Part 3

"Whenever that man gets my place we shall have strange doings," Palmerston had said toward the end of his life, alluding to the open-minded Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Gladstone, and had he remained on earth for another generation, he would indeed have seen much done by his erstwhile followers under Gladstone's direction which he would have accounted passing strange. Admitting the democratic principle that the state owed it to itself to provide every man's child with an education, Gladstone inaugurated (1870) a beneficent system of free public schools. An old popular grievance, the viva voce method of voting at parliamentary elections, was done away and the secret ballot substituted (1872), a change which struck a heavy blow at the prevalent bribery and intimidation. He corrected one of the worst abuses in the army by abolishing the purchase system, under which a junior officer was accustomed to buy his promotion by compensating his seniors, a practice which had closed the higher grades to men of small means. The extension of the suffrage to the agricultural laborers was finally reached by his Reform Bill of 1884, the last class being thus admitted to the body politic.

THE CAUSE OF IRELAND

But it was to the grievances of Ireland that Gladstone bent the readiest ear, and it was upon that reef that his political career made shipwreck at the last. In his first ministry he undertook and carried the disestablishment of the Irish Church, by which the Irish Catholics were relieved of an odious burden. His Irish Land Act of 1870 aimed to give the tenant-farmer certain valuable rights in the land which he rented. The result was rather to redouble the cry against "landlordism," with its corollary of agrarian crime. A second Land Act (1881) provided a land court for adjusting rents. Instead of quieting the disorders this indulgent legislation was the signal for a fresh outburst of crime. The Irish Land League was organized to secure the abolition of landlordism, and when the Irish leader, Charles Stewart Parnell, was imprisoned he exhorted the tenants to cease paying rent altogether until the government should grant all their demands. The Liberals were forced for the moment to use strong measures to restore order to Ireland, but the Home Rule party in Parliament, skillfully led by Mr. Parnell, continued to embarrass legislation and obstruct the ordinary functions of government. In April, 1886, Mr, Gladstone, having become Prime Minister for the third time, asked Parliament to grant home rule to Ireland through an Irish Parliament sitting at Dublin. Parnell and his following supported the measure, but the Liberal party was rent in twain. Lord Hartington, Joseph Chamberlain, John Bright, and others of less note, deserted their old chief. Enough of these "Liberal Unionists" seceded to defeat the bill. In August, 1892, the aged Liberal chieftain again carried the elections and took the seals of office for the fourth time. Home Rule was again the principal plank in his platform, and all the energies of the "Grand Old Man" were mustered to carry a new law differing somewhat from the bill of 1886. Though it passed the Commons (301 to 267) it was thrown out by the Lords by 419 to 41, and his successor, Lord Rosebery, had no mind to renew the contest.

The Gladstonian foreign policy was such as might have been expected from a leader whose motto was "Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform." It was never aggressive, and in the opinion of many, it was lacking in the assertion of British rights. Thus, in 1871, when Russia refused to be bound longer by the treaty stipulations forbidding her to maintain a war fleet on the Euxine, Mr. Gladstone did not hold her to her engagement. In England it was thought to be a sign of weakness in his government to allow the "Alabama" and "San Juan Boundary" questions to be settled by arbitrators instead of by diplomacy or a show of force. In 1881, when the Boers of the Transvaal had worsted the British at Majuba Hill, they received from Gladstone an honorable peace instead of extermination. The abandonment of the Egyptian Soudan, in 1883, which carried with it the massacre of General Gordon, at Khartoum, was perhaps the heaviest load that the Gladstonian foreign policy ever had to bear.

DISRAELI AND IMPERIALISM

Foreign affairs were the field of Disraeli's most brilliant exploits. "He had two ruling ideas," says the historian Oman, "the first was the conception of England as an imperial world- power, interested in European politics, but still more interested in the maintenance and development of her vast colonial and Indian empire. This is the notion which friends and enemies now using the word in different senses call 'imperialism.' The second ruling thought in Disraeli's mind was the conviction that the Conservative party ought to step forward as rival to the Liberal party in commanding the sympathies and allegiance of the masses." In pursuance of this second idea he took the "leap in the dark," in 1867, carrying a reform bill which was but little short of democratic in its extension of the right to vote. This was followed up by legislation favoring the English tenant-farmers, and improving the condition of workingmen in towns. Even after Disraeli's death, Lord Salisbury continued his domestic policy, instituting local government by means of county councils in 1888, making the schools free in 1891, and refunding the national debt in 1888.

