Regiments of having destroyed the prestige of the American navy. Peninsular veterans now arriving, gained yet more decided victories over the brave but undisciplined Statesmen; one battle taking place within the very sound of Niagara's torrent [July 25, 1814]. The war now became aggressive on the part of the British. Washington, the yet youthful capital of the Republic, was attacked, carried, and—to the deep disgrace of the parties in command—its public buildings, but recently constructed, blown up or burned. The Americans were avenged by the reverses they inflicted on our forces on Lake Erie, through the utter imbecility of our commander, Sir George Prevost, which stung eight hundred men into desertion, and involved himself at last in trouble from which a sudden natural death was deemed a timely escape. Further retribution for the wanton destruction of Washington was suffered at New Orleans, the attack on which swampsurrounded city [December, 1814] cost the lives of Pakenham and Gibbs (officers who had highly distinguished themselves in European warfare), picked off by Kentucky rifles, and of two thousand unfortunate men. The disaster was at once augmented and relieved by the circumstance, that peace had been concluded two months before its occurrence. The north-eastern states had brought their aversion to the war to the length of refusing to contribute to its conduct, and the threat of making a separate peace with Great Britain. Foreign trade was literally annihilated-fourteen hundred American merchantmen had appeared as prizes in the London "Gazette." Happily, our war party could no longer find a pretence for continuing hostilities, and the Emperor Alexander-with whom the American war party had contracted a suspicious friendship-mediated on behalf of the States. Negotiations were carried on first at Gottenburg, afterwards at Ghent, and termi. nated in a treaty which left the questions the war was started to decide absolutely untouched. No mention was made of the words that had drawn two brother nations into a conflict bitter and cruel beyond ordinary wars, as are usually the quarrels of near relatives over those of ordinary men. The boundary of Maine question was left to trouble another generation; but a clause was inserted to the perfect observance of which a great peacemaker has recently appealed as a justification of his doctrinesnamely, that neither nation should keep an armed ship on those inland seas which lie between their respective territories. Never did a war, in its origin, conduct, and conclusion, more loudly testify to the folly and wickedness of carrying international disputes to the bloody arbitrament of gunpowder and steel-to the brute force of military strength, or the infernal craft of military skill. A few words on our internal history during the last three years of this dismal period are now required of us. The Perceval administration was justly • Mr. Cobden, at the Wrexham peace-meeting, November, 1350 mourned as the last truly Protestant and Tory cabinet. With its successor was introduced that policy of concession and temperate conservatism which had its highest type in the great statesman who has recently departed, but who was then commencing public life. The Catholic question was no longer tabooed in the cabinet, now that the monarch was virtually defunct; so that when Canning proposed, in the summer of 1812, to engage the House to the discussion of the subject the following year, Castlereagh redeemed the pledge he and his great master had given and broken, by voting for the motion, which was carried by the triumphant majority of two hundred and thirty-five to one h ndred and six. In the Upper House, the Marquis of Wellesley introduced a similar resolution; three cabinet ministers spoke in its favour; and it was lost by only one vote. A general election-Parliament having sat six sessions-which ensued in the same year, amidst intense excitement, resulted in a House less favourable to the Catholic claims. When Grattan introduced a bill based on Canning's resolution of the previous session, the first division, after a fierce debate of four nights, showed a majority of only forty. In committee, the Speaker, Mr. Abbott, passionately opposed the bill, declaring that, under its sanction, the Crown itself might be Catholic, and moved the omission of the vital clause—that which admitted Catholics to Parliament; and, unhappily, succeeding by a majority of four, the bill was abandoned. This retrogression had more to do than was apparent with ab extra influences. Concessions at home alternated with victories abroad. The retreat from Moscow and the march on Paris deferred for twenty years the triumph of a cause that seemed beyond the fear of reverse. All domestic interests were forgotten in the exultation of victory in the greatest conflict of modern times. Wellington, for some time subject to ignorant and unjust detraction, suddenly became the object of universal and extravagant praise. In 1811, young Mr. Peel displayed his sagacity and generosity in defending himin 1814, Canning and Grattan eulogized him in their most eloquent strains. "The mighty deluge," said the former, "which overwhelmed the continent, begins to subside; the limits of nations are again visible; the spires and turrets of old establishments reappear above the subsiding wave. To whom, under God, do we owe this? To the illustrious Wellington-whose admirable designs, whose rapid executions, whose sagacious combinations of means to an end, the completeness of whose plans, whose thunderbolt of war at last launched upon the foe, has furnished this country with the most ample basis she ever yet possessed for a secure and glorious peace." The formal thanks of both Houses embodied the panegyrics of their leading orators, and were personally acknowledged. All the titles of the peerage, with permission to cover his breast with foreign decorations, were bestowed upon the "illustrious soldier." Nor with these honorary rewards did the admiring gratitude of Parliament and people content itself. In successive sums, four hundred thousand pounds were voted to Wellington for his services. Large are the rewards of peace to the few who have headed the hosts and survived the vicissitudes of war! But large as are those rewards, they constitute only a fraction of the sum total of a nation's "glory bill." Every attempt to represent to the mind the cost of this twenty years' war, is utterly inadequate. It is possible to calculate, perhaps with approximate correctness, the loss by death in the field, on the march, and in the hospital, on the deck and in the cockpit; and thence to overwhelm the imagination and torture the heart with an elaborated tableau of physical suffering-or to estimate the pecuniary loss to the community, negatively, by the abstraction of so many labourers from the productive fields of industry, and, positively, by their sustenance in idleness; not only