throughout the year had been struggling to evade the British
+right of search, at once joined this neutral league, and were followed
+by Sweden in their course. It was plain that, as soon as the spring of
+1801 opened the Baltic, the fleets of the three Powers would act in
+practical union with those of France and Spain. But the command of the
+seas which such a union threatened was a matter for England of life and
+death, for at this very moment the Peace of Lunéville left Buonaparte
+without a foe on the Continent, and able to deal as he would with the
+whole military resources of France. Once master of the Channel he could
+throw a force on the southern coast of England which she had no means of
+meeting in the field. But dexterous as the combination was, it was
+shattered at a blow. On the first of April 1801 a British fleet of
+eighteen men-of-war forced the passage of the Belt, appeared before
+Copenhagen, and at once attacked the city and its fleet. In spite of a
+brave resistance from the Danish batteries and gunboats six Danish ships
+were taken, and the Crown Prince was forced to conclude an armistice
+which enabled the English ships to enter the Baltic, where the Russian
+fleet was still detained by the ice. But their work was really over. The
+seizure of English goods and the declaration of war had bitterly
+irritated the Russian nobles, whose sole outlet for the sale of the
+produce of their vast estates was thus closed to them; and on the
+twenty-fourth of March, nine days before the battle of Copenhagen, Paul
+fell in a midnight attack by conspirators in his own palace. With Paul
+fell the Confederacy of the North. The policy of his successor, the Czar
+Alexander, was far more in unison with the general feeling of his
+subjects; in June a Convention between England and Russia settled the
+vexed questions of the right of search and contraband of war, and this
+Convention was accepted by Sweden and Denmark.
+
+[Sidenote: French lose Egypt.]
+
+The First Consul's disappointment was keen; but he saw clearly that with
+this dissolution of the Northern alliance the war came virtually to an
+end. He no longer had any means of attacking Britain save by the efforts
+of France itself, and even with the aid of Holland and Spain France was
+at this moment helpless before the supremacy of England at sea. On the
+other hand the continuance of the struggle would give triumph after
+triumph to his foes. One such blow had already fallen. Even in the midst
+of his immense schemes against Britain at home, Buonaparte had not
+abandoned the hope of attacking her in India. Egypt was needful to such
+a scheme; and from the first moment of his power he strained every nerve
+to retain Egypt in the hands of France. Menou, who commanded there, was
+ordered to hold the country; an expedition was fitted out in the Spanish
+ports for its relief; and light vessels were hurried from the Italian
+coast with arms and supplies. But at the very moment of the attack on
+Copenhagen, a stroke as effective wrecked his projects in the East.
+England had not forgotten the danger to her dependency; ever since
+Buonaparte's expedition her fleet had blockaded Malta, the island
+fortress whose possession gave France a first stepping-stone in any
+enterprise against it; and the surrender of Malta left her unquestioned
+mistress of the Mediterranean. From Malta she now turned to Egypt
+itself. Triumphant as England had been at sea since the opening of the
+war, her soldiers had proved no match for the French on land. Two
+expeditions had been sent against Holland, and each had ended in a
+disastrous retreat. But at this moment England reappeared as a military
+power. In March 1801 a force of 15,000 men under General Abercromby
+anchored in Aboukir Bay. Deserted as they were by Buonaparte, the French
+had firmly maintained their hold on Egypt. They had suppressed a revolt
+at Cairo, driven back Turkish invaders in a fresh victory, and by native
+levies and reinforcements raised the number of their troops to 30,000
+men. But their army was foolishly scattered, and Abercromby was able to
+force a landing five days after his arrival on the coast. The French
+however rapidly concentrated; and on the 21st of March their general
+attacked the English army on the ground it had won with a force equal to
+its own. The battle was a stubborn one, and Abercromby fell mortally
+wounded ere its close; but after six hours' fighting the French drew off
+with heavy loss; and their retreat was followed by the investment of
+Alexandria and Cairo, into which Menou had withdrawn his army. All hope
+however was over. Five thousand Turks, with a fresh division from
+England and India, reinforced the besiegers; and at the close of June
+the capitulation of the 13,000 soldiers who remained closed the French
+rule over Egypt.
+
+[Sidenote: The Peace of Amiens.]
+
+Bitter as was the anger with which the First Consul received the news of
+this surrender, it only strengthened his resolve to suspend a war of
+which Britain only could now reap the fruits, and whose continuance
+might in the present temper of Russia and its Czar disturb that peace of
+the Continent on which all his plans against England rested. It was to
+give time for such an organization of France and its resources as might
+enable him to reopen the struggle with other chances of success that the
+First Consul opened negotiations for peace at the close of 1801. His
+offers were at once met by the English Government. In the actual
+settlement of the Continent indeed England saw only an imperfect balance
+to the power of France, but it had no means of disputing the settlement,
+as France had no means of disturbing its supremacy at sea. If Buonaparte
+wished to husband his resources for a new attack all but the wilder
+Tories were willing to husband the resources of England for the more
+favourable opportunity of renewing it which would come with a revival of
+European energy. With such a temper on both sides the conclusion of
+peace became easy; and the negotiations which went on through the winter
+between England and the three allied Powers of France, Spain, and the
+Dutch, brought about in March 1802 the Peace of Amiens. The terms of the
+Peace were necessarily simple; for as England had no claim to interfere
+with the settlement of the Continent, which had been brought about by
+the treaties of its powers with the French Republic, all that remained
+for her was to provide that the settlement should be a substantial one
+by a pledge on the part of France to withdraw its forces from Southern
+Italy, and to leave to themselves the republics it had set up along its
+border in Holland, Switzerland, and Piedmont. In exchange for this
+pledge England recognized the French government, restored all the
+colonies which they had lost, save Ceylon and Trinidad, to France and
+its allies, acknowledged the Ionian Islands as a free republic, and
+engaged to restore Malta within three months to its old masters, the
+Knights of St. John.
+
+[Sidenote: Buonaparte.]
+
+There was a general sense of relief at the close of so long a struggle;
+and for a moment the bitter hatred which England had cherished against
+France seemed to give place to more friendly feelings. The new French
+ambassador was drawn in triumph on his arrival through the streets of
+London; and thousands of Englishmen crossed the Channel to visit a
+country which had conquered the world, and to gaze on the young general
+who after wonderful victories had given a yet more wonderful peace to
+Europe. But amidst all the glare of success, shrewd observers saw the
+dangers that lay in the temper of the First Consul. Whatever had been
+the errors of the French Revolutionists, even their worst attacks on the
+independence of the nations around them had been veiled by a vague
+notion of freeing the peoples whom they invaded from the yoke of their
+rulers. But the aim of Buonaparte was simply that of a vulgar conqueror.
+He was resolute to be master of the Western world, and no notions of
+popular freedom or sense of national right interfered with his resolve.
+The means at his command for carrying out such a design were immense.
+The political life of the Revolution had been cut short by his military
+despotism, but the new social vigour which the Revolution had given to
+France through the abolition of privileges and the creation of a new
+middle class on the ruins of the clergy and the nobles still lived on;
+and while the dissensions which tore the country asunder were hushed by
+the policy of the First Consul, by his restoration of the Church as a
+religious power, his recall of the exiles, and the economy and wise
+administration that distinguished his rule, the centralised system of
+government that had been bequeathed by the Monarchy to the Revolution
+and by the Revolution to Buonaparte enabled him easily to seize this
+national vigour for the profit of his own despotism. On the other hand,
+the exhaustion of the brilliant hopes raised by the Revolution, the
+craving for public order, the military enthusiasm and the impulse of a
+new glory given by the wonderful victories France had won, made a
+Tyranny possible; and in the hands of Buonaparte this tyranny was
+supported by a secret police, by the suppression of the press and of all
+freedom of opinion, and above all by the iron will and immense ability
+of the First Consul himself.
+
+[Sidenote: His designs.]
+
+Once chosen Consul for life, he felt himself secure at home, and turned
+restlessly to the work of outer aggression. The pledges given at Amiens
+were set aside. The republics established on the borders of France were
+brought into mere dependence on his will. Piedmont and Parma were
+actually annexed to France; and a French army occupied Switzerland. The
+temperate protests of the English Government were answered by demands
+for the expulsion of the French exiles who had been living in England
+ever since the Revolution, and for its surrender of Malta, which was
+retained till some security could be devised against a fresh seizure of
+the island by the French fleet. Meanwhile huge armaments were preparing
+in the French ports; and a new activity was seen in those of Spain. Not
+for a moment indeed had Buonaparte relinquished his design of attacking
+Britain. He had made peace because peace would serve his purpose, both
+in strengthening the tranquillity of the Continent, which was essential
+to his success in any campaign across the Channel, and in giving him
+time to replace by a new combination the maritime schemes which had
+broken down. Beaten as it had been, the Spanish fleet was still
+powerful; and a union with the French fleet which the First Consul was
+forming might still enable it to dispute the command of the sea. All
+that he wished for was time; and time was what the Peace gave him. But
+delay was as dangerous to England, now that it discerned his plans, as
+it was profitable to France; and in May 1803 the British Government
+anticipated his attack by a declaration of war.
+
+[Sidenote: The Camp at Boulogne.]
+
+The breach only quickened Buonaparte's resolve to attack his enemy at
+home. The difficulties in his way he set contemptuously aside; "Fifteen
+millions of people," he said, in allusion to the disproportion between
+the population of England and France, "must give way to forty millions";
+and the invasion was planned on a gigantic scale. A camp of one hundred
+thousand men was formed at Boulogne, and a host of flat-bottomed boats
+gathered for their conveyance across the Channel. The peril of the
+nation forced Addington from office and recalled Pitt to power. His
+health was broken, and as the days went by his appearance became so
+haggard and depressed that it was plain death was drawing near. But
+dying as he really was, the nation clung to him with all its old faith.
+He was still the representative of national union; and he proposed to
+include Fox and the leading Whigs in his new ministry, but he was foiled
+by the bigotry of the king; and the refusal of Lord Grenville and of
+Windham to take office without Fox, as well as the loss of his post at a
+later time by his ablest supporter, Dundas, left him almost alone. But
+lonely as he was, he faced difficulty and danger with the same courage
+as of old. The invasion seemed imminent when Buonaparte, who now assumed
+the title of the Emperor Napoleon, appeared in the camp at Boulogne. A
+slight experience however showed him the futility of his scheme for
+crossing the Channel in open boats in the teeth of English men-of-war;
+and he turned to fresh plans of securing its passage. "Let us be masters
+of the Channel for six hours," he is reported to have said, "and we are
+masters of the world." A skilfully-combined plan, by which the British
+fleet would have been divided while the whole French navy was
+concentrated in the Channel, was delayed by the death of the admiral
+destined to execute it. But the alliance with Spain placed the Spanish
+fleet at Napoleon's disposal, and in 1805 he planned its union with that
+of France, the crushing of the squadron which blocked the ports of the
+Channel before the English ships which were watching the Spanish
+armament could come to its support, and a crossing of the vast armament
+thus protected to the English shore.
+
+[Sidenote: Trafalgar.]
+
+Though three hundred thousand volunteers mustered in England to meet the
+coming attack, such a force would have offered but small hindrance to
+the veterans of the Grand Army, had they once crossed the Channel. But
+Pitt had already found them work elsewhere. It was not merely the danger
+of Britain, and the sense that without this counterpoise they would be
+helpless before the new French Empire, that roused the alarm of the
+Continental powers. They had been scared by Napoleon's course of
+aggression since the settlement at Lunéville, and his annexation of
+Genoa brought their alarm to a head. Pitt's offer of subsidies removed
+the last obstacle in the way of a league; and Russia, Austria, and
+Sweden joined in an alliance to wrest Italy and the Low Countries from
+the grasp of the French Emperor. Napoleon meanwhile swept the sea in
+vain for a glimpse of the great armament whose assembly in the Channel
+he had so skilfully planned. Admiral Villeneuve, uniting the Spanish
+ships with his own squadron from Toulon, drew Nelson in pursuit to the
+West Indies, and then suddenly returning to Cadiz, hastened to form a
+junction with the French squadron at Brest and to crush the English
+fleet in the Channel. But a headlong pursuit brought Nelson up with him
+ere the manoeuvre was complete, and the two fleets met on the 21st of
+October 1805 off Cape Trafalgar. "England" ran Nelson's famous signal,
+"expects every man to do his duty"; and though he fell himself in the
+hour of victory, twenty French sail had struck their flag ere the day
+was done. The French and Spanish navies were in fact annihilated. From
+this hour the supremacy of England at sea remained unquestioned; and the
+danger of any invasion of England rolled away like a dream.
+
+[Sidenote: The Peace of Tilsit.]
+
+Her allies were less fortunate. "England has saved herself by her
+courage," Pitt said in what were destined to be his last public words:
+"she will save Europe by her example!" But even before the victory of
+Trafalgar Napoleon had abandoned the dream of invading England to meet
+the coalition in his rear; and swinging round his forces on the Danube,
+he forced an Austrian army to capitulation in Ulm three days before his
+naval defeat. From Ulm he marched on Vienna, and at the close of
+November he crushed the combined armies of Austria and Russia in the
+battle of Austerlitz. "Austerlitz," Wilberforce wrote in his diary,
+"killed Pitt." Though he was still but forty-seven, the hollow voice and
+wasted frame of the great Minister had long told that death was near;
+and the blow to his hopes proved fatal. "Roll up that map," he said,
+pointing to a map of Europe which hung upon the wall; "it will not be
+wanted these ten years!" Once only he rallied from stupor; and those
+who bent over him caught a faint murmur of "My country! How I leave my
+country!" On the twenty-third of January 1806 he breathed his last; and
+was laid in Westminster Abbey in the grave of Chatham. "What grave,"
+exclaimed Lord Wellesley, "contains such a father and such a son! What
+sepulchre embosoms the remains of so much human excellence and glory!"
+So great was felt to be the loss that nothing but the union of parties,
+which Pitt had in vain desired during his lifetime, could fill up the
+gap left by his death. In the new ministry Fox, with the small body of
+popular Whigs who were bent on peace and internal reform, united with
+the aristocratic Whigs under Lord Grenville and with the Tories under
+Lord Sidmouth. All home questions, in fact, were subordinated to the
+need of saving Europe from the ambition of France, and in the resolve to
+save Europe Fox was as resolute as Pitt himself. His hopes of peace
+indeed were stronger; but they were foiled by the evasive answer which
+Napoleon gave to his overtures, and by a new war which he undertook
+against Prussia, the one power which seemed able to resist his arms. On
+the 14th of October 1806 a decisive victory at Jena laid North Germany
+at the Emperor's feet. From Berlin Napoleon marched into the heart of
+Poland to bring to terms the last opponent now left him on the
+Continent; and though checked in the winter by the stubborn defence of
+the Russian forces on the field of Eylau, in the summer of 1807 a
+decisive victory at Friedland brought the Czar to consent to the Peace
+of Tilsit.
+
+[Sidenote: The Continental System.]
+
+The Peace of Tilsit marked an overthrow for the time of that European
+settlement and balance of power which had been established five years
+before by the Peace of Lunéville. The change in his policy had been to a
+great extent forced on Napoleon; for the league of 1805 had shown that
+his plan of such a Continental peace as would suffer him to concentrate
+his whole strength on an invasion of Britain was certain to be foiled by
+the fears of the Continental states; and that an unquestioned supremacy
+over Europe was a first condition in the struggle with his great rival.
+Even with such a supremacy, indeed, his plans for a descent on Britain
+itself, or for winning the command of the sea which was the necessary
+preliminary to such a descent, still remained impracticable. The battle
+of Trafalgar had settled the question of an invasion of England; and a
+thousand victories on land would not make him master, even for "six
+hours," of the "silver streak" of sea that barred his path. But Napoleon
+was far from abandoning his struggle against Britain; on the contrary,
+he saw in his mastery of Europe the means of giving fresh force and
+effectiveness to his attack in a quarter where his foe was still
+vulnerable. It was her wealth that had raised up that European coalition
+against him which had forced him to break up his camp at Boulogne; and
+in his mastery of Europe he saw the means of striking at her wealth. His
+earlier attempt at the enforcement of a "Continental System" had broken
+down with the failure of the Northern League; but he now saw a yet more
+effective means of realising his dream. It was this gigantic project
+which revealed itself as soon as Jena had laid Prussia at his feet.
+Napoleon was able to find a pretext for his new attack in England's own
+action. By a violent stretch of her rights as a combatant she had
+declared the whole coast occupied by France and its allies, from Dantzig
+to Trieste, to be in a state of blockade. It was impossible to enforce
+such an order as this, even with the immense force at her disposal; but
+it was ostensibly to meet this "paper blockade" that Napoleon issued
+from Berlin, on the twenty-first of November 1806, a decree
+which--without a single ship to carry it out--placed the British Islands
+in a state of blockade. All commerce or communication with them was
+prohibited; all English goods or manufactures found in the territory of
+France or its allies were declared liable to confiscation; and their
+harbours were closed, not only against vessels coming from Britain, but
+against all who had touched at her ports. An army of inspectors spread
+along the coasts to carry out this decree.
+
+[Sidenote: Its results.]
+
+But it was almost impossible to enforce such a system. It was foiled by
+the rise of a widespread contraband trade, by the reluctance of Holland
+to aid in its own ruin, by the connivance of officials along the
+Prussian and Russian shores, and by the pressure of facts. It was
+impossible even for Napoleon himself to do without the goods he
+pretended to exclude; an immense system of licences soon neutralized his
+decree; and the French army which marched to Eylau was clad in
+greatcoats made at Leeds, and shod with shoes made at Northampton.
+Vexatious therefore as the system might be at once to England and to
+Europe, it told on British industry mainly by heightening the price of
+its products, and so far by restricting the market for them. But it told
+far more fatally on British commerce. Trade at once began to move from
+English vessels, which were subject to instant confiscation, and to
+shelter itself under neutral flags, where goods had at least to be
+proved to be British before they could be seized. America profited most
+by this transfer. She was now entering on that commercial career which
+was to make her England's chief trading rival; and she rapidly availed
+herself of the Berlin decree to widen her carrying trade. But the
+British Government at once felt the pressure of the merchant class. As
+yet this class had profited above all others by the war and by the
+monopoly which war placed in its hands; and now that not only its
+monopoly but its very existence was threatened, it called on the
+Government to protect it. It was to this appeal that the administration
+of Lord Grenville replied, in January 1807, by an Order in Council which
+declared all the ports of the coast of France and her allies under
+blockade, and any neutral vessels trading between them to be good prize.
+
+[Sidenote: Fall of the Grenville Ministry.]
+
+Such a step however, though it arbitrarily shut neutral vessels out from
+the coasting trade of most of Europe, was far from satisfying the
+British merchants, for it left the whole trade between Europe and other
+countries, which virtually included the colonial trade, untouched; and
+this passed as of old into American bottoms. But their appeal was no
+longer to Lord Grenville. The work which his ministry had set itself to
+do was to continue the double work of Pitt, his resolute maintenance of
+English greatness, and his endeavour to carry on even amidst the stress
+of the fight that course of philanthropic and political progress which
+was struggling back into renewed vigour after its long arrest through
+the French Revolution. But the forces of ignorance and bigotry which had
+been too strong for Pitt were too strong for the Grenville ministry,
+weakened as it was by the death of Fox at the close of the previous
+year. Its greatest work, the abolition of the slave-trade, in February
+1807, was done in the teeth of a vigorous opposition from the Tories and
+the merchants of Liverpool; and in March the first indication of its
+desire to open the question of religious equality by allowing Catholic
+officers to serve in the army was met on the part of the king by the
+demand of a pledge not to meddle with the question. On the refusal of
+this pledge the Ministry was dismissed. Its fall was the final close of
+that union of parties in face of the war with France which had brought
+about the junction of the bulk of the Whig party with the Tories, and
+which had been to some extent renewed after the temporary breach in
+Pitt's last ministry by the junction of Lord Sidmouth and a large body
+of the Tories with the Whigs. The union had been based on the actual
+peril to England's existence, and on the suspension of all home
+questions in face of the peril. But with the break-up of the camp at
+Boulogne and the victory of Trafalgar the peril of invasion had
+disappeared. England again broke into the party that called for progress
+and the party that resisted it.
+
+[Sidenote: The Portland Ministry.]
+
+The last was still the stronger: for in the mass of the nation progress
+was still confounded with the destruction of institutions, the passion
+for war absorbed public attention, and the Tories showed themselves most
+in earnest in the prosecution of the war. From this time therefore to
+the end of the war England was wholly governed by the Tories. The
+nominal head of the ministry which succeeded that of Lord Grenville was
+the Duke of Portland; its guiding spirit was the Foreign Secretary,
+George Canning, a young and devoted adherent of Pitt, whose brilliant
+rhetoric gave him power over the House of Commons, while the vigour and
+breadth of his mind gave a new energy and colour to the war. At no time
+had opposition to Napoleon seemed so hopeless as at the moment of his
+entry into power. From foes the two Emperors of Western and Eastern
+Europe had become friends, and the hope of French aid in the conquest of
+Turkey drew Alexander to a close alliance with Napoleon. Russia not only
+enforced the Berlin decrees against British commerce, but forced Sweden,
+the one ally that England still retained on the Continent, to renounce
+her alliance. The Russian and Swedish fleets were thus placed at the
+service of France; and the two Emperors counted on securing in addition
+the fleet of Denmark, and again threatening by this union the maritime
+supremacy which formed England's real defence. The hope was foiled by
+the decision of the new ministers. In July 1807 an expedition was
+promptly and secretly equipped by Canning, with a demand for the
+surrender of the Danish fleet into the hands of England, on pledge of
+its return at the close of the war. On the refusal of the Danes the
+demand was enforced by a bombardment of Copenhagen; and the whole Danish
+fleet, with a vast mass of naval stores, was carried into British
+ports. It was in the same spirit of almost reckless decision that
+Canning turned to meet Napoleon's Continental System. The cry of the
+British merchant fell upon willing ears. Of trade or the laws of trade
+Canning was utterly ignorant; nor could he see that the interests of the
+country were not necessarily the interests of a class; but he was
+resolute at any cost to hinder the transfer of commerce to neutral
+flags; and he saw in the crisis a means of forcing the one great neutral
+power, America, to join Britain in her strife with France. In November
+1807, therefore, he issued fresh Orders in Council. By these France, and
+every Continental state from which the British flag was excluded, were
+put in a state of blockade, and all vessels bound for their harbours
+were held subject to seizure unless they had touched at a British port.
+The orders were at once met by another decree of Napoleon issued at
+Milan in December, which declared every vessel, of whatever nation,
+coming from or bound to Britain or any British colony, to have forfeited
+its character as a neutral, and to be liable to seizure.
+
+[Sidenote: The American Embargo.]
+
+The policy of Napoleon was at any rate a consistent one in these
+measures; for his sole aim was to annihilate the industry as well as the
+commerce of Britain; and he had little to fear from the indignation of
+America. But the aim of Britain was to find outlets for her
+manufactures; and of these outlets America was now far the most
+important. She took in fact ten millions of our exports every year, not
+only for her own consumption, but for the illicit trade which she
+managed to carry on with the Continent. To close such an outlet as this
+was to play into Napoleon's hands. And yet the first result of Canning's
+policy was to close it. In the long strife between France and England,
+America had already borne much from both combatants, but above all from
+Britain. Not only had the English Government exercised its right of
+search, but it asserted a right of seizing English seamen found in
+American vessels; and as there were few means of discriminating between
+English seamen and American, the sailor of Maine or Massachusetts was
+often impressed to serve in the British fleet. Galled however as was
+America by outrages such as these, she was hindered from resenting them
+by her strong disinclination to war, as well as by the profit which she
+drew from the maintenance of her neutral position; and she believed in
+the words of Jefferson, that "it will ever be in our power to keep so
+even a stand between France and England, as to inspire a wish in neither
+to throw us into the scale of his adversary." But the Orders in Council
+and the Milan Decree forced her into action, and she at once answered
+them by an embargo of trade with Europe.
+
+Such a step was a menace of further action, for it was plain that
+America could not long remain in utter isolation, and that if she left
+it she must join one combatant or the other. But she had as yet shown no
+military power outside her own bounds, either by land or sea; and
+England looked with scorn on the threats of a state which possessed
+neither army nor fleet. "America," Lord Sidmouth wrote at this time, "is
+a bugbear: there is no terror in her threats!" Canning indeed saw in the
+embargo only a carrying out of his policy by the very machinery of the
+American Government. The commerce of America ceased to exist. Her seamen
+were driven to seek employment under the British flag; and Britain again
+absorbed the carrying-trade of the world. But what he really looked
+forward to was something far beyond this. He saw that the embargo was
+but a temporary expedient: and he believed that its failure would force
+the United States into union with England in her war with France.
+Nothing shows the world-wide nature of the struggle more than such a
+policy as this; but for a while it seemed justified by its results.
+After a year's trial America found it impossible to maintain the
+embargo: and at the opening of 1809 she exchanged it for an Act of
+Non-Intercourse with France and England alone. But this Act was as
+ineffective as the embargo. The American Government was utterly without
+means of enforcing it on its land frontier; and it had small means of
+enforcing it at sea. Throughout 1809 indeed vessels sailed daily for
+British ports. The Act was thus effective against France alone, and part
+of Canning's end was gained. At last the very protest which it embodied
+was given up, and in May 1810 the Non-Intercourse Act was repealed
+altogether. All that America persisted in maintaining was an offer that
+if either Power would repeal its edicts, it would prohibit American
+commerce with the other.
+
+[Sidenote: Napoleon and Spain.]
+
+What the results of this offer were to be we shall see hereafter. But at
+the moment the attitude of America was one of utter submission; and the
+effect of the Continental system on Britain had thus been to drive it to
+a policy of aggression upon neutral states, which seemed to be as
+successful as it was aggressive. The effect of his system on Napoleon
+himself was precisely the same. It was to maintain this material union
+of Europe against Britain that he was driven to aggression after
+aggression in North Germany, and to demands upon Russia which threatened
+the league that had been formed at Tilsit. Above all, it was the hope of
+more effectually crushing the world-power of Britain that drove him, at
+the very moment when Canning was attacking America, to his worst
+aggression, the aggression upon Spain. Spain was already his subservient
+ally; but her alliance became every hour less useful. The country was
+ruined by misgovernment: its treasury was empty: its fleet rotted in
+its harbours. To seize the whole Spanish Peninsula, to develope its
+resources by an active administration, to have at his command not only a
+regenerated Spain and Portugal, but their mighty dominions in Southern
+and Central America, to renew with these fresh forces the struggle with
+Britain for her empire of the seas, these were the designs by which
+Napoleon was driven to the most ruthless of his enterprises. He acted
+with his usual subtlety. In October 1807 France and Spain agreed to
+divide Portugal between them; and on the advance of their forces the
+reigning House of Braganza fled helplessly from Lisbon to a refuge in
+Brazil. But the seizure of Portugal was only a prelude to the seizure of
+Spain. Charles the Fourth, whom a riot in his capital drove at this
+moment to abdication, and his son and successor, Ferdinand the Seventh,
+were alike drawn to Bayonne in May 1808, and forced to resign their
+claims to the Spanish crown; while a French army entered Madrid, and
+proclaimed Joseph Buonaparte as King of Spain.
+
+[Sidenote: The Rising of Spain.]
+
+High-handed as such an act was, it was in harmony with the general
+system which Napoleon was pursuing elsewhere, and which had as yet
+stirred no national resistance. Holland had been changed into a monarchy
+by a simple decree of the French Emperor, and its crown bestowed on his
+brother Louis. For another brother, Jerome, a kingdom of Westphalia had
+been built up out of the Electorates of Hesse Cassel and Hanover.
+Joseph himself had been set as king over Naples before his transfer to
+Spain. But the spell of submission was now suddenly broken, and the new
+king had hardly entered Madrid when Spain rose as one man against the
+stranger. Desperate as the effort of its people seemed, the news of the
+rising was welcomed throughout England with a burst of enthusiastic joy.
+"Hitherto," cried Sheridan, a leader of the Whig opposition, "Buonaparte
+has contended with princes without dignity, numbers without ardour, or
+peoples without patriotism. He has yet to learn what it is to combat a
+people who are animated by one spirit against him." Tory and Whig alike
+held that "never had so happy an opportunity existed for Britain to
+strike a bold stroke for the rescue of the world"; and Canning at once
+resolved to change the system of desultory descents on colonies and
+sugar islands for a vigorous warfare in the Peninsula. Supplies were
+sent to the Spanish insurgents with reckless profusion, and two small
+armies placed under the command of Sir John Moore and Sir Arthur
+Wellesley for service in the Peninsula. In July 1808 the surrender at
+Baylen of a French force which had invaded Andalusia gave the first
+shock to the power of Napoleon, and the blow was followed by one almost
+as severe. Landing at the Mondego with fifteen thousand men, Sir Arthur
+Wellesley drove the French army of Portugal from the field of Vimiera,
+and forced it to surrender in the Convention of Cintra on the 30th of
+August. But the tide of success was soon roughly turned. Napoleon
+appeared in Spain with an army of two hundred thousand men; and Moore,
+who had advanced from Lisbon to Salamanca to support the Spanish armies,
+found them crushed on the Ebro, and was driven to fall hastily back on
+the coast. His force saved its honour in a battle before Corunna on the
+16th of January 1809, which enabled it to embark in safety; but
+elsewhere all seemed lost. The whole of northern and central Spain was
+held by the French armies; and even Zaragoza, which had once heroically
+repulsed them, submitted after a second equally desperate resistance.
+
+[Sidenote: Wellesley in Portugal.]
+
+The landing of the wreck of Moore's army and the news of the Spanish
+defeats turned the temper of England from the wildest hope to the
+deepest despair; but Canning remained unmoved. On the day of the
+evacuation of Corunna he signed a treaty of alliance with the Junta
+which governed Spain in the absence of its king; and the English force
+at Lisbon, which had already prepared to leave Portugal, was reinforced
+with thirteen thousand fresh troops and placed under the command of Sir
+Arthur Wellesley. "Portugal," Wellesley wrote coolly, "may be defended
+against any force which the French can bring against it." At this
+critical moment the best of the French troops with the Emperor himself
+were drawn from the Peninsula to the Danube; for the Spanish rising had
+roused Austria as well as England to a renewal of the struggle. When
+Marshal Soult therefore threatened Lisbon from the north, Wellesley
+marched boldly against him, drove him from Oporto in a disastrous
+retreat, and suddenly changing his line of operations, pushed with
+twenty thousand men by Abrantes on Madrid. He was joined on the march by
+a Spanish force of thirty thousand men; and a bloody action with a
+French army of equal force at Talavera in July 1809 restored the renown
+of English arms. The losses on both sides were enormous, and the French
+fell back at the close of the struggle; but the fruits of the victory
+were lost by a sudden appearance of Soult on the English line of
+advance. Wellesley was forced to retreat hastily on Badajoz, and his
+failure was embittered by heavier disasters elsewhere; for Austria was
+driven to sue for peace by a decisive victory of Napoleon at Wagram,
+while a force of forty thousand English soldiers which had been
+despatched against Antwerp in July returned home baffled after losing
+half its numbers in the marshes of Walcheren.
+
+[Sidenote: The Perceval Ministry.]
+
+The failure at Walcheren brought about the fall of the Portland
+ministry. Canning attributed this disaster to the incompetence of Lord
+Castlereagh, heir to an Irish peerage, who after taking the chief part
+in bringing about the union between England and Ireland had been raised
+by the Duke of Portland to the post of Secretary at War; and the quarrel
+between the two Ministers ended in a duel and in their resignation of
+their offices in September 1809. The Duke of Portland retired with
+Canning; and a new ministry was formed out of the more Tory members of
+the late administration under the guidance of Spencer Perceval, an
+industrious mediocrity of the narrowest type; while the Marquis of
+Wellesley, a brother of the English general in Spain, succeeded Canning
+as Foreign Secretary. But if Perceval and his colleagues possessed few
+of the higher qualities of statesmanship, they had one characteristic
+which in the actual position of English affairs was beyond all price.
+They were resolute to continue the war. In the nation at large the fit
+of enthusiasm had been followed by a fit of despair; and the City of
+London even petitioned for a withdrawal of the English forces from the
+Peninsula, Napoleon seemed irresistible, and now that Austria was
+crushed and England stood alone in opposition to him, the Emperor
+determined to put an end to the strife by a vigorous prosecution of the
+war in Spain. Andalusia, the one province which remained independent,
+was invaded in the opening of 1810, and with the exception of Cadiz
+reduced to submission; while Marshal Massena with a fine army of eighty
+thousand men marched upon Lisbon. Even Perceval abandoned all hope of
+preserving a hold on the Peninsula in face of these new efforts, and
+threw on Wellesley, who had been raised to the peerage as Lord
+Wellington after Talavera, the responsibility of resolving to remain
+there.
+
+[Sidenote: Torres Vedras.]
+
+But the cool judgement and firm temper which distinguished Wellington
+enabled him to face a responsibility from which weaker men would have
+shrunk. "I conceive," he answered, "that the honour and interest of our
+country require that we should hold our ground here as long as possible;
+and, please God, I will maintain it as long as I can." By the addition
+of Portuguese troops who had been trained under British officers, his
+army was now raised to fifty thousand men; and though his inferiority in
+force compelled him to look on while Massena reduced the frontier
+fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, he inflicted on him a heavy
+check at the heights of Busaco, and finally fell back in October 1810 on
+three lines of defence which he had secretly constructed at Torres
+Vedras, along a chain of mountain, heights crowned with redoubts and
+bristling with cannon. The position was impregnable: and able and
+stubborn as Massena was he found himself forced after a month's
+fruitless efforts to fall back in a masterly retreat; but so terrible
+were the privations of the French army in passing again through the
+wasted country that it was only with forty thousand men that he reached
+Ciudad Rodrigo in the spring of 1811. Reinforced by fresh troops,
+Massena turned fiercely to the relief of Almeida, which Wellington had
+besieged. Two days' bloody and obstinate fighting however, in May 1811,
+failed to drive the English army from its position at Fuentes d'Onore,
+and the Marshal fell back on Salamanca and relinquished his effort to
+drive Wellington from Portugal. But great as was the effect of Torres
+Vedras in restoring the spirit of the English people, and in reviving
+throughout Europe the hope of resistance to the tyranny of Napoleon, its
+immediate result was little save the deliverance of Portugal. If Massena
+had failed, his colleagues had succeeded in their enterprises; the
+French were now masters of all Spain save Cadiz and the eastern
+provinces, and even the east coast was reduced in 1811 by the vigour of
+General Suchet.
+
+[Sidenote: The Quarrel with America.]
+
+While England thus failed to rescue Spain from the aggression of
+Napoleon, she was suddenly brought face to face with the result of her
+own aggression in America. The repeal of the Non-Intercourse Act in 1810
+had in effect been a triumph for Britain: but the triumph forced
+Napoleon's hand. As yet all he had done by his attack on neutral rights
+had been to drive the United States practically to join England against
+him. To revenge himself by war with them would only play England's game
+yet more; and with characteristic rapidity Napoleon passed from
+hostility to friendship. He seized on the offer with which America had
+closed her efforts against the two combatants, and after promising to
+revoke his Berlin and Milan Decrees he called on America to redeem her
+pledge. In February 1811, therefore, the United States announced that
+all intercourse with Great Britain and her dependencies was at an end.
+The effect of this step was seen in a reduction of English exports
+during this year by a third of their whole amount. It was in vain that
+Britain pleaded that the Emperor's promises remained unfulfilled, that
+neither of the decrees was withdrawn, that Napoleon had failed to return
+the American merchandise seized under them, and that the enforcement of
+non-intercourse with England was thus an unjust act, and an act of
+hostility. The pressure of the American policy, as well as news of the
+warlike temper which had at last grown up in the United States, made
+submission inevitable; for the industrial state of England was now so
+critical that to expose it to fresh shocks was to court the very ruin
+which Napoleon had planned.
+
+[Sidenote: State of England.]
+
+During the earlier years of the war indeed the increase of wealth had
+been enormous. England was sole mistress of the seas. The war gave her
+possession of the colonies of Spain, of Holland, and of France; and if
+her trade was checked for a time by the Berlin Decree, the efforts of
+Napoleon were soon rendered fruitless by the smuggling system which
+sprang up along the southern coasts and the coast of North Germany.
+English exports indeed had nearly doubled since the opening of the
+century. Manufactures were profiting by the discoveries of Watt and
+Arkwright; and the consumption of raw cotton in the mills of Lancashire
+rose during the same period from fifty to a hundred million of pounds.
+The vast accumulation of capital, as well as the vast increase of the
+population at this time, told upon the land, and forced agriculture into
+a feverish and unhealthy prosperity. Wheat rose to famine prices, and
+the value of land rose in proportion with the price of wheat. Inclosures
+went on with prodigious rapidity; the income of every landowner was
+doubled, while the farmers were able to introduce improvements into the
+processes of agriculture which changed the whole face of the country.
+But if the increase of wealth was enormous, its distribution was
+partial. During the fifteen years which preceded Waterloo, the number of
+the population rose from ten to thirteen millions, and this rapid
+increase kept down the rate of wages, which would naturally have
+advanced in a corresponding degree with the increase in the national
+wealth. Even manufactures, though destined in the long run to benefit
+the labouring classes, seemed at first rather to depress them; for one
+of the earliest results of the introduction of machinery was the ruin of
+a number of small trades which were carried on at home and the
+pauperization of families who relied on them for support. In the winter
+of 1811 the terrible pressure of this transition from handicraft to
+machinery was seen in the Luddite, or machine-breaking, riots which
+broke out over the northern and midland counties; and which were only
+suppressed by military force. While labour was thus thrown out of its
+older grooves, and the rate of wages kept down at an artificially low
+figure by the rapid increase of population, the rise in the price of
+wheat, which brought wealth to the landowner and the farmer, brought
+famine and death to the poor, for England was cut off by the war from
+the vast corn-fields of the Continent or of America, which nowadays
+redress from their abundance the results of a bad harvest. Scarcity was
+followed by a terrible pauperization of the labouring classes. The
+amount of the poor-rate rose fifty per cent; and with the increase of
+poverty followed its inevitable result, the increase of crime.
+
+[Sidenote: Political Progress.]
+
+The natural relation of trade and commerce to the general wealth of the
+people at large was thus disturbed by the peculiar circumstances of the
+time. The war enriched the landowner, the farmer, the merchant, the
+manufacturer; but it impoverished the poor. It is indeed from these
+fatal years that we must date that war of classes, that social severance
+between employers and employed, which still forms the main difficulty
+of English politics. But it is from these too that we must date the
+renewal of that progressive movement in politics which had been
+suspended since the opening of the war. The publication of the
+_Edinburgh Review_ in 1802 by a knot of young lawyers at Edinburgh
+marked a revival of the policy of constitutional and administrative
+progress which had been reluctantly abandoned by William Pitt. Jeremy
+Bentham gave a new vigour to political speculation by his advocacy of
+the doctrine of Utility, and his definition of "the greatest happiness
+of the greatest number" as the aim of political action. In 1809 Sir
+Francis Burdett revived the question of Parliamentary Reform. Only
+fifteen members supported his motion; and a reference to the House of
+Commons in a pamphlet which he subsequently published, as "a part of our
+fellow-subjects collected together by means which it is not necessary to
+describe," was met by his committal to the Tower, where he remained till
+the prorogation of the Parliament. A far greater effect was produced by
+the perseverance with which Canning pressed year by year the question of
+Catholic Emancipation. So long as Perceval lived both efforts at Reform
+were equally vain; but the advancing strength of a more liberal
+sentiment in the nation was felt by the policy of "moderate concession"
+which was adopted by his successors. Catholic Emancipation became an
+open question in the Cabinet itself, and was adopted in 1812 by a
+triumphant majority in the House of Commons, though it was still
+rejected by the Lords.
+
+[Sidenote: War with America.]
+
+With social and political troubles thus awaking anew to life about them,
+even Tory statesmen were not willing to face the terrible consequences
+of a ruin of English industry such as might follow from the junction of
+America with Napoleon. They were in fact preparing to withdraw the
+Orders in Council, when their plans were arrested by the dissolution of
+the Perceval ministry. Its position had from the first been a weak one.
+A return of the king's madness made it necessary in the beginning of
+1811 to confer the Regency on the Prince of Wales; and the Whig
+sympathies of the Prince threatened for a while the Cabinet with
+dismissal. Though this difficulty was surmounted their hold of power
+remained insecure, and the insecurity of the ministry told on the
+conduct of the war; for the apparent inactivity of Wellington during
+1811 was really due to the hesitation and timidity of the Cabinet at
+home. But in May 1812 the assassination of Perceval by a madman named
+Bellingham brought about the dissolution of his ministry; and fresh
+efforts were made by the Regent to install the Whigs in office. Mutual
+distrust however again foiled his attempts; and the old ministry
+returned to office under the headship of Lord Liverpool, a man of no
+great abilities, but temperate, well informed, and endowed with a
+remarkable skill in holding discordant colleagues together. The most
+important of these colleagues was Lord Castlereagh, who became Secretary
+for Foreign Affairs. Time has long ago rendered justice to the political
+ability of Castlereagh, disguised as it was to men of his own day by a
+curious infelicity of expression; and the instinctive good sense of
+Englishmen never showed itself more remarkably than in their preference
+at this crisis of his cool judgement, his high courage, his discernment,
+and his will to the more showy brilliancy of Canning. His first work
+indeed as a minister was to meet the danger in which Canning had
+involved the country by his Orders in Council. On the 23rd of June, only
+twelve days after the ministry had been formed, these Orders were
+repealed. But, quick as was Castlereagh's action, events had moved even
+more quickly. At the opening of the year America, in despair of redress,
+had resolved on war; Congress had voted an increase of both army and
+navy; and laid in April an embargo on all vessels in American harbours.
+Actual hostilities might still have been averted by the repeal of the
+Orders, on which the English Cabinet was resolved; but in the confusion
+which followed the murder of Perceval, and the strife of parties for
+office through the month that followed, the opportunity was lost. When
+the news of the repeal reached America, it came six weeks too late. On
+the 18th of June an Act of Congress had declared America at war with
+Great Britain.
+
+[Sidenote: Napoleon and Russia.]
+
+Had Napoleon been able to reap the fruits of the strife which his policy
+had thus forced on the two English peoples, it is hard to say how
+Britain could have coped with him. Cut off from her markets alike in
+east and west, her industries checked and disorganized, a financial
+crisis added to her social embarrassment, it may be doubted whether she
+must not have bowed in the end before the pressure of the Continental
+System. But if that system had thrust her into aggression and ruin, it
+was as inevitably thrusting the same aggression and ruin on her rival.
+The moment when America entered into the great struggle was a critical
+moment in the history of mankind. Six days after President Madison
+issued his declaration of war, Napoleon crossed the Niemen on his march
+to Moscow. Successful as his policy had been in stirring up war between
+England and America, it had been no less successful in breaking the
+alliance which he had made with the Czar at Tilsit and in forcing on a
+contest with Russia. On the one hand, Napoleon was irritated by the
+refusal of Russia to enforce strictly the suspension of all trade with
+England, though such a suspension would have ruined the Russian
+landowners. On the other, Alexander saw with growing anxiety the advance
+of the French Empire which sprang from Napoleon's resolve to enforce his
+system by a seizure of the northern coasts. In 1811 Holland, the
+Hanseatic towns, part of Westphalia, and the Duchy of Oldenburg were
+successively annexed, and the Duchy of Mecklenburg threatened with
+seizure. A peremptory demand on the part of France for the entire
+cessation of intercourse with England brought the quarrel to a head; and
+preparations were made on both sides for a gigantic struggle.
+
+[Sidenote: Salamanca.]
+
+Even before it opened, this new enterprise gave fresh vigour to
+Napoleon's foes. The best of the French soldiers were drawn from Spain
+to the frontier of Poland; and Wellington, whose army had been raised to
+a force of forty thousand Englishmen and twenty thousand Portuguese,
+profited by the withdrawal to throw off his system of defence and to
+assume an attitude of attack. Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz were taken by
+storm during the spring of 1812; and at the close of June, three days
+before Napoleon crossed the Niemen, in his march on Moscow, Wellington
+crossed the Agueda in a march on Salamanca. After a series of masterly
+movements on both sides, Marmont with the French army of the North
+attacked the English on the hills in the neighbourhood of that town on
+the twenty-second of July. While he was marching round the right of the
+English position his left wing remained isolated; and with a sudden
+exclamation of "Marmont is lost!" Wellington flung on it the bulk of
+his force, crushed it, and drove the whole army from the field. The loss
+on either side was nearly equal, but failure had demoralized the French
+army; and its retreat forced Joseph to leave Madrid, and Soult to
+evacuate Andalusia and to concentrate the southern army on the eastern
+coast. While Napoleon was still pushing slowly over the vast plains of
+Poland, Wellington made his entry into Madrid in August, and began the
+siege of Burgos. The town however held out gallantly for a month, till
+the advance of the two French armies, now concentrated in the north and
+south of Spain, forced Wellington, in October, to a hasty retreat on the
+Portuguese frontier.
+
+[Sidenote: Ruin of Napoleon.]
+
+If Wellington had shaken the rule of the French in Spain in this
+campaign, his ultimate failure showed how firm a military hold they
+still possessed there. But the disappointment was forgotten in the news
+which followed it. At the moment when the English troops fell back from
+Burgos began the retreat of the Grand Army from Moscow. Victorious in a
+battle at Borodino, Napoleon had entered the older capital of Russia in
+triumph, and waited impatiently to receive proposals of peace from the
+Czar. But a fire kindled by its own inhabitants reduced the city to
+ashes; Alexander still remained silent; and the gathering cold bent even
+the stubborn will of Napoleon to own the need of retreat. The French
+were forced to fall back amidst the horrors of a Russian winter; and of
+the four hundred thousand combatants who formed the Grand Army at its
+first outset, only a few thousands recrossed the Niemen in December. In
+spite of the gigantic efforts which Napoleon made to repair his losses,
+the spell which he had cast over Europe was broken. Prussia rose against
+him as the Russians crossed the Niemen in the spring of 1813; and the
+forces which held it were at once thrown back on the Elbe. In this
+emergency the military genius of the French Emperor rose to its height.
+With a fresh army of two hundred thousand men whom he had gathered at
+Mainz he marched on the allied armies of Russia and Prussia in May,
+cleared Saxony by a victory over them at Lutzen, and threw them back on
+the Oder by a fresh victory at Bautzen. Disheartened by defeat, and by
+the neutral attitude which Austria still preserved, the two powers
+consented in June to an armistice, and negotiated for peace. But
+Austria, though unwilling to utterly ruin France to the profit of her
+great rival in the East, was as resolute as either of the allies to
+wrest from Napoleon his supremacy over Europe; and at the moment when it
+became clear that Napoleon was only bent on playing with her proposals,
+she was stirred to action by news that his army was at last driven from
+Spain. Wellington had left Portugal in May with an army which had now
+risen to ninety thousand men; and overtaking the French forces in
+retreat at Vitoria on the twenty-first of June he inflicted on them a
+defeat which drove them in utter rout across the Pyrenees. Madrid was at
+once evacuated; and Clausel fell back from Zaragoza into France. The
+victory not only freed Spain from its invaders; it restored the spirit
+of the Allies. The close of the armistice was followed by a union of
+Austria with the forces of Prussia and the Czar; and in October a final
+overthrow of Napoleon at Leipzig forced the French army to fall back in
+rout across the Rhine.
+
+[Sidenote: His Abdication.]
+
+The war now hurried to its close. Though held at bay for a while by the
+sieges of San Sebastian and Pampeluna, as well as by an obstinate
+defence of the Pyrenees, Wellington succeeded in the very month of the
+triumph at Leipzig in winning a victory on the Bidassoa, which enabled
+him to enter France. He was soon followed by the Allies. On the last day
+of 1813 their forces crossed the Rhine; and a third of France passed,
+without opposition, into their hands. For two months more Napoleon
+maintained a wonderful struggle with a handful of raw conscripts against
+their overwhelming numbers; while in the south, Soult, forced from his
+entrenched camp near Bayonne and defeated at Orthez, fell back before
+Wellington on Toulouse. Here their two armies met in April in a stubborn
+and indecisive engagement. But though neither leader knew it, the war
+was even then at an end. The struggle of Napoleon himself had ended at
+the close of March with the surrender of Paris; and the submission of
+the capital was at once followed by the abdication of the Emperor and
+the return of the Bourbons.
+
+[Sidenote: The American War.]
+
+England's triumph over its enemy was dashed by the more doubtful
+fortunes of the struggle across the Atlantic. The declaration of war by
+America seemed an act of sheer madness; for its navy consisted of a few
+frigates and sloops; its army was a mass of half-drilled and half-armed
+recruits; while the States themselves were divided on the question of
+the war, and Connecticut with Massachusetts refused to send either money
+or men. Three attempts to penetrate into Canada during the summer and
+autumn were repulsed with heavy loss. But these failures were more than
+redeemed by unexpected successes at sea, where in two successive
+engagements between English and American frigates, the former were
+forced to strike their flag. The effect of these victories was out of
+all proportion to their real importance; for they were the first heavy
+blows which had been dealt at England's supremacy over the seas. In 1813
+America followed up its naval triumphs by more vigorous efforts on land.
+Its forces cleared Lake Ontario, captured Toronto, destroyed the British
+flotilla on Lake Erie, and made themselves masters of Upper Canada. An
+attack on Lower Canada, however, was successfully beaten back; and a
+fresh advance of the British and Canadian forces in the heart of the
+winter again recovered the Upper Province. The reverse gave fresh
+strength to the party in the United States which had throughout been
+opposed to the war, and whose opposition to it had been embittered by
+the terrible distress brought about by the blockade and the ruin of
+American commerce. Cries of secession began to be heard, and
+Massachusetts took the bold step of appointing delegates to confer with
+delegates from the other New England States "on the subject of their
+grievances and common concerns."
+
+[Sidenote: Peace in America.]
+
+In 1814, however, the war was renewed with more vigour than ever; and
+Upper Canada was again invaded. But the American army, after inflicting
+a severe defeat on the British forces in the battle of Chippewa in July,
+was itself defeated a few weeks after in an equally stubborn engagement,
+and thrown back on its own frontier; while the fall of Napoleon enabled
+the English Government to devote its whole strength to the struggle with
+an enemy which it had ceased to despise. General Ross, with a force of
+four thousand men, appeared in the Potomac, captured Washington, and
+before evacuating the city burnt its public buildings to the ground. Few
+more shameful acts are recorded in our history; and it was the more
+shameful in that it was done under strict orders from the Government at
+home. But the raid upon Washington was intended simply to strike terror
+into the American people; and the real stress of the war was thrown on
+two expeditions whose business was to penetrate into the States from the
+north and from the south. Both proved utter failures. A force of nine
+thousand Peninsular veterans which marched in September to the attack of
+Plattsburg on Lake Champlain was forced to fall back by the defeat of
+the English flotilla which accompanied it. A second force under General
+Packenham appeared in December at the mouth of the Mississippi and
+attacked New Orleans, but was repulsed by General Jackson with the loss
+of half its numbers. Peace, however, had already been concluded. The
+close of the French war, if it left untouched the grounds of the
+struggle, made the United States sensible of the danger of pushing it
+further; Britain herself was anxious for peace; and the warring claims,
+both of England and America, were set aside in silence in the treaty of
+1814.
+
+[Sidenote: Return of Napoleon.]
+
+The close of the war with the United States freed England's hands at a
+moment when the reappearance of Napoleon at Paris called her to a new
+and final struggle with France. By treaty with the Allied Powers
+Napoleon had been suffered to retain a fragment of his former
+empire--the island of Elba off the coast of Tuscany; and from Elba he
+looked on at the quarrels which sprang up between his conquerors as soon
+as they gathered at Vienna to complete the settlement of Europe. The
+most formidable of these quarrels arose from a claim of Prussia to annex
+Saxony and that of Russia to annex Poland; but their union for this
+purpose was met by a counter-league of England and Austria with their
+old enemy, France, whose ambassador, Talleyrand, laboured vigorously to
+bring the question to an issue by force of arms. At the moment, however,
+when a war between the two leagues seemed close at hand, Napoleon landed
+on the coast near Cannes, and, followed only by a thousand of his
+guards, marched over the mountains of Dauphiné upon Grenoble and Lyons.
+He counted, and counted justly, on the indifference of the country to
+its new Bourbon rulers, on the longing of the army for a fresh struggle
+which should restore its glory, and above all on the spell of his name
+over soldiers whom he had so often led to victory. In twenty days from
+his landing he reached the Tuileries unopposed, while Lewis the
+Eighteenth fled helplessly to Ghent. But whatever hopes he had drawn
+from the divisions of the Allied Powers were at once dispelled by their
+resolute action on the news of his descent upon France. Their strife was
+hushed and their old union restored by the consciousness of a common
+danger. An engagement to supply a million of men for the purposes of the
+war, and a recall of their armies to the Rhine, answered Napoleon's
+efforts to open negotiations with the Powers.
+
+England furnished subsidies to the amount of eleven millions, and
+hastened to place an army on the frontier of the Netherlands. The best
+troops of the force which had been employed in the Peninsula however
+were still across the Atlantic; and of the eighty thousand men who
+gathered round Wellington only about half were Englishmen, the rest
+mainly raw levies from Belgium and Hanover. The Duke's plan was to unite
+with the one hundred and fifty thousand Prussians under Marshal Blücher
+who were advancing on the Lower Rhine, and to enter France by Mons and
+Namur while the forces of Austria and Russia closed in upon Paris by way
+of Belfort and Elsass. But Napoleon had thrown aside all thought of a
+merely defensive warfare. By amazing efforts he had raised an army of
+two hundred and fifty thousand men in the few months since his arrival
+in Paris; and in the opening of June 1815 one hundred and twenty
+thousand Frenchmen were concentrated on the Sambre at Charleroi, while
+Wellington's troops still lay in cantonments on the line of the Scheldt
+from Ath to Nivelles, and Blücher's on that of the Meuse from Nivelles
+to Liége. Both the allied armies hastened to unite at Quatre Bras; but
+their junction there was already impossible. Blücher with eighty
+thousand men was himself attacked by Napoleon at Ligny, and after a
+desperate contest driven back with terrible loss upon Wavre. On the
+same day Ney with twenty thousand men, and an equal force under D'Erlon
+in reserve, appeared before Quatre Bras, where as yet only ten thousand
+English and the same force of Belgian troops had been able to assemble.
+The Belgians broke before the charges of the French horse; and only the
+dogged resistance of the English infantry gave time for Wellington to
+bring up corps after corps, till at the close of the day Ney saw himself
+heavily outnumbered, and withdrew baffled from the field.
+
+[Sidenote: Waterloo.]
+
+About five thousand men had fallen on either side in this fierce
+engagement: but, heavy as was Wellington's loss, the firmness of the
+English army had already done much to foil Napoleon's effort at breaking
+through the line of the Allies. Blücher's retreat however left the
+English flank uncovered; and on the following day, while the Prussians
+were falling back on Wavre, Wellington, with nearly seventy thousand
+men--for his army was now well in hand--withdrew in good order, followed
+by the mass of the French forces under the Emperor himself. Napoleon had
+detached thirty thousand men under Grouchy to hang upon the rear of the
+beaten Prussians, while with a force of eighty thousand he resolved to
+bring Wellington to battle. On the morning of the 18th of June the two
+armies faced one another on the field of Waterloo in front of the Forest
+of Soignies, on the high road to Brussels. Napoleon's one fear had been
+that of a continued retreat. "I have them!" he cried, as he saw the
+English line drawn up on a low rise of ground which stretched across the
+high-road from the château of Hougomont on its right to the farm and
+straggling village of La Haye Sainte on its left. He had some grounds
+for his confidence of success. On either side the forces numbered
+between seventy and eighty thousand men: but the French were superior in
+guns and cavalry, and a large part of Wellington's force consisted of
+Belgian levies who broke and fled at the outset of the fight. A fierce
+attack upon Hougomont opened the battle at eleven; but it was not till
+midday that the corps of D'Erlon advanced upon the centre near La Haye
+Sainte, which from that time bore the main brunt of the struggle. Never
+has greater courage, whether of attack or endurance, been shown on any
+field than was shown by both combatants at Waterloo. The columns of
+D'Erlon, repulsed by the English foot, were hurled back in disorder by a
+charge of the Scots Greys; but the victorious horsemen were crushed in
+their turn by the French cuirassiers, and the mass of the French
+cavalry, twelve thousand strong, flung itself in charge after charge on
+the English front, carrying the English guns and sweeping with desperate
+bravery round the unbroken squares whose fire thinned their ranks. With
+almost equal bravery the French columns of the centre again advanced,
+wrested at last the farm of La Haye Sainte from their opponents, and
+pushed on vigorously though in vain under Ney against the troops in its
+rear.
+
+But meanwhile every hour was telling against Napoleon. To win the battle
+he must crush the English army before Blücher joined it; and the English
+army was still uncrushed. Terrible as was his loss, and many of his
+regiments were reduced to a mere handful of men, Wellington stubbornly
+held his ground while the Prussians, advancing from Wavre through deep
+and miry forest roads, were slowly gathering to his support,
+disregarding the attack on their rear by which Grouchy strove to hold
+them back from the field. At half-past four their advanced guard
+deployed at last from the woods; but the main body was far behind, and
+Napoleon was still able to hold his ground against them till their
+increasing masses forced him to stake all on a desperate effort against
+the English front. The Imperial Guard--his only reserve, and which had
+as yet taken no part in the battle--was drawn up at seven in two huge
+columns of attack. The first, with Ney himself at its head, swept all
+before it as it mounted the rise beside La Haye Sainte, on which the
+thin English line still held its ground, and all but touched the English
+front when its mass, torn by the terrible fire of musketry with which it
+was received, gave way before a charge. The second, three thousand
+strong, advanced with the same courage over the slope near Hougomont,
+only to be repulsed and shattered in its turn. At the moment when these
+masses fell slowly and doggedly back down the fatal rise, the Prussians
+pushed forward on Napoleon's right, their guns swept the road to
+Charleroi, and Wellington seized the moment for a general advance. From
+that hour all was lost. Only the Guard stood firm in the wreck of the
+French army; and though darkness and exhaustion checked the English in
+their pursuit of the broken troops as they hurried from the field, the
+Prussian horse continued the chase through the night. Only forty
+thousand Frenchmen with some thirty guns recrossed the Sambre while
+Napoleon himself fled hurriedly to Paris. His second abdication was
+followed by a triumphant entry of the English and Prussian armies into
+the French capital; and the long war ended with his exile to St. Helena,
+and the return of Lewis the Eighteenth to the throne of the Bourbons.
+
+
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
+
+
+   Reference to the Index has been removed from the
+   Table of Contents.
+
+   The word manoeuvre uses an oe ligature in the original.
+
+   Variations in spelling have been left as in the original.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE,
+VOLUME VIII (OF 8)***
+
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, History of the English People, Volume VIII
+(of 8), by John Richard Green</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8)</p>
+<p>       Modern England, 1760-1815</p>
+<p>Author: John Richard Green</p>
+<p>Release Date: May 20, 2008  [eBook #25536]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE, VOLUME VIII (OF 8)***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Paul Murray, Jacqueline Jeremy, Lisa Reigel,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="notebox">
+Transcriber's Notes: Click on the page number in the
+left margin to see an image of the
+page. Click on the maps to see more detail. More notes
+<a href="#TN">follow</a> the text.<br />
+<br />
+The index for the entire 8 volume
+set of <i>History of the English People</i> was located
+at the end of this volume (Volume VIII). For ease in
+accessibility, it has been removed and produced as a
+separate volume
+(<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/25533">http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/25533</a>).
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-ii" id="Page_8-ii"></a><a href="./images/ii.png">8-ii</a>]</span></p>
+<div class="titlepage">
+<span class="main">HISTORY<br />
+OF<br />
+THE ENGLISH PEOPLE</span>
+
+
+<div class="byline">BY<br />
+
+<span class="docauthor">JOHN RICHARD GREEN, M.A.<br />
+HONORARY FELLOW OF JESUS COLLEGE, OXFORD</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<span class="sub">VOLUME VIII</span>
+
+<ul>
+  <li>MODERN ENGLAND. 1760-1815.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="byline">
+London<br />
+MACMILLAN AND CO., <span class="smcap" style="display: inline;">Ltd.</span><br />
+NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.<br />
+1896</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-iii" id="Page_8-iii"></a><a href="./images/iii.png">8-iii</a>]</span></p>
+<div class="titlepage">
+<ul>
+  <li><i>First Edition, 1879; Reprinted 1882, 1886, 1891.</i></li>
+  <li><i>Eversley Edition, 1896.</i></li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="toc">
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-iv" id="Page_8-iv"></a><a href="./images/iv.png">8-iv</a>]</span></p>
+
+<div class="header">CONTENTS</div>
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table summary="Table of contents" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">
+<tr class="book">
+  <td class="tdcenter" colspan="2">BOOK IX<br />
+  MODERN ENGLAND. 1760-1815.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdright" colspan="2">PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr class="chapter">
+  <td class="tdcenter" colspan="2">CHAPTER II</td>
+</tr>
+<tr class="chapter">
+  <td class="tdlsc">The Independence of America. 1767-1782</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_8-1">1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr class="chapter">
+  <td class="tdcenter" colspan="2">CHAPTER III</td>
+</tr>
+<tr class="chapter">
+  <td class="tdlsc">Industrial England. 1782-1792</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_8-45">45</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr class="chapter">
+  <td class="tdcenter" colspan="2">CHAPTER IV</td>
+</tr>
+<tr class="chapter">
+  <td class="tdlsc" style="padding-right: 5em;">England and Revolutionary France. 1792-1801</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_8-97">97</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr class="chapter">
+  <td class="tdcenter" colspan="2">CHAPTER V</td>
+</tr>
+<tr class="chapter">
+  <td class="tdlsc">England and Napoleon. 1801-1815</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_8-144">144</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-v" id="Page_8-v"></a><a href="./images/v.png">8-v</a>]</span></p>
+
+
+
+<div class="toc">
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-vi" id="Page_8-vi"></a><a href="./images/vi.png">8-vi</a>]</span></p>
+
+<div class="header">MAPS</div>
+
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table summary="List of Maps" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">
+<tr class="chapter">
+  <td class="tdright">I.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc" style="padding-right: 5em;">The Colonies of North America at the Declaration of Independence</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><i>To face p.</i> <a href="#coloniestb">1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr class="chapter">
+  <td class="tdright">II.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">Europe after the Peace of Lun&eacute;ville, 1801</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#lunevilletb">146</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr class="chapter">
+  <td class="tdright">III.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">Europe after the Peace of Tilsit, 1807</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#tilsittb">158</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-1" id="Page_8-1"></a><a href="./images/1.png">8-001</a>]</span></p>
+<div class="volume">
+<div class="book">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<div class="head">
+<hr />
+<ul>
+  <li>CHAPTER II</li>
+  <li>THE INDEPENDENCE OF AMERICA</li>
+  <li>1767-1782</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<a name="coloniestb" id="coloniestb"></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="./images/colonies.jpg">
+<img class="plain" src="./images/coloniestb.jpg" width="400" height="290" alt="map of colonies in North America when Independence declared" title="Colonies of North America at the Declaration of Independence" /></a>
+<span class="caption">Colonies of North America at the Declaration of
+Independence</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Growing influence of public opinion.</span></p>
+
+<p>The Chatham ministry marked a new phase in the relation of public
+opinion to the government of the State. In 1766 as in 1756 Pitt had been
+called into office by "the voice of the people" at large. But in his
+former ministry the influence he drew from popularity could only make
+itself effective through an alliance with the influence which was drawn
+from political connexion; and when the two elements of the
+administration became opposed the support of the nation gave Pitt little
+strength of resistance against the Whigs. Nor had the young king had
+much better fortune as yet in his efforts to break their rule. He had
+severed them indeed from Pitt; and he had dexterously broken up the
+great party into jealous factions. But broken as it was, even its
+factions remained too strong for the king. His <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-2" id="Page_8-2"></a><a href="./images/2.png">8-002</a>]</span>one effort at
+independence under Bute hardly lasted a year, and he was as helpless in
+the hands of Grenville as in the hands of Rockingham. His bribery, his
+patronage, his Parliamentary "friends," his perfidy and his lies, had
+done much to render good government impossible and to steep public life
+in deeper corruption, but they had done little to further the triumph of
+the Crown over the great houses. Of the one power indeed which could
+break the Whig rule, the power of public opinion, George was more
+bitterly jealous than even of the Whigs themselves. But in spite of his
+jealousy the tide of opinion steadily rose. In wise and in unwise ways
+the country at large showed its new interest in national policy, its new
+resolve to have a share in the direction of it. It showed no love for
+the king or the king's schemes. But it retained all its old disgust for
+the Whigs and for the Parliament. It clung to Pitt closer than ever, and
+in spite of his isolation from all party support raised him daily into a
+mightier power. It was the sense that a new England was thus growing up
+about him, that a new basis was forming itself for political action,
+which at last roused the Great Commoner to the bold enterprise of
+breaking through the bonds of "connexion" altogether. For the first time
+since the Revolution a minister told the peers in their own house that
+he defied their combinations.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Chatham's withdrawal.</span></p>
+
+<p>The ministry of 1766 in fact was itself such a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-3" id="Page_8-3"></a><a href="./images/3.png">8-003</a>]</span>defiance; for it was an
+attempt to found political power not on the support of the Whigs as a
+party, but on the support of national opinion. But as Parliament was
+then constituted, it was only through Chatham himself that opinion could
+tell even on the administration he formed; and six months after he had
+taken office Chatham was no more than a name. The dread which had driven
+him from the stormy agitation of the Lower House to the quiet of the
+House of Peers now became a certainty. As winter died into the spring of
+1767 his nervous disorganization grew into a painful and overwhelming
+illness which almost wholly withdrew him from public affairs; and when
+Parliament met again he was unable either to come to town or to confer
+with his colleagues. It was in vain that they prayed him for a single
+word of counsel. Chatham remained utterly silent; and the ministry which
+his guidance had alone held together at once fell into confusion. The
+Earl's plans were suffered to drop. His colleagues lost all cohesion,
+and each acted as he willed. Townshend, a brilliant but shallow
+rhetorician whom Pitt had been driven reluctantly to make his Chancellor
+of the Exchequer, after angering the House of Commons by proposals for
+an increase of the land-tax, strove to win back popularity among the
+squires by undertaking to raise a revenue from America. That a member of
+a ministry which bore Pitt's name should have proposed to reopen <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-4" id="Page_8-4"></a><a href="./images/4.png">8-004</a>]</span>the
+question of colonial taxation within a year of the repeal of the Stamp
+Acts was strange enough to the colonists; and they were yet more
+astonished when, on its neglect to make provision for compensating those
+who had suffered from the recent outbreak in due conformity to an Act of
+the British Parliament, the Assembly of New York was suspended, and when
+Townshend redeemed his pledge by laying duties on various objects
+brought into American ports. But these measures were the result of
+levity and disorganization rather than of any purpose to reopen the
+quarrel. Pitt's colleagues had as yet no design to reverse his policy.
+The one aim of the ministry which bore his name, and which during his
+retirement looked to the Duke of Grafton as its actual head, was simply
+to exist. But in the face of Chatham's continued withdrawal, of
+Townshend's death in 1767, and of the increasing hostility of the
+Rockingham Whigs, even existence was difficult; and Grafton saw himself
+forced to a union with the faction which was gathered under the Duke of
+Bedford, and to the appointment of a Tory noble as Secretary of State.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">His resignation.</span></p>
+
+<p>Such measures however only showed how far the ministry had drifted from
+the ground on which Pitt took his stand in its formation; and the very
+force on which he had relied turned at once against it. The elections
+for the new Parliament which met in 1768 were more corrupt than <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-5" id="Page_8-5"></a><a href="./images/5.png">8-005</a>]</span>any
+that had as yet been witnessed; and even the stoutest opponents of
+reform shrank aghast from the open bribery of constituencies and the
+prodigal barter of seats. How bitter the indignation of the country had
+grown was seen in its fresh backing of Wilkes. Wilkes had remained in
+France since his outlawry; but he seized on the opening afforded by the
+elections to return and offer himself as a member for the new
+Parliament. To the surprise and dismay of the ministers he was returned
+for Middlesex, a county the large number of whose voters made its choice
+a real expression of public opinion. The choice of Wilkes at such a
+moment was in effect a public condemnation of the House of Commons and
+the ministerial system. The ministry however and the House alike shrank
+from a fresh struggle with the agitator. But the king was eager for the
+contest. After ten years of struggle and disappointment George had all
+but reached his aim. The two forces which had as yet worsted him were
+both of them paralysed. The Whigs were fatally divided, and discredited
+in the eyes of the country by their antagonism to Pitt. Pitt on the
+other hand was suddenly removed from the stage. The ministry was without
+support in the country; and for Parliamentary support it was forced to
+lean more and more on the men who looked for direction to the king
+himself. At a moment when all hope of exerting any influence seemed
+crushed by the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-6" id="Page_8-6"></a><a href="./images/6.png">8-006</a>]</span>return of Chatham to power, George found his influence
+predominant as it had never been before. One force of opposition alone
+remained in the public discontent; and at this he struck more fiercely
+than ever. "I think it highly expedient to apprise you," he wrote to
+Lord North, "that the expulsion of Mr. Wilkes appears to be very
+essential, and must be effected." The ministers and the House of Commons
+bowed to his will. By his non-appearance in court when charged with
+libel, Wilkes had become an outlaw, and he was now thrown into prison on
+his outlawry. Dangerous riots broke out in London and over the whole
+country at the news of his arrest; and continued throughout the rest of
+the year. In the midst of these tumults the ministry itself was torn
+with internal discord. The adherents of Chatham found their position in
+it an intolerable one; and Lord Shelburne announced his purpose of
+resigning office. The announcement was followed in the autumn by the
+resignation of Chatham himself. Though still prostrated by disease, the
+Earl was sufficiently restored to grasp the actual position of the
+Cabinet which traded on his name, and in October 1768 he withdrew
+formally from the ministry.</p>
+
+<p>The withdrawal of Chatham however, if it shook the ministry, only
+rendered it still more dependent on the king; and in spite of its
+reluctance George forced it to plunge into a decisive <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-7" id="Page_8-7"></a><a href="./images/7.png">8-007</a>]</span>struggle with the
+public opinion which was declaring itself in tumult and riot against the
+system of government. The triumph of Wilkes had been driven home by the
+election of a nominee of the great agitator as his colleague on a fresh
+vacancy in the representation of Middlesex. The Government met the blow
+by a show of vigour, and by calling on the magistrates of Surrey to
+disperse the mobs; a summons which ended in conflicts between the crowd
+and the soldiers, in which some of the rioters were slain. Wilkes at
+once published the letter of the Secretary of State with comments on it
+as a cause of bloodshed; and the ministry accepted the step as a
+challenge to combat. If his comments were libellous, the libel was
+cognizable in the ordinary courts of law. But no sooner had Parliament
+assembled in 1769 than the House of Commons was called to take the
+matter into its own hands. Witnesses were examined at its bar: the forms
+of a trial were gone through; and as Wilkes persisted in his charge, he
+was expelled as a libeller. Unluckily the course which had been adopted
+put the House itself on trial before the constituencies. No sooner was
+the new writ issued than Wilkes again presented himself as a candidate,
+and was again elected by the shire of Middlesex. Violent and oppressive
+as the course of the House of Commons had been, it had as yet acted
+within its strict right, for no one questioned <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-8" id="Page_8-8"></a><a href="./images/8.png">8-008</a>]</span>its possession of a
+right of expulsion. But the defiance of Middlesex led it now to go
+further. It resolved, "That Mr. Wilkes having been in this session of
+Parliament expelled the House, was and is incapable of being elected a
+member to serve in the present Parliament"; and it issued a writ for a
+fresh election. Middlesex answered this insolent claim to limit the free
+choice of a constituency by again returning Wilkes; and the House was
+driven by its anger to a fresh and more outrageous usurpation. It again
+expelled the member for Middlesex; and on his return for the third time
+by an immense majority it voted that the candidate whom he had defeated,
+Colonel Luttrell, ought to have been returned, and was the legal
+representative of Middlesex. The Commons had not only limited at their
+own arbitrary discretion the free election of the constituency, but they
+had transferred its rights to themselves by seating Luttrell as member
+in defiance of the deliberate choice of Wilkes by the freeholders of
+Middlesex. The country at once rose indignantly against this violation
+of constitutional law. Wilkes was elected an Alderman of London; and the
+Mayor, Aldermen, and Livery petitioned the king to dissolve the
+Parliament. A remonstrance from London and Westminster mooted a far
+larger question. It said boldly that "there is a time when it is clearly
+demonstrable that men cease to be representatives. That time <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-9" id="Page_8-9"></a><a href="./images/9.png">8-009</a>]</span>is now
+arrived. The House of Commons do not represent the people." Meanwhile a
+writer who styled himself Junius attacked the Government in letters,
+which, rancorous and unscrupulous as was their tone, gave a new power to
+the literature of the Press by their clearness and terseness of
+statement, the finish of their style, and the terrible vigour of their
+invective.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Parliamentary Reform.</span></p>
+
+<p>The storm however beat idly on the obstinacy of the king. The printer of
+the bold letters was prosecuted, and the petitions and remonstrances of
+London were haughtily rejected. The issue of the struggle verified the
+forebodings of Burke. If, as Middlesex declared, and as the strife
+itself proved, the House of Commons had ceased to represent the English
+people, it was inevitable that men should look forward to measures that
+would make it representative. At the beginning of 1770 a cessation of
+the disease which had long held him prostrate enabled Chatham to
+reappear in the House of Lords. He at once denounced the usurpations of
+the Commons, and brought in a bill to declare them illegal. But his
+genius made him the first to see that remedies of this sort were
+inadequate to meet evils which really sprang from the fact that the
+House of Commons no longer represented the people of England; and he
+mooted a plan for its reform by an increase of the county members, who
+then formed the most independent portion of the House. Further <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-10" id="Page_8-10"></a><a href="./images/10.png">8-010</a>]</span>he could
+not go, for even in the proposals he made he stood almost alone. The
+Tories and the king's friends were not likely to welcome proposals which
+would lessen the king's influence. On the other hand the Whigs under
+Lord Rockingham had no sympathy with Parliamentary reform. As early as
+1769, in his first political publication, their one philosophic thinker,
+Edmund Burke, had met a proposal to enlarge the number of constituents
+by a counter-proposal to lessen them. "It would be more in the spirit of
+our constitution, and more agreeable to the fashion of our best laws,"
+he said, "by lessening the number to add to the weight and independency
+of our voters." Nor did the Whigs shrink with less haughty disdain from
+the popular agitation in which public opinion was forced to express
+itself, and which Chatham, while censuring its extravagance, as
+deliberately encouraged. It is from the quarrel between Wilkes and the
+House of Commons that we may date the influence of public meetings on
+English politics. The gatherings of the Middlesex electors in his
+support were preludes to the great meetings of Yorkshire freeholders in
+which the question of Parliamentary reform rose into importance; and it
+was in the movement for reform, and the establishment of corresponding
+committees throughout the country for the purpose of promoting it, that
+the power of political agitation first made itself felt. Political
+societies and clubs took their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-11" id="Page_8-11"></a><a href="./images/11.png">8-011</a>]</span>part in this quickening and organization
+of public opinion: and the spread of discussion, as well as the
+influence which now began to be exercised by the appearance of vast
+numbers of men in support of any political movement, proved that
+Parliament, whether it would or no, must soon reckon with the sentiments
+of the people at large.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Publication of debates.</span></p>
+
+<p>But an agent far more effective than popular agitation was preparing to
+bring the force of public opinion to bear directly on Parliament itself.
