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penditure and unexampled war contributions were levied upon her own inhabitants alone. No neutral or allied powers had to rue the day when she made peace. She concluded it without exacting cessions save of a few inconsiderable colonies, either from her enemies or friends. So strict was the discipline maintained by her chiefs even in the enemy's territory, that their own generals confessed that "every peasant wished to be placed under his protection" [ante, Chap. LXXXVII. § 35]; and the first act of Louis XVIII., on his second restoration to the throne, was to thank the Duke of Wellington and his officers, in presence of his whole court, for the protection they had bestowed on his unhappy subjects [ante, Chap. xcv. § 15].

have resulted from the triumph of Gracchus in the Roman republic: in the latter, the principles of ruin which, from the continued ascendant of the patricians, at length overturned the vast and splendid fabric of the Roman empire. It will be the duty of a future historian to unfold the causes which have in this manner prepared the decline and fall of the British empire: it has been the more agreeable province of him whose labours are concluding, to trace the progress of its rise and greatness. Yet a few observations will not be misplaced on the social results which have in this country attended its magnificent triumphs; for subsequent experience has unfolded many of the causes of past prosperity, and the difficulties with which we are now surrounded throw the clearest light on the wisdom of the measures by which those of former times have been sur

86. Such, so far as at present can be discerned, were the principal causes which gave Great Britain the final vic-mounted. tory in this protracted and memorable 87. It need be told to none of this contest. But immortality is not the generation-it will be painfully evident destiny of communities any more than to posterity-in what serious embarof single men; and sin has brought rassments Great Britain has been indeath to nations not less than indivi- volved since the peace. In truth, they duals. Out of the triumph of the con- have been so great and pressing, that querors have arisen evils as great, selfish- it is hard to say whether they have ness as intense, dangers as pressing, as not exceeded all the dangers and diffihave attached to the vanquished from culties of the war. Barely concealed the entire overthrow of society. The beneath the splendid surface of highly victory of property has been attended advanced civilisation, lie smouldering with as great a destruction of vested the sparks of a conflagration which may, interests, a disregard of the rights of at no distant period, involve the emothers, in some respects as complete as pire in ruin. If its fall is not sudden that of numbers in the adjoining king- from a maritime disaster, like that at dom. The inherent corruption of man- Aigospotamos, which at once destroyed kind has appeared as strongly in the the Athenian republic, it will assuredly victors after the contest was over, as in dwindle away under the causes which the vanquished before it commenced. undermined the vast fabric of Roman It is in the selfishness of the dominant power. Already they are to be seen class, the growth of their desires, and in full and portentous activity amongst the dereliction of their principles from us. The wealth of individuals, and the very effects of their success, that poverty of the state, the luxury of the the causes of these disastrous results rich, and misery of the poor, the proare to be found. Prosperity, both in gressive and oppressive weight of diFrance and England, has produced its rect taxation, the impossibility of mainusual effect of developing the seeds taining an establishment of land and of evil, by increasing the sway of self-sea forces equal to the necessities of a ish desires in the classes in these respective countries which have obtained the mastery. In the former have been exemplified the disasters which would

widespread dominion, the indifference of the affluent to the sufferings of the destitute, the exasperation of the many at the fortunes of the few, the increas

has advanced in the British Islands ten times as fast as the numbers of the people; all the efforts of philanthropy and instruction seem unable to restrain it.§ Population in the manufacturing districts has not only outgrown the

ing dependence of the nation on foreign supplies of food, the constant drain thence resulting upon its metallic resources; the ceaseless growth of debt, the progressive diminution in the remuneration of labour, the prostration of the interests of rural before the as-means, but extinguished in a large cendant of urban activity, the continued growth of crime, and failure of all efforts either to deter or check it, the appalling increase of pauperism, and extension of the reckless habits among the working classes which produce it, so often and feelingly complained of by the historians of antiquity, are precisely applicable to the British empire at this time.*