It was a great day for the British empire when Disraeli's telegram to the hard-pressed Khedive of Egypt, in 1875, bought for England the controlling interest in the Suez canal, the water-gate to India. It was a bold stroke of Disraeli's also which, at the close of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, compelled the victor to take his paw from the throat of his victim and submit the treaty to a congress of the powers at Berlin, where its terms were modified and England was admitted to its benefits. The Second Afghan War (1878-80), and the Zulu War (1878-79), and the Boer War, which brought little glory to Britain, were the direct result of the Prime Minister's desire to extend the empire and strengthen its frontiers. It may have been theatrical, but it was certainly impressive to the assembled princes of India when Lord Lytton, the Viceroy, proclaimed Victoria Empress of India in Delhi, the old capital of the Moguls, on January 1, 1877. And though Disraeli (raised to the peerage as Lord Beaconsfield) was in his grave, his spirit dominated the pageantry of 1887 and 1897, when every nation and tribe and kindred and people of the Greater Britain sent representatives to London to celebrate the jubilee and diamond jubilee of the Empress-Queen, to whose aggrandizement he had contributed so effectively.

AFTER A HUNDRED YEARS

The century closes upon another England than that which was struggling against Napoleon at its dawn. Instead of the "right little tight little island," a compact and self-contained nation, it is now the head of an empire comparable in extent and population with no other since the Rome of Augustus. Canada, Federal Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa form a Greater Britain, while the subject lands and islands dot the globe. The problem which confronts the English at the end of the century is not whether they can hold their own against a foreign power as in the days of Waterloo, but whether all these British commonwealths can be made to work together in some sort of federal union, or whether the present ties are to dissolve or snap asunder and girdle the globe with independent states like the American republic, where each may be free to develop under its peculiar conditions the genius of the Anglo-Saxon race.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. How was England situated at the opening of the nineteenth century? 2. What did the names Hohenlinden, Trafalgar, and Austerlitz mean to England? 3. Sum up briefly the career of Wellesley. 4. How did Canning's policy mark a turning-point in British foreign affairs? 5. What was the result of the Catholic agitation? 6. How did the locomotive influence England's empire? 7. How was Parliament changed by the Reform Bill? 8. What changes in the Poor Laws were at once undertaken? 9. What action regarding slavery and Irish taxation? 10. What was the Chartist agitation? 11. Describe the agitation for "repeal." 12. Why did the Corn Laws become intolerable? 13. What reforms were wrought through the influence of the Earl of Shaftesbury? 14. Through what foreign complications did England pass under Palmerston? 15. What important abuses were corrected under Gladstone's leadership? 16. Describe his dealings with the Irish question. 17. How were certain great foreign matters dealt with by his government? 18. What brilliant foreign achievements were accomplished by Disraeli? 19. What is England's problem in the twentieth century?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

HISTORY OF ENGLAND DURING THE THIRTY YEARS' PEACE. By Harriet Martineau. HISTORY OF ENGLAND SINCE 1815. By Spencer Walpole. THE HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. By Justin McCarthy. ENGLAND IN THE XIXTH CENTURY. By Elizabeth Wormely Latimer. THE GREVILLE MEMOIRS. Edited by Henry Reeve. HISTORY OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT. By R. G. Gammage. THE REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. Edited by T. Humphrey Ward. HISTORY OF ENGLAND. By W. N. Molesworth.

WELLINGTON, AND THE STRUGGLE WITH NAPOLEON

In February, 1792, William Pitt, Prime Minister of George III., unfolding his annual budget in the House of Commons, declared, "Unquestionably there never was a time in the history of this country when, from the situation of Europe, we might more reasonably expect fifteen years of peace, than at the present moment." Yet within a twelvemonth after this utterance, apparently sincere, France and England were plunged into a war which lasted, with but one brief intermission, until 1815. It embroiled in succession nearly every nation in Europe. In France it provided a theater for the genius of Napoleon, who after conquering in turn the best soldiers of the continent, was to meet his match in the Duke of Wellington on the field of Waterloo.

The first period of the war mainly antedates the century which we are considering. In 1793 the Convention, the revolutionary body which had taken the place of the overturned French monarchy, declared war on Holland and England. Pitt was still at the head of King George III.'s ministry, and the conduct of the war devolved upon him. Her insular position and powerful fleet rendered England safe from invasion, but her active participation in the military operations upon the continent was limited in measure and distressing in outcome. The expeditions which she landed in the Netherlands were shockingly inadequate in numbers, and led by high-born generals without knowledge, talent, or experience. It is little wonder that they accomplished nothing except to feed the French contempt for English arms.

Successive coalitions were formed by the energetic Pitt with Prussia, Austria, and other nations to check the advance of the republican armies in which, after 1795, the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte leaped into prominence. His victories disintegrated these alliances, which had been cemented with English gold. At the same time his victories so strengthened his personal hold upon the army and the nation that he was able to make himself absolute master of France.