+We have seen how much of the corruption of the House of Commons sprang
+from the secrecy of Parliamentary proceedings, but this secrecy was the
+harder to preserve as the nation woke to a greater interest in its own
+affairs. From the accession of the Georges imperfect reports of the more
+important discussions began to be published under the title of "The
+Senate of Lilliput," and with feigned names or simple initials to denote
+the speakers. The best known reports of this kind were those contributed
+by Samuel Johnson to the <i>Gentleman's Magazine</i>. Obtained by stealth and
+often merely recalled by memory, such reports were naturally inaccurate;
+and their inaccuracy was eagerly seized on as a pretext for enforcing
+the rules which guarded the secrecy of proceedings in Parliament. In
+1771 the Commons issued a proclamation forbidding the publication of
+debates; and six printers, who set it at defiance, were summoned to the
+bar of the House. One who <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-12" id="Page_8-12"></a><a href="./images/12.png">8-012</a>]</span>refused to appear was arrested by its
+messenger; but the arrest brought the House into conflict with the
+magistrates of London. The magistrates set aside its proclamation as
+without legal force, released the printers, and sent the messenger to
+prison for an unlawful arrest. The House sent the Lord Mayor to the
+Tower, but the cheers of the crowds which followed him on his way told
+that public opinion was again with the Press, and the attempt to hinder
+its publication of Parliamentary proceedings dropped silently on his
+release at the next prorogation. Few changes of equal importance have
+been so quietly brought about. Not only was the responsibility of
+members to their constituents made constant and effective by the
+publication of their proceedings, but the nation itself was called in to
+assist in the deliberations of its representatives. A new and wider
+interest in its own affairs was roused in the people at large, and a new
+political education was given to it through the discussion of every
+subject of national importance in the Houses and the Press. Stimulated
+and moulded into shape by free discussion, encouraged and made conscious
+of its strength by public meetings, and gathered up and represented on
+all its sides by the journals of the day, public opinion became a force
+in practical statesmanship, influenced the course of debates, and
+controlled, in a closer and more constant way than even Parliament
+itself had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-13" id="Page_8-13"></a><a href="./images/13.png">8-013</a>]</span>been able to do, the actions of the Government. The
+importance of its new position gave a weight to the Press which it had
+never had before. The first great English journals date from this time.
+With the <i>Morning Chronicle</i>, the <i>Morning Post</i>, the <i>Morning Herald</i>,
+and the <i>Times</i>, all of which appeared in the interval between the
+opening years of the American War and the beginning of the war with the
+French Revolution, journalism took a new tone of responsibility and
+intelligence. The hacks of Grub Street were superseded by publicists of
+a high moral temper and literary excellence; and philosophers like
+Coleridge or statesmen like Canning turned to influence public opinion
+through the columns of the Press.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Renewed strife with America.</span></p>
+
+<p>But great as the influence of opinion was destined to become, it was
+feebly felt as yet; and George the Third was able to set Chatham's
+policy disdainfully aside and to plunge into a contest far more
+disastrous than his contest with the Press. In all the proceedings of
+the last few years, what had galled him most had been the act which
+averted a war between England and her colonies. To the king the
+Americans were already "rebels," and the great statesman whose eloquence
+had made their claims irresistible was a "trumpet of sedition." George
+deplored in his correspondence with his ministers the repeal of the
+Stamp Acts. "All men feel," he wrote, "that the fatal compliance in 1766
+has increased the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-14" id="Page_8-14"></a><a href="./images/14.png">8-014</a>]</span>pretensions of the Americans to absolute
+independence." But in England generally the question was regarded as
+settled, while in America the news of the repeal had been received with
+universal joy, and taken as a close of the strife. On both sides however
+there remained a pride and irritability which only wise handling could
+have allayed; and in the present state of English politics wise handling
+was impossible. Only a few months indeed passed before the quarrel was
+again reopened; for no sooner had the illness of Lord Chatham removed
+him from any real share in public affairs than the wretched
+administration which bore his name suspended the Assembly of New York on
+its refusal to provide quarters for English troops, and resolved to
+assert British sovereignty by levying import duties of trivial amount at
+American ports. The Assembly of Massachusetts was dissolved on a
+trifling quarrel with its Governor, and Boston was occupied for a time
+by British soldiers. It was without a thought of any effective struggle
+however that the Cabinet had entered on this course of vexation; and
+when the remonstrances of the Legislatures of Massachusetts and
+Virginia, coupled with a fall in the funds, warned the ministers of its
+danger, they hastened to withdraw from it. In 1769 the troops were
+recalled, and all duties, save one, abandoned. But with a fatal
+obstinacy the king insisted on retaining the duty on tea as an
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-15" id="Page_8-15"></a><a href="./images/15.png">8-015</a>]</span>assertion of the supremacy of the mother country. Its retention was
+enough to prevent any thorough restoration of good feeling. A series of
+petty quarrels went on in almost every colony between the popular
+assemblies and the Governors appointed by the Crown, and the colonists
+persisted in their agreement to import nothing from the mother country.
+As yet however there was no prospect of serious strife. In America the
+influence of George Washington allayed the irritation of Virginia; while
+Massachusetts contented itself with quarrelling with its Governor and
+refusing to buy tea so long as the duty was levied.</p>
+
+<p>The temper of the colonists was in the main that of the bulk of English
+statesmen. Even George Grenville, though approving the retention of the
+duty in question, abandoned all dream of further taxation. But the king
+was now supreme. The reappearance and attack of Chatham at the opening
+of 1770 had completed the ruin of the ministry. Those of his adherents
+who still clung to it, Lord Camden, the Chancellor, Lord Granby, the
+Commander-in-Chief, Dunning, the Solicitor-General, resigned their
+posts. In a few days they were followed by the Duke of Grafton, who
+since Chatham's resignation had been nominally the head of the
+administration. All that remained of it were the Bedford faction and the
+dependents of the king; but George did not hesitate to form these into a
+ministry, and to place at its head the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-16" id="Page_8-16"></a><a href="./images/16.png">8-016</a>]</span>former Chancellor of the
+Exchequer, Lord North, a man of some administrative ability, but
+unconnected with any political party, steadily opposed to any
+recognition of public opinion, and of an easy and indolent temper which
+yielded against his better knowledge to the stubborn doggedness of the
+king. The instinct of the country at once warned it of the results of
+such a change; and the City of London put itself formally at the head of
+the public discontent. In solemn addresses it called on George the Third
+to dismiss his ministers and to dissolve the Parliament; and its action
+was supported by petitions to the same effect from the greater counties.
+In the following year it fought, as we have seen, a battle with the
+House of Commons which established the freedom of the press. But the
+efforts of the country failed before the paralysis of political action
+which resulted from the position of the Whigs and the corruption of
+Parliament. The deaths of Grenville and Bedford broke up two of the Whig
+factions. Rockingham with the rest of the party held aloof from the
+popular agitation, and drew more and more away from Chatham as he
+favoured it. The Parliament remained steady to the king, and the king
+clung more and more to the ministry. The ministry was in fact a mere
+cloak for the direction of public affairs by George himself. "Not only
+did he direct the minister," a careful observer tells us, "in all
+important matters of foreign and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-17" id="Page_8-17"></a><a href="./images/17.png">8-017</a>]</span>domestic policy, but he instructed him
+as to the management of debates in Parliament, suggested what motions
+should be made or opposed, and how measures should be carried. He
+reserved for himself all the patronage, he arranged the whole cast of
+administration, settled the relative places and pretensions of ministers
+of State, law officers, and members of the household, nominated and
+promoted the English and Scotch judges, appointed and translated bishops
+and deans, and dispensed other preferments in the Church. He disposed of
+military governments, regiments, and commissions; and himself ordered
+the marching of troops. He gave and refused titles, honours, and
+pensions." All this immense patronage was persistently used for the
+creation and maintenance in both Houses of Parliament of a majority
+directed by the king himself; and its weight was seen in the steady
+action of such a majority. It was seen yet more in the subjection to
+which the ministry that bore North's name was reduced. George was in
+fact the minister through the years of its existence; and the shame of
+the darkest hour of English history lies wholly at his door.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Boston tea-riots.</span></p>
+
+<p>His fixed purpose was to seize on the first opportunity of undoing the
+"fatal compliance of 1766." A trivial riot gave him at last the handle
+he wanted. In December 1773 the arrival of some English ships laden with
+tea kindled fresh irritation in Boston, where the non-importation
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-18" id="Page_8-18"></a><a href="./images/18.png">8-018</a>]</span>agreement was strictly enforced; and a mob in the disguise of Indians
+boarded the vessels and flung their contents into the sea. The outrage
+was deplored alike by the friends of America in England and by its own
+leading statesmen; and both Washington and Chatham were prepared to
+support the Government in its looked-for demand of redress. But the
+thought of the king was not of redress but of repression, and he set
+roughly aside the more conciliatory proposals of Lord North and his
+fellow-ministers. They had already rejected as "frivolous and vexatious"
+a petition of the Assembly of Massachusetts for the dismissal of two
+public officers whose letters home advised the withdrawal of free
+institutions from the colonies. They now seized on the riot as a pretext
+for rigorous measures. A bill introduced into Parliament in the
+beginning of 1774 punished Boston by closing its port against all
+commerce. Another punished the State of Massachusetts by withdrawing the
+liberties it had enjoyed ever since the Pilgrim Fathers landed on its
+soil. Its charter was altered. The choice of its Council was transferred
+from the people to the Crown, and the nomination of its judges was
+transferred to the Governor. In the Governor too, by a provision more
+outrageous than even these, was vested the right of sending all persons
+charged with a share in the late disturbances to England for trial. To
+enforce these measures of repression <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-19" id="Page_8-19"></a><a href="./images/19.png">8-019</a>]</span>troops were sent to America, and
+General Gage, the commander-in-chief there, was appointed Governor of
+Massachusetts. The king's exultation at the prospect before him was
+unbounded. "The die," he wrote triumphantly to his minister, "is cast.
+The colonies must either triumph or submit." Four regiments would be
+enough to bring the Americans to their senses. They would only be "lions
+while we are lambs." "If we take the resolute part," he decided
+solemnly, "they will undoubtedly be very meek."</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">American resistance.</span></p>
+
+<p>Unluckily the blow at Massachusetts was received with anything but
+meekness. The jealousies between colony and colony were hushed by a
+sense that the liberties of all were in danger. If the British
+Parliament could cancel the charter of Massachusetts and ruin the trade
+of Boston, it could cancel the charter of every colony and ruin the
+trade of every port from the St. Lawrence to the coast of Georgia. All,
+therefore, adopted the cause of Massachusetts; and all their
+Legislatures save that of Georgia sent delegates to a Congress which
+assembled on the 4th of September at Philadelphia. Massachusetts took a
+yet bolder course. Not one of its citizens would act under the new laws.
+Its Assembly met in defiance of the Governor, called out the militia of
+the State, and provided arms and ammunition for it. But there was still
+room for reconciliation. The resolutions of the Congress had been
+moderate, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-20" id="Page_8-20"></a><a href="./images/20.png">8-020</a>]</span>for Virginia was the wealthiest and most influential among
+the States who sent delegates, and though resolute to resist the new
+measures of the government, Virginia still clung to the mother country.
+At home the merchants of London and Bristol pleaded loudly for
+reconciliation; and in January 1775 Chatham again came forward to avert
+a strife he had once before succeeded in preventing. With characteristic
+largeness of feeling he set aside all half-measures or proposals of
+compromise. "It is not cancelling a piece of parchment," he insisted,
+"that can win back America: you must respect her fears and her
+resentments." The bill which he introduced in concert with Franklin
+provided for the repeal of the late Acts and for the security of the
+colonial charters, abandoned the claim of taxation, and ordered the
+recall of the troops. A colonial assembly was directed to meet and
+provide means by which America might contribute towards the payment of
+the public debt.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Washington.</span></p>
+
+<p>Chatham's measure was contemptuously rejected by the Lords, as was a
+similar measure of Burke's by the House of Commons, and a petition of
+the City of London in favour of the Colonies by the king himself. With
+the rejection of these efforts for conciliation began the great struggle
+which ended eight years later in the severance of the American Colonies
+from the British Crown. The Congress of delegates from the Colonial
+Legislatures <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-21" id="Page_8-21"></a><a href="./images/21.png">8-021</a>]</span>at once voted measures for general defence, ordered the
+levy of an army, and set George Washington at its head. No nobler figure
+ever stood in the forefront of a nation's life. Washington was grave and
+courteous in address; his manners were simple and unpretending; his
+silence and the serene calmness of his temper spoke of a perfect
+self-mastery. But there was little in his outer bearing to reveal the
+grandeur of soul which lifts his figure with all the simple majesty of
+an ancient statue out of the smaller passions, the meaner impulses, of
+the world around him. What recommended him for command was singly his
+weight among his fellow-landowners of Virginia, and the experience of
+war which he had gained by service in border contests with the French
+and the Indians, as well as in Braddock's luckless expedition against
+Fort Duquesne. It was only as the weary fight went on that the colonists
+discovered, however slowly and imperfectly, the greatness of their
+leader, his clear judgement, his heroic endurance, his silence under
+difficulties, his calmness in the hour of danger or defeat, the patience
+with which he waited, the quickness and hardness with which he struck,
+the lofty and serene sense of duty that never swerved from its task
+through resentment or jealousy, that never through war or peace felt the
+touch of a meaner ambition, that knew no aim save that of guarding the
+freedom of his fellow-countrymen, and no personal longing save that of
+returning to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-22" id="Page_8-22"></a><a href="./images/22.png">8-022</a>]</span>his own fireside when their freedom was secured. It was
+almost unconsciously that men learned to cling to Washington with a
+trust and faith such as few other men have won, and to regard him with a
+reverence which still hushes us in presence of his memory. But even
+America hardly recognised his real greatness while he lived. It was only
+when death set its seal on him that the voice of those whom he had
+served so long proclaimed him "the man first in war, first in peace, and
+first in the hearts of his fellow-countrymen."</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Declaration of Independence,</span></p>
+
+<p>Washington more than any of his fellow-colonists represented the
+clinging of the Virginian landowners to the mother country, and his
+acceptance of a military command proved that even the most moderate
+among the colonists had no hope now save in arms. The struggle opened
+with a skirmish between a party of English troops and a detachment of
+militia at Lexington on the nineteenth of April 1775; and in a few days
+twenty thousand colonists appeared before Boston. The Congress
+reassembled, declared the States they represented "The United Colonies
+of America," and undertook the work of government. Meanwhile ten
+thousand fresh English troops landed at Boston. But the provincial
+militia, in number almost double that of the British force which
+prepared to attack them, seized a neck of ground which joins Boston to
+the mainland; and though on the 17th of June they were driven from the
+heights of Bunker's Hill which commanded the town, it was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-23" id="Page_8-23"></a><a href="./images/23.png">8-023</a>]</span>only after a
+desperate struggle in which their bravery put an end for ever to the
+taunts of cowardice which had been levelled against the colonists. "Are
+the Yankees cowards?" shouted the men of Massachusetts as the first
+English attack rolled back baffled down the hill-side. But a far truer
+courage was shown in the stubborn endurance with which Washington's raw
+militiamen, who gradually dwindled from sixteen thousand to ten,
+ill-fed, ill-armed, and with but forty-five rounds of ammunition to each
+man, cooped up through the winter a force of ten thousand veterans in
+the lines of Boston. The spring of 1776 saw them force these troops to
+withdraw from the city to New York, where the whole British army,
+largely reinforced by mercenaries from Germany, was concentrated under
+General Howe. Meanwhile a raid of the American General Arnold nearly
+drove the British troops from Canada; and though his attempt broke down
+before Quebec, it showed that all hope of reconciliation was over. The
+colonies of the south, the last to join in the struggle, had in fact
+expelled their Governors at the close of 1775; at the opening of the
+next year Massachusetts instructed its delegates to support a complete
+repudiation of the king's government by the Colonies; while the American
+ports were thrown open to the world in defiance of the Navigation Acts.
+These <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-24" id="Page_8-24"></a><a href="./images/24.png">8-024</a>]</span>decisive steps were followed by the great act with which American
+history begins, the adoption on the 4th of July 1776 by the delegates in
+Congress after a fierce resistance from those of Pennsylvania and South
+Carolina, and in spite of the abstention of those of New York, of a
+Declaration of Independence. "We," ran its solemn words, "the
+representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
+appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our
+intentions, solemnly publish and declare that these United Colonies are,
+and of right ought to be, Free and Independent States."</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Saratoga.</span></p>
+
+<p>But the earlier successes of the colonists were soon followed by
+suffering and defeat. Howe, an active general with a fine army at his
+back, cleared Long Island in August by a victory at Brooklyn; and
+Washington, whose force was weakened by withdrawals and defeat and
+disheartened by the loyal tone of the State in which it was encamped,
+was forced in the autumn of 1776 to evacuate New York and New Jersey,
+and to fall back first on the Hudson and then on the Delaware. The
+Congress prepared to fly from Philadelphia, and a general despair showed
+itself in cries of peace. But a well-managed surprise and a daring march
+on the rear of Howe's army restored the spirits of Washington's men, and
+forced the English general in his turn to fall back on New York.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-25" id="Page_8-25"></a><a href="./images/25.png">8-025</a>]</span>England however was now roused to more serious efforts; and the
+campaign of 1777 opened with a combined attempt for the suppression of
+the revolt. An army which had assembled in Canada under General Burgoyne
+marched in June by way of the Lakes to seize the line of the Hudson.
+Howe meanwhile sailed up the Chesapeake and advanced on Philadelphia,
+the temporary capital of the United States and the seat of the Congress.
+The rout of his little army of seven thousand men at Brandywine forced
+Washington to abandon Philadelphia, and after a bold but unsuccessful
+attack on his victors to retire into winter quarters on the banks of the
+Schuylkill, where the unconquerable resolve with which he nerved his
+handful of beaten and half-starved troops to face Howe's army in their
+camp at Valley Forge is the noblest of his triumphs. But in the north
+the war had taken another colour. Burgoyne's movement had been planned
+in view of a junction with at least a part of Howe's army from New York;
+a junction which would have enabled him to seize the line of the Hudson
+and thus cut off New England from her sister provinces. But Howe was
+held fast by Washington's resistance and unable to send a man to the
+north; while the spirit of New England, which had grown dull as the war
+rolled away from its borders, quickened again at the news of invasion
+and of the outrages committed by the Indians employed among the English
+troops. Its militia hurried from town and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-26" id="Page_8-26"></a><a href="./images/26.png">8-026</a>]</span>homestead to a camp with
+which General Gates had barred the road to Albany; and after a fruitless
+attack on the American lines, Burgoyne saw himself surrounded on the
+heights of Saratoga. On the 17th of October his whole force was
+compelled to surrender.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">France and America.</span></p>
+
+<p>The news of this calamity gave force to the words with which Chatham at
+the very time of the surrender was pressing for peace. "You cannot
+conquer America," he cried when men were glorying in Howe's successes
+over Washington. "If I were an American as I am an Englishman, while a
+foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my
+arms&mdash;never, never, never!" Then, in a burst of indignant eloquence he
+thundered against an outrage which was at that moment nerving New
+England to its rally against Burgoyne, the use of the Indian with his
+scalping-knife as an ally of England against her children. The proposals
+which Chatham brought forward might perhaps in his hands even yet have
+drawn America and the mother country together. His plan was one of
+absolute conciliation. He looked forward to a federal union between the
+settlements and Great Britain which would have left the Colonies
+absolutely their own masters in all matters of internal government, and
+linked only by ties of affection and loyalty to the general body of the
+Empire. But the plan met with the same scornful rejection <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-27" id="Page_8-27"></a><a href="./images/27.png">8-027</a>]</span>as his
+previous proposals. Its rejection was at once followed by the news of
+Saratoga, and by the yet more fatal news that this disaster had roused
+the Bourbon Courts to avenge the humiliation of the Seven Years' War.
+Crippled and impoverished as she was at its close, France could do
+nothing to break the world-power which was rising in front of her; but
+in the very moment of her defeat, the foresight of Choiseul had seen in
+a future straggle between England and her Colonies a chance of ruining
+the great fabric which Pitt's triumphs had built up. Nor was Pitt blind
+to the steady resolve of France to renew the fight. In every attempt
+which he had made to construct a Ministry he had laid down as the
+corner-stone of his foreign policy a renewal of that alliance with the
+Protestant States of North Germany against the House of Bourbon which
+could alone save England from the dangers of the Family Compact. But his
+efforts had been foiled alike by the resistance of the king, the timid
+peacefulness of the Whigs, and at last by the distrust of England which
+had been rooted in the mind of Frederick the Great through the treachery
+of Lord Bute.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Death of Chatham.</span></p>
+
+<p>The wisdom of his policy was now brought home by the coming of the
+danger he had foreseen when the foresight of Choiseul was justified by
+the outbreak of strife between England and America. Even then for a
+while <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-28" id="Page_8-28"></a><a href="./images/28.png">8-028</a>]</span>France looked idly on. Her king, Lewis the Sixteenth, was averse
+from war; her treasury was empty; her government, scared by the growth
+of new movements towards freedom about it, and fearful of endangering
+the monarchy by the encouragement these would receive from a union with
+the revolted Colonies, still doubted whether America had any real power
+of resisting Britain. It was to no purpose that from the moment when
+they declared themselves independent, the United States called on France
+for aid; or that Franklin pressed their appeal on its government. A year
+in fact passed without any decisive resolution to give aid to the
+colonists. But the steady drift of French policy and the passion of the
+French people pressed heavier every day on the hesitation of their
+government; and the news of Saratoga forced its hand. The American
+envoys at last succeeded in forming an alliance; and in February 1778 a
+treaty offensive and defensive was concluded between France and America.
+Lord North strove to meet the blow by fresh offers of conciliation, and
+by a pledge to renounce for ever the right of direct taxation over the
+Colonies; but he felt that such offers were fruitless, that the time for
+conciliation was past, while all hope of reducing America by force of
+arms had disappeared. In utter despair he pressed his resignation on the
+king. But George was as obstinate for war as ever; and the country,
+stung to the quick by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-29" id="Page_8-29"></a><a href="./images/29.png">8-029</a>]</span>the attack of France, backed passionately the
+obstinacy of the king. But unlike George the Third, it instinctively
+felt that if a hope still remained of retaining the friendship of the
+Colonies and of baffling the efforts of the Bourbons, it lay in Lord
+Chatham; and in spite of the king's resistance the voice of the whole
+country called him back to power. The danger indeed which had scared
+Lord North into resignation, and before which a large party of the Whigs
+now advocated the acknowledgement of American independence, only woke
+Chatham to his old daring and fire. He had revolted from a war against
+Englishmen. But all his pride in English greatness, all his confidence
+in English power, woke afresh at the challenge of France. His genius saw
+indeed in the new danger a means of escape from the old. He would have
+withdrawn every soldier from America, and flung the whole force of
+Britain into the conflict with France. He believed that in the splendour
+of triumphs over her older enemy England might be brought to terms of
+amity which would win back the Colonies, and that the English blood of
+the colonists themselves would be quickened to a fresh union with the
+mother country by her struggle against a power from which she had so
+lately rescued them. Till such a trial had been made, with all the
+advantages that the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-30" id="Page_8-30"></a><a href="./images/30.png">8-030</a>]</span>magic of his name could give it in England and
+America alike, he would not bow to a need that must wreck the great
+Empire his hand had built up. Even at this hour there was a chance of
+success for such a policy; but on the eve of Chatham's return to office
+this chance was shattered by the hand of death. Broken with age and
+disease, the Earl was borne to the House of Lords on the seventh of
+April to utter in a few broken words his protest against the proposal to
+surrender America. "I rejoice," he murmured, "that I am still alive to
+lift up my voice against the dismemberment of this ancient and noble
+monarchy. His Majesty succeeded to an Empire as great in extent as its
+reputation was unsullied. Seventeen years ago this people was the terror
+of the world." He listened impatiently to the reply of the Duke of
+Richmond, and again rose to his feet. But he had hardly risen when he
+pressed his hand upon his heart, and falling back in a swoon was borne
+home to die.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">England against Europe.</span></p>
+
+<p>How well founded was Chatham's faith in the power of Britain was seen in
+the strife that now opened. From the hour of his death England entered
+on a conflict with enemies whose circle gradually widened till she stood
+single-handed against the world. At the close of 1778 the Family Compact
+bore its full fruit; Spain joined the league of France and America
+against her; and in the next year the joint fleets of the two powers
+rode the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-31" id="Page_8-31"></a><a href="./images/31.png">8-031</a>]</span>masters of the Channel. They even threatened a descent on the
+English coast. But dead as Chatham was, his cry woke a new life in
+England. "Shall we fall prostrate," he exclaimed with his last breath,
+"before the House of Bourbon?" and the divisions which had broken the
+nation in its struggle with American liberty were hushed in the presence
+of this danger to its own existence. The weakness of the Ministry was
+compensated by the energy of England itself. For three years, from 1779
+to 1782, General Elliott held against famine and bombardment from a
+French and Spanish army the rock fortress of Gibraltar. Although a
+quarrel over the right of search banded Holland and the Courts of the
+North in an armed neutrality against her, and added the Dutch fleet to
+the number of her assailants, England held her own at sea. In her
+Eastern dependency, where France sought a counterpoise to the power of
+Britain in that of the Mahrattas, freebooters of Hindoo blood whose
+tribes had for a century past carried their raids over India from the
+hills of the Western coast, and founded sovereignties in Guzerat, Malwa,
+and Tanjore, the tenacity and resource of Warren Hastings, the first
+Governor-General of British India, wrested victory from failure and
+defeat. Though the wide schemes of conquest which he formed were for the
+moment frustrated, the annexation of Benares, the extension of British
+rule along the Ganges, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-32" id="Page_8-32"></a><a href="./images/32.png">8-032</a>]</span>the reduction of Oudh to virtual dependence, the
+appearance of English armies in Central India, and the defeat of the
+Sultan of Mysore, laid the foundation of an Indian Empire which his
+genius was bold enough to foresee. Even in America the fortune of the
+war seemed for a while to turn. After Burgoyne's surrender the English
+generals had withdrawn from Pennsylvania, and bent all their efforts on
+the Southern States, where a strong Royalist party still existed. The
+capture of Charlestown and the successes of Lord Cornwallis in 1780 were
+rendered fruitless by the obstinate resistance of General Greene; but
+the United States remained weakened by bankruptcy and unnerved by hopes
+of aid from France.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">America and Ireland.</span></p>
+
+<p>Hardly a year however had passed when the face of the war in America was
+changed by a terrible disaster. Foiled in an attempt on North Carolina
+by the refusal of his fellow-general, Sir Henry Clinton, to assist him,
+Cornwallis fell back in 1781 on Virginia, and entrenched himself in the
+lines of York Town. A sudden march of Washington brought him to the
+front of the English troops at a moment when the French fleet held the
+sea, and the British army was driven by famine in October to a surrender
+as humiliating as that of Saratoga. The news fell like a thunderbolt on
+the wretched Minister, who had till now suppressed at his master's order
+his own conviction of the uselessness of further bloodshed. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-33" id="Page_8-33"></a><a href="./images/33.png">8-033</a>]</span>Opening his
+arms and pacing wildly about the room, Lord North exclaimed, "It is all
+over," and resigned. At this moment indeed the country seemed on the
+brink of ruin. Humiliating as it was, England could have borne fifty
+such calamities as the surrender at York Town. But in the very crisis of
+the struggle with America she found herself confronted with a danger
+nearer home. The revolt of one great dependency brought with it a
+threatened revolt from another. In Ireland, as in the Colonies, England
+had shrunk from carrying out either a national or an imperial policy.
+She might have recognised Ireland as a free nationality, and bound it to
+herself by federal bonds; or she might have absorbed it, as she had
+absorbed Scotland, into the general mass of her own national life. With
+a perverse ingenuity she had not only refrained from taking either of
+these courses, but she had deliberately adopted the worst features of
+both. Ireland was absolutely subject to Britain, but she formed no part
+of it, she shared neither in its liberty nor its wealth. But on the
+other hand she was allowed no national existence of her own. While all
+the outer seeming of national life was left, while Ireland possessed in
+name an army, a Parliament, a magistracy, the mass of the Irish people
+was as strange to all this life as the savages of Polynesia. Every
+Catholic Irishman, and there were five Irish Catholics to every Irish
+Protestant, was treated as a stranger <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-34" id="Page_8-34"></a><a href="./images/34.png">8-034</a>]</span>and a foreigner in his own
+country. The House of Lords, the House of Commons, the magistracy, all
+corporate offices in towns, all ranks in the army, the bench, the bar,
+the whole administration of government or justice, were closed against
+Catholics. The very right of voting for their representatives in
+Parliament was denied them. Few Catholic landowners had been left by the
+sweeping confiscations which had followed the successive revolts of the
+island, and oppressive laws forced even these few with scant exceptions
+to profess Protestantism. Necessity indeed had brought about a practical
+toleration of their religion and their worship; but in all social and
+political matters the native Catholics, in other words the immense
+majority of the people of Ireland, were simply hewers of wood and
+drawers of water for Protestant masters, for masters who still looked on
+themselves as mere settlers, who boasted of their Scotch or English
+extraction, and who regarded the name of "Irishman" as an insult.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Irish Government.</span></p>
+
+<p>But small as was this Protestant body, one-half of it fared little
+better as far as power was concerned than the Catholics. The
+Presbyterians, who formed the bulk of the Ulster settlers, were shut out
+by law from all civil, military, and municipal offices. The
+administration and justice of the country were thus kept rigidly in the
+hands of members of the Established Church, a body <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-35" id="Page_8-35"></a><a href="./images/35.png">8-035</a>]</span>which comprised
+about a twelfth of the population of the island, while its government
+was practically monopolised by a few great Protestant landowners. The
+rotten boroughs, which had originally been created to make the Irish
+Parliament dependent on the Crown, had by this time fallen under the
+influence of the adjacent landlords, whose command of these made them
+masters of the House of Commons while they themselves formed in person
+the House of Peers. To such a length had this system been carried that
+at the time of the Union the great majority of the boroughs lay in the
+hands of a very few families. Two-thirds of the House of Commons, in
+fact, was returned by a small group of nobles, who were recognised as
+"parliamentary undertakers," and who undertook to "manage" Parliament on
+their own terms. Irish politics was for these men a mere means of public
+plunder; they were glutted with pensions, preferments, and bribes in
+hard cash, in return for their services; they were the advisers of every
+Lord-Lieutenant and the practical governors of the country. The results
+were what might have been expected. For more than a century Ireland was
+the worst governed country in Europe. That its government was not even
+worse than it was, was due to its connection with England and the
+subordination of its Parliament to the English Privy Council. The Irish
+Parliament had no power of originating legislative or financial
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-36" id="Page_8-36"></a><a href="./images/36.png">8-036</a>]</span>measures, and could only say "yes" or "no" to Acts laid before it by
+the Privy Council in England. The English Parliament too claimed the
+right of binding Ireland as well as England by its enactments, and one
+of its statutes transferred the appellate jurisdiction of the Irish
+Peerage to the English House of Lords. Galling as these restrictions
+were to the plundering aristocracy of Ireland, they formed a useful
+check on its tyranny. But as if to compensate for the benefits of this
+protection, England did her best from the time of William the Third to
+annihilate Irish commerce and to ruin Irish agriculture. Statutes passed
+by the jealousy of English landowners forbade the export of Irish cattle
+or sheep to English ports. The export of wool was forbidden lest it
+might interfere with the profits of English wool-growers. Poverty was
+thus added to the curse of misgovernment; and poverty deepened with the
+rapid growth of the native population, a growth due in great part to the
+physical misery and moral degradation of their lives, till famine turned
+the country into a hell.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Volunteers.</span></p>
+
+<p>The bitter lesson of the last conquest however long sufficed to check
+all dreams of revolt among the native Irish; and the outbreaks which
+sprang from time to time out of the general misery and discontent were
+purely social in their character, and were roughly repressed by the
+ruling class. When political revolt at last threatened English
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-37" id="Page_8-37"></a><a href="./images/37.png">8-037</a>]</span>supremacy over Ireland, the threat came from the ruling class itself.
+Some timid efforts made by the English Government at the accession of
+George the Third to control its tyranny were resented by a refusal of
+money bills, and by a cry for the removal of the checks imposed on the
+independence of the Irish Parliament. But it was not till the American
+war that this cry became a political danger. The threat of a French
+invasion and the want of any regular force to oppose it compelled the
+Government to call on Ireland to provide for its own defence, and in
+answer to its call forty thousand volunteers appeared in arms in 1779.
+The force was wholly a Protestant one, commanded by Protestant officers,
+and it was turned to account by the Protestant oligarchy. Threats of an
+armed revolt backed the eloquence of two Parliamentary leaders, Grattan
+and Flood, in their demand for the repeal of Poynings' Act, which took
+all power of initiative legislation from the Irish Parliament, and for
+the recognition of the Irish House of Lords as an ultimate Court of
+Appeal. But the Volunteers were forced to bid for the support of the
+native Catholics, who looked with indifference on these quarrels of
+their masters, by claiming for them a relaxation of the penal laws
+against the exercise of their religion and of some of their most
+oppressive disabilities. So real was the danger that England was forced
+to give way. The first demands were in effect a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-38" id="Page_8-38"></a><a href="./images/38.png">8-038</a>]</span>claim for national
+independence. But there were no means of resisting them, for England was
+without a soldier to oppose the Volunteers, while she was pressed hard
+by the league of Europe and America against her. In the face of such a
+rising close at home, it became plain even to the most dogged of Tories
+that it was impossible to continue a strife across three thousand miles
+of sea; and to deal with the attitude of Ireland became even a more
+pressing need of the Ministry which followed that of Lord North than the
+need of dealing with America.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">End of the war.</span></p>
+
+<p>The blow which had shattered the attempt of England to wield an
+autocratic power over her Colonies had shattered the attempt of its king
+to establish an autocratic power over England itself. The Ministry which
+bore the name of Lord North had been a mere screen for the
+administration of George the Third, and its ruin was the ruin of the
+system he had striven to build up. Never again was the Crown to possess
+such a power as he had wielded during the past ten years. For the moment
+however there was nothing to mark so decisive a change; and both to the
+king and his opponents it must have seemed only a new turn in the
+political game which they were playing when in March 1782 the Whigs
+returned to office. Rockingham was still at the head of the party; and
+on Rockingham fell the double task of satisfying Ireland and of putting
+an end, at any cost, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-39" id="Page_8-39"></a><a href="./images/39.png">8-039</a>]</span>to the war with the United States. The task
+involved in both quarters a humiliating surrender; for neither Ireland
+nor America would be satisfied save by a full concession of their
+claims. It needed the bitter stress of necessity to induce the English
+Parliament to follow Rockingham's counsels, but the need was too urgent
+to suffer their rejection. The Houses therefore abandoned by a formal
+statute the judicial and legislative supremacy they had till then
+asserted over the Parliament of Ireland; and from this moment England
+and Ireland were simply held together by the fact that the sovereign of
+the one island was also the sovereign of the other. The grant of
+independence to the one great dependency made it easier to recognise the
+freedom of the other. Rockingham in fact took office with the purpose of
+winning peace by a full acknowledgement of the independence of the
+United States, and negotiations were soon entered into for that purpose.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Peace.</span></p>
+
+<p>But America was bound by its league with the Bourbon Courts to make no
+peace save one common to its allies, and from its allies peace was hard
+to win without concessions which would have stripped from England all
+that remained of her older greatness. With the revolt of Ireland and the
+surrender of Cornwallis the hopes of her enemies rose high. Spain
+refused to suspend hostilities at any other price than the surrender of
+Gibraltar; while France proposed that England should give <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-40" id="Page_8-40"></a><a href="./images/40.png">8-040</a>]</span>up all her
+Indian conquests save Bengal. The triumph of the Bourbons indeed seemed
+secure. If terms like these were accepted the world-empire of Britain
+was at an end. Stripped of her Colonies in America, stripped of her rule
+in India, matched on the very ocean by rival fleets, England sank back
+into a European State, into the England of the first Georges. And yet
+there seemed little chance of her holding out against the demands of
+such a league as fronted her at a moment when her military power was
+paralysed by the attitude of Ireland. But the true basis of her
+world-power lay on the sea. It was by her command of the sea that such
+an empire could alone be possible; nor was it possible so long as she
+commanded the sea for all the armies of the Bourbon powers to rob her of
+it. And at this moment the command of the seas again became her own. On
+the 16th of January 1780 Admiral Rodney, the greatest of English seamen
+save Nelson and Blake, encountered the Spanish fleet off Cape St.
+Vincent, and only four of its vessels escaped to Cadiz. At the opening
+of 1782 the triumphs of the French admiral De Grasse called him to the
+West Indies; and on the 12th of April a man&oelig;uvre which he was the
+first to introduce broke his opponent's line, and drove the French fleet
+shattered from the Atlantic. With Rodney's last victory the struggle of
+the Bourbons was really over, for no means remained of attacking their
+enemy save at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-41" id="Page_8-41"></a><a href="./images/41.png">8-041</a>]</span>Gibraltar, and here a last attack of the joint force
+gathered against it was repulsed by the heroism of Elliott. Nor would
+America wait any longer for the satisfaction of her allies. In November
+her commissioners signed the preliminaries of a peace in which Britain
+reserved to herself on the American continent only Canada and the island
+of Newfoundland; and acknowledged without reserve the independence of
+the United States.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">England and the United States.</span></p>
+
+<p>The action of America ended the war; and the treaty of peace with the
+United States was a prelude to treaties of peace with the Bourbon
+powers. Their actual gains were insignificant. France indeed won nothing
+in the treaties with which the war ended; Spain gained only Florida and
+Minorca. Nor could they feel even in this hour of their triumph that the
+end at which they aimed had been fully reached. In half their great
+effort against the world-power of Britain they had utterly failed. She
+had even won ground in India. In America itself she still retained the
+northern dominion of Canada. Her West Indian islands remained intact.
+Above all, she had asserted more nobly than ever her command of the sea,
+and with it the possibility of building up a fresh power in such lands
+as Cook had called her to. But at the close of the war there was less
+thought of what she had retained than of what she had lost. She was
+parted from her American Colonies; and at the moment such a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-42" id="Page_8-42"></a><a href="./images/42.png">8-042</a>]</span>parting
+seemed to be the knell of her greatness. In wealth, in population, the
+American Colonies far surpassed all that remained of her Empire; and the
+American Colonies were irrecoverably gone. It is no wonder that in the
+first shock of such a loss England looked on herself as on the verge of
+ruin, or that the Bourbon Courts believed her position as a world-power
+to be practically at an end. How utterly groundless such a conception
+was the coming years were to show. The energies of England were in fact
+spurred to new efforts by the crisis in her fortunes. The industrial
+developement which followed the war gave her a material supremacy such
+as she had never known before, and the rapid growth of wealth which this
+industry brought with it raised her again into a mother of nations as
+her settlers built up in the waters of the Pacific Colonies as great as
+those which she had lost on the coast of America. But if the Bourbons
+overrated their triumph in one way, they immensely underrated it in
+another. Whatever might be the importance of American independence in
+the history of England, it was of unequalled moment in the history of
+the world. If it crippled for a while the supremacy of the English
+nation, it founded the supremacy of the English race. From the hour of
+American Independence the life of the English People has flowed not in
+one current, but in two; and while the older has shown little signs of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-43" id="Page_8-43"></a><a href="./images/43.png">8-043</a>]</span>lessening, the younger has fast risen to a greatness which has changed
+the face of the world. In 1783 America was a nation of three millions of
+inhabitants, scattered thinly along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. It
+is now a nation of forty millions, stretching over the whole continent
+from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In wealth and material energy, as in
+numbers, it far surpasses the mother country from which it sprang. It is
+already the main branch of the English People; and in the days that are
+at hand the main current of that people's history must run along the
+channel not of the Thames or the Mersey, but of the Hudson and the
+Mississippi. But distinct as these currents are, every year proves more
+clearly that in spirit the English People is one. The distance that
+parted England from America lessens every day. The ties that unite them
+grow every day stronger. The social and political differences that
+threatened a hundred years ago to form an impassable barrier between
+them grow every day less. Against this silent and inevitable drift of
+things the spirit of narrow isolation on either side the Atlantic
+struggles in vain. It is possible that the two branches of the English
+People will remain for ever separate political existences. It is likely
+enough that the older of them may again break in twain, and that the
+English People in the Pacific may assert as distinct a national life as
+the two English Peoples on either side the Atlantic. But <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-44" id="Page_8-44"></a><a href="./images/44.png">8-044</a>]</span>the spirit,
+the influence, of all these branches will remain one. And in thus
+remaining one, before half-a-century is over it will change the face of
+the world. As two hundred millions of Englishmen fill the valley of the
+Mississippi, as fifty millions of Englishmen assert their lordship over
+Australasia, this vast power will tell through Britain on the old world
+of Europe, whose nations will have shrunk into insignificance before it.
+What the issues of such a world-wide change may be, not even the wildest
+dreamer would dare to dream. But one issue is inevitable. In the
+centuries that lie before us, the primacy of the world will lie with the
+English People. English institutions, English speech, English thought,
+will become the main features of the political, the social, and the
+intellectual life of mankind.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-45" id="Page_8-45"></a><a href="./images/45.png">8-045</a>]</span></p>
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<div class="head">
+<hr />
+<ul>
+  <li>CHAPTER III</li>
+  <li>INDUSTRIAL ENGLAND</li>
+  <li>1782-1792</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">England in the American War.</span></p>
+
+<p>That in the creation of the United States the world had reached one of
+the turning-points in its history seems at the time to have entered into
+the thought of not a single European statesman. What startled men most
+at the moment was the discovery that England herself was far from being
+ruined by the greatness of her defeat. She rose from it indeed stronger
+and more vigorous than ever. Never had she shown a mightier energy than
+in the struggle against France which followed only ten years after her
+loss of America, nor did she ever stand higher among the nations than on
+the day of Waterloo. Her internal developement was as imposing as her
+outer grandeur. Weary and disgraceful indeed as was the strife with the
+Colonies, the years of its progress were years of as mighty a revolution
+for the mother country as for its child. The England <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-46" id="Page_8-46"></a><a href="./images/46.png">8-046</a>]</span>that is about us
+dates from the American War. It was then that the moral, the
+philanthropic, the religious ideas which have moulded English society
+into its present shape first broke the spiritual torpor of the
+eighteenth century. It was then that with the wider diffusion of
+intelligence our literature woke to a nobler and larger life which
+fitted it to become the mouthpiece of every national emotion. It was
+then that by a change unparalleled in history the country laid aside her
+older agricultural character to develope industrial forces which made
+her at a single bound the workshop of the world. Amidst the turmoil of
+the early years of George the Third Brindley was silently covering
+England with canals, and Watt as silently perfecting his invention of
+the steam-engine. It was amidst the strife with America that Adam Smith
+regenerated our economical, Gibbon our historical, and Burke our
+political literature; and peace was hardly declared when the appearance
+of Crabbe, Cowper, and Burns heralded a new birth of our poetry.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The religious movement.</span></p>
+
+<p>No names so illustrious as these marked the more silent but even deeper
+change in the religious temper of the country. It dates, as we have
+seen, from the work of the Wesleys, but the Methodists themselves were
+the least result of the Methodist revival. Its action upon the Church
+broke the lethargy of the clergy; and the "Evangelical" movement, which
+found representatives <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-47" id="Page_8-47"></a><a href="./images/47.png">8-047</a>]</span>like Newton and Cecil within the pale of the
+Establishment, made the fox-hunting parson and the absentee rector at
+last impossible. In Walpole's day the English clergy were the idlest and
+the most lifeless in the world. In our own time no body of religious
+ministers surpasses them in piety, in philanthropic energy, or in
+popular regard. But the movement was far from being limited to the
+Methodists or the clergy. In the nation at large appeared a new moral
+enthusiasm which, rigid and pedantic as it often seemed, was still
+healthy in its social tone, and whose power showed itself in a gradual
+disappearance of the profligacy which had disgraced the upper classes,
+and the foulness which had infested literature ever since the
+Restoration. A yet nobler result of the religious revival was the steady
+attempt, which has never ceased from that day to this, to remedy the
+guilt, the ignorance, the physical suffering, the social degradation of
+the profligate and the poor. It was not till the Wesleyan impulse had
+done its work that this philanthropic impulse began. The Sunday Schools
+established by Mr. Raikes of Gloucester at the close of the century were
+the beginnings of popular education. By writings and by her own personal
+example Hannah More drew the sympathy of England to the poverty and
+crime of the agricultural labourer. A passionate impulse of human
+sympathy with the wronged and afflicted raised hospitals, endowed
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-48" id="Page_8-48"></a><a href="./images/48.png">8-048</a>]</span>charities, built churches, sent missionaries to the heathen, supported
+Burke in his plea for the Hindoo, and Clarkson and Wilberforce in their
+crusade against the iniquity of the slave trade.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Howard.</span></p>
+
+<p>It is only the moral chivalry of his labours that amongst a crowd of
+philanthropists draws us most to the work and character of John Howard.
+The sympathy which all were feeling for the sufferings of mankind Howard
+felt for the sufferings of the worst and most hapless of men. With
+wonderful ardour and perseverance he devoted himself to the cause of the
+debtor, the felon, and the murderer. An appointment to the office of
+High Sheriff of Bedfordshire in 1774 drew his attention to the state of
+the prisons which were placed under his care; and from that time the
+quiet country gentleman, whose only occupation had been reading his
+Bible and studying his thermometer, became the most energetic and
+zealous of reformers. Before a year was over he had personally visited
+almost every English gaol, and in nearly all of them he found frightful
+abuses which had been noticed half-a-century before, but which had been
+left unredressed by Parliament. Gaolers who bought their places were
+paid by fees, and suffered to extort what they could. Even when
+acquitted, men were dragged back to their cells for want of funds to
+discharge the sums they owed to their keepers. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-49" id="Page_8-49"></a><a href="./images/49.png">8-049</a>]</span>Debtors and felons were
+huddled together in the prisons which Howard found crowded by the
+legislation of the day. No separation was preserved between different
+sexes, no criminal discipline was enforced. Every gaol was a chaos of
+cruelty and the foulest immorality, from which the prisoner could only
+escape by sheer starvation or through the gaol-fever that festered
+without ceasing in these haunts of misery. Howard saw everything with
+his own eyes, he tested every suffering by his own experience. In one
+prison he found a cell so narrow and noisome that the poor wretch who
+inhabited it begged as a mercy for hanging. Howard shut himself up in
+the cell and bore its darkness and foulness till nature could bear no
+more. It was by work of this sort and by the faithful pictures of such
+scenes which it enabled him to give that he brought about their reform.
+The book in which he recorded his terrible experience and the plans
+which he submitted for the reformation of criminals made him the father,
+so far as England is concerned, of prison discipline. But his labours
+were far from being confined to England. In journey after journey he
+visited the gaols of Holland and Germany, till his longing to discover
+some means of checking the fatal progress of the Plague led him to
+examine the lazarettos of Europe and the East. He was still engaged in
+this work of charity when he was seized by a malignant fever <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-50" id="Page_8-50"></a><a href="./images/50.png">8-050</a>]</span>at Cherson
+in Southern Russia, and "laid quietly in the earth," as he desired.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Trial of Hastings.</span></p>
+
+<p>In Howard's later labours the new sentiment of humanity had carried him
+far beyond the bounds of national sympathy; and forces at once of pity
+and religion told more and more in begetting a consciousness of the
+common brotherhood of man. Even at the close of the American war this
+feeling had become strong enough to colour our political life. It told
+on the attitude of England towards its great dependency of India.
+Discussions over rival plans of Indian administration diffused a sense
+of national responsibility for its good government, and there was a
+general resolve that the security against injustice and misrule which
+was enjoyed by the poorest Englishman should be enjoyed by the poorest
+Hindoo. It was this resolve which expressed itself in 1786 in the trial
+of Warren Hastings. Hastings returned from India at the close of the war
+with the hope of rewards as great as those of Clive. He had saved all
+that Clive had won. He had laid the foundation of a vast empire in the
+East. He had shown rare powers of administration, and the foresight,
+courage, and temperance which mark the born ruler of men. But with him
+came rumours of tyranny and wrong. Even those who admitted the wisdom
+and glory of his rule shrank from its terrible ruthlessness. He was
+charged with having sold for a vast sum the services of British <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-51" id="Page_8-51"></a><a href="./images/51.png">8-051</a>]</span>troops
+to crush the free tribes of the Rohillas, with having wrung
+half-a-million by extortion from the Rajah of Benares, with having
+extorted by torture and starvation more than a million from the
+Princesses of Oudh. He was accused of having kept his hold upon power by
+measures as unscrupulous, and with having murdered a native who opposed
+him by an abuse of the forms of English law. On almost all these charges
+the cooler judgement of later inquirers has acquitted Warren Hastings of
+guilt. Personally there can be little doubt that he had done much to
+secure to the new subjects of Britain a just and peaceable government.
+What was hardest and most pitiless in his rule had been simply a
+carrying out of the system of administration which was native to India
+and which he found existing there. But such a system was alien from the
+new humanity of Englishmen; and few dared to vindicate Hastings when
+Burke in words of passionate earnestness moved for his impeachment.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Slave-Trade.</span></p>
+
+<p>The great trial lingered on for years; and in the long run Hastings
+secured an acquittal. But the end at which the impeachment aimed had
+really been won. The attention, the sympathy of Englishmen had been
+drawn across distant seas to a race utterly strange to them; and the
+peasant of Cornwall or Cumberland had learned how to thrill at the
+suffering of a peasant of Bengal. And even while the trial was going on
+a yet wider <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-52" id="Page_8-52"></a><a href="./images/52.png">8-052</a>]</span>extension of English sympathy made itself felt. The
+hero-seamen of Elizabeth had not blushed to make gain out of kidnapping
+negroes and selling them into slavery. One of the profits which England
+bought by the triumphs of Marlborough was a right to a monopoly of the
+slave-trade between Africa and the Spanish dominions; and it was England
+that had planted slavery in her American colonies and her West Indian
+islands. Half the wealth of Liverpool, in fact, was drawn from the
+traffic of its merchants in human flesh. The horrors and iniquity of the
+trade, the ruin and degradation of Africa which it brought about, the
+oppression of the negro himself, had till now moved no pity among
+Englishmen. But as the spirit of humanity told on the people this apathy
+suddenly disappeared. Philanthropy allied itself with the new religious
+movement in an attack on the slave-trade. At the close of the American
+war its evils began to be felt so widely and deeply that the question
+forced itself into politics. "After a conversation in the open air at
+the root of an old tree, just above the steep descent into the Vale of
+Keston," with the younger Pitt, his friend, William Wilberforce, whose
+position as a representative of the evangelical party gave weight to his
+advocacy of such a cause, resolved to bring in a bill for the abolition
+of the slave-trade. The bill which he brought forward in 1788 fell
+before the opposition of the Liverpool <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-53" id="Page_8-53"></a><a href="./images/53.png">8-053</a>]</span>slave merchants and the general
+indifference of the House of Commons. But the movement gathered fresh
+strength in the country with every year; in spite of the absorption of
+England in the struggle with the French Revolution, it succeeded at last
+in forcing on Parliament the abolition of the traffic in slaves; and
+this abolition was followed a few years later by the abolition of
+slavery itself.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">English manufactures.</span></p>
+
+<p>Time was to show how wide were the issues to which this religious
+developement and the sentiment of humanity which it generated were to
+tend. But at the moment they told less directly and immediately on the
+political and social life of England than an industrial revolution which
+accompanied them. Though England already stood in the first rank of
+commercial states at the accession of George the Third, her industrial
+life at home was mainly agricultural. The growth of her manufactures was
+steady, but it continued to be slow; they gave employment as yet to but
+a small part of the population, and added in no great degree to the
+national wealth. The wool-trade remained the largest, as it was the
+oldest of them; it had gradually established itself in Norfolk, the West
+Riding of Yorkshire, and the counties of the south-west; while the
+manufacture of cotton was still almost limited to Manchester and Bolton,
+and though winning on its rival remained so unimportant that in the
+middle of the eighteenth <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-54" id="Page_8-54"></a><a href="./images/54.png">8-054</a>]</span>century the export of cotton goods hardly
+reached the value of fifty thousand a year. There was the same slow and
+steady progress in the linen trade of Belfast and Dundee, and the silks
+of Spitalfields. But as yet textile manufactures contributed little to
+the national resources; nor did these resources owe much to the working
+of our minerals. The coal trade was small, and limited by the cost of
+carriage as well as by ignorance of any mode of employing coal in
+iron-smelting. On the other hand the scarcity of wood, which was used
+for that purpose, limited the production of iron. In 1750 only eighteen
+thousand tons were produced in England; and four-fifths of its iron
+goods were imported from Sweden. Nor did there seem any likelihood of a
+rapid change. Skilled labour was scarce; and the processes of
+manufacture were too rude to allow any large increase of production. It
+was only where a stream gave force to turn a mill-wheel that the
+wool-worker could establish his factory; and cotton was as yet spun by
+hand in the cottages, the "spinsters" of the family sitting with their
+distaffs round the weaver's hand-loom.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Canals.</span></p>
+
+<p>But even had the processes of production become more efficient, they
+would have been rendered useless by the inefficiency of the means of
+distribution. The older main roads, which had lasted fairly through the
+Middle Ages, had broken down in later times before the growth of traffic
+and the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-55" id="Page_8-55"></a><a href="./images/55.png">8-055</a>]</span>increase of wagons and carriages. The new lines of trade lay
+often along mere country lanes which had never been more than
+horse-tracks, and to drive heavy wains through lanes like these was all
+but impossible. Much of the woollen trade therefore had to be carried on
+by means of long trains of pack-horses; and in most cases the cost of
+carriage added heavily to the price of production. In the case of yet
+heavier goods, such as coal, distribution was almost impracticable, save
+along the greater rivers or in districts accessible from the sea. But at
+the moment when England was just plunging into the Seven Years' War the
+enterprise of a duke and a millwright solved this problem of carriage,
+and started the country on a mighty course of industry which was to
+change both its social and its political character. Francis, Duke of
+Bridgewater, was a shy, dreamy man, whom a disappointment in love drove
+to a life of isolation on his estates in the north. He was the possessor
+of collieries at Worsley whose value depended on their finding a market
+at the neighbouring town of Manchester; and it was to bring his coal to
+this market that he resolved to drive a canal from the mine to the river
+Irwell. With singular good luck he found the means of carrying out his
+design in a self-taught mechanic, James Brindley. But in Brindley's mind
+the scheme widened far beyond the plans of the duke. Canals, as he
+conceived them, were no longer to serve as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-56" id="Page_8-56"></a><a href="./images/56.png">8-056</a>]</span>mere adjuncts to rivers; on
+the contrary, "rivers were only meant," he said, "to feed canals"; and
+instead of ending in the Irwell, he carried the duke's canal by an
+aqueduct across that river to Manchester itself. What Brindley had
+discovered was in fact the water-road, a means of carrying heavy goods
+with the least resistance, and therefore the least cost, from the point
+of production to the point of sale; and England at once seized on his
+discovery to free itself from the bondage in which it had been held.
+From the year 1767, when Brindley completed his enterprise, a network of
+such water-roads was flung over the country; and before the movement had
+spent its force Great Britain alone was traversed in every direction by
+three thousand miles of navigable canals.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Mineral developement.</span></p>
+
+<p>To English trade the canal opened up the richest of all markets, the
+market of England itself. Every part of the country was practically
+thrown open to the manufacturer: and the impulse which was given by this
+facility of carriage was at once felt in a vast developement of
+production. But such a developement would have been impossible had not
+the discovery of this new mode of distribution been accompanied by the
+discovery of a new productive force. In the coal which lay beneath her
+soil England possessed a store of force which had hitherto remained
+almost useless. But its effects were now to make themselves felt. The
+first instance of the power of coal was shown in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-57" id="Page_8-57"></a><a href="./images/57.png">8-057</a>]</span>utilizing the stores
+of iron which had lain side by side with it in the northern counties,
+but which had lain there unworked through the scarcity of wood, which
+was looked upon as the only fuel by which it could be smelted. In the
+middle of the eighteenth century a process for smelting iron with coal
+turned out to be effective; and the whole aspect of the iron-trade was
+at once revolutionized. In fifty years the annual production of iron in
+Great Britain rose from under twenty thousand to more than one hundred
+and seventy thousand tons. During the fifty years that followed it rose
+to six millions of tons. Iron was to become the working material of the
+modern world; and it is its production of iron which more than all else
+has placed England at the head of industrial Europe. But iron was not
+the only metal which coal drew from the soil to swell the national
+wealth. The increase in its production was rivalled by that of lead,
+copper, and tin; and the "mining districts" soon gathered a population
+which raised them into social as well as economical importance.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Steam Engine.</span></p>
+
+<p>But it was not in its direct application to metallurgy that coal was
+destined to produce its most amazing effects. What was needed to turn
+England into a manufacturing country was some means of transforming the
+force stored up in coal into a labour force; and it was this
+transformation which was now brought about through the agency of steam.
+Engines in which steam was used as a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-58" id="Page_8-58"></a><a href="./images/58.png">8-058</a>]</span>means of draining mines had long
+been in use; but the power relied on was mainly that of the weight of
+the air pressing on a piston beneath which a vacuum had been created by
+the condensation of steam; and the economical use of such engines was
+checked by the waste of fuel which resulted from the cooling of the
+cylinder at each condensation, and from the expenditure of heat in again
+raising it to its old temperature before a fresh stroke of the piston
+was possible. Both these obstacles were removed by the ingenuity of
+James Watt. Watt was a working engineer at Glasgow, whose mind had for
+some time been bent on the improvement of the steam-engine; but it was
+not till the spring of 1765, amidst the political turmoil which
+characterized the early reign of George the Third, that as he strolled
+on a Sunday afternoon across the Green of Glasgow the means of effecting
+it burst on him. "I had gone," he says, "to take a walk on a fine
+Sabbath afternoon. I had entered the Green by the gate at the foot of
+Charlotte Street, and had passed the old washing-house. I was thinking
+upon the engine at the time, and had got as far as the herd's house,
+when the idea came into my mind that as steam was an elastic body it
+would rush into a vacuum, and if a communication were made between the
+cylinder and an exhausted vessel it would rush into it, and might there
+be condensed without cooling the cylinder. I had not walked <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-59" id="Page_8-59"></a><a href="./images/59.png">8-059</a>]</span>farther
+than the Golf-House when the whole thing was arranged in my mind." The
+employment of a separate condenser, with the entire discarding of any
+other force in its action save that of steam itself, changed the whole
+conditions of the steam-engine. On the eve of the American war, in 1776,
+its use passed beyond the mere draining of mines; and it was rapidly
+adopted as a motive-force for all kinds of manufacturing industry.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Cotton manufactures.</span></p>
+
+<p>The almost unlimited supply of labour-power in the steam-engine came at
+a time when the existing supply of manual labour was proving utterly
+inadequate to cope with the demands of the manufacturer. This was
+especially the case in textile fabrics. In its earlier stages the
+manufacture of cotton had been retarded by the difficulty with which the
+weavers obtained a sufficient supply of cotton yarn from the spinsters;
+and this difficulty became yet greater when the invention of the
+fly-shuttle enabled one weaver to do in a single day what had hitherto
+been the work of two. The difficulty was solved by a Blackburn weaver,
+John Hargreaves, who noticed that his wife's spindle, which had been
+accidentally upset, continued to revolve in an upright position on the
+floor, while the thread was still spinning in her hand. The hint led him
+to connect a number of spindles with a single wheel, and thus to enable
+one spinster to do the work of eight. Hargreaves's invention only
+spurred the wits of a barber's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-60" id="Page_8-60"></a><a href="./images/60.png">8-060</a>]</span>assistant, Richard Arkwright, to yet
+greater improvement in the construction of a machine for spinning by
+rollers revolving at different rates of speed; and this in its turn was
+improved and developed in the "mule" of a Bolton weaver, Samuel
+Crompton. The result of these inventions was to reverse the difficulty
+which hampered the trade, for the supply of yarn became so rapid and
+unlimited as to outrun the power of the hand-loom weaver to consume it;
+but a few years after the close of the American war this difficulty was
+met by the discovery of the power-loom, which replaced the weaver by
+machinery. Ingenious however as these inventions were, they would have
+remained comparatively useless had it not been for the revelation of a
+new and inexhaustible labour-force in the steam-engine. It was the
+combination of such a force with such means of applying it that enabled
+Britain during the terrible years of her struggle with France and
+Napoleon to all but monopolise the woollen and cotton trades, and raised
+her into the greatest manufacturing country that the world had seen.</p>
+
+<p>How mighty a force this industrial revolution was to exert on English
+politics and English society time was to show. By the transfer of wealth
+and population from southern to northern England, and from the country
+to the town, it was in the next fifty years to set on foot a revolution
+in both, the results of which have still to be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-61" id="Page_8-61"></a><a href="./images/61.png">8-061</a>]</span>disclosed. Of such a
+revolution no English statesman as yet had a glimpse; but already the
+growth of industrial energy and industrial wealth was telling on the
+conditions of English statesmanship. The manufacturer and the merchant
+were coming fast to the front; and their temper was more menacing to the
+monopoly of political power by the Whigs and the landed aristocracy whom
+the Whigs represented than the temper of the king himself. Already
+public opinion was finding in them a new concentration and weight; and
+it was certain that as the representatives of public opinion they would
+at last demand a share in the work of government. Such a demand might
+have been delayed for a while had they been content with the way in
+which England was governed. But they were far from being content with
+it. To no class indeed could the selfishness, the corruption, the
+factiousness, and the administrative inefficiency of the ruling order be
+more utterly odious. Their tone was moral, and they were influenced more
+and more by the religious and philanthropic movement about them. As men
+of business, they revolted against the waste and mismanagement which
+seemed to have become normal in every department of government. Their
+patriotism, their pride in England's greatness, alienated them from men
+who looked upon political eminence as a means of personal gain. Above
+all their personal energy, their consciousness of wealth and power, and
+to some <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-62" id="Page_8-62"></a><a href="./images/62.png">8-062</a>]</span>extent the natural jealousy of the trader against the country
+gentleman, urged them to press for an overthrow of the existing
+monopoly, and for a fairer distribution of political influence. But such
+a pressure could only bring them into conflict with the Whigs whom the
+fall of Lord North had recalled to office. Though the Tories had now
+grown to a compact body of a hundred and fifty members, the Whigs still
+remained superior to their rivals in numbers and ability as well as in
+distinctness of political aim; for the return of the Bedford section to
+the general body of the party, as well as its steady opposition to the
+American war, had restored much of their early cohesion. But this
+reunion only strengthened their aristocratic and exclusive tendencies,
+and widened the breach which was steadily opening on questions such as
+Parliamentary Reform between the bulk of the Whigs and the small
+fragment of their party which remained true to the more popular
+sympathies of Chatham.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">William Pitt.</span></p>
+
+<p>Lord Shelburne stood at the head of the Chatham party, and it was
+reinforced at this moment by the entry into Parliament of the second and
+youngest son of Chatham himself. William Pitt had hardly reached his
+twenty-second year; but he left college with the learning of a ripe
+scholar, and his ready and sonorous eloquence had been matured by his
+father's teaching. "He will be one of the first men in Parliament," said
+a member to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-63" id="Page_8-63"></a><a href="./images/63.png">8-063</a>]</span>Charles Fox, the Whig leader in the Commons, after Pitt's
+earliest speech in that house. "He is so already," replied Fox. Young as
+he was, the haughty self-esteem of the new statesman breathed in every
+movement of his tall, spare figure, in the hard lines of a countenance
+which none but his closer friends saw lighted by a smile, in his cold
+and repulsive address, his invariable gravity of demeanour, and his
+habitual air of command. But none knew how great the qualities were
+which lay beneath this haughty exterior; nor had any one guessed how
+soon this "boy," as his rivals mockingly styled him, was to crush every
+opponent and to hold England at his will. There was only a smile of
+wonder when he refused any of the minor posts which were offered him in
+the Rockingham administration, and the wonder passed into angry sarcasms
+as soon as it was known that he claimed, if he took office at all, to be
+at once admitted to the Cabinet. But Pitt had no desire to take office
+under Rockingham. He was the inheritor of that side of his father's
+policy which was most distasteful to the Whigs. To him as to Chatham the
+main lesson of the war was the need of putting an end to those abuses in
+the composition of Parliament by which George the Third had been enabled
+to plunge the country into it. A thorough reform of the House of Commons
+was the only effectual means of doing this, and Pitt brought forward a
+bill founded on his father's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-64" id="Page_8-64"></a><a href="./images/64.png">8-064</a>]</span>plans for that purpose. But though a more
+liberal section of the Whigs, with Charles Fox at their head, were
+wavering round to a wish for reform, the great bulk of the party could
+not nerve themselves to the sacrifice of property and influence which
+such a reform would involve. Rockingham remained hostile to reform, and
+Burke, whose influence still told much upon Rockingham, was yet more
+hostile than his chief. Pitt's bill therefore was thrown out. In its
+stead the Ministry endeavoured to weaken the means of corrupt influence
+which the king had unscrupulously used by disqualifying persons holding
+government contracts from sitting in Parliament, by depriving revenue
+officers of the elective franchise (a measure which diminished the
+weight of the Crown in seventy boroughs), and above all by a bill for
+the reduction of the civil establishment, of the pension list, and of
+the secret service fund, which was brought in by Burke. These measures
+were to a great extent effectual in diminishing the influence of the
+Crown over Parliament, and they are memorable as marking the date when
+the direct bribery of members absolutely ceased. But they were utterly
+inoperative in rendering the House of Commons really representative of
+or responsible to the people of England.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Coalition.</span></p>
+
+<p>The jealousy which the mass of the Whigs entertained of the followers of
+Chatham and their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-65" id="Page_8-65"></a><a href="./images/65.png">8-065</a>]</span>plans was more plainly shown however on the death of
+Lord Rockingham in July. Shelburne, who had hitherto served as Secretary
+of State, was called by the king to the head of the Ministry, a post to
+which his eminent talents and the ability which he was showing in the
+negotiations for the Peace clearly gave him a title. But Shelburne had
+been hampered in these negotiations by the jealousy of Charles Fox, who
+as joint Secretary of State with him claimed in spite of usage a share
+in conducting them, and who persisted without a show of reason in
+believing himself to have been unfairly treated. It was on personal
+grounds therefore that Fox refused to serve under Shelburne; but the
+refusal of Burke and the bulk of Rockingham's followers was based on
+more than personal grounds. It sprang from a rooted distrust of the more
+popular tendencies of which Shelburne was justly regarded as the
+representative. To Pitt, on the other hand, these tendencies were the
+chief ground of confidence in the new Ministry; and, young as he was, he
+at once entered office as Chancellor of the Exchequer. But his tenure of
+this post was a brief one. The Shelburne Ministry in fact only lasted
+long enough to conclude the final peace with the United States on the
+base of their independence; for in the opening of 1783 it was overthrown
+by the most unscrupulous coalition known in our history, a union of the
+Whig followers of Fox with the Tories who <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-66" id="Page_8-66"></a><a href="./images/66.png">8-066</a>]</span>still clung to Lord North. In
+Parliament such a coalition was irresistible, and the resignation of
+Shelburne at once made way for an administration in which both the
+triumphant parties were represented. But the effect on England at large
+was very different. Whatever new credit the Whigs had gained with the
+country during their long exclusion from office had been due to their
+steady denunciation of the policy and temper of Lord North's
+administration. That they should take office hand in hand with men whom
+they had for years denounced as the worst of Ministers shocked even
+their most loyal adherents; and the shock was the greater that a new
+seriousness in politics, a longing for a deeper and more earnest
+treatment of political questions, was making mere faction intolerable to
+Englishmen. But behind all this was the sense that something more than
+mere faction had really brought the two parties together. It was their
+common dread of the popular tendencies which Shelburne's Ministry
+represented, their common hatred of parliamentary reform, which hushed
+for the moment the bitter hostility between the followers of Rockingham
+and the followers of North. Yet never had the need of representative
+reform been more clearly shown than by a coalition which proved how
+powerless was the force of public opinion to check even the most
+shameless faction in Parliament, how completely the lessening of royal
+influence <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-67" id="Page_8-67"></a><a href="./images/67.png">8-067</a>]</span>by the measures of Burke and Rockingham had tended to the
+profit not of the people but of the borough-mongers who usurped its
+representation. The turn of public opinion was quick in disclosing
+itself. Fox was the most popular of the Whigs, but he was hooted from
+the platform when he addressed his constituents at Westminster. Pitt, on
+the other hand, whose attacks on the new union rose to a lofty and
+indignant eloquence, was lifted by it into an almost solitary greatness.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Fall of the Coalition.</span></p>
+
+<p>But in Parliament Pitt was as powerless as he was influential in the
+country. His renewed proposal of Parliamentary Reform, though he set
+aside the disfranchisement of rotten boroughs as a violation of private
+property, and limited himself to the disfranchisement of boroughs
+convicted of corruption, and to the addition of one hundred members to
+the county representation, was rejected by a majority of two to one.
