HISTORY OF THE HALF CENTURY.

PROEM.

We have reached the meridian of the nineteenth century. It is time, therefore, that we review its course, and estimate its character. Its several epochs have already and frequently been made the subject of survey and reflection—the entire period now invites and demands thoughtful retrospect. The progress of events, it is true, as little accommodates itself to as it is determined by our artificial chronologies. As "the horologe of nature has no bell on which to strike the entrance and the exit of its periods," so are human affairs very independent of almanacks. The cycles of civilization do not correspond with the great celestial circles-nor do the stages of a nation's career lie parallel with the lesser of the planetary revolutions. Yet is it customary and useful to pursue the researches and speculations suggested by the recurrence of natural eras.

To say that the interval now completed is eventful beyond any that have preceded it, is scarcely more, perhaps, than has been said by the men of every similar lapse of time. "Oh century but half elapsed," exclaims Jules Janin, "yet reckoning the events of a thousand years!" But contemporaneous judgment is seldom just. The actors or immediate spectators of events are too excited by not to exaggerate them. With this caution, we may nevertheless challenge for the times which have just passed over us, comparison with any former, within the history of our country or of modern Europe, for interest and influence. Other ages have witnessed events of as striking and important a character-as, for example, those of the Crusades, or of the Reformation-but not such a combination, or consentaneous action, of all the social forces; of individual character and public opinion-the vicissitudes of war and the victories of peace. An ancient and powerful dynasty suddenly overturned-a republic rising on its ruins, repelling its foes, changing into a mighty military despotism-that, again, shattered by a league of outraged nationalities; led on by monarchs who, from the assailants of liberty, had involuntarily come to be its unworthy and insincere defenders-the gigantic efforts of one people, in particular, successively, in

both of those opposite relations—the rapid development of latent powers under the genial influence of general peace; the augmentation of wealth, the spread of education, the heightened lustre of literature, the achievements of science and art, the energy of re-awakened religion, the triumphs of philanthropy-the growth of colonies-the emancipation of conscience from the heaviest and most galling of its fetters, the large concession of political power to popular claims, and the legislative recognition of the natural principles of commercial intercourse-the continued prosecution of these great achievements to their ultimatum, yet in the future—the sudden confusion of all calculations, and the precipitation of results the most hoped for and the most dreaded, by the bursting forth anew of that volcano which sixty years before had rained on the surrounding nations the heated, quickened seeds of hasty change, and now with even wider range- these are the varied phenomena of the region on which we can now look back : to arrange and theorize upon them may be a presumptuous, but cannot be an ill-timed nor an unattractive task.

An additional, though somewhat melancholy, appropriateness is given to our undertaking, by the rapidity with which the celebrities of the period I propose to review are passing away from us. The patriarchs of the poetry and criticism of the nineteenth century have sunk under the weight of reverend years. Jeffrey and Sidney Smith, Southey and Wordsworth-those brilliant lights that sat like tongues of flame on Arthur's Seat, or shone with a milder lustre over Windermere-have gone out one by one. The grey masters of the senate and the forum-the foremost wrestlers in the great struggle of parties which seems now to have paused-have fallen, almost side by side, under the hand of a common conqueror, and within our sight. Grey, Melbourne, O'Connell, Peel-they who had grown into manhood, and given promise of future eminence, while the century was yet in its adolescence—are now no more; and invite us from their vacated seats to inform ourselves of their career, and forecast the decision of posterity upon the part they played. Still more recently, an old man, an exile and an ex-monarch, has closed among us a life, the remarkable changes of which were nearly identical with the decades of this history -forced by one revolution to become a wanderer, restored by another to the vast possessions of his princely fathers, elevated by a third to the proud position of an elected king, and scared by a fourth into seeking a final refuge on a foreign but ever hospitable shore. These individual lives, running, like so many coloured threads, through our record, may impart to it that personal interest and dramatic unity which, otherwise, extended and uneven, it might lack, however imposing its successive scenes.