The Peace of Amiens (March, 1802, to May, 1803) afforded the only breathing space in all these twenty-two years of warfare. Napoleon, now first consul, was soon to change that republican mask for the honest and ambitious title of emperor. The hollowness of the peace soon became evident. Under its cloak French ships were building and French armies mustering in the channel ports for the invasion of England. The character of the strife had now radically changed. At the outset, ten years before, England had joined hands with the continental monarchies to check the spread of the liberal ideas which the French republican armies were carrying on their bayonets in a species of crusade in the name of liberty. But with the accession of Bonaparte to the throne of the Bourbons, England was plunged into a struggle for existence. Napoleon himself said that peace could never prevail in Europe so long as England had the power to disturb it, and all parties in England were resolved to combat to the last the establishment of a vast and menacing military despotism beyond the Straits of Dover.

The genius of Admiral Nelson preserved the command of the narrow seas for England, and forced the Emperor to abandon his project of invasion which had aroused the English nation to unprecedented military activity. Pitt's subsidies had again set the continental armaments in motion, but Napoleon's brilliant dash into Germany brought these to naught in the battle of Austerlitz, which destroyed the Third Coalition and brought Austria to terms. It was this news that the great Prime Minister of George III. took so to heart. He survived the disaster but a few weeks. But the ministry of "All the Talents" took up his task with no thought of abandoning the struggle. The death of Fox soon broke up this administration, but those of Portland, Perceval, and Liverpool, which followed, were as dogged in their resolution to spend the last pound, and the last man, if need were, in ridding Europe of the conqueror whose existence England had now come to regard as a threat against her national independence.

As his conquests added state after state to the territory in which his word was law, Napoleon developed new tactics against England. He conceived it practicable to crush that commercial and manufacturing power by excluding her goods from the markets of Europe. This "continental system" was inaugurated in November, 1806, by the Berlin Decree which closed the ports of Europe to British vessels, and declared a paper blockade against the British Isles. This policy he forced upon nation after nation, to which his conquests extended. England retaliated by the "Orders in Council," which declared a blockade against the French ports, and authorized the seizure of neutral vessels found trading with them. By a naval raid in September, 1807, the British swooped down on Denmark and carried off the Danish fleet to keep that weapon from falling into the Emperor's hands. Two months later, in anticipation of a British descent, French armies seized Portugal and entered Spain.

Up to the entrance of the French into the Spanish Peninsula, the protracted hostilities had brought little advantage to the British arms except on the sea. It was the Peninsular War, precipitated by this fresh encroachment of Napoleon, which first gave a laurel to the English arms and prepared Wellington for Waterloo. Napoleon and the soldier who was to overthrow him were born in the same year. The babe whom the world was to know as the Duke of Wellington was christened in Dublin in May, 1769, by the name of Arthur Wesley. (In 1798 the older spelling of the family name, Wellesley, was resumed.) He was descended from English ancestors long resident in Ireland, and was himself the fourth son of the Earl of Mornington. The death of the Earl when Arthur was but twelve years old left the family in slender circumstances. Richard, the eldest son and successor to the title, had achieved high university honors, but Arthur was a slow student of everything save music and mathematics. After a brief residence at Eton he entered a higher institution at Angers, in France. His mother thought him worth nothing better than "food for powder," and at eighteen he obtained a commission as ensign in the Seventy-sixth Regiment of British Foot. Family influence and the purchase of his "steps" soon made him a lieutenant- colonel (1793) of the Thirty-third Foot. He had already been three years a member of the Irish House of Commons where, however, he did not distinguish himself.

England was now at war with France, and Colonel Arthur Wellesley's first foreign service was in 1794, when his regiment was sent to the support of the Duke of York, who was near the end of his ignominious campaign in the Low Countries. In March, 1795, he was back in England, disgusted with the incompetency of his superiors. Of the value of this experience he afterward said, "Why, I learned what one ought not to do, and that is always something." At the time, however, he was less philosophical, and after consulting with his wise elder brother as to the future possibilities of distinction in military life, he applied for a civil office under the Lord Lieutenant of England.