+Secure in their parliamentary majority, and heedless of the power of
+public opinion outside the walls of the House of Commons, the new
+Ministers entered boldly on a greater task than had as yet taxed the
+constructive genius of English statesmen. To leave such a dominion as
+Warren Hastings had built up in India to the control of a mere Company
+of traders was clearly impossible; and Fox proposed to transfer its
+political government from the Directors of the Company to a board of
+seven Commissioners. The appointment of the seven was vested in the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-68" id="Page_8-68"></a><a href="./images/68.png">8-068</a>]</span>first instance in Parliament, and afterwards in the Crown; their office
+was to be held for five years, but they were removable on address from
+either House of Parliament. The proposal was at once met with a storm of
+opposition. The scheme indeed was an injudicious one; for the new
+Commissioners would have been destitute of that practical knowledge of
+India which belonged to the Company, while the want of any immediate
+link between them and the actual Ministry of the Crown would have
+prevented Parliament from exercising an effective control over their
+acts. But the real faults of this India Bill were hardly noticed in the
+popular outcry against it. It had challenged the hostility of powerful
+influences. The merchant-class was galled by the blow levelled at the
+greatest merchant-body in the realm: corporations trembled at the
+cancelling of a charter; the king viewed the measure as a mere means of
+transferring the patronage of India to the Whigs. But it might have
+defied the opposition of corporations and the king had it not had to
+meet the bitter hostility of the nation at large. With the nation the
+faults of the bill lay not in this detail or that, but in the character
+of the Ministry which proposed it. To give the rule and patronage of
+India over to the existing House of Commons was to give a new and
+immense power to a body which misused in the grossest way the power it
+possessed. It was the sense of this popular feeling which encouraged the
+king to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-69" id="Page_8-69"></a><a href="./images/69.png">8-069</a>]</span>exert his personal influence to defeat the measure in the
+Lords, and on its defeat to order his Ministers to deliver up the seals.
+The unpopularity of Shelburne stood in the way of his resumption of
+office, and in December 1783 Pitt accepted the post of First Lord of the
+Treasury. His position would at once have been untenable had the country
+gone with its nominal representatives. He was defeated again and again
+by large majorities in the Commons; but the majorities dwindled as a
+shower of addresses from every quarter, from the Tory University of
+Oxford as from the Whig Corporation of London, proved that public
+opinion went with the Minister and not with the House. It was the
+general sense of this that justified Pitt in the firmness with which, in
+the teeth of addresses for his removal from office, he delayed the
+dissolution of Parliament for five months, and gained time for that
+ripening of the national sentiment on which he counted for success. When
+the election of 1784 came the struggle was at once at an end. The public
+feeling took a strength which broke through the corrupt influences that
+commonly governed its representation. Every great constituency, the
+counties and the large towns, returned supporters of Pitt. Of the
+majority which had defeated him in the Commons, a hundred and sixty
+members were unseated. Fox hardly retained his seat for Westminster,
+Burke lost his seat for Bristol, and only a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-70" id="Page_8-70"></a><a href="./images/70.png">8-070</a>]</span>fragment of the Whig party
+was saved by its command of nomination boroughs.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Pitt's temper.</span></p>
+
+<p>When Parliament came together after the overthrow of the Coalition, the
+Minister of twenty-five was master of England as no Minister had been
+before. Even George the Third yielded to his sway, partly through
+gratitude for the triumph he had won for him, partly from a sense of the
+madness which was soon to strike him down, but still more from a gradual
+discovery that the triumph which he had won over his political rivals
+had been won, not to the profit of the crown, but of the nation at
+large. The Whigs, it was true, were broken, unpopular, and without a
+policy; while the Tories, whom the Coalition had disgusted with Lord
+North, as it had estranged Fox from their opponents, clung to the
+Minister who had "saved the king." But it was the support of a new
+political power that really gave his strength to the young Minister. The
+sudden rise of English industry was pushing the manufacturer to the
+front; and the manufacturer pinned his faith from the first in William
+Pitt. All that the trading classes loved in Chatham, his nobleness of
+temper, his consciousness of power, his patriotism, his sympathy with a
+wider world than the world within the Parliament-house, they saw in his
+son. He had little indeed of the poetic and imaginative side of
+Chatham's genius, of his quick perception of what was just and what was
+possible, his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-71" id="Page_8-71"></a><a href="./images/71.png">8-071</a>]</span>far-reaching conceptions of national policy, his outlook
+into the future of the world. Pitt's flowing and sonorous commonplaces
+rang hollow beside the broken phrases which still make his father's
+eloquence a living thing to Englishmen. On the other hand he possessed
+some qualities in which Chatham was utterly wanting. His temper, though
+naturally ardent and sensitive, had been schooled in a proud
+self-command. His simplicity and good taste freed him from his father's
+ostentation and extravagance. Diffuse and commonplace as his speeches
+seem to the reader, they were adapted as much by their very qualities of
+diffuseness and commonplace as by their lucidity and good sense to the
+intelligence of the classes whom Pitt felt to be his real audience. In
+his love of peace, his immense industry, his despatch of business, his
+skill in debate, his knowledge of finance, he recalled Sir Robert
+Walpole; but he had virtues which Walpole never possessed, and he was
+free from Walpole's worst defects. He was careless of personal gain. He
+was too proud to rule by corruption. His lofty self-esteem left no room
+for any jealousy of subordinates. He was generous in his appreciation of
+youthful merits; and the "boys" he gathered round him, such as Canning
+and Lord Wellesley, rewarded his generosity by a devotion which death
+left untouched. With Walpole's cynical inaction Pitt had no sympathy
+whatever. His policy from the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-72" id="Page_8-72"></a><a href="./images/72.png">8-072</a>]</span>first was a policy of active reform, and
+he faced every one of the problems, financial, constitutional,
+religious, from which Walpole had shrunk. Above all, he had none of
+Walpole's scorn of his fellowmen. The noblest feature in his mind was
+its wide humanity. His love for England was as deep and personal as his
+father's love, but of the sympathy with English passion and English
+prejudice which had been at once his father's weakness and strength he
+had not a trace. When Fox taunted him with forgetting Chatham's jealousy
+of France and his faith that she was the natural foe of England, Pitt
+answered nobly that "to suppose any nation can be unalterably the enemy
+of another is weak and childish."</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">His statesmanship.</span></p>
+
+<p>The temper of the time, and the larger sympathy of man with man which
+especially marks the eighteenth century as a turning-point in the
+history of the human race, was everywhere bringing to the front a new
+order of statesmen, such as Turgot and Joseph the Second, whose
+characteristics were a love of mankind, and a belief that as the
+happiness of the individual can only be secured by the general happiness
+of the community to which he belongs, so the welfare of individual
+nations can only be secured by the general welfare of the world. Of
+these Pitt was one. But he rose high above the rest in the consummate
+knowledge and the practical force which he brought to the realization of
+his aims. His strength lay in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-73" id="Page_8-73"></a><a href="./images/73.png">8-073</a>]</span>finance; and he came forward at a time
+when the growth of English wealth made a knowledge of finance essential
+to a great Minister. The progress of the nation was wonderful.
+Population more than doubled during the eighteenth century, and the
+advance of wealth was even greater than that of population. Though the
+war had added a hundred millions to the national debt, the burden was
+hardly felt. The loss of America only increased the commerce with that
+country, and industry, as we have seen, had begun that great career
+which was to make England the workshop of the world. To deal wisely with
+such a growth required a knowledge of the laws of wealth which would
+have been impossible at an earlier time. But it had become possible in
+the days of Pitt. If books are to be measured by the effect which they
+have produced on the fortunes of mankind, the "Wealth of Nations" must
+rank among the greatest of books. Its author was Adam Smith, an Oxford
+scholar and a professor at Glasgow. Labour, he contended, was the one
+source of wealth, and it was by freedom of labour, by suffering the
+worker to pursue his own interest in his own way, that the public wealth
+would best be promoted. Any attempt to force labour into artificial
+channels, to shape by laws the course of commerce, to promote special
+branches of industry in particular countries, or to fix the character of
+the intercourse between one country and another, is not only a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-74" id="Page_8-74"></a><a href="./images/74.png">8-074</a>]</span>wrong to
+the worker or the merchant, but actually hurtful to the wealth of a
+state. The book was published in 1776, at the opening of the American
+war, and studied by Pitt during his career as an undergraduate at
+Cambridge. From that time he owned Adam Smith for his master; and he had
+hardly become Minister before he took the principles of the "Wealth of
+Nations" as the groundwork of his policy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Pitt and Parliamentary reform.</span></p>
+
+<p>It was thus that the ten earlier years of Pitt's rule marked a new point
+of departure in English statesmanship. He was the first English Minister
+who really grasped the part which industry was to play in promoting the
+welfare of the world. He was not only a peace Minister and a financier,
+as Walpole had been, but a statesman who saw that the best security for
+peace lay in the freedom and widening of commercial intercourse between
+nations; that public economy not only lessened the general burdens but
+left additional capital in the hands of industry; and that finance might
+be turned from a mere means of raising revenue into a powerful engine of
+political and social improvement. That little was done by Pitt himself
+to carry these principles into effect was partly owing to the mass of
+ignorance and prejudice with which he had to contend, and still more to
+the sudden break of his plans through the French Revolution. His power
+rested above all on the trading classes, and these were still persuaded
+that wealth meant <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-75" id="Page_8-75"></a><a href="./images/75.png">8-075</a>]</span>gold and silver, and that commerce was best furthered
+by jealous monopolies. It was only by patience and dexterity that the
+mob of merchants and country squires who backed him in the House of
+Commons could be brought to acquiesce in the changes he proposed. How
+small his power was when it struggled with the prejudices around him was
+seen in the failure of the first great measure he brought forward. The
+question of parliamentary reform which had been mooted during the
+American war had been coming steadily to the front. Chatham had
+advocated an increase of county members, who were then the most
+independent part of the Lower House. The Duke of Richmond talked of
+universal suffrage, equal electoral districts, and annual Parliaments.
+Wilkes anticipated the Reform Bill of a later time by proposing to
+disfranchise the rotten boroughs, and to give members in their stead to
+the counties and to the more populous and wealthy towns. William Pitt
+had made the question his own by bringing forward a motion for reform on
+his first entry into the House, and one of his earliest measures as
+Minister was to bring in a bill in 1785 which, while providing for the
+gradual extinction of all decayed boroughs, disfranchised thirty-six at
+once, and transferred their members to counties. He brought the king to
+abstain from opposition, and strove to buy off the borough-mongers, as
+the holders of rotten boroughs were called, by offering <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-76" id="Page_8-76"></a><a href="./images/76.png">8-076</a>]</span>to compensate
+them for the seats they lost at their market-value. But the bulk of his
+own party joined the bulk of the Whigs in a steady resistance to the
+bill, while it received no effective support from the general opinion of
+the people without. The more glaring abuses, indeed, within Parliament
+itself, the abuses which stirred Chatham and Wilkes to action, had in
+great part disappeared. The bribery of members had ceased. Burke's Bill
+of Economical Reform had just dealt a fatal blow at the influence which
+the king exercised by suppressing a host of useless offices, household
+appointments, judicial and diplomatic charges, which were maintained for
+the purpose of corruption. But what was probably the most fatal obstacle
+to any pressure for reform was the triumph of public opinion to which
+Pitt owed his power. The utter overthrow of the Coalition, the complete
+victory of public opinion, had done much to diminish the sense of any
+real danger from the opposition which Parliament had shown till now to
+the voice of the nation. England, then as now, was indifferent to all
+but practical grievances; and the nation cared little for anomalies in
+the form of representation so long as it felt itself represented.
+"Terribly disappointed and beat," as Wilberforce tells us Pitt was by
+the rejection of his measure, the temper of the House and of the people
+was too plain to be mistaken, and though his opinion remained unaltered,
+he never brought it forward again.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-77" id="Page_8-77"></a><a href="./images/77.png">8-077</a>]</span></p><p><span class="sidenote">Pitt's finance.</span></p>
+
+<p>The failure of his constitutional reform was more than compensated by
+the triumphs of his finance. When he entered office public credit was at
+its lowest ebb. The debt had been doubled by the American war, yet large
+sums still remained unfunded, while the revenue was reduced by a vast
+system of smuggling which turned every coast-town into a nest of
+robbers. The deficiency in the revenue was met for the moment by new
+taxes, but the time which was thus gained served to change the whole
+face of public affairs. The first of Pitt's financial measures&mdash;his plan
+for gradually paying off the debt by a sinking fund&mdash;was undoubtedly an
+error; but it had a happy effect in restoring public confidence. He met
+the smuggler by a reduction of Custom-duties which made his trade
+unprofitable. He revived Walpole's plan of an Excise. Meanwhile the
+public expenses were reduced, and commission after commission was
+appointed to introduce economy into every department of the public
+service. The rapid developement of the national industry which we have
+already noted no doubt aided the success of these measures. Credit was
+restored. The smuggling trade was greatly reduced. In two years there
+was a surplus of a million, and though duty after duty was removed the
+revenue rose steadily with every remission of taxation. Meanwhile Pitt
+was showing the political value of the new finance in a wider field.
+Ireland, then as now, was England's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-78" id="Page_8-78"></a><a href="./images/78.png">8-078</a>]</span>difficulty. The tyrannous
+misgovernment under which she had groaned ever since the battle of the
+Boyne was producing its natural fruit; the miserable land was torn with
+political faction, religious feuds, and peasant conspiracies; and so
+threatening had the attitude of the Protestant party which ruled it
+become during the American war that they had forced the English
+Parliament to relinquish its control over their Parliament in Dublin.
+Pitt saw that much at least of the misery and disloyalty of Ireland
+sprang from its poverty. The population had grown rapidly, while culture
+remained stationary and commerce perished. And of this poverty much was
+the direct result of unjust law. Ireland was a grazing country, but to
+protect the interest of English graziers the import of its cattle into
+England was forbidden. To protect the interests of English clothiers and
+weavers, its manufactures were loaded with duties. To redress this wrong
+was the first financial effort of Pitt, and the bill which he introduced
+in 1785 did away with every obstacle to freedom of trade between England
+and Ireland. It was a measure which, as he held, would "draw what
+remained of the shattered empire together," and repair in part the loss
+of America by creating a loyal and prosperous Ireland; and, struggling
+almost alone in face of a fierce opposition from the Whigs and the
+Manchester merchants, he dragged it through the English Parliament,
+though only to see it flung <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-79" id="Page_8-79"></a><a href="./images/79.png">8-079</a>]</span>aside by the Protestant faction under
+Grattan which then ruled the Parliament of Ireland. But the defeat only
+spurred him to a greater effort elsewhere. If Ireland was England's
+difficulty, France had been looked upon as England's natural enemy. We
+have seen how nobly Pitt rebuked prejudices such as this; but he knew
+that nothing could so effectively dispel it as increased intercourse
+between nation and nation. In 1787 therefore he concluded a Treaty of
+Commerce with France which enabled subjects of both countries to reside
+and travel in either without licence or passport, did away with all
+prohibition of trade on either side, and reduced every import duty.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">England and Europe.</span></p>
+
+<p>The immediate result of this treaty was a great increase of trade
+between France and England; and brief as its course was fated to be, it
+at once set Pitt on a higher level than any rival statesman of his time.
+But the spirit of humanity which breathed through his policy had to
+wrestle with difficulties both at home and abroad. No measure secured a
+warmer support from the young Minister than the bill for the suppression
+of the slave-trade; but in 1788 it was defeated by the vigorous
+opposition of the trading classes and the prejudice of the people at
+large. His efforts to sap the enmity of nation against nation by a freer
+intercourse encountered a foe even more fatal than English prejudice, in
+the very movement of which his measures formed a part. Across the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-80" id="Page_8-80"></a><a href="./images/80.png">8-080</a>]</span>Channel this movement was growing into a revolution which was to change
+the face of the world. That such a revolution must one day come, every
+observer who had compared the state of Europe with that of England had
+long seen to be inevitable. So far as England was concerned, the Puritan
+resistance of the seventeenth century had in the end succeeded in
+checking the general tendency of the time to religious and political
+despotism. Since the Revolution of 1688 freedom of conscience and the
+people's right to govern itself through its representatives in
+Parliament had been practically established. Social equality had begun
+long before. Every man from the highest to the lowest was subject to,
+and protected by, the same law. The English aristocracy, though
+exercising a powerful influence on government, were possessed of few
+social privileges, and hindered from forming a separate class in the
+nation by the legal and social tradition which counted all save the
+eldest son of a noble house as commoners. No impassable line parted the
+gentry from the commercial classes, and these again possessed no
+privileges which could part them from the lower classes of the
+community. Public opinion, the general sense of educated Englishmen, had
+established itself after a short struggle as the dominant element in
+English government. But in all the other great states of Europe the wars
+of religion had left only the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-81" id="Page_8-81"></a><a href="./images/81.png">8-081</a>]</span>name of freedom. Government tended to a
+pure despotism. Privilege was supreme in religion, in politics, in
+society. Society itself rested on a rigid division of classes from one
+another, which refused to the people at large any equal rights of
+justice or of industry.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">France.</span></p>
+
+<p>We have already seen how alien such a conception of national life was
+from the ideas which the wide diffusion of intelligence during the
+eighteenth century was spreading throughout Europe; and in almost every
+country some enlightened rulers were striving by administrative reforms
+to satisfy in some sort the sense of wrong which was felt around them.
+The attempts of sovereigns like Frederick the Great in Prussia and
+Joseph the Second in Austria and the Netherlands were rivalled by the
+efforts of statesmen such as Turgot in France. It was in France indeed
+that the contrast between the actual state of society and the new ideas
+of public right was felt most keenly. Nowhere had the victory of the
+Crown been more complete. The aristocracy had been robbed of all share
+in public affairs; it enjoyed social privileges and exemption from any
+contribution to the public burdens without that sense of public duty
+which a governing class to some degree always possesses. Guilds and
+monopolies fettered the industry of the trader and the merchant, and cut
+them off from the working classes, as the value attached to noble blood
+cut <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-82" id="Page_8-82"></a><a href="./images/82.png">8-082</a>]</span>off both from the aristocracy. If its political position indeed
+were compared with that of most of the countries round it, France stood
+high. Its government was less oppressive, its general wealth was larger
+and more evenly diffused, there was a better administration of justice,
+and greater security for public order. Poor as its peasantry seemed to
+English eyes, they were far above the peasants of Germany or Spain. Its
+middle class was the quickest and most intelligent in Europe. Under
+Lewis the Fifteenth opinion was practically free, and a literary class
+had sprung up which devoted itself with wonderful brilliancy and
+activity to popularizing the ideas of social and political justice which
+it learned from English writers, and in the case of Montesquieu and
+Voltaire from personal contact with English life. The moral conceptions
+of the time, its love of mankind, its sense of human brotherhood, its
+hatred of oppression, its pity for the guilty and the poor, its longing
+after a higher and nobler standard of life and action, were expressed by
+a crowd of writers, and above all by Rousseau, with a fire and eloquence
+which carried them to the heart of the people. But this new force of
+intelligence only jostled roughly with the social forms with which it
+found itself in contact. The philosopher denounced the tyranny of the
+priesthood. The peasant grumbled at the lord's right to judge him in his
+courts and to exact feudal <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-83" id="Page_8-83"></a><a href="./images/83.png">8-083</a>]</span>services from him. The merchant was galled
+by the trading restrictions and the heavy taxation. The country gentry
+rebelled against their exclusion from public life and from the
+government of the country. Its powerlessness to bring about any change
+at home turned all this new energy into sympathy with a struggle against
+tyranny abroad. Public opinion forced France to ally itself with America
+in its contest for liberty, and French volunteers under the Marquis de
+Lafayette joined Washington's army. But while the American war spread
+more widely throughout the nation the craving for freedom, it brought on
+the Government financial embarrassments from which it could only free
+itself by an appeal to the country at large. Lewis the Sixteenth
+resolved to summon the States-General, which had not met since the time
+of Richelieu, and to appeal to the nobles to waive their immunity from
+taxation. His resolve at once stirred into vigorous life every impulse
+and desire which had been seething in the minds of the people; and the
+States-General no sooner met at Versailles in May 1789 than the fabric
+of despotism and privilege began to crumble. A rising in Paris destroyed
+the Bastille, and the capture of this fortress was taken for the dawn of
+a new era of constitutional freedom in France and through Europe. Even
+in England men thrilled with a strange joy at the tidings of its fall.
+"How much is this the greatest event that ever <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-84" id="Page_8-84"></a><a href="./images/84.png">8-084</a>]</span>happened in the world,"
+Fox cried with a burst of enthusiasm, "and how much the best!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Pitt and Russia.</span></p>
+
+<p>Pitt regarded the approach of France to sentiments of liberty which had
+long been familiar to England with greater coolness, but with no
+distrust. For the moment indeed his attention was distracted by an
+attack of madness which visited George the Third in 1788, and by the
+claim of a right to the Regency which was at once advanced by the Prince
+of Wales. The Prince belonged to the Whig party; and Fox, who was
+travelling in Italy, hurried home to support his claim in full belief
+that the Prince's Regency would be followed by his own return to power.
+Pitt successfully resisted the claim on the constitutional ground that
+in such a case the right to choose a temporary Regent, under what
+limitations it would, lay with Parliament; and a bill which conferred
+the Regency on the Prince, in accordance with this view, was already
+passing the Houses when the recovery of the king put an end to the long
+dispute. Foreign difficulties, too, absorbed Pitt's attention. Russia
+had risen into greatness under Catharine the Second; and Catharine had
+resolved from the first on the annexation of Poland, the expulsion of
+the Turks from Europe, and the setting up of a Russian throne at
+Constantinople. In her first aim she was baffled for the moment by
+Frederick the Great. She had already made herself virtually mistress of
+the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-85" id="Page_8-85"></a><a href="./images/85.png">8-085</a>]</span>whole of Poland, her armies occupied the kingdom, and she had
+seated a nominee of her own on its throne, when Frederick in union with
+the Emperor Joseph the Second forced her to admit Germany to a share of
+the spoil. If the Polish partition of 1773 brought the Russian frontier
+westward to the upper waters of the Dwina and the Dnieper, it gave
+Galicia to Maria Theresa, and West Prussia to Frederick himself. Foiled
+in her first aim, she waited for the realization of her second till the
+alliance between the two German powers was at an end through the
+resistance of Prussia to Joseph's schemes for the annexation of Bavaria,
+and till the death of Frederick removed her most watchful foe. Then in
+1788 Joseph and the Empress joined hands for a partition of the Turkish
+Empire. But Prussia was still watchful, and England was no longer
+fettered as in 1773 by troubles with America. The friendship established
+by Chatham between the two countries, which had been suspended by Bute's
+treachery and all but destroyed during the Northern League of Neutral
+Powers, had been restored by Pitt through his co-operation with the
+successor of Frederick the Great in the restoration of the Dutch
+Stadtholderate. Its political weight was now seen in an alliance of
+England, Prussia, and Holland, in 1789, for the preservation of the
+Turkish Empire. A great European struggle seemed at hand. In such a
+struggle the sympathy and aid <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-86" id="Page_8-86"></a><a href="./images/86.png">8-086</a>]</span>of France were of the highest importance;
+and it was only as weakening her in face of such a crisis that Pitt
+looked on the Revolution with any fear. But with the treaty the danger
+passed away. In the spring of 1790 Joseph died broken-hearted at the
+failure of his plans and the revolt of the Netherlands against his
+innovations; Austria practically withdrew from the war with the Turks;
+and the young Minister could give free expression to the sympathy with
+which the French movement inspired him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The French Revolution.</span></p>
+
+<p>In France indeed things were moving fast. By breaking down the division
+between its separate orders the States-General became a National
+Assembly, which abolished the privileges of the provincial parliaments,
+of the nobles, and the Church. In October 1789 the mob of Paris marched
+on Versailles and forced both King and Assembly to return with them to
+the capital; and a Constitution hastily put together was accepted by
+Lewis the Sixteenth in the stead of his old despotic power. To Pitt the
+tumult and disorder with which these great changes were wrought seemed
+transient matters. In January 1790 he still believed that "the present
+convulsions in France must sooner or later culminate in general harmony
+and regular order," and that when her own freedom was established,
+"France would stand forth as one of the most brilliant powers of
+Europe." But the coolness and goodwill with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-87" id="Page_8-87"></a><a href="./images/87.png">8-087</a>]</span>which Pitt looked on the
+Revolution were far from being universal in the nation at large. The
+cautious good sense of the bulk of Englishmen, their love of order and
+law, their distaste for violent changes and for abstract theories, as
+well as their reverence for the past, were rousing throughout the
+country a dislike of the revolutionary changes which were hurrying on
+across the Channel; and both the political sense and the political
+prejudice of the nation were being fired by the warnings of Edmund
+Burke. The fall of the Bastille, though it kindled enthusiasm in Fox,
+roused in Burke only distrust. "Whenever a separation is made between
+liberty and justice," he wrote a few weeks later, "neither is safe." The
+night of the fourth of August, when the privileges of every class were
+abolished, filled him with horror. He saw, and rightly saw, in it the
+critical moment which revealed the character of the Revolution, and his
+part was taken at once. "The French," he cried in January, while Pitt
+was foretelling a glorious future for the new Constitution, "the French
+have shown themselves the ablest architects of ruin who have hitherto
+existed in the world. In a short space of time they have pulled to the
+ground their army, their navy, their commerce, their arts and their
+manufactures."</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Pitt and France.</span></p>
+
+<p>But in Parliament Burke stood alone. The Whigs, though distrustfully,
+followed Fox in his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-88" id="Page_8-88"></a><a href="./images/88.png">8-088</a>]</span>applause of the Revolution. The Tories, yet more
+distrustfully, followed Pitt; and Pitt warmly expressed his sympathy
+with the constitutional government which was ruling France. At this
+moment indeed the more revolutionary party in that country gave a signal
+proof of its friendship for England. Irritated by an English settlement
+at Nootka Sound in California, Spain appealed to France for aid in
+accordance with the Family Compact; and the French Ministry, with a
+party at its back which believed things had gone far enough, resolved on
+a war as the best means of checking the progress of the Revolution and
+restoring the power of the Crown. The revolutionary party naturally
+opposed this design; and after a bitter struggle the right of declaring
+war, save with the sanction of the Assembly, was taken from the king.
+With this vote all danger of hostilities passed away. "The French
+Government," Pitt asserted, "was bent on cultivating the most unbounded
+friendship for Great Britain," and he saw no reason in its revolutionary
+changes why Britain should not return the friendship of France. What
+told even more on his temper towards that country was a conviction that
+nothing but the joint action of France and England would in the end
+arrest the troubles of Eastern Europe. His intervention foiled for the
+moment a fresh effort of Prussia to rob Poland of Dantzig and Thorn. But
+though Russia was still pressing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-89" id="Page_8-89"></a><a href="./images/89.png">8-089</a>]</span>Turkey hard, a Russian war was so
+unpopular in England that a hostile vote in Parliament forced Pitt to
+discontinue his armaments; and a fresh union of Austria and Prussia,
+which promised at this juncture to bring about a close of the Turkish
+struggle, promised also a fresh attack on the independence of Poland. To
+prevent a new partition without the co-operation of France was
+impossible; and in the existing state of things Pitt saw nothing to
+hinder the continuance of a friendship which would make such a
+co-operation inevitable.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Burke and the Revolution.</span></p>
+
+<p>But while Pitt was pleading for friendship between the two countries,
+Burke was resolved to make friendship impossible. In Parliament, as we
+have seen, he stood alone. He had long ceased, in fact, to have any hold
+over the House of Commons. The eloquence which had vied with that of
+Chatham during the discussions on the Stamp Act had become distasteful
+to the bulk of its members. The length of his speeches, the profound and
+philosophical character of his argument, the splendour and often the
+extravagance of his illustrations, his passionate earnestness, his want
+of temper and discretion, wearied and perplexed the squires and
+merchants about him. He was known nowadays as "the dinner-bell of the
+House," so rapidly did its benches thin at his rising. For a time his
+energies found scope in the impeachment of Hastings; and the grandeur of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-90" id="Page_8-90"></a><a href="./images/90.png">8-090</a>]</span>his appeals to the justice of England hushed detraction. But with the
+close of the impeachment his repute had again fallen; and the approach
+of old age, for he was now past sixty, seemed to counsel retirement from
+an assembly where he stood unpopular and alone. But age and
+disappointment and loneliness were forgotten as Burke saw rising across
+the Channel the embodiment of all that he hated&mdash;a Revolution founded on
+scorn of the past, and threatening with ruin the whole social fabric
+which the past had reared; the ordered structure of classes and ranks
+crumbling before a doctrine of social equality; a State rudely
+demolished and reconstituted; a Church and a Nobility swept away in a
+night. Against the enthusiasm of what he rightly saw to be a new
+political religion he resolved to rouse the enthusiasm of the old. He
+was at once a great orator and a great writer; and now that the House
+was deaf to his voice, he appealed to the country by his pen. The
+"Reflections on the French Revolution" which he published in October
+1790 not only denounced the acts of rashness and violence which sullied
+the great change that France had wrought, but the very principles from
+which the change had sprung. Burke's deep sense of the need of social
+order, of the value of that continuity in human affairs "without which
+men would become like flies in a summer," blinded him to all but the
+faith in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-91" id="Page_8-91"></a><a href="./images/91.png">8-091</a>]</span>mere rebellion and the yet sillier faith in mere novelty which
+disguised a real nobleness of aim and temper even in the most ardent of
+the revolutionists. He would see no abuses in the past, now that it had
+fallen, or anything but the ruin of society in the future. He preached a
+crusade against men whom he regarded as the foes of religion and
+civilization, and called on the armies of Europe to put down a
+Revolution whose principles threatened every state with destruction.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">His failure in Parliament.</span></p>
+
+<p>The great obstacle to such a crusade was Pitt: and one of the grandest
+outbursts of the "Reflections" closed with a bitter taunt at the
+Minister. "The age of chivalry," Burke cried, "is gone; that of
+sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of
+Europe is extinguished for ever." But neither taunt nor invective moved
+Pitt from his course. At the moment when the "Reflections" appeared he
+gave a fresh assurance to France of his resolve to have nothing to do
+with any crusade against the Revolution. "This country," he wrote,
+"means to persevere in the neutrality hitherto scrupulously observed
+with respect to the internal dissensions of France; and from which it
+will never depart unless the conduct held there makes it indispensable
+as an act of self-defence." So far indeed was he from sharing the
+reactionary panic which was spreading around him that he chose this time
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-92" id="Page_8-92"></a><a href="./images/92.png">8-092</a>]</span>for supporting Fox in his Libel Act, a measure which, by transferring
+the decision on what was libellous in any publication from the judge to
+the jury, completed the freedom of the press; and himself passed in 1791
+a bill which, though little noticed among the storms of the time, was
+one of the noblest of his achievements. He boldly put aside the dread
+which had been roused by the American war, that the gift of
+self-government to our colonies would serve only as a step towards their
+secession from the mother country, and established a House of Assembly
+and a Council in the two Canadas. "I am convinced," said Fox, who gave
+the measure his hearty support, "that the only method of retaining
+distant colonies with advantage is to enable them to govern themselves";
+and the policy of the one statesman as well as the foresight of the
+other has been justified by the later history of our dependencies. Nor
+had Burke better success with his own party. Fox remained an ardent
+lover of the Revolution, and answered a fresh attack of Burke upon it
+with more than usual warmth. Till now a close affection had bound the
+two men together; but no sooner had this defence been uttered than the
+fanaticism of Burke declared their union to be over. "There is no loss
+of friendship," Fox exclaimed, with a sudden burst of tears. "There is!"
+Burke repeated. "I know the price of my conduct. Our friendship is at an
+end."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-93" id="Page_8-93"></a><a href="./images/93.png">8-093</a>]</span></p><p><span class="sidenote">His success with the country.</span></p>
+
+<p>Within the walls of Parliament however Burke as yet stood utterly alone.
+His "Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs," in June 1791, failed to
+detach a follower from Fox; while Pitt coldly counselled him rather to
+praise the English Constitution than to rail at the French. "I have made
+many enemies and few friends," Burke wrote sadly to the French princes
+who had fled from their country and were gathering in arms at Coblentz,
+"by the part I have taken." But the opinion of the people was slowly
+drifting to his side; and a sale of thirty thousand copies showed that
+the "Reflections" echoed the general sentiment of Englishmen. At this
+moment indeed the mood of England was singularly unfavourable to any
+fair appreciation of the Revolution across the Channel. Her temper was
+above all industrial. Men who were working hard and fast growing rich,
+who had the narrow and practical turn of men of business, looked angrily
+at this sudden disturbance of order, this restless and vague activity,
+these rhetorical appeals to human feeling, these abstract and often
+empty theories. In England it was a time of political content and social
+well-being, of steady economic progress, as well as of a powerful
+religious revival; and an insular lack of imaginative interest in other
+races hindered men from seeing that every element of this content, of
+this order, of this peaceful and harmonious progress, of this
+reconciliation of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-94" id="Page_8-94"></a><a href="./images/94.png">8-094</a>]</span>society and religion, was wanting abroad. The
+sympathy which the first outbreak of the Revolution had roused among
+Englishmen grew cooler in fact with every step which the Revolution
+took. While the Declaration of the Rights of Man roused France to a
+frenzy of enthusiasm, it was set aside as a dream by the practical
+islanders who based their rights on precedent and not on theory. The
+abolition of all social privileges on the 12th of August, the most
+characteristic step in the French Revolution, was met with grave
+disapproval by a people more alien from social equality than any people
+in Europe. Every incident in the struggle between the French people and
+their king widened the breach of feeling. The anarchy of the country,
+the want of political sense in its Assembly, the paltry declamation of
+its clubs, the exaggerated sentiment, the universal suspicion, the
+suspension of every security for personal freedom, the arrests, the
+murders, the overthrow of the Church, the ruin of the Crown, were
+watched with an ever-growing severity by a nation whose chief instinct
+was one of order, whose bent was to practical politics, whose temper was
+sober and trustful, whose passionate love of personal liberty was only
+equalled by its passionate abhorrence of bloodshed in civil strife, and
+whose ecclesiastical and political institutions were newly endeared to
+it by a fresh revival of religious feeling, and by the constitutional
+attitude of its Government for a hundred years.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-95" id="Page_8-95"></a><a href="./images/95.png">8-095</a>]</span></p><p><span class="sidenote">The coalition against France.</span></p>
+
+<p>Sympathy in fact was soon limited to a few groups of reformers who
+gathered in "Constitutional Clubs," and whose reckless language
+quickened the national reaction. But in spite of Burke's appeals and the
+cries of the nobles who had fled from France and longed only to march
+against their country, Europe held back from any attack on the
+Revolution, and Pitt preserved his attitude of neutrality, though with a
+greater appearance of reserve. So anxious, in fact, did the aspect of
+affairs in the East make him for the restoration of tranquillity in
+France, that he foiled a plan which its emigrant nobles had formed for a
+descent on the French coast, and declared formally at Vienna that
+England would remain absolutely neutral should hostilities arise between
+France and the Emperor. But the Emperor was as anxious to avoid a French
+war as Pitt himself. Though Catharine, now her strife with Turkey was
+over, wished to plunge the two German powers into a struggle with the
+Revolution which would leave her free to annex Poland single-handed,
+neither Leopold nor Prussia would tie their hands by such a contest. The
+flight of Lewis the Sixteenth from Paris in June 1791 brought Europe for
+a moment to the verge of war; but he was intercepted and brought back:
+and for a while the danger seemed to incline the revolutionists in
+France to greater moderation. Lewis too not only accepted the
+Constitution, but pleaded earnestly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-96" id="Page_8-96"></a><a href="./images/96.png">8-096</a>]</span>with the Emperor against any armed
+intervention as certain to bring ruin to his throne. In their conference
+at Pillnitz therefore, in August, Leopold and the king of Prussia
+contented themselves with a vague declaration inviting the European
+powers to co-operate in restoring a sound form of government in France,
+availed themselves of England's neutrality to refuse all military aid to
+the French princes, and dealt simply with the affairs of Poland. But the
+peace they desired soon became impossible. The Constitutional Royalists
+in France availed themselves of the irritation caused by the Declaration
+of Pillnitz to revive the cry for a war which, as they hoped, would give
+strength to the throne. The more violent revolutionists, or Jacobins, on
+the other hand, abandoned their advocacy of peace. Under the influence
+of the "Girondists," the deputies from the south of France, whose aim
+was a republic, and who saw in a great national struggle a means of
+overthrowing the monarchy, they decided, in spite of the opposition of
+their leader, Robespierre, on a contest with the Emperor. Both parties
+united to demand the breaking up of an army which the emigrant princes
+had formed on the Rhine; and though Leopold before his death assented to
+this demand, France declared war against his successor, Francis, in
+April 1792.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-97" id="Page_8-97"></a><a href="./images/97.png">8-097</a>]</span></p>
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<div class="head">
+<hr />
+<ul>
+  <li>CHAPTER IV</li>
+  <li>ENGLAND AND REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE</li>
+  <li>1792-1801</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">England and the Revolutionists.</span></p>
+
+<p>That the war with Germany would widen into a vast European struggle, a
+struggle in which the peoples would rise against their oppressors, and
+the freedom which France had won diffuse itself over the world, no
+French revolutionist doubted for an hour. Nor did they doubt that in
+this struggle England would join them. It was from England that they had
+drawn those principles of political and social liberty which they
+believed themselves to be putting into practice. It was to England that
+they looked above all for approbation and sympathy, and on the aid of
+England that they confidently counted in their struggle with a despotic
+and priest-ridden Europe. Absorbed in the mighty events about them, and
+utterly ignorant of the real set of English feeling or the real meaning
+of Pitt's policy, they were astonished and indignant at his firm refusal
+of their alliance and his resolve <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-98" id="Page_8-98"></a><a href="./images/98.png">8-098</a>]</span>to stand apart from the struggle. It
+was in vain that Pitt strove to allay this irritation by demanding only
+that Holland should remain untouched, and promising neutrality even
+though Belgium should be occupied by a French army, or that he
+strengthened these pledges by a reduction of military forces, and by
+bringing forward in 1792 a peace-budget which rested on a large
+remission of taxation. To the revolutionists at Paris the attitude of
+England remained unintelligible and irritating. Instead of the aid they
+had counted on, they found but a cold neutrality. In place of the
+sympathy on which they reckoned, they saw, now that they looked coolly
+across the Channel, a reserve passing into disapproval. The pen of Burke
+was denouncing the Revolution as the very negation of those principles
+on which English liberty rested. The priests and nobles who had fled
+from the new France were finding pity and welcome on English shores. And
+now that France flung herself on an armed Europe to win freedom for its
+peoples from their kings, England stood coldly apart. To men frenzied
+with a passionate enthusiasm, and frenzied yet more with a sudden terror
+at the dangers they were encountering, such an attitude of neutrality in
+such a quarter seemed like a stab in the back.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Their efforts in England.</span></p>
+
+<p>But that this attitude was that of the English people as a whole was
+incredible to the French enthusiasts. Conscious as no Englishman could
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-99" id="Page_8-99"></a><a href="./images/99.png">8-099</a>]</span>be conscious of the great evils they had overthrown, of the great
+benefits they had won for their country, they saw in the attitude of
+England only the sympathy of an aristocracy with the aristocracy they
+had struck down. The cries for a parliamentary reform which reached them
+across the Channel became in their ears cries of a people as powerless
+and oppressed as the people of France had been. They still clung to the
+hope of England's aid in the emancipation of Europe from despotism and
+superstition, but they came now to believe that England must itself be
+emancipated before such an aid could be given. Their first work
+therefore they held to be the bringing about a revolution in England
+which might free the people from the aristocracy and the aristocratic
+government which held it down. But this was far from being all the work
+they looked to accomplishing. The aristocracy which oppressed the people
+at home oppressed, as they believed, great peoples beyond the bounds of
+England itself. It was subjecting to its sway nation after nation in
+India. Its rule over Ireland was a masterpiece of tyranny. To rouse
+India, to rouse Ireland to a struggle which should shake off the English
+yoke, became necessary steps to the establishment of freedom in England
+itself. From the moment therefore that the opposition between the two
+countries declared itself, French agents were busy "sowing the
+revolution" in each quarter. In Ireland they <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-100" id="Page_8-100"></a><a href="./images/100.png">8-100</a>]</span>entered into communication
+with the United Irishmen. In India they appeared at the courts of the
+native princes, and above all at the court of Mysore. Meanwhile in
+England itself they strove through a number of associations, which had
+formed themselves under the name of Constitutional Clubs, to rouse the
+same spirit which they had roused in France; and the French envoy,
+Chauvelin, protested warmly against a proclamation which denounced this
+correspondence as seditious.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Coalition attacks France.</span></p>
+
+<p>Such a course could only knit men of all parties together in a common
+resentment; and the effect of these revolutionary efforts on the friends
+of the Revolution was seen in a declaration which they wrested from Fox,
+that at such a moment even the discussion of parliamentary reform was
+inexpedient. A far worse result was the new strength they gave to its
+foes. Burke was still working hard in writings whose extravagance of
+style was forgotten in their intensity of feeling to spread alarm
+throughout Europe. He had from the first encouraged the emigrant princes
+to take arms, and sent his son to join them at Coblentz. "Be alarmists,"
+he wrote to them; "diffuse terror!" But the royalist terror which he
+sowed would have been of little moment had it not roused a revolutionary
+terror in France itself. At the threat of war against the Emperor the
+two German Courts had drawn together, and reluctantly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-101" id="Page_8-101"></a><a href="./images/101.png">8-101</a>]</span>abandoning all
+hope of peace with France, gathered eighty thousand men under the Duke
+of Brunswick, and advanced slowly in August 1792 on the Meuse. France,
+though she had forced on the struggle, was really almost defenceless;
+her forces in Belgium broke at the first shock of arms into shameful
+rout; and the panic, as it spread from the soldiery to the nation at
+large, took violent and horrible forms. At the first news of Brunswick's
+advance the mob of Paris broke into the Tuileries on the 10th of August;
+and at its demand Lewis, who had taken refuge in the Assembly, was
+suspended from his office and imprisoned in the Temple. In the following
+September, while General Dumouriez by boldness and adroit negotiations
+was arresting the progress of the Allies in the defiles of the Argonne,
+bodies of paid murderers butchered the royalist prisoners who crowded
+the gaols of Paris, with a view of influencing the elections to a new
+Convention which met to proclaim the abolition of royalty. The retreat
+of the Prussian army, whose numbers had been reduced by disease till an
+advance on Paris became impossible, and a brilliant victory won by
+Dumouriez at Jemappes which laid the Netherlands at his feet, turned the
+panic of the French into a wild self-confidence. In November the
+Convention decreed that France offered the aid of her soldiers to all
+nations who would strive for freedom. "All governments are our enemies,"
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-102" id="Page_8-102"></a><a href="./images/102.png">8-102</a>]</span>cried its President; "all peoples are our allies." In the teeth of
+treaties signed only two years before, and of the stipulation made by
+England when it pledged itself to neutrality, the French Government
+resolved to attack Holland, and ordered its generals to enforce by arms
+the opening of the Scheldt.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">France declares war with England.</span></p>
+
+<p>To do this was to force England into war. Public opinion was already
+pressing every day harder upon Pitt. The horror of the massacres of
+September, the hideous despotism of the Parisian mob, did more to
+estrange England from the Revolution than all the eloquence of Burke.
+But even while withdrawing our Minister from Paris on the imprisonment
+of the king, to whose Court he had been commissioned, Pitt clung
+stubbornly to a policy of peace. His hope was to bring the war to an end
+through English mediation, and to "leave France, which I believe is the
+best way, to arrange its own internal affairs as it can." No hour of
+Pitt's life is so great as the hour when he stood lonely and passionless
+before the growth of national passion, and refused to bow to the
+gathering cry for war. Even the news of the September massacres could
+only force from him a hope that France might abstain from any war of
+conquest and might escape from its social anarchy. In October the French
+agent in England reported that Pitt was about to recognize the Republic.
+At the opening of November he still <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-103" id="Page_8-103"></a><a href="./images/103.png">8-103</a>]</span>pressed on Holland a steady
+neutrality. It was France, and not England, which at last wrenched peace
+from his grasp. The decree of the Convention and the attack on the Dutch
+left him no choice but war, for it was impossible for England to endure
+a French fleet at Antwerp, or to desert allies like the United
+Provinces. But even in December the news of the approaching partition of
+Poland nerved him to a last struggle for peace; he offered to aid
+Austria in acquiring Bavaria if she would make terms with France, and
+pledged himself to France to abstain from war if that power would cease
+from violating the independence of her neighbour states. But desperately
+as Pitt struggled for peace, his struggle was in vain. Across the
+Channel his moderation was only taken for fear, while in England the
+general mourning which followed on the news of the French king's
+execution showed the growing ardour for the contest. The rejection of
+his last offers indeed made a contest inevitable. Both sides ceased from
+diplomatic communications, and in February 1793 France issued her
+Declaration of War.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Panic.</span></p>
+
+<p>From that moment Pitt's power was at an end. His pride, his immoveable
+firmness, and the general confidence of the nation, still kept him at
+the head of affairs; but he could do little save drift along with a tide
+of popular feeling which he never fully understood. Around him the
+country broke out in a fit of passion and panic which rivalled the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-104" id="Page_8-104"></a><a href="./images/104.png">8-104</a>]</span>passion and panic over sea. The confidence of France in its illusions
+as to opinion in England deluded for the moment even Englishmen
+themselves. The partisans of Republicanism were in reality but a few
+handfuls of men who played at gathering Conventions, and at calling
+themselves citizens and patriots, in childish imitation of what was
+going on across the Channel. But in the mass of Englishmen the dread of
+these revolutionists passed for the hour into sheer panic. Even the bulk
+of the Whig party believed property and the constitution to be in peril,
+and forsook Fox when he still proclaimed his faith in France and the
+Revolution. The "Old Whigs," as they called themselves, with the Duke of
+Portland, Earls Spencer and Fitzwilliam, and Mr. Windham at their head,
+followed Burke in giving their adhesion to the Government. Pitt himself,
+though little touched by the political reaction which was to constitute
+the creed of those who represented themselves as "Pittites," was shaken
+by the dream of social danger, which was turning the wisest heads about
+him. For a moment at least his cool good sense bent to believe in the
+existence of "thousands of bandits" who were ready to rise against the
+throne, to plunder every landlord, and to sack London. "Paine is no
+fool," he said to his niece, who quoted to him a passage from the
+<i>Rights of Man</i>, in which that author had vindicated the principles <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-105" id="Page_8-105"></a><a href="./images/105.png">8-105</a>]</span>of
+the Revolution. "He is perhaps right; but if I did what he wants I
+should have thousands of bandits on my hands to-morrow and London
+burnt." It was this sense of social danger which alone reconciled him to
+the war. It would have been impossible indeed for Pitt, or for any other
+English statesman, to have stood idly by while France annexed the
+Netherlands and marched to annex Holland. He must in any case have
+fought even had France not forced him to fight by her declaration of
+war. But bitter as the need of such a struggle was to him, he accepted
+it with the less reluctance that war, as he trusted, would check the
+progress of "French principles" in England itself.</p>
+
+<p>The worst issue of this panic was the series of legislative measures in
+which it found expression. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, a bill
+against seditious assemblies restricted the liberty of public meeting,
+and a wider scope was given to the Statute of Treasons. Prosecution
+after prosecution was directed against the Press; the sermons of some
+dissenting ministers were indicted as seditious; and the conventions of
+sympathizers with France were roughly broken up. The worst excesses of
+this panic were witnessed in Scotland, where young Whigs, whose only
+offence was an advocacy of parliamentary reform, were sentenced to
+transportation, and where a brutal Judge openly expressed his regret
+that the practice of torture in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-106" id="Page_8-106"></a><a href="./images/106.png">8-106</a>]</span>seditious cases should have fallen into
+disuse. But the panic soon passed away for sheer want of material to
+feed on. The bloodshed and anarchy of the Jacobin rule disgusted the
+last sympathizers with France. To staunch Whigs like Romilly, the
+French, after the massacres of October, seemed a mere "nation of
+tigers." The good sense of the nation discovered the unreality of the
+dangers which had driven it to its short-lived frenzy; and when the
+leaders of the Corresponding Society, a body which expressed sympathy
+with France, were brought to trial in 1794 on a charge of high treason,
+their acquittal told that all active terror was over. So far indeed was
+the nation from any danger of social overthrow that, save for occasional
+riots to which the poor were goaded by sheer want of bread, no social
+disturbance troubled England during the twenty years of struggle which
+lay before it. But though the public terror passed, it left a terrible
+legacy behind. The blind reaction against all reform which had sprung
+from the panic lasted on when the panic was forgotten. For nearly a
+quarter of a century it was hard to get a hearing for any measure which
+threatened change to an existing institution, beneficial though the
+change might be. Even the philanthropic movement which so nobly
+characterized the time found itself checked and hampered by the dread of
+revolution.</p>
+
+<p>Easy however as Pitt found it to deal with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-107" id="Page_8-107"></a><a href="./images/107.png">8-107</a>]</span>"French principles" at home,
+he found it less easy to deal with French armies abroad. The very
+excellences of his character indeed unfitted him for the conduct of a
+war. He was at heart a Peace Minister; he was forced into war by a panic
+and enthusiasm which he shared in a very small degree; and he was
+utterly destitute of his father's gift of entering instinctively into
+the sympathies and passions around him, and of rousing passions and
+sympathies in return. At first indeed all seemed to go ill for France.
+When the campaign of 1793 opened she was girt in along her whole
+frontier by a ring of foes. The forces of the House of Austria, of the
+Empire, and of the King of Prussia, pressed her to the north and the
+east; those of Spain and Sardinia attacked her in the south; and the
+accession of England to this league threatened to close the sea against
+her. The efforts of these foreign foes were seconded too by civil war.
+The peasants of Poitou and Brittany, estranged from the revolution by
+its attack on the clergy, rose in revolt against the government at
+Paris; while Marseilles and Lyons were driven into insurrection by the
+violent leaders who now seized on power in the capital. The campaign
+opened therefore with a series of terrible reverses. In spite of the
+efforts of General Dumouriez the French were foiled in their attack on
+Holland and driven, after a disastrous defeat at Neerwinden, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-108" id="Page_8-108"></a><a href="./images/108.png">8-108</a>]</span>from the
+Netherlands. At the moment when the Duke of York with ten thousand
+English troops joined the Austrian army on the northern border of
+France, a march upon Paris would have crushed the revolution. But the
+chance was lost. At this moment indeed the two German powers were far
+from wishing honestly for the suppression of the Republic and the
+re-establishment of a strong monarchy in France. Such a restoration
+would have foiled their projects of aggrandizement in Eastern Europe.
+The strife on the Rhine had set Russia free, as Pitt had foreseen, to
+carry out her schemes of aggression; and Austria and Prussia saw
+themselves forced, in the interest of a balance of power, to share in
+her annexations at the cost of Poland. But this new division of Poland
+would have become impossible had France been enabled by a restoration of
+its monarchy to take up again its natural position in Europe, and to
+accept the alliance which Pitt would in such a case have offered her.
+The policy of the German courts therefore was to prolong an anarchy
+which left them free for the moment to crush Poland, and which they
+counted on crushing in its turn at a more convenient time; and the
+allied armies which might have marched upon Paris were purposely
+frittered away in sieges in the Netherlands and the Rhine.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The revival of France.</span></p>
+
+<p>Such a policy gave France all that she needed to recover from the shock
+of her past disasters: it <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-109" id="Page_8-109"></a><a href="./images/109.png">8-109</a>]</span>gave her time. Whatever were the crimes and
+tyranny of her leaders, the country felt in spite of them the value of
+the Revolution, and rallied enthusiastically to its support. The
+strength of the revolt in La Vend&eacute;e was broken. The insurrection in the
+south was drowned in blood. The Spanish invaders were held at bay at the
+foot of the Pyrenees, and the Piedmontese were driven from Nice and
+Savoy. At the close of the year a fresh blow fell upon the struggling
+country in the revolt of Toulon, the naval station of its Mediterranean
+fleet. The town called for foreign aid against the government at Paris;
+and Lord Hood entered the port with an English squadron, while a force
+of 11,000 men, gathered hastily from every quarter, was despatched under
+General O'Hara as a garrison. But the successes against Spain and Savoy
+freed the hands of France at this critical moment: the town was at once
+invested, and the seizure of a promontory which commanded the harbour, a
+step counselled by a young artillery officer, Napoleon Buonaparte,
+brought about the withdrawal of the garrison and the surrender of
+Toulon. The success was a prelude of what was to come. At the opening of
+1794 a victory at Fleurus, which again made the French masters of the
+Netherlands, showed that the tide had turned. France was united within
+by the cessation of the Terror and of the tyranny of the Jacobins, while
+on every border victory followed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-110" id="Page_8-110"></a><a href="./images/110.png">8-110</a>]</span>the gigantic efforts with which she
+met the coalition against her. The coalition indeed was fast breaking
+up. Spain sued for peace. Prussia, more intent on her gains in the east
+than on any battle with the revolution on the west, prepared to follow
+Spain's example by the withdrawal of her armies from the Rhine. It was
+only by English subsidies that Austria and Sardinia were still kept in
+the field; and the Rhine provinces were wrested from the first, while
+the forces of Sardinia were driven back from the Riviera and the
+Maritime Alps into the plain of Piedmont. Before the year ended Holland
+was lost. Pichegru crossed the Waal in midwinter with an overwhelming
+force, and the wretched remnant of ten thousand men who had followed the
+Duke of York to the Netherlands, thinned by disease and by the hardships
+of retreat, re-embarked for England.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Howe's victory.</span></p>
+
+<p>In one quarter only had the fortune of war gone against the French
+republic. The victories of Rodney at the close of the strife with
+America had concentrated English interest on the fleet. Even during the
+peace, while the army was sacrificed to financial distress, great
+efforts were made to preserve the efficiency of the navy; and the recent
+alarms of war with Russia and Spain had ended in raising it to a
+strength which it had never reached before. But France was as eager as
+England herself to dispute the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-111" id="Page_8-111"></a><a href="./images/111.png">8-111</a>]</span>sovereignty of the seas, and almost
+equal attention had been bestowed on the navy which crowded the great
+harbours of Toulon and Brest. In force as in number of ships it was
+equal in effective strength to that of England; and both nations looked
+with hope to the issue of a contest at sea. No battle marked the first
+year of the war; but, as it ended, the revolt of Toulon gave a fatal
+wound to the naval strength of France in the almost total destruction of
+her Mediterranean fleet. That of the Channel however remained unhurt;
+and it was this which Lord Howe at last encountered, off Brest in 1794,
+in the battle which is known by the name of the day on which it was
+fought&mdash;The "First of June." The number of ships on either side was
+nearly the same, and the battle was one of sheer hard fighting, unmarked
+by any display of naval skill. But the result was a decisive victory for
+England, and the French admiral, weakened by a loss of seven vessels and
+three thousand men, again took refuge in Brest.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Break-up of the Coalition.</span></p>
+
+<p>The success of Lord Howe did somewhat to counteract the discouragement
+which sprang from the general aspect of the war. At the opening of 1795
+the coalition finally gave way. Holland had been detached from it by
+Pichegru's conquest, and the Batavian republic which he set up there was
+now an ally of France. In the spring Prussia bought peace at Basle by
+the cession of her possessions <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-112" id="Page_8-112"></a><a href="./images/112.png">8-112</a>]</span>west of the Rhine. Peace with Spain
+followed in the summer, while Sweden and the Protestant cantons of
+Switzerland recognized the republic. These terrible blows were hardly
+met by the success of the Austrian army in relieving Maintz, or by the
+colonial acquisitions of England. The latter indeed were far from being
+inconsiderable. Most of the West-Indian Islands which had been held by
+France now fell into British hands; and the alliance of Holland with the
+French threw open to English attack the far more valuable settlements of
+the Dutch. The surrender of Cape Town in September gave England the
+colony of the Cape of Good Hope, the nucleus of what has since grown
+into a vast southern settlement which is destined to play a great part
+in the history of Africa. At the close of the year the Island of Ceylon
+was added to our Indian dependencies. Both of these acquisitions were
+destined to remain permanently attached to England, though at the moment
+their value was eclipsed by the conquest of the Dutch colonies in the
+Pacific, the more famous Spice Islands of the Malaccas and Java. But,
+important as these gains were in their after issues, they had no
+immediate influence on the war. The French armies prepared for the
+invasion of Italy; while in France itself discord came well-nigh to an
+end. A descent by a force of French emigrants on the coast <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-113" id="Page_8-113"></a><a href="./images/113.png">8-113</a>]</span>of Brittany
+ended in their massacre at Quiberon and in the final cessation of the
+war in La Vend&eacute;e; while the royalist party in Paris was crushed as soon
+as it rose against the Convention by the genius of Napoleon Buonaparte.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Pitt's effort for peace.</span></p>
+
+<p>But the fresh severities against the ultra-republicans which followed on
+the establishment of a Directory after this success indicated the
+moderate character of the new government, and Pitt seized on this change
+in the temper of the French Government as giving an opening for peace.
+The dread of a Jacobin propagandism was now all but at an end. In spite
+of an outbreak of the London mob, whose cries meant chiefly impatience
+of dear bread, but which brought about a fresh suspension of the Habeas
+Corpus Act and the introduction of a Bill "for the prosecution of
+seditious meetings," the fear of any social disturbance or of the spread
+of "French principles" in England was fast passing away from men's
+minds. The new constitution which France accepted in 1795 showed that
+the tendencies of the French themselves were now rather to order than to
+freedom. The old grounds for the struggle therefore had ceased to exist;
+while the pressure of it grew hourly more intolerable. Pitt himself was
+sick of the strife. The war indeed had hardly begun when he found
+himself without the means of carrying it on. The English navy was in a
+high state of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-114" id="Page_8-114"></a><a href="./images/114.png">8-114</a>]</span>efficiency; but the financial distress which followed the
+American war had brought with it a neglect of the army. The army was not
+only small, but without proper equipment; and the want of military
+experience among its soldiers was only equalled by the incapacity of
+their leaders. "We have no general," Lord Grenville wrote bitterly, "but
+some old woman in a red riband." Wretched, too, as had been the conduct
+of the war, its cost was already terrible; for if England was without
+soldiers she had wealth, and in default of nobler means of combating the
+revolution Pitt had been forced to use wealth as an engine of war. He
+became the paymaster of the coalition, and his subsidies kept the allied
+armies in the field. But the immense loans which these called for, and
+the quick growth of expenditure, undid all the financial reforms on
+which the young minister prided himself. Taxation, which had reached its
+lowest point at the outbreak of the contest, mounted ere a few years
+were past to a height undreamed of before. The debt rose by leaps and
+bounds. In three years nearly eighty millions had been added to it, a
+sum greater than that piled up by the whole war with America, and in the
+opening of 1796 votes were taken for loans which amounted to twenty-five
+millions more.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The dogged temper of England.</span></p>
+
+<p>Nor was this wreck of his financial hopes Pitt's only ground for
+desiring a close of the war. From <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-115" id="Page_8-115"></a><a href="./images/115.png">8-115</a>]</span>the first, as we have seen, he had
+been keenly sensitive to the European dangers which the contest
+involved; nor had he shown, even in his moment of social panic, the
+fanatical blindness of men like Burke to the evils which had produced
+the revolution, or to the good which it had wrought. But he could only
+listen in silence while the Marquis of Lansdowne, the Lord Shelburne of
+earlier days and the successor of Chatham as the advocate of a more
+liberal policy, met the rhetoric of Burke by a cool demonstration of the
+benefit which the recent change had brought to the mass of the French
+people, and by pointing to the profit which Russia was drawing from the
+struggle in the west. In their wide-reaching view of European affairs,
+in their justice to the revolution, Shelburne and Pitt stood alone.
+Around them men were hardened and blinded by passion. The old hatred
+between nation and nation, which Pitt had branded as irrational, woke up
+fiercer than ever at the clash of arms, for with it was blended a
+resentment that had smouldered in English breasts ever since the war
+with America at the blow which France had dealt England in that hour of
+her weakness, and a disgust which only slowly grew fainter at her
+overthrow of every social and political institution that Englishmen held
+dear. On the dogged temper of the nation at large the failure of the
+coalition produced little effect. It had no fear of fighting France
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-116" id="Page_8-116"></a><a href="./images/116.png">8-116</a>]</span>single-handed, nor could it understand Pitt's suggestion that a time
+had come for opening negotiations with a view to peace. Public opinion
+indeed went hotly with Burke in his denunciation of all purpose of
+relaxing England's hostility against the revolution, a denunciation
+which was embodied in his "Letters on a Regicide Peace," the last outcry
+of that fanaticism which had done so much to plunge the world in blood.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Irish danger.</span></p>
+
+<p>But though Pitt stood all but alone, he was firm in his purpose to bring
+the war, if he could, to a close. What specially moved him was not the
+danger on the Continent, whether that danger sprang from French
+victories or from aggression in the east. It was a danger in the west.
+Vain as the expectations of the French revolutionists had proved in the
+case of England, they had better ground for their hopes elsewhere. Even
+before the outbreak of the war Pitt had shown how keen was his sense of
+a possible danger from Ireland. In that wretched country the terrible
+fruits of a century of oppression and wrong were still to reap. From the
+close of the American war, when her armed Volunteers had wrung
+legislative independence from the Rockingham ministry, Ireland had
+continued to be England's difficulty. She was now "independent"; but her
+independence was a mere name for the uncontrolled rule of a few noble
+families. The victory of the Volunteers had been won simply to the
+profit of "undertakers," who <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-117" id="Page_8-117"></a><a href="./images/117.png">8-117</a>]</span>returned a majority of members in the
+Irish House of Commons, while they themselves formed the Irish House of
+Lords. The suspension of any effective control or interference from
+England left Ireland at these men's mercy, and they soon showed that
+they meant to keep it for themselves. When the Catholics claimed
+admission to the franchise or to equal civil rights as a reward for
+their aid in the late struggle, their claim was rejected. A similar
+demand of the Presbyterians, who had formed a good half of the
+Volunteers, for the removal of their disabilities was equally set aside.
+Even Grattan, when he pleaded for a reform which would make the
+Parliament at least a fair representative of the Protestant Englishry,
+utterly failed. The ruling class found government too profitable to
+share it with other possessors. It was only by hard bribery that the
+English viceroys could secure their co-operation in the simplest
+measures of administration. "If ever there was a country unfit to govern
+itself," said Lord Hutchinson, "it is Ireland. A corrupt aristocracy, a
+ferocious commonalty, a distracted Government, a divided people!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Irish Emancipation.</span></p>
+
+<p>The real character of this Parliamentary rule was seen in the rejection
+of Pitt's offer of free trade. In Pitt's eyes the danger of Ireland lay
+above all in the misery of its people. Although the Irish Catholics were
+held down by the brute force of their Protestant rulers, he saw that
+their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-118" id="Page_8-118"></a><a href="./images/118.png">8-118</a>]</span>discontent was growing fast into rebellion, and that one secret
+at any rate of their discontent lay in Irish poverty, a poverty
+increased if not originally brought about by the jealous exclusion of
+Irish products from their natural markets in England itself. One of his
+first commercial measures therefore, as we have seen, aimed at putting
+an end to this exclusion by a bill which established freedom of trade
+between the two islands. But though he met successfully the fears and
+jealousies of the English farmers and manufacturers he was foiled by the
+factious ignorance of the Irish landowners, and his bill was rejected by
+the Irish Parliament. So utterly was he discouraged that for the moment
+he ceased from all further attempts to improve the condition of Ireland.
+But the efforts which the French revolutionists made to excite rebellion
+amongst the Irish roused him to fresh measures of conciliation and good
+government. The hopes of some reform of the Irish Parliament had been
+fanned by the eloquence of Grattan and by the pressure of the United
+Irishmen, an association which had sprung up in Ulster, where Protestant
+dissenters, who were equally excluded with Catholics from any share in
+political power, formed the strongest part of the population. These
+hopes however were growing every day fainter. To the Irish aristocracy
+parliamentary reform meant the close of a corrupt rule which had gone on
+unchecked since the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-119" id="Page_8-119"></a><a href="./images/119.png">8-119</a>]</span>American war. But to the Irish Catholic it meant
+far more; it meant his admission, not only to the electoral franchise,
+but in the end to all the common privileges of citizenship from which he
+was excluded, his "emancipation," to use the word which now became
+common, from the yoke of slavery which had pressed on him ever since the
+Battle of the Boyne.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The United Irishmen.</span></p>
+
+<p>To such an emancipation Pitt was already looking forward. In 1792, a
+year before the outbreak of war with France, he forced on the Irish
+Parliament measures for the admission of Catholics to the electoral
+franchise and to civil and military office within the island, which
+promised a new era of religious liberty. But the promise came too late.
+The hope of conciliation was lost in the fast rising tide of religious
+and social passion. As the dream of obtaining Parliamentary reform died
+away the United Irishmen of the North drifted into projects of
+insurrection and a correspondence with France. The news of the French
+Revolution fell with a yet more terrible effect on the Catholic
+peasantry, brooding over their misery and their wrongs. Their discontent
+broke out in social disorder, in the outrages of secret societies of
+"Defenders" and "Peep o' Day Boys," which spread panic among the ruling
+classes. It was only by sheer terror and bloodshed that the Protestant
+landowners, who banded together in "Orange" societies to meet the secret
+societies <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-120" id="Page_8-120"></a><a href="./images/120.png">8-120</a>]</span>about them, could hold the country down. Outrages on the one
+side, tyranny on the other, deepened the disorder and panic every day,
+and the hopes of the reformers grew fainter as the terror rose fast
+around them. The maddened Protestants scouted all notions of further
+concessions to men whom they looked upon as on the verge of revolt; and
+Grattan's motions for reform were defeated by increasing majorities. On
+the other hand the entry of the anti-revolutionary Whigs into Pitt's
+ministry revived Grattan's hopes, for Burke and his followers were
+pledged to a liberal policy towards Ireland, and Lord Fitzwilliam, who
+came over as viceroy in 1794, encouraged Grattan to bring in a bill for
+the entire emancipation of the Catholics at the opening of the next
+year. Such a step can hardly have been taken without Pitt's assent; but
+the minister was now swept along by a tide of feeling which he could not
+control. The Orangemen threatened revolt, the Tories in Pitt's own
+Cabinet recoiled from the notion of reform, and Lord Fitzwilliam was not
+only recalled, but replaced by Lord Camden, an avowed enemy of all
+change or concession to the Catholics. From that moment the United
+Irishmen became a revolutionary society; and one of their leaders, Wolfe
+Tone, made his way to France, in the spring of 1796, to seek aid in a
+national rising.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">France and Ireland.</span></p>
+
+<p>It is probable that Tone's errand was known to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-121" id="Page_8-121"></a><a href="./images/121.png">8-121</a>]</span>Pitt; it is certain that
+Lord Edward Fitzgerald, another of the patriot leaders, who had been
+summoned to carry on more definite negotiations in Basle, revealed
+inadvertently as he returned the secret of his hopes to an agent of the
+English Cabinet. Vague as were the offers of the United Irishmen, they
+had been warmly welcomed by the French Government. Masters at home, the
+Directory were anxious to draw off the revolutionary enthusiasm which
+the French party of order dreaded as much as Burke himself to the
+channels of foreign conquest. They were already planning that descent of
+their army in the Alps upon Lombardy which was to give a fatal blow to
+one of their enemies, Austria; and they welcomed the notion of a French
+descent upon Ireland and an Irish revolt, which would give as fatal a
+blow to their other enemy, England. An army of 25,000 men under General
+Hoche was promised, a fleet was manned, and preparations were being made
+for the expedition during the summer. But the secret was ill kept, and
+the news of such an attempt was, we can hardly doubt, the ground of the
+obstinacy with which Pitt persisted in the teeth of the national feeling
+and of Burke's invectives in clinging to his purpose of concluding a
+peace. In October 1796 Lord Malmesbury was despatched to Paris and
+negotiations were finally opened for that purpose. The terms which Pitt
+offered were terms of mutual restitution. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-122" id="Page_8-122"></a><a href="./images/122.png">8-122</a>]</span>France was to evacuate
+Holland and to restore Belgium to the Emperor. England on the other hand
+was to restore the colonies she had won to France, Holland, and Spain.
+As the English Minister had no power of dealing with the territories
+already ceded by Prussia and other states, such a treaty would have left
+France, as her eastern border, the line of the Rhine. But even had they
+desired peace at all, the Directors would have scorned it on terms such
+as these. While Malmesbury was negotiating indeed France was roused to
+new dreams of conquest by the victories of Napoleon Buonaparte. The
+genius of Carnot, the French Minister of War, had planned a joint
+advance upon Vienna by the French armies of Italy and the Rhine, the one
+under Buonaparte, the other under Moreau. The plan was only partly
+successful. Moreau, though he pushed forward through every obstacle to
+Bavaria, was compelled to fall back by the defeat of a lieutenant; and
+was only enabled by a masterly retreat through the Black Forest to reach
+the Rhine. But the disaster of Moreau was more than redeemed by the
+victories of Buonaparte. With the army which occupied the Riviera and
+the Maritime Alps the young general marched on Piedmont at the opening
+of the summer, separated its army from the Austrian troops, and forced
+the king of Sardinia to conclude a humiliating peace. A brilliant
+victory at the bridge of Lodi brought him to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-123" id="Page_8-123"></a><a href="./images/123.png">8-123</a>]</span>Milan, and drove the
+Austrians into the Tyrol. Lombardy was in the hands of the French, the
+Duchies south of the Po pillaged, and the Pope driven to purchase an
+armistice at enormous cost, before the Austrian armies, raised to a
+force of 50,000 men, again descended from the Tyrol for the relief of
+Mantua. But a fatal division of their forces by the Lake of Garda
+enabled Buonaparte to hurl them back broken upon Trent, and to shut up
+their general, Wurmser, in Mantua with the remnant of his men; while
+fresh victories at the bridge of Arcola and at Bassano drove back two
+new Austrian armies who advanced to Wurmser's rescue.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Terror of Ireland.</span></p>
+
+<p>It was the success of Buonaparte which told on the resolve of the
+Directory to reject all terms of peace. After months of dilatory
+negotiations the offers of Lord Malmesbury were definitely declined, and
+the English envoy returned home at the end of the year. Every hour of
+his stay in Paris had raised higher hopes of success against England in
+the minds of the Directory. At the moment of his arrival Spain had been
+driven to declare war as their ally against Britain; and the Spanish and
+Dutch fleets were now at the French service for a struggle at sea. The
+merciless exactions of Buonaparte poured gold into the exhausted
+treasury; and the energy of Hoche rapidly availed itself of this supply
+to equip a force for operations in Ireland. At the opening of December
+he was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-124" id="Page_8-124"></a><a href="./images/124.png">8-124</a>]</span>ready to put to sea with a fleet of more than forty sail and
+25,000 men; and the return of Lord Malmesbury was the signal for the
+despatch of his expedition from Brest. The fleet at Toulon, which was
+intended to co-operate with that at Brest, and which had sailed through
+the Straits of Gibraltar for that purpose, was driven into Port l'Orient
+by an English squadron: but contrary winds baffled the fleet which was
+watching Hoche, and his armament slipped away with little hindrance
+towards the Irish coast. Had it reached Ireland unbroken and under such
+a general, the island might well have been lost to the English Crown.