88. If we are not threatened by a hostile girdle of barbarous nations thirsting for the spoils of the empire, our dangers are not less real from the ill-disguised jealousy of civilised ambition: if half our population are not slaves, a seventh of them are already paupers,† in still more deplorable circumstances: if we are not reduced to look to the harvests of Egypt and Libya for our daily bread, free trade is preparing a similar dependence on those of Poland and America. Serious crime during the last forty years

class the desire of religious instruction; the sinking-fund, after thirty years' cessation of hostilities, has on an average of years disappeared; recourse has been found to be unavoidable, even during profound peace, to the ultimum remedium of direct taxation; the proportion of foreign vessels which carry on our commerce is steadily and rapidly increasing; and with a population twice as numerous, and resources four times as great as they were in 1792, and a colonial empire of triple the magnitude to defend, we have not half the effective navy at our disposal which we had when the war broke out.

89. Various changes of the most important kind in our internal and external policy since the peace have coexisted with these remarkable features in our social condition. First, and most important in its consequences, has been the great alteration in the monetary system of the empire by the

"Pro his nos habemus luxuriam atque avaritiam: publice egestatem, privatim opu lentiam; laudamus divitias, sequimur inertiam; inter bonos et malos nullum discrimen; omnia virtutis præmia ambitio possidet."-SALLUST, Bell. Cat.

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or a seventh of the whole population nearly, which in 1844 was 27,500,000.-PORTER's Progress of the Nation, 82, 91, 2d edit.; and ALISON's England in 1815 and 1845, p. 12.

In fifteen months from August 1846, when free trade was introduced, to November 1847, Great Britain imported 14,200,000 quarters of foreign grain, though the harvest of 1847 was uncommonly fine; and the money sent abroad for this prodigious supply, nearly a fourth of the annual consumption of the nation, was £33,560,000 sterling.-Chancellor of Exchequer's Speech, Nov. 30, 1847.

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This shows an increase of crime above six-fold in forty years; while during the same time the population has only advanced from eighty-nine to one hundred and fifty-five, or as nine to fifteen-that is, about sixty per cent. Crime, therefore, has increased ten times as fast as the numbers of the people. In Scotland, the growth of crime has been still more rapid.-PORTER's Progress of the Nation, 2d edit., pp. 8, 642.

Il See Table, p. 331, opposite (Comparative Growth of British and Foreign Shipping).

act of 1819, compelling the Bank of England to resume payments in cash, followed by those of 1826, prohibiting the issue of one-pound notes by all English banks, and of 1844, restricting the issue of paper by the Bank of England, on any other security but an equal amount of specie in its coffers, to £14,000,000 sterling, with similar acts for Scotland and Ireland. Without pronouncing an opinion on abstract grounds in this work on the expedience of these changes, the effects of which have not yet been fully ascertained by experience, it may be observed, that it has already (1849) been decisively proved that they have added fifty per cent to the weight of all debts, and taken as much from the remuneration of productive labour throughout the empire; that they have extinguished, practically speaking, the sinking-fund, and rendered indirect taxes so unproductive that a recurrence to direct taxation, even in a period of profound peace, has become unavoidable; that they have compelled government to starve down the military and naval establishments of the empire to a degree inconsistent with its security, and which may ere long endanger its independence; and have rendered it more difficult now to raise fifty millions ayear from twenty-eight millions of men, than in the latter years of the war it

was to raise seventy millions a-year from eighteen millions. And if it be said that these evils were unavoidable, and the price which the nation pays for shunning the dangers of an unrestricted issue of paper, -the South American madness of 1824 and 1825, followed by the dreadful monetary crisis in the close of the latter year; the joint-stock mania of 1835 and 1836, succeeded by the severe and protracted depression from 1838 to 1843; and the railway mania of 1845, terminating in the awful and protracted monetary crisis of 1847, sufficiently demonstrate that the metallic system affords no security against these dangers, but, on the contrary, by rendering commercial credit dependent on the plenty or scarcity of that most shifting and evanescent of earthly things, a gold currency, in the highest degree aggravates them.+