Instead of droning out his life in a treasury clerkship, Wellesley found a more strenuous career abroad. In the autumn of 1795 his regiment was ordered to India, where he arrived in February, 1797. A year later his already famous brother Richard, Lord Mornington, came out as Governor-general. The brothers were sincerely devoted to each other, and co-operated cordially in the important operations which followed. The English possessions in India were then limited to the coast regions, the kings and princes of the states of the interior being variously bound to the East india Company by treaty engagements. The news of the victorious progress of the French arms in Europe lost nothing by repetition in the bazaars of Hindustan, and emissaries of France were not wanting to stir the native princes against England. Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt in 1798 revealed his intention to attack England through her Indian realm. In February, 1799, the Governor-general declared war against Tippoo, Sultan of Mysore, a powerful prince, who had been plotting in the French interest. The younger Wellesley had contributed much to the efficient organization of the army which was to invade the Sultan's territory, and after the fall of Seringapatam he distinguished himself by his firm and orderly administration of the conquered domain. In 1802, the year of the Peace of Amiens, he was made a major-general. When the news of the treaty with France reached him, his opinion was emphatically expressed: "It establishes the French power over Europe, and when we shall have disarmed we shall have no security except in our own abjectness." The conquest of Mysore left only the Mahratta confederacy undominated by British authority. These states, a vast domain in western and central India, having quarreled among themselves, applied to the British for aid. General Wellesley secured the close alliance of one party, and as commander-in-chief, took the field against the others. On the 23rd of September, 1803, he found himself with seven thousand five hundred men in the presence of the Mahratta host of fifty thousand men with one hundred and twenty-eight guns. Retreat was difficult, speedy reinforcement impossible. The young major-general determined an attack immediately, and handling his little army with great skill and intrepid courage, he routed the enemy in the great victory of Assaye, which broke the Mahratta power. For his exploits he received the thanks of King and Parliament, and was dubbed a Knight of the Bath.

General Sir Arthur Wellesley returned to England in 1805, after seven years absence in India. On his way he touched at the Isle of St. Helena, and took note of its beautiful scenery and salubrious climate. Doubtless the impression then made was recalled ten years later, when it became necessary to select a safe residence for his defeated foe. To one who expressed surprise that a man of his solid achievement should receive but a subordinate post as that to which he was assigned on his return to England, General Wellesley said, "I am NIM MUK WALLAH, as we say in the East. I have eaten of the King's salt and therefore I conceive it to be my duty to serve with zeal and cheerfulness when and wherever the King or his government may think fit to employ me." This expression explains his lifelong attitude toward the crown. He considered himself its "retained servant."

It was two years before his talents were properly utilized. Meanwhile he was member of Parliament and secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The Peninsular War was his opportunity. Napoleon had sent Marshal Junot to Lisbon with an army to seize the country and force it into his continental system, the royal family retiring to Brazil as he advanced. At almost the same time, by a series of conscienceless machinations, he had compelled the King of Spain to abdicate, and had occupied Madrid and the fortresses of the northern provinces. In spite of popular risings against the French, Napoleon made his brother Joseph King of Spain. At once revolt flamed out among the common people, and the insurrection spread through both kingdoms, and was accepted in England as an invitation to come to their relief.

Pitt had foreseen amid the shadows of the defeat of Austerlitz that the Iberian Peninsula might be the final field of resistance to Napoleon, and now events had brought his successors to the same view. It was accessible by England's ocean highway, its people were high-spirited, and impatient of foreign domination, and a successful campaign there would threaten the French flank. In June, 1808, an expedition was dispatched to the aid of the Spanish and Portuguese insurrectionists, and the command was given to Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Wellesley. The night before he left London he said to the friend who interrupted his reverie, "Why, I am thinking of the French. . . . 'Tis enough to make one thoughtful. But no matter; my die is cast. They may overwhelm me, but I don't think they will out-manueuver me. . . . I suspect all the continental armies were more than half-beaten before the battle was begun. I at least will not be beaten beforehand."

The qualities which fitted this officer for the heavy work in hand were those which had been developed and tested in India. He was, first of all, a worker of surpassing industry and the closest application. Where others were brilliant, he was thorough. No commander ever left less to chance or to the inspiration of the moment. He prepared for his campaigns by subjecting his troops to the most thorough drill and by providing them properly with all the munitions of war. His troops were shaped by incessant care and pains into a perfect weapon, the use of which he perfectly understood. Further than this, his experience in India, where conditions had made him the responsible administrator of vast native states, made him the right man to conduct a campaign in the peninsula, where, between the French and the Nationalists, civil administration had fallen into great disorder, and where all sorts of extraordinary tasks devolved upon the British representative. His management of his uncertain allies, the guerrilla chiefs, and his relations with the revolutionary "juntas" called for qualities as rare as those which defeated one after another of Napoleon's marshals and finally worsted the great captain himself. Thoroughness of preparation, the ability to see things as they are, to wait patiently, decide promptly, and act with energy--these are perhaps simple military virtues, but they bring success, and they were in high degree the possession of the young Indian officer, who was now to undertake a difficult campaign in a foreign country. The event proved that with such qualities a general may compass the most difficult tasks, though he may be "cold" in temperament, and incapable of kindling in the breasts of his men that passionate personal devotion which some hold to be the true test of a great soldier.

Wellesley disembarked his expeditionary force in August, at Mondego Bay, a hundred miles north of Lisbon, which Junot held with twelve thousand men. Junot advanced to meet the English, and at Vimiero Wellesley met and defeated the first of Napoleon's marshals. Before the close of the day the arrival of a superior officer terminated Wellesley's command. He had, however, inflicted such a blow that Junot was glad to sign a convention which permitted him to evacuate the kingdom. Wellesley returned to England.