+But the winds fought against France, as they had fought against the
+Armada of Spain; and the ships were parted from one another by a gale
+which burst on them as they put to sea. Seventeen reached Bantry Bay,
+but hearing nothing of their leader or of the rest, they sailed back
+again to Brest, in spite of the entreaties of the soldiers to be
+suffered to land. Another division reached the Shannon to be scattered
+and driven home again by a second storm. Twelve vessels were wrecked or
+captured, and the frigate in which Hoche had embarked returned to port
+without having seen any of its companions. The invasion had failed, but
+the panic which it roused woke passions of cruelty and tyranny which
+turned Ireland into a hell. Soldiers and yeomanry marched over the
+country torturing and scourging <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-125" id="Page_8-125"></a><a href="./images/125.png">8-125</a>]</span>the "croppies," as the Irish peasantry
+were termed from their short-cut hair; robbing, ravishing, and murdering
+at their will. The lightest suspicion, the most unfounded charges, were
+taken as warrants for bloodshed. So hideous were these outrages that the
+news of them as it reached England woke a thrill of horror in the minds
+of even the blindest Tories; but by the landowners who formed the Irish
+Parliament they were sanctioned in a Bill of Indemnity and protected for
+the future by an Insurrection Act. The terror however only woke a
+universal spirit of revolt. Ireland drank in greedily that hatred of
+England and of English rule which all the justice and moderation of
+later government has failed to destroy; and the United Irishmen looked
+with more passionate longing than ever to France.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The struggle for the Sea.</span></p>
+
+<p>Nor had France abandoned the design of invasion; while her victories
+made such a design every day more formidable. The war was going steadily
+in her favour. A fresh victory at Rivoli, the surrender of Mantua, and
+an advance through Styria on Vienna, enabled Buonaparte to wring a peace
+from England's one ally, Austria. The armistice was concluded in April
+1797, and the final treaty which was signed at Campo Formio in October
+not only gave France the Ionian Islands, a part of the old territory of
+Venice (whose Italian possessions passed to the Emperor), as well as the
+Netherlands and the whole left bank of the Rhine, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-126" id="Page_8-126"></a><a href="./images/126.png">8-126</a>]</span>but united Lombardy
+with the Duchies south of the Po and the Papal States as far as the
+Rubicon into a "Cisalpine Republic," which was absolutely beneath her
+control. The withdrawal of Austria left France without an enemy on the
+Continent, and England without an ally. The stress of the war was
+pressing more heavily on her every day. A mutiny in the fleet was
+suppressed with difficulty. The news of Hoche's expedition brought about
+a run for gold which forced on the Bank a suspension of specie payments.
+It was in this darkest hour of the struggle that Burke passed away,
+protesting to the last against the peace which, in spite of his previous
+failure, Pitt was again striving to bring about by fresh negotiations at
+Lille. Peace seemed more needful than ever to him now that France was
+free to attack her enemy with the soldiers who had fought at Arcola and
+Rivoli. Their way, indeed, lay across the sea, and at sea Britain was
+supreme. But her supremacy was threatened by a coalition of naval forces
+such as had all but crushed her in the American war. Again the Dutch and
+Spanish fleets were allied with the fleets of France; and it was
+necessary to watch Cadiz and the Scheldt as well as Brest and Toulon. A
+single victory of the three confederates, or even such a command of the
+Channel as they had held for months during the war with America, would
+enable the Directory to throw overwhelming armies not only on the shores
+of England, but on the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-127" id="Page_8-127"></a><a href="./images/127.png">8-127</a>]</span>shores of Ireland, and whatever might be the
+fate of the one enterprise, there could be little doubt of the success
+of the other. The danger was real; but it had hardly threatened England
+when it was dispelled by two great victories. The Spanish fleet, which
+put out to sea with twenty-seven sail of the line, was met on the
+fourteenth of February 1797 by Admiral Jervis off Cape St. Vincent with
+a force of but fifteen; and driven back to Cadiz with a loss of four of
+its finest vessels. Disheartened as they were, however, their numbers
+still exceeded that of the force which blockaded them; and France
+counted with confidence on the fleet of Holland, which was ordered to
+join its own fleet at Brest. The aim of this union was to protect a
+fresh force in its descent upon Ireland, where the United Irishmen now
+declared themselves ready for revolt. But a yet sterner fortune awaited
+the Dutch than that which had fallen on the Spaniards. Their admiral, De
+Winter, who had quitted the Texel during a storm with eleven sail of the
+line and four frigates, fell in on the eleventh of October with a far
+larger fleet under Admiral Duncan off Camperdown. The Hollanders fought
+with a stubborn courage worthy of their old renown, and it was only when
+their ships were riddled with shot into mere wrecks that they fell into
+the hands of the English.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Irish Rising.</span></p>
+
+<p>The French project for an expedition to Ireland hung on the junction of
+the Dutch fleet with that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-128" id="Page_8-128"></a><a href="./images/128.png">8-128</a>]</span>of Brest, and the command of the Channel
+which this junction would have given them. Such a command became
+impossible after the defeat of Camperdown. But the disappointment of
+their hopes of foreign aid only drove the adherents of revolt in Ireland
+to a rising of despair. The union of the national party, which had
+lasted to some extent from the American war, was now broken up. The
+Protestants of Ulster still looked for aid to France. The Catholics, on
+the other hand, were alienated from the French by their attack on
+religion and the priesthood; and the failure of the French expedition,
+while it damped the hopes of the Ulstermen, gave force to the demands of
+the Catholic party for a purely national rising. So fierce was this
+demand that the leaders of the United Irishmen were forced to fix on the
+spring of 1798 for the outbreak of an insurrection, in which Lord Edward
+Fitzgerald, who had some small military experience, was to take the
+command. But while yielding on this point to the Catholic section of
+their party they conciliated the Protestants by renewed appeals for aid
+to the Directory. In spite of its previous failures France again
+promised help; and a division was prepared during the winter for service
+in Ireland. But the passion of the nation was too intense to wait for
+its arrival. The government too acted with a prompt decision in face of
+the danger, and an arrest of Lord Edward Fitzgerald with three of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-129" id="Page_8-129"></a><a href="./images/129.png">8-129</a>]</span>their
+chief leaders in February 1798 broke the plans of the insurgents. On the
+23rd of May, however, the day fixed for the opening of the revolt, the
+Catholic peasantry of the south rose in arms. Elsewhere their disorderly
+gatherings were easily dispersed by the yeomanry; but Wexford
+surrendered to 14,000 insurgents who marched on it, headed by a village
+priest, and the town at once became the centre of a formidable revolt.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Its failure.</span></p>
+
+<p>Fortunately for the English rule the old religious hatred which had so
+often wrecked the hopes of Ireland broke out in the instant of this
+triumph. The Protestant inhabitants of Wexford were driven into the
+river or flung into prison. Another body of insurgents, frenzied by the
+cruelties of the royal troops, massacred a hundred Protestants in cool
+blood. The atrocities of the soldiers and the yeomanry were avenged with
+a fiendish ruthlessness. Loyalists were lashed and tortured in their
+turn, and every soldier taken was butchered without mercy. The result of
+these outrages was fatal to the insurrection. The Ulster Protestants,
+who formed the strength of the United Irishmen, stood sullenly aloof
+from rebels who murdered Protestants. The Catholic gentry threw
+themselves on the side of the government against a rising which
+threatened the country with massacre and anarchy. Few in fact had joined
+the insurgents in Wexford when <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-130" id="Page_8-130"></a><a href="./images/130.png">8-130</a>]</span>Lord Lake appeared before their camp
+upon Vinegar Hill with a strong force of English troops on the 21st of
+May. The camp was stormed, and with the dispersion of its defenders the
+revolt came suddenly to an end. But its suppression came only just in
+time to prevent greater disasters; for a few weeks after the close of
+the rebellion the long-expected aid arrived from France. The news of the
+outbreak had forced the armament which was being equipped in the French
+ports to put to sea with forces utterly inadequate to the task it had
+set itself, but fresh aid was promised to follow, and the nine hundred
+soldiers who landed in August under General Humbert on the coast of Mayo
+showed by their first successes how formidable a centre they would have
+given to the revolt had the revolt held its ground. But in the two
+months which had passed since Vinegar Hill all trace of resistance to
+the English rule had been trodden out in blood, and Humbert found
+himself alone in a country exhausted and panic-stricken. He marched
+however boldly on Castlebar, broke a force of yeomanry and volunteers
+three times his number, and only surrendered when Lord Cornwallis, who
+had succeeded to the Lord-Lieutenancy, faced him with thirty thousand
+men.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">French designs on India.</span></p>
+
+<p>Of the threefold attack on which the Directory had relied for the ruin
+of England two parts had now broken down. Humbert's surrender and the
+failure of the native insurrection left little hope <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-131" id="Page_8-131"></a><a href="./images/131.png">8-131</a>]</span>for future attack
+on the side of Ireland. The naval confederacy which was to rob England
+of the command of the seas had been foiled by the utter wreck of the
+Dutch fleet, and the imprisonment of the Spanish fleet in Cadiz. But the
+genius of Buonaparte had seized on the schemes for a rising against the
+English rule in Hindostan, and widened them into a project of all but
+world-wide conquest. At this time the strongest and most vigorous of the
+Indian powers was that of Mysore, at the southern extremity of the
+peninsula, where a Mussulman state had been built up by the genius of an
+adventurer, Hyder Ali. In the days when the English were winning their
+supremacy over the Carnatic, Hyder had been their chief difficulty; and
+his attack had once brought them to the verge of ruin. The hostility of
+his son Tippoo was even more bitter; but the victories of Lord
+Cornwallis had taught the Sultan of Mysore that he was no match for the
+British power single-handed; and his hopes, like those of the United
+Irishmen, were fixed upon France. He was striving to get aid from the
+Afghans and from the Nizam, but what he most counted on for the
+expulsion of the English from the Carnatic was a force of thirty
+thousand French soldiers. Letters requesting such a force were
+despatched by him to France in 1797. Buonaparte had already fixed on
+Mysore as a basis of operations against the British rule in Hindostan;
+and after <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-132" id="Page_8-132"></a><a href="./images/132.png">8-132</a>]</span>dismissing as impracticable a project suggested to him on his
+return from Italy after the treaty of Campo Formio for a descent upon
+England itself, he laid before the Directory a plan for the conquest and
+occupation of Egypt as a preliminary to a campaign in Southern India.
+Utterly as this plan was foiled in the future, it was far from being the
+wild dream which it has often been considered. Both the Ministry and
+East Indian Directors were roused into anxiety by the first news of
+Buonaparte's expedition. The Earl of Mornington, Governor-General of
+British India, was warned of a possible attack from the Red Sea. Four
+thousand soldiers were hurried off to reinforce his army; while the
+English fleet watched anxiously in the Mediterranean. But so perfect was
+the secrecy with which the French plans were combined that Buonaparte
+was able to put to sea in May 1798 with a force of 30,000 veterans drawn
+from the army of Italy, and making himself master of Malta as he passed
+to land near Alexandria at the close of June.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The battle of the Nile.</span></p>
+
+<p>The conquest of Egypt proved as easy and complete as Buonaparte had
+hoped. The Mamelukes were routed in the battle of the Pyramids; Cairo
+was occupied; and the French troops pushed rapidly up the valley of the
+Nile. Their general meanwhile showed his genius for government by a
+masterly organization of the conquered country, by the conciliation of
+his new subjects, and by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-133" id="Page_8-133"></a><a href="./images/133.png">8-133</a>]</span>measures for the enrolment of native soldiers
+which would in a short time have placed him at the head of a formidable
+army. Of his ultimate aim there can be little doubt; for he had hardly
+landed at Alexandria when he despatched the news of his arrival and
+promises of support to Tippoo. All chance however of success in his
+projects hung on the maintenance of communications with France. With
+Italy, with the Ionian Islands, with Alexandria in French holding, it
+was all but impossible to prevent supplies of men and arms from being
+forwarded to Egypt, so long as the French fleet remained in the waters
+of the Mediterranean and kept the English force concentrated by the
+necessity of watching its movements. But the French were hardly masters
+of Egypt when their fleet ceased to exist. The thirteen men-of-war which
+had escorted the expedition were found by Admiral Nelson in Aboukir Bay,
+moored close to the coast in a line guarded at either end by gunboats
+and batteries. Nelson resolved to thrust his ships between the French
+and the shore. On the morning of the 1st of August his own flag-ship led
+the way in this attack; and after a terrible fight of twelve hours, nine
+of the French vessels were captured and destroyed, two were burned, and
+five thousand French seamen were killed or made prisoners. "Victory,"
+cried Nelson, "is not a name strong enough for such a scene." Few
+victories indeed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-134" id="Page_8-134"></a><a href="./images/134.png">8-134</a>]</span>in history have produced more effective results than
+the battle of the Nile. The French flag was swept from the waters of the
+Mediterranean. All communication between France and Buonaparte's army
+was cut off; and his hopes of making Egypt a starting-point for the
+conquest of India fell at a blow. To hold Egypt itself soon became
+difficult, for a desperate revolt broke out at the news of Nelson's
+victory in the streets of Cairo, and a Turkish army advanced from Syria
+to recover the valley of the Nile.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">France and Europe.</span></p>
+
+<p>Secure against invasion at home as against rebellion in Ireland, secure
+too against the dangers that threatened her rule in India, and mistress
+of the seas, England was free in her turn to attack the assailant who
+had so long threatened her very existence. And in such an attack she was
+aided at this moment by the temper of the European powers, and by the
+ceaseless aggressions of France. The treaties of Basle and Campo Formio
+were far from being accepted by the Directory as a final settlement of
+the relations of France with Europe. Some faint remnant of the older
+dreams of freeing oppressed peoples may have lingered in the aid which
+it gave to the rising of the subject districts of Basle and Vaud against
+their Bernese masters in the opening of 1798. But mere greed of gold was
+seen in the plunder of the treasury of Berne, a plunder which served to
+equip the army that sailed with Buonaparte to the shores of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-135" id="Page_8-135"></a><a href="./images/135.png">8-135</a>]</span>Egypt, and
+to recruit the exhausted treasury of the Directory; and an ambition, as
+reckless as this greed, broke out in an attack on the mountain cantons,
+states whose democratic institutions gave no such excuse for hostility
+as had been afforded by the aristocracy of Berne. A French decree
+abolished the Swiss Confederation, and the independence of its several
+states, and established in their place an Helvetic Republic modelled on
+a plan sent from Paris, and placed under the protection of France. The
+mountain cantons rose against this overthrow of a freedom compared with
+which the freedom of France was but of yesterday; but desperate as was
+their struggle they were overwhelmed by numbers, and the men of Uri, of
+Unterwalden and of Schwytz bowed for the first time to a foreign
+conqueror.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Russia and France.</span></p>
+
+<p>The overthrow of this immemorial house of freedom opened the eyes of the
+blindest enthusiast to the real character of the French aggressions.
+Even in the group of young English poets, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and
+Southey, who had clung till now to the dream of the Revolution, of a
+Europe freed and regenerated by the arms of the new republic, all belief
+in such a dream passed finally away. But the France of the Directory
+would have cared little for this alienation of the peoples, had it not
+been backed by the revived hostility of their kings. What England
+counted on in her efforts for a revival of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-136" id="Page_8-136"></a><a href="./images/136.png">8-136</a>]</span>coalition was the
+resentment of Austria at the aggressions which the Directory had ever
+since the peace of Campo Formio been carrying on in Italy. In the
+opening of 1798 a French force entered Rome, set up a Roman republic,
+and carried off Pius VI. a prisoner to Siena; while the king of Sardinia
+was driven to admit French garrisons into his fortresses. Austria
+however was still too weak after her defeats to listen to Pitt's
+advances, had Pitt stood alone. But Russia was now about to take a new
+part in European affairs. Under Catharine the Second this power had
+availed itself of the war against France in the west to carry out its
+own projects of conquest in eastern Europe; and, as we have seen, Pitt
+had watched its advance at the opening of the Revolution with far
+greater dread than the movements in France. It was in fact the need
+which the two German states felt of balancing the Russian annexations in
+Poland by annexations of their own which had paralysed their armies on
+the Rhine and saved France at the moment of her greatest danger in 1793.
+It is probable that the Directory still counted on the persistence of
+Russia in a similar policy, and believed that Catharine would see in
+their attack on Egypt and the Turks only a fresh opportunity for
+conquests on the Danube. But the sudden greatness of France had warned
+Russia that its policy of selfishness had been carried too far. It had
+allowed the Republic to tower into supremacy <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-137" id="Page_8-137"></a><a href="./images/137.png">8-137</a>]</span>over the Continent, and if
+once such a supremacy was firmly established it would prove a fatal
+obstacle to the Russian advance. France would again, as under the
+monarchy, aim at the restoration of Poland; she would again bar the way
+to Constantinople; and her action would be backed by the weight of all
+western Europe, which had been thrown into her scale by the policy of
+the very state she defied. To avert such a result it was necessary to
+restore that balance of the Continent by which France and the German
+powers held one another in check; and with a view to this restoration
+Russia suddenly declared itself an enemy of France. Catharine's
+successor, the Czar Paul, set aside the overtures of the Directory. A
+close alliance was formed with Austria, and while an Imperial army
+gathered on the Bavarian frontier Russian troops hurried to the west.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Union with Ireland.</span></p>
+
+<p>The appearance of this new element in the struggle changed its whole
+conditions; and it was with renewed hope that Pitt lavished subsidies on
+the two allies at the close of 1798. But his preparations for the new
+strife were far from being limited to efforts abroad. In England he had
+found fresh resources in an Income-Tax, from which he anticipated an
+annual return of ten millions. Heavy as the tax was, and it amounted to
+ten per cent on all incomes above &pound;200 a year, the dogged resolution of
+the people to fight on <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-138" id="Page_8-138"></a><a href="./images/138.png">8-138</a>]</span>was seen in the absence of all opposition to
+this proposal. What was of even greater importance was to remove all
+chance of fresh danger from Ireland. Pitt's temper was of too
+statesmanlike a mould to rest content with the mere suppression of
+insurrection or with the system of terrorism which for the moment held
+the country down. His disgust at "the bigoted fury of Irish Protestants"
+had backed Lord Cornwallis in checking the reprisals of his troops and
+of the Orangemen; but the hideous cruelty which he was forced to witness
+brought about a firm resolve to put an end to the farce of
+"Independence" which left Ireland helpless in such hands. The political
+necessity for a union of the two islands had been brought home to every
+English statesman by the course of the Irish Parliament during the
+disputes over the Regency. While England repelled the claims of the
+Prince of Wales to the Regency as of right, the legislature of Ireland
+admitted them. As the only union left between the two peoples since the
+concession of legislative independence was their obedience to a common
+ruler, such an act might conceivably have ended in their entire
+severance; and the sense of this danger secured a welcome in England for
+the proposal which Pitt made at the opening of 1799 to unite the two
+Parliaments. The opposition of the Irish borough-mongers was naturally
+stubborn and determined, and when the plan was introduced into the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-139" id="Page_8-139"></a><a href="./images/139.png">8-139</a>]</span>Parliament at Dublin, it was only saved from rejection by a single
+vote. But with men like these it was a sheer question of gold; and their
+assent was bought with a million in money, and with a liberal
+distribution of pensions and peerages. Base and shameless as were such
+means, Pitt may fairly plead that they were the only means by which the
+bill for the Union could have been passed. As the matter was finally
+arranged in June 1800, one hundred Irish members became part of the
+House of Commons at Westminster, and twenty-eight temporal peers chosen
+by their fellows for life, with four spiritual peers succeeding in a
+fixed rotation, took their seats in the House of Lords. Commerce between
+the two countries was freed from all restrictions, and every trading
+privilege of the one thrown open to the other, while taxation was
+proportionately distributed between the two peoples.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">France and the Coalition.</span></p>
+
+<p>While the Union was being pushed slowly forward, the struggle abroad was
+passing through strange vicissitudes. At the opening of 1799 the efforts
+of the new coalition were crowned with success in every quarter. Though
+Naples had been turned into a Parthenopean Republic at the close of the
+previous year, and the French supremacy extended over the whole
+peninsula, the descent of an Austrian army from the Tyrol at the end of
+March, and a victory of the Russian and Austrian forces at Cassano,
+compelled the French army to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-140" id="Page_8-140"></a><a href="./images/140.png">8-140</a>]</span>evacuate Southern Italy and Lombardy,
+while a fresh defeat at Novi flung it back on the Maritime Alps. A
+campaign conducted with more varying success drove the armies which
+advanced into Germany back over the Rhine. In Switzerland however the
+stubborn energy of Massena enabled his soldiers to hold their ground
+against the combined attack of Russian and Austrian forces; and the
+attempt of a united force of Russians and English to wrest Holland from
+its French masters was successfully repulsed. Twelve of the thirty
+thousand men who formed this army consisted of English troops; and Sir
+Ralph Abercromby succeeded in landing at their head, in seizing what
+remained of the Dutch fleet at the Texel, and in holding General Brune
+at bay when he advanced with superior forces. But Abercromby was
+superseded in his command by the Duke of York; and in another month the
+new leader was glad to conclude a convention by which the safe
+withdrawal of his troops was secured.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Buonaparte in Syria.</span></p>
+
+<p>In the East however England was more successful. Even had Buonaparte not
+been baffled in his plans of a descent on Southern India from the basis
+of Egypt by the battle of the Nile, they would have been frustrated by
+the energy of Lord Wellesley. Mysore was invaded, its capital stormed,
+and Tippoo slain, before a French soldier could have been despatched to
+its aid. But foiled as were his dreams of Indian conquest the daring
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-141" id="Page_8-141"></a><a href="./images/141.png">8-141</a>]</span>genius of the French general plunged into wilder projects. He conceived
+the design of the conquest of Syria and of the creation of an army among
+its warlike mountaineers. "With a hundred thousand men on the banks of
+the Euphrates," he said years afterwards, "I might have gone to
+Constantinople or India, I might have changed the face of the world."
+Gaza was taken, Jaffa stormed, and ten thousand French soldiers advanced
+under their young general on Acre. Acre was the key of Syria, and its
+reduction was the first step in these immense projects. "Once possessed
+of Acre," wrote Napoleon, "the army would have gone to Damascus and the
+Euphrates. The Christians of Syria, the Druses, the Armenians, would
+have joined us. The provinces of the Ottoman Empire were ready for a
+change, and were only waiting for a man." But Acre was stubbornly held
+by the Turks, the French battering train was captured at sea by an
+English captain, Sir Sidney Smith, whose seamen aided in the defence of
+the place, and after a loss of three thousand men by sword and plague,
+the besiegers were forced to fall back upon Egypt.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Peace of Lun&eacute;ville.</span></p>
+
+<p>Egypt indeed was more than ever their own, for their army had now
+penetrated to the cataracts of the Nile, and a Turkish force which
+landed near Alexandria was cut to pieces by Buonaparte in the battle of
+Aboukir. But the news of defeat at home and the certainty that all wider
+hopes in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-142" id="Page_8-142"></a><a href="./images/142.png">8-142</a>]</span>the East were at an end, induced him only a month after his
+victory to leave his army. With a couple of frigates he set sail for
+France; and his arrival in Paris was soon followed by a change in the
+government. The Directors were divided among themselves, while the
+disasters of their administration made them hateful to the country; and
+a revolution brought about by the soldiery on the 10th of November put
+an end to their power. In the new system which followed three consuls
+took the place of the Directors; but the system only screened the
+government of a single man, for under the name of First Consul
+Buonaparte became in effect sole ruler of the country. His energy at
+once changed the whole face of European affairs. The offers of peace
+which he made to England and Austria were intended to do little more
+than to shake the coalition, and gain breathing time for the
+organization of a new force which was gathering in secrecy at Dijon,
+while Moreau with the army of the Rhine pushed again along the Danube.
+The First Consul crossed the Saint Bernard with this army in the spring
+of 1800, and on the 14th of June a victory at Marengo left the Austrian
+army, which had just succeeded in reducing Genoa, helpless in his hands.
+It was by the surrender of all Lombardy to the Oglio that the defeated
+general obtained an armistice for his troops; and a similar truce
+arrested the march of Moreau, who had captured <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-143" id="Page_8-143"></a><a href="./images/143.png">8-143</a>]</span>Munich and was pushing
+on to Vienna. The armistice only added to the difficulties of
+Buonaparte's opponents, for Russia, as anxious not to establish a German
+supremacy as she had been to weaken the supremacy of France, had
+withdrawn from the contest as soon as the coalition seemed to be
+successful; and Austria was only held back from peace by her acceptance
+of English subsidies. But though she fought on, the resumption of the
+war in the autumn failed to reverse the fortune of arms. The Austrians
+were driven back on Vienna; and on the second of December Moreau crushed
+their army on the Iser in the victory of Hohenlinden. But the aim of the
+First Consul was only to wrest peace from his enemies by these triumphs;
+while the expiration of her engagements with England left his opponent
+free to lay down her arms. In February 1801 therefore the Continental
+War was brought suddenly to an end by the Peace of Lun&eacute;ville.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-144" id="Page_8-144"></a><a href="./images/144.png">8-144</a>]</span></p>
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<div class="head">
+<hr />
+<ul>
+  <li>CHAPTER V</li>
+  <li>ENGLAND AND NAPOLEON</li>
+  <li>1801-1815</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The New Europe.</span></p>
+
+<p>The treaty of Lun&eacute;ville was of far greater import than the treaties
+which had ended the struggle of the first coalition. It was in effect
+the close of the attack which revolutionary France had directed against
+the Continental powers. With it expired the outer energy of the
+Revolution, as its inner energy expired with the elevation of Buonaparte
+to the First Consulate. The change that the French onset had wrought in
+the aspect of Europe had no doubt been great. In the nine years which
+had passed since the earlier league of the powers against her, France
+had won all and more than all that the ambition of her older statesmen
+had ever aimed at. She had absorbed the Netherlands. She was practically
+mistress of Holland, Switzerland, and Piedmont, whose dependent
+republics covered her frontier; while she had revived that union with
+Spain which had fallen for a time with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-145" id="Page_8-145"></a><a href="./images/145.png">8-145</a>]</span>the Family Compact of the House
+of Bourbon. But in spite of this growth the dread of French aggression
+was far less keenly felt by her neighbour states than in the early years
+of the war. What they had dreaded then was not so much the political
+reconstruction of Europe as the revolutionary enthusiasm which would
+have pushed this political reconstruction into a social revolution. But
+at the opening of the nineteenth century the enthusiasm of France had
+faded away. She was again Christian. She was again practically
+monarchical. What her neighbours saw in her after all these years of
+change was little more than the old France with a wider frontier; and
+now that they could look upon those years as a whole, it was clear that
+much of this widening of her borders was only a fair counterbalance for
+the widened borders of the states around her. If France had grown great,
+other powers had grown in greatness too. If France had pushed her
+frontier to the Rhine and established dependencies across the Rhone and
+the Alps, Russia during the same period had annexed the bulk of Poland,
+and the two great German powers had enlarged themselves both to the east
+and the west. The Empire had practically ceased to be; but its ruin had
+given fresh extension and compactness to the states which had profited
+by it. The cessions of Prussia had been small beside her gains. The
+losses of Austria had been more than <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-146" id="Page_8-146"></a><a href="./images/146.png">8-146</a>]</span>counterbalanced in Italy by her
+acquisition of Venice, and far more than counterbalanced by
+secularizations and annexations within Germany itself.</p>
+
+<a name="lunevilletb" id="lunevilletb"></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="./images/luneville.jpg">
+<img class="plain" src="./images/lunevilletb.jpg" width="400" height="307" alt="map of Europe after Luneville treaty" title="Europe after the Peace of Luneville" /></a>
+<span class="caption">Europe after the Peace of Lun&eacute;ville</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">France and Britain.</span></p>
+
+<p>Although therefore the old Europe and its balance of power had passed
+away, the new Europe which had taken its place presented a balance of
+power which might be regarded as even more effective; and the peace of
+Lun&eacute;ville was in reality the recognition on both sides of a European
+settlement on the basis of such a balance. But in the mind of Buonaparte
+it was far more than this. It was the first step in an entire reversal
+of the policy which Revolutionary France had pursued in her dealings
+with the world. It was a return to the older policy of the French
+monarchy. Under the guidance of the revolutionists France had striven
+for supremacy among the states of Europe. But for such a supremacy the
+First Consul cared comparatively little. What he cared for was what
+Choiseul and the statesmen who followed him cared for, the supremacy of
+the world. And he saw that with every year of war on the Continent such
+a supremacy grew more distant than ever. The very victories of France
+indeed were playing into the hands of England. Amidst all the triumphs
+of the revolutionary war the growth of the British Empire had been
+steady and ceaseless. She was more than ever mistress of the sea. The
+mastery of Holland by the French had only ended in the removal of one of
+the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-147" id="Page_8-147"></a><a href="./images/147.png">8-147</a>]</span>obstacles to such a mastery by the ruin of the Dutch navy, and the
+transfer of the rich Dutch colonies to the British crown. The winning of
+Egypt had but spurred her to crush the only Mussulman power that could
+avert her rule over southern India. But her growth was more than a
+merely territorial growth. She was turning her command of the seas to a
+practical account. Not only was she monopolizing the carrying trade of
+the European nations, but the sudden uprush of her industries was making
+her the workshop as well as the market of the world. From the first the
+mind of Buonaparte had been set on a struggle with this growing
+world-power. Even amidst his earliest victories he had dreamed of
+wresting from England her dominion in the East; and if his Egyptian
+expedition had done nothing for India, it had secured in Egypt itself a
+stepping-stone for further efforts. But now that France was wholly at
+his disposal, the First Consul resolved to free his hands from the
+strife with the Continent, and to enter on that struggle with Britain
+which was henceforth to be the task of his life.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Pitt's position.</span></p>
+
+<p>The significance then of the Peace of Lun&eacute;ville lay in this, not only
+that it was the close of the earlier revolutionary struggle for
+supremacy in Europe, the abandonment by France of her effort to
+"liberate the peoples," to force new institutions on the nations about
+her by sheer dint of arms; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-148" id="Page_8-148"></a><a href="./images/148.png">8-148</a>]</span>but that it marked the concentration of all
+her energies on a struggle with Britain for the supremacy of the world.
+For England herself the event which accompanied it, the sudden
+withdrawal of William Pitt from office which took place in the very
+month of the treaty, was hardly less significant. To men of our day the
+later position of William Pitt seems one of almost tragic irony. An
+economist heaping up millions of debt, a Peace Minister dragged into the
+costliest of wars, he is the very type of the baffled statesman; and the
+passionate loyalty with which England clung to him through the
+revolutionary struggle is one of the least intelligible passages of our
+history. But if England clung to Pitt through these years of gloom, it
+was because then more than ever she saw in him her own representative.
+His strength had lain throughout in his reflection of public opinion:
+and public opinion saw itself reflected in him still. At the outset of
+his career the set of opinion had been towards a larger and more popular
+policy than of old. New facilities of communication, new industrial
+energy, and a quick accumulation of wealth, as well as the social
+changes which followed hard on these economical changes, all pointed
+forward to political progress, to an adaptation of our institutions to
+the varied conditions of the time. The nation was quivering with a new
+sense of life; and it faced eagerly questions of religion, of
+philanthropy, of education, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-149" id="Page_8-149"></a><a href="./images/149.png">8-149</a>]</span>of trade, as one after another they
+presented themselves before it. Above all it clung to the young minister
+whose ideas were its own, who, alien as his temper seemed from that of
+an innovator, came boldly to the front with projects for a new
+Parliament, a new finance, a new international policy, a new imperial
+policy, a new humanitarian policy. It was this oneness of Pitt's temper
+with the temper of the men he ruled that made him sympathize, in spite
+of the alarm of the court, with the first movements of the revolution in
+France, and deal fairly, if coldly, with its after-course. It was this
+that gave him strength to hold out so long against a struggle with it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Pitt and the War.</span></p>
+
+<p>But as the alarm deepened, as the nation saw its social, political, and
+religious traditions alike threatened, the bulk of Englishmen swung
+round into an attitude of fierce resistance. The craving for
+self-preservation hushed all other cravings. What men looked for in Pitt
+now was not the economist or the reformer, but the son of Chatham, the
+heir of his father's courage, of his father's faith in the greatness of
+England. And what they looked for they found. Pitt was no born War
+Minister; he had none of the genius that commands victory, or of the
+passionate enthusiasm that rouses a nation to great deeds of arms. But
+he had faith in England. Even when she stood alone against the world he
+never despaired. Reading him, as we read him now, we see the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-150" id="Page_8-150"></a><a href="./images/150.png">8-150</a>]</span>sickness
+and the gloom of his inner soul; but no sign betrayed it to the world.
+As the tempest gathered about them, men looked with trust that deepened
+into awe on the stately figure that embodied their faith in England's
+fortunes, and huddled in the darkness round "the pilot that weathered
+the storm." But there were deeper and less conscious grounds for their
+trust in him. Pitt reflected far more than the nation's resolve. He
+reflected the waverings and inconsistencies of its political temper in a
+way that no other man did. In the general swing round to an attitude of
+resistance, the impulse of progress had come utterly to an end. Men
+doubted of the truth of principles that seemed to have brought about the
+horrors of the Revolution. They listened to Burke as he built up his
+theory of political immobility on the basis of an absolute perfection in
+the constitution of things as they were. But even in this moment of
+reaction they still clung unconsciously to a belief in something better,
+to a trust that progress would again be possible, and to the man who
+reflected their trust. Like them, Pitt could understand little of the
+scene about him, that seething ocean of European change where states
+vanished like dreams, and the very elements of social life seemed to
+melt in a mist; his mind, like theirs, was baffled with doubt and
+darkness, with the seeming suicide of freedom, the seeming triumph of
+violence and wrong. But, baffled and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-151" id="Page_8-151"></a><a href="./images/151.png">8-151</a>]</span>bewildered as he was, he never
+ceased to believe in liberty, or to hope that the work of reform which
+he had begun might yet be carried into effect.</p>
+
+<p>It was as the representative of this temper of the people at large, of
+its mingled mood of terror at the new developements of freedom and yet
+of faith in freedom itself, of its dread of progress and yet its hope of
+a time when a larger national life should again become possible, that
+Pitt had gathered the nation round him from the opening of the war. Much
+indeed of the seeming weakness and uncertainty of his statesmanship
+throughout the struggle sprang from the fidelity with which he reflected
+this double aspect of national opinion. He has been blamed for fighting
+the French Revolution at all, as he has been blamed for not entering on
+an anti-revolutionary crusade. But his temper was that of the nation as
+a whole. He shrank from the fanaticism of Burke as he shrank from the
+fanaticism of Tom Paine: his aim was not to crush France or the
+Revolution, but to bring the struggle with them to such an end as might
+enable England to return in safety to the work of progress which the
+struggle had interrupted. And it was this that gave significance to his
+fall. It was a sign that the time had come when the national union which
+Pitt embodied must dissolve with the disappearance of the force that
+created it; when resistance had done its work, and the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-152" id="Page_8-152"></a><a href="./images/152.png">8-152</a>]</span>arrest of all
+national movement had come to an end with the attitude of mere
+resistance from which it sprang; when in face of a new France and a new
+French policy England could again return to her normal political life,
+and the impulses towards progress which had received so severe a check
+in 1792 could again flow in their older channels. In such a return Pitt
+himself took the lead; and his proposal of Catholic emancipation was as
+significant of a new era of English life as the Peace of Lun&eacute;ville was
+significant of a new settlement of Europe.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Catholic Emancipation.</span></p>
+
+<p>In Pitt's mind the Union which he brought about in 1800 was more than a
+mere measure for the security of the one island; it was a first step in
+the regeneration of the other. The legislative connexion of the two
+countries was only part of the plan which he had conceived for the
+conciliation of Ireland. With the conclusion of the Union indeed, his
+projects of free trade between the two countries, projects which had
+been defeated a few years back by the folly of the Irish Parliament,
+came quietly into play; and in spite of insufficient capital and social
+disturbance the growth of the trade, shipping, and manufactures of
+Ireland has gone on without a check from that time to this. The change
+which brought Ireland directly under the common Parliament was followed
+too by a gradual revision of its oppressive laws and an amendment in
+their administration; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-153" id="Page_8-153"></a><a href="./images/153.png">8-153</a>]</span>while taxation was lightened, and a faint
+beginning made of public instruction. But in Pitt's mind the great means
+of conciliation was the concession of religious equality. In proposing
+to the English Parliament the union of the two countries he pointed out
+that when thus joined to a Protestant country like England all danger of
+a Catholic supremacy in Ireland, even should Catholic disabilities be
+removed, would be practically at an end. In such a case, he suggested
+that "an effectual and adequate provision for the Catholic clergy" would
+be a security for their loyalty. His words gave strength to the hopes of
+"Catholic emancipation," as the removal of what remained of the civil
+disabilities of Catholics was called, which were held out by his agent,
+Lord Castlereagh, in Ireland itself as a means of hindering any
+opposition to the project of Union on the part of the Catholics. It was
+agreed on all sides that their opposition would have secured its defeat;
+and the absence of such a Catholic opposition showed the new trust in
+Pitt which was awakened by the hints of Lord Castlereagh. The trust had
+good grounds to go on. After the passing of the bill Pitt prepared to
+lay before his Cabinet a measure which would have raised not only the
+Irish Catholic but the Irish Dissenter to a perfect equality of civil
+rights. He proposed to remove all religious tests which limited the
+exercise of the franchise, or which were required for admission to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-154" id="Page_8-154"></a><a href="./images/154.png">8-154</a>]</span>Parliament, the magistracy, the bar, municipal offices, or posts in the
+army or the service of the State. An oath of allegiance and of fidelity
+to the Constitution was substituted for the Sacramental test; while the
+loyalty of the Catholic and Dissenting clergy was secured by a grant of
+some provision to both on the part of the State. To win over the
+Episcopal Church to such an equality measures were added for
+strengthening its modes of discipline, as well as for increasing the
+stipends of its poorer ministers, while a commutation of tithes was
+planned as a means of removing a constant source of quarrel between the
+Protestant clergy and the Irish people.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Pitt's resignation.</span></p>
+
+<p>But the scheme was too large and statesmanlike to secure the immediate
+assent of the Cabinet; and before that assent could be won or the plan
+laid with full ministerial sanction before the king, it was communicated
+through the treachery of the Chancellor, Lord Loughborough, to George
+the Third. "I count any man my personal enemy," George broke out angrily
+to Dundas, "who proposes any such measure." Pitt answered this outburst
+by submitting his whole plan to the king. "The political circumstances
+under which the exclusive laws originated," he wrote, "arising either
+from the conflicting power of hostile and nearly balanced sects, from
+the apprehension of a Popish queen as successor, a disputed succession
+and a foreign pretender, a division in Europe <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-155" id="Page_8-155"></a><a href="./images/155.png">8-155</a>]</span>between Catholic and
+Protestant Powers, are no longer applicable to the present state of
+things." But argument was wasted upon George the Third. In spite of the
+decision of the lawyers whom he consulted, the king declared himself
+bound by his Coronation Oath to maintain the tests; and his obstinacy
+was only strengthened by a knowledge that such a refusal must drive Pitt
+from office. George was weary of his minister's supremacy. He was
+longing for servants who would leave him more than a show of power, and
+he chose his ground for a struggle with all the cunning of his earlier
+years. It was by his command of public opinion that Pitt had been able
+to force his measures on the king. But in the question of Catholic
+Emancipation George knew that opinion was not with his minister, but
+with himself. On this point his bigotry was at one with the bigotry of
+the bulk of his subjects, as well as with their political distrust of
+Catholics and Irishmen. He persisted therefore in his refusal; and it
+was followed by the event he foresaw. In February 1801, at the moment of
+the Peace of Lun&eacute;ville, William Pitt resigned his office into the hands
+of the king.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Addington Ministry.</span></p>
+
+<p>It was with a sense of relief that George found himself freed from the
+great minister whose temper was so alien from his own. But it was with a
+yet greater sense of relief that he saw him followed into retirement not
+only by Lord Grenville, but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-156" id="Page_8-156"></a><a href="./images/156.png">8-156</a>]</span>by nearly all the more liberal section of
+the ministry, by men like Windham and Lord Spencer, the representatives
+of the "Old Whigs" who had joined Pitt on the disruption of their party
+through the French Revolution. Such a union indeed could hardly have
+lasted much longer. The terror which had so long held these Whigs in
+their alliance with the Tories who formed the bulk of the administration
+was now at an end; and we have already seen their pressure for a more
+liberal policy in the action of Lord Fitzwilliam as Lord-Lieutenant of
+Ireland. But the question of Emancipation finally brought about a
+restoration of the natural position of parties; and from this moment the
+old Whigs, who accepted Lord Grenville as their head, fell into alliance
+with the more revolutionary Whigs who had remained faithful to Fox. The
+Whig party thus became again a powerful element in English politics,
+while in face of the reunited Whigs stood the Tories, relieved like
+themselves from the burthen of an alliance which grew hourly more
+distasteful. The bulk of the old Ministry returned in a few days to
+office with Mr. Addington at their head, and his administration received
+the support of the whole Tory party in Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>Without the walls of Parliament however the nation looked on such a
+change with dismay. Addington was regarded as a weak and narrow-minded
+man; and the favour with which the king <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-157" id="Page_8-157"></a><a href="./images/157.png">8-157</a>]</span>welcomed him was clue to a
+consciousness of their common bigotry. Of Lord Hawkesbury, who succeeded
+Lord Grenville in the conduct of foreign affairs, nothing was known
+outside the House of Commons. It was with anxiety that England found
+itself guided by men like these at a time when every hour brought darker
+news. The scarcity of bread was mounting to a famine. Taxes were raised
+anew, and yet the loan for the year amounted to five-and-twenty
+millions. The country stood utterly alone; while the peace of Lun&eacute;ville
+secured France from all hostility on the Continent. And it was soon
+plain that this peace was only the first step in a new policy on the
+part of the First Consul. What he had done was to free his hands for a
+decisive conflict with Britain itself, both as a world-power and as a
+centre of wealth. England was at once the carrier of European commerce
+and the workshop of European manufactures. While her mines, her looms,
+her steam-engines, were giving her almost a monopoly of industrial
+production, her merchant ships sufficed not only to spread her own
+products through the world, but to carry to every part of it the
+products of other countries. Though the war had already told on both
+these sources of wealth, it was far from having told fatally. It had
+long closed France indeed to English exports, while the waste of wealth
+in so wide a strife had lessened the buying power of Europe at large.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-158" id="Page_8-158"></a><a href="./images/158.png">8-158</a>]</span>But in Europe the loss was to some extent made up for the moment by the
+artificial demand for supplies which war creates; the home market still
+sufficed to absorb a vast quantity of manufactures; and America, which
+was fast growing into the most important of English customers, remained
+unaffected by the struggle. Industry had thus suffered but little loss,
+while commerce believed itself to have greatly gained. All rivals save
+one had in fact been swept from the sea; the carrying trade of France
+and Holland alike had been transferred to the British flag, and the
+conquest of their wealthier settlements had thrown into British hands
+the whole colonial trade of the world.</p>
+
+<a name="tilsittb" id="tilsittb"></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="./images/tilsit.jpg">
+<img class="plain" src="./images/tilsittb.jpg" width="400" height="309" alt="map of Europe after Tilsit treaty" title="Europe after the Peace of Tilsit" /></a>
+<span class="caption">Europe after the Peace of Tilsit</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">League of Neutrals.</span></p>
+
+<p>To strike at England's wealth had been among the projects of the
+Directory: it was now the dream of the First Consul. It was in vain for
+England to produce, if he shut her out of every market. Her carrying
+trade must be annihilated if he closed every port against her ships. It
+was this gigantic project of a "Continental System" that revealed itself
+as soon as Buonaparte became finally master of France. From France
+itself and its dependencies in Holland and the Netherlands English trade
+was already excluded. But Italy also was shut against her after the
+Peace of Lun&eacute;ville, and Spain not only closed her own ports but forced
+Portugal to break with her English ally. In the Baltic Buonaparte was
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-159" id="Page_8-159"></a><a href="./images/159.png">8-159</a>]</span>more active than even in the Mediterranean. In a treaty with America,
+which was destined to bring this power also in the end into his great
+attack, he had formally recognized the rights of neutral vessels which
+England was hourly disputing; and in her disregard of them he not only
+saw the means of bringing the northern powers into his system of
+exclusion, but of drawing on their resources for a yet more decisive
+blow. He was set upon challenging not only England's wealth but her
+world-empire; and his failure in Egypt had taught him that the first
+condition of success in such an enterprise was to wrest from her her
+command of the seas. The only means of doing this lay in a combination
+of naval powers; and the earlier efforts of France had left but one
+naval combination for Buonaparte to try. The Directory had been able to
+assail England at sea by the joint action of the French fleet with those
+of Holland and of Spain. But the Spanish navy had been crippled by the
+battle of Cape St. Vincent, and the Dutch fleet destroyed in the victory
+of Camperdown. The only powers which now possessed naval resources were
+the powers of the North. The fleets of Denmark, Sweden, and Russia
+numbered forty sail of the line, and they had been untouched by the
+strife. Both the Scandinavian states resented the severity with which
+Britain enforced that right of search which had brought about their
+armed neutrality at the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-160" id="Page_8-160"></a><a href="./images/160.png">8-160</a>]</span>close of the American war; while Denmark was
+besides an old ally of France, and her sympathies were still believed to
+be French. The First Consul therefore had little trouble in enlisting
+them in a league of neutrals, which was in effect a declaration of war
+against England, and which Prussia as before showed herself ready to
+join.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Russia's designs.</span></p>
+
+<p>Russia indeed seemed harder to gain. Since Paul's accession she had been
+the moving spirit in the confederacy which had only been broken up by
+the victory of Marengo. But the spirit of revolutionary aggression which
+had nominally roused Paul to action, had, as the Czar believed, been
+again hushed by the First Consul. Buonaparte had yielded to his
+remonstrances in preserving the independence of Naples and Sardinia; and
+with Italian subtlety he now turned the faith in French moderation which
+these concessions created in the mind of Paul into a dread of the
+ambition of England and a jealousy of her sovereignty of the seas. But
+his efforts would have been in vain had they not fallen in with the
+general current of Russian policy. From the first outbreak of the
+Revolutionary struggle Russia, as we have seen, had taken advantage of
+the strife among the Western nations to push forward her own projects in
+the East. Catharine had aimed at absorbing Poland, and at becoming the
+mistress of European Turkey. In the first she had been successful, but
+the second still <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-161" id="Page_8-161"></a><a href="./images/161.png">8-161</a>]</span>remained unaccomplished when her empire passed to her
+son. For a time Paul had been diverted from the task by the turn of
+affairs in Western Europe, where the victories of the French Republic
+threatened an utter overthrow of the powers opposed to it, which would
+have foiled the plans of Russia by bringing about a European union that
+must have paralysed her advance. The Czar therefore acted strictly in
+the spirit of Catharine's policy when he stepped in again to feed the
+strife by raising the combatants to a new equality, and when he withdrew
+his armies at the very moment that this was done. But successful as his
+diversion had been, Paul saw that one obstacle remained in the way of
+his projects upon Turkey. Pitt had never hidden his opposition to the
+Russian plans. His whole policy at the outbreak of the Revolution had
+been guided by a desperate hope of binding the powers again together to
+prevent the ruin of Poland, or of hindering it by a league of England
+and France alone. Foiled as he had been in these efforts, he was even
+more resolute to check the advance of Russia on Constantinople. Already
+her growing empire in India was telling on the European policy of
+England; and the security of Egypt, of Syria, of Turkey at large, was
+getting deemed to be essential to the maintenance of her communication
+with her great dependency. The French descent on Egypt, the attack on
+Syria, had bound Britain and Turkey <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-162" id="Page_8-162"></a><a href="./images/162.png">8-162</a>]</span>together; and Paul saw that an
+attack on the one would bring him a fresh opponent in the other.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The League broken up.</span></p>
+
+<p>It was to check the action of Britain in the East that the Czar now
+turned to the French Consul, and seconded his efforts for the formation
+of a naval confederacy in the North, while his minister, Rostopchin,
+planned a division of the Turkish Empire in Europe between Russia and
+her allies. Austria was to be satisfied with the western provinces of
+the Balkan peninsula; Russia gained Moldavia, Bulgaria, and Roumelia as
+far as Constantinople; while Greece fell to the lot of France, whose
+troops were already on the Italian shores, at a day's sail from the
+Illyrian coast. A squabble over Malta, which had been blockaded since
+its capture by Buonaparte, and which surrendered at last to a British
+fleet, but whose possession the Czar claimed as his own on the ground of
+an alleged election as Grand Master of the Order of St. John, served as
+a pretext for a quarrel with England; and at the close of 1800 Paul
+openly prepared for hostilities. In October he announced an armed
+neutrality; in December he seized three hundred English vessels in his
+ports, and sequestrated all English goods found in his Empire. The
+Danes, who throughout the year had been struggling to evade the British
+right of search, at once joined this neutral league, and were followed
+by Sweden in their course. It <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-163" id="Page_8-163"></a><a href="./images/163.png">8-163</a>]</span>was plain that, as soon as the spring of
+1801 opened the Baltic, the fleets of the three Powers would act in
+practical union with those of France and Spain. But the command of the
+seas which such a union threatened was a matter for England of life and
+death, for at this very moment the Peace of Lun&eacute;ville left Buonaparte
+without a foe on the Continent, and able to deal as he would with the
+whole military resources of France. Once master of the Channel he could
+throw a force on the southern coast of England which she had no means of
+meeting in the field. But dexterous as the combination was, it was
+shattered at a blow. On the first of April 1801 a British fleet of
+eighteen men-of-war forced the passage of the Belt, appeared before
+Copenhagen, and at once attacked the city and its fleet. In spite of a
+brave resistance from the Danish batteries and gunboats six Danish ships
+were taken, and the Crown Prince was forced to conclude an armistice
+which enabled the English ships to enter the Baltic, where the Russian
+fleet was still detained by the ice. But their work was really over. The
+seizure of English goods and the declaration of war had bitterly
+irritated the Russian nobles, whose sole outlet for the sale of the
+produce of their vast estates was thus closed to them; and on the
+twenty-fourth of March, nine days before the battle of Copenhagen, Paul
+fell in a midnight attack by conspirators in his own palace. With <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-164" id="Page_8-164"></a><a href="./images/164.png">8-164</a>]</span>Paul
+fell the Confederacy of the North. The policy of his successor, the Czar
+Alexander, was far more in unison with the general feeling of his
+subjects; in June a Convention between England and Russia settled the
+vexed questions of the right of search and contraband of war, and this
+Convention was accepted by Sweden and Denmark.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">French lose Egypt.</span></p>
+
+<p>The First Consul's disappointment was keen; but he saw clearly that with
+this dissolution of the Northern alliance the war came virtually to an
+end. He no longer had any means of attacking Britain save by the efforts
+of France itself, and even with the aid of Holland and Spain France was
+at this moment helpless before the supremacy of England at sea. On the
+other hand the continuance of the struggle would give triumph after
+triumph to his foes. One such blow had already fallen. Even in the midst
+of his immense schemes against Britain at home, Buonaparte had not
+abandoned the hope of attacking her in India. Egypt was needful to such
+a scheme; and from the first moment of his power he strained every nerve
+to retain Egypt in the hands of France. Menou, who commanded there, was
+ordered to hold the country; an expedition was fitted out in the Spanish
+ports for its relief; and light vessels were hurried from the Italian
+coast with arms and supplies. But at the very moment of the attack on
+Copenhagen, a stroke as effective wrecked his projects in the East.
+England had not forgotten <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-165" id="Page_8-165"></a><a href="./images/165.png">8-165</a>]</span>the danger to her dependency; ever since
+Buonaparte's expedition her fleet had blockaded Malta, the island
+fortress whose possession gave France a first stepping-stone in any
+enterprise against it; and the surrender of Malta left her unquestioned
+mistress of the Mediterranean. From Malta she now turned to Egypt
+itself. Triumphant as England had been at sea since the opening of the
+war, her soldiers had proved no match for the French on land. Two
+expeditions had been sent against Holland, and each had ended in a
+disastrous retreat. But at this moment England reappeared as a military
+power. In March 1801 a force of 15,000 men under General Abercromby
+anchored in Aboukir Bay. Deserted as they were by Buonaparte, the French
+had firmly maintained their hold on Egypt. They had suppressed a revolt
+at Cairo, driven back Turkish invaders in a fresh victory, and by native
+levies and reinforcements raised the number of their troops to 30,000
+men. But their army was foolishly scattered, and Abercromby was able to
+force a landing five days after his arrival on the coast. The French
+however rapidly concentrated; and on the 21st of March their general
+attacked the English army on the ground it had won with a force equal to
+its own. The battle was a stubborn one, and Abercromby fell mortally
+wounded ere its close; but after six hours' fighting the French drew off
+with heavy loss; and their retreat was followed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-166" id="Page_8-166"></a><a href="./images/166.png">8-166</a>]</span>by the investment of
+Alexandria and Cairo, into which Menou had withdrawn his army. All hope
+however was over. Five thousand Turks, with a fresh division from
+England and India, reinforced the besiegers; and at the close of June
+the capitulation of the 13,000 soldiers who remained closed the French
+rule over Egypt.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Peace of Amiens.</span></p>
+
+<p>Bitter as was the anger with which the First Consul received the news of
+this surrender, it only strengthened his resolve to suspend a war of
+which Britain only could now reap the fruits, and whose continuance
+might in the present temper of Russia and its Czar disturb that peace of
+the Continent on which all his plans against England rested. It was to
+give time for such an organization of France and its resources as might
+enable him to reopen the struggle with other chances of success that the
+First Consul opened negotiations for peace at the close of 1801. His
+offers were at once met by the English Government. In the actual
+settlement of the Continent indeed England saw only an imperfect balance
+to the power of France, but it had no means of disputing the settlement,
+as France had no means of disturbing its supremacy at sea. If Buonaparte
+wished to husband his resources for a new attack all but the wilder
+Tories were willing to husband the resources of England for the more
+favourable opportunity of renewing it which would come with a revival of
+European energy. With such <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-167" id="Page_8-167"></a><a href="./images/167.png">8-167</a>]</span>a temper on both sides the conclusion of
+peace became easy; and the negotiations which went on through the winter
+between England and the three allied Powers of France, Spain, and the
+Dutch, brought about in March 1802 the Peace of Amiens. The terms of the
+Peace were necessarily simple; for as England had no claim to interfere
+with the settlement of the Continent, which had been brought about by
+the treaties of its powers with the French Republic, all that remained
+for her was to provide that the settlement should be a substantial one
+by a pledge on the part of France to withdraw its forces from Southern
+Italy, and to leave to themselves the republics it had set up along its
+border in Holland, Switzerland, and Piedmont. In exchange for this
+pledge England recognized the French government, restored all the
+colonies which they had lost, save Ceylon and Trinidad, to France and
+its allies, acknowledged the Ionian Islands as a free republic, and
+engaged to restore Malta within three months to its old masters, the
+Knights of St. John.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Buonaparte.</span></p>
+
+<p>There was a general sense of relief at the close of so long a struggle;
+and for a moment the bitter hatred which England had cherished against
+France seemed to give place to more friendly feelings. The new French
+ambassador was drawn in triumph on his arrival through the streets of
+London; and thousands of Englishmen crossed the Channel to visit a
+country which had conquered <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-168" id="Page_8-168"></a><a href="./images/168.png">8-168</a>]</span>the world, and to gaze on the young general
+who after wonderful victories had given a yet more wonderful peace to
+Europe. But amidst all the glare of success, shrewd observers saw the
+dangers that lay in the temper of the First Consul. Whatever had been
+the errors of the French Revolutionists, even their worst attacks on the
+independence of the nations around them had been veiled by a vague
+notion of freeing the peoples whom they invaded from the yoke of their
+rulers. But the aim of Buonaparte was simply that of a vulgar conqueror.
+He was resolute to be master of the Western world, and no notions of
+popular freedom or sense of national right interfered with his resolve.
+The means at his command for carrying out such a design were immense.
+The political life of the Revolution had been cut short by his military
+despotism, but the new social vigour which the Revolution had given to
+France through the abolition of privileges and the creation of a new
+middle class on the ruins of the clergy and the nobles still lived on;
+and while the dissensions which tore the country asunder were hushed by
+the policy of the First Consul, by his restoration of the Church as a
+religious power, his recall of the exiles, and the economy and wise
+administration that distinguished his rule, the centralised system of
+government that had been bequeathed by the Monarchy to the Revolution
+and by the Revolution to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-169" id="Page_8-169"></a><a href="./images/169.png">8-169</a>]</span>Buonaparte enabled him easily to seize this
+national vigour for the profit of his own despotism. On the other hand,
+the exhaustion of the brilliant hopes raised by the Revolution, the
+craving for public order, the military enthusiasm and the impulse of a
+new glory given by the wonderful victories France had won, made a
+Tyranny possible; and in the hands of Buonaparte this tyranny was
+supported by a secret police, by the suppression of the press and of all
+freedom of opinion, and above all by the iron will and immense ability
+of the First Consul himself.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">His designs.</span></p>
+
+<p>Once chosen Consul for life, he felt himself secure at home, and turned
+restlessly to the work of outer aggression. The pledges given at Amiens
+were set aside. The republics established on the borders of France were
+brought into mere dependence on his will. Piedmont and Parma were
+actually annexed to France; and a French army occupied Switzerland. The
+temperate protests of the English Government were answered by demands
+for the expulsion of the French exiles who had been living in England
+ever since the Revolution, and for its surrender of Malta, which was
+retained till some security could be devised against a fresh seizure of
+the island by the French fleet. Meanwhile huge armaments were preparing
+in the French ports; and a new activity was seen in those of Spain. Not
+for a moment indeed had Buonaparte relinquished his design of attacking
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-170" id="Page_8-170"></a><a href="./images/170.png">8-170</a>]</span>Britain. He had made peace because peace would serve his purpose, both
+in strengthening the tranquillity of the Continent, which was essential
+to his success in any campaign across the Channel, and in giving him
+time to replace by a new combination the maritime schemes which had
+broken down. Beaten as it had been, the Spanish fleet was still
+powerful; and a union with the French fleet which the First Consul was
+forming might still enable it to dispute the command of the sea. All
+that he wished for was time; and time was what the Peace gave him. But
+delay was as dangerous to England, now that it discerned his plans, as
+it was profitable to France; and in May 1803 the British Government
+anticipated his attack by a declaration of war.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Camp at Boulogne.</span></p>
+
+<p>The breach only quickened Buonaparte's resolve to attack his enemy at
+home. The difficulties in his way he set contemptuously aside; "Fifteen
+millions of people," he said, in allusion to the disproportion between
+the population of England and France, "must give way to forty millions";
+and the invasion was planned on a gigantic scale. A camp of one hundred
+thousand men was formed at Boulogne, and a host of flat-bottomed boats
+gathered for their conveyance across the Channel. The peril of the
+nation forced Addington from office and recalled Pitt to power. His
+health was broken, and as the days went by his appearance became so
+haggard and depressed that it was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-171" id="Page_8-171"></a><a href="./images/171.png">8-171</a>]</span>plain death was drawing near. But
+dying as he really was, the nation clung to him with all its old faith.
+He was still the representative of national union; and he proposed to
+include Fox and the leading Whigs in his new ministry, but he was foiled
+by the bigotry of the king; and the refusal of Lord Grenville and of
+Windham to take office without Fox, as well as the loss of his post at a
+later time by his ablest supporter, Dundas, left him almost alone. But
+lonely as he was, he faced difficulty and danger with the same courage
+as of old. The invasion seemed imminent when Buonaparte, who now assumed
+the title of the Emperor Napoleon, appeared in the camp at Boulogne. A
+slight experience however showed him the futility of his scheme for
+crossing the Channel in open boats in the teeth of English men-of-war;
+and he turned to fresh plans of securing its passage. "Let us be masters
+of the Channel for six hours," he is reported to have said, "and we are
+masters of the world." A skilfully-combined plan, by which the British
+fleet would have been divided while the whole French navy was
+concentrated in the Channel, was delayed by the death of the admiral
+destined to execute it. But the alliance with Spain placed the Spanish
+fleet at Napoleon's disposal, and in 1805 he planned its union with that
+of France, the crushing of the squadron which blocked the ports of the
+Channel before the English ships <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-172" id="Page_8-172"></a><a href="./images/172.png">8-172</a>]</span>which were watching the Spanish
+armament could come to its support, and a crossing of the vast armament
+thus protected to the English shore.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Trafalgar.</span></p>
+
+<p>Though three hundred thousand volunteers mustered in England to meet the
+coming attack, such a force would have offered but small hindrance to
+the veterans of the Grand Army, had they once crossed the Channel. But
+Pitt had already found them work elsewhere. It was not merely the danger
+of Britain, and the sense that without this counterpoise they would be
+helpless before the new French Empire, that roused the alarm of the
+Continental powers. They had been scared by Napoleon's course of
+aggression since the settlement at Lun&eacute;ville, and his annexation of
+Genoa brought their alarm to a head. Pitt's offer of subsidies removed
+the last obstacle in the way of a league; and Russia, Austria, and
+Sweden joined in an alliance to wrest Italy and the Low Countries from
+the grasp of the French Emperor. Napoleon meanwhile swept the sea in
+vain for a glimpse of the great armament whose assembly in the Channel
+he had so skilfully planned. Admiral Villeneuve, uniting the Spanish
+ships with his own squadron from Toulon, drew Nelson in pursuit to the
+West Indies, and then suddenly returning to Cadiz, hastened to form a
+junction with the French squadron at Brest and to crush the English
+fleet in the Channel. But a headlong pursuit brought Nelson up with him
+ere the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-173" id="Page_8-173"></a><a href="./images/173.png">8-173</a>]</span>man&oelig;uvre was complete, and the two fleets met on the 21st of
+October 1805 off Cape Trafalgar. "England" ran Nelson's famous signal,
+"expects every man to do his duty"; and though he fell himself in the
+hour of victory, twenty French sail had struck their flag ere the day
+was done. The French and Spanish navies were in fact annihilated. From
+this hour the supremacy of England at sea remained unquestioned; and the
+danger of any invasion of England rolled away like a dream.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Peace of Tilsit.</span></p>
+
+<p>Her allies were less fortunate. "England has saved herself by her
+courage," Pitt said in what were destined to be his last public words:
+"she will save Europe by her example!" But even before the victory of
+Trafalgar Napoleon had abandoned the dream of invading England to meet
+the coalition in his rear; and swinging round his forces on the Danube,
+he forced an Austrian army to capitulation in Ulm three days before his
+naval defeat. From Ulm he marched on Vienna, and at the close of
+November he crushed the combined armies of Austria and Russia in the
+battle of Austerlitz. "Austerlitz," Wilberforce wrote in his diary,
+"killed Pitt." Though he was still but forty-seven, the hollow voice and
+wasted frame of the great Minister had long told that death was near;
+and the blow to his hopes proved fatal. "Roll up that map," he said,
+pointing to a map of Europe which hung upon the wall; "it will not be
+wanted these ten <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-174" id="Page_8-174"></a><a href="./images/174.png">8-174</a>]</span>years!" Once only he rallied from stupor; and those
+who bent over him caught a faint murmur of "My country! How I leave my
+country!" On the twenty-third of January 1806 he breathed his last; and
+was laid in Westminster Abbey in the grave of Chatham. "What grave,"
+exclaimed Lord Wellesley, "contains such a father and such a son! What
+sepulchre embosoms the remains of so much human excellence and glory!"
+So great was felt to be the loss that nothing but the union of parties,
+which Pitt had in vain desired during his lifetime, could fill up the
+gap left by his death. In the new ministry Fox, with the small body of
+popular Whigs who were bent on peace and internal reform, united with
+the aristocratic Whigs under Lord Grenville and with the Tories under
+Lord Sidmouth. All home questions, in fact, were subordinated to the
+need of saving Europe from the ambition of France, and in the resolve to
+save Europe Fox was as resolute as Pitt himself. His hopes of peace
+indeed were stronger; but they were foiled by the evasive answer which
+Napoleon gave to his overtures, and by a new war which he undertook
+against Prussia, the one power which seemed able to resist his arms. On
+the 14th of October 1806 a decisive victory at Jena laid North Germany
+at the Emperor's feet. From Berlin Napoleon marched into the heart of
+Poland to bring to terms the last opponent now left him on the
+Continent; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-175" id="Page_8-175"></a><a href="./images/175.png">8-175</a>]</span>and though checked in the winter by the stubborn defence of
+the Russian forces on the field of Eylau, in the summer of 1807 a
+decisive victory at Friedland brought the Czar to consent to the Peace
+of Tilsit.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Continental System.</span></p>
+
+<p>The Peace of Tilsit marked an overthrow for the time of that European
+settlement and balance of power which had been established five years
+before by the Peace of Lun&eacute;ville. The change in his policy had been to a
+great extent forced on Napoleon; for the league of 1805 had shown that
+his plan of such a Continental peace as would suffer him to concentrate
+his whole strength on an invasion of Britain was certain to be foiled by
+the fears of the Continental states; and that an unquestioned supremacy
+over Europe was a first condition in the struggle with his great rival.
+Even with such a supremacy, indeed, his plans for a descent on Britain
+itself, or for winning the command of the sea which was the necessary
+preliminary to such a descent, still remained impracticable. The battle
+of Trafalgar had settled the question of an invasion of England; and a
+thousand victories on land would not make him master, even for "six
+hours," of the "silver streak" of sea that barred his path. But Napoleon
+was far from abandoning his struggle against Britain; on the contrary,
+he saw in his mastery of Europe the means of giving fresh force and
+effectiveness to his attack in a quarter where his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-176" id="Page_8-176"></a><a href="./images/176.png">8-176</a>]</span>foe was still
+vulnerable. It was her wealth that had raised up that European coalition
+against him which had forced him to break up his camp at Boulogne; and
+in his mastery of Europe he saw the means of striking at her wealth. His
+earlier attempt at the enforcement of a "Continental System" had broken
+down with the failure of the Northern League; but he now saw a yet more
+effective means of realising his dream. It was this gigantic project
+which revealed itself as soon as Jena had laid Prussia at his feet.
+Napoleon was able to find a pretext for his new attack in England's own
+action. By a violent stretch of her rights as a combatant she had
+declared the whole coast occupied by France and its allies, from Dantzig
+to Trieste, to be in a state of blockade. It was impossible to enforce
+such an order as this, even with the immense force at her disposal; but
+it was ostensibly to meet this "paper blockade" that Napoleon issued
+from Berlin, on the twenty-first of November 1806, a decree
+which&mdash;without a single ship to carry it out&mdash;placed the British Islands
+in a state of blockade. All commerce or communication with them was
+prohibited; all English goods or manufactures found in the territory of
+France or its allies were declared liable to confiscation; and their
+harbours were closed, not only against vessels coming from Britain, but
+against all who had touched at her ports. An army of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-177" id="Page_8-177"></a><a href="./images/177.png">8-177</a>]</span>inspectors spread
+along the coasts to carry out this decree.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Its results.</span></p>
+
+<p>But it was almost impossible to enforce such a system. It was foiled by
+the rise of a widespread contraband trade, by the reluctance of Holland
+to aid in its own ruin, by the connivance of officials along the
+Prussian and Russian shores, and by the pressure of facts. It was
+impossible even for Napoleon himself to do without the goods he
+pretended to exclude; an immense system of licences soon neutralized his
+decree; and the French army which marched to Eylau was clad in
+greatcoats made at Leeds, and shod with shoes made at Northampton.
+Vexatious therefore as the system might be at once to England and to
+Europe, it told on British industry mainly by heightening the price of
+its products, and so far by restricting the market for them. But it told
+far more fatally on British commerce. Trade at once began to move from
+English vessels, which were subject to instant confiscation, and to
+shelter itself under neutral flags, where goods had at least to be
+proved to be British before they could be seized. America profited most
+by this transfer. She was now entering on that commercial career which
+was to make her England's chief trading rival; and she rapidly availed
+herself of the Berlin decree to widen her carrying trade. But the
+British Government at once felt the pressure of the merchant class. As
+yet this class had profited <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-178" id="Page_8-178"></a><a href="./images/178.png">8-178</a>]</span>above all others by the war and by the
+monopoly which war placed in its hands; and now that not only its
+monopoly but its very existence was threatened, it called on the
+Government to protect it. It was to this appeal that the administration
+of Lord Grenville replied, in January 1807, by an Order in Council which
+declared all the ports of the coast of France and her allies under
+blockade, and any neutral vessels trading between them to be good prize.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Fall of the Grenville Ministry.</span></p>
+
+<p>Such a step however, though it arbitrarily shut neutral vessels out from
+the coasting trade of most of Europe, was far from satisfying the
+British merchants, for it left the whole trade between Europe and other
+countries, which virtually included the colonial trade, untouched; and
+this passed as of old into American bottoms. But their appeal was no
+longer to Lord Grenville. The work which his ministry had set itself to
+do was to continue the double work of Pitt, his resolute maintenance of
+English greatness, and his endeavour to carry on even amidst the stress
+of the fight that course of philanthropic and political progress which
+was struggling back into renewed vigour after its long arrest through
+the French Revolution. But the forces of ignorance and bigotry which had
+been too strong for Pitt were too strong for the Grenville ministry,
+weakened as it was by the death of Fox at the close of the previous
+year. Its greatest work, the abolition of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-179" id="Page_8-179"></a><a href="./images/179.png">8-179</a>]</span>the slave-trade, in February
+1807, was done in the teeth of a vigorous opposition from the Tories and
+the merchants of Liverpool; and in March the first indication of its
+desire to open the question of religious equality by allowing Catholic
+officers to serve in the army was met on the part of the king by the
+demand of a pledge not to meddle with the question. On the refusal of
+this pledge the Ministry was dismissed. Its fall was the final close of
+that union of parties in face of the war with France which had brought
+about the junction of the bulk of the Whig party with the Tories, and
+which had been to some extent renewed after the temporary breach in
+Pitt's last ministry by the junction of Lord Sidmouth and a large body
+of the Tories with the Whigs. The union had been based on the actual
+peril to England's existence, and on the suspension of all home
+questions in face of the peril. But with the break-up of the camp at
+Boulogne and the victory of Trafalgar the peril of invasion had
+disappeared. England again broke into the party that called for progress
+and the party that resisted it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Portland Ministry.</span></p>
+
+<p>The last was still the stronger: for in the mass of the nation progress
+was still confounded with the destruction of institutions, the passion
+for war absorbed public attention, and the Tories showed themselves most
+in earnest in the prosecution of the war. From this time therefore to
+the end of the war England was wholly governed by the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-180" id="Page_8-180"></a><a href="./images/180.png">8-180</a>]</span>Tories. The
+nominal head of the ministry which succeeded that of Lord Grenville was
+the Duke of Portland; its guiding spirit was the Foreign Secretary,
+George Canning, a young and devoted adherent of Pitt, whose brilliant
+rhetoric gave him power over the House of Commons, while the vigour and
+breadth of his mind gave a new energy and colour to the war. At no time
+had opposition to Napoleon seemed so hopeless as at the moment of his
+entry into power. From foes the two Emperors of Western and Eastern
+Europe had become friends, and the hope of French aid in the conquest of
+Turkey drew Alexander to a close alliance with Napoleon. Russia not only
+enforced the Berlin decrees against British commerce, but forced Sweden,
+the one ally that England still retained on the Continent, to renounce
+her alliance. The Russian and Swedish fleets were thus placed at the
+service of France; and the two Emperors counted on securing in addition
+the fleet of Denmark, and again threatening by this union the maritime
+supremacy which formed England's real defence. The hope was foiled by
+the decision of the new ministers. In July 1807 an expedition was
+promptly and secretly equipped by Canning, with a demand for the
+surrender of the Danish fleet into the hands of England, on pledge of
+its return at the close of the war. On the refusal of the Danes the
+demand was enforced by a bombardment of Copenhagen; and the whole Danish
+fleet, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-181" id="Page_8-181"></a><a href="./images/181.png">8-181</a>]</span>with a vast mass of naval stores, was carried into British
+ports. It was in the same spirit of almost reckless decision that
+Canning turned to meet Napoleon's Continental System. The cry of the
+British merchant fell upon willing ears. Of trade or the laws of trade
+Canning was utterly ignorant; nor could he see that the interests of the
+country were not necessarily the interests of a class; but he was
+resolute at any cost to hinder the transfer of commerce to neutral
+flags; and he saw in the crisis a means of forcing the one great neutral
+power, America, to join Britain in her strife with France. In November
+1807, therefore, he issued fresh Orders in Council. By these France, and
+every Continental state from which the British flag was excluded, were
+put in a state of blockade, and all vessels bound for their harbours
+were held subject to seizure unless they had touched at a British port.