90. The great monetary change of 1819 was followed, two years afterwards, by one equally important to our maritime interests. In February 1821 Mr Huskisson introduced the reciprocity system, by which Great Britain announced its determination to admit the ships of all nations, which would agree to the proposal, into her harbours, on the same terms on which they admitted hers. Experience has in like manner already demonstrated the ef

Comparative Growth of British and Foreign Shipping from 1816 to 1844 :-

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1,795,188 1831 2,367,322
2,070,132 1832 2,185,980
2,648,851 1833 2,183,814
2,351,812 1834 2,298,263
2,115,671 1835 2,442,734

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874,605 3,241,927
639,979 2,825,959
762,085 2,945,899
833,905 3,132,168
866,990 3,309,724

3,623,106

1816 1,415,723 379,465
1817 1,625,121 445,011
1818 1,886,394 762,457
1819 1,809,128 542,684
1820 1,668,060 447,611
*1821 1,599,274 396,256 1,995,530 1836 2,505,473 988,899 3,494,372
1822 1,664,186 469,151 2,133,337 1837 2,617,166 1,005,940
1823
1,740,859 582,996 2,323,855 1838 2,785,387 1,211,666 3,997,053
1824 1,797,320 759,441 2,556,761 1839 2,101,650 1,331,365 4,433,015
1825 2,144,598 958,132 3,102,730 1840 3,197,501 1,460,294 4,657,795
1826 1,950,630 694,116 2,644,746 1841 3,361,211 1,291,165 4,612,376
1827 2,086,898 751,864 2,839,762 1842 3,294,725 1,205,303 4,500,028
1828 2,094,357 634,620 2,728,977 1843 3,545,346 1,301,958 4,847,296
1829 2,184,525 710,303 2,894,828 1844 3,647,463 1,402,138 5,049,601
1830 2,180,042 758,828 2,938,870 1845 4,310,639 1,735,079 6,045,718

• Reciprocity system introduced.

-PORTER'S Progress of the Nation, 406, 2d edit.

+ See Appendix, H, Chap. xcv., for the proof of these observations.

fect of this system. The foreign ton- | is even more formidable in its consenage employed in carrying on the trade quences than the alteration in our of Great Britain-which, as already monetary system, from which such shown, rapidly declined, while the Brit- widespread financial distress has folish as rapidly increased throughout the lowed; for it strikes at the national inwhole war, and for eight years after its dependence, on which all our other termination-[ante, Chap. xov. § 65, blessings depend. Yet, such is the note at once began to gain the as- disregard of remote consequences in cendancy upon that change being in- the great majority of men, when their troduced; until now, instead of the interests or supposed interests are conBritish shipping employed in carrying cerned, that this main security of our on the commerce of the empire being independence has already been swept quadruple the foreign, it is barely away, and the Navigation Laws, the double it.* In ten years more, at the bulwark of our navy, numbered among same rate of progress, the foreign ship- the things that have been. ping employed in carrying on the trade of Great Britain will be equal to its own, and in ten more it will greatly exceed it. The moment that occurs, the independence of the empire will be a mere name; for what reliance can a maritime state place on its means of defence, if it has reared up, in conducting its own traffic, a body of foreign seamen superior to its own, who may at any moment be ranged in hostility against it? Vain, worse than vain, in such an event, would be the magnitude of its exports, and the vast extent of its manufacturing industry. Of what avail would be the hundred and thirty millions of foreign exports if hostile fleets blockaded the Thames, the Mersey, and the Clyde? Like a beleaguered city encumbered with useless mouths, it would only find in the multitude who produced them a burden which would compel its speedy surrender. Less conspicuous to the unthinking many, because less prejudicial to general interests, this great change in our policy

91. So many alterations in the political and religious policy of the empire could not have been adopted without inducing a change, gradual or violent, in its government. The misery produced was so general, that a large portion of the people became not only indifferent to, but desirous of changethe shock given to established feelings, perhaps prejudices, so violent, that the main bulwark against innovation was cast down. So many of the commercial classes in particular, who earned their livelihood by buying and selling, had been involved in difficulties or insolvency by the constant fall in the price of commodities which followed the contraction of the currency, that the desire for an extension of political power became universal amongst them, from the belief that it would enable them to ward off these effects. So profound were the feelings of indignation which pervaded a large part of those who were strongly impressed with religious feelings, from the manner in