To the seniors of this generation, who have witnessed the events and

participated in the processes I am about attempting to review, such a resumé may be neither uninteresting nor unnecessary. They may be glad to have recalled to their recollection, and re-arranged for their contemplation, the prominent occurrences as well as the less noticeable transitions through which they have lived. Often I have listened with delight to the reminiscences of honoured elders of the times when radical reform was a proscribed sentiment, when the progress of Dissent provoked attempts to revive persecuting enactments as well as excited the virulent hostility of favoured sectaries, when the repeal of test acts was deemed the culmination of religious liberty, and attempts to educate the people were denounced as ridiculous and treasonable. Such pleasant and instructive “confidences ”far more impressive and animating than the best of printed histories— have suggested to me, that to those before whose seniority I uncover, an epitome of these times would be no unacceptable offering. To those whose public recollections are few and imperfect-whose instructors have carefully informed them of the days of Pericles and Cicero, but left those of Pitt and Canning a great anachronism-whose faces are turned to the future— whose hearts beat with impatience for action, and are flushed with hope unchastened by experience-it may be of service to show the precise relations of the recent past to the present and proximate times, to point out the sources of the elements now chiefly operative for good or for ill; the antecedents of the men who occupy the high places of the nation; what has been accomplished by those whose names already echo as from posterity, and what may be expected of those who "stand upon the forehead of the age."

The

I aim, in the spirit of the sentence quoted in the title-page of this volume, to write-however briefly—the inner "life of the nation" during this expiring half-century. "The life of a nation," continues the eminent writer and excellent man from whom I take the phrase, "is twofold, external and internal-its transactions with other peoples; and its own physical, intellectual, and political progress: the latter has generally been neglected by history, and the former has consisted chiefly of wars.' last clause is, unhappily, emphatically true of our own times. Fifteen of the fifty years just passed, were consumed in almost unintermittent and furious war—and the subsequent thirty-five are not entitled to be styled, as they often and vauntingly are, a "period of profound and uninterrupted peace;" on the shores of the Mediterranean, in the Chinese seas, and among the Indian mountains, our ships and troops have destroyed or yielded up lives as valuable as those which were wasted in the peninsula or on the continent. To those times, Alison's powerful but partisan pen has given ample portraiture. Russell's annals, "brought down" to within a few years-Smollett's "continuation of Hume," continued to the reign of

Victoria-are meagre and unsatisfying. Miss Martineau's very admirable "History of England since the Peace" has scarcely a fault, except that its bulk and expensiveness prevent its general accessibility. Other popular histories run over the same period, with a superficiality that justifies other endeavours. The writer's purpose is, to furnish, however imperfectly, a history of opinions, rather than of events; a retrospect of political and social progress;-to use occurrences as bones upon which to clothe a theory of national life-deal with wars chiefly in relation to their causes and results-follow the camp only that the treaty may be understood-and subordinate even the narration of legislative proceedings to the exhibition of what the people felt and did. From the commencement of the century to the restoration of peace in 1815-thence to the enactment of the Reform Bill-and from that to the present time-will form the natural divisions of the narrative.

HISTORY OF THE HALF CENTURY

PERIOD THE FIRST.-1800 To 1815

CHAPTER I.

ASPECT OF THE WORLD TO THE DAWNING CENTURY-EVENTS CONSEQUENT ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION-BONAPARTE'S ITALIAN VICTORIES-THE TREATY OF CAMPOFORMIO-INVASION OF EGYPT-BONAPARTE FIRST CONSUL-STATE OF PARTIES AND THE PEOPLE IN ENGLANDREBELLION IN IRELAND-OVERTHROW OF TIPPO SULTAN.

"WE are standing," said Lucien Bonaparte, on the eve of 1800,"amid the graves of old and beside the cradle of new institutions." There was more of truth in the sentence than in the majority of such rhetorical utterances. The dawn of the nineteenth century beheld the world in a state of distraction and disorder without a parallel since the Roman empire fell to pieces. Not one of the old powers of Europe was undisturbed—even the ancient immobility of Asia was broken up, and Egypt, the birth place of civilization, invaded by the ambition and defended for the interests of northern rivals. The New World alone-happily separated by a wide expanse of waters from its parent states-was permitted to develop in peace those elements of greatness which it had begun to reveal; and even upon the islands that cluster at its side, descended the skirts of the storm. Washington had just quitted, at the sudden summons of Death, the country in which he was justly revered as Father and Deliverer.

France-at first the occasion, now the chief agent, of this world-tumult -was exchanging the liberties conferred by the Revolution, and retained amid the changes of government that rapidly succeeded, for subjection to the masterful will, and her aggrandisement by the guilty genius, of the First Consul Bonaparte. To understand by what steps he had risen, in five or six years, from poverty and obscurity to this eminence of power and station-to comprehend, at the same time, the relative position of the nations-it is necessary that we briefly retrace the course of events consequent on the establishment of the French Republic [1792.]

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