+The orders were at once met by another decree of Napoleon issued at
+Milan in December, which declared every vessel, of whatever nation,
+coming from or bound to Britain or any British colony, to have forfeited
+its character as a neutral, and to be liable to seizure.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The American Embargo.</span></p>
+
+<p>The policy of Napoleon was at any rate a consistent one in these
+measures; for his sole aim was to annihilate the industry as well as the
+commerce of Britain; and he had little to fear from the indignation of
+America. But the aim of Britain was to find outlets for her
+manufactures; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-182" id="Page_8-182"></a><a href="./images/182.png">8-182</a>]</span>and of these outlets America was now far the most
+important. She took in fact ten millions of our exports every year, not
+only for her own consumption, but for the illicit trade which she
+managed to carry on with the Continent. To close such an outlet as this
+was to play into Napoleon's hands. And yet the first result of Canning's
+policy was to close it. In the long strife between France and England,
+America had already borne much from both combatants, but above all from
+Britain. Not only had the English Government exercised its right of
+search, but it asserted a right of seizing English seamen found in
+American vessels; and as there were few means of discriminating between
+English seamen and American, the sailor of Maine or Massachusetts was
+often impressed to serve in the British fleet. Galled however as was
+America by outrages such as these, she was hindered from resenting them
+by her strong disinclination to war, as well as by the profit which she
+drew from the maintenance of her neutral position; and she believed in
+the words of Jefferson, that "it will ever be in our power to keep so
+even a stand between France and England, as to inspire a wish in neither
+to throw us into the scale of his adversary." But the Orders in Council
+and the Milan Decree forced her into action, and she at once answered
+them by an embargo of trade with Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Such a step was a menace of further action, for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-183" id="Page_8-183"></a><a href="./images/183.png">8-183</a>]</span>it was plain that
+America could not long remain in utter isolation, and that if she left
+it she must join one combatant or the other. But she had as yet shown no
+military power outside her own bounds, either by land or sea; and
+England looked with scorn on the threats of a state which possessed
+neither army nor fleet. "America," Lord Sidmouth wrote at this time, "is
+a bugbear: there is no terror in her threats!" Canning indeed saw in the
+embargo only a carrying out of his policy by the very machinery of the
+American Government. The commerce of America ceased to exist. Her seamen
+were driven to seek employment under the British flag; and Britain again
+absorbed the carrying-trade of the world. But what he really looked
+forward to was something far beyond this. He saw that the embargo was
+but a temporary expedient: and he believed that its failure would force
+the United States into union with England in her war with France.
+Nothing shows the world-wide nature of the struggle more than such a
+policy as this; but for a while it seemed justified by its results.
+After a year's trial America found it impossible to maintain the
+embargo: and at the opening of 1809 she exchanged it for an Act of
+Non-Intercourse with France and England alone. But this Act was as
+ineffective as the embargo. The American Government was utterly without
+means of enforcing it on its land frontier; and it had small <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-184" id="Page_8-184"></a><a href="./images/184.png">8-184</a>]</span>means of
+enforcing it at sea. Throughout 1809 indeed vessels sailed daily for
+British ports. The Act was thus effective against France alone, and part
+of Canning's end was gained. At last the very protest which it embodied
+was given up, and in May 1810 the Non-Intercourse Act was repealed
+altogether. All that America persisted in maintaining was an offer that
+if either Power would repeal its edicts, it would prohibit American
+commerce with the other.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Napoleon and Spain.</span></p>
+
+<p>What the results of this offer were to be we shall see hereafter. But at
+the moment the attitude of America was one of utter submission; and the
+effect of the Continental system on Britain had thus been to drive it to
+a policy of aggression upon neutral states, which seemed to be as
+successful as it was aggressive. The effect of his system on Napoleon
+himself was precisely the same. It was to maintain this material union
+of Europe against Britain that he was driven to aggression after
+aggression in North Germany, and to demands upon Russia which threatened
+the league that had been formed at Tilsit. Above all, it was the hope of
+more effectually crushing the world-power of Britain that drove him, at
+the very moment when Canning was attacking America, to his worst
+aggression, the aggression upon Spain. Spain was already his subservient
+ally; but her alliance became every hour less useful. The country was
+ruined by misgovernment: its treasury <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-185" id="Page_8-185"></a><a href="./images/185.png">8-185</a>]</span>was empty: its fleet rotted in
+its harbours. To seize the whole Spanish Peninsula, to develope its
+resources by an active administration, to have at his command not only a
+regenerated Spain and Portugal, but their mighty dominions in Southern
+and Central America, to renew with these fresh forces the struggle with
+Britain for her empire of the seas, these were the designs by which
+Napoleon was driven to the most ruthless of his enterprises. He acted
+with his usual subtlety. In October 1807 France and Spain agreed to
+divide Portugal between them; and on the advance of their forces the
+reigning House of Braganza fled helplessly from Lisbon to a refuge in
+Brazil. But the seizure of Portugal was only a prelude to the seizure of
+Spain. Charles the Fourth, whom a riot in his capital drove at this
+moment to abdication, and his son and successor, Ferdinand the Seventh,
+were alike drawn to Bayonne in May 1808, and forced to resign their
+claims to the Spanish crown; while a French army entered Madrid, and
+proclaimed Joseph Buonaparte as King of Spain.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Rising of Spain.</span></p>
+
+<p>High-handed as such an act was, it was in harmony with the general
+system which Napoleon was pursuing elsewhere, and which had as yet
+stirred no national resistance. Holland had been changed into a monarchy
+by a simple decree of the French Emperor, and its crown bestowed on his
+brother Louis. For another brother, Jerome, a kingdom of Westphalia had
+been built up out of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-186" id="Page_8-186"></a><a href="./images/186.png">8-186</a>]</span>the Electorates of Hesse Cassel and Hanover.
+Joseph himself had been set as king over Naples before his transfer to
+Spain. But the spell of submission was now suddenly broken, and the new
+king had hardly entered Madrid when Spain rose as one man against the
+stranger. Desperate as the effort of its people seemed, the news of the
+rising was welcomed throughout England with a burst of enthusiastic joy.
+"Hitherto," cried Sheridan, a leader of the Whig opposition, "Buonaparte
+has contended with princes without dignity, numbers without ardour, or
+peoples without patriotism. He has yet to learn what it is to combat a
+people who are animated by one spirit against him." Tory and Whig alike
+held that "never had so happy an opportunity existed for Britain to
+strike a bold stroke for the rescue of the world"; and Canning at once
+resolved to change the system of desultory descents on colonies and
+sugar islands for a vigorous warfare in the Peninsula. Supplies were
+sent to the Spanish insurgents with reckless profusion, and two small
+armies placed under the command of Sir John Moore and Sir Arthur
+Wellesley for service in the Peninsula. In July 1808 the surrender at
+Baylen of a French force which had invaded Andalusia gave the first
+shock to the power of Napoleon, and the blow was followed by one almost
+as severe. Landing at the Mondego with fifteen thousand men, Sir Arthur
+Wellesley drove the French army of Portugal from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-187" id="Page_8-187"></a><a href="./images/187.png">8-187</a>]</span>the field of Vimiera,
+and forced it to surrender in the Convention of Cintra on the 30th of
+August. But the tide of success was soon roughly turned. Napoleon
+appeared in Spain with an army of two hundred thousand men; and Moore,
+who had advanced from Lisbon to Salamanca to support the Spanish armies,
+found them crushed on the Ebro, and was driven to fall hastily back on
+the coast. His force saved its honour in a battle before Corunna on the
+16th of January 1809, which enabled it to embark in safety; but
+elsewhere all seemed lost. The whole of northern and central Spain was
+held by the French armies; and even Zaragoza, which had once heroically
+repulsed them, submitted after a second equally desperate resistance.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Wellesley in Portugal.</span></p>
+
+<p>The landing of the wreck of Moore's army and the news of the Spanish
+defeats turned the temper of England from the wildest hope to the
+deepest despair; but Canning remained unmoved. On the day of the
+evacuation of Corunna he signed a treaty of alliance with the Junta
+which governed Spain in the absence of its king; and the English force
+at Lisbon, which had already prepared to leave Portugal, was reinforced
+with thirteen thousand fresh troops and placed under the command of Sir
+Arthur Wellesley. "Portugal," Wellesley wrote coolly, "may be defended
+against any force which the French can bring against it." At this
+critical moment the best of the French <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-188" id="Page_8-188"></a><a href="./images/188.png">8-188</a>]</span>troops with the Emperor himself
+were drawn from the Peninsula to the Danube; for the Spanish rising had
+roused Austria as well as England to a renewal of the struggle. When
+Marshal Soult therefore threatened Lisbon from the north, Wellesley
+marched boldly against him, drove him from Oporto in a disastrous
+retreat, and suddenly changing his line of operations, pushed with
+twenty thousand men by Abrantes on Madrid. He was joined on the march by
+a Spanish force of thirty thousand men; and a bloody action with a
+French army of equal force at Talavera in July 1809 restored the renown
+of English arms. The losses on both sides were enormous, and the French
+fell back at the close of the struggle; but the fruits of the victory
+were lost by a sudden appearance of Soult on the English line of
+advance. Wellesley was forced to retreat hastily on Badajoz, and his
+failure was embittered by heavier disasters elsewhere; for Austria was
+driven to sue for peace by a decisive victory of Napoleon at Wagram,
+while a force of forty thousand English soldiers which had been
+despatched against Antwerp in July returned home baffled after losing
+half its numbers in the marshes of Walcheren.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Perceval Ministry.</span></p>
+
+<p>The failure at Walcheren brought about the fall of the Portland
+ministry. Canning attributed this disaster to the incompetence of Lord
+Castlereagh, heir to an Irish peerage, who after taking the chief part
+in bringing about the union between England <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-189" id="Page_8-189"></a><a href="./images/189.png">8-189</a>]</span>and Ireland had been raised
+by the Duke of Portland to the post of Secretary at War; and the quarrel
+between the two Ministers ended in a duel and in their resignation of
+their offices in September 1809. The Duke of Portland retired with
+Canning; and a new ministry was formed out of the more Tory members of
+the late administration under the guidance of Spencer Perceval, an
+industrious mediocrity of the narrowest type; while the Marquis of
+Wellesley, a brother of the English general in Spain, succeeded Canning
+as Foreign Secretary. But if Perceval and his colleagues possessed few
+of the higher qualities of statesmanship, they had one characteristic
+which in the actual position of English affairs was beyond all price.
+They were resolute to continue the war. In the nation at large the fit
+of enthusiasm had been followed by a fit of despair; and the City of
+London even petitioned for a withdrawal of the English forces from the
+Peninsula, Napoleon seemed irresistible, and now that Austria was
+crushed and England stood alone in opposition to him, the Emperor
+determined to put an end to the strife by a vigorous prosecution of the
+war in Spain. Andalusia, the one province which remained independent,
+was invaded in the opening of 1810, and with the exception of Cadiz
+reduced to submission; while Marshal Massena with a fine army of eighty
+thousand men marched upon Lisbon. Even Perceval abandoned all hope of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-190" id="Page_8-190"></a><a href="./images/190.png">8-190</a>]</span>preserving a hold on the Peninsula in face of these new efforts, and
+threw on Wellesley, who had been raised to the peerage as Lord
+Wellington after Talavera, the responsibility of resolving to remain
+there.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Torres Vedras.</span></p>
+
+<p>But the cool judgement and firm temper which distinguished Wellington
+enabled him to face a responsibility from which weaker men would have
+shrunk. "I conceive," he answered, "that the honour and interest of our
+country require that we should hold our ground here as long as possible;
+and, please God, I will maintain it as long as I can." By the addition
+of Portuguese troops who had been trained under British officers, his
+army was now raised to fifty thousand men; and though his inferiority in
+force compelled him to look on while Massena reduced the frontier
+fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, he inflicted on him a heavy
+check at the heights of Busaco, and finally fell back in October 1810 on
+three lines of defence which he had secretly constructed at Torres
+Vedras, along a chain of mountain, heights crowned with redoubts and
+bristling with cannon. The position was impregnable: and able and
+stubborn as Massena was he found himself forced after a month's
+fruitless efforts to fall back in a masterly retreat; but so terrible
+were the privations of the French army in passing again through the
+wasted country that it was only with forty thousand men that he reached
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-191" id="Page_8-191"></a><a href="./images/191.png">8-191</a>]</span>Ciudad Rodrigo in the spring of 1811. Reinforced by fresh troops,
+Massena turned fiercely to the relief of Almeida, which Wellington had
+besieged. Two days' bloody and obstinate fighting however, in May 1811,
+failed to drive the English army from its position at Fuentes d'Onore,
+and the Marshal fell back on Salamanca and relinquished his effort to
+drive Wellington from Portugal. But great as was the effect of Torres
+Vedras in restoring the spirit of the English people, and in reviving
+throughout Europe the hope of resistance to the tyranny of Napoleon, its
+immediate result was little save the deliverance of Portugal. If Massena
+had failed, his colleagues had succeeded in their enterprises; the
+French were now masters of all Spain save Cadiz and the eastern
+provinces, and even the east coast was reduced in 1811 by the vigour of
+General Suchet.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The Quarrel with America.</span></p>
+
+<p>While England thus failed to rescue Spain from the aggression of
+Napoleon, she was suddenly brought face to face with the result of her
+own aggression in America. The repeal of the Non-Intercourse Act in 1810
+had in effect been a triumph for Britain: but the triumph forced
+Napoleon's hand. As yet all he had done by his attack on neutral rights
+had been to drive the United States practically to join England against
+him. To revenge himself by war with them would only play England's game
+yet more; and with characteristic rapidity Napoleon passed from
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-192" id="Page_8-192"></a><a href="./images/192.png">8-192</a>]</span>hostility to friendship. He seized on the offer with which America had
+closed her efforts against the two combatants, and after promising to
+revoke his Berlin and Milan Decrees he called on America to redeem her
+pledge. In February 1811, therefore, the United States announced that
+all intercourse with Great Britain and her dependencies was at an end.
+The effect of this step was seen in a reduction of English exports
+during this year by a third of their whole amount. It was in vain that
+Britain pleaded that the Emperor's promises remained unfulfilled, that
+neither of the decrees was withdrawn, that Napoleon had failed to return
+the American merchandise seized under them, and that the enforcement of
+non-intercourse with England was thus an unjust act, and an act of
+hostility. The pressure of the American policy, as well as news of the
+warlike temper which had at last grown up in the United States, made
+submission inevitable; for the industrial state of England was now so
+critical that to expose it to fresh shocks was to court the very ruin
+which Napoleon had planned.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">State of England.</span></p>
+
+<p>During the earlier years of the war indeed the increase of wealth had
+been enormous. England was sole mistress of the seas. The war gave her
+possession of the colonies of Spain, of Holland, and of France; and if
+her trade was checked for a time by the Berlin Decree, the efforts of
+Napoleon were soon rendered fruitless by the smuggling <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-193" id="Page_8-193"></a><a href="./images/193.png">8-193</a>]</span>system which
+sprang up along the southern coasts and the coast of North Germany.
+English exports indeed had nearly doubled since the opening of the
+century. Manufactures were profiting by the discoveries of Watt and
+Arkwright; and the consumption of raw cotton in the mills of Lancashire
+rose during the same period from fifty to a hundred million of pounds.
+The vast accumulation of capital, as well as the vast increase of the
+population at this time, told upon the land, and forced agriculture into
+a feverish and unhealthy prosperity. Wheat rose to famine prices, and
+the value of land rose in proportion with the price of wheat. Inclosures
+went on with prodigious rapidity; the income of every landowner was
+doubled, while the farmers were able to introduce improvements into the
+processes of agriculture which changed the whole face of the country.
+But if the increase of wealth was enormous, its distribution was
+partial. During the fifteen years which preceded Waterloo, the number of
+the population rose from ten to thirteen millions, and this rapid
+increase kept down the rate of wages, which would naturally have
+advanced in a corresponding degree with the increase in the national
+wealth. Even manufactures, though destined in the long run to benefit
+the labouring classes, seemed at first rather to depress them; for one
+of the earliest results of the introduction of machinery was the ruin of
+a number of small <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-194" id="Page_8-194"></a><a href="./images/194.png">8-194</a>]</span>trades which were carried on at home and the
+pauperization of families who relied on them for support. In the winter
+of 1811 the terrible pressure of this transition from handicraft to
+machinery was seen in the Luddite, or machine-breaking, riots which
+broke out over the northern and midland counties; and which were only
+suppressed by military force. While labour was thus thrown out of its
+older grooves, and the rate of wages kept down at an artificially low
+figure by the rapid increase of population, the rise in the price of
+wheat, which brought wealth to the landowner and the farmer, brought
+famine and death to the poor, for England was cut off by the war from
+the vast corn-fields of the Continent or of America, which nowadays
+redress from their abundance the results of a bad harvest. Scarcity was
+followed by a terrible pauperization of the labouring classes. The
+amount of the poor-rate rose fifty per cent; and with the increase of
+poverty followed its inevitable result, the increase of crime.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Political Progress.</span></p>
+
+<p>The natural relation of trade and commerce to the general wealth of the
+people at large was thus disturbed by the peculiar circumstances of the
+time. The war enriched the landowner, the farmer, the merchant, the
+manufacturer; but it impoverished the poor. It is indeed from these
+fatal years that we must date that war of classes, that social severance
+between employers and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-195" id="Page_8-195"></a><a href="./images/195.png">8-195</a>]</span>employed, which still forms the main difficulty
+of English politics. But it is from these too that we must date the
+renewal of that progressive movement in politics which had been
+suspended since the opening of the war. The publication of the
+<i>Edinburgh Review</i> in 1802 by a knot of young lawyers at Edinburgh
+marked a revival of the policy of constitutional and administrative
+progress which had been reluctantly abandoned by William Pitt. Jeremy
+Bentham gave a new vigour to political speculation by his advocacy of
+the doctrine of Utility, and his definition of "the greatest happiness
+of the greatest number" as the aim of political action. In 1809 Sir
+Francis Burdett revived the question of Parliamentary Reform. Only
+fifteen members supported his motion; and a reference to the House of
+Commons in a pamphlet which he subsequently published, as "a part of our
+fellow-subjects collected together by means which it is not necessary to
+describe," was met by his committal to the Tower, where he remained till
+the prorogation of the Parliament. A far greater effect was produced by
+the perseverance with which Canning pressed year by year the question of
+Catholic Emancipation. So long as Perceval lived both efforts at Reform
+were equally vain; but the advancing strength of a more liberal
+sentiment in the nation was felt by the policy of "moderate concession"
+which was adopted by his successors. Catholic Emancipation <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-196" id="Page_8-196"></a><a href="./images/196.png">8-196</a>]</span>became an
+open question in the Cabinet itself, and was adopted in 1812 by a
+triumphant majority in the House of Commons, though it was still
+rejected by the Lords.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">War with America.</span></p>
+
+<p>With social and political troubles thus awaking anew to life about them,
+even Tory statesmen were not willing to face the terrible consequences
+of a ruin of English industry such as might follow from the junction of
+America with Napoleon. They were in fact preparing to withdraw the
+Orders in Council, when their plans were arrested by the dissolution of
+the Perceval ministry. Its position had from the first been a weak one.
+A return of the king's madness made it necessary in the beginning of
+1811 to confer the Regency on the Prince of Wales; and the Whig
+sympathies of the Prince threatened for a while the Cabinet with
+dismissal. Though this difficulty was surmounted their hold of power
+remained insecure, and the insecurity of the ministry told on the
+conduct of the war; for the apparent inactivity of Wellington during
+1811 was really due to the hesitation and timidity of the Cabinet at
+home. But in May 1812 the assassination of Perceval by a madman named
+Bellingham brought about the dissolution of his ministry; and fresh
+efforts were made by the Regent to install the Whigs in office. Mutual
+distrust however again foiled his attempts; and the old ministry
+returned to office under the headship of Lord Liverpool, a man of no
+great abilities, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-197" id="Page_8-197"></a><a href="./images/197.png">8-197</a>]</span>but temperate, well informed, and endowed with a
+remarkable skill in holding discordant colleagues together. The most
+important of these colleagues was Lord Castlereagh, who became Secretary
+for Foreign Affairs. Time has long ago rendered justice to the political
+ability of Castlereagh, disguised as it was to men of his own day by a
+curious infelicity of expression; and the instinctive good sense of
+Englishmen never showed itself more remarkably than in their preference
+at this crisis of his cool judgement, his high courage, his discernment,
+and his will to the more showy brilliancy of Canning. His first work
+indeed as a minister was to meet the danger in which Canning had
+involved the country by his Orders in Council. On the 23rd of June, only
+twelve days after the ministry had been formed, these Orders were
+repealed. But, quick as was Castlereagh's action, events had moved even
+more quickly. At the opening of the year America, in despair of redress,
+had resolved on war; Congress had voted an increase of both army and
+navy; and laid in April an embargo on all vessels in American harbours.
+Actual hostilities might still have been averted by the repeal of the
+Orders, on which the English Cabinet was resolved; but in the confusion
+which followed the murder of Perceval, and the strife of parties for
+office through the month that followed, the opportunity was lost. When
+the news of the repeal reached America, it came six weeks too late. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-198" id="Page_8-198"></a><a href="./images/198.png">8-198</a>]</span>On
+the 18th of June an Act of Congress had declared America at war with
+Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Napoleon and Russia.</span></p>
+
+<p>Had Napoleon been able to reap the fruits of the strife which his policy
+had thus forced on the two English peoples, it is hard to say how
+Britain could have coped with him. Cut off from her markets alike in
+east and west, her industries checked and disorganized, a financial
+crisis added to her social embarrassment, it may be doubted whether she
+must not have bowed in the end before the pressure of the Continental
+System. But if that system had thrust her into aggression and ruin, it
+was as inevitably thrusting the same aggression and ruin on her rival.
+The moment when America entered into the great struggle was a critical
+moment in the history of mankind. Six days after President Madison
+issued his declaration of war, Napoleon crossed the Niemen on his march
+to Moscow. Successful as his policy had been in stirring up war between
+England and America, it had been no less successful in breaking the
+alliance which he had made with the Czar at Tilsit and in forcing on a
+contest with Russia. On the one hand, Napoleon was irritated by the
+refusal of Russia to enforce strictly the suspension of all trade with
+England, though such a suspension would have ruined the Russian
+landowners. On the other, Alexander saw with growing anxiety the advance
+of the French Empire which sprang from Napoleon's resolve to enforce his
+system by a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-199" id="Page_8-199"></a><a href="./images/199.png">8-199</a>]</span>seizure of the northern coasts. In 1811 Holland, the
+Hanseatic towns, part of Westphalia, and the Duchy of Oldenburg were
+successively annexed, and the Duchy of Mecklenburg threatened with
+seizure. A peremptory demand on the part of France for the entire
+cessation of intercourse with England brought the quarrel to a head; and
+preparations were made on both sides for a gigantic struggle.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Salamanca.</span></p>
+
+<p>Even before it opened, this new enterprise gave fresh vigour to
+Napoleon's foes. The best of the French soldiers were drawn from Spain
+to the frontier of Poland; and Wellington, whose army had been raised to
+a force of forty thousand Englishmen and twenty thousand Portuguese,
+profited by the withdrawal to throw off his system of defence and to
+assume an attitude of attack. Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz were taken by
+storm during the spring of 1812; and at the close of June, three days
+before Napoleon crossed the Niemen, in his march on Moscow, Wellington
+crossed the Agueda in a march on Salamanca. After a series of masterly
+movements on both sides, Marmont with the French army of the North
+attacked the English on the hills in the neighbourhood of that town on
+the twenty-second of July. While he was marching round the right of the
+English position his left wing remained isolated; and with a sudden
+exclamation of "Marmont is lost!" Wellington flung on it the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-200" id="Page_8-200"></a><a href="./images/200.png">8-200</a>]</span>bulk of
+his force, crushed it, and drove the whole army from the field. The loss
+on either side was nearly equal, but failure had demoralized the French
+army; and its retreat forced Joseph to leave Madrid, and Soult to
+evacuate Andalusia and to concentrate the southern army on the eastern
+coast. While Napoleon was still pushing slowly over the vast plains of
+Poland, Wellington made his entry into Madrid in August, and began the
+siege of Burgos. The town however held out gallantly for a month, till
+the advance of the two French armies, now concentrated in the north and
+south of Spain, forced Wellington, in October, to a hasty retreat on the
+Portuguese frontier.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Ruin of Napoleon.</span></p>
+
+<p>If Wellington had shaken the rule of the French in Spain in this
+campaign, his ultimate failure showed how firm a military hold they
+still possessed there. But the disappointment was forgotten in the news
+which followed it. At the moment when the English troops fell back from
+Burgos began the retreat of the Grand Army from Moscow. Victorious in a
+battle at Borodino, Napoleon had entered the older capital of Russia in
+triumph, and waited impatiently to receive proposals of peace from the
+Czar. But a fire kindled by its own inhabitants reduced the city to
+ashes; Alexander still remained silent; and the gathering cold bent even
+the stubborn will of Napoleon to own the need of retreat. The French
+were forced to fall back amidst the horrors of a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-201" id="Page_8-201"></a><a href="./images/201.png">8-201</a>]</span>Russian winter; and of
+the four hundred thousand combatants who formed the Grand Army at its
+first outset, only a few thousands recrossed the Niemen in December. In
+spite of the gigantic efforts which Napoleon made to repair his losses,
+the spell which he had cast over Europe was broken. Prussia rose against
+him as the Russians crossed the Niemen in the spring of 1813; and the
+forces which held it were at once thrown back on the Elbe. In this
+emergency the military genius of the French Emperor rose to its height.
+With a fresh army of two hundred thousand men whom he had gathered at
+Mainz he marched on the allied armies of Russia and Prussia in May,
+cleared Saxony by a victory over them at Lutzen, and threw them back on
+the Oder by a fresh victory at Bautzen. Disheartened by defeat, and by
+the neutral attitude which Austria still preserved, the two powers
+consented in June to an armistice, and negotiated for peace. But
+Austria, though unwilling to utterly ruin France to the profit of her
+great rival in the East, was as resolute as either of the allies to
+wrest from Napoleon his supremacy over Europe; and at the moment when it
+became clear that Napoleon was only bent on playing with her proposals,
+she was stirred to action by news that his army was at last driven from
+Spain. Wellington had left Portugal in May with an army which had now
+risen to ninety thousand men; and overtaking <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-202" id="Page_8-202"></a><a href="./images/202.png">8-202</a>]</span>the French forces in
+retreat at Vitoria on the twenty-first of June he inflicted on them a
+defeat which drove them in utter rout across the Pyrenees. Madrid was at
+once evacuated; and Clausel fell back from Zaragoza into France. The
+victory not only freed Spain from its invaders; it restored the spirit
+of the Allies. The close of the armistice was followed by a union of
+Austria with the forces of Prussia and the Czar; and in October a final
+overthrow of Napoleon at Leipzig forced the French army to fall back in
+rout across the Rhine.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">His Abdication.</span></p>
+
+<p>The war now hurried to its close. Though held at bay for a while by the
+sieges of San Sebastian and Pampeluna, as well as by an obstinate
+defence of the Pyrenees, Wellington succeeded in the very month of the
+triumph at Leipzig in winning a victory on the Bidassoa, which enabled
+him to enter France. He was soon followed by the Allies. On the last day
+of 1813 their forces crossed the Rhine; and a third of France passed,
+without opposition, into their hands. For two months more Napoleon
+maintained a wonderful struggle with a handful of raw conscripts against
+their overwhelming numbers; while in the south, Soult, forced from his
+entrenched camp near Bayonne and defeated at Orthez, fell back before
+Wellington on Toulouse. Here their two armies met in April in a stubborn
+and indecisive engagement. But though neither leader knew it, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-203" id="Page_8-203"></a><a href="./images/203.png">8-203</a>]</span>war
+was even then at an end. The struggle of Napoleon himself had ended at
+the close of March with the surrender of Paris; and the submission of
+the capital was at once followed by the abdication of the Emperor and
+the return of the Bourbons.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">The American War.</span></p>
+
+<p>England's triumph over its enemy was dashed by the more doubtful
+fortunes of the struggle across the Atlantic. The declaration of war by
+America seemed an act of sheer madness; for its navy consisted of a few
+frigates and sloops; its army was a mass of half-drilled and half-armed
+recruits; while the States themselves were divided on the question of
+the war, and Connecticut with Massachusetts refused to send either money
+or men. Three attempts to penetrate into Canada during the summer and
+autumn were repulsed with heavy loss. But these failures were more than
+redeemed by unexpected successes at sea, where in two successive
+engagements between English and American frigates, the former were
+forced to strike their flag. The effect of these victories was out of
+all proportion to their real importance; for they were the first heavy
+blows which had been dealt at England's supremacy over the seas. In 1813
+America followed up its naval triumphs by more vigorous efforts on land.
+Its forces cleared Lake Ontario, captured Toronto, destroyed the British
+flotilla on Lake Erie, and made themselves masters of Upper Canada. An
+attack on Lower Canada, however, was successfully <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-204" id="Page_8-204"></a><a href="./images/204.png">8-204</a>]</span>beaten back; and a
+fresh advance of the British and Canadian forces in the heart of the
+winter again recovered the Upper Province. The reverse gave fresh
+strength to the party in the United States which had throughout been
+opposed to the war, and whose opposition to it had been embittered by
+the terrible distress brought about by the blockade and the ruin of
+American commerce. Cries of secession began to be heard, and
+Massachusetts took the bold step of appointing delegates to confer with
+delegates from the other New England States "on the subject of their
+grievances and common concerns."</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Peace in America.</span></p>
+
+<p>In 1814, however, the war was renewed with more vigour than ever; and
+Upper Canada was again invaded. But the American army, after inflicting
+a severe defeat on the British forces in the battle of Chippewa in July,
+was itself defeated a few weeks after in an equally stubborn engagement,
+and thrown back on its own frontier; while the fall of Napoleon enabled
+the English Government to devote its whole strength to the struggle with
+an enemy which it had ceased to despise. General Ross, with a force of
+four thousand men, appeared in the Potomac, captured Washington, and
+before evacuating the city burnt its public buildings to the ground. Few
+more shameful acts are recorded in our history; and it was the more
+shameful in that it was done under strict orders from the Government at
+home. But <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-205" id="Page_8-205"></a><a href="./images/205.png">8-205</a>]</span>the raid upon Washington was intended simply to strike terror
+into the American people; and the real stress of the war was thrown on
+two expeditions whose business was to penetrate into the States from the
+north and from the south. Both proved utter failures. A force of nine
+thousand Peninsular veterans which marched in September to the attack of
+Plattsburg on Lake Champlain was forced to fall back by the defeat of
+the English flotilla which accompanied it. A second force under General
+Packenham appeared in December at the mouth of the Mississippi and
+attacked New Orleans, but was repulsed by General Jackson with the loss
+of half its numbers. Peace, however, had already been concluded. The
+close of the French war, if it left untouched the grounds of the
+struggle, made the United States sensible of the danger of pushing it
+further; Britain herself was anxious for peace; and the warring claims,
+both of England and America, were set aside in silence in the treaty of
+1814.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Return of Napoleon.</span></p>
+
+<p>The close of the war with the United States freed England's hands at a
+moment when the reappearance of Napoleon at Paris called her to a new
+and final struggle with France. By treaty with the Allied Powers
+Napoleon had been suffered to retain a fragment of his former
+empire&mdash;the island of Elba off the coast of Tuscany; and from Elba he
+looked on at the quarrels which sprang up between his conquerors as soon
+as they gathered <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-206" id="Page_8-206"></a><a href="./images/206.png">8-206</a>]</span>at Vienna to complete the settlement of Europe. The
+most formidable of these quarrels arose from a claim of Prussia to annex
+Saxony and that of Russia to annex Poland; but their union for this
+purpose was met by a counter-league of England and Austria with their
+old enemy, France, whose ambassador, Talleyrand, laboured vigorously to
+bring the question to an issue by force of arms. At the moment, however,
+when a war between the two leagues seemed close at hand, Napoleon landed
+on the coast near Cannes, and, followed only by a thousand of his
+guards, marched over the mountains of Dauphin&eacute; upon Grenoble and Lyons.
+He counted, and counted justly, on the indifference of the country to
+its new Bourbon rulers, on the longing of the army for a fresh struggle
+which should restore its glory, and above all on the spell of his name
+over soldiers whom he had so often led to victory. In twenty days from
+his landing he reached the Tuileries unopposed, while Lewis the
+Eighteenth fled helplessly to Ghent. But whatever hopes he had drawn
+from the divisions of the Allied Powers were at once dispelled by their
+resolute action on the news of his descent upon France. Their strife was
+hushed and their old union restored by the consciousness of a common
+danger. An engagement to supply a million of men for the purposes of the
+war, and a recall of their armies to the Rhine, answered Napoleon's
+efforts to open negotiations with the Powers.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-207" id="Page_8-207"></a><a href="./images/207.png">8-207</a>]</span></p><p>England furnished subsidies to the amount of eleven millions, and
+hastened to place an army on the frontier of the Netherlands. The best
+troops of the force which had been employed in the Peninsula however
+were still across the Atlantic; and of the eighty thousand men who
+gathered round Wellington only about half were Englishmen, the rest
+mainly raw levies from Belgium and Hanover. The Duke's plan was to unite
+with the one hundred and fifty thousand Prussians under Marshal Bl&uuml;cher
+who were advancing on the Lower Rhine, and to enter France by Mons and
+Namur while the forces of Austria and Russia closed in upon Paris by way
+of Belfort and Elsass. But Napoleon had thrown aside all thought of a
+merely defensive warfare. By amazing efforts he had raised an army of
+two hundred and fifty thousand men in the few months since his arrival
+in Paris; and in the opening of June 1815 one hundred and twenty
+thousand Frenchmen were concentrated on the Sambre at Charleroi, while
+Wellington's troops still lay in cantonments on the line of the Scheldt
+from Ath to Nivelles, and Bl&uuml;cher's on that of the Meuse from Nivelles
+to Li&eacute;ge. Both the allied armies hastened to unite at Quatre Bras; but
+their junction there was already impossible. Bl&uuml;cher with eighty
+thousand men was himself attacked by Napoleon at Ligny, and after a
+desperate contest driven back with terrible loss upon Wavre. On <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-208" id="Page_8-208"></a><a href="./images/208.png">8-208</a>]</span>the
+same day Ney with twenty thousand men, and an equal force under D'Erlon
+in reserve, appeared before Quatre Bras, where as yet only ten thousand
+English and the same force of Belgian troops had been able to assemble.
+The Belgians broke before the charges of the French horse; and only the
+dogged resistance of the English infantry gave time for Wellington to
+bring up corps after corps, till at the close of the day Ney saw himself
+heavily outnumbered, and withdrew baffled from the field.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Waterloo.</span></p>
+
+<p>About five thousand men had fallen on either side in this fierce
+engagement: but, heavy as was Wellington's loss, the firmness of the
+English army had already done much to foil Napoleon's effort at breaking
+through the line of the Allies. Bl&uuml;cher's retreat however left the
+English flank uncovered; and on the following day, while the Prussians
+were falling back on Wavre, Wellington, with nearly seventy thousand
+men&mdash;for his army was now well in hand&mdash;withdrew in good order, followed
+by the mass of the French forces under the Emperor himself. Napoleon had
+detached thirty thousand men under Grouchy to hang upon the rear of the
+beaten Prussians, while with a force of eighty thousand he resolved to
+bring Wellington to battle. On the morning of the 18th of June the two
+armies faced one another on the field of Waterloo in front of the Forest
+of Soignies, on the high road to Brussels. Napoleon's one <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-209" id="Page_8-209"></a><a href="./images/209.png">8-209</a>]</span>fear had been
+that of a continued retreat. "I have them!" he cried, as he saw the
+English line drawn up on a low rise of ground which stretched across the
+high-road from the ch&acirc;teau of Hougomont on its right to the farm and
+straggling village of La Haye Sainte on its left. He had some grounds
+for his confidence of success. On either side the forces numbered
+between seventy and eighty thousand men: but the French were superior in
+guns and cavalry, and a large part of Wellington's force consisted of
+Belgian levies who broke and fled at the outset of the fight. A fierce
+attack upon Hougomont opened the battle at eleven; but it was not till
+midday that the corps of D'Erlon advanced upon the centre near La Haye
+Sainte, which from that time bore the main brunt of the struggle. Never
+has greater courage, whether of attack or endurance, been shown on any
+field than was shown by both combatants at Waterloo. The columns of
+D'Erlon, repulsed by the English foot, were hurled back in disorder by a
+charge of the Scots Greys; but the victorious horsemen were crushed in
+their turn by the French cuirassiers, and the mass of the French
+cavalry, twelve thousand strong, flung itself in charge after charge on
+the English front, carrying the English guns and sweeping with desperate
+bravery round the unbroken squares whose fire thinned their ranks. With
+almost equal bravery the French columns of the centre again advanced,
+wrested at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-210" id="Page_8-210"></a><a href="./images/210.png">8-210</a>]</span>last the farm of La Haye Sainte from their opponents, and
+pushed on vigorously though in vain under Ney against the troops in its
+rear.</p>
+
+<p>But meanwhile every hour was telling against Napoleon. To win the battle
+he must crush the English army before Bl&uuml;cher joined it; and the English
+army was still uncrushed. Terrible as was his loss, and many of his
+regiments were reduced to a mere handful of men, Wellington stubbornly
+held his ground while the Prussians, advancing from Wavre through deep
+and miry forest roads, were slowly gathering to his support,
+disregarding the attack on their rear by which Grouchy strove to hold
+them back from the field. At half-past four their advanced guard
+deployed at last from the woods; but the main body was far behind, and
+Napoleon was still able to hold his ground against them till their
+increasing masses forced him to stake all on a desperate effort against
+the English front. The Imperial Guard&mdash;his only reserve, and which had
+as yet taken no part in the battle&mdash;was drawn up at seven in two huge
+columns of attack. The first, with Ney himself at its head, swept all
+before it as it mounted the rise beside La Haye Sainte, on which the
+thin English line still held its ground, and all but touched the English
+front when its mass, torn by the terrible fire of musketry with which it
+was received, gave way before a charge. The second, three thousand
+strong, advanced with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8-211" id="Page_8-211"></a><a href="./images/211.png">8-211</a>]</span>the same courage over the slope near Hougomont,
+only to be repulsed and shattered in its turn. At the moment when these
+masses fell slowly and doggedly back down the fatal rise, the Prussians
+pushed forward on Napoleon's right, their guns swept the road to
+Charleroi, and Wellington seized the moment for a general advance. From
+that hour all was lost. Only the Guard stood firm in the wreck of the
+French army; and though darkness and exhaustion checked the English in
+their pursuit of the broken troops as they hurried from the field, the
+Prussian horse continued the chase through the night. Only forty
+thousand Frenchmen with some thirty guns recrossed the Sambre while
+Napoleon himself fled hurriedly to Paris. His second abdication was
+followed by a triumphant entry of the English and Prussian armies into
+the French capital; and the long war ended with his exile to St. Helena,
+and the return of Lewis the Eighteenth to the throne of the Bourbons.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="notebox">
+<h2><a name="TN" id="TN"></a>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES</h2>
+
+<p class="noindent">Reference to the
+Index has been removed from the Table of Contents.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Variations in spelling have been left as in the original.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Page v is blank in the original.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE, VOLUME VIII (OF 8)***</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, History of the English People, Volume VIII
+(of 8), by John Richard Green
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8)
+       Modern England, 1760-1815
+
+
+Author: John Richard Green
+
+
+
+Release Date: May 20, 2008  [eBook #25536]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE,
+VOLUME VIII (OF 8)***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Paul Murray, Jacqueline Jeremy, Lisa Reigel, and the
+Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+(https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original maps and links to
+      images of the original pages.
+      See 25536-h.htm or 25536-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/5/3/25536/25536-h/25536-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/5/3/25536/25536-h.zip)
+
+      The index for the entire 8 volume set of _History of
+      the English People_ was located at the end of this
+      volume (Volume VIII). For ease in accessibility, it
+      has been removed and produced as a separate volume
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/25533).
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE
+
+by
+
+JOHN RICHARD GREEN, M.A.
+Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford
+
+VOLUME VIII
+
+MODERN ENGLAND. 1760-1815.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+MacMillan and Co., Ltd.
+New York: The MacMillan Co.
+1896
+
+First Edition, 1879; Reprinted 1882, 1886, 1891.
+Eversley Edition, 1896.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+   BOOK IX
+
+   MODERN ENGLAND. 1760-1815.
+
+
+     CHAPTER II
+                                                           PAGE
+     THE INDEPENDENCE OF AMERICA. 1767-1782                   1
+
+
+     CHAPTER III
+
+     INDUSTRIAL ENGLAND. 1782-1792                           45
+
+
+     CHAPTER IV
+
+     ENGLAND AND REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE. 1792-1801             97
+
+
+     CHAPTER V
+
+     ENGLAND AND NAPOLEON. 1801-1815                        144
+
+
+
+
+MAPS
+
+
+    I. THE COLONIES OF NORTH AMERICA AT THE
+           DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE        _To face p._ 1
+
+   II. EUROPE AFTER THE PEACE OF LUNEVILLE, 1801         146
+
+  III. EUROPE AFTER THE PEACE OF TILSIT, 1807            158
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE COLONIES OF NORTH AMERICA at the Declaration of
+Independence]
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE INDEPENDENCE OF AMERICA
+
+1767-1782
+
+
+[Sidenote: Growing influence of public opinion.]
+
+The Chatham ministry marked a new phase in the relation of public
+opinion to the government of the State. In 1766 as in 1756 Pitt had been
+called into office by "the voice of the people" at large. But in his
+former ministry the influence he drew from popularity could only make
+itself effective through an alliance with the influence which was drawn
+from political connexion; and when the two elements of the
+administration became opposed the support of the nation gave Pitt little
+strength of resistance against the Whigs. Nor had the young king had
+much better fortune as yet in his efforts to break their rule. He had
+severed them indeed from Pitt; and he had dexterously broken up the
+great party into jealous factions. But broken as it was, even its
+factions remained too strong for the king. His one effort at
+independence under Bute hardly lasted a year, and he was as helpless in
+the hands of Grenville as in the hands of Rockingham. His bribery, his
+patronage, his Parliamentary "friends," his perfidy and his lies, had
+done much to render good government impossible and to steep public life
+in deeper corruption, but they had done little to further the triumph of
+the Crown over the great houses. Of the one power indeed which could
+break the Whig rule, the power of public opinion, George was more
+bitterly jealous than even of the Whigs themselves. But in spite of his
+jealousy the tide of opinion steadily rose. In wise and in unwise ways
+the country at large showed its new interest in national policy, its new
+resolve to have a share in the direction of it. It showed no love for
+the king or the king's schemes. But it retained all its old disgust for
+the Whigs and for the Parliament. It clung to Pitt closer than ever, and
+in spite of his isolation from all party support raised him daily into a
+mightier power. It was the sense that a new England was thus growing up
+about him, that a new basis was forming itself for political action,
+which at last roused the Great Commoner to the bold enterprise of
+breaking through the bonds of "connexion" altogether. For the first time
+since the Revolution a minister told the peers in their own house that
+he defied their combinations.
+
+[Sidenote: Chatham's withdrawal.]
+
+The ministry of 1766 in fact was itself such a defiance; for it was an
+attempt to found political power not on the support of the Whigs as a
+party, but on the support of national opinion. But as Parliament was
+then constituted, it was only through Chatham himself that opinion could
+tell even on the administration he formed; and six months after he had
+taken office Chatham was no more than a name. The dread which had driven
+him from the stormy agitation of the Lower House to the quiet of the
+House of Peers now became a certainty. As winter died into the spring of
+1767 his nervous disorganization grew into a painful and overwhelming
+illness which almost wholly withdrew him from public affairs; and when
+Parliament met again he was unable either to come to town or to confer
+with his colleagues. It was in vain that they prayed him for a single
+word of counsel. Chatham remained utterly silent; and the ministry which
+his guidance had alone held together at once fell into confusion. The
+Earl's plans were suffered to drop. His colleagues lost all cohesion,
+and each acted as he willed. Townshend, a brilliant but shallow
+rhetorician whom Pitt had been driven reluctantly to make his Chancellor
+of the Exchequer, after angering the House of Commons by proposals for
+an increase of the land-tax, strove to win back popularity among the
+squires by undertaking to raise a revenue from America. That a member of
+a ministry which bore Pitt's name should have proposed to reopen the
+question of colonial taxation within a year of the repeal of the Stamp
+Acts was strange enough to the colonists; and they were yet more
+astonished when, on its neglect to make provision for compensating those
+who had suffered from the recent outbreak in due conformity to an Act of
+the British Parliament, the Assembly of New York was suspended, and when
+Townshend redeemed his pledge by laying duties on various objects
+brought into American ports. But these measures were the result of
+levity and disorganization rather than of any purpose to reopen the
+quarrel. Pitt's colleagues had as yet no design to reverse his policy.
+The one aim of the ministry which bore his name, and which during his
+retirement looked to the Duke of Grafton as its actual head, was simply
+to exist. But in the face of Chatham's continued withdrawal, of
+Townshend's death in 1767, and of the increasing hostility of the
+Rockingham Whigs, even existence was difficult; and Grafton saw himself
+forced to a union with the faction which was gathered under the Duke of
+Bedford, and to the appointment of a Tory noble as Secretary of State.
+
+[Sidenote: His resignation.]
+
+Such measures however only showed how far the ministry had drifted from
+the ground on which Pitt took his stand in its formation; and the very
+force on which he had relied turned at once against it. The elections
+for the new Parliament which met in 1768 were more corrupt than any
+that had as yet been witnessed; and even the stoutest opponents of
+reform shrank aghast from the open bribery of constituencies and the
+prodigal barter of seats. How bitter the indignation of the country had
+grown was seen in its fresh backing of Wilkes. Wilkes had remained in
+France since his outlawry; but he seized on the opening afforded by the
+elections to return and offer himself as a member for the new
+Parliament. To the surprise and dismay of the ministers he was returned
+for Middlesex, a county the large number of whose voters made its choice
+a real expression of public opinion. The choice of Wilkes at such a
+moment was in effect a public condemnation of the House of Commons and
+the ministerial system. The ministry however and the House alike shrank
+from a fresh struggle with the agitator. But the king was eager for the
+contest. After ten years of struggle and disappointment George had all
+but reached his aim. The two forces which had as yet worsted him were
+both of them paralysed. The Whigs were fatally divided, and discredited
+in the eyes of the country by their antagonism to Pitt. Pitt on the
+other hand was suddenly removed from the stage. The ministry was without
+support in the country; and for Parliamentary support it was forced to
+lean more and more on the men who looked for direction to the king
+himself. At a moment when all hope of exerting any influence seemed
+crushed by the return of Chatham to power, George found his influence
+predominant as it had never been before. One force of opposition alone
+remained in the public discontent; and at this he struck more fiercely
+than ever. "I think it highly expedient to apprise you," he wrote to
+Lord North, "that the expulsion of Mr. Wilkes appears to be very
+essential, and must be effected." The ministers and the House of Commons
+bowed to his will. By his non-appearance in court when charged with
+libel, Wilkes had become an outlaw, and he was now thrown into prison on
+his outlawry. Dangerous riots broke out in London and over the whole
+country at the news of his arrest; and continued throughout the rest of
+the year. In the midst of these tumults the ministry itself was torn
+with internal discord. The adherents of Chatham found their position in
+it an intolerable one; and Lord Shelburne announced his purpose of
+resigning office. The announcement was followed in the autumn by the
+resignation of Chatham himself. Though still prostrated by disease, the
+Earl was sufficiently restored to grasp the actual position of the
+Cabinet which traded on his name, and in October 1768 he withdrew
+formally from the ministry.
+
+The withdrawal of Chatham however, if it shook the ministry, only
+rendered it still more dependent on the king; and in spite of its
+reluctance George forced it to plunge into a decisive struggle with the
+public opinion which was declaring itself in tumult and riot against the
+system of government. The triumph of Wilkes had been driven home by the
+election of a nominee of the great agitator as his colleague on a fresh
+vacancy in the representation of Middlesex. The Government met the blow
+by a show of vigour, and by calling on the magistrates of Surrey to
+disperse the mobs; a summons which ended in conflicts between the crowd
+and the soldiers, in which some of the rioters were slain. Wilkes at
+once published the letter of the Secretary of State with comments on it
+as a cause of bloodshed; and the ministry accepted the step as a
+challenge to combat. If his comments were libellous, the libel was
+cognizable in the ordinary courts of law. But no sooner had Parliament
+assembled in 1769 than the House of Commons was called to take the
+matter into its own hands. Witnesses were examined at its bar: the forms
+of a trial were gone through; and as Wilkes persisted in his charge, he
+was expelled as a libeller. Unluckily the course which had been adopted
+put the House itself on trial before the constituencies. No sooner was
+the new writ issued than Wilkes again presented himself as a candidate,
+and was again elected by the shire of Middlesex. Violent and oppressive
+as the course of the House of Commons had been, it had as yet acted
+within its strict right, for no one questioned its possession of a
+right of expulsion. But the defiance of Middlesex led it now to go
+further. It resolved, "That Mr. Wilkes having been in this session of
+Parliament expelled the House, was and is incapable of being elected a
+member to serve in the present Parliament"; and it issued a writ for a
+fresh election. Middlesex answered this insolent claim to limit the free
+choice of a constituency by again returning Wilkes; and the House was
+driven by its anger to a fresh and more outrageous usurpation. It again
+expelled the member for Middlesex; and on his return for the third time
+by an immense majority it voted that the candidate whom he had defeated,
+Colonel Luttrell, ought to have been returned, and was the legal
+representative of Middlesex. The Commons had not only limited at their
+own arbitrary discretion the free election of the constituency, but they
+had transferred its rights to themselves by seating Luttrell as member
+in defiance of the deliberate choice of Wilkes by the freeholders of
+Middlesex. The country at once rose indignantly against this violation
+of constitutional law. Wilkes was elected an Alderman of London; and the
+Mayor, Aldermen, and Livery petitioned the king to dissolve the
+Parliament. A remonstrance from London and Westminster mooted a far
+larger question. It said boldly that "there is a time when it is clearly
+demonstrable that men cease to be representatives. That time is now
+arrived. The House of Commons do not represent the people." Meanwhile a
+writer who styled himself Junius attacked the Government in letters,
+which, rancorous and unscrupulous as was their tone, gave a new power to
+the literature of the Press by their clearness and terseness of
+statement, the finish of their style, and the terrible vigour of their
+invective.
+
+[Sidenote: Parliamentary Reform.]
+
+The storm however beat idly on the obstinacy of the king. The printer of
+the bold letters was prosecuted, and the petitions and remonstrances of
+London were haughtily rejected. The issue of the struggle verified the
+forebodings of Burke. If, as Middlesex declared, and as the strife
+itself proved, the House of Commons had ceased to represent the English
+people, it was inevitable that men should look forward to measures that
+would make it representative. At the beginning of 1770 a cessation of
+the disease which had long held him prostrate enabled Chatham to
+reappear in the House of Lords. He at once denounced the usurpations of
+the Commons, and brought in a bill to declare them illegal. But his
+genius made him the first to see that remedies of this sort were
+inadequate to meet evils which really sprang from the fact that the
+House of Commons no longer represented the people of England; and he
+mooted a plan for its reform by an increase of the county members, who
+then formed the most independent portion of the House. Further he could
+not go, for even in the proposals he made he stood almost alone. The
+Tories and the king's friends were not likely to welcome proposals which
+would lessen the king's influence. On the other hand the Whigs under
+Lord Rockingham had no sympathy with Parliamentary reform. As early as
+1769, in his first political publication, their one philosophic thinker,
+Edmund Burke, had met a proposal to enlarge the number of constituents
+by a counter-proposal to lessen them. "It would be more in the spirit of
+our constitution, and more agreeable to the fashion of our best laws,"
+he said, "by lessening the number to add to the weight and independency
+of our voters." Nor did the Whigs shrink with less haughty disdain from
+the popular agitation in which public opinion was forced to express
+itself, and which Chatham, while censuring its extravagance, as
+deliberately encouraged. It is from the quarrel between Wilkes and the
+House of Commons that we may date the influence of public meetings on
+English politics. The gatherings of the Middlesex electors in his
+support were preludes to the great meetings of Yorkshire freeholders in
+which the question of Parliamentary reform rose into importance; and it
+was in the movement for reform, and the establishment of corresponding
+committees throughout the country for the purpose of promoting it, that
+the power of political agitation first made itself felt. Political
+societies and clubs took their part in this quickening and organization
+of public opinion: and the spread of discussion, as well as the
+influence which now began to be exercised by the appearance of vast
+numbers of men in support of any political movement, proved that
+Parliament, whether it would or no, must soon reckon with the sentiments
+of the people at large.
+
+[Sidenote: Publication of debates.]
+
+But an agent far more effective than popular agitation was preparing to
+bring the force of public opinion to bear directly on Parliament itself.
+We have seen how much of the corruption of the House of Commons sprang
+from the secrecy of Parliamentary proceedings, but this secrecy was the
+harder to preserve as the nation woke to a greater interest in its own
+affairs. From the accession of the Georges imperfect reports of the more
+important discussions began to be published under the title of "The
+Senate of Lilliput," and with feigned names or simple initials to denote
+the speakers. The best known reports of this kind were those contributed
+by Samuel Johnson to the _Gentleman's Magazine_. Obtained by stealth and
+often merely recalled by memory, such reports were naturally inaccurate;
+and their inaccuracy was eagerly seized on as a pretext for enforcing
+the rules which guarded the secrecy of proceedings in Parliament. In
+1771 the Commons issued a proclamation forbidding the publication of
+debates; and six printers, who set it at defiance, were summoned to the
+bar of the House. One who refused to appear was arrested by its
+messenger; but the arrest brought the House into conflict with the
+magistrates of London. The magistrates set aside its proclamation as
+without legal force, released the printers, and sent the messenger to
+prison for an unlawful arrest. The House sent the Lord Mayor to the
+Tower, but the cheers of the crowds which followed him on his way told
+that public opinion was again with the Press, and the attempt to hinder
+its publication of Parliamentary proceedings dropped silently on his
+release at the next prorogation. Few changes of equal importance have
+been so quietly brought about. Not only was the responsibility of
+members to their constituents made constant and effective by the
+publication of their proceedings, but the nation itself was called in to
+assist in the deliberations of its representatives. A new and wider
+interest in its own affairs was roused in the people at large, and a new
+political education was given to it through the discussion of every
+subject of national importance in the Houses and the Press. Stimulated
+and moulded into shape by free discussion, encouraged and made conscious
+of its strength by public meetings, and gathered up and represented on
+all its sides by the journals of the day, public opinion became a force
+in practical statesmanship, influenced the course of debates, and
+controlled, in a closer and more constant way than even Parliament
+itself had been able to do, the actions of the Government. The
+importance of its new position gave a weight to the Press which it had
+never had before. The first great English journals date from this time.
+With the _Morning Chronicle_, the _Morning Post_, the _Morning Herald_,
+and the _Times_, all of which appeared in the interval between the
+opening years of the American War and the beginning of the war with the
+French Revolution, journalism took a new tone of responsibility and
+intelligence. The hacks of Grub Street were superseded by publicists of
+a high moral temper and literary excellence; and philosophers like
+Coleridge or statesmen like Canning turned to influence public opinion
+through the columns of the Press.
+
+[Sidenote: Renewed strife with America.]
+
+But great as the influence of opinion was destined to become, it was
+feebly felt as yet; and George the Third was able to set Chatham's
+policy disdainfully aside and to plunge into a contest far more
+disastrous than his contest with the Press. In all the proceedings of
+the last few years, what had galled him most had been the act which
+averted a war between England and her colonies. To the king the
+Americans were already "rebels," and the great statesman whose eloquence
+had made their claims irresistible was a "trumpet of sedition." George
+deplored in his correspondence with his ministers the repeal of the
+Stamp Acts. "All men feel," he wrote, "that the fatal compliance in 1766
+has increased the pretensions of the Americans to absolute
+independence." But in England generally the question was regarded as
+settled, while in America the news of the repeal had been received with
+universal joy, and taken as a close of the strife. On both sides however
+there remained a pride and irritability which only wise handling could
+have allayed; and in the present state of English politics wise handling
+was impossible. Only a few months indeed passed before the quarrel was
+again reopened; for no sooner had the illness of Lord Chatham removed
+him from any real share in public affairs than the wretched
+administration which bore his name suspended the Assembly of New York on
+its refusal to provide quarters for English troops, and resolved to
+assert British sovereignty by levying import duties of trivial amount at
+American ports. The Assembly of Massachusetts was dissolved on a
+trifling quarrel with its Governor, and Boston was occupied for a time
+by British soldiers. It was without a thought of any effective struggle
+however that the Cabinet had entered on this course of vexation; and
+when the remonstrances of the Legislatures of Massachusetts and
+Virginia, coupled with a fall in the funds, warned the ministers of its
+danger, they hastened to withdraw from it. In 1769 the troops were
+recalled, and all duties, save one, abandoned. But with a fatal
+obstinacy the king insisted on retaining the duty on tea as an
+assertion of the supremacy of the mother country. Its retention was
+enough to prevent any thorough restoration of good feeling. A series of
+petty quarrels went on in almost every colony between the popular
+assemblies and the Governors appointed by the Crown, and the colonists
+persisted in their agreement to import nothing from the mother country.
+As yet however there was no prospect of serious strife. In America the
+influence of George Washington allayed the irritation of Virginia; while
+Massachusetts contented itself with quarrelling with its Governor and
+refusing to buy tea so long as the duty was levied.
+
+The temper of the colonists was in the main that of the bulk of English
+statesmen. Even George Grenville, though approving the retention of the
+duty in question, abandoned all dream of further taxation. But the king
+was now supreme. The reappearance and attack of Chatham at the opening
+of 1770 had completed the ruin of the ministry. Those of his adherents
+who still clung to it, Lord Camden, the Chancellor, Lord Granby, the
+Commander-in-Chief, Dunning, the Solicitor-General, resigned their
+posts. In a few days they were followed by the Duke of Grafton, who
+since Chatham's resignation had been nominally the head of the
+administration. All that remained of it were the Bedford faction and the
+dependents of the king; but George did not hesitate to form these into a
+ministry, and to place at its head the former Chancellor of the
+Exchequer, Lord North, a man of some administrative ability, but
+unconnected with any political party, steadily opposed to any
+recognition of public opinion, and of an easy and indolent temper which
+yielded against his better knowledge to the stubborn doggedness of the
+king. The instinct of the country at once warned it of the results of
+such a change; and the City of London put itself formally at the head of
+the public discontent. In solemn addresses it called on George the Third
+to dismiss his ministers and to dissolve the Parliament; and its action
+was supported by petitions to the same effect from the greater counties.
+In the following year it fought, as we have seen, a battle with the
+House of Commons which established the freedom of the press. But the
+efforts of the country failed before the paralysis of political action
+which resulted from the position of the Whigs and the corruption of
+Parliament. The deaths of Grenville and Bedford broke up two of the Whig
+factions. Rockingham with the rest of the party held aloof from the
+popular agitation, and drew more and more away from Chatham as he
+favoured it. The Parliament remained steady to the king, and the king
+clung more and more to the ministry. The ministry was in fact a mere
+cloak for the direction of public affairs by George himself. "Not only
+did he direct the minister," a careful observer tells us, "in all
+important matters of foreign and domestic policy, but he instructed him
+as to the management of debates in Parliament, suggested what motions
+should be made or opposed, and how measures should be carried. He
+reserved for himself all the patronage, he arranged the whole cast of
+administration, settled the relative places and pretensions of ministers
+of State, law officers, and members of the household, nominated and
+promoted the English and Scotch judges, appointed and translated bishops
+and deans, and dispensed other preferments in the Church. He disposed of
+military governments, regiments, and commissions; and himself ordered
+the marching of troops. He gave and refused titles, honours, and
+pensions." All this immense patronage was persistently used for the
+creation and maintenance in both Houses of Parliament of a majority
+directed by the king himself; and its weight was seen in the steady
+action of such a majority. It was seen yet more in the subjection to
+which the ministry that bore North's name was reduced. George was in
+fact the minister through the years of its existence; and the shame of
+the darkest hour of English history lies wholly at his door.
+
+[Sidenote: The Boston tea-riots.]
+
+His fixed purpose was to seize on the first opportunity of undoing the
+"fatal compliance of 1766." A trivial riot gave him at last the handle
+he wanted. In December 1773 the arrival of some English ships laden with
+tea kindled fresh irritation in Boston, where the non-importation
+agreement was strictly enforced; and a mob in the disguise of Indians
+boarded the vessels and flung their contents into the sea. The outrage
+was deplored alike by the friends of America in England and by its own
+leading statesmen; and both Washington and Chatham were prepared to
+support the Government in its looked-for demand of redress. But the
+thought of the king was not of redress but of repression, and he set
+roughly aside the more conciliatory proposals of Lord North and his
+fellow-ministers. They had already rejected as "frivolous and vexatious"
+a petition of the Assembly of Massachusetts for the dismissal of two
+public officers whose letters home advised the withdrawal of free
+institutions from the colonies. They now seized on the riot as a pretext
+for rigorous measures. A bill introduced into Parliament in the
+beginning of 1774 punished Boston by closing its port against all
+commerce. Another punished the State of Massachusetts by withdrawing the
+liberties it had enjoyed ever since the Pilgrim Fathers landed on its
+soil. Its charter was altered. The choice of its Council was transferred
+from the people to the Crown, and the nomination of its judges was
+transferred to the Governor. In the Governor too, by a provision more
+outrageous than even these, was vested the right of sending all persons
+charged with a share in the late disturbances to England for trial. To
+enforce these measures of repression troops were sent to America, and
+General Gage, the commander-in-chief there, was appointed Governor of
+Massachusetts. The king's exultation at the prospect before him was
+unbounded. "The die," he wrote triumphantly to his minister, "is cast.
+The colonies must either triumph or submit." Four regiments would be
+enough to bring the Americans to their senses. They would only be "lions
+while we are lambs." "If we take the resolute part," he decided
+solemnly, "they will undoubtedly be very meek."
+
+[Sidenote: American resistance.]
+
+Unluckily the blow at Massachusetts was received with anything but
+meekness. The jealousies between colony and colony were hushed by a
+sense that the liberties of all were in danger. If the British
+Parliament could cancel the charter of Massachusetts and ruin the trade
+of Boston, it could cancel the charter of every colony and ruin the
+trade of every port from the St. Lawrence to the coast of Georgia. All,
+therefore, adopted the cause of Massachusetts; and all their
+Legislatures save that of Georgia sent delegates to a Congress which
+assembled on the 4th of September at Philadelphia. Massachusetts took a
+yet bolder course. Not one of its citizens would act under the new laws.
+Its Assembly met in defiance of the Governor, called out the militia of
+the State, and provided arms and ammunition for it. But there was still
+room for reconciliation. The resolutions of the Congress had been
+moderate, for Virginia was the wealthiest and most influential among
+the States who sent delegates, and though resolute to resist the new
+measures of the government, Virginia still clung to the mother country.
+At home the merchants of London and Bristol pleaded loudly for
+reconciliation; and in January 1775 Chatham again came forward to avert
+a strife he had once before succeeded in preventing. With characteristic
+largeness of feeling he set aside all half-measures or proposals of
+compromise. "It is not cancelling a piece of parchment," he insisted,
+"that can win back America: you must respect her fears and her
+resentments." The bill which he introduced in concert with Franklin
+provided for the repeal of the late Acts and for the security of the
+colonial charters, abandoned the claim of taxation, and ordered the
+recall of the troops. A colonial assembly was directed to meet and
+provide means by which America might contribute towards the payment of
+the public debt.
+
+[Sidenote: Washington.]
+
+Chatham's measure was contemptuously rejected by the Lords, as was a
+similar measure of Burke's by the House of Commons, and a petition of
+the City of London in favour of the Colonies by the king himself. With
+the rejection of these efforts for conciliation began the great struggle
+which ended eight years later in the severance of the American Colonies
+from the British Crown. The Congress of delegates from the Colonial
+Legislatures at once voted measures for general defence, ordered the
+levy of an army, and set George Washington at its head. No nobler figure
+ever stood in the forefront of a nation's life. Washington was grave and
+courteous in address; his manners were simple and unpretending; his
+silence and the serene calmness of his temper spoke of a perfect
+self-mastery. But there was little in his outer bearing to reveal the
+grandeur of soul which lifts his figure with all the simple majesty of
+an ancient statue out of the smaller passions, the meaner impulses, of
+the world around him. What recommended him for command was singly his
+weight among his fellow-landowners of Virginia, and the experience of
+war which he had gained by service in border contests with the French
+and the Indians, as well as in Braddock's luckless expedition against
+Fort Duquesne. It was only as the weary fight went on that the colonists
+discovered, however slowly and imperfectly, the greatness of their
+leader, his clear judgement, his heroic endurance, his silence under
+difficulties, his calmness in the hour of danger or defeat, the patience
+with which he waited, the quickness and hardness with which he struck,
+the lofty and serene sense of duty that never swerved from its task
+through resentment or jealousy, that never through war or peace felt the
+touch of a meaner ambition, that knew no aim save that of guarding the
+freedom of his fellow-countrymen, and no personal longing save that of
+returning to his own fireside when their freedom was secured. It was
+almost unconsciously that men learned to cling to Washington with a
+trust and faith such as few other men have won, and to regard him with a
+reverence which still hushes us in presence of his memory. But even
+America hardly recognised his real greatness while he lived. It was only
+when death set its seal on him that the voice of those whom he had
+served so long proclaimed him "the man first in war, first in peace, and
+first in the hearts of his fellow-countrymen."
+
+[Sidenote: Declaration of Independence,]
+
+Washington more than any of his fellow-colonists represented the
+clinging of the Virginian landowners to the mother country, and his
+acceptance of a military command proved that even the most moderate
+among the colonists had no hope now save in arms. The struggle opened
+with a skirmish between a party of English troops and a detachment of
+militia at Lexington on the nineteenth of April 1775; and in a few days
+twenty thousand colonists appeared before Boston. The Congress
+reassembled, declared the States they represented "The United Colonies
+of America," and undertook the work of government. Meanwhile ten
+thousand fresh English troops landed at Boston. But the provincial
+militia, in number almost double that of the British force which
+prepared to attack them, seized a neck of ground which joins Boston to
+the mainland; and though on the 17th of June they were driven from the
+heights of Bunker's Hill which commanded the town, it was only after a
+desperate struggle in which their bravery put an end for ever to the
+taunts of cowardice which had been levelled against the colonists. "Are
+the Yankees cowards?" shouted the men of Massachusetts as the first
+English attack rolled back baffled down the hill-side. But a far truer
+courage was shown in the stubborn endurance with which Washington's raw
+militiamen, who gradually dwindled from sixteen thousand to ten,
+ill-fed, ill-armed, and with but forty-five rounds of ammunition to each
+man, cooped up through the winter a force of ten thousand veterans in
+the lines of Boston. The spring of 1776 saw them force these troops to
+withdraw from the city to New York, where the whole British army,
+largely reinforced by mercenaries from Germany, was concentrated under
+General Howe. Meanwhile a raid of the American General Arnold nearly
+drove the British troops from Canada; and though his attempt broke down
+before Quebec, it showed that all hope of reconciliation was over. The
+colonies of the south, the last to join in the struggle, had in fact
+expelled their Governors at the close of 1775; at the opening of the
+next year Massachusetts instructed its delegates to support a complete
+repudiation of the king's government by the Colonies; while the American
+ports were thrown open to the world in defiance of the Navigation Acts.
+These decisive steps were followed by the great act with which American
+history begins, the adoption on the 4th of July 1776 by the delegates in
+Congress after a fierce resistance from those of Pennsylvania and South
+Carolina, and in spite of the abstention of those of New York, of a
+Declaration of Independence. "We," ran its solemn words, "the
+representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
+appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our
+intentions, solemnly publish and declare that these United Colonies are,
+and of right ought to be, Free and Independent States."
+
+[Sidenote: Saratoga.]
+
+But the earlier successes of the colonists were soon followed by
+suffering and defeat. Howe, an active general with a fine army at his
+back, cleared Long Island in August by a victory at Brooklyn; and
+Washington, whose force was weakened by withdrawals and defeat and
+disheartened by the loyal tone of the State in which it was encamped,
+was forced in the autumn of 1776 to evacuate New York and New Jersey,
+and to fall back first on the Hudson and then on the Delaware. The
+Congress prepared to fly from Philadelphia, and a general despair showed
+itself in cries of peace. But a well-managed surprise and a daring march
+on the rear of Howe's army restored the spirits of Washington's men, and
+forced the English general in his turn to fall back on New York.
+England however was now roused to more serious efforts; and the
+campaign of 1777 opened with a combined attempt for the suppression of
+the revolt. An army which had assembled in Canada under General Burgoyne
+marched in June by way of the Lakes to seize the line of the Hudson.
+Howe meanwhile sailed up the Chesapeake and advanced on Philadelphia,
+the temporary capital of the United States and the seat of the Congress.
+The rout of his little army of seven thousand men at Brandywine forced
+Washington to abandon Philadelphia, and after a bold but unsuccessful
+attack on his victors to retire into winter quarters on the banks of the
+Schuylkill, where the unconquerable resolve with which he nerved his
+handful of beaten and half-starved troops to face Howe's army in their
+camp at Valley Forge is the noblest of his triumphs. But in the north
+the war had taken another colour. Burgoyne's movement had been planned
+in view of a junction with at least a part of Howe's army from New York;
+a junction which would have enabled him to seize the line of the Hudson
+and thus cut off New England from her sister provinces. But Howe was
+held fast by Washington's resistance and unable to send a man to the
+north; while the spirit of New England, which had grown dull as the war
+rolled away from its borders, quickened again at the news of invasion
+and of the outrages committed by the Indians employed among the English
+troops. Its militia hurried from town and homestead to a camp with
+which General Gates had barred the road to Albany; and after a fruitless
+attack on the American lines, Burgoyne saw himself surrounded on the
+heights of Saratoga. On the 17th of October his whole force was
+compelled to surrender.
+
+[Sidenote: France and America.]
+
+The news of this calamity gave force to the words with which Chatham at
+the very time of the surrender was pressing for peace. "You cannot
+conquer America," he cried when men were glorying in Howe's successes
+over Washington. "If I were an American as I am an Englishman, while a
+foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my
+arms--never, never, never!" Then, in a burst of indignant eloquence he
+thundered against an outrage which was at that moment nerving New
+England to its rally against Burgoyne, the use of the Indian with his
+scalping-knife as an ally of England against her children. The proposals
+which Chatham brought forward might perhaps in his hands even yet have
+drawn America and the mother country together. His plan was one of
+absolute conciliation. He looked forward to a federal union between the
+settlements and Great Britain which would have left the Colonies
+absolutely their own masters in all matters of internal government, and
+linked only by ties of affection and loyalty to the general body of the
+Empire. But the plan met with the same scornful rejection as his
+previous proposals. Its rejection was at once followed by the news of
+Saratoga, and by the yet more fatal news that this disaster had roused
+the Bourbon Courts to avenge the humiliation of the Seven Years' War.