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-Parl. Tables; and Progress of the Nation, ii. 174; and 406, 2d edit.

which Catholic emancipation had been carried, that they too had come to think some change had become indispensable, or, from resentment at its authors, resolved not to oppose it. Amidst a "chaos of unanimity," as it has been well styled, produced by these causes, the Reform Bill was carried: the close boroughs, the channel of colonial representation, were closed; and the government of the empire was vested, with scarcely any control, in a million electors of Great Britain and Ireland.

lowing the example only by the entire prostration of their resources, under the effects of Negro emancipation; and the discontent produced by the abolition of the benefit of colonial protection, from the consequences of free trade, renders it a matter of certainty that, on the first serious reverse to the state, they will, like the colonies of Athens or Carthage on a similar crisis, and from a similar cause, declare them. selves independent, or openly range themselves under the banner of our enemies.

93. So vast was the power enjoyed by the leaders of the Reform movement under the first parliament returned by the new constitution, so vehemently was a large part of the nation set upon revolutionary measures, that if they had chosen to have gone on in the career, the British constitution was at an end. Beyond all question they might have abolished the house of peers, confiscat

92. It was foreseen and predicted at the time,* what subsequent events have abundantly verified, that the effect of this great change would be to break up the bond of union which had hitherto in so wonderful a manner held together the British empire, and by impelling the national policy into measures dictated by the selfish desires of the majority in the dominant island, without any regard to the interests of the un-ed the church property, annihilated the represented colonies, render probable, national debt, dethroned the sovereign. if not certain, at no distant period, The besom of destruction was as firmtheir separation from the parent state, ly placed in their hands as ever it had and consequent ruin of its maritime been in those of Mirabeau and the Consuperiority. Such an effect has already stitutent Assembly. But in that eventtaken place, or is in the course of being ful crisis the indelible influence of race realised. Canada has broken into open appeared. The English character was revolt, and only a slender bond still at- not awanting to itself. With a tem. taches it to the parent state; the West perance in the exercise of power, which Indies have been prevented from fol- is as worthy of praise as their conduct "This consideration points to the fun- that of shopkeepers, it contains no prodamental and irremediable defect of the pro- vision for the interests of the other classes, posed constitution, that it vests an over- and still less for the welfare of the remote whelming majority in the populace of these but important parts of the empire. These islands, to the exclusion of the other great remote possessions being unrepresented, can and weighty interests of the British empire. have no influence on the electors but by the By vesting the right of returning members corrupt channel of actual bribery. The most to parliament in forty-shilling freeholders valuable feature of the British constitution, in the counties, and ten-pound tenants in that of affording an inlet through the close towns, the command of the legislature will burghs to all the great and varied interests be placed in hands inaccessible, save by of the empire, will be destroyed. The Reactual bribery, to the approach of the colo- form Bill in this view should be entitled 'a nial or shipping interests. If such a change bill for disfranchising the colonial and shipping does not produce a revolution, it must in interests, and vesting the exclusive right of the end lead to the dismemberment of the returning members to parliament in the poempire. The East and West Indian and pulace of Great Britain and Ireland.'"-On Canadian dependencies will not long submit Parliamentary Reform and the French Revoluto the rule of the populace in the dominant tion, No. V.; Blackwood's Magazine, May 1, island, indifferent to their interests, ignor-1831. The author, at the distance of twenty ant of their circumstances, careless of their welfare. This evil is inherent in any system of uniform representation, and must, to the end of time, render it unfit for the legislature of a great and varied empire. Being based mainly upon one class of society, which under the proposed system will be

years, can reflect with satisfaction that he has nothing to unsay or regret in a predic. tion made during the heat of the first discussions on the Reform Bill; and that subsequent events have tended only to demonstrate that his first anticipations of the effects of the measure were too true.

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