non-productive while consuming, but destructive, in the shape of arms, ammunition, and accoutrements, of several times their proper share of material wealth were they peacefully employed; and so to astound the faculties with an incomprehensible aggregate of annihilated substance, whether in the shape of pounds sterling, or in the more impressive form of quarters of wheat. It is easy to write down that France, from the Revolution to the Restoration, levied upwards of four million men, a million and a half of whom perished in war, and half a million languished for years in foreign captivity—and that England lost, during the same period, more than three hundred ships of war. It is a step towards the full understanding of this awful statement, to think, for a moment, of every French regiment employed with the implements of agriculture upon their native fields, and on every English ship converted, as it might be, into a flourishing town. Not dwelling upon these suggestive circumstances of this vast destructive process—this deliberate surpassing, by the art of man, of the volcano, the earthquake, the tropical tornado, in desolating potency - we might go on to ponder its influence, its divergent and reflex influence, on the finances, the commerce, the manners, the religion, and the literature-on all, in short, that constitutes the condition and character of a nation; to which we devote a brief concluding chapter. CHAPTER X. HOW NATIONS SURVIVE CRISES-STATISTICAL DATA-PROGRESS OF POPULATION, AND OF PAUPERISM AND CRIME-THE RISE OF PRICES, BUT NOT OF WAGES-EXTENSIVE USE OF MACHINERY, AND ITS EFFECT ON THE POOR-EXPORTS AND IMPORTS-REVENUE AND DEBT-PAPER-MONEY AND THE SINKING-FUND-LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. "WHEN, previous to the Revolution," says Chateaubriand, speaking "from the tomb" (" Mémoires d'outre Tombe")-" I read in history of public troubles in different nations, I could not conceive how people could have existed in those times." A similar difficulty must have been experienced by the thoughtful reader of the foregoing pages, as it had often previously been felt by the writer. "The Revolution made me comprehend the possibility of such a mode of life. The moments of crisis produce a redoubled vitality The struggle and the shock form a transitory combina in the life of man. tion which does not allow of a moment of ennui." We shall probably find in the answer of the brilliant Frenchman to his own question, the solution of the problem we have used his words to describe. We shall find that, notwithstanding the tremendous sacrifices which England made, and the sufferings she endured, through the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century, she progressed beyond former parallel in those particulars to which peace is usually considered all but essential-in population, in agricultural productiveness, in foreign trade; but, at the same time, in crime and pauperism; and that, moreover, while the amount of her burdens was exaggerated, her energy was stimulated, was followed by a perilous collapse, and has entailed upon posterity incumbrances not inherited from prior ages. The following statistics extracted from Porter's "Progress of the Nation"—are the essential data of our investigation. Deficient as they obviously are, they bear the highest reputation-and the reign of the statisticians dates only from within the last ten years. For convenience of reference and remark they are divided into two classes : The first class of facts are those relating to population, pauperism, crime, and the price of wheat. These have a close and effective relation to one another. The popular doctrine concerning them is substantially correct -however unsatisfactory, or rather incomplete, in its theoretic development, to the social philosopher-that the increase of the first-named (popu lation) is significant of prosperity; and that the increase of the latter three, is mutually consequent, as well as invariably coincident. The "true law of population," it may be, is yet to be ascertained-whether a high or low physical condition be more favourable to the propagation of the species, may, perhaps, still be questioned. The truth probably is, that while the latter is more prolific, its productions are feeble and short-lived—that poverty has many more children than wealth or competence, but that they perish as of a rot; that the balance is thus preserved, and human productiveness is not permitted to outstrip the provision, or rather capability, of Nature. So long, therefore, as year by year a steady increase of population is observable, it is assumed that no serious interruption has been offered to the natural progress of a nation. Applying this first test, we detect no indication of national suffering during the war, but the reverse. The numerical growth of the people, it will be observed, was uninterrupted, either by the desolations of the war, or the unseen operations of domestic distress. The census was taken in 1801, and again in 1811; in both cases, the figures given above include the army and navy, in which there were, at the first date, 470,598—at the latter, 640,500; and the increase per cent. between the two periods was 14.3. The next test we apply, that of pauperism, is conclusive in the opposite direction. The increase of pauperism, evinced by the rapidly augmented amounts of poor and county rates, is indisputable proof of the distressed condition of the working classes. The table given above is imperfect; omitting several years consecutively, not giving the number of recipients as well as amount of relief dispensed, nor distinguishing county from poor's rate, and is considerably below what is given by other authorities; but all accounts concur in testifying that the cost to the community of maintaining its destitute poor, rose fully fifty per cent. The criminal returns, assuming the connexion of destitution and crime, are decisive in proving the popular deterioration. If the column distinguished grave from light offences, the great proportionate preponderance of the former would confirm the conclusion. Nor are the causes of this deterioration hard to discover. The monetary difficulties of '93 to '97 had made thousands of bankrupts among the middle classes, forcing them down to a lower rank, and their dependents lower still. While the price of wheat and other articles of food had risen in a frightful ratio, wages had not kept pace with them. The cause of the former we shall presently show; but it did not affect, in an equal degree, the latter. A priori reasoning and uniform experience would lead us to expect the discrepancy. Working men knew the fact, that their wages did not rise with their expenses, long before they understood the reason—namely, that the one is not dependent upon the other. A multitude of statements are at hand to confirm this conclusion as to the particular period before us. They may be condensed into the one G |