+Crippled and impoverished as she was at its close, France could do
+nothing to break the world-power which was rising in front of her; but
+in the very moment of her defeat, the foresight of Choiseul had seen in
+a future straggle between England and her Colonies a chance of ruining
+the great fabric which Pitt's triumphs had built up. Nor was Pitt blind
+to the steady resolve of France to renew the fight. In every attempt
+which he had made to construct a Ministry he had laid down as the
+corner-stone of his foreign policy a renewal of that alliance with the
+Protestant States of North Germany against the House of Bourbon which
+could alone save England from the dangers of the Family Compact. But his
+efforts had been foiled alike by the resistance of the king, the timid
+peacefulness of the Whigs, and at last by the distrust of England which
+had been rooted in the mind of Frederick the Great through the treachery
+of Lord Bute.
+
+[Sidenote: Death of Chatham.]
+
+The wisdom of his policy was now brought home by the coming of the
+danger he had foreseen when the foresight of Choiseul was justified by
+the outbreak of strife between England and America. Even then for a
+while France looked idly on. Her king, Lewis the Sixteenth, was averse
+from war; her treasury was empty; her government, scared by the growth
+of new movements towards freedom about it, and fearful of endangering
+the monarchy by the encouragement these would receive from a union with
+the revolted Colonies, still doubted whether America had any real power
+of resisting Britain. It was to no purpose that from the moment when
+they declared themselves independent, the United States called on France
+for aid; or that Franklin pressed their appeal on its government. A year
+in fact passed without any decisive resolution to give aid to the
+colonists. But the steady drift of French policy and the passion of the
+French people pressed heavier every day on the hesitation of their
+government; and the news of Saratoga forced its hand. The American
+envoys at last succeeded in forming an alliance; and in February 1778 a
+treaty offensive and defensive was concluded between France and America.
+Lord North strove to meet the blow by fresh offers of conciliation, and
+by a pledge to renounce for ever the right of direct taxation over the
+Colonies; but he felt that such offers were fruitless, that the time for
+conciliation was past, while all hope of reducing America by force of
+arms had disappeared. In utter despair he pressed his resignation on the
+king. But George was as obstinate for war as ever; and the country,
+stung to the quick by the attack of France, backed passionately the
+obstinacy of the king. But unlike George the Third, it instinctively
+felt that if a hope still remained of retaining the friendship of the
+Colonies and of baffling the efforts of the Bourbons, it lay in Lord
+Chatham; and in spite of the king's resistance the voice of the whole
+country called him back to power. The danger indeed which had scared
+Lord North into resignation, and before which a large party of the Whigs
+now advocated the acknowledgement of American independence, only woke
+Chatham to his old daring and fire. He had revolted from a war against
+Englishmen. But all his pride in English greatness, all his confidence
+in English power, woke afresh at the challenge of France. His genius saw
+indeed in the new danger a means of escape from the old. He would have
+withdrawn every soldier from America, and flung the whole force of
+Britain into the conflict with France. He believed that in the splendour
+of triumphs over her older enemy England might be brought to terms of
+amity which would win back the Colonies, and that the English blood of
+the colonists themselves would be quickened to a fresh union with the
+mother country by her struggle against a power from which she had so
+lately rescued them. Till such a trial had been made, with all the
+advantages that the magic of his name could give it in England and
+America alike, he would not bow to a need that must wreck the great
+Empire his hand had built up. Even at this hour there was a chance of
+success for such a policy; but on the eve of Chatham's return to office
+this chance was shattered by the hand of death. Broken with age and
+disease, the Earl was borne to the House of Lords on the seventh of
+April to utter in a few broken words his protest against the proposal to
+surrender America. "I rejoice," he murmured, "that I am still alive to
+lift up my voice against the dismemberment of this ancient and noble
+monarchy. His Majesty succeeded to an Empire as great in extent as its
+reputation was unsullied. Seventeen years ago this people was the terror
+of the world." He listened impatiently to the reply of the Duke of
+Richmond, and again rose to his feet. But he had hardly risen when he
+pressed his hand upon his heart, and falling back in a swoon was borne
+home to die.
+
+[Sidenote: England against Europe.]
+
+How well founded was Chatham's faith in the power of Britain was seen in
+the strife that now opened. From the hour of his death England entered
+on a conflict with enemies whose circle gradually widened till she stood
+single-handed against the world. At the close of 1778 the Family Compact
+bore its full fruit; Spain joined the league of France and America
+against her; and in the next year the joint fleets of the two powers
+rode the masters of the Channel. They even threatened a descent on the
+English coast. But dead as Chatham was, his cry woke a new life in
+England. "Shall we fall prostrate," he exclaimed with his last breath,
+"before the House of Bourbon?" and the divisions which had broken the
+nation in its struggle with American liberty were hushed in the presence
+of this danger to its own existence. The weakness of the Ministry was
+compensated by the energy of England itself. For three years, from 1779
+to 1782, General Elliott held against famine and bombardment from a
+French and Spanish army the rock fortress of Gibraltar. Although a
+quarrel over the right of search banded Holland and the Courts of the
+North in an armed neutrality against her, and added the Dutch fleet to
+the number of her assailants, England held her own at sea. In her
+Eastern dependency, where France sought a counterpoise to the power of
+Britain in that of the Mahrattas, freebooters of Hindoo blood whose
+tribes had for a century past carried their raids over India from the
+hills of the Western coast, and founded sovereignties in Guzerat, Malwa,
+and Tanjore, the tenacity and resource of Warren Hastings, the first
+Governor-General of British India, wrested victory from failure and
+defeat. Though the wide schemes of conquest which he formed were for the
+moment frustrated, the annexation of Benares, the extension of British
+rule along the Ganges, the reduction of Oudh to virtual dependence, the
+appearance of English armies in Central India, and the defeat of the
+Sultan of Mysore, laid the foundation of an Indian Empire which his
+genius was bold enough to foresee. Even in America the fortune of the
+war seemed for a while to turn. After Burgoyne's surrender the English
+generals had withdrawn from Pennsylvania, and bent all their efforts on
+the Southern States, where a strong Royalist party still existed. The
+capture of Charlestown and the successes of Lord Cornwallis in 1780 were
+rendered fruitless by the obstinate resistance of General Greene; but
+the United States remained weakened by bankruptcy and unnerved by hopes
+of aid from France.
+
+[Sidenote: America and Ireland.]
+
+Hardly a year however had passed when the face of the war in America was
+changed by a terrible disaster. Foiled in an attempt on North Carolina
+by the refusal of his fellow-general, Sir Henry Clinton, to assist him,
+Cornwallis fell back in 1781 on Virginia, and entrenched himself in the
+lines of York Town. A sudden march of Washington brought him to the
+front of the English troops at a moment when the French fleet held the
+sea, and the British army was driven by famine in October to a surrender
+as humiliating as that of Saratoga. The news fell like a thunderbolt on
+the wretched Minister, who had till now suppressed at his master's order
+his own conviction of the uselessness of further bloodshed. Opening his
+arms and pacing wildly about the room, Lord North exclaimed, "It is all
+over," and resigned. At this moment indeed the country seemed on the
+brink of ruin. Humiliating as it was, England could have borne fifty
+such calamities as the surrender at York Town. But in the very crisis of
+the struggle with America she found herself confronted with a danger
+nearer home. The revolt of one great dependency brought with it a
+threatened revolt from another. In Ireland, as in the Colonies, England
+had shrunk from carrying out either a national or an imperial policy.
+She might have recognised Ireland as a free nationality, and bound it to
+herself by federal bonds; or she might have absorbed it, as she had
+absorbed Scotland, into the general mass of her own national life. With
+a perverse ingenuity she had not only refrained from taking either of
+these courses, but she had deliberately adopted the worst features of
+both. Ireland was absolutely subject to Britain, but she formed no part
+of it, she shared neither in its liberty nor its wealth. But on the
+other hand she was allowed no national existence of her own. While all
+the outer seeming of national life was left, while Ireland possessed in
+name an army, a Parliament, a magistracy, the mass of the Irish people
+was as strange to all this life as the savages of Polynesia. Every
+Catholic Irishman, and there were five Irish Catholics to every Irish
+Protestant, was treated as a stranger and a foreigner in his own
+country. The House of Lords, the House of Commons, the magistracy, all
+corporate offices in towns, all ranks in the army, the bench, the bar,
+the whole administration of government or justice, were closed against
+Catholics. The very right of voting for their representatives in
+Parliament was denied them. Few Catholic landowners had been left by the
+sweeping confiscations which had followed the successive revolts of the
+island, and oppressive laws forced even these few with scant exceptions
+to profess Protestantism. Necessity indeed had brought about a practical
+toleration of their religion and their worship; but in all social and
+political matters the native Catholics, in other words the immense
+majority of the people of Ireland, were simply hewers of wood and
+drawers of water for Protestant masters, for masters who still looked on
+themselves as mere settlers, who boasted of their Scotch or English
+extraction, and who regarded the name of "Irishman" as an insult.
+
+[Sidenote: Irish Government.]
+
+But small as was this Protestant body, one-half of it fared little
+better as far as power was concerned than the Catholics. The
+Presbyterians, who formed the bulk of the Ulster settlers, were shut out
+by law from all civil, military, and municipal offices. The
+administration and justice of the country were thus kept rigidly in the
+hands of members of the Established Church, a body which comprised
+about a twelfth of the population of the island, while its government
+was practically monopolised by a few great Protestant landowners. The
+rotten boroughs, which had originally been created to make the Irish
+Parliament dependent on the Crown, had by this time fallen under the
+influence of the adjacent landlords, whose command of these made them
+masters of the House of Commons while they themselves formed in person
+the House of Peers. To such a length had this system been carried that
+at the time of the Union the great majority of the boroughs lay in the
+hands of a very few families. Two-thirds of the House of Commons, in
+fact, was returned by a small group of nobles, who were recognised as
+"parliamentary undertakers," and who undertook to "manage" Parliament on
+their own terms. Irish politics was for these men a mere means of public
+plunder; they were glutted with pensions, preferments, and bribes in
+hard cash, in return for their services; they were the advisers of every
+Lord-Lieutenant and the practical governors of the country. The results
+were what might have been expected. For more than a century Ireland was
+the worst governed country in Europe. That its government was not even
+worse than it was, was due to its connection with England and the
+subordination of its Parliament to the English Privy Council. The Irish
+Parliament had no power of originating legislative or financial
+measures, and could only say "yes" or "no" to Acts laid before it by
+the Privy Council in England. The English Parliament too claimed the
+right of binding Ireland as well as England by its enactments, and one
+of its statutes transferred the appellate jurisdiction of the Irish
+Peerage to the English House of Lords. Galling as these restrictions
+were to the plundering aristocracy of Ireland, they formed a useful
+check on its tyranny. But as if to compensate for the benefits of this
+protection, England did her best from the time of William the Third to
+annihilate Irish commerce and to ruin Irish agriculture. Statutes passed
+by the jealousy of English landowners forbade the export of Irish cattle
+or sheep to English ports. The export of wool was forbidden lest it
+might interfere with the profits of English wool-growers. Poverty was
+thus added to the curse of misgovernment; and poverty deepened with the
+rapid growth of the native population, a growth due in great part to the
+physical misery and moral degradation of their lives, till famine turned
+the country into a hell.
+
+[Sidenote: The Volunteers.]
+
+The bitter lesson of the last conquest however long sufficed to check
+all dreams of revolt among the native Irish; and the outbreaks which
+sprang from time to time out of the general misery and discontent were
+purely social in their character, and were roughly repressed by the
+ruling class. When political revolt at last threatened English
+supremacy over Ireland, the threat came from the ruling class itself.
+Some timid efforts made by the English Government at the accession of
+George the Third to control its tyranny were resented by a refusal of
+money bills, and by a cry for the removal of the checks imposed on the
+independence of the Irish Parliament. But it was not till the American
+war that this cry became a political danger. The threat of a French
+invasion and the want of any regular force to oppose it compelled the
+Government to call on Ireland to provide for its own defence, and in
+answer to its call forty thousand volunteers appeared in arms in 1779.
+The force was wholly a Protestant one, commanded by Protestant officers,
+and it was turned to account by the Protestant oligarchy. Threats of an
+armed revolt backed the eloquence of two Parliamentary leaders, Grattan
+and Flood, in their demand for the repeal of Poynings' Act, which took
+all power of initiative legislation from the Irish Parliament, and for
+the recognition of the Irish House of Lords as an ultimate Court of
+Appeal. But the Volunteers were forced to bid for the support of the
+native Catholics, who looked with indifference on these quarrels of
+their masters, by claiming for them a relaxation of the penal laws
+against the exercise of their religion and of some of their most
+oppressive disabilities. So real was the danger that England was forced
+to give way. The first demands were in effect a claim for national
+independence. But there were no means of resisting them, for England was
+without a soldier to oppose the Volunteers, while she was pressed hard
+by the league of Europe and America against her. In the face of such a
+rising close at home, it became plain even to the most dogged of Tories
+that it was impossible to continue a strife across three thousand miles
+of sea; and to deal with the attitude of Ireland became even a more
+pressing need of the Ministry which followed that of Lord North than the
+need of dealing with America.
+
+[Sidenote: End of the war.]
+
+The blow which had shattered the attempt of England to wield an
+autocratic power over her Colonies had shattered the attempt of its king
+to establish an autocratic power over England itself. The Ministry which
+bore the name of Lord North had been a mere screen for the
+administration of George the Third, and its ruin was the ruin of the
+system he had striven to build up. Never again was the Crown to possess
+such a power as he had wielded during the past ten years. For the moment
+however there was nothing to mark so decisive a change; and both to the
+king and his opponents it must have seemed only a new turn in the
+political game which they were playing when in March 1782 the Whigs
+returned to office. Rockingham was still at the head of the party; and
+on Rockingham fell the double task of satisfying Ireland and of putting
+an end, at any cost, to the war with the United States. The task
+involved in both quarters a humiliating surrender; for neither Ireland
+nor America would be satisfied save by a full concession of their
+claims. It needed the bitter stress of necessity to induce the English
+Parliament to follow Rockingham's counsels, but the need was too urgent
+to suffer their rejection. The Houses therefore abandoned by a formal
+statute the judicial and legislative supremacy they had till then
+asserted over the Parliament of Ireland; and from this moment England
+and Ireland were simply held together by the fact that the sovereign of
+the one island was also the sovereign of the other. The grant of
+independence to the one great dependency made it easier to recognise the
+freedom of the other. Rockingham in fact took office with the purpose of
+winning peace by a full acknowledgement of the independence of the
+United States, and negotiations were soon entered into for that purpose.
+
+[Sidenote: The Peace.]
+
+But America was bound by its league with the Bourbon Courts to make no
+peace save one common to its allies, and from its allies peace was hard
+to win without concessions which would have stripped from England all
+that remained of her older greatness. With the revolt of Ireland and the
+surrender of Cornwallis the hopes of her enemies rose high. Spain
+refused to suspend hostilities at any other price than the surrender of
+Gibraltar; while France proposed that England should give up all her
+Indian conquests save Bengal. The triumph of the Bourbons indeed seemed
+secure. If terms like these were accepted the world-empire of Britain
+was at an end. Stripped of her Colonies in America, stripped of her rule
+in India, matched on the very ocean by rival fleets, England sank back
+into a European State, into the England of the first Georges. And yet
+there seemed little chance of her holding out against the demands of
+such a league as fronted her at a moment when her military power was
+paralysed by the attitude of Ireland. But the true basis of her
+world-power lay on the sea. It was by her command of the sea that such
+an empire could alone be possible; nor was it possible so long as she
+commanded the sea for all the armies of the Bourbon powers to rob her of
+it. And at this moment the command of the seas again became her own. On
+the 16th of January 1780 Admiral Rodney, the greatest of English seamen
+save Nelson and Blake, encountered the Spanish fleet off Cape St.
+Vincent, and only four of its vessels escaped to Cadiz. At the opening
+of 1782 the triumphs of the French admiral De Grasse called him to the
+West Indies; and on the 12th of April a manoeuvre which he was the
+first to introduce broke his opponent's line, and drove the French fleet
+shattered from the Atlantic. With Rodney's last victory the struggle of
+the Bourbons was really over, for no means remained of attacking their
+enemy save at Gibraltar, and here a last attack of the joint force
+gathered against it was repulsed by the heroism of Elliott. Nor would
+America wait any longer for the satisfaction of her allies. In November
+her commissioners signed the preliminaries of a peace in which Britain
+reserved to herself on the American continent only Canada and the island
+of Newfoundland; and acknowledged without reserve the independence of
+the United States.
+
+[Sidenote: England and the United States.]
+
+The action of America ended the war; and the treaty of peace with the
+United States was a prelude to treaties of peace with the Bourbon
+powers. Their actual gains were insignificant. France indeed won nothing
+in the treaties with which the war ended; Spain gained only Florida and
+Minorca. Nor could they feel even in this hour of their triumph that the
+end at which they aimed had been fully reached. In half their great
+effort against the world-power of Britain they had utterly failed. She
+had even won ground in India. In America itself she still retained the
+northern dominion of Canada. Her West Indian islands remained intact.
+Above all, she had asserted more nobly than ever her command of the sea,
+and with it the possibility of building up a fresh power in such lands
+as Cook had called her to. But at the close of the war there was less
+thought of what she had retained than of what she had lost. She was
+parted from her American Colonies; and at the moment such a parting
+seemed to be the knell of her greatness. In wealth, in population, the
+American Colonies far surpassed all that remained of her Empire; and the
+American Colonies were irrecoverably gone. It is no wonder that in the
+first shock of such a loss England looked on herself as on the verge of
+ruin, or that the Bourbon Courts believed her position as a world-power
+to be practically at an end. How utterly groundless such a conception
+was the coming years were to show. The energies of England were in fact
+spurred to new efforts by the crisis in her fortunes. The industrial
+developement which followed the war gave her a material supremacy such
+as she had never known before, and the rapid growth of wealth which this
+industry brought with it raised her again into a mother of nations as
+her settlers built up in the waters of the Pacific Colonies as great as
+those which she had lost on the coast of America. But if the Bourbons
+overrated their triumph in one way, they immensely underrated it in
+another. Whatever might be the importance of American independence in
+the history of England, it was of unequalled moment in the history of
+the world. If it crippled for a while the supremacy of the English
+nation, it founded the supremacy of the English race. From the hour of
+American Independence the life of the English People has flowed not in
+one current, but in two; and while the older has shown little signs of
+lessening, the younger has fast risen to a greatness which has changed
+the face of the world. In 1783 America was a nation of three millions of
+inhabitants, scattered thinly along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. It
+is now a nation of forty millions, stretching over the whole continent
+from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In wealth and material energy, as in
+numbers, it far surpasses the mother country from which it sprang. It is
+already the main branch of the English People; and in the days that are
+at hand the main current of that people's history must run along the
+channel not of the Thames or the Mersey, but of the Hudson and the
+Mississippi. But distinct as these currents are, every year proves more
+clearly that in spirit the English People is one. The distance that
+parted England from America lessens every day. The ties that unite them
+grow every day stronger. The social and political differences that
+threatened a hundred years ago to form an impassable barrier between
+them grow every day less. Against this silent and inevitable drift of
+things the spirit of narrow isolation on either side the Atlantic
+struggles in vain. It is possible that the two branches of the English
+People will remain for ever separate political existences. It is likely
+enough that the older of them may again break in twain, and that the
+English People in the Pacific may assert as distinct a national life as
+the two English Peoples on either side the Atlantic. But the spirit,
+the influence, of all these branches will remain one. And in thus
+remaining one, before half-a-century is over it will change the face of
+the world. As two hundred millions of Englishmen fill the valley of the
+Mississippi, as fifty millions of Englishmen assert their lordship over
+Australasia, this vast power will tell through Britain on the old world
+of Europe, whose nations will have shrunk into insignificance before it.
+What the issues of such a world-wide change may be, not even the wildest
+dreamer would dare to dream. But one issue is inevitable. In the
+centuries that lie before us, the primacy of the world will lie with the
+English People. English institutions, English speech, English thought,
+will become the main features of the political, the social, and the
+intellectual life of mankind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+INDUSTRIAL ENGLAND
+
+1782-1792
+
+
+[Sidenote: England in the American War.]
+
+That in the creation of the United States the world had reached one of
+the turning-points in its history seems at the time to have entered into
+the thought of not a single European statesman. What startled men most
+at the moment was the discovery that England herself was far from being
+ruined by the greatness of her defeat. She rose from it indeed stronger
+and more vigorous than ever. Never had she shown a mightier energy than
+in the struggle against France which followed only ten years after her
+loss of America, nor did she ever stand higher among the nations than on
+the day of Waterloo. Her internal developement was as imposing as her
+outer grandeur. Weary and disgraceful indeed as was the strife with the
+Colonies, the years of its progress were years of as mighty a revolution
+for the mother country as for its child. The England that is about us
+dates from the American War. It was then that the moral, the
+philanthropic, the religious ideas which have moulded English society
+into its present shape first broke the spiritual torpor of the
+eighteenth century. It was then that with the wider diffusion of
+intelligence our literature woke to a nobler and larger life which
+fitted it to become the mouthpiece of every national emotion. It was
+then that by a change unparalleled in history the country laid aside her
+older agricultural character to develope industrial forces which made
+her at a single bound the workshop of the world. Amidst the turmoil of
+the early years of George the Third Brindley was silently covering
+England with canals, and Watt as silently perfecting his invention of
+the steam-engine. It was amidst the strife with America that Adam Smith
+regenerated our economical, Gibbon our historical, and Burke our
+political literature; and peace was hardly declared when the appearance
+of Crabbe, Cowper, and Burns heralded a new birth of our poetry.
+
+[Sidenote: The religious movement.]
+
+No names so illustrious as these marked the more silent but even deeper
+change in the religious temper of the country. It dates, as we have
+seen, from the work of the Wesleys, but the Methodists themselves were
+the least result of the Methodist revival. Its action upon the Church
+broke the lethargy of the clergy; and the "Evangelical" movement, which
+found representatives like Newton and Cecil within the pale of the
+Establishment, made the fox-hunting parson and the absentee rector at
+last impossible. In Walpole's day the English clergy were the idlest and
+the most lifeless in the world. In our own time no body of religious
+ministers surpasses them in piety, in philanthropic energy, or in
+popular regard. But the movement was far from being limited to the
+Methodists or the clergy. In the nation at large appeared a new moral
+enthusiasm which, rigid and pedantic as it often seemed, was still
+healthy in its social tone, and whose power showed itself in a gradual
+disappearance of the profligacy which had disgraced the upper classes,
+and the foulness which had infested literature ever since the
+Restoration. A yet nobler result of the religious revival was the steady
+attempt, which has never ceased from that day to this, to remedy the
+guilt, the ignorance, the physical suffering, the social degradation of
+the profligate and the poor. It was not till the Wesleyan impulse had
+done its work that this philanthropic impulse began. The Sunday Schools
+established by Mr. Raikes of Gloucester at the close of the century were
+the beginnings of popular education. By writings and by her own personal
+example Hannah More drew the sympathy of England to the poverty and
+crime of the agricultural labourer. A passionate impulse of human
+sympathy with the wronged and afflicted raised hospitals, endowed
+charities, built churches, sent missionaries to the heathen, supported
+Burke in his plea for the Hindoo, and Clarkson and Wilberforce in their
+crusade against the iniquity of the slave trade.
+
+[Sidenote: Howard.]
+
+It is only the moral chivalry of his labours that amongst a crowd of
+philanthropists draws us most to the work and character of John Howard.
+The sympathy which all were feeling for the sufferings of mankind Howard
+felt for the sufferings of the worst and most hapless of men. With
+wonderful ardour and perseverance he devoted himself to the cause of the
+debtor, the felon, and the murderer. An appointment to the office of
+High Sheriff of Bedfordshire in 1774 drew his attention to the state of
+the prisons which were placed under his care; and from that time the
+quiet country gentleman, whose only occupation had been reading his
+Bible and studying his thermometer, became the most energetic and
+zealous of reformers. Before a year was over he had personally visited
+almost every English gaol, and in nearly all of them he found frightful
+abuses which had been noticed half-a-century before, but which had been
+left unredressed by Parliament. Gaolers who bought their places were
+paid by fees, and suffered to extort what they could. Even when
+acquitted, men were dragged back to their cells for want of funds to
+discharge the sums they owed to their keepers. Debtors and felons were
+huddled together in the prisons which Howard found crowded by the
+legislation of the day. No separation was preserved between different
+sexes, no criminal discipline was enforced. Every gaol was a chaos of
+cruelty and the foulest immorality, from which the prisoner could only
+escape by sheer starvation or through the gaol-fever that festered
+without ceasing in these haunts of misery. Howard saw everything with
+his own eyes, he tested every suffering by his own experience. In one
+prison he found a cell so narrow and noisome that the poor wretch who
+inhabited it begged as a mercy for hanging. Howard shut himself up in
+the cell and bore its darkness and foulness till nature could bear no
+more. It was by work of this sort and by the faithful pictures of such
+scenes which it enabled him to give that he brought about their reform.
+The book in which he recorded his terrible experience and the plans
+which he submitted for the reformation of criminals made him the father,
+so far as England is concerned, of prison discipline. But his labours
+were far from being confined to England. In journey after journey he
+visited the gaols of Holland and Germany, till his longing to discover
+some means of checking the fatal progress of the Plague led him to
+examine the lazarettos of Europe and the East. He was still engaged in
+this work of charity when he was seized by a malignant fever at Cherson
+in Southern Russia, and "laid quietly in the earth," as he desired.
+
+[Sidenote: Trial of Hastings.]
+
+In Howard's later labours the new sentiment of humanity had carried him
+far beyond the bounds of national sympathy; and forces at once of pity
+and religion told more and more in begetting a consciousness of the
+common brotherhood of man. Even at the close of the American war this
+feeling had become strong enough to colour our political life. It told
+on the attitude of England towards its great dependency of India.
+Discussions over rival plans of Indian administration diffused a sense
+of national responsibility for its good government, and there was a
+general resolve that the security against injustice and misrule which
+was enjoyed by the poorest Englishman should be enjoyed by the poorest
+Hindoo. It was this resolve which expressed itself in 1786 in the trial
+of Warren Hastings. Hastings returned from India at the close of the war
+with the hope of rewards as great as those of Clive. He had saved all
+that Clive had won. He had laid the foundation of a vast empire in the
+East. He had shown rare powers of administration, and the foresight,
+courage, and temperance which mark the born ruler of men. But with him
+came rumours of tyranny and wrong. Even those who admitted the wisdom
+and glory of his rule shrank from its terrible ruthlessness. He was
+charged with having sold for a vast sum the services of British troops
+to crush the free tribes of the Rohillas, with having wrung
+half-a-million by extortion from the Rajah of Benares, with having
+extorted by torture and starvation more than a million from the
+Princesses of Oudh. He was accused of having kept his hold upon power by
+measures as unscrupulous, and with having murdered a native who opposed
+him by an abuse of the forms of English law. On almost all these charges
+the cooler judgement of later inquirers has acquitted Warren Hastings of
+guilt. Personally there can be little doubt that he had done much to
+secure to the new subjects of Britain a just and peaceable government.
+What was hardest and most pitiless in his rule had been simply a
+carrying out of the system of administration which was native to India
+and which he found existing there. But such a system was alien from the
+new humanity of Englishmen; and few dared to vindicate Hastings when
+Burke in words of passionate earnestness moved for his impeachment.
+
+[Sidenote: The Slave-Trade.]
+
+The great trial lingered on for years; and in the long run Hastings
+secured an acquittal. But the end at which the impeachment aimed had
+really been won. The attention, the sympathy of Englishmen had been
+drawn across distant seas to a race utterly strange to them; and the
+peasant of Cornwall or Cumberland had learned how to thrill at the
+suffering of a peasant of Bengal. And even while the trial was going on
+a yet wider extension of English sympathy made itself felt. The
+hero-seamen of Elizabeth had not blushed to make gain out of kidnapping
+negroes and selling them into slavery. One of the profits which England
+bought by the triumphs of Marlborough was a right to a monopoly of the
+slave-trade between Africa and the Spanish dominions; and it was England
+that had planted slavery in her American colonies and her West Indian
+islands. Half the wealth of Liverpool, in fact, was drawn from the
+traffic of its merchants in human flesh. The horrors and iniquity of the
+trade, the ruin and degradation of Africa which it brought about, the
+oppression of the negro himself, had till now moved no pity among
+Englishmen. But as the spirit of humanity told on the people this apathy
+suddenly disappeared. Philanthropy allied itself with the new religious
+movement in an attack on the slave-trade. At the close of the American
+war its evils began to be felt so widely and deeply that the question
+forced itself into politics. "After a conversation in the open air at
+the root of an old tree, just above the steep descent into the Vale of
+Keston," with the younger Pitt, his friend, William Wilberforce, whose
+position as a representative of the evangelical party gave weight to his
+advocacy of such a cause, resolved to bring in a bill for the abolition
+of the slave-trade. The bill which he brought forward in 1788 fell
+before the opposition of the Liverpool slave merchants and the general
+indifference of the House of Commons. But the movement gathered fresh
+strength in the country with every year; in spite of the absorption of
+England in the struggle with the French Revolution, it succeeded at last
+in forcing on Parliament the abolition of the traffic in slaves; and
+this abolition was followed a few years later by the abolition of
+slavery itself.
+
+[Sidenote: English manufactures.]
+
+Time was to show how wide were the issues to which this religious
+developement and the sentiment of humanity which it generated were to
+tend. But at the moment they told less directly and immediately on the
+political and social life of England than an industrial revolution which
+accompanied them. Though England already stood in the first rank of
+commercial states at the accession of George the Third, her industrial
+life at home was mainly agricultural. The growth of her manufactures was
+steady, but it continued to be slow; they gave employment as yet to but
+a small part of the population, and added in no great degree to the
+national wealth. The wool-trade remained the largest, as it was the
+oldest of them; it had gradually established itself in Norfolk, the West
+Riding of Yorkshire, and the counties of the south-west; while the
+manufacture of cotton was still almost limited to Manchester and Bolton,
+and though winning on its rival remained so unimportant that in the
+middle of the eighteenth century the export of cotton goods hardly
+reached the value of fifty thousand a year. There was the same slow and
+steady progress in the linen trade of Belfast and Dundee, and the silks
+of Spitalfields. But as yet textile manufactures contributed little to
+the national resources; nor did these resources owe much to the working
+of our minerals. The coal trade was small, and limited by the cost of
+carriage as well as by ignorance of any mode of employing coal in
+iron-smelting. On the other hand the scarcity of wood, which was used
+for that purpose, limited the production of iron. In 1750 only eighteen
+thousand tons were produced in England; and four-fifths of its iron
+goods were imported from Sweden. Nor did there seem any likelihood of a
+rapid change. Skilled labour was scarce; and the processes of
+manufacture were too rude to allow any large increase of production. It
+was only where a stream gave force to turn a mill-wheel that the
+wool-worker could establish his factory; and cotton was as yet spun by
+hand in the cottages, the "spinsters" of the family sitting with their
+distaffs round the weaver's hand-loom.
+
+[Sidenote: Canals.]
+
+But even had the processes of production become more efficient, they
+would have been rendered useless by the inefficiency of the means of
+distribution. The older main roads, which had lasted fairly through the
+Middle Ages, had broken down in later times before the growth of traffic
+and the increase of wagons and carriages. The new lines of trade lay
+often along mere country lanes which had never been more than
+horse-tracks, and to drive heavy wains through lanes like these was all
+but impossible. Much of the woollen trade therefore had to be carried on
+by means of long trains of pack-horses; and in most cases the cost of
+carriage added heavily to the price of production. In the case of yet
+heavier goods, such as coal, distribution was almost impracticable, save
+along the greater rivers or in districts accessible from the sea. But at
+the moment when England was just plunging into the Seven Years' War the
+enterprise of a duke and a millwright solved this problem of carriage,
+and started the country on a mighty course of industry which was to
+change both its social and its political character. Francis, Duke of
+Bridgewater, was a shy, dreamy man, whom a disappointment in love drove
+to a life of isolation on his estates in the north. He was the possessor
+of collieries at Worsley whose value depended on their finding a market
+at the neighbouring town of Manchester; and it was to bring his coal to
+this market that he resolved to drive a canal from the mine to the river
+Irwell. With singular good luck he found the means of carrying out his
+design in a self-taught mechanic, James Brindley. But in Brindley's mind
+the scheme widened far beyond the plans of the duke. Canals, as he
+conceived them, were no longer to serve as mere adjuncts to rivers; on
+the contrary, "rivers were only meant," he said, "to feed canals"; and
+instead of ending in the Irwell, he carried the duke's canal by an
+aqueduct across that river to Manchester itself. What Brindley had
+discovered was in fact the water-road, a means of carrying heavy goods
+with the least resistance, and therefore the least cost, from the point
+of production to the point of sale; and England at once seized on his
+discovery to free itself from the bondage in which it had been held.
+From the year 1767, when Brindley completed his enterprise, a network of
+such water-roads was flung over the country; and before the movement had
+spent its force Great Britain alone was traversed in every direction by
+three thousand miles of navigable canals.
+
+[Sidenote: Mineral developement.]
+
+To English trade the canal opened up the richest of all markets, the
+market of England itself. Every part of the country was practically
+thrown open to the manufacturer: and the impulse which was given by this
+facility of carriage was at once felt in a vast developement of
+production. But such a developement would have been impossible had not
+the discovery of this new mode of distribution been accompanied by the
+discovery of a new productive force. In the coal which lay beneath her
+soil England possessed a store of force which had hitherto remained
+almost useless. But its effects were now to make themselves felt. The
+first instance of the power of coal was shown in utilizing the stores
+of iron which had lain side by side with it in the northern counties,
+but which had lain there unworked through the scarcity of wood, which
+was looked upon as the only fuel by which it could be smelted. In the
+middle of the eighteenth century a process for smelting iron with coal
+turned out to be effective; and the whole aspect of the iron-trade was
+at once revolutionized. In fifty years the annual production of iron in
+Great Britain rose from under twenty thousand to more than one hundred
+and seventy thousand tons. During the fifty years that followed it rose
+to six millions of tons. Iron was to become the working material of the
+modern world; and it is its production of iron which more than all else
+has placed England at the head of industrial Europe. But iron was not
+the only metal which coal drew from the soil to swell the national
+wealth. The increase in its production was rivalled by that of lead,
+copper, and tin; and the "mining districts" soon gathered a population
+which raised them into social as well as economical importance.
+
+[Sidenote: The Steam Engine.]
+
+But it was not in its direct application to metallurgy that coal was
+destined to produce its most amazing effects. What was needed to turn
+England into a manufacturing country was some means of transforming the
+force stored up in coal into a labour force; and it was this
+transformation which was now brought about through the agency of steam.
+Engines in which steam was used as a means of draining mines had long
+been in use; but the power relied on was mainly that of the weight of
+the air pressing on a piston beneath which a vacuum had been created by
+the condensation of steam; and the economical use of such engines was
+checked by the waste of fuel which resulted from the cooling of the
+cylinder at each condensation, and from the expenditure of heat in again
+raising it to its old temperature before a fresh stroke of the piston
+was possible. Both these obstacles were removed by the ingenuity of
+James Watt. Watt was a working engineer at Glasgow, whose mind had for
+some time been bent on the improvement of the steam-engine; but it was
+not till the spring of 1765, amidst the political turmoil which
+characterized the early reign of George the Third, that as he strolled
+on a Sunday afternoon across the Green of Glasgow the means of effecting
+it burst on him. "I had gone," he says, "to take a walk on a fine
+Sabbath afternoon. I had entered the Green by the gate at the foot of
+Charlotte Street, and had passed the old washing-house. I was thinking
+upon the engine at the time, and had got as far as the herd's house,
+when the idea came into my mind that as steam was an elastic body it
+would rush into a vacuum, and if a communication were made between the
+cylinder and an exhausted vessel it would rush into it, and might there
+be condensed without cooling the cylinder. I had not walked farther
+than the Golf-House when the whole thing was arranged in my mind." The
+employment of a separate condenser, with the entire discarding of any
+other force in its action save that of steam itself, changed the whole
+conditions of the steam-engine. On the eve of the American war, in 1776,
+its use passed beyond the mere draining of mines; and it was rapidly
+adopted as a motive-force for all kinds of manufacturing industry.
+
+[Sidenote: The Cotton manufactures.]
+
+The almost unlimited supply of labour-power in the steam-engine came at
+a time when the existing supply of manual labour was proving utterly
+inadequate to cope with the demands of the manufacturer. This was
+especially the case in textile fabrics. In its earlier stages the
+manufacture of cotton had been retarded by the difficulty with which the
+weavers obtained a sufficient supply of cotton yarn from the spinsters;
+and this difficulty became yet greater when the invention of the
+fly-shuttle enabled one weaver to do in a single day what had hitherto
+been the work of two. The difficulty was solved by a Blackburn weaver,
+John Hargreaves, who noticed that his wife's spindle, which had been
+accidentally upset, continued to revolve in an upright position on the
+floor, while the thread was still spinning in her hand. The hint led him
+to connect a number of spindles with a single wheel, and thus to enable
+one spinster to do the work of eight. Hargreaves's invention only
+spurred the wits of a barber's assistant, Richard Arkwright, to yet
+greater improvement in the construction of a machine for spinning by
+rollers revolving at different rates of speed; and this in its turn was
+improved and developed in the "mule" of a Bolton weaver, Samuel
+Crompton. The result of these inventions was to reverse the difficulty
+which hampered the trade, for the supply of yarn became so rapid and
+unlimited as to outrun the power of the hand-loom weaver to consume it;
+but a few years after the close of the American war this difficulty was
+met by the discovery of the power-loom, which replaced the weaver by
+machinery. Ingenious however as these inventions were, they would have
+remained comparatively useless had it not been for the revelation of a
+new and inexhaustible labour-force in the steam-engine. It was the
+combination of such a force with such means of applying it that enabled
+Britain during the terrible years of her struggle with France and
+Napoleon to all but monopolise the woollen and cotton trades, and raised
+her into the greatest manufacturing country that the world had seen.
+
+How mighty a force this industrial revolution was to exert on English
+politics and English society time was to show. By the transfer of wealth
+and population from southern to northern England, and from the country
+to the town, it was in the next fifty years to set on foot a revolution
+in both, the results of which have still to be disclosed. Of such a
+revolution no English statesman as yet had a glimpse; but already the
+growth of industrial energy and industrial wealth was telling on the
+conditions of English statesmanship. The manufacturer and the merchant
+were coming fast to the front; and their temper was more menacing to the
+monopoly of political power by the Whigs and the landed aristocracy whom
+the Whigs represented than the temper of the king himself. Already
+public opinion was finding in them a new concentration and weight; and
+it was certain that as the representatives of public opinion they would
+at last demand a share in the work of government. Such a demand might
+have been delayed for a while had they been content with the way in
+which England was governed. But they were far from being content with
+it. To no class indeed could the selfishness, the corruption, the
+factiousness, and the administrative inefficiency of the ruling order be
+more utterly odious. Their tone was moral, and they were influenced more
+and more by the religious and philanthropic movement about them. As men
+of business, they revolted against the waste and mismanagement which
+seemed to have become normal in every department of government. Their
+patriotism, their pride in England's greatness, alienated them from men
+who looked upon political eminence as a means of personal gain. Above
+all their personal energy, their consciousness of wealth and power, and
+to some extent the natural jealousy of the trader against the country
+gentleman, urged them to press for an overthrow of the existing
+monopoly, and for a fairer distribution of political influence. But such
+a pressure could only bring them into conflict with the Whigs whom the
+fall of Lord North had recalled to office. Though the Tories had now
+grown to a compact body of a hundred and fifty members, the Whigs still
+remained superior to their rivals in numbers and ability as well as in
+distinctness of political aim; for the return of the Bedford section to
+the general body of the party, as well as its steady opposition to the
+American war, had restored much of their early cohesion. But this
+reunion only strengthened their aristocratic and exclusive tendencies,
+and widened the breach which was steadily opening on questions such as
+Parliamentary Reform between the bulk of the Whigs and the small
+fragment of their party which remained true to the more popular
+sympathies of Chatham.
+
+[Sidenote: William Pitt.]
+
+Lord Shelburne stood at the head of the Chatham party, and it was
+reinforced at this moment by the entry into Parliament of the second and
+youngest son of Chatham himself. William Pitt had hardly reached his
+twenty-second year; but he left college with the learning of a ripe
+scholar, and his ready and sonorous eloquence had been matured by his
+father's teaching. "He will be one of the first men in Parliament," said
+a member to Charles Fox, the Whig leader in the Commons, after Pitt's
+earliest speech in that house. "He is so already," replied Fox. Young as
+he was, the haughty self-esteem of the new statesman breathed in every
+movement of his tall, spare figure, in the hard lines of a countenance
+which none but his closer friends saw lighted by a smile, in his cold
+and repulsive address, his invariable gravity of demeanour, and his
+habitual air of command. But none knew how great the qualities were
+which lay beneath this haughty exterior; nor had any one guessed how
+soon this "boy," as his rivals mockingly styled him, was to crush every
+opponent and to hold England at his will. There was only a smile of
+wonder when he refused any of the minor posts which were offered him in
+the Rockingham administration, and the wonder passed into angry sarcasms
+as soon as it was known that he claimed, if he took office at all, to be
+at once admitted to the Cabinet. But Pitt had no desire to take office
+under Rockingham. He was the inheritor of that side of his father's
+policy which was most distasteful to the Whigs. To him as to Chatham the
+main lesson of the war was the need of putting an end to those abuses in
+the composition of Parliament by which George the Third had been enabled
+to plunge the country into it. A thorough reform of the House of Commons
+was the only effectual means of doing this, and Pitt brought forward a
+bill founded on his father's plans for that purpose. But though a more
+liberal section of the Whigs, with Charles Fox at their head, were
+wavering round to a wish for reform, the great bulk of the party could
+not nerve themselves to the sacrifice of property and influence which
+such a reform would involve. Rockingham remained hostile to reform, and
+Burke, whose influence still told much upon Rockingham, was yet more
+hostile than his chief. Pitt's bill therefore was thrown out. In its
+stead the Ministry endeavoured to weaken the means of corrupt influence
+which the king had unscrupulously used by disqualifying persons holding
+government contracts from sitting in Parliament, by depriving revenue
+officers of the elective franchise (a measure which diminished the
+weight of the Crown in seventy boroughs), and above all by a bill for
+the reduction of the civil establishment, of the pension list, and of
+the secret service fund, which was brought in by Burke. These measures
+were to a great extent effectual in diminishing the influence of the
+Crown over Parliament, and they are memorable as marking the date when
+the direct bribery of members absolutely ceased. But they were utterly
+inoperative in rendering the House of Commons really representative of
+or responsible to the people of England.
+
+[Sidenote: The Coalition.]
+
+The jealousy which the mass of the Whigs entertained of the followers of
+Chatham and their plans was more plainly shown however on the death of
+Lord Rockingham in July. Shelburne, who had hitherto served as Secretary
+of State, was called by the king to the head of the Ministry, a post to
+which his eminent talents and the ability which he was showing in the
+negotiations for the Peace clearly gave him a title. But Shelburne had
+been hampered in these negotiations by the jealousy of Charles Fox, who
+as joint Secretary of State with him claimed in spite of usage a share
+in conducting them, and who persisted without a show of reason in
+believing himself to have been unfairly treated. It was on personal
+grounds therefore that Fox refused to serve under Shelburne; but the
+refusal of Burke and the bulk of Rockingham's followers was based on
+more than personal grounds. It sprang from a rooted distrust of the more
+popular tendencies of which Shelburne was justly regarded as the
+representative. To Pitt, on the other hand, these tendencies were the
+chief ground of confidence in the new Ministry; and, young as he was, he
+at once entered office as Chancellor of the Exchequer. But his tenure of
+this post was a brief one. The Shelburne Ministry in fact only lasted
+long enough to conclude the final peace with the United States on the
+base of their independence; for in the opening of 1783 it was overthrown
+by the most unscrupulous coalition known in our history, a union of the
+Whig followers of Fox with the Tories who still clung to Lord North. In
+Parliament such a coalition was irresistible, and the resignation of
+Shelburne at once made way for an administration in which both the
+triumphant parties were represented. But the effect on England at large
+was very different. Whatever new credit the Whigs had gained with the
+country during their long exclusion from office had been due to their
+steady denunciation of the policy and temper of Lord North's
+administration. That they should take office hand in hand with men whom
+they had for years denounced as the worst of Ministers shocked even
+their most loyal adherents; and the shock was the greater that a new
+seriousness in politics, a longing for a deeper and more earnest
+treatment of political questions, was making mere faction intolerable to
+Englishmen. But behind all this was the sense that something more than
+mere faction had really brought the two parties together. It was their
+common dread of the popular tendencies which Shelburne's Ministry
+represented, their common hatred of parliamentary reform, which hushed
+for the moment the bitter hostility between the followers of Rockingham
+and the followers of North. Yet never had the need of representative
+reform been more clearly shown than by a coalition which proved how
+powerless was the force of public opinion to check even the most
+shameless faction in Parliament, how completely the lessening of royal
+influence by the measures of Burke and Rockingham had tended to the
+profit not of the people but of the borough-mongers who usurped its
+representation. The turn of public opinion was quick in disclosing
+itself. Fox was the most popular of the Whigs, but he was hooted from
+the platform when he addressed his constituents at Westminster. Pitt, on
+the other hand, whose attacks on the new union rose to a lofty and
+indignant eloquence, was lifted by it into an almost solitary greatness.
+
+[Sidenote: Fall of the Coalition.]
+
+But in Parliament Pitt was as powerless as he was influential in the
+country. His renewed proposal of Parliamentary Reform, though he set
+aside the disfranchisement of rotten boroughs as a violation of private
+property, and limited himself to the disfranchisement of boroughs
+convicted of corruption, and to the addition of one hundred members to
+the county representation, was rejected by a majority of two to one.
+Secure in their parliamentary majority, and heedless of the power of
+public opinion outside the walls of the House of Commons, the new
+Ministers entered boldly on a greater task than had as yet taxed the
+constructive genius of English statesmen. To leave such a dominion as
+Warren Hastings had built up in India to the control of a mere Company
+of traders was clearly impossible; and Fox proposed to transfer its
+political government from the Directors of the Company to a board of
+seven Commissioners. The appointment of the seven was vested in the
+first instance in Parliament, and afterwards in the Crown; their office
+was to be held for five years, but they were removable on address from
+either House of Parliament. The proposal was at once met with a storm of
+opposition. The scheme indeed was an injudicious one; for the new
+Commissioners would have been destitute of that practical knowledge of
+India which belonged to the Company, while the want of any immediate
+link between them and the actual Ministry of the Crown would have
+prevented Parliament from exercising an effective control over their
+acts. But the real faults of this India Bill were hardly noticed in the
+popular outcry against it. It had challenged the hostility of powerful
+influences. The merchant-class was galled by the blow levelled at the
+greatest merchant-body in the realm: corporations trembled at the
+cancelling of a charter; the king viewed the measure as a mere means of
+transferring the patronage of India to the Whigs. But it might have
+defied the opposition of corporations and the king had it not had to
+meet the bitter hostility of the nation at large. With the nation the
+faults of the bill lay not in this detail or that, but in the character
+of the Ministry which proposed it. To give the rule and patronage of
+India over to the existing House of Commons was to give a new and
+immense power to a body which misused in the grossest way the power it
+possessed. It was the sense of this popular feeling which encouraged the
+king to exert his personal influence to defeat the measure in the
+Lords, and on its defeat to order his Ministers to deliver up the seals.
+The unpopularity of Shelburne stood in the way of his resumption of
+office, and in December 1783 Pitt accepted the post of First Lord of the
+Treasury. His position would at once have been untenable had the country
+gone with its nominal representatives. He was defeated again and again
+by large majorities in the Commons; but the majorities dwindled as a
+shower of addresses from every quarter, from the Tory University of
+Oxford as from the Whig Corporation of London, proved that public
+opinion went with the Minister and not with the House. It was the
+general sense of this that justified Pitt in the firmness with which, in
+the teeth of addresses for his removal from office, he delayed the
+dissolution of Parliament for five months, and gained time for that
+ripening of the national sentiment on which he counted for success. When
+the election of 1784 came the struggle was at once at an end. The public
+feeling took a strength which broke through the corrupt influences that
+commonly governed its representation. Every great constituency, the
+counties and the large towns, returned supporters of Pitt. Of the
+majority which had defeated him in the Commons, a hundred and sixty
+members were unseated. Fox hardly retained his seat for Westminster,
+Burke lost his seat for Bristol, and only a fragment of the Whig party
+was saved by its command of nomination boroughs.
+
+[Sidenote: Pitt's temper.]
+
+When Parliament came together after the overthrow of the Coalition, the
+Minister of twenty-five was master of England as no Minister had been
+before. Even George the Third yielded to his sway, partly through
+gratitude for the triumph he had won for him, partly from a sense of the
+madness which was soon to strike him down, but still more from a gradual
+discovery that the triumph which he had won over his political rivals
+had been won, not to the profit of the crown, but of the nation at
+large. The Whigs, it was true, were broken, unpopular, and without a
+policy; while the Tories, whom the Coalition had disgusted with Lord
+North, as it had estranged Fox from their opponents, clung to the
+Minister who had "saved the king." But it was the support of a new
+political power that really gave his strength to the young Minister. The
+sudden rise of English industry was pushing the manufacturer to the
+front; and the manufacturer pinned his faith from the first in William
+Pitt. All that the trading classes loved in Chatham, his nobleness of
+temper, his consciousness of power, his patriotism, his sympathy with a
+wider world than the world within the Parliament-house, they saw in his
+son. He had little indeed of the poetic and imaginative side of
+Chatham's genius, of his quick perception of what was just and what was
+possible, his far-reaching conceptions of national policy, his outlook
+into the future of the world. Pitt's flowing and sonorous commonplaces
+rang hollow beside the broken phrases which still make his father's
+eloquence a living thing to Englishmen. On the other hand he possessed
+some qualities in which Chatham was utterly wanting. His temper, though
+naturally ardent and sensitive, had been schooled in a proud
+self-command. His simplicity and good taste freed him from his father's
+ostentation and extravagance. Diffuse and commonplace as his speeches
+seem to the reader, they were adapted as much by their very qualities of
+diffuseness and commonplace as by their lucidity and good sense to the
+intelligence of the classes whom Pitt felt to be his real audience. In
+his love of peace, his immense industry, his despatch of business, his
+skill in debate, his knowledge of finance, he recalled Sir Robert
+Walpole; but he had virtues which Walpole never possessed, and he was
+free from Walpole's worst defects. He was careless of personal gain. He
+was too proud to rule by corruption. His lofty self-esteem left no room
+for any jealousy of subordinates. He was generous in his appreciation of
+youthful merits; and the "boys" he gathered round him, such as Canning
+and Lord Wellesley, rewarded his generosity by a devotion which death
+left untouched. With Walpole's cynical inaction Pitt had no sympathy
+whatever. His policy from the first was a policy of active reform, and
+he faced every one of the problems, financial, constitutional,
+religious, from which Walpole had shrunk. Above all, he had none of
+Walpole's scorn of his fellowmen. The noblest feature in his mind was
+its wide humanity. His love for England was as deep and personal as his
+father's love, but of the sympathy with English passion and English
+prejudice which had been at once his father's weakness and strength he
+had not a trace. When Fox taunted him with forgetting Chatham's jealousy
+of France and his faith that she was the natural foe of England, Pitt
+answered nobly that "to suppose any nation can be unalterably the enemy
+of another is weak and childish."
+
+[Sidenote: His statesmanship.]
+
+The temper of the time, and the larger sympathy of man with man which
+especially marks the eighteenth century as a turning-point in the
+history of the human race, was everywhere bringing to the front a new
+order of statesmen, such as Turgot and Joseph the Second, whose
+characteristics were a love of mankind, and a belief that as the
+happiness of the individual can only be secured by the general happiness
+of the community to which he belongs, so the welfare of individual
+nations can only be secured by the general welfare of the world. Of
+these Pitt was one. But he rose high above the rest in the consummate
+knowledge and the practical force which he brought to the realization of
+his aims. His strength lay in finance; and he came forward at a time
+when the growth of English wealth made a knowledge of finance essential
+to a great Minister. The progress of the nation was wonderful.
+Population more than doubled during the eighteenth century, and the
+advance of wealth was even greater than that of population. Though the
+war had added a hundred millions to the national debt, the burden was
+hardly felt. The loss of America only increased the commerce with that
+country, and industry, as we have seen, had begun that great career
+which was to make England the workshop of the world. To deal wisely with
+such a growth required a knowledge of the laws of wealth which would
+have been impossible at an earlier time. But it had become possible in
+the days of Pitt. If books are to be measured by the effect which they
+have produced on the fortunes of mankind, the "Wealth of Nations" must
+rank among the greatest of books. Its author was Adam Smith, an Oxford
+scholar and a professor at Glasgow. Labour, he contended, was the one
+source of wealth, and it was by freedom of labour, by suffering the
+worker to pursue his own interest in his own way, that the public wealth
+would best be promoted. Any attempt to force labour into artificial
+channels, to shape by laws the course of commerce, to promote special
+branches of industry in particular countries, or to fix the character of
+the intercourse between one country and another, is not only a wrong to
+the worker or the merchant, but actually hurtful to the wealth of a
+state. The book was published in 1776, at the opening of the American
+war, and studied by Pitt during his career as an undergraduate at
+Cambridge. From that time he owned Adam Smith for his master; and he had
+hardly become Minister before he took the principles of the "Wealth of
+Nations" as the groundwork of his policy.
+
+[Sidenote: Pitt and Parliamentary reform.]
+
+It was thus that the ten earlier years of Pitt's rule marked a new point
+of departure in English statesmanship. He was the first English Minister
+who really grasped the part which industry was to play in promoting the
+welfare of the world. He was not only a peace Minister and a financier,
+as Walpole had been, but a statesman who saw that the best security for
+peace lay in the freedom and widening of commercial intercourse between
+nations; that public economy not only lessened the general burdens but
+left additional capital in the hands of industry; and that finance might
+be turned from a mere means of raising revenue into a powerful engine of
+political and social improvement. That little was done by Pitt himself
+to carry these principles into effect was partly owing to the mass of
+ignorance and prejudice with which he had to contend, and still more to
+the sudden break of his plans through the French Revolution. His power
+rested above all on the trading classes, and these were still persuaded
+that wealth meant gold and silver, and that commerce was best furthered
+by jealous monopolies. It was only by patience and dexterity that the
+mob of merchants and country squires who backed him in the House of
+Commons could be brought to acquiesce in the changes he proposed. How
+small his power was when it struggled with the prejudices around him was
+seen in the failure of the first great measure he brought forward. The
+question of parliamentary reform which had been mooted during the
+American war had been coming steadily to the front. Chatham had
+advocated an increase of county members, who were then the most
+independent part of the Lower House. The Duke of Richmond talked of
+universal suffrage, equal electoral districts, and annual Parliaments.
+Wilkes anticipated the Reform Bill of a later time by proposing to
+disfranchise the rotten boroughs, and to give members in their stead to
+the counties and to the more populous and wealthy towns. William Pitt
+had made the question his own by bringing forward a motion for reform on
+his first entry into the House, and one of his earliest measures as
+Minister was to bring in a bill in 1785 which, while providing for the
+gradual extinction of all decayed boroughs, disfranchised thirty-six at
+once, and transferred their members to counties. He brought the king to
+abstain from opposition, and strove to buy off the borough-mongers, as
+the holders of rotten boroughs were called, by offering to compensate
+them for the seats they lost at their market-value. But the bulk of his
+own party joined the bulk of the Whigs in a steady resistance to the
+bill, while it received no effective support from the general opinion of
+the people without. The more glaring abuses, indeed, within Parliament
+itself, the abuses which stirred Chatham and Wilkes to action, had in
+great part disappeared. The bribery of members had ceased. Burke's Bill
+of Economical Reform had just dealt a fatal blow at the influence which
+the king exercised by suppressing a host of useless offices, household
+appointments, judicial and diplomatic charges, which were maintained for
+the purpose of corruption. But what was probably the most fatal obstacle
+to any pressure for reform was the triumph of public opinion to which
+Pitt owed his power. The utter overthrow of the Coalition, the complete
+victory of public opinion, had done much to diminish the sense of any
+real danger from the opposition which Parliament had shown till now to
+the voice of the nation. England, then as now, was indifferent to all
+but practical grievances; and the nation cared little for anomalies in
+the form of representation so long as it felt itself represented.
+"Terribly disappointed and beat," as Wilberforce tells us Pitt was by
+the rejection of his measure, the temper of the House and of the people
+was too plain to be mistaken, and though his opinion remained unaltered,
+he never brought it forward again.
+
+[Sidenote: Pitt's finance.]
+
+The failure of his constitutional reform was more than compensated by
+the triumphs of his finance. When he entered office public credit was at
+its lowest ebb. The debt had been doubled by the American war, yet large
+sums still remained unfunded, while the revenue was reduced by a vast
+system of smuggling which turned every coast-town into a nest of
+robbers. The deficiency in the revenue was met for the moment by new
+taxes, but the time which was thus gained served to change the whole
+face of public affairs. The first of Pitt's financial measures--his plan
+for gradually paying off the debt by a sinking fund--was undoubtedly an
+error; but it had a happy effect in restoring public confidence. He met
+the smuggler by a reduction of Custom-duties which made his trade
+unprofitable. He revived Walpole's plan of an Excise. Meanwhile the
+public expenses were reduced, and commission after commission was
+appointed to introduce economy into every department of the public
+service. The rapid developement of the national industry which we have
+already noted no doubt aided the success of these measures. Credit was
+restored. The smuggling trade was greatly reduced. In two years there
+was a surplus of a million, and though duty after duty was removed the
+revenue rose steadily with every remission of taxation. Meanwhile Pitt
+was showing the political value of the new finance in a wider field.
+Ireland, then as now, was England's difficulty. The tyrannous
+misgovernment under which she had groaned ever since the battle of the
+Boyne was producing its natural fruit; the miserable land was torn with
+political faction, religious feuds, and peasant conspiracies; and so
+threatening had the attitude of the Protestant party which ruled it
+become during the American war that they had forced the English
+Parliament to relinquish its control over their Parliament in Dublin.
+Pitt saw that much at least of the misery and disloyalty of Ireland
+sprang from its poverty. The population had grown rapidly, while culture
+remained stationary and commerce perished. And of this poverty much was
+the direct result of unjust law. Ireland was a grazing country, but to
+protect the interest of English graziers the import of its cattle into
+England was forbidden. To protect the interests of English clothiers and
+weavers, its manufactures were loaded with duties. To redress this wrong
+was the first financial effort of Pitt, and the bill which he introduced
+in 1785 did away with every obstacle to freedom of trade between England
+and Ireland. It was a measure which, as he held, would "draw what
+remained of the shattered empire together," and repair in part the loss
+of America by creating a loyal and prosperous Ireland; and, struggling
+almost alone in face of a fierce opposition from the Whigs and the
+Manchester merchants, he dragged it through the English Parliament,
+though only to see it flung aside by the Protestant faction under
+Grattan which then ruled the Parliament of Ireland. But the defeat only
+spurred him to a greater effort elsewhere. If Ireland was England's
+difficulty, France had been looked upon as England's natural enemy. We
+have seen how nobly Pitt rebuked prejudices such as this; but he knew
+that nothing could so effectively dispel it as increased intercourse
+between nation and nation. In 1787 therefore he concluded a Treaty of
+Commerce with France which enabled subjects of both countries to reside
+and travel in either without licence or passport, did away with all
+prohibition of trade on either side, and reduced every import duty.
+
+[Sidenote: England and Europe.]
+
+The immediate result of this treaty was a great increase of trade
+between France and England; and brief as its course was fated to be, it
+at once set Pitt on a higher level than any rival statesman of his time.
+But the spirit of humanity which breathed through his policy had to
+wrestle with difficulties both at home and abroad. No measure secured a
+warmer support from the young Minister than the bill for the suppression
+of the slave-trade; but in 1788 it was defeated by the vigorous
+opposition of the trading classes and the prejudice of the people at
+large. His efforts to sap the enmity of nation against nation by a freer
+intercourse encountered a foe even more fatal than English prejudice, in
+the very movement of which his measures formed a part. Across the
+Channel this movement was growing into a revolution which was to change
+the face of the world. That such a revolution must one day come, every
+observer who had compared the state of Europe with that of England had
+long seen to be inevitable. So far as England was concerned, the Puritan
+resistance of the seventeenth century had in the end succeeded in
+checking the general tendency of the time to religious and political
+despotism. Since the Revolution of 1688 freedom of conscience and the
+people's right to govern itself through its representatives in
+Parliament had been practically established. Social equality had begun
+long before. Every man from the highest to the lowest was subject to,
+and protected by, the same law. The English aristocracy, though
+exercising a powerful influence on government, were possessed of few
+social privileges, and hindered from forming a separate class in the
+nation by the legal and social tradition which counted all save the
+eldest son of a noble house as commoners. No impassable line parted the
+gentry from the commercial classes, and these again possessed no
+privileges which could part them from the lower classes of the
+community. Public opinion, the general sense of educated Englishmen, had
+established itself after a short struggle as the dominant element in
+English government. But in all the other great states of Europe the wars
+of religion had left only the name of freedom. Government tended to a
+pure despotism. Privilege was supreme in religion, in politics, in
+society. Society itself rested on a rigid division of classes from one
+another, which refused to the people at large any equal rights of
+justice or of industry.
+
+[Sidenote: France.]
+
+We have already seen how alien such a conception of national life was
+from the ideas which the wide diffusion of intelligence during the
+eighteenth century was spreading throughout Europe; and in almost every
+country some enlightened rulers were striving by administrative reforms
+to satisfy in some sort the sense of wrong which was felt around them.
+The attempts of sovereigns like Frederick the Great in Prussia and
+Joseph the Second in Austria and the Netherlands were rivalled by the
+efforts of statesmen such as Turgot in France. It was in France indeed
+that the contrast between the actual state of society and the new ideas
+of public right was felt most keenly. Nowhere had the victory of the
+Crown been more complete. The aristocracy had been robbed of all share
+in public affairs; it enjoyed social privileges and exemption from any
+contribution to the public burdens without that sense of public duty
+which a governing class to some degree always possesses. Guilds and
+monopolies fettered the industry of the trader and the merchant, and cut
+them off from the working classes, as the value attached to noble blood
+cut off both from the aristocracy. If its political position indeed
+were compared with that of most of the countries round it, France stood
+high. Its government was less oppressive, its general wealth was larger
+and more evenly diffused, there was a better administration of justice,
+and greater security for public order. Poor as its peasantry seemed to
+English eyes, they were far above the peasants of Germany or Spain. Its
+middle class was the quickest and most intelligent in Europe. Under
+Lewis the Fifteenth opinion was practically free, and a literary class
+had sprung up which devoted itself with wonderful brilliancy and
+activity to popularizing the ideas of social and political justice which
+it learned from English writers, and in the case of Montesquieu and
+Voltaire from personal contact with English life. The moral conceptions
+of the time, its love of mankind, its sense of human brotherhood, its
+hatred of oppression, its pity for the guilty and the poor, its longing
+after a higher and nobler standard of life and action, were expressed by
+a crowd of writers, and above all by Rousseau, with a fire and eloquence
+which carried them to the heart of the people. But this new force of
+intelligence only jostled roughly with the social forms with which it
+found itself in contact. The philosopher denounced the tyranny of the
+priesthood. The peasant grumbled at the lord's right to judge him in his
+courts and to exact feudal services from him. The merchant was galled
+by the trading restrictions and the heavy taxation. The country gentry
+rebelled against their exclusion from public life and from the
+government of the country. Its powerlessness to bring about any change
+at home turned all this new energy into sympathy with a struggle against
+tyranny abroad. Public opinion forced France to ally itself with America
+in its contest for liberty, and French volunteers under the Marquis de
+Lafayette joined Washington's army. But while the American war spread
+more widely throughout the nation the craving for freedom, it brought on
+the Government financial embarrassments from which it could only free
+itself by an appeal to the country at large. Lewis the Sixteenth
+resolved to summon the States-General, which had not met since the time
+of Richelieu, and to appeal to the nobles to waive their immunity from
+taxation. His resolve at once stirred into vigorous life every impulse
+and desire which had been seething in the minds of the people; and the
+States-General no sooner met at Versailles in May 1789 than the fabric
+of despotism and privilege began to crumble. A rising in Paris destroyed
+the Bastille, and the capture of this fortress was taken for the dawn of
+a new era of constitutional freedom in France and through Europe. Even
+in England men thrilled with a strange joy at the tidings of its fall.
+"How much is this the greatest event that ever happened in the world,"
+Fox cried with a burst of enthusiasm, "and how much the best!"
+
+[Sidenote: Pitt and Russia.]
+
+Pitt regarded the approach of France to sentiments of liberty which had
+long been familiar to England with greater coolness, but with no
+distrust. For the moment indeed his attention was distracted by an
+attack of madness which visited George the Third in 1788, and by the
+claim of a right to the Regency which was at once advanced by the Prince
+of Wales. The Prince belonged to the Whig party; and Fox, who was
+travelling in Italy, hurried home to support his claim in full belief
+that the Prince's Regency would be followed by his own return to power.
+Pitt successfully resisted the claim on the constitutional ground that
+in such a case the right to choose a temporary Regent, under what
+limitations it would, lay with Parliament; and a bill which conferred
+the Regency on the Prince, in accordance with this view, was already
+passing the Houses when the recovery of the king put an end to the long
+dispute. Foreign difficulties, too, absorbed Pitt's attention. Russia
+had risen into greatness under Catharine the Second; and Catharine had
+resolved from the first on the annexation of Poland, the expulsion of
+the Turks from Europe, and the setting up of a Russian throne at
+Constantinople. In her first aim she was baffled for the moment by
+Frederick the Great. She had already made herself virtually mistress of
+the whole of Poland, her armies occupied the kingdom, and she had
+seated a nominee of her own on its throne, when Frederick in union with
+the Emperor Joseph the Second forced her to admit Germany to a share of
+the spoil. If the Polish partition of 1773 brought the Russian frontier
+westward to the upper waters of the Dwina and the Dnieper, it gave
+Galicia to Maria Theresa, and West Prussia to Frederick himself. Foiled
+in her first aim, she waited for the realization of her second till the
+alliance between the two German powers was at an end through the
+resistance of Prussia to Joseph's schemes for the annexation of Bavaria,
+and till the death of Frederick removed her most watchful foe. Then in
+1788 Joseph and the Empress joined hands for a partition of the Turkish
+Empire. But Prussia was still watchful, and England was no longer
+fettered as in 1773 by troubles with America. The friendship established
+by Chatham between the two countries, which had been suspended by Bute's
+treachery and all but destroyed during the Northern League of Neutral
+Powers, had been restored by Pitt through his co-operation with the
+successor of Frederick the Great in the restoration of the Dutch
+Stadtholderate. Its political weight was now seen in an alliance of
+England, Prussia, and Holland, in 1789, for the preservation of the
+Turkish Empire. A great European struggle seemed at hand. In such a
+struggle the sympathy and aid of France were of the highest importance;
+and it was only as weakening her in face of such a crisis that Pitt
+looked on the Revolution with any fear. But with the treaty the danger
+passed away. In the spring of 1790 Joseph died broken-hearted at the
+failure of his plans and the revolt of the Netherlands against his
+innovations; Austria practically withdrew from the war with the Turks;
+and the young Minister could give free expression to the sympathy with
+which the French movement inspired him.
+
+[Sidenote: The French Revolution.]
+
+In France indeed things were moving fast. By breaking down the division
+between its separate orders the States-General became a National
+Assembly, which abolished the privileges of the provincial parliaments,
+of the nobles, and the Church. In October 1789 the mob of Paris marched
+on Versailles and forced both King and Assembly to return with them to
+the capital; and a Constitution hastily put together was accepted by
+Lewis the Sixteenth in the stead of his old despotic power. To Pitt the
+tumult and disorder with which these great changes were wrought seemed
+transient matters. In January 1790 he still believed that "the present
+convulsions in France must sooner or later culminate in general harmony
+and regular order," and that when her own freedom was established,
+"France would stand forth as one of the most brilliant powers of
+Europe." But the coolness and goodwill with which Pitt looked on the
+Revolution were far from being universal in the nation at large. The
+cautious good sense of the bulk of Englishmen, their love of order and
+law, their distaste for violent changes and for abstract theories, as
+well as their reverence for the past, were rousing throughout the
+country a dislike of the revolutionary changes which were hurrying on
+across the Channel; and both the political sense and the political
+prejudice of the nation were being fired by the warnings of Edmund
+Burke. The fall of the Bastille, though it kindled enthusiasm in Fox,
+roused in Burke only distrust. "Whenever a separation is made between
+liberty and justice," he wrote a few weeks later, "neither is safe." The
+night of the fourth of August, when the privileges of every class were
+abolished, filled him with horror. He saw, and rightly saw, in it the
+critical moment which revealed the character of the Revolution, and his
+part was taken at once. "The French," he cried in January, while Pitt
+was foretelling a glorious future for the new Constitution, "the French
+have shown themselves the ablest architects of ruin who have hitherto
+existed in the world. In a short space of time they have pulled to the
+ground their army, their navy, their commerce, their arts and their
+manufactures."
+
+[Sidenote: Pitt and France.]
+
+But in Parliament Burke stood alone. The Whigs, though distrustfully,
+followed Fox in his applause of the Revolution. The Tories, yet more
+distrustfully, followed Pitt; and Pitt warmly expressed his sympathy
+with the constitutional government which was ruling France. At this
+moment indeed the more revolutionary party in that country gave a signal
+proof of its friendship for England. Irritated by an English settlement
+at Nootka Sound in California, Spain appealed to France for aid in
+accordance with the Family Compact; and the French Ministry, with a
+party at its back which believed things had gone far enough, resolved on
+a war as the best means of checking the progress of the Revolution and
+restoring the power of the Crown. The revolutionary party naturally
+opposed this design; and after a bitter struggle the right of declaring
+war, save with the sanction of the Assembly, was taken from the king.
+With this vote all danger of hostilities passed away. "The French
+Government," Pitt asserted, "was bent on cultivating the most unbounded
+friendship for Great Britain," and he saw no reason in its revolutionary
+changes why Britain should not return the friendship of France. What
+told even more on his temper towards that country was a conviction that
+nothing but the joint action of France and England would in the end
+arrest the troubles of Eastern Europe. His intervention foiled for the
+moment a fresh effort of Prussia to rob Poland of Dantzig and Thorn. But
+though Russia was still pressing Turkey hard, a Russian war was so
+unpopular in England that a hostile vote in Parliament forced Pitt to
+discontinue his armaments; and a fresh union of Austria and Prussia,
+which promised at this juncture to bring about a close of the Turkish
+struggle, promised also a fresh attack on the independence of Poland. To
+prevent a new partition without the co-operation of France was
+impossible; and in the existing state of things Pitt saw nothing to
+hinder the continuance of a friendship which would make such a
+co-operation inevitable.
+
+[Sidenote: Burke and the Revolution.]
+
+But while Pitt was pleading for friendship between the two countries,
+Burke was resolved to make friendship impossible. In Parliament, as we
+have seen, he stood alone. He had long ceased, in fact, to have any hold
+over the House of Commons. The eloquence which had vied with that of
+Chatham during the discussions on the Stamp Act had become distasteful
+to the bulk of its members. The length of his speeches, the profound and
+philosophical character of his argument, the splendour and often the
+extravagance of his illustrations, his passionate earnestness, his want
+of temper and discretion, wearied and perplexed the squires and
+merchants about him. He was known nowadays as "the dinner-bell of the
+House," so rapidly did its benches thin at his rising. For a time his
+energies found scope in the impeachment of Hastings; and the grandeur of
+his appeals to the justice of England hushed detraction. But with the
+close of the impeachment his repute had again fallen; and the approach
+of old age, for he was now past sixty, seemed to counsel retirement from
+an assembly where he stood unpopular and alone. But age and
+disappointment and loneliness were forgotten as Burke saw rising across
+the Channel the embodiment of all that he hated--a Revolution founded on
+scorn of the past, and threatening with ruin the whole social fabric
+which the past had reared; the ordered structure of classes and ranks
+crumbling before a doctrine of social equality; a State rudely
+demolished and reconstituted; a Church and a Nobility swept away in a
+night. Against the enthusiasm of what he rightly saw to be a new
+political religion he resolved to rouse the enthusiasm of the old. He
+was at once a great orator and a great writer; and now that the House
+was deaf to his voice, he appealed to the country by his pen. The
+"Reflections on the French Revolution" which he published in October
+1790 not only denounced the acts of rashness and violence which sullied
+the great change that France had wrought, but the very principles from
+which the change had sprung. Burke's deep sense of the need of social
+order, of the value of that continuity in human affairs "without which
+men would become like flies in a summer," blinded him to all but the
+faith in mere rebellion and the yet sillier faith in mere novelty which
+disguised a real nobleness of aim and temper even in the most ardent of
+the revolutionists. He would see no abuses in the past, now that it had
+fallen, or anything but the ruin of society in the future. He preached a
+crusade against men whom he regarded as the foes of religion and
+civilization, and called on the armies of Europe to put down a
+Revolution whose principles threatened every state with destruction.
+
+[Sidenote: His failure in Parliament.]
+
+The great obstacle to such a crusade was Pitt: and one of the grandest
+outbursts of the "Reflections" closed with a bitter taunt at the
+Minister. "The age of chivalry," Burke cried, "is gone; that of
+sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of
+Europe is extinguished for ever." But neither taunt nor invective moved
+Pitt from his course. At the moment when the "Reflections" appeared he
+gave a fresh assurance to France of his resolve to have nothing to do
+with any crusade against the Revolution. "This country," he wrote,
+"means to persevere in the neutrality hitherto scrupulously observed
+with respect to the internal dissensions of France; and from which it
+will never depart unless the conduct held there makes it indispensable
+as an act of self-defence." So far indeed was he from sharing the
+reactionary panic which was spreading around him that he chose this time
+for supporting Fox in his Libel Act, a measure which, by transferring
+the decision on what was libellous in any publication from the judge to
+the jury, completed the freedom of the press; and himself passed in 1791
+a bill which, though little noticed among the storms of the time, was
+one of the noblest of his achievements. He boldly put aside the dread
+which had been roused by the American war, that the gift of
+self-government to our colonies would serve only as a step towards their
+secession from the mother country, and established a House of Assembly
+and a Council in the two Canadas. "I am convinced," said Fox, who gave
+the measure his hearty support, "that the only method of retaining
+distant colonies with advantage is to enable them to govern themselves";
+and the policy of the one statesman as well as the foresight of the
+other has been justified by the later history of our dependencies. Nor
+had Burke better success with his own party. Fox remained an ardent
+lover of the Revolution, and answered a fresh attack of Burke upon it
+with more than usual warmth. Till now a close affection had bound the
+two men together; but no sooner had this defence been uttered than the
+fanaticism of Burke declared their union to be over. "There is no loss
+of friendship," Fox exclaimed, with a sudden burst of tears. "There is!"
+Burke repeated. "I know the price of my conduct. Our friendship is at an
+end."
+
+[Sidenote: His success with the country.]
+
+Within the walls of Parliament however Burke as yet stood utterly alone.
+His "Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs," in June 1791, failed to
+detach a follower from Fox; while Pitt coldly counselled him rather to
+praise the English Constitution than to rail at the French. "I have made
+many enemies and few friends," Burke wrote sadly to the French princes
+who had fled from their country and were gathering in arms at Coblentz,
+"by the part I have taken." But the opinion of the people was slowly
+drifting to his side; and a sale of thirty thousand copies showed that
+the "Reflections" echoed the general sentiment of Englishmen. At this
+moment indeed the mood of England was singularly unfavourable to any
+fair appreciation of the Revolution across the Channel. Her temper was
+above all industrial. Men who were working hard and fast growing rich,
+who had the narrow and practical turn of men of business, looked angrily
+at this sudden disturbance of order, this restless and vague activity,
+these rhetorical appeals to human feeling, these abstract and often
+empty theories. In England it was a time of political content and social
+well-being, of steady economic progress, as well as of a powerful
+religious revival; and an insular lack of imaginative interest in other
+races hindered men from seeing that every element of this content, of
+this order, of this peaceful and harmonious progress, of this
+reconciliation of society and religion, was wanting abroad. The
+sympathy which the first outbreak of the Revolution had roused among
+Englishmen grew cooler in fact with every step which the Revolution
+took. While the Declaration of the Rights of Man roused France to a
+frenzy of enthusiasm, it was set aside as a dream by the practical
+islanders who based their rights on precedent and not on theory. The
+abolition of all social privileges on the 12th of August, the most
+characteristic step in the French Revolution, was met with grave
+disapproval by a people more alien from social equality than any people
+in Europe. Every incident in the struggle between the French people and
+their king widened the breach of feeling. The anarchy of the country,
+the want of political sense in its Assembly, the paltry declamation of
+its clubs, the exaggerated sentiment, the universal suspicion, the
+suspension of every security for personal freedom, the arrests, the
+murders, the overthrow of the Church, the ruin of the Crown, were
+watched with an ever-growing severity by a nation whose chief instinct
+was one of order, whose bent was to practical politics, whose temper was
+sober and trustful, whose passionate love of personal liberty was only
+equalled by its passionate abhorrence of bloodshed in civil strife, and
+whose ecclesiastical and political institutions were newly endeared to
+it by a fresh revival of religious feeling, and by the constitutional
+attitude of its Government for a hundred years.
+
+[Sidenote: The coalition against France.]
+
+Sympathy in fact was soon limited to a few groups of reformers who
+gathered in "Constitutional Clubs," and whose reckless language
+quickened the national reaction. But in spite of Burke's appeals and the
+cries of the nobles who had fled from France and longed only to march
+against their country, Europe held back from any attack on the
+Revolution, and Pitt preserved his attitude of neutrality, though with a
+greater appearance of reserve. So anxious, in fact, did the aspect of
+affairs in the East make him for the restoration of tranquillity in
+France, that he foiled a plan which its emigrant nobles had formed for a
+descent on the French coast, and declared formally at Vienna that
+England would remain absolutely neutral should hostilities arise between
+France and the Emperor. But the Emperor was as anxious to avoid a French
+war as Pitt himself. Though Catharine, now her strife with Turkey was
+over, wished to plunge the two German powers into a struggle with the
+Revolution which would leave her free to annex Poland single-handed,
+neither Leopold nor Prussia would tie their hands by such a contest. The
+flight of Lewis the Sixteenth from Paris in June 1791 brought Europe for
+a moment to the verge of war; but he was intercepted and brought back:
+and for a while the danger seemed to incline the revolutionists in
+France to greater moderation. Lewis too not only accepted the
+Constitution, but pleaded earnestly with the Emperor against any armed
+intervention as certain to bring ruin to his throne. In their conference
+at Pillnitz therefore, in August, Leopold and the king of Prussia
+contented themselves with a vague declaration inviting the European
+powers to co-operate in restoring a sound form of government in France,
+availed themselves of England's neutrality to refuse all military aid to
+the French princes, and dealt simply with the affairs of Poland. But the
+peace they desired soon became impossible. The Constitutional Royalists
+in France availed themselves of the irritation caused by the Declaration
+of Pillnitz to revive the cry for a war which, as they hoped, would give
+strength to the throne. The more violent revolutionists, or Jacobins, on
+the other hand, abandoned their advocacy of peace. Under the influence
+of the "Girondists," the deputies from the south of France, whose aim
+was a republic, and who saw in a great national struggle a means of
+overthrowing the monarchy, they decided, in spite of the opposition of
+their leader, Robespierre, on a contest with the Emperor. Both parties
+united to demand the breaking up of an army which the emigrant princes
+had formed on the Rhine; and though Leopold before his death assented to
+this demand, France declared war against his successor, Francis, in
+April 1792.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+ENGLAND AND REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE
+
+1792-1801
+
+
+[Sidenote: England and the Revolutionists.]
+
+That the war with Germany would widen into a vast European struggle, a
+struggle in which the peoples would rise against their oppressors, and
+the freedom which France had won diffuse itself over the world, no
+French revolutionist doubted for an hour. Nor did they doubt that in
+this struggle England would join them. It was from England that they had
+drawn those principles of political and social liberty which they
+believed themselves to be putting into practice. It was to England that
+they looked above all for approbation and sympathy, and on the aid of
+England that they confidently counted in their struggle with a despotic
+and priest-ridden Europe. Absorbed in the mighty events about them, and
+utterly ignorant of the real set of English feeling or the real meaning
+of Pitt's policy, they were astonished and indignant at his firm refusal
+of their alliance and his resolve to stand apart from the struggle. It
+was in vain that Pitt strove to allay this irritation by demanding only
+that Holland should remain untouched, and promising neutrality even
+though Belgium should be occupied by a French army, or that he
+strengthened these pledges by a reduction of military forces, and by
+bringing forward in 1792 a peace-budget which rested on a large
+remission of taxation. To the revolutionists at Paris the attitude of
+England remained unintelligible and irritating. Instead of the aid they
+had counted on, they found but a cold neutrality. In place of the
+sympathy on which they reckoned, they saw, now that they looked coolly
+across the Channel, a reserve passing into disapproval. The pen of Burke
+was denouncing the Revolution as the very negation of those principles
+on which English liberty rested. The priests and nobles who had fled
+from the new France were finding pity and welcome on English shores. And
+now that France flung herself on an armed Europe to win freedom for its
+peoples from their kings, England stood coldly apart. To men frenzied
+with a passionate enthusiasm, and frenzied yet more with a sudden terror
+at the dangers they were encountering, such an attitude of neutrality in
+such a quarter seemed like a stab in the back.
+
+[Sidenote: Their efforts in England.]
+
+But that this attitude was that of the English people as a whole was
+incredible to the French enthusiasts. Conscious as no Englishman could
+be conscious of the great evils they had overthrown, of the great
+benefits they had won for their country, they saw in the attitude of
+England only the sympathy of an aristocracy with the aristocracy they
+had struck down. The cries for a parliamentary reform which reached them
+across the Channel became in their ears cries of a people as powerless
+and oppressed as the people of France had been. They still clung to the
+hope of England's aid in the emancipation of Europe from despotism and
+superstition, but they came now to believe that England must itself be
+emancipated before such an aid could be given. Their first work
+therefore they held to be the bringing about a revolution in England
+which might free the people from the aristocracy and the aristocratic
+government which held it down. But this was far from being all the work
+they looked to accomplishing. The aristocracy which oppressed the people
+at home oppressed, as they believed, great peoples beyond the bounds of
+England itself. It was subjecting to its sway nation after nation in
+India. Its rule over Ireland was a masterpiece of tyranny. To rouse
+India, to rouse Ireland to a struggle which should shake off the English
+yoke, became necessary steps to the establishment of freedom in England
+itself. From the moment therefore that the opposition between the two
+countries declared itself, French agents were busy "sowing the
+revolution" in each quarter. In Ireland they entered into communication
+with the United Irishmen. In India they appeared at the courts of the
+native princes, and above all at the court of Mysore. Meanwhile in
+England itself they strove through a number of associations, which had
+formed themselves under the name of Constitutional Clubs, to rouse the
+same spirit which they had roused in France; and the French envoy,
+Chauvelin, protested warmly against a proclamation which denounced this
+correspondence as seditious.
+
+[Sidenote: The Coalition attacks France.]
+
+Such a course could only knit men of all parties together in a common
+resentment; and the effect of these revolutionary efforts on the friends
+of the Revolution was seen in a declaration which they wrested from Fox,
+that at such a moment even the discussion of parliamentary reform was
+inexpedient. A far worse result was the new strength they gave to its
+foes. Burke was still working hard in writings whose extravagance of
+style was forgotten in their intensity of feeling to spread alarm
+throughout Europe. He had from the first encouraged the emigrant princes
+to take arms, and sent his son to join them at Coblentz. "Be alarmists,"
+he wrote to them; "diffuse terror!" But the royalist terror which he
+sowed would have been of little moment had it not roused a revolutionary
+terror in France itself. At the threat of war against the Emperor the
+two German Courts had drawn together, and reluctantly abandoning all
+hope of peace with France, gathered eighty thousand men under the Duke
+of Brunswick, and advanced slowly in August 1792 on the Meuse. France,
+though she had forced on the struggle, was really almost defenceless;
+her forces in Belgium broke at the first shock of arms into shameful
+rout; and the panic, as it spread from the soldiery to the nation at
+large, took violent and horrible forms. At the first news of Brunswick's
+advance the mob of Paris broke into the Tuileries on the 10th of August;
+and at its demand Lewis, who had taken refuge in the Assembly, was
+suspended from his office and imprisoned in the Temple. In the following
+September, while General Dumouriez by boldness and adroit negotiations
+was arresting the progress of the Allies in the defiles of the Argonne,
+bodies of paid murderers butchered the royalist prisoners who crowded
+the gaols of Paris, with a view of influencing the elections to a new
+Convention which met to proclaim the abolition of royalty. The retreat
+of the Prussian army, whose numbers had been reduced by disease till an
+advance on Paris became impossible, and a brilliant victory won by
+Dumouriez at Jemappes which laid the Netherlands at his feet, turned the
+panic of the French into a wild self-confidence. In November the
+Convention decreed that France offered the aid of her soldiers to all
+nations who would strive for freedom. "All governments are our enemies,"
+cried its President; "all peoples are our allies." In the teeth of
+treaties signed only two years before, and of the stipulation made by
+England when it pledged itself to neutrality, the French Government
+resolved to attack Holland, and ordered its generals to enforce by arms
+the opening of the Scheldt.
+
+[Sidenote: France declares war with England.]
+
+To do this was to force England into war. Public opinion was already
+pressing every day harder upon Pitt. The horror of the massacres of
+September, the hideous despotism of the Parisian mob, did more to
+estrange England from the Revolution than all the eloquence of Burke.
+But even while withdrawing our Minister from Paris on the imprisonment
+of the king, to whose Court he had been commissioned, Pitt clung
+stubbornly to a policy of peace. His hope was to bring the war to an end
+through English mediation, and to "leave France, which I believe is the
+best way, to arrange its own internal affairs as it can." No hour of
+Pitt's life is so great as the hour when he stood lonely and passionless
+before the growth of national passion, and refused to bow to the
+gathering cry for war. Even the news of the September massacres could
+only force from him a hope that France might abstain from any war of
+conquest and might escape from its social anarchy. In October the French
+agent in England reported that Pitt was about to recognize the Republic.
+At the opening of November he still pressed on Holland a steady
+neutrality. It was France, and not England, which at last wrenched peace
+from his grasp. The decree of the Convention and the attack on the Dutch
+left him no choice but war, for it was impossible for England to endure
+a French fleet at Antwerp, or to desert allies like the United
+Provinces. But even in December the news of the approaching partition of
+Poland nerved him to a last struggle for peace; he offered to aid
+Austria in acquiring Bavaria if she would make terms with France, and
+pledged himself to France to abstain from war if that power would cease
+from violating the independence of her neighbour states. But desperately
+as Pitt struggled for peace, his struggle was in vain. Across the
+Channel his moderation was only taken for fear, while in England the
+general mourning which followed on the news of the French king's
+execution showed the growing ardour for the contest. The rejection of
+his last offers indeed made a contest inevitable. Both sides ceased from
+diplomatic communications, and in February 1793 France issued her
+Declaration of War.
+
+[Sidenote: The Panic.]
+
+From that moment Pitt's power was at an end. His pride, his immoveable
+firmness, and the general confidence of the nation, still kept him at
+the head of affairs; but he could do little save drift along with a tide
+of popular feeling which he never fully understood. Around him the
+country broke out in a fit of passion and panic which rivalled the
+passion and panic over sea. The confidence of France in its illusions
+as to opinion in England deluded for the moment even Englishmen
+themselves. The partisans of Republicanism were in reality but a few
+handfuls of men who played at gathering Conventions, and at calling
+themselves citizens and patriots, in childish imitation of what was
+going on across the Channel. But in the mass of Englishmen the dread of
+these revolutionists passed for the hour into sheer panic. Even the bulk
+of the Whig party believed property and the constitution to be in peril,
+and forsook Fox when he still proclaimed his faith in France and the
+Revolution. The "Old Whigs," as they called themselves, with the Duke of
+Portland, Earls Spencer and Fitzwilliam, and Mr. Windham at their head,
+followed Burke in giving their adhesion to the Government. Pitt himself,
+though little touched by the political reaction which was to constitute
+the creed of those who represented themselves as "Pittites," was shaken
+by the dream of social danger, which was turning the wisest heads about
+him. For a moment at least his cool good sense bent to believe in the
+existence of "thousands of bandits" who were ready to rise against the
+throne, to plunder every landlord, and to sack London. "Paine is no
+fool," he said to his niece, who quoted to him a passage from the
+_Rights of Man_, in which that author had vindicated the principles of
+the Revolution. "He is perhaps right; but if I did what he wants I
+should have thousands of bandits on my hands to-morrow and London
+burnt." It was this sense of social danger which alone reconciled him to
+the war. It would have been impossible indeed for Pitt, or for any other
+English statesman, to have stood idly by while France annexed the
+Netherlands and marched to annex Holland. He must in any case have
+fought even had France not forced him to fight by her declaration of
+war. But bitter as the need of such a struggle was to him, he accepted
+it with the less reluctance that war, as he trusted, would check the
+progress of "French principles" in England itself.
+
+The worst issue of this panic was the series of legislative measures in
+which it found expression. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, a bill
+against seditious assemblies restricted the liberty of public meeting,
+and a wider scope was given to the Statute of Treasons. Prosecution
+after prosecution was directed against the Press; the sermons of some
+dissenting ministers were indicted as seditious; and the conventions of
+sympathizers with France were roughly broken up. The worst excesses of
+this panic were witnessed in Scotland, where young Whigs, whose only
+offence was an advocacy of parliamentary reform, were sentenced to
+transportation, and where a brutal Judge openly expressed his regret
+that the practice of torture in seditious cases should have fallen into
+disuse. But the panic soon passed away for sheer want of material to
+feed on. The bloodshed and anarchy of the Jacobin rule disgusted the
+last sympathizers with France. To staunch Whigs like Romilly, the
+French, after the massacres of October, seemed a mere "nation of
+tigers." The good sense of the nation discovered the unreality of the
+dangers which had driven it to its short-lived frenzy; and when the
+leaders of the Corresponding Society, a body which expressed sympathy
+with France, were brought to trial in 1794 on a charge of high treason,
+their acquittal told that all active terror was over. So far indeed was
+the nation from any danger of social overthrow that, save for occasional
+riots to which the poor were goaded by sheer want of bread, no social
+disturbance troubled England during the twenty years of struggle which
+lay before it. But though the public terror passed, it left a terrible
+legacy behind. The blind reaction against all reform which had sprung
+from the panic lasted on when the panic was forgotten. For nearly a
+quarter of a century it was hard to get a hearing for any measure which
+threatened change to an existing institution, beneficial though the
+change might be. Even the philanthropic movement which so nobly
+characterized the time found itself checked and hampered by the dread of
+revolution.
+
+Easy however as Pitt found it to deal with "French principles" at home,
+he found it less easy to deal with French armies abroad. The very
+excellences of his character indeed unfitted him for the conduct of a
+war. He was at heart a Peace Minister; he was forced into war by a panic
+and enthusiasm which he shared in a very small degree; and he was
+utterly destitute of his father's gift of entering instinctively into
+the sympathies and passions around him, and of rousing passions and
+sympathies in return. At first indeed all seemed to go ill for France.
+When the campaign of 1793 opened she was girt in along her whole
+frontier by a ring of foes. The forces of the House of Austria, of the
+Empire, and of the King of Prussia, pressed her to the north and the
+east; those of Spain and Sardinia attacked her in the south; and the
+accession of England to this league threatened to close the sea against
+her. The efforts of these foreign foes were seconded too by civil war.
+The peasants of Poitou and Brittany, estranged from the revolution by
+its attack on the clergy, rose in revolt against the government at
+Paris; while Marseilles and Lyons were driven into insurrection by the
+violent leaders who now seized on power in the capital. The campaign
+opened therefore with a series of terrible reverses. In spite of the
+efforts of General Dumouriez the French were foiled in their attack on
+Holland and driven, after a disastrous defeat at Neerwinden, from the
+Netherlands. At the moment when the Duke of York with ten thousand
+English troops joined the Austrian army on the northern border of
+France, a march upon Paris would have crushed the revolution. But the
+chance was lost. At this moment indeed the two German powers were far
+from wishing honestly for the suppression of the Republic and the
+re-establishment of a strong monarchy in France. Such a restoration
+would have foiled their projects of aggrandizement in Eastern Europe.
+The strife on the Rhine had set Russia free, as Pitt had foreseen, to
+carry out her schemes of aggression; and Austria and Prussia saw
+themselves forced, in the interest of a balance of power, to share in
+her annexations at the cost of Poland. But this new division of Poland
+would have become impossible had France been enabled by a restoration of
+its monarchy to take up again its natural position in Europe, and to
+accept the alliance which Pitt would in such a case have offered her.
+The policy of the German courts therefore was to prolong an anarchy
+which left them free for the moment to crush Poland, and which they
+counted on crushing in its turn at a more convenient time; and the
+allied armies which might have marched upon Paris were purposely
+frittered away in sieges in the Netherlands and the Rhine.
+
+[Sidenote: The revival of France.]
+
+Such a policy gave France all that she needed to recover from the shock
+of her past disasters: it gave her time. Whatever were the crimes and
+tyranny of her leaders, the country felt in spite of them the value of
+the Revolution, and rallied enthusiastically to its support. The
+strength of the revolt in La Vendee was broken. The insurrection in the
+south was drowned in blood. The Spanish invaders were held at bay at the
+foot of the Pyrenees, and the Piedmontese were driven from Nice and
+Savoy. At the close of the year a fresh blow fell upon the struggling
+country in the revolt of Toulon, the naval station of its Mediterranean
+fleet. The town called for foreign aid against the government at Paris;
+and Lord Hood entered the port with an English squadron, while a force
+of 11,000 men, gathered hastily from every quarter, was despatched under
+General O'Hara as a garrison. But the successes against Spain and Savoy
+freed the hands of France at this critical moment: the town was at once
+invested, and the seizure of a promontory which commanded the harbour, a
+step counselled by a young artillery officer, Napoleon Buonaparte,
+brought about the withdrawal of the garrison and the surrender of
+Toulon. The success was a prelude of what was to come. At the opening of
+1794 a victory at Fleurus, which again made the French masters of the
+Netherlands, showed that the tide had turned. France was united within
+by the cessation of the Terror and of the tyranny of the Jacobins, while
+on every border victory followed the gigantic efforts with which she
+met the coalition against her. The coalition indeed was fast breaking
+up. Spain sued for peace. Prussia, more intent on her gains in the east
+than on any battle with the revolution on the west, prepared to follow
+Spain's example by the withdrawal of her armies from the Rhine. It was
+only by English subsidies that Austria and Sardinia were still kept in
+the field; and the Rhine provinces were wrested from the first, while
+the forces of Sardinia were driven back from the Riviera and the
+Maritime Alps into the plain of Piedmont. Before the year ended Holland
+was lost. Pichegru crossed the Waal in midwinter with an overwhelming
+force, and the wretched remnant of ten thousand men who had followed the
+Duke of York to the Netherlands, thinned by disease and by the hardships
+of retreat, re-embarked for England.
+
+[Sidenote: Howe's victory.]
+
+In one quarter only had the fortune of war gone against the French
+republic. The victories of Rodney at the close of the strife with
+America had concentrated English interest on the fleet. Even during the
+peace, while the army was sacrificed to financial distress, great
+efforts were made to preserve the efficiency of the navy; and the recent
+alarms of war with Russia and Spain had ended in raising it to a
+strength which it had never reached before. But France was as eager as
+England herself to dispute the sovereignty of the seas, and almost
+equal attention had been bestowed on the navy which crowded the great
+harbours of Toulon and Brest. In force as in number of ships it was
+equal in effective strength to that of England; and both nations looked
+with hope to the issue of a contest at sea. No battle marked the first
+year of the war; but, as it ended, the revolt of Toulon gave a fatal
+wound to the naval strength of France in the almost total destruction of
+her Mediterranean fleet. That of the Channel however remained unhurt;
+and it was this which Lord Howe at last encountered, off Brest in 1794,
+in the battle which is known by the name of the day on which it was
+fought--The "First of June." The number of ships on either side was
+nearly the same, and the battle was one of sheer hard fighting, unmarked
+by any display of naval skill. But the result was a decisive victory for
+England, and the French admiral, weakened by a loss of seven vessels and
+three thousand men, again took refuge in Brest.
+
+[Sidenote: Break-up of the Coalition.]
+
+The success of Lord Howe did somewhat to counteract the discouragement
+which sprang from the general aspect of the war. At the opening of 1795
+the coalition finally gave way. Holland had been detached from it by
+Pichegru's conquest, and the Batavian republic which he set up there was
+now an ally of France. In the spring Prussia bought peace at Basle by
+the cession of her possessions west of the Rhine. Peace with Spain
+followed in the summer, while Sweden and the Protestant cantons of
+Switzerland recognized the republic. These terrible blows were hardly
+met by the success of the Austrian army in relieving Maintz, or by the
+colonial acquisitions of England. The latter indeed were far from being
+inconsiderable. Most of the West-Indian Islands which had been held by
+France now fell into British hands; and the alliance of Holland with the
+French threw open to English attack the far more valuable settlements of
+the Dutch. The surrender of Cape Town in September gave England the
+colony of the Cape of Good Hope, the nucleus of what has since grown
+into a vast southern settlement which is destined to play a great part
+in the history of Africa. At the close of the year the Island of Ceylon
+was added to our Indian dependencies. Both of these acquisitions were
+destined to remain permanently attached to England, though at the moment
+their value was eclipsed by the conquest of the Dutch colonies in the
+Pacific, the more famous Spice Islands of the Malaccas and Java. But,
+important as these gains were in their after issues, they had no
+immediate influence on the war. The French armies prepared for the
+invasion of Italy; while in France itself discord came well-nigh to an
+end. A descent by a force of French emigrants on the coast of Brittany
+ended in their massacre at Quiberon and in the final cessation of the
+war in La Vendee; while the royalist party in Paris was crushed as soon
+as it rose against the Convention by the genius of Napoleon Buonaparte.
+
+[Sidenote: Pitt's effort for peace.]
+
+But the fresh severities against the ultra-republicans which followed on
+the establishment of a Directory after this success indicated the
+moderate character of the new government, and Pitt seized on this change
+in the temper of the French Government as giving an opening for peace.
+The dread of a Jacobin propagandism was now all but at an end. In spite
+of an outbreak of the London mob, whose cries meant chiefly impatience
+of dear bread, but which brought about a fresh suspension of the Habeas
+Corpus Act and the introduction of a Bill "for the prosecution of
+seditious meetings," the fear of any social disturbance or of the spread
+of "French principles" in England was fast passing away from men's
+minds. The new constitution which France accepted in 1795 showed that
+the tendencies of the French themselves were now rather to order than to
+freedom. The old grounds for the struggle therefore had ceased to exist;
+while the pressure of it grew hourly more intolerable. Pitt himself was
+sick of the strife. The war indeed had hardly begun when he found
+himself without the means of carrying it on. The English navy was in a
+high state of efficiency; but the financial distress which followed the
+American war had brought with it a neglect of the army. The army was not
+only small, but without proper equipment; and the want of military
+experience among its soldiers was only equalled by the incapacity of
+their leaders. "We have no general," Lord Grenville wrote bitterly, "but
+some old woman in a red riband." Wretched, too, as had been the conduct
+of the war, its cost was already terrible; for if England was without
+soldiers she had wealth, and in default of nobler means of combating the
+revolution Pitt had been forced to use wealth as an engine of war. He
+became the paymaster of the coalition, and his subsidies kept the allied
+armies in the field. But the immense loans which these called for, and
+the quick growth of expenditure, undid all the financial reforms on
+which the young minister prided himself. Taxation, which had reached its
+lowest point at the outbreak of the contest, mounted ere a few years
+were past to a height undreamed of before. The debt rose by leaps and
+bounds. In three years nearly eighty millions had been added to it, a
+sum greater than that piled up by the whole war with America, and in the
+opening of 1796 votes were taken for loans which amounted to twenty-five
+millions more.
+
+[Sidenote: The dogged temper of England.]
+
+Nor was this wreck of his financial hopes Pitt's only ground for
+desiring a close of the war. From the first, as we have seen, he had
+been keenly sensitive to the European dangers which the contest
+involved; nor had he shown, even in his moment of social panic, the
+fanatical blindness of men like Burke to the evils which had produced
+the revolution, or to the good which it had wrought. But he could only
+listen in silence while the Marquis of Lansdowne, the Lord Shelburne of
+earlier days and the successor of Chatham as the advocate of a more
+liberal policy, met the rhetoric of Burke by a cool demonstration of the
+benefit which the recent change had brought to the mass of the French
+people, and by pointing to the profit which Russia was drawing from the
+struggle in the west. In their wide-reaching view of European affairs,
+in their justice to the revolution, Shelburne and Pitt stood alone.
+Around them men were hardened and blinded by passion. The old hatred
+between nation and nation, which Pitt had branded as irrational, woke up
+fiercer than ever at the clash of arms, for with it was blended a
+resentment that had smouldered in English breasts ever since the war
+with America at the blow which France had dealt England in that hour of
+her weakness, and a disgust which only slowly grew fainter at her
+overthrow of every social and political institution that Englishmen held
+dear. On the dogged temper of the nation at large the failure of the
+coalition produced little effect. It had no fear of fighting France
+single-handed, nor could it understand Pitt's suggestion that a time
+had come for opening negotiations with a view to peace. Public opinion
+indeed went hotly with Burke in his denunciation of all purpose of
+relaxing England's hostility against the revolution, a denunciation
+which was embodied in his "Letters on a Regicide Peace," the last outcry
+of that fanaticism which had done so much to plunge the world in blood.
+
+[Sidenote: The Irish danger.]
+
+But though Pitt stood all but alone, he was firm in his purpose to bring
+the war, if he could, to a close. What specially moved him was not the
+danger on the Continent, whether that danger sprang from French
+victories or from aggression in the east. It was a danger in the west.
+Vain as the expectations of the French revolutionists had proved in the
+case of England, they had better ground for their hopes elsewhere. Even
+before the outbreak of the war Pitt had shown how keen was his sense of
+a possible danger from Ireland. In that wretched country the terrible
+fruits of a century of oppression and wrong were still to reap. From the
+close of the American war, when her armed Volunteers had wrung
+legislative independence from the Rockingham ministry, Ireland had
+continued to be England's difficulty. She was now "independent"; but her
+independence was a mere name for the uncontrolled rule of a few noble
+families. The victory of the Volunteers had been won simply to the
+profit of "undertakers," who returned a majority of members in the
+Irish House of Commons, while they themselves formed the Irish House of
+Lords. The suspension of any effective control or interference from
+England left Ireland at these men's mercy, and they soon showed that
+they meant to keep it for themselves. When the Catholics claimed
+admission to the franchise or to equal civil rights as a reward for
+their aid in the late struggle, their claim was rejected. A similar
+demand of the Presbyterians, who had formed a good half of the
+Volunteers, for the removal of their disabilities was equally set aside.
+Even Grattan, when he pleaded for a reform which would make the
+Parliament at least a fair representative of the Protestant Englishry,
+utterly failed. The ruling class found government too profitable to
+share it with other possessors. It was only by hard bribery that the
+English viceroys could secure their co-operation in the simplest
+measures of administration. "If ever there was a country unfit to govern
+itself," said Lord Hutchinson, "it is Ireland. A corrupt aristocracy, a
+ferocious commonalty, a distracted Government, a divided people!"
+
+[Sidenote: Irish Emancipation.]
+
+The real character of this Parliamentary rule was seen in the rejection
+of Pitt's offer of free trade. In Pitt's eyes the danger of Ireland lay
+above all in the misery of its people. Although the Irish Catholics were
+held down by the brute force of their Protestant rulers, he saw that
+their discontent was growing fast into rebellion, and that one secret
+at any rate of their discontent lay in Irish poverty, a poverty
+increased if not originally brought about by the jealous exclusion of
+Irish products from their natural markets in England itself. One of his
+first commercial measures therefore, as we have seen, aimed at putting
+an end to this exclusion by a bill which established freedom of trade
+between the two islands. But though he met successfully the fears and
+jealousies of the English farmers and manufacturers he was foiled by the
+factious ignorance of the Irish landowners, and his bill was rejected by
+the Irish Parliament. So utterly was he discouraged that for the moment
+he ceased from all further attempts to improve the condition of Ireland.
+But the efforts which the French revolutionists made to excite rebellion
+amongst the Irish roused him to fresh measures of conciliation and good
+government. The hopes of some reform of the Irish Parliament had been
+fanned by the eloquence of Grattan and by the pressure of the United
+Irishmen, an association which had sprung up in Ulster, where Protestant
+dissenters, who were equally excluded with Catholics from any share in
+political power, formed the strongest part of the population. These
+hopes however were growing every day fainter. To the Irish aristocracy
+parliamentary reform meant the close of a corrupt rule which had gone on
+unchecked since the American war. But to the Irish Catholic it meant
+far more; it meant his admission, not only to the electoral franchise,
+but in the end to all the common privileges of citizenship from which he
+was excluded, his "emancipation," to use the word which now became
+common, from the yoke of slavery which had pressed on him ever since the
+Battle of the Boyne.
+
+[Sidenote: The United Irishmen.]
+
+To such an emancipation Pitt was already looking forward. In 1792, a
+year before the outbreak of war with France, he forced on the Irish
+Parliament measures for the admission of Catholics to the electoral
+franchise and to civil and military office within the island, which
+promised a new era of religious liberty. But the promise came too late.
+The hope of conciliation was lost in the fast rising tide of religious
+and social passion. As the dream of obtaining Parliamentary reform died
+away the United Irishmen of the North drifted into projects of
+insurrection and a correspondence with France. The news of the French
+Revolution fell with a yet more terrible effect on the Catholic
+peasantry, brooding over their misery and their wrongs. Their discontent
+broke out in social disorder, in the outrages of secret societies of
+"Defenders" and "Peep o' Day Boys," which spread panic among the ruling
+classes. It was only by sheer terror and bloodshed that the Protestant
+landowners, who banded together in "Orange" societies to meet the secret
+societies about them, could hold the country down. Outrages on the one
+side, tyranny on the other, deepened the disorder and panic every day,
+and the hopes of the reformers grew fainter as the terror rose fast
+around them. The maddened Protestants scouted all notions of further
+concessions to men whom they looked upon as on the verge of revolt; and
+Grattan's motions for reform were defeated by increasing majorities. On
+the other hand the entry of the anti-revolutionary Whigs into Pitt's
+ministry revived Grattan's hopes, for Burke and his followers were
+pledged to a liberal policy towards Ireland, and Lord Fitzwilliam, who
+came over as viceroy in 1794, encouraged Grattan to bring in a bill for
+the entire emancipation of the Catholics at the opening of the next
+year. Such a step can hardly have been taken without Pitt's assent; but
+the minister was now swept along by a tide of feeling which he could not
+control. The Orangemen threatened revolt, the Tories in Pitt's own
+Cabinet recoiled from the notion of reform, and Lord Fitzwilliam was not
+only recalled, but replaced by Lord Camden, an avowed enemy of all
+change or concession to the Catholics. From that moment the United
+Irishmen became a revolutionary society; and one of their leaders, Wolfe
+Tone, made his way to France, in the spring of 1796, to seek aid in a
+national rising.
+
+[Sidenote: France and Ireland.]
+
+It is probable that Tone's errand was known to Pitt; it is certain that
+Lord Edward Fitzgerald, another of the patriot leaders, who had been
+summoned to carry on more definite negotiations in Basle, revealed
+inadvertently as he returned the secret of his hopes to an agent of the
+English Cabinet. Vague as were the offers of the United Irishmen, they
+had been warmly welcomed by the French Government. Masters at home, the
+Directory were anxious to draw off the revolutionary enthusiasm which
+the French party of order dreaded as much as Burke himself to the
+channels of foreign conquest. They were already planning that descent of
+their army in the Alps upon Lombardy which was to give a fatal blow to
+one of their enemies, Austria; and they welcomed the notion of a French
+descent upon Ireland and an Irish revolt, which would give as fatal a
+blow to their other enemy, England. An army of 25,000 men under General
+Hoche was promised, a fleet was manned, and preparations were being made
+for the expedition during the summer. But the secret was ill kept, and
+the news of such an attempt was, we can hardly doubt, the ground of the
+obstinacy with which Pitt persisted in the teeth of the national feeling
+and of Burke's invectives in clinging to his purpose of concluding a
+peace. In October 1796 Lord Malmesbury was despatched to Paris and
+negotiations were finally opened for that purpose. The terms which Pitt
+offered were terms of mutual restitution. France was to evacuate
+Holland and to restore Belgium to the Emperor. England on the other hand
+was to restore the colonies she had won to France, Holland, and Spain.
+As the English Minister had no power of dealing with the territories
+already ceded by Prussia and other states, such a treaty would have left
+France, as her eastern border, the line of the Rhine. But even had they
+desired peace at all, the Directors would have scorned it on terms such
+as these. While Malmesbury was negotiating indeed France was roused to
+new dreams of conquest by the victories of Napoleon Buonaparte. The
+genius of Carnot, the French Minister of War, had planned a joint
+advance upon Vienna by the French armies of Italy and the Rhine, the one
+under Buonaparte, the other under Moreau. The plan was only partly
+successful. Moreau, though he pushed forward through every obstacle to
+Bavaria, was compelled to fall back by the defeat of a lieutenant; and
+was only enabled by a masterly retreat through the Black Forest to reach
+the Rhine. But the disaster of Moreau was more than redeemed by the
+victories of Buonaparte. With the army which occupied the Riviera and
+the Maritime Alps the young general marched on Piedmont at the opening
+of the summer, separated its army from the Austrian troops, and forced
+the king of Sardinia to conclude a humiliating peace. A brilliant
+victory at the bridge of Lodi brought him to Milan, and drove the
+Austrians into the Tyrol. Lombardy was in the hands of the French, the
+Duchies south of the Po pillaged, and the Pope driven to purchase an
+armistice at enormous cost, before the Austrian armies, raised to a
+force of 50,000 men, again descended from the Tyrol for the relief of
+Mantua. But a fatal division of their forces by the Lake of Garda
+enabled Buonaparte to hurl them back broken upon Trent, and to shut up
+their general, Wurmser, in Mantua with the remnant of his men; while
+fresh victories at the bridge of Arcola and at Bassano drove back two
+new Austrian armies who advanced to Wurmser's rescue.
+
+[Sidenote: The Terror of Ireland.]
+
+It was the success of Buonaparte which told on the resolve of the
+Directory to reject all terms of peace. After months of dilatory
+negotiations the offers of Lord Malmesbury were definitely declined, and
+the English envoy returned home at the end of the year. Every hour of
+his stay in Paris had raised higher hopes of success against England in
+the minds of the Directory. At the moment of his arrival Spain had been
+driven to declare war as their ally against Britain; and the Spanish and
+Dutch fleets were now at the French service for a struggle at sea. The
+merciless exactions of Buonaparte poured gold into the exhausted
+treasury; and the energy of Hoche rapidly availed itself of this supply
+to equip a force for operations in Ireland. At the opening of December
+he was ready to put to sea with a fleet of more than forty sail and
+25,000 men; and the return of Lord Malmesbury was the signal for the
+despatch of his expedition from Brest. The fleet at Toulon, which was
+intended to co-operate with that at Brest, and which had sailed through
+the Straits of Gibraltar for that purpose, was driven into Port l'Orient
+by an English squadron: but contrary winds baffled the fleet which was
+watching Hoche, and his armament slipped away with little hindrance
+towards the Irish coast. Had it reached Ireland unbroken and under such
+a general, the island might well have been lost to the English Crown.
+But the winds fought against France, as they had fought against the
+Armada of Spain; and the ships were parted from one another by a gale
+which burst on them as they put to sea. Seventeen reached Bantry Bay,
+but hearing nothing of their leader or of the rest, they sailed back
+again to Brest, in spite of the entreaties of the soldiers to be
+suffered to land. Another division reached the Shannon to be scattered
+and driven home again by a second storm. Twelve vessels were wrecked or
+captured, and the frigate in which Hoche had embarked returned to port
+without having seen any of its companions. The invasion had failed, but
+the panic which it roused woke passions of cruelty and tyranny which
+turned Ireland into a hell. Soldiers and yeomanry marched over the
+country torturing and scourging the "croppies," as the Irish peasantry
+were termed from their short-cut hair; robbing, ravishing, and murdering
+at their will. The lightest suspicion, the most unfounded charges, were
+taken as warrants for bloodshed. So hideous were these outrages that the
+news of them as it reached England woke a thrill of horror in the minds
+of even the blindest Tories; but by the landowners who formed the Irish
+Parliament they were sanctioned in a Bill of Indemnity and protected for
+the future by an Insurrection Act. The terror however only woke a
+universal spirit of revolt. Ireland drank in greedily that hatred of
+England and of English rule which all the justice and moderation of
+later government has failed to destroy; and the United Irishmen looked
+with more passionate longing than ever to France.
+
+[Sidenote: The struggle for the Sea.]
+
+Nor had France abandoned the design of invasion; while her victories
+made such a design every day more formidable. The war was going steadily
+in her favour. A fresh victory at Rivoli, the surrender of Mantua, and
+an advance through Styria on Vienna, enabled Buonaparte to wring a peace
+from England's one ally, Austria. The armistice was concluded in April
+1797, and the final treaty which was signed at Campo Formio in October
+not only gave France the Ionian Islands, a part of the old territory of
+Venice (whose Italian possessions passed to the Emperor), as well as the
+Netherlands and the whole left bank of the Rhine, but united Lombardy
+with the Duchies south of the Po and the Papal States as far as the
+Rubicon into a "Cisalpine Republic," which was absolutely beneath her
+control. The withdrawal of Austria left France without an enemy on the
+Continent, and England without an ally. The stress of the war was
+pressing more heavily on her every day. A mutiny in the fleet was
+suppressed with difficulty. The news of Hoche's expedition brought about
+a run for gold which forced on the Bank a suspension of specie payments.
+It was in this darkest hour of the struggle that Burke passed away,
+protesting to the last against the peace which, in spite of his previous
+failure, Pitt was again striving to bring about by fresh negotiations at
+Lille. Peace seemed more needful than ever to him now that France was
+free to attack her enemy with the soldiers who had fought at Arcola and
+Rivoli. Their way, indeed, lay across the sea, and at sea Britain was
+supreme. But her supremacy was threatened by a coalition of naval forces
+such as had all but crushed her in the American war. Again the Dutch and
+Spanish fleets were allied with the fleets of France; and it was
+necessary to watch Cadiz and the Scheldt as well as Brest and Toulon. A
+single victory of the three confederates, or even such a command of the
+Channel as they had held for months during the war with America, would
+enable the Directory to throw overwhelming armies not only on the shores
+of England, but on the shores of Ireland, and whatever might be the
+fate of the one enterprise, there could be little doubt of the success
+of the other. The danger was real; but it had hardly threatened England
+when it was dispelled by two great victories. The Spanish fleet, which
+put out to sea with twenty-seven sail of the line, was met on the
+fourteenth of February 1797 by Admiral Jervis off Cape St. Vincent with
+a force of but fifteen; and driven back to Cadiz with a loss of four of
+its finest vessels. Disheartened as they were, however, their numbers
+still exceeded that of the force which blockaded them; and France
+counted with confidence on the fleet of Holland, which was ordered to
+join its own fleet at Brest. The aim of this union was to protect a
+fresh force in its descent upon Ireland, where the United Irishmen now
+declared themselves ready for revolt. But a yet sterner fortune awaited
+the Dutch than that which had fallen on the Spaniards. Their admiral, De
+Winter, who had quitted the Texel during a storm with eleven sail of the
+line and four frigates, fell in on the eleventh of October with a far
+larger fleet under Admiral Duncan off Camperdown. The Hollanders fought
+with a stubborn courage worthy of their old renown, and it was only when
+their ships were riddled with shot into mere wrecks that they fell into
+the hands of the English.
+
+[Sidenote: The Irish Rising.]
+
+The French project for an expedition to Ireland hung on the junction of
+the Dutch fleet with that of Brest, and the command of the Channel
+which this junction would have given them. Such a command became
+impossible after the defeat of Camperdown. But the disappointment of
+their hopes of foreign aid only drove the adherents of revolt in Ireland
+to a rising of despair. The union of the national party, which had
+lasted to some extent from the American war, was now broken up. The
+Protestants of Ulster still looked for aid to France. The Catholics, on
+the other hand, were alienated from the French by their attack on
+religion and the priesthood; and the failure of the French expedition,
+while it damped the hopes of the Ulstermen, gave force to the demands of
+the Catholic party for a purely national rising. So fierce was this
+demand that the leaders of the United Irishmen were forced to fix on the
+spring of 1798 for the outbreak of an insurrection, in which Lord Edward
+Fitzgerald, who had some small military experience, was to take the
+command. But while yielding on this point to the Catholic section of
+their party they conciliated the Protestants by renewed appeals for aid
+to the Directory. In spite of its previous failures France again
+promised help; and a division was prepared during the winter for service
+in Ireland. But the passion of the nation was too intense to wait for
+its arrival. The government too acted with a prompt decision in face of
+the danger, and an arrest of Lord Edward Fitzgerald with three of their
+chief leaders in February 1798 broke the plans of the insurgents. On the
+23rd of May, however, the day fixed for the opening of the revolt, the
+Catholic peasantry of the south rose in arms. Elsewhere their disorderly
+gatherings were easily dispersed by the yeomanry; but Wexford
+surrendered to 14,000 insurgents who marched on it, headed by a village
+priest, and the town at once became the centre of a formidable revolt.
+
+[Sidenote: Its failure.]
+
+Fortunately for the English rule the old religious hatred which had so
+often wrecked the hopes of Ireland broke out in the instant of this
+triumph. The Protestant inhabitants of Wexford were driven into the
+river or flung into prison. Another body of insurgents, frenzied by the
+cruelties of the royal troops, massacred a hundred Protestants in cool
+blood. The atrocities of the soldiers and the yeomanry were avenged with
+a fiendish ruthlessness. Loyalists were lashed and tortured in their
+turn, and every soldier taken was butchered without mercy. The result of
+these outrages was fatal to the insurrection. The Ulster Protestants,
+who formed the strength of the United Irishmen, stood sullenly aloof
+from rebels who murdered Protestants. The Catholic gentry threw
+themselves on the side of the government against a rising which
+threatened the country with massacre and anarchy. Few in fact had joined
+the insurgents in Wexford when Lord Lake appeared before their camp
+upon Vinegar Hill with a strong force of English troops on the 21st of
+May. The camp was stormed, and with the dispersion of its defenders the
+revolt came suddenly to an end. But its suppression came only just in
+time to prevent greater disasters; for a few weeks after the close of
+the rebellion the long-expected aid arrived from France. The news of the
+outbreak had forced the armament which was being equipped in the French
+ports to put to sea with forces utterly inadequate to the task it had
+set itself, but fresh aid was promised to follow, and the nine hundred
+soldiers who landed in August under General Humbert on the coast of Mayo
+showed by their first successes how formidable a centre they would have
+given to the revolt had the revolt held its ground. But in the two
+months which had passed since Vinegar Hill all trace of resistance to
+the English rule had been trodden out in blood, and Humbert found
+himself alone in a country exhausted and panic-stricken. He marched
+however boldly on Castlebar, broke a force of yeomanry and volunteers
+three times his number, and only surrendered when Lord Cornwallis, who
+had succeeded to the Lord-Lieutenancy, faced him with thirty thousand
+men.
+
+[Sidenote: French designs on India.]
+
+Of the threefold attack on which the Directory had relied for the ruin
+of England two parts had now broken down. Humbert's surrender and the
+failure of the native insurrection left little hope for future attack
+on the side of Ireland. The naval confederacy which was to rob England
+of the command of the seas had been foiled by the utter wreck of the
+Dutch fleet, and the imprisonment of the Spanish fleet in Cadiz. But the
+genius of Buonaparte had seized on the schemes for a rising against the
+English rule in Hindostan, and widened them into a project of all but
+world-wide conquest. At this time the strongest and most vigorous of the
+Indian powers was that of Mysore, at the southern extremity of the
+peninsula, where a Mussulman state had been built up by the genius of an
+adventurer, Hyder Ali. In the days when the English were winning their
+supremacy over the Carnatic, Hyder had been their chief difficulty; and
+his attack had once brought them to the verge of ruin. The hostility of
+his son Tippoo was even more bitter; but the victories of Lord
+Cornwallis had taught the Sultan of Mysore that he was no match for the
+British power single-handed; and his hopes, like those of the United
+Irishmen, were fixed upon France. He was striving to get aid from the
+Afghans and from the Nizam, but what he most counted on for the
+expulsion of the English from the Carnatic was a force of thirty
+thousand French soldiers. Letters requesting such a force were
+despatched by him to France in 1797. Buonaparte had already fixed on
+Mysore as a basis of operations against the British rule in Hindostan;
+and after dismissing as impracticable a project suggested to him on his
+return from Italy after the treaty of Campo Formio for a descent upon
+England itself, he laid before the Directory a plan for the conquest and
+occupation of Egypt as a preliminary to a campaign in Southern India.
+Utterly as this plan was foiled in the future, it was far from being the
+wild dream which it has often been considered. Both the Ministry and
+East Indian Directors were roused into anxiety by the first news of
+Buonaparte's expedition. The Earl of Mornington, Governor-General of
+British India, was warned of a possible attack from the Red Sea. Four
+thousand soldiers were hurried off to reinforce his army; while the
+English fleet watched anxiously in the Mediterranean. But so perfect was
+the secrecy with which the French plans were combined that Buonaparte
+was able to put to sea in May 1798 with a force of 30,000 veterans drawn
+from the army of Italy, and making himself master of Malta as he passed
+to land near Alexandria at the close of June.
+
+[Sidenote: The battle of the Nile.]
+
+The conquest of Egypt proved as easy and complete as Buonaparte had
+hoped. The Mamelukes were routed in the battle of the Pyramids; Cairo
+was occupied; and the French troops pushed rapidly up the valley of the
+Nile. Their general meanwhile showed his genius for government by a
+masterly organization of the conquered country, by the conciliation of
+his new subjects, and by measures for the enrolment of native soldiers
+which would in a short time have placed him at the head of a formidable
+army. Of his ultimate aim there can be little doubt; for he had hardly
+landed at Alexandria when he despatched the news of his arrival and
+promises of support to Tippoo. All chance however of success in his
+projects hung on the maintenance of communications with France. With
+Italy, with the Ionian Islands, with Alexandria in French holding, it
+was all but impossible to prevent supplies of men and arms from being
+forwarded to Egypt, so long as the French fleet remained in the waters
+of the Mediterranean and kept the English force concentrated by the
+necessity of watching its movements. But the French were hardly masters
+of Egypt when their fleet ceased to exist. The thirteen men-of-war which
+had escorted the expedition were found by Admiral Nelson in Aboukir Bay,
+moored close to the coast in a line guarded at either end by gunboats
+and batteries. Nelson resolved to thrust his ships between the French
+and the shore. On the morning of the 1st of August his own flag-ship led
+the way in this attack; and after a terrible fight of twelve hours, nine
+of the French vessels were captured and destroyed, two were burned, and
+five thousand French seamen were killed or made prisoners. "Victory,"
+cried Nelson, "is not a name strong enough for such a scene." Few
+victories indeed in history have produced more effective results than
+the battle of the Nile. The French flag was swept from the waters of the
+Mediterranean. All communication between France and Buonaparte's army
+was cut off; and his hopes of making Egypt a starting-point for the
+conquest of India fell at a blow. To hold Egypt itself soon became
+difficult, for a desperate revolt broke out at the news of Nelson's
+victory in the streets of Cairo, and a Turkish army advanced from Syria
+to recover the valley of the Nile.
+
+[Sidenote: France and Europe.]
+
+Secure against invasion at home as against rebellion in Ireland, secure
+too against the dangers that threatened her rule in India, and mistress
+of the seas, England was free in her turn to attack the assailant who
+had so long threatened her very existence. And in such an attack she was
+aided at this moment by the temper of the European powers, and by the
+ceaseless aggressions of France. The treaties of Basle and Campo Formio
+were far from being accepted by the Directory as a final settlement of
+the relations of France with Europe. Some faint remnant of the older
+dreams of freeing oppressed peoples may have lingered in the aid which
+it gave to the rising of the subject districts of Basle and Vaud against
+their Bernese masters in the opening of 1798. But mere greed of gold was
+seen in the plunder of the treasury of Berne, a plunder which served to
+equip the army that sailed with Buonaparte to the shores of Egypt, and
+to recruit the exhausted treasury of the Directory; and an ambition, as
+reckless as this greed, broke out in an attack on the mountain cantons,
+states whose democratic institutions gave no such excuse for hostility
+as had been afforded by the aristocracy of Berne. A French decree
+abolished the Swiss Confederation, and the independence of its several
+states, and established in their place an Helvetic Republic modelled on
+a plan sent from Paris, and placed under the protection of France. The
+mountain cantons rose against this overthrow of a freedom compared with
+which the freedom of France was but of yesterday; but desperate as was
+their struggle they were overwhelmed by numbers, and the men of Uri, of
+Unterwalden and of Schwytz bowed for the first time to a foreign
+conqueror.
+
+[Sidenote: Russia and France.]
+
+The overthrow of this immemorial house of freedom opened the eyes of the
+blindest enthusiast to the real character of the French aggressions.
+Even in the group of young English poets, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and
+Southey, who had clung till now to the dream of the Revolution, of a
+Europe freed and regenerated by the arms of the new republic, all belief
+in such a dream passed finally away. But the France of the Directory
+would have cared little for this alienation of the peoples, had it not
+been backed by the revived hostility of their kings. What England
+counted on in her efforts for a revival of the coalition was the
+resentment of Austria at the aggressions which the Directory had ever
+since the peace of Campo Formio been carrying on in Italy. In the
+opening of 1798 a French force entered Rome, set up a Roman republic,
+and carried off Pius VI. a prisoner to Siena; while the king of Sardinia
+was driven to admit French garrisons into his fortresses. Austria
+however was still too weak after her defeats to listen to Pitt's
+advances, had Pitt stood alone. But Russia was now about to take a new
+part in European affairs. Under Catharine the Second this power had
+availed itself of the war against France in the west to carry out its
+own projects of conquest in eastern Europe; and, as we have seen, Pitt
+had watched its advance at the opening of the Revolution with far
+greater dread than the movements in France. It was in fact the need
+which the two German states felt of balancing the Russian annexations in
+Poland by annexations of their own which had paralysed their armies on
+the Rhine and saved France at the moment of her greatest danger in 1793.
+It is probable that the Directory still counted on the persistence of
+Russia in a similar policy, and believed that Catharine would see in
+their attack on Egypt and the Turks only a fresh opportunity for
+conquests on the Danube. But the sudden greatness of France had warned
+Russia that its policy of selfishness had been carried too far. It had
+allowed the Republic to tower into supremacy over the Continent, and if
+once such a supremacy was firmly established it would prove a fatal
+obstacle to the Russian advance. France would again, as under the
+monarchy, aim at the restoration of Poland; she would again bar the way
+to Constantinople; and her action would be backed by the weight of all
+western Europe, which had been thrown into her scale by the policy of
+the very state she defied. To avert such a result it was necessary to
+restore that balance of the Continent by which France and the German
+powers held one another in check; and with a view to this restoration
+Russia suddenly declared itself an enemy of France. Catharine's
+successor, the Czar Paul, set aside the overtures of the Directory. A
+close alliance was formed with Austria, and while an Imperial army
+gathered on the Bavarian frontier Russian troops hurried to the west.
+
+[Sidenote: The Union with Ireland.]
+
+The appearance of this new element in the struggle changed its whole
+conditions; and it was with renewed hope that Pitt lavished subsidies on
+the two allies at the close of 1798. But his preparations for the new
+strife were far from being limited to efforts abroad. In England he had
+found fresh resources in an Income-Tax, from which he anticipated an
+annual return of ten millions. Heavy as the tax was, and it amounted to
+ten per cent on all incomes above L200 a year, the dogged resolution of
+the people to fight on was seen in the absence of all opposition to
+this proposal. What was of even greater importance was to remove all
+chance of fresh danger from Ireland. Pitt's temper was of too
+statesmanlike a mould to rest content with the mere suppression of
+insurrection or with the system of terrorism which for the moment held
+the country down. His disgust at "the bigoted fury of Irish Protestants"
+had backed Lord Cornwallis in checking the reprisals of his troops and
+of the Orangemen; but the hideous cruelty which he was forced to witness
+brought about a firm resolve to put an end to the farce of
+"Independence" which left Ireland helpless in such hands. The political
+necessity for a union of the two islands had been brought home to every
+English statesman by the course of the Irish Parliament during the
+disputes over the Regency. While England repelled the claims of the
+Prince of Wales to the Regency as of right, the legislature of Ireland
+admitted them. As the only union left between the two peoples since the
+concession of legislative independence was their obedience to a common
+ruler, such an act might conceivably have ended in their entire
+severance; and the sense of this danger secured a welcome in England for
+the proposal which Pitt made at the opening of 1799 to unite the two
+Parliaments. The opposition of the Irish borough-mongers was naturally
+stubborn and determined, and when the plan was introduced into the
+Parliament at Dublin, it was only saved from rejection by a single
+vote. But with men like these it was a sheer question of gold; and their
+assent was bought with a million in money, and with a liberal
+distribution of pensions and peerages. Base and shameless as were such
+means, Pitt may fairly plead that they were the only means by which the
+bill for the Union could have been passed. As the matter was finally
+arranged in June 1800, one hundred Irish members became part of the
+House of Commons at Westminster, and twenty-eight temporal peers chosen
+by their fellows for life, with four spiritual peers succeeding in a
+fixed rotation, took their seats in the House of Lords. Commerce between
+the two countries was freed from all restrictions, and every trading
+privilege of the one thrown open to the other, while taxation was
+proportionately distributed between the two peoples.
+
+[Sidenote: France and the Coalition.]
+
+While the Union was being pushed slowly forward, the struggle abroad was
+passing through strange vicissitudes. At the opening of 1799 the efforts
+of the new coalition were crowned with success in every quarter. Though
+Naples had been turned into a Parthenopean Republic at the close of the
+previous year, and the French supremacy extended over the whole
+peninsula, the descent of an Austrian army from the Tyrol at the end of
+March, and a victory of the Russian and Austrian forces at Cassano,
+compelled the French army to evacuate Southern Italy and Lombardy,
+while a fresh defeat at Novi flung it back on the Maritime Alps. A
+campaign conducted with more varying success drove the armies which
+advanced into Germany back over the Rhine. In Switzerland however the
+stubborn energy of Massena enabled his soldiers to hold their ground
+against the combined attack of Russian and Austrian forces; and the
+attempt of a united force of Russians and English to wrest Holland from
+its French masters was successfully repulsed. Twelve of the thirty
+thousand men who formed this army consisted of English troops; and Sir
+Ralph Abercromby succeeded in landing at their head, in seizing what
+remained of the Dutch fleet at the Texel, and in holding General Brune
+at bay when he advanced with superior forces. But Abercromby was
+superseded in his command by the Duke of York; and in another month the
+new leader was glad to conclude a convention by which the safe
+withdrawal of his troops was secured.
+
+[Sidenote: Buonaparte in Syria.]
+
+In the East however England was more successful. Even had Buonaparte not
+been baffled in his plans of a descent on Southern India from the basis
+of Egypt by the battle of the Nile, they would have been frustrated by
+the energy of Lord Wellesley. Mysore was invaded, its capital stormed,
+and Tippoo slain, before a French soldier could have been despatched to
+its aid. But foiled as were his dreams of Indian conquest the daring
+genius of the French general plunged into wilder projects. He conceived
+the design of the conquest of Syria and of the creation of an army among
+its warlike mountaineers. "With a hundred thousand men on the banks of
+the Euphrates," he said years afterwards, "I might have gone to
+Constantinople or India, I might have changed the face of the world."
+Gaza was taken, Jaffa stormed, and ten thousand French soldiers advanced
+under their young general on Acre. Acre was the key of Syria, and its
+reduction was the first step in these immense projects. "Once possessed
+of Acre," wrote Napoleon, "the army would have gone to Damascus and the
+Euphrates. The Christians of Syria, the Druses, the Armenians, would
+have joined us. The provinces of the Ottoman Empire were ready for a
+change, and were only waiting for a man." But Acre was stubbornly held
+by the Turks, the French battering train was captured at sea by an
+English captain, Sir Sidney Smith, whose seamen aided in the defence of
+the place, and after a loss of three thousand men by sword and plague,
+the besiegers were forced to fall back upon Egypt.
+
+[Sidenote: The Peace of Luneville.]
+
+Egypt indeed was more than ever their own, for their army had now
+penetrated to the cataracts of the Nile, and a Turkish force which
+landed near Alexandria was cut to pieces by Buonaparte in the battle of
+Aboukir. But the news of defeat at home and the certainty that all wider
+hopes in the East were at an end, induced him only a month after his
+victory to leave his army. With a couple of frigates he set sail for
+France; and his arrival in Paris was soon followed by a change in the
+government. The Directors were divided among themselves, while the
+disasters of their administration made them hateful to the country; and
+a revolution brought about by the soldiery on the 10th of November put
+an end to their power. In the new system which followed three consuls
+took the place of the Directors; but the system only screened the
+government of a single man, for under the name of First Consul
+Buonaparte became in effect sole ruler of the country. His energy at
+once changed the whole face of European affairs. The offers of peace
+which he made to England and Austria were intended to do little more
+than to shake the coalition, and gain breathing time for the
+organization of a new force which was gathering in secrecy at Dijon,
+while Moreau with the army of the Rhine pushed again along the Danube.
+The First Consul crossed the Saint Bernard with this army in the spring
+of 1800, and on the 14th of June a victory at Marengo left the Austrian
+army, which had just succeeded in reducing Genoa, helpless in his hands.
+It was by the surrender of all Lombardy to the Oglio that the defeated
+general obtained an armistice for his troops; and a similar truce
+arrested the march of Moreau, who had captured Munich and was pushing
+on to Vienna. The armistice only added to the difficulties of
+Buonaparte's opponents, for Russia, as anxious not to establish a German
+supremacy as she had been to weaken the supremacy of France, had
+withdrawn from the contest as soon as the coalition seemed to be
+successful; and Austria was only held back from peace by her acceptance
+of English subsidies. But though she fought on, the resumption of the
+war in the autumn failed to reverse the fortune of arms. The Austrians
+were driven back on Vienna; and on the second of December Moreau crushed
+their army on the Iser in the victory of Hohenlinden. But the aim of the
+First Consul was only to wrest peace from his enemies by these triumphs;
+while the expiration of her engagements with England left his opponent
+free to lay down her arms. In February 1801 therefore the Continental
+War was brought suddenly to an end by the Peace of Luneville.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ENGLAND AND NAPOLEON
+
+1801-1815
+
+
+[Sidenote: The New Europe.]
+
+The treaty of Luneville was of far greater import than the treaties
+which had ended the struggle of the first coalition. It was in effect
+the close of the attack which revolutionary France had directed against
+the Continental powers. With it expired the outer energy of the
+Revolution, as its inner energy expired with the elevation of Buonaparte
+to the First Consulate. The change that the French onset had wrought in
+the aspect of Europe had no doubt been great. In the nine years which
+had passed since the earlier league of the powers against her, France
+had won all and more than all that the ambition of her older statesmen
+had ever aimed at. She had absorbed the Netherlands. She was practically
+mistress of Holland, Switzerland, and Piedmont, whose dependent
+republics covered her frontier; while she had revived that union with
+Spain which had fallen for a time with the Family Compact of the House
+of Bourbon. But in spite of this growth the dread of French aggression
+was far less keenly felt by her neighbour states than in the early years
+of the war. What they had dreaded then was not so much the political
+reconstruction of Europe as the revolutionary enthusiasm which would
+have pushed this political reconstruction into a social revolution. But
+at the opening of the nineteenth century the enthusiasm of France had
+faded away. She was again Christian. She was again practically
+monarchical. What her neighbours saw in her after all these years of
+change was little more than the old France with a wider frontier; and
+now that they could look upon those years as a whole, it was clear that
+much of this widening of her borders was only a fair counterbalance for
+the widened borders of the states around her. If France had grown great,
+other powers had grown in greatness too. If France had pushed her
+frontier to the Rhine and established dependencies across the Rhone and
+the Alps, Russia during the same period had annexed the bulk of Poland,
+and the two great German powers had enlarged themselves both to the east
+and the west. The Empire had practically ceased to be; but its ruin had
+given fresh extension and compactness to the states which had profited
+by it. The cessions of Prussia had been small beside her gains. The
+losses of Austria had been more than counterbalanced in Italy by her
+acquisition of Venice, and far more than counterbalanced by
+secularizations and annexations within Germany itself.
+
+[Illustration: EUROPE after the PEACE OF LUNEVILLE, 1801]
+
+[Sidenote: France and Britain.]
+
+Although therefore the old Europe and its balance of power had passed
+away, the new Europe which had taken its place presented a balance of
+power which might be regarded as even more effective; and the peace of
+Luneville was in reality the recognition on both sides of a European
+settlement on the basis of such a balance. But in the mind of Buonaparte
+it was far more than this. It was the first step in an entire reversal
+of the policy which Revolutionary France had pursued in her dealings
+with the world. It was a return to the older policy of the French
+monarchy. Under the guidance of the revolutionists France had striven
+for supremacy among the states of Europe. But for such a supremacy the
+First Consul cared comparatively little. What he cared for was what
+Choiseul and the statesmen who followed him cared for, the supremacy of
+the world. And he saw that with every year of war on the Continent such
+a supremacy grew more distant than ever. The very victories of France
+indeed were playing into the hands of England. Amidst all the triumphs
+of the revolutionary war the growth of the British Empire had been
+steady and ceaseless. She was more than ever mistress of the sea. The
+mastery of Holland by the French had only ended in the removal of one of
+the obstacles to such a mastery by the ruin of the Dutch navy, and the
+transfer of the rich Dutch colonies to the British crown. The winning of
+Egypt had but spurred her to crush the only Mussulman power that could
+avert her rule over southern India. But her growth was more than a
+merely territorial growth. She was turning her command of the seas to a
+practical account. Not only was she monopolizing the carrying trade of
+the European nations, but the sudden uprush of her industries was making
+her the workshop as well as the market of the world. From the first the
+mind of Buonaparte had been set on a struggle with this growing
+world-power. Even amidst his earliest victories he had dreamed of
+wresting from England her dominion in the East; and if his Egyptian
+expedition had done nothing for India, it had secured in Egypt itself a
+stepping-stone for further efforts. But now that France was wholly at
+his disposal, the First Consul resolved to free his hands from the
+strife with the Continent, and to enter on that struggle with Britain
+which was henceforth to be the task of his life.
+
+[Sidenote: Pitt's position.]
+
+The significance then of the Peace of Luneville lay in this, not only
+that it was the close of the earlier revolutionary struggle for
+supremacy in Europe, the abandonment by France of her effort to
+"liberate the peoples," to force new institutions on the nations about
+her by sheer dint of arms; but that it marked the concentration of all
+her energies on a struggle with Britain for the supremacy of the world.
+For England herself the event which accompanied it, the sudden
+withdrawal of William Pitt from office which took place in the very
+month of the treaty, was hardly less significant. To men of our day the
+later position of William Pitt seems one of almost tragic irony. An
+economist heaping up millions of debt, a Peace Minister dragged into the
+costliest of wars, he is the very type of the baffled statesman; and the
+passionate loyalty with which England clung to him through the
+revolutionary struggle is one of the least intelligible passages of our
+history. But if England clung to Pitt through these years of gloom, it
+was because then more than ever she saw in him her own representative.
+His strength had lain throughout in his reflection of public opinion:
+and public opinion saw itself reflected in him still. At the outset of
+his career the set of opinion had been towards a larger and more popular
+policy than of old. New facilities of communication, new industrial
+energy, and a quick accumulation of wealth, as well as the social
+changes which followed hard on these economical changes, all pointed
+forward to political progress, to an adaptation of our institutions to
+the varied conditions of the time. The nation was quivering with a new
+sense of life; and it faced eagerly questions of religion, of
+philanthropy, of education, of trade, as one after another they
+presented themselves before it. Above all it clung to the young minister
+whose ideas were its own, who, alien as his temper seemed from that of
+an innovator, came boldly to the front with projects for a new
+Parliament, a new finance, a new international policy, a new imperial
+policy, a new humanitarian policy. It was this oneness of Pitt's temper
+with the temper of the men he ruled that made him sympathize, in spite
+of the alarm of the court, with the first movements of the revolution in
+France, and deal fairly, if coldly, with its after-course. It was this
+that gave him strength to hold out so long against a struggle with it.
+
+[Sidenote: Pitt and the War.]
+
+But as the alarm deepened, as the nation saw its social, political, and
+religious traditions alike threatened, the bulk of Englishmen swung
+round into an attitude of fierce resistance. The craving for
+self-preservation hushed all other cravings. What men looked for in Pitt
+now was not the economist or the reformer, but the son of Chatham, the
+heir of his father's courage, of his father's faith in the greatness of
+England. And what they looked for they found. Pitt was no born War
+Minister; he had none of the genius that commands victory, or of the
+passionate enthusiasm that rouses a nation to great deeds of arms. But
+he had faith in England. Even when she stood alone against the world he
+never despaired. Reading him, as we read him now, we see the sickness
+and the gloom of his inner soul; but no sign betrayed it to the world.
+As the tempest gathered about them, men looked with trust that deepened
+into awe on the stately figure that embodied their faith in England's
+fortunes, and huddled in the darkness round "the pilot that weathered
+the storm." But there were deeper and less conscious grounds for their
+trust in him. Pitt reflected far more than the nation's resolve. He
+reflected the waverings and inconsistencies of its political temper in a
+way that no other man did. In the general swing round to an attitude of
+resistance, the impulse of progress had come utterly to an end. Men
+doubted of the truth of principles that seemed to have brought about the
+horrors of the Revolution. They listened to Burke as he built up his
+theory of political immobility on the basis of an absolute perfection in
+the constitution of things as they were. But even in this moment of
+reaction they still clung unconsciously to a belief in something better,
+to a trust that progress would again be possible, and to the man who
+reflected their trust. Like them, Pitt could understand little of the
+scene about him, that seething ocean of European change where states
+vanished like dreams, and the very elements of social life seemed to
+melt in a mist; his mind, like theirs, was baffled with doubt and
+darkness, with the seeming suicide of freedom, the seeming triumph of
+violence and wrong. But, baffled and bewildered as he was, he never
+ceased to believe in liberty, or to hope that the work of reform which
+he had begun might yet be carried into effect.
+
+It was as the representative of this temper of the people at large, of
+its mingled mood of terror at the new developements of freedom and yet
+of faith in freedom itself, of its dread of progress and yet its hope of
+a time when a larger national life should again become possible, that
+Pitt had gathered the nation round him from the opening of the war. Much
+indeed of the seeming weakness and uncertainty of his statesmanship
+throughout the struggle sprang from the fidelity with which he reflected
+this double aspect of national opinion. He has been blamed for fighting
+the French Revolution at all, as he has been blamed for not entering on
+an anti-revolutionary crusade. But his temper was that of the nation as
+a whole. He shrank from the fanaticism of Burke as he shrank from the
+fanaticism of Tom Paine: his aim was not to crush France or the
+Revolution, but to bring the struggle with them to such an end as might
+enable England to return in safety to the work of progress which the
+struggle had interrupted. And it was this that gave significance to his
+fall. It was a sign that the time had come when the national union which
+Pitt embodied must dissolve with the disappearance of the force that
+created it; when resistance had done its work, and the arrest of all
+national movement had come to an end with the attitude of mere
+resistance from which it sprang; when in face of a new France and a new
+French policy England could again return to her normal political life,
+and the impulses towards progress which had received so severe a check
+in 1792 could again flow in their older channels. In such a return Pitt
+himself took the lead; and his proposal of Catholic emancipation was as
+significant of a new era of English life as the Peace of Luneville was
+significant of a new settlement of Europe.
+
+[Sidenote: Catholic Emancipation.]
+
+In Pitt's mind the Union which he brought about in 1800 was more than a
+mere measure for the security of the one island; it was a first step in
+the regeneration of the other. The legislative connexion of the two
+countries was only part of the plan which he had conceived for the
+conciliation of Ireland. With the conclusion of the Union indeed, his
+projects of free trade between the two countries, projects which had
+been defeated a few years back by the folly of the Irish Parliament,
+came quietly into play; and in spite of insufficient capital and social
+disturbance the growth of the trade, shipping, and manufactures of
+Ireland has gone on without a check from that time to this. The change
+which brought Ireland directly under the common Parliament was followed
+too by a gradual revision of its oppressive laws and an amendment in
+their administration; while taxation was lightened, and a faint
+beginning made of public instruction. But in Pitt's mind the great means
+of conciliation was the concession of religious equality. In proposing
+to the English Parliament the union of the two countries he pointed out
+that when thus joined to a Protestant country like England all danger of
+a Catholic supremacy in Ireland, even should Catholic disabilities be
+removed, would be practically at an end. In such a case, he suggested
+that "an effectual and adequate provision for the Catholic clergy" would
+be a security for their loyalty. His words gave strength to the hopes of
+"Catholic emancipation," as the removal of what remained of the civil
+disabilities of Catholics was called, which were held out by his agent,
+Lord Castlereagh, in Ireland itself as a means of hindering any
+opposition to the project of Union on the part of the Catholics. It was
+agreed on all sides that their opposition would have secured its defeat;
+and the absence of such a Catholic opposition showed the new trust in
+Pitt which was awakened by the hints of Lord Castlereagh. The trust had
+good grounds to go on. After the passing of the bill Pitt prepared to
+lay before his Cabinet a measure which would have raised not only the
+Irish Catholic but the Irish Dissenter to a perfect equality of civil
+rights. He proposed to remove all religious tests which limited the
+exercise of the franchise, or which were required for admission to
+Parliament, the magistracy, the bar, municipal offices, or posts in the
+army or the service of the State. An oath of allegiance and of fidelity
+to the Constitution was substituted for the Sacramental test; while the
+loyalty of the Catholic and Dissenting clergy was secured by a grant of
+some provision to both on the part of the State. To win over the
+Episcopal Church to such an equality measures were added for
+strengthening its modes of discipline, as well as for increasing the
+stipends of its poorer ministers, while a commutation of tithes was
+planned as a means of removing a constant source of quarrel between the
+Protestant clergy and the Irish people.
+
+[Sidenote: Pitt's resignation.]
+
+But the scheme was too large and statesmanlike to secure the immediate
+assent of the Cabinet; and before that assent could be won or the plan
+laid with full ministerial sanction before the king, it was communicated
+through the treachery of the Chancellor, Lord Loughborough, to George
+the Third. "I count any man my personal enemy," George broke out angrily
+to Dundas, "who proposes any such measure." Pitt answered this outburst
+by submitting his whole plan to the king. "The political circumstances
+under which the exclusive laws originated," he wrote, "arising either
+from the conflicting power of hostile and nearly balanced sects, from
+the apprehension of a Popish queen as successor, a disputed succession
+and a foreign pretender, a division in Europe between Catholic and
+Protestant Powers, are no longer applicable to the present state of
+things." But argument was wasted upon George the Third. In spite of the
+decision of the lawyers whom he consulted, the king declared himself
+bound by his Coronation Oath to maintain the tests; and his obstinacy
+was only strengthened by a knowledge that such a refusal must drive Pitt
+from office. George was weary of his minister's supremacy. He was
+longing for servants who would leave him more than a show of power, and
+he chose his ground for a struggle with all the cunning of his earlier
+years. It was by his command of public opinion that Pitt had been able
+to force his measures on the king. But in the question of Catholic
+Emancipation George knew that opinion was not with his minister, but
+with himself. On this point his bigotry was at one with the bigotry of
+the bulk of his subjects, as well as with their political distrust of
+Catholics and Irishmen. He persisted therefore in his refusal; and it
+was followed by the event he foresaw. In February 1801, at the moment of
+the Peace of Luneville, William Pitt resigned his office into the hands
+of the king.
+
+[Sidenote: The Addington Ministry.]
+
+It was with a sense of relief that George found himself freed from the
+great minister whose temper was so alien from his own. But it was with a
+yet greater sense of relief that he saw him followed into retirement not
+only by Lord Grenville, but by nearly all the more liberal section of
+the ministry, by men like Windham and Lord Spencer, the representatives
+of the "Old Whigs" who had joined Pitt on the disruption of their party
+through the French Revolution. Such a union indeed could hardly have
+lasted much longer. The terror which had so long held these Whigs in
+their alliance with the Tories who formed the bulk of the administration
+was now at an end; and we have already seen their pressure for a more
+liberal policy in the action of Lord Fitzwilliam as Lord-Lieutenant of
+Ireland. But the question of Emancipation finally brought about a
+restoration of the natural position of parties; and from this moment the
+old Whigs, who accepted Lord Grenville as their head, fell into alliance
+with the more revolutionary Whigs who had remained faithful to Fox. The
+Whig party thus became again a powerful element in English politics,
+while in face of the reunited Whigs stood the Tories, relieved like
+themselves from the burthen of an alliance which grew hourly more
+distasteful. The bulk of the old Ministry returned in a few days to
+office with Mr. Addington at their head, and his administration received
+the support of the whole Tory party in Parliament.
+
+Without the walls of Parliament however the nation looked on such a
+change with dismay. Addington was regarded as a weak and narrow-minded
+man; and the favour with which the king welcomed him was clue to a
+consciousness of their common bigotry. Of Lord Hawkesbury, who succeeded
+Lord Grenville in the conduct of foreign affairs, nothing was known
+outside the House of Commons. It was with anxiety that England found
+itself guided by men like these at a time when every hour brought darker
+news. The scarcity of bread was mounting to a famine. Taxes were raised
+anew, and yet the loan for the year amounted to five-and-twenty
+millions. The country stood utterly alone; while the peace of Luneville
+secured France from all hostility on the Continent. And it was soon
+plain that this peace was only the first step in a new policy on the
+part of the First Consul. What he had done was to free his hands for a
+decisive conflict with Britain itself, both as a world-power and as a
+centre of wealth. England was at once the carrier of European commerce
+and the workshop of European manufactures. While her mines, her looms,
+her steam-engines, were giving her almost a monopoly of industrial
+production, her merchant ships sufficed not only to spread her own
+products through the world, but to carry to every part of it the
+products of other countries. Though the war had already told on both
+these sources of wealth, it was far from having told fatally. It had
+long closed France indeed to English exports, while the waste of wealth
+in so wide a strife had lessened the buying power of Europe at large.
+But in Europe the loss was to some extent made up for the moment by the
+artificial demand for supplies which war creates; the home market still
+sufficed to absorb a vast quantity of manufactures; and America, which
+was fast growing into the most important of English customers, remained
+unaffected by the struggle. Industry had thus suffered but little loss,
+while commerce believed itself to have greatly gained. All rivals save
+one had in fact been swept from the sea; the carrying trade of France
+and Holland alike had been transferred to the British flag, and the
+conquest of their wealthier settlements had thrown into British hands
+the whole colonial trade of the world.
+
+[Illustration: EUROPE after the PEACE OF TILSIT, 1807]
+
+[Sidenote: League of Neutrals.]
+
+To strike at England's wealth had been among the projects of the
+Directory: it was now the dream of the First Consul. It was in vain for
+England to produce, if he shut her out of every market. Her carrying
+trade must be annihilated if he closed every port against her ships. It
+was this gigantic project of a "Continental System" that revealed itself
+as soon as Buonaparte became finally master of France. From France
+itself and its dependencies in Holland and the Netherlands English trade
+was already excluded. But Italy also was shut against her after the
+Peace of Luneville, and Spain not only closed her own ports but forced
+Portugal to break with her English ally. In the Baltic Buonaparte was
+more active than even in the Mediterranean. In a treaty with America,
+which was destined to bring this power also in the end into his great
+attack, he had formally recognized the rights of neutral vessels which
+England was hourly disputing; and in her disregard of them he not only
+saw the means of bringing the northern powers into his system of
+exclusion, but of drawing on their resources for a yet more decisive
+blow. He was set upon challenging not only England's wealth but her
+world-empire; and his failure in Egypt had taught him that the first
+condition of success in such an enterprise was to wrest from her her
+command of the seas. The only means of doing this lay in a combination
+of naval powers; and the earlier efforts of France had left but one
+naval combination for Buonaparte to try. The Directory had been able to
+assail England at sea by the joint action of the French fleet with those
+of Holland and of Spain. But the Spanish navy had been crippled by the
+battle of Cape St. Vincent, and the Dutch fleet destroyed in the victory
+of Camperdown. The only powers which now possessed naval resources were
+the powers of the North. The fleets of Denmark, Sweden, and Russia
+numbered forty sail of the line, and they had been untouched by the
+strife. Both the Scandinavian states resented the severity with which
+Britain enforced that right of search which had brought about their
+armed neutrality at the close of the American war; while Denmark was
+besides an old ally of France, and her sympathies were still believed to
+be French. The First Consul therefore had little trouble in enlisting
+them in a league of neutrals, which was in effect a declaration of war
+against England, and which Prussia as before showed herself ready to
+join.
+
+[Sidenote: Russia's designs.]
+
+Russia indeed seemed harder to gain. Since Paul's accession she had been
+the moving spirit in the confederacy which had only been broken up by
+the victory of Marengo. But the spirit of revolutionary aggression which
+had nominally roused Paul to action, had, as the Czar believed, been
+again hushed by the First Consul. Buonaparte had yielded to his
+remonstrances in preserving the independence of Naples and Sardinia; and
+with Italian subtlety he now turned the faith in French moderation which
+these concessions created in the mind of Paul into a dread of the
+ambition of England and a jealousy of her sovereignty of the seas. But
+his efforts would have been in vain had they not fallen in with the
+general current of Russian policy. From the first outbreak of the
+Revolutionary struggle Russia, as we have seen, had taken advantage of
+the strife among the Western nations to push forward her own projects in
+the East. Catharine had aimed at absorbing Poland, and at becoming the
+mistress of European Turkey. In the first she had been successful, but
+the second still remained unaccomplished when her empire passed to her
+son. For a time Paul had been diverted from the task by the turn of
+affairs in Western Europe, where the victories of the French Republic
+threatened an utter overthrow of the powers opposed to it, which would
+have foiled the plans of Russia by bringing about a European union that
+must have paralysed her advance. The Czar therefore acted strictly in
+the spirit of Catharine's policy when he stepped in again to feed the
+strife by raising the combatants to a new equality, and when he withdrew
+his armies at the very moment that this was done. But successful as his
+diversion had been, Paul saw that one obstacle remained in the way of
+his projects upon Turkey. Pitt had never hidden his opposition to the
+Russian plans. His whole policy at the outbreak of the Revolution had
+been guided by a desperate hope of binding the powers again together to
+prevent the ruin of Poland, or of hindering it by a league of England
+and France alone. Foiled as he had been in these efforts, he was even
+more resolute to check the advance of Russia on Constantinople. Already
+her growing empire in India was telling on the European policy of
+England; and the security of Egypt, of Syria, of Turkey at large, was
+getting deemed to be essential to the maintenance of her communication
+with her great dependency. The French descent on Egypt, the attack on
+Syria, had bound Britain and Turkey together; and Paul saw that an
+attack on the one would bring him a fresh opponent in the other.
+
+[Sidenote: The League broken up.]
+
+It was to check the action of Britain in the East that the Czar now
+turned to the French Consul, and seconded his efforts for the formation
+of a naval confederacy in the North, while his minister, Rostopchin,
+planned a division of the Turkish Empire in Europe between Russia and
+her allies. Austria was to be satisfied with the western provinces of
+the Balkan peninsula; Russia gained Moldavia, Bulgaria, and Roumelia as
+far as Constantinople; while Greece fell to the lot of France, whose
+troops were already on the Italian shores, at a day's sail from the
+Illyrian coast. A squabble over Malta, which had been blockaded since
+its capture by Buonaparte, and which surrendered at last to a British
+fleet, but whose possession the Czar claimed as his own on the ground of
+an alleged election as Grand Master of the Order of St. John, served as
+a pretext for a quarrel with England; and at the close of 1800 Paul
+openly prepared for hostilities. In October he announced an armed
+neutrality; in December he seized three hundred English vessels in his
+ports, and sequestrated all English goods found in his Empire. The
+Danes, who throughout the year had been struggling to evade the British
+right of search, at once joined this neutral league, and were followed
+by Sweden in their course. It was plain that, as soon as the spring of
+1801 opened the Baltic, the fleets of the three Powers would act in
+practical union with those of France and Spain. But the command of the
+seas which such a union threatened was a matter for England of life and
+death, for at this very moment the Peace of Luneville left Buonaparte
+without a foe on the Continent, and able to deal as he would with the
+whole military resources of France. Once master of the Channel he could
+throw a force on the southern coast of England which she had no means of
+meeting in the field. But dexterous as the combination was, it was
+shattered at a blow. On the first of April 1801 a British fleet of
+eighteen men-of-war forced the passage of the Belt, appeared before
+Copenhagen, and at once attacked the city and its fleet. In spite of a
+brave resistance from the Danish batteries and gunboats six Danish ships
+were taken, and the Crown Prince was forced to conclude an armistice
+which enabled the English ships to enter the Baltic, where the Russian
+fleet was still detained by the ice. But their work was really over. The
+seizure of English goods and the declaration of war had bitterly
+irritated the Russian nobles, whose sole outlet for the sale of the
+produce of their vast estates was thus closed to them; and on the
+twenty-fourth of March, nine days before the battle of Copenhagen, Paul
+fell in a midnight attack by conspirators in his own palace. With Paul
+fell the Confederacy of the North. The policy of his successor, the Czar
+Alexander, was far more in unison with the general feeling of his
+subjects; in June a Convention between England and Russia settled the
+vexed questions of the right of search and contraband of war, and this
+Convention was accepted by Sweden and Denmark.
+
+[Sidenote: French lose Egypt.]
+
+The First Consul's disappointment was keen; but he saw clearly that with
+this dissolution of the Northern alliance the war came virtually to an
+end. He no longer had any means of attacking Britain save by the efforts
+of France itself, and even with the aid of Holland and Spain France was
+at this moment helpless before the supremacy of England at sea. On the
+other hand the continuance of the struggle would give triumph after
+triumph to his foes. One such blow had already fallen. Even in the midst
+of his immense schemes against Britain at home, Buonaparte had not
+abandoned the hope of attacking her in India. Egypt was needful to such
+a scheme; and from the first moment of his power he strained every nerve
+to retain Egypt in the hands of France. Menou, who commanded there, was
+ordered to hold the country; an expedition was fitted out in the Spanish
+ports for its relief; and light vessels were hurried from the Italian
+coast with arms and supplies. But at the very moment of the attack on
+Copenhagen, a stroke as effective wrecked his projects in the East.
+England had not forgotten the danger to her dependency; ever since
+Buonaparte's expedition her fleet had blockaded Malta, the island
+fortress whose possession gave France a first stepping-stone in any
+enterprise against it; and the surrender of Malta left her unquestioned
+mistress of the Mediterranean. From Malta she now turned to Egypt
+itself. Triumphant as England had been at sea since the opening of the
+war, her soldiers had proved no match for the French on land. Two
+expeditions had been sent against Holland, and each had ended in a
+disastrous retreat. But at this moment England reappeared as a military
+power. In March 1801 a force of 15,000 men under General Abercromby
+anchored in Aboukir Bay. Deserted as they were by Buonaparte, the French
+had firmly maintained their hold on Egypt. They had suppressed a revolt
+at Cairo, driven back Turkish invaders in a fresh victory, and by native
+levies and reinforcements raised the number of their troops to 30,000
+men. But their army was foolishly scattered, and Abercromby was able to
+force a landing five days after his arrival on the coast. The French
+however rapidly concentrated; and on the 21st of March their general
+attacked the English army on the ground it had won with a force equal to
+its own. The battle was a stubborn one, and Abercromby fell mortally
+wounded ere its close; but after six hours' fighting the French drew off
+with heavy loss; and their retreat was followed by the investment of
+Alexandria and Cairo, into which Menou had withdrawn his army. All hope
+however was over. Five thousand Turks, with a fresh division from
+England and India, reinforced the besiegers; and at the close of June
+the capitulation of the 13,000 soldiers who remained closed the French
+rule over Egypt.
+
+[Sidenote: The Peace of Amiens.]
+
+Bitter as was the anger with which the First Consul received the news of
+this surrender, it only strengthened his resolve to suspend a war of
+which Britain only could now reap the fruits, and whose continuance
+might in the present temper of Russia and its Czar disturb that peace of
+the Continent on which all his plans against England rested. It was to
+give time for such an organization of France and its resources as might
+enable him to reopen the struggle with other chances of success that the
+First Consul opened negotiations for peace at the close of 1801. His
+offers were at once met by the English Government. In the actual
+settlement of the Continent indeed England saw only an imperfect balance
+to the power of France, but it had no means of disputing the settlement,
+as France had no means of disturbing its supremacy at sea. If Buonaparte
+wished to husband his resources for a new attack all but the wilder
+Tories were willing to husband the resources of England for the more
+favourable opportunity of renewing it which would come with a revival of
+European energy. With such a temper on both sides the conclusion of
+peace became easy; and the negotiations which went on through the winter
+between England and the three allied Powers of France, Spain, and the
+Dutch, brought about in March 1802 the Peace of Amiens. The terms of the
+Peace were necessarily simple; for as England had no claim to interfere
+with the settlement of the Continent, which had been brought about by
+the treaties of its powers with the French Republic, all that remained
+for her was to provide that the settlement should be a substantial one
+by a pledge on the part of France to withdraw its forces from Southern
+Italy, and to leave to themselves the republics it had set up along its
+border in Holland, Switzerland, and Piedmont. In exchange for this
+pledge England recognized the French government, restored all the
+colonies which they had lost, save Ceylon and Trinidad, to France and
+its allies, acknowledged the Ionian Islands as a free republic, and
+engaged to restore Malta within three months to its old masters, the
+Knights of St. John.
+
+[Sidenote: Buonaparte.]
+
+There was a general sense of relief at the close of so long a struggle;
+and for a moment the bitter hatred which England had cherished against
+France seemed to give place to more friendly feelings. The new French
+ambassador was drawn in triumph on his arrival through the streets of
+London; and thousands of Englishmen crossed the Channel to visit a
+country which had conquered the world, and to gaze on the young general
+who after wonderful victories had given a yet more wonderful peace to
+Europe. But amidst all the glare of success, shrewd observers saw the
+dangers that lay in the temper of the First Consul. Whatever had been
+the errors of the French Revolutionists, even their worst attacks on the
+independence of the nations around them had been veiled by a vague
+notion of freeing the peoples whom they invaded from the yoke of their
+rulers. But the aim of Buonaparte was simply that of a vulgar conqueror.
+He was resolute to be master of the Western world, and no notions of
+popular freedom or sense of national right interfered with his resolve.
+The means at his command for carrying out such a design were immense.
+The political life of the Revolution had been cut short by his military
+despotism, but the new social vigour which the Revolution had given to
+France through the abolition of privileges and the creation of a new
+middle class on the ruins of the clergy and the nobles still lived on;
+and while the dissensions which tore the country asunder were hushed by
+the policy of the First Consul, by his restoration of the Church as a
+religious power, his recall of the exiles, and the economy and wise
+administration that distinguished his rule, the centralised system of
+government that had been bequeathed by the Monarchy to the Revolution
+and by the Revolution to Buonaparte enabled him easily to seize this
+national vigour for the profit of his own despotism. On the other hand,
+the exhaustion of the brilliant hopes raised by the Revolution, the
+craving for public order, the military enthusiasm and the impulse of a
+new glory given by the wonderful victories France had won, made a
+Tyranny possible; and in the hands of Buonaparte this tyranny was
+supported by a secret police, by the suppression of the press and of all
+freedom of opinion, and above all by the iron will and immense ability
+of the First Consul himself.
+
+[Sidenote: His designs.]
+
+Once chosen Consul for life, he felt himself secure at home, and turned
+restlessly to the work of outer aggression. The pledges given at Amiens
+were set aside. The republics established on the borders of France were
+brought into mere dependence on his will. Piedmont and Parma were
+actually annexed to France; and a French army occupied Switzerland. The
+temperate protests of the English Government were answered by demands
+for the expulsion of the French exiles who had been living in England
+ever since the Revolution, and for its surrender of Malta, which was
+retained till some security could be devised against a fresh seizure of
+the island by the French fleet. Meanwhile huge armaments were preparing
+in the French ports; and a new activity was seen in those of Spain. Not
+for a moment indeed had Buonaparte relinquished his design of attacking
+Britain. He had made peace because peace would serve his purpose, both
+in strengthening the tranquillity of the Continent, which was essential
+to his success in any campaign across the Channel, and in giving him
+time to replace by a new combination the maritime schemes which had
+broken down. Beaten as it had been, the Spanish fleet was still
+powerful; and a union with the French fleet which the First Consul was
+forming might still enable it to dispute the command of the sea. All
+that he wished for was time; and time was what the Peace gave him. But
+delay was as dangerous to England, now that it discerned his plans, as
+it was profitable to France; and in May 1803 the British Government
+anticipated his attack by a declaration of war.
+
+[Sidenote: The Camp at Boulogne.]
+
+The breach only quickened Buonaparte's resolve to attack his enemy at
+home. The difficulties in his way he set contemptuously aside; "Fifteen
+millions of people," he said, in allusion to the disproportion between
+the population of England and France, "must give way to forty millions";
+and the invasion was planned on a gigantic scale. A camp of one hundred
+thousand men was formed at Boulogne, and a host of flat-bottomed boats
+gathered for their conveyance across the Channel. The peril of the
+nation forced Addington from office and recalled Pitt to power. His
+health was broken, and as the days went by his appearance became so
+haggard and depressed that it was plain death was drawing near. But
+dying as he really was, the nation clung to him with all its old faith.
+He was still the representative of national union; and he proposed to
+include Fox and the leading Whigs in his new ministry, but he was foiled
+by the bigotry of the king; and the refusal of Lord Grenville and of
+Windham to take office without Fox, as well as the loss of his post at a
+later time by his ablest supporter, Dundas, left him almost alone. But
+lonely as he was, he faced difficulty and danger with the same courage
+as of old. The invasion seemed imminent when Buonaparte, who now assumed
+the title of the Emperor Napoleon, appeared in the camp at Boulogne. A
+slight experience however showed him the futility of his scheme for
+crossing the Channel in open boats in the teeth of English men-of-war;
+and he turned to fresh plans of securing its passage. "Let us be masters
+of the Channel for six hours," he is reported to have said, "and we are
+masters of the world." A skilfully-combined plan, by which the British
+fleet would have been divided while the whole French navy was
+concentrated in the Channel, was delayed by the death of the admiral
+destined to execute it. But the alliance with Spain placed the Spanish
+fleet at Napoleon's disposal, and in 1805 he planned its union with that
+of France, the crushing of the squadron which blocked the ports of the
+Channel before the English ships which were watching the Spanish
+armament could come to its support, and a crossing of the vast armament
+thus protected to the English shore.
+
+[Sidenote: Trafalgar.]
+
+Though three hundred thousand volunteers mustered in England to meet the
+coming attack, such a force would have offered but small hindrance to
+the veterans of the Grand Army, had they once crossed the Channel. But
+Pitt had already found them work elsewhere. It was not merely the danger
+of Britain, and the sense that without this counterpoise they would be
+helpless before the new French Empire, that roused the alarm of the
+Continental powers. They had been scared by Napoleon's course of
+aggression since the settlement at Luneville, and his annexation of
+Genoa brought their alarm to a head. Pitt's offer of subsidies removed
+the last obstacle in the way of a league; and Russia, Austria, and
+Sweden joined in an alliance to wrest Italy and the Low Countries from
+the grasp of the French Emperor. Napoleon meanwhile swept the sea in
+vain for a glimpse of the great armament whose assembly in the Channel
+he had so skilfully planned. Admiral Villeneuve, uniting the Spanish
+ships with his own squadron from Toulon, drew Nelson in pursuit to the
+West Indies, and then suddenly returning to Cadiz, hastened to form a
+junction with the French squadron at Brest and to crush the English
+fleet in the Channel. But a headlong pursuit brought Nelson up with him
+ere the manoeuvre was complete, and the two fleets met on the 21st of
+October 1805 off Cape Trafalgar. "England" ran Nelson's famous signal,
+"expects every man to do his duty"; and though he fell himself in the
+hour of victory, twenty French sail had struck their flag ere the day
+was done. The French and Spanish navies were in fact annihilated. From
+this hour the supremacy of England at sea remained unquestioned; and the
+danger of any invasion of England rolled away like a dream.
+
+[Sidenote: The Peace of Tilsit.]
+
+Her allies were less fortunate. "England has saved herself by her
+courage," Pitt said in what were destined to be his last public words:
+"she will save Europe by her example!" But even before the victory of
+Trafalgar Napoleon had abandoned the dream of invading England to meet
+the coalition in his rear; and swinging round his forces on the Danube,
+he forced an Austrian army to capitulation in Ulm three days before his
+naval defeat. From Ulm he marched on Vienna, and at the close of
+November he crushed the combined armies of Austria and Russia in the
+battle of Austerlitz. "Austerlitz," Wilberforce wrote in his diary,
+"killed Pitt." Though he was still but forty-seven, the hollow voice and
+wasted frame of the great Minister had long told that death was near;
+and the blow to his hopes proved fatal. "Roll up that map," he said,
+pointing to a map of Europe which hung upon the wall; "it will not be
+wanted these ten years!" Once only he rallied from stupor; and those
+who bent over him caught a faint murmur of "My country! How I leave my
+country!" On the twenty-third of January 1806 he breathed his last; and
+was laid in Westminster Abbey in the grave of Chatham. "What grave,"
+exclaimed Lord Wellesley, "contains such a father and such a son! What
+sepulchre embosoms the remains of so much human excellence and glory!"
+So great was felt to be the loss that nothing but the union of parties,
+which Pitt had in vain desired during his lifetime, could fill up the
+gap left by his death. In the new ministry Fox, with the small body of
+popular Whigs who were bent on peace and internal reform, united with
+the aristocratic Whigs under Lord Grenville and with the Tories under
+Lord Sidmouth. All home questions, in fact, were subordinated to the
+need of saving Europe from the ambition of France, and in the resolve to
+save Europe Fox was as resolute as Pitt himself. His hopes of peace
+indeed were stronger; but they were foiled by the evasive answer which
+Napoleon gave to his overtures, and by a new war which he undertook
+against Prussia, the one power which seemed able to resist his arms. On
+the 14th of October 1806 a decisive victory at Jena laid North Germany
+at the Emperor's feet. From Berlin Napoleon marched into the heart of
+Poland to bring to terms the last opponent now left him on the
+Continent; and though checked in the winter by the stubborn defence of
+the Russian forces on the field of Eylau, in the summer of 1807 a
+decisive victory at Friedland brought the Czar to consent to the Peace
+of Tilsit.
+
+[Sidenote: The Continental System.]
+
+The Peace of Tilsit marked an overthrow for the time of that European
+settlement and balance of power which had been established five years
+before by the Peace of Luneville. The change in his policy had been to a
+great extent forced on Napoleon; for the league of 1805 had shown that
+his plan of such a Continental peace as would suffer him to concentrate
+his whole strength on an invasion of Britain was certain to be foiled by
+the fears of the Continental states; and that an unquestioned supremacy
+over Europe was a first condition in the struggle with his great rival.
+Even with such a supremacy, indeed, his plans for a descent on Britain
+itself, or for winning the command of the sea which was the necessary
+preliminary to such a descent, still remained impracticable. The battle
+of Trafalgar had settled the question of an invasion of England; and a
+thousand victories on land would not make him master, even for "six
+hours," of the "silver streak" of sea that barred his path. But Napoleon
+was far from abandoning his struggle against Britain; on the contrary,
+he saw in his mastery of Europe the means of giving fresh force and
+effectiveness to his attack in a quarter where his foe was still
+vulnerable. It was her wealth that had raised up that European coalition
+against him which had forced him to break up his camp at Boulogne; and
+in his mastery of Europe he saw the means of striking at her wealth. His
+earlier attempt at the enforcement of a "Continental System" had broken
+down with the failure of the Northern League; but he now saw a yet more
+effective means of realising his dream. It was this gigantic project
+which revealed itself as soon as Jena had laid Prussia at his feet.
+Napoleon was able to find a pretext for his new attack in England's own
+action. By a violent stretch of her rights as a combatant she had
+declared the whole coast occupied by France and its allies, from Dantzig
+to Trieste, to be in a state of blockade. It was impossible to enforce
+such an order as this, even with the immense force at her disposal; but
+it was ostensibly to meet this "paper blockade" that Napoleon issued
+from Berlin, on the twenty-first of November 1806, a decree
+which--without a single ship to carry it out--placed the British Islands
+in a state of blockade. All commerce or communication with them was
+prohibited; all English goods or manufactures found in the territory of
+France or its allies were declared liable to confiscation; and their
+harbours were closed, not only against vessels coming from Britain, but
+against all who had touched at her ports. An army of inspectors spread
+along the coasts to carry out this decree.
+
+[Sidenote: Its results.]
+
+But it was almost impossible to enforce such a system. It was foiled by
+the rise of a widespread contraband trade, by the reluctance of Holland
+to aid in its own ruin, by the connivance of officials along the
+Prussian and Russian shores, and by the pressure of facts. It was
+impossible even for Napoleon himself to do without the goods he
+pretended to exclude; an immense system of licences soon neutralized his
+decree; and the French army which marched to Eylau was clad in
+greatcoats made at Leeds, and shod with shoes made at Northampton.
+Vexatious therefore as the system might be at once to England and to
+Europe, it told on British industry mainly by heightening the price of
+its products, and so far by restricting the market for them. But it told
+far more fatally on British commerce. Trade at once began to move from
+English vessels, which were subject to instant confiscation, and to
+shelter itself under neutral flags, where goods had at least to be
+proved to be British before they could be seized. America profited most
+by this transfer. She was now entering on that commercial career which
+was to make her England's chief trading rival; and she rapidly availed
+herself of the Berlin decree to widen her carrying trade. But the
+British Government at once felt the pressure of the merchant class. As
+yet this class had profited above all others by the war and by the
+monopoly which war placed in its hands; and now that not only its
+monopoly but its very existence was threatened, it called on the
+Government to protect it. It was to this appeal that the administration
+of Lord Grenville replied, in January 1807, by an Order in Council which
+declared all the ports of the coast of France and her allies under
+blockade, and any neutral vessels trading between them to be good prize.
+
+[Sidenote: Fall of the Grenville Ministry.]
+
+Such a step however, though it arbitrarily shut neutral vessels out from
+the coasting trade of most of Europe, was far from satisfying the
+British merchants, for it left the whole trade between Europe and other
+countries, which virtually included the colonial trade, untouched; and
+this passed as of old into American bottoms. But their appeal was no
+longer to Lord Grenville. The work which his ministry had set itself to
+do was to continue the double work of Pitt, his resolute maintenance of
+English greatness, and his endeavour to carry on even amidst the stress
+of the fight that course of philanthropic and political progress which
+was struggling back into renewed vigour after its long arrest through
+the French Revolution. But the forces of ignorance and bigotry which had
+been too strong for Pitt were too strong for the Grenville ministry,
+weakened as it was by the death of Fox at the close of the previous
+year. Its greatest work, the abolition of the slave-trade, in February
+1807, was done in the teeth of a vigorous opposition from the Tories and
+the merchants of Liverpool; and in March the first indication of its
+desire to open the question of religious equality by allowing Catholic
+officers to serve in the army was met on the part of the king by the
+demand of a pledge not to meddle with the question. On the refusal of
+this pledge the Ministry was dismissed. Its fall was the final close of
+that union of parties in face of the war with France which had brought
+about the junction of the bulk of the Whig party with the Tories, and
+which had been to some extent renewed after the temporary breach in
+Pitt's last ministry by the junction of Lord Sidmouth and a large body
+of the Tories with the Whigs. The union had been based on the actual
+peril to England's existence, and on the suspension of all home
+questions in face of the peril. But with the break-up of the camp at
+Boulogne and the victory of Trafalgar the peril of invasion had
+disappeared. England again broke into the party that called for progress
+and the party that resisted it.
+
+[Sidenote: The Portland Ministry.]
+
+The last was still the stronger: for in the mass of the nation progress
+was still confounded with the destruction of institutions, the passion
+for war absorbed public attention, and the Tories showed themselves most
+in earnest in the prosecution of the war. From this time therefore to
+the end of the war England was wholly governed by the Tories. The
+nominal head of the ministry which succeeded that of Lord Grenville was
+the Duke of Portland; its guiding spirit was the Foreign Secretary,
+George Canning, a young and devoted adherent of Pitt, whose brilliant
+rhetoric gave him power over the House of Commons, while the vigour and
+breadth of his mind gave a new energy and colour to the war. At no time
+had opposition to Napoleon seemed so hopeless as at the moment of his
+entry into power. From foes the two Emperors of Western and Eastern
+Europe had become friends, and the hope of French aid in the conquest of
+Turkey drew Alexander to a close alliance with Napoleon. Russia not only
+enforced the Berlin decrees against British commerce, but forced Sweden,
+the one ally that England still retained on the Continent, to renounce
+her alliance. The Russian and Swedish fleets were thus placed at the
+service of France; and the two Emperors counted on securing in addition
+the fleet of Denmark, and again threatening by this union the maritime
+supremacy which formed England's real defence. The hope was foiled by
+the decision of the new ministers. In July 1807 an expedition was
+promptly and secretly equipped by Canning, with a demand for the
+surrender of the Danish fleet into the hands of England, on pledge of
+its return at the close of the war. On the refusal of the Danes the
+demand was enforced by a bombardment of Copenhagen; and the whole Danish
+fleet, with a vast mass of naval stores, was carried into British
+ports. It was in the same spirit of almost reckless decision that
+Canning turned to meet Napoleon's Continental System. The cry of the
+British merchant fell upon willing ears. Of trade or the laws of trade
+Canning was utterly ignorant; nor could he see that the interests of the
+country were not necessarily the interests of a class; but he was
+resolute at any cost to hinder the transfer of commerce to neutral
+flags; and he saw in the crisis a means of forcing the one great neutral
+power, America, to join Britain in her strife with France. In November
+1807, therefore, he issued fresh Orders in Council. By these France, and
+every Continental state from which the British flag was excluded, were
+put in a state of blockade, and all vessels bound for their harbours
+were held subject to seizure unless they had touched at a British port.
+The orders were at once met by another decree of Napoleon issued at
+Milan in December, which declared every vessel, of whatever nation,
+coming from or bound to Britain or any British colony, to have forfeited
+its character as a neutral, and to be liable to seizure.
+
+[Sidenote: The American Embargo.]
+
+The policy of Napoleon was at any rate a consistent one in these
+measures; for his sole aim was to annihilate the industry as well as the
+commerce of Britain; and he had little to fear from the indignation of
+America. But the aim of Britain was to find outlets for her
+manufactures; and of these outlets America was now far the most
+important. She took in fact ten millions of our exports every year, not
+only for her own consumption, but for the illicit trade which she
+managed to carry on with the Continent. To close such an outlet as this
+was to play into Napoleon's hands. And yet the first result of Canning's
+policy was to close it. In the long strife between France and England,
+America had already borne much from both combatants, but above all from
+Britain. Not only had the English Government exercised its right of
+search, but it asserted a right of seizing English seamen found in
+American vessels; and as there were few means of discriminating between
+English seamen and American, the sailor of Maine or Massachusetts was
+often impressed to serve in the British fleet. Galled however as was
+America by outrages such as these, she was hindered from resenting them
+by her strong disinclination to war, as well as by the profit which she
+drew from the maintenance of her neutral position; and she believed in
+the words of Jefferson, that "it will ever be in our power to keep so
+even a stand between France and England, as to inspire a wish in neither
+to throw us into the scale of his adversary." But the Orders in Council
+and the Milan Decree forced her into action, and she at once answered
+them by an embargo of trade with Europe.
+
+Such a step was a menace of further action, for it was plain that
+America could not long remain in utter isolation, and that if she left
+it she must join one combatant or the other. But she had as yet shown no
+military power outside her own bounds, either by land or sea; and
+England looked with scorn on the threats of a state which possessed
+neither army nor fleet. "America," Lord Sidmouth wrote at this time, "is
+a bugbear: there is no terror in her threats!" Canning indeed saw in the
+embargo only a carrying out of his policy by the very machinery of the
+American Government. The commerce of America ceased to exist. Her seamen
+were driven to seek employment under the British flag; and Britain again
+absorbed the carrying-trade of the world. But what he really looked
+forward to was something far beyond this. He saw that the embargo was
+but a temporary expedient: and he believed that its failure would force
+the United States into union with England in her war with France.
+Nothing shows the world-wide nature of the struggle more than such a
+policy as this; but for a while it seemed justified by its results.
+After a year's trial America found it impossible to maintain the
+embargo: and at the opening of 1809 she exchanged it for an Act of
+Non-Intercourse with France and England alone. But this Act was as
+ineffective as the embargo. The American Government was utterly without
+means of enforcing it on its land frontier; and it had small means of
+enforcing it at sea. Throughout 1809 indeed vessels sailed daily for
+British ports. The Act was thus effective against France alone, and part
+of Canning's end was gained. At last the very protest which it embodied
+was given up, and in May 1810 the Non-Intercourse Act was repealed
+altogether. All that America persisted in maintaining was an offer that
+if either Power would repeal its edicts, it would prohibit American
+commerce with the other.
+
+[Sidenote: Napoleon and Spain.]
+
+What the results of this offer were to be we shall see hereafter. But at
+the moment the attitude of America was one of utter submission; and the
+effect of the Continental system on Britain had thus been to drive it to
+a policy of aggression upon neutral states, which seemed to be as
+successful as it was aggressive. The effect of his system on Napoleon
+himself was precisely the same. It was to maintain this material union
+of Europe against Britain that he was driven to aggression after
+aggression in North Germany, and to demands upon Russia which threatened
+the league that had been formed at Tilsit. Above all, it was the hope of
+more effectually crushing the world-power of Britain that drove him, at
+the very moment when Canning was attacking America, to his worst
+aggression, the aggression upon Spain. Spain was already his subservient
+ally; but her alliance became every hour less useful. The country was
+ruined by misgovernment: its treasury was empty: its fleet rotted in
+its harbours. To seize the whole Spanish Peninsula, to develope its
+resources by an active administration, to have at his command not only a
+regenerated Spain and Portugal, but their mighty dominions in Southern
+and Central America, to renew with these fresh forces the struggle with
+Britain for her empire of the seas, these were the designs by which
+Napoleon was driven to the most ruthless of his enterprises. He acted
+with his usual subtlety. In October 1807 France and Spain agreed to
+divide Portugal between them; and on the advance of their forces the
+reigning House of Braganza fled helplessly from Lisbon to a refuge in
+Brazil. But the seizure of Portugal was only a prelude to the seizure of
+Spain. Charles the Fourth, whom a riot in his capital drove at this
+moment to abdication, and his son and successor, Ferdinand the Seventh,
+were alike drawn to Bayonne in May 1808, and forced to resign their
+claims to the Spanish crown; while a French army entered Madrid, and
+proclaimed Joseph Buonaparte as King of Spain.
+
+[Sidenote: The Rising of Spain.]
+
+High-handed as such an act was, it was in harmony with the general
+system which Napoleon was pursuing elsewhere, and which had as yet
+stirred no national resistance. Holland had been changed into a monarchy
+by a simple decree of the French Emperor, and its crown bestowed on his
+brother Louis. For another brother, Jerome, a kingdom of Westphalia had
+been built up out of the Electorates of Hesse Cassel and Hanover.
+Joseph himself had been set as king over Naples before his transfer to
+Spain. But the spell of submission was now suddenly broken, and the new
+king had hardly entered Madrid when Spain rose as one man against the
+stranger. Desperate as the effort of its people seemed, the news of the
+rising was welcomed throughout England with a burst of enthusiastic joy.
+"Hitherto," cried Sheridan, a leader of the Whig opposition, "Buonaparte
+has contended with princes without dignity, numbers without ardour, or
+peoples without patriotism. He has yet to learn what it is to combat a
+people who are animated by one spirit against him." Tory and Whig alike
+held that "never had so happy an opportunity existed for Britain to
+strike a bold stroke for the rescue of the world"; and Canning at once
+resolved to change the system of desultory descents on colonies and
+sugar islands for a vigorous warfare in the Peninsula. Supplies were
+sent to the Spanish insurgents with reckless profusion, and two small
+armies placed under the command of Sir John Moore and Sir Arthur
+Wellesley for service in the Peninsula. In July 1808 the surrender at
+Baylen of a French force which had invaded Andalusia gave the first
+shock to the power of Napoleon, and the blow was followed by one almost
+as severe. Landing at the Mondego with fifteen thousand men, Sir Arthur
+Wellesley drove the French army of Portugal from the field of Vimiera,
+and forced it to surrender in the Convention of Cintra on the 30th of
+August. But the tide of success was soon roughly turned. Napoleon
+appeared in Spain with an army of two hundred thousand men; and Moore,
+who had advanced from Lisbon to Salamanca to support the Spanish armies,
+found them crushed on the Ebro, and was driven to fall hastily back on
+the coast. His force saved its honour in a battle before Corunna on the
+16th of January 1809, which enabled it to embark in safety; but
+elsewhere all seemed lost. The whole of northern and central Spain was
+held by the French armies; and even Zaragoza, which had once heroically
+repulsed them, submitted after a second equally desperate resistance.
+
+[Sidenote: Wellesley in Portugal.]
+
+The landing of the wreck of Moore's army and the news of the Spanish
+defeats turned the temper of England from the wildest hope to the
+deepest despair; but Canning remained unmoved. On the day of the
+evacuation of Corunna he signed a treaty of alliance with the Junta
+which governed Spain in the absence of its king; and the English force
+at Lisbon, which had already prepared to leave Portugal, was reinforced
+with thirteen thousand fresh troops and placed under the command of Sir
+Arthur Wellesley. "Portugal," Wellesley wrote coolly, "may be defended
+against any force which the French can bring against it." At this
+critical moment the best of the French troops with the Emperor himself
+were drawn from the Peninsula to the Danube; for the Spanish rising had
+roused Austria as well as England to a renewal of the struggle. When
+Marshal Soult therefore threatened Lisbon from the north, Wellesley
+marched boldly against him, drove him from Oporto in a disastrous
+retreat, and suddenly changing his line of operations, pushed with
+twenty thousand men by Abrantes on Madrid. He was joined on the march by
+a Spanish force of thirty thousand men; and a bloody action with a
+French army of equal force at Talavera in July 1809 restored the renown
+of English arms. The losses on both sides were enormous, and the French
+fell back at the close of the struggle; but the fruits of the victory
+were lost by a sudden appearance of Soult on the English line of
+advance. Wellesley was forced to retreat hastily on Badajoz, and his
+failure was embittered by heavier disasters elsewhere; for Austria was
+driven to sue for peace by a decisive victory of Napoleon at Wagram,
+while a force of forty thousand English soldiers which had been
+despatched against Antwerp in July returned home baffled after losing
+half its numbers in the marshes of Walcheren.
+
+[Sidenote: The Perceval Ministry.]
+
+The failure at Walcheren brought about the fall of the Portland
+ministry. Canning attributed this disaster to the incompetence of Lord
+Castlereagh, heir to an Irish peerage, who after taking the chief part
+in bringing about the union between England and Ireland had been raised
+by the Duke of Portland to the post of Secretary at War; and the quarrel
+between the two Ministers ended in a duel and in their resignation of
+their offices in September 1809. The Duke of Portland retired with
+Canning; and a new ministry was formed out of the more Tory members of
+the late administration under the guidance of Spencer Perceval, an
+industrious mediocrity of the narrowest type; while the Marquis of
+Wellesley, a brother of the English general in Spain, succeeded Canning
+as Foreign Secretary. But if Perceval and his colleagues possessed few
+of the higher qualities of statesmanship, they had one characteristic
+which in the actual position of English affairs was beyond all price.
+They were resolute to continue the war. In the nation at large the fit
+of enthusiasm had been followed by a fit of despair; and the City of
+London even petitioned for a withdrawal of the English forces from the
+Peninsula, Napoleon seemed irresistible, and now that Austria was
+crushed and England stood alone in opposition to him, the Emperor
+determined to put an end to the strife by a vigorous prosecution of the
+war in Spain. Andalusia, the one province which remained independent,
+was invaded in the opening of 1810, and with the exception of Cadiz
+reduced to submission; while Marshal Massena with a fine army of eighty
+thousand men marched upon Lisbon. Even Perceval abandoned all hope of
+preserving a hold on the Peninsula in face of these new efforts, and
+threw on Wellesley, who had been raised to the peerage as Lord
+Wellington after Talavera, the responsibility of resolving to remain
+there.
+
+[Sidenote: Torres Vedras.]
+
+But the cool judgement and firm temper which distinguished Wellington
+enabled him to face a responsibility from which weaker men would have
+shrunk. "I conceive," he answered, "that the honour and interest of our
+country require that we should hold our ground here as long as possible;
+and, please God, I will maintain it as long as I can." By the addition
+of Portuguese troops who had been trained under British officers, his
+army was now raised to fifty thousand men; and though his inferiority in
+force compelled him to look on while Massena reduced the frontier
+fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, he inflicted on him a heavy
+check at the heights of Busaco, and finally fell back in October 1810 on
+three lines of defence which he had secretly constructed at Torres
+Vedras, along a chain of mountain, heights crowned with redoubts and
+bristling with cannon. The position was impregnable: and able and
+stubborn as Massena was he found himself forced after a month's
+fruitless efforts to fall back in a masterly retreat; but so terrible
+were the privations of the French army in passing again through the
+wasted country that it was only with forty thousand men that he reached
+Ciudad Rodrigo in the spring of 1811. Reinforced by fresh troops,
+Massena turned fiercely to the relief of Almeida, which Wellington had
+besieged. Two days' bloody and obstinate fighting however, in May 1811,
+failed to drive the English army from its position at Fuentes d'Onore,
+and the Marshal fell back on Salamanca and relinquished his effort to
+drive Wellington from Portugal. But great as was the effect of Torres
+Vedras in restoring the spirit of the English people, and in reviving
+throughout Europe the hope of resistance to the tyranny of Napoleon, its
+immediate result was little save the deliverance of Portugal. If Massena
+had failed, his colleagues had succeeded in their enterprises; the
+French were now masters of all Spain save Cadiz and the eastern
+provinces, and even the east coast was reduced in 1811 by the vigour of
+General Suchet.
+
+[Sidenote: The Quarrel with America.]
+
+While England thus failed to rescue Spain from the aggression of
+Napoleon, she was suddenly brought face to face with the result of her
+own aggression in America. The repeal of the Non-Intercourse Act in 1810
+had in effect been a triumph for Britain: but the triumph forced
+Napoleon's hand. As yet all he had done by his attack on neutral rights
+had been to drive the United States practically to join England against
+him. To revenge himself by war with them would only play England's game
+yet more; and with characteristic rapidity Napoleon passed from
+hostility to friendship. He seized on the offer with which America had
+closed her efforts against the two combatants, and after promising to
+revoke his Berlin and Milan Decrees he called on America to redeem her
+pledge. In February 1811, therefore, the United States announced that
+all intercourse with Great Britain and her dependencies was at an end.
+The effect of this step was seen in a reduction of English exports
+during this year by a third of their whole amount. It was in vain that
+Britain pleaded that the Emperor's promises remained unfulfilled, that
+neither of the decrees was withdrawn, that Napoleon had failed to return
+the American merchandise seized under them, and that the enforcement of
+non-intercourse with England was thus an unjust act, and an act of
+hostility. The pressure of the American policy, as well as news of the
+warlike temper which had at last grown up in the United States, made
+submission inevitable; for the industrial state of England was now so
+critical that to expose it to fresh shocks was to court the very ruin
+which Napoleon had planned.
+
+[Sidenote: State of England.]
+
+During the earlier years of the war indeed the increase of wealth had
+been enormous. England was sole mistress of the seas. The war gave her
+possession of the colonies of Spain, of Holland, and of France; and if
+her trade was checked for a time by the Berlin Decree, the efforts of
+Napoleon were soon rendered fruitless by the smuggling system which
+sprang up along the southern coasts and the coast of North Germany.
+English exports indeed had nearly doubled since the opening of the
+century. Manufactures were profiting by the discoveries of Watt and
+Arkwright; and the consumption of raw cotton in the mills of Lancashire
+rose during the same period from fifty to a hundred million of pounds.
+The vast accumulation of capital, as well as the vast increase of the
+population at this time, told upon the land, and forced agriculture into
+a feverish and unhealthy prosperity. Wheat rose to famine prices, and
+the value of land rose in proportion with the price of wheat. Inclosures
+went on with prodigious rapidity; the income of every landowner was
+doubled, while the farmers were able to introduce improvements into the
+processes of agriculture which changed the whole face of the country.
+But if the increase of wealth was enormous, its distribution was
+partial. During the fifteen years which preceded Waterloo, the number of
+the population rose from ten to thirteen millions, and this rapid
+increase kept down the rate of wages, which would naturally have
+advanced in a corresponding degree with the increase in the national
+wealth. Even manufactures, though destined in the long run to benefit
+the labouring classes, seemed at first rather to depress them; for one
+of the earliest results of the introduction of machinery was the ruin of
+a number of small trades which were carried on at home and the
+pauperization of families who relied on them for support. In the winter
+of 1811 the terrible pressure of this transition from handicraft to
+machinery was seen in the Luddite, or machine-breaking, riots which
+broke out over the northern and midland counties; and which were only
+suppressed by military force. While labour was thus thrown out of its
+older grooves, and the rate of wages kept down at an artificially low
+figure by the rapid increase of population, the rise in the price of
+wheat, which brought wealth to the landowner and the farmer, brought
+famine and death to the poor, for England was cut off by the war from
+the vast corn-fields of the Continent or of America, which nowadays
+redress from their abundance the results of a bad harvest. Scarcity was
+followed by a terrible pauperization of the labouring classes. The
+amount of the poor-rate rose fifty per cent; and with the increase of
+poverty followed its inevitable result, the increase of crime.
+
+[Sidenote: Political Progress.]
+
+The natural relation of trade and commerce to the general wealth of the
+people at large was thus disturbed by the peculiar circumstances of the
+time. The war enriched the landowner, the farmer, the merchant, the
+manufacturer; but it impoverished the poor. It is indeed from these
+fatal years that we must date that war of classes, that social severance
+between employers and employed, which still forms the main difficulty
+of English politics. But it is from these too that we must date the
+renewal of that progressive movement in politics which had been
+suspended since the opening of the war. The publication of the
+_Edinburgh Review_ in 1802 by a knot of young lawyers at Edinburgh
+marked a revival of the policy of constitutional and administrative
+progress which had been reluctantly abandoned by William Pitt. Jeremy
+Bentham gave a new vigour to political speculation by his advocacy of
+the doctrine of Utility, and his definition of "the greatest happiness
+of the greatest number" as the aim of political action. In 1809 Sir
+Francis Burdett revived the question of Parliamentary Reform. Only
+fifteen members supported his motion; and a reference to the House of
+Commons in a pamphlet which he subsequently published, as "a part of our
+fellow-subjects collected together by means which it is not necessary to
+describe," was met by his committal to the Tower, where he remained till
+the prorogation of the Parliament. A far greater effect was produced by
+the perseverance with which Canning pressed year by year the question of
+Catholic Emancipation. So long as Perceval lived both efforts at Reform
+were equally vain; but the advancing strength of a more liberal
+sentiment in the nation was felt by the policy of "moderate concession"
+which was adopted by his successors. Catholic Emancipation became an
+open question in the Cabinet itself, and was adopted in 1812 by a
+triumphant majority in the House of Commons, though it was still
+rejected by the Lords.
+
+[Sidenote: War with America.]
+
+With social and political troubles thus awaking anew to life about them,
+even Tory statesmen were not willing to face the terrible consequences
+of a ruin of English industry such as might follow from the junction of
+America with Napoleon. They were in fact preparing to withdraw the
+Orders in Council, when their plans were arrested by the dissolution of
+the Perceval ministry. Its position had from the first been a weak one.
+A return of the king's madness made it necessary in the beginning of
+1811 to confer the Regency on the Prince of Wales; and the Whig
+sympathies of the Prince threatened for a while the Cabinet with
+dismissal. Though this difficulty was surmounted their hold of power
+remained insecure, and the insecurity of the ministry told on the
+conduct of the war; for the apparent inactivity of Wellington during
+1811 was really due to the hesitation and timidity of the Cabinet at
+home. But in May 1812 the assassination of Perceval by a madman named
+Bellingham brought about the dissolution of his ministry; and fresh
+efforts were made by the Regent to install the Whigs in office. Mutual
+distrust however again foiled his attempts; and the old ministry
+returned to office under the headship of Lord Liverpool, a man of no
+great abilities, but temperate, well informed, and endowed with a
+remarkable skill in holding discordant colleagues together. The most
+important of these colleagues was Lord Castlereagh, who became Secretary
+for Foreign Affairs. Time has long ago rendered justice to the political
+ability of Castlereagh, disguised as it was to men of his own day by a
+curious infelicity of expression; and the instinctive good sense of
+Englishmen never showed itself more remarkably than in their preference
+at this crisis of his cool judgement, his high courage, his discernment,
+and his will to the more showy brilliancy of Canning. His first work
+indeed as a minister was to meet the danger in which Canning had
+involved the country by his Orders in Council. On the 23rd of June, only
+twelve days after the ministry had been formed, these Orders were
+repealed. But, quick as was Castlereagh's action, events had moved even
+more quickly. At the opening of the year America, in despair of redress,
+had resolved on war; Congress had voted an increase of both army and
+navy; and laid in April an embargo on all vessels in American harbours.
+Actual hostilities might still have been averted by the repeal of the
+Orders, on which the English Cabinet was resolved; but in the confusion
+which followed the murder of Perceval, and the strife of parties for
+office through the month that followed, the opportunity was lost. When
+the news of the repeal reached America, it came six weeks too late. On
+the 18th of June an Act of Congress had declared America at war with
+Great Britain.
+
+[Sidenote: Napoleon and Russia.]
+
+Had Napoleon been able to reap the fruits of the strife which his policy
+had thus forced on the two English peoples, it is hard to say how
+Britain could have coped with him. Cut off from her markets alike in
+east and west, her industries checked and disorganized, a financial
+crisis added to her social embarrassment, it may be doubted whether she
+must not have bowed in the end before the pressure of the Continental
+System. But if that system had thrust her into aggression and ruin, it
+was as inevitably thrusting the same aggression and ruin on her rival.
+The moment when America entered into the great struggle was a critical
+moment in the history of mankind. Six days after President Madison
+issued his declaration of war, Napoleon crossed the Niemen on his march
+to Moscow. Successful as his policy had been in stirring up war between
+England and America, it had been no less successful in breaking the
+alliance which he had made with the Czar at Tilsit and in forcing on a
+contest with Russia. On the one hand, Napoleon was irritated by the
+refusal of Russia to enforce strictly the suspension of all trade with
+England, though such a suspension would have ruined the Russian
+landowners. On the other, Alexander saw with growing anxiety the advance
+of the French Empire which sprang from Napoleon's resolve to enforce his
+system by a seizure of the northern coasts. In 1811 Holland, the
+Hanseatic towns, part of Westphalia, and the Duchy of Oldenburg were
+successively annexed, and the Duchy of Mecklenburg threatened with
+seizure. A peremptory demand on the part of France for the entire
+cessation of intercourse with England brought the quarrel to a head; and
+preparations were made on both sides for a gigantic struggle.
+
+[Sidenote: Salamanca.]
+
+Even before it opened, this new enterprise gave fresh vigour to
+Napoleon's foes. The best of the French soldiers were drawn from Spain
+to the frontier of Poland; and Wellington, whose army had been raised to
+a force of forty thousand Englishmen and twenty thousand Portuguese,
+profited by the withdrawal to throw off his system of defence and to
+assume an attitude of attack. Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz were taken by
+storm during the spring of 1812; and at the close of June, three days
+before Napoleon crossed the Niemen, in his march on Moscow, Wellington
+crossed the Agueda in a march on Salamanca. After a series of masterly
+movements on both sides, Marmont with the French army of the North
+attacked the English on the hills in the neighbourhood of that town on
+the twenty-second of July. While he was marching round the right of the
+English position his left wing remained isolated; and with a sudden
+exclamation of "Marmont is lost!" Wellington flung on it the bulk of
+his force, crushed it, and drove the whole army from the field. The loss
+on either side was nearly equal, but failure had demoralized the French
+army; and its retreat forced Joseph to leave Madrid, and Soult to
+evacuate Andalusia and to concentrate the southern army on the eastern
+coast. While Napoleon was still pushing slowly over the vast plains of
+Poland, Wellington made his entry into Madrid in August, and began the
+siege of Burgos. The town however held out gallantly for a month, till
+the advance of the two French armies, now concentrated in the north and
+south of Spain, forced Wellington, in October, to a hasty retreat on the
+Portuguese frontier.
+
+[Sidenote: Ruin of Napoleon.]
+
+If Wellington had shaken the rule of the French in Spain in this
+campaign, his ultimate failure showed how firm a military hold they
+still possessed there. But the disappointment was forgotten in the news
+which followed it. At the moment when the English troops fell back from
+Burgos began the retreat of the Grand Army from Moscow. Victorious in a
+battle at Borodino, Napoleon had entered the older capital of Russia in
+triumph, and waited impatiently to receive proposals of peace from the
+Czar. But a fire kindled by its own inhabitants reduced the city to
+ashes; Alexander still remained silent; and the gathering cold bent even
+the stubborn will of Napoleon to own the need of retreat. The French
+were forced to fall back amidst the horrors of a Russian winter; and of
+the four hundred thousand combatants who formed the Grand Army at its
+first outset, only a few thousands recrossed the Niemen in December. In
+spite of the gigantic efforts which Napoleon made to repair his losses,
+the spell which he had cast over Europe was broken. Prussia rose against
+him as the Russians crossed the Niemen in the spring of 1813; and the
+forces which held it were at once thrown back on the Elbe. In this
+emergency the military genius of the French Emperor rose to its height.
+With a fresh army of two hundred thousand men whom he had gathered at
+Mainz he marched on the allied armies of Russia and Prussia in May,
+cleared Saxony by a victory over them at Lutzen, and threw them back on
+the Oder by a fresh victory at Bautzen. Disheartened by defeat, and by
+the neutral attitude which Austria still preserved, the two powers
+consented in June to an armistice, and negotiated for peace. But
+Austria, though unwilling to utterly ruin France to the profit of her
+great rival in the East, was as resolute as either of the allies to
+wrest from Napoleon his supremacy over Europe; and at the moment when it
+became clear that Napoleon was only bent on playing with her proposals,
+she was stirred to action by news that his army was at last driven from
+Spain. Wellington had left Portugal in May with an army which had now
+risen to ninety thousand men; and overtaking the French forces in
+retreat at Vitoria on the twenty-first of June he inflicted on them a
+defeat which drove them in utter rout across the Pyrenees. Madrid was at
+once evacuated; and Clausel fell back from Zaragoza into France. The
+victory not only freed Spain from its invaders; it restored the spirit
+of the Allies. The close of the armistice was followed by a union of
+Austria with the forces of Prussia and the Czar; and in October a final
+overthrow of Napoleon at Leipzig forced the French army to fall back in
+rout across the Rhine.
+
+[Sidenote: His Abdication.]
+
+The war now hurried to its close. Though held at bay for a while by the
+sieges of San Sebastian and Pampeluna, as well as by an obstinate
+defence of the Pyrenees, Wellington succeeded in the very month of the
+triumph at Leipzig in winning a victory on the Bidassoa, which enabled
+him to enter France. He was soon followed by the Allies. On the last day
+of 1813 their forces crossed the Rhine; and a third of France passed,
+without opposition, into their hands. For two months more Napoleon
+maintained a wonderful struggle with a handful of raw conscripts against
+their overwhelming numbers; while in the south, Soult, forced from his
+entrenched camp near Bayonne and defeated at Orthez, fell back before
+Wellington on Toulouse. Here their two armies met in April in a stubborn
+and indecisive engagement. But though neither leader knew it, the war
+was even then at an end. The struggle of Napoleon himself had ended at
+the close of March with the surrender of Paris; and the submission of
+the capital was at once followed by the abdication of the Emperor and
+the return of the Bourbons.
+
+[Sidenote: The American War.]
+
+England's triumph over its enemy was dashed by the more doubtful
+fortunes of the struggle across the Atlantic. The declaration of war by
+America seemed an act of sheer madness; for its navy consisted of a few
+frigates and sloops; its army was a mass of half-drilled and half-armed
+recruits; while the States themselves were divided on the question of
+the war, and Connecticut with Massachusetts refused to send either money
+or men. Three attempts to penetrate into Canada during the summer and
+autumn were repulsed with heavy loss. But these failures were more than
+redeemed by unexpected successes at sea, where in two successive
+engagements between English and American frigates, the former were
+forced to strike their flag. The effect of these victories was out of
+all proportion to their real importance; for they were the first heavy
+blows which had been dealt at England's supremacy over the seas. In 1813
+America followed up its naval triumphs by more vigorous efforts on land.
+Its forces cleared Lake Ontario, captured Toronto, destroyed the British
+flotilla on Lake Erie, and made themselves masters of Upper Canada. An
+attack on Lower Canada, however, was successfully beaten back; and a
+fresh advance of the British and Canadian forces in the heart of the
+winter again recovered the Upper Province. The reverse gave fresh
+strength to the party in the United States which had throughout been
+opposed to the war, and whose opposition to it had been embittered by
+the terrible distress brought about by the blockade and the ruin of
+American commerce. Cries of secession began to be heard, and
+Massachusetts took the bold step of appointing delegates to confer with
+delegates from the other New England States "on the subject of their
+grievances and common concerns."
+
+[Sidenote: Peace in America.]
+
+In 1814, however, the war was renewed with more vigour than ever; and
+Upper Canada was again invaded. But the American army, after inflicting
+a severe defeat on the British forces in the battle of Chippewa in July,
+was itself defeated a few weeks after in an equally stubborn engagement,
+and thrown back on its own frontier; while the fall of Napoleon enabled
+the English Government to devote its whole strength to the struggle with
+an enemy which it had ceased to despise. General Ross, with a force of
+four thousand men, appeared in the Potomac, captured Washington, and
+before evacuating the city burnt its public buildings to the ground. Few
+more shameful acts are recorded in our history; and it was the more
+shameful in that it was done under strict orders from the Government at
+home. But the raid upon Washington was intended simply to strike terror
+into the American people; and the real stress of the war was thrown on
+two expeditions whose business was to penetrate into the States from the
+north and from the south. Both proved utter failures. A force of nine
+thousand Peninsular veterans which marched in September to the attack of
+Plattsburg on Lake Champlain was forced to fall back by the defeat of
+the English flotilla which accompanied it. A second force under General
+Packenham appeared in December at the mouth of the Mississippi and
+attacked New Orleans, but was repulsed by General Jackson with the loss
+of half its numbers. Peace, however, had already been concluded. The
+close of the French war, if it left untouched the grounds of the
+struggle, made the United States sensible of the danger of pushing it
+further; Britain herself was anxious for peace; and the warring claims,
+both of England and America, were set aside in silence in the treaty of
+1814.
+
+[Sidenote: Return of Napoleon.]
+
+The close of the war with the United States freed England's hands at a
+moment when the reappearance of Napoleon at Paris called her to a new
+and final struggle with France. By treaty with the Allied Powers
+Napoleon had been suffered to retain a fragment of his former
+empire--the island of Elba off the coast of Tuscany; and from Elba he
+looked on at the quarrels which sprang up between his conquerors as soon
+as they gathered at Vienna to complete the settlement of Europe. The
+most formidable of these quarrels arose from a claim of Prussia to annex
+Saxony and that of Russia to annex Poland; but their union for this
+purpose was met by a counter-league of England and Austria with their
+old enemy, France, whose ambassador, Talleyrand, laboured vigorously to
+bring the question to an issue by force of arms. At the moment, however,
+when a war between the two leagues seemed close at hand, Napoleon landed
+on the coast near Cannes, and, followed only by a thousand of his
+guards, marched over the mountains of Dauphine upon Grenoble and Lyons.
+He counted, and counted justly, on the indifference of the country to
+its new Bourbon rulers, on the longing of the army for a fresh struggle
+which should restore its glory, and above all on the spell of his name
+over soldiers whom he had so often led to victory. In twenty days from
+his landing he reached the Tuileries unopposed, while Lewis the
+Eighteenth fled helplessly to Ghent. But whatever hopes he had drawn
+from the divisions of the Allied Powers were at once dispelled by their
+resolute action on the news of his descent upon France. Their strife was
+hushed and their old union restored by the consciousness of a common
+danger. An engagement to supply a million of men for the purposes of the
+war, and a recall of their armies to the Rhine, answered Napoleon's
+efforts to open negotiations with the Powers.
+
+England furnished subsidies to the amount of eleven millions, and
+hastened to place an army on the frontier of the Netherlands. The best
+troops of the force which had been employed in the Peninsula however
+were still across the Atlantic; and of the eighty thousand men who
+gathered round Wellington only about half were Englishmen, the rest
+mainly raw levies from Belgium and Hanover. The Duke's plan was to unite
+with the one hundred and fifty thousand Prussians under Marshal Bluecher
+who were advancing on the Lower Rhine, and to enter France by Mons and
+Namur while the forces of Austria and Russia closed in upon Paris by way
+of Belfort and Elsass. But Napoleon had thrown aside all thought of a
+merely defensive warfare. By amazing efforts he had raised an army of
+two hundred and fifty thousand men in the few months since his arrival
+in Paris; and in the opening of June 1815 one hundred and twenty
+thousand Frenchmen were concentrated on the Sambre at Charleroi, while
+Wellington's troops still lay in cantonments on the line of the Scheldt
+from Ath to Nivelles, and Bluecher's on that of the Meuse from Nivelles
+to Liege. Both the allied armies hastened to unite at Quatre Bras; but
+their junction there was already impossible. Bluecher with eighty
+thousand men was himself attacked by Napoleon at Ligny, and after a
+desperate contest driven back with terrible loss upon Wavre. On the
+same day Ney with twenty thousand men, and an equal force under D'Erlon
+in reserve, appeared before Quatre Bras, where as yet only ten thousand
+English and the same force of Belgian troops had been able to assemble.
+The Belgians broke before the charges of the French horse; and only the
+dogged resistance of the English infantry gave time for Wellington to
+bring up corps after corps, till at the close of the day Ney saw himself
+heavily outnumbered, and withdrew baffled from the field.
+
+[Sidenote: Waterloo.]
+
+About five thousand men had fallen on either side in this fierce
+engagement: but, heavy as was Wellington's loss, the firmness of the
+English army had already done much to foil Napoleon's effort at breaking
+through the line of the Allies. Bluecher's retreat however left the
+English flank uncovered; and on the following day, while the Prussians
+were falling back on Wavre, Wellington, with nearly seventy thousand
+men--for his army was now well in hand--withdrew in good order, followed
+by the mass of the French forces under the Emperor himself. Napoleon had
+detached thirty thousand men under Grouchy to hang upon the rear of the
+beaten Prussians, while with a force of eighty thousand he resolved to
+bring Wellington to battle. On the morning of the 18th of June the two
+armies faced one another on the field of Waterloo in front of the Forest
+of Soignies, on the high road to Brussels. Napoleon's one fear had been
+that of a continued retreat. "I have them!" he cried, as he saw the
+English line drawn up on a low rise of ground which stretched across the
+high-road from the chateau of Hougomont on its right to the farm and
+straggling village of La Haye Sainte on its left. He had some grounds
+for his confidence of success. On either side the forces numbered
+between seventy and eighty thousand men: but the French were superior in
+guns and cavalry, and a large part of Wellington's force consisted of
+Belgian levies who broke and fled at the outset of the fight. A fierce
+attack upon Hougomont opened the battle at eleven; but it was not till
+midday that the corps of D'Erlon advanced upon the centre near La Haye
+Sainte, which from that time bore the main brunt of the struggle. Never
+has greater courage, whether of attack or endurance, been shown on any
+field than was shown by both combatants at Waterloo. The columns of
+D'Erlon, repulsed by the English foot, were hurled back in disorder by a
+charge of the Scots Greys; but the victorious horsemen were crushed in
+their turn by the French cuirassiers, and the mass of the French
+cavalry, twelve thousand strong, flung itself in charge after charge on
+the English front, carrying the English guns and sweeping with desperate
+bravery round the unbroken squares whose fire thinned their ranks. With
+almost equal bravery the French columns of the centre again advanced,
+wrested at last the farm of La Haye Sainte from their opponents, and
+pushed on vigorously though in vain under Ney against the troops in its
+rear.
+
+But meanwhile every hour was telling against Napoleon. To win the battle
+he must crush the English army before Bluecher joined it; and the English
+army was still uncrushed. Terrible as was his loss, and many of his
+regiments were reduced to a mere handful of men, Wellington stubbornly
+held his ground while the Prussians, advancing from Wavre through deep
+and miry forest roads, were slowly gathering to his support,
+disregarding the attack on their rear by which Grouchy strove to hold
+them back from the field. At half-past four their advanced guard
+deployed at last from the woods; but the main body was far behind, and
+Napoleon was still able to hold his ground against them till their
+increasing masses forced him to stake all on a desperate effort against
+the English front. The Imperial Guard--his only reserve, and which had
+as yet taken no part in the battle--was drawn up at seven in two huge
+columns of attack. The first, with Ney himself at its head, swept all
+before it as it mounted the rise beside La Haye Sainte, on which the
+thin English line still held its ground, and all but touched the English
+front when its mass, torn by the terrible fire of musketry with which it
+was received, gave way before a charge. The second, three thousand
+strong, advanced with the same courage over the slope near Hougomont,
+only to be repulsed and shattered in its turn. At the moment when these
+masses fell slowly and doggedly back down the fatal rise, the Prussians
+pushed forward on Napoleon's right, their guns swept the road to
+Charleroi, and Wellington seized the moment for a general advance. From
+that hour all was lost. Only the Guard stood firm in the wreck of the
+French army; and though darkness and exhaustion checked the English in
+their pursuit of the broken troops as they hurried from the field, the
+Prussian horse continued the chase through the night. Only forty
+thousand Frenchmen with some thirty guns recrossed the Sambre while
+Napoleon himself fled hurriedly to Paris. His second abdication was
+followed by a triumphant entry of the English and Prussian armies into
+the French capital; and the long war ended with his exile to St. Helena,
+and the return of Lewis the Eighteenth to the throne of the Bourbons.
+
+
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
+
+
+   Reference to the Index has been removed from the
+   Table of Contents.
+
+   The word manoeuvre uses an oe ligature in the original.
+
+   Variations in spelling have been left as in the original.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE,
+VOLUME VIII (OF 8)***
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