The Leading Facts of English History

by D. H. Montgomery

TENTH PERIOD

"The history of England is emphatically the history of progress. It is the history of a constant movement of the public mind, of a constant change in the institutions of a great society."—Macaulay

India Gained; America Lost—Parliamentary Reform—Government by the
People

The House of Hanover (1714) to the Present Time

George I, 1714-1727 William IV, 1830-1837
George II, 1727-1760 Victoria, 1837-1901
George III, 1760-1820 Edward VII, 1901-1910
George IV, 1820-1830 George V, 1910-

532. Accession of George I.

As Queen Anne died without leaving an heir to the throne (S515),
George, Elector of Hanover, in accordance with the Act of Settlement
(S497), now came into possession of the English crown. (See
Genealogical Table opposite.) The new King had no desire whatever to
go to England.

As he owed his new position to Whig legislation (S479), he naturally favored that party and turned his back on the Tories (S479), who, deprived of the sunshine of royal favor, were as unhappy as their rivals were jubilant. The triumphant Whigs denounced "the shameful Peace of Utrecht" (S512). Next, they impeached the three fallen Tory leaders,[2] of whom Harley was the chief (S510), on a charge of treason. The indictment accused them of having given back to Louis XIV, in the late war, more captured territory than was necessary. Furthermore, they were said to be guilty of having intrigued to restore the House of Stuart with the design of making the "Pretender" King (SS490, 491). Harley was sent to the Tower of London for a time; he was then acquitted and released. Meanwhile his two indicted associates had fled to France.

[2] The three Tory leaders were Harley, now Earl of Oxford (S510), St. John (Viscount Bolingbroke), and Butler (Duke of Ormonde). Bolingbroke and Ormonde fled to Frnce, where the first entered the service of the "Pretender," but he was ultimately permitted to return to England. Ormonde never came back. Harley, as stated above, was sent to the Tower; while there he secretly wrote to the "Pretender" (S490), and offered him his services.

Later, the Whigs repealed two harsh religious statutes (S511) directed against Dissenters (S472), which the Tories and the High Churchmen had enacted in the previous reign for the purpose of keeping themselves in power.

The House of Hanover, also called Brunswick and Guelf

James (Stuart) I of England
I
+—————————======================
| I
Charles I Elizabeth, m. Frederick,
| Elector-Palatine,* and
———————————————- later King of Bohemia
| | | I
Charles II James II Mary, m. Sophia, m. the Elector
| William II of of Hanover+
———————————- Orange I
| | | | George, Elector of
Mary, m. Anne James William III of Hanover, became
William III Edward Orange, became George I of England,
of Orange, Stuart, William III of 1714
afterward (the so- England, I
William III called "Old 1689 George II
of England Pretender, I
b. 1688, Frederick, Prince of
d. 1765 Wales (died before
| coming to the throne)
Charles Edward I
Stuart (the so-called ============================
"Young Pretender"), I I I
b. 1720, d. 1788 George IV William IV Edward,
Duke of Kent,
d. 1820
*Elector-Palatine: a prince ruling over the I
territory called the Palatinate in Victoria
western Germany, on the Rhine. I
+Elector of Hanover: a prince ruling over the Edward VII
province of Hanover, a part of the German I
Empire, lying on the North Sea. The elector George V
received his title from the fact that he was
one of a certain number of princes who had
the right of electing the German Emperor.

533. Character of the New King.

The new sovereign was a selfish, coarse old man, who in private life would, as Lady Montagu said, have passed for an honest blockhead. He neither knew anything about England, nor did he desire to know anything of it. He could not speak a word of the language of the country he was called to govern, and he made no attempt to learn it; even the coronation service had to be explained to him as best it might, in such broken Latin as the ministers could muster.

Laboring under these disadvantages he wisely declined to take any active part in the affairs of the nation. He trusted everything to his Whig friends (S532) and let them, with Sir Robert Walpole at their head, manage the country in their own way.

Forunately, the great body of the English people were abundantly able to take care of themselves. A noted French writer said of them that they resembled a barrel of their own beer, froth at the top, dregs at the bottom, but thoroughly sound and wholesome in the middle. It was this middle class, with their solid practical good sense, that kept the nation right.

They were by no means enthusiastic worshipers of the German King who had come to reign over them, but they saw that he had three good qualities: he was no hypocrite, he did not waste the people's money, and he was a man of unquestioned courage. But they also saw more than this, for they realized that though George I might be as heavy, dull, and wooden as the figurehead of an old-fashioned ship, yet, like that figurehead, he stood for something greater and better than himself,— for he represented Protestantism, with civil and religious liberty,— and so the people gave him their allegiance.

534. Rise of Cabinet Government; the First Prime Minister.

The present method of Cabinet Government dates in great part from this reign. From the earliest period of English history the sovereign was accustomed to have a permanent council composed of some of the chief men of the realm, whom he consulted on all matters of importance (SS144, 145). Charles II, either because he found this body inconveniently large for the rapid transaction of business, or because he believed it inexpedient to discuss his plans with so many, selected a small confidential committee from it (S476). This committee met to consult with the King in his cabinet, or private room, and so came to be called "the Cabinet Council," or briefly, "the Cabinet," a name which it has ever since retained.

During Charles II's reign and that of his immediate successors the King continued to choose this special council from those whom he believed to be friendly to his measures, often without much regard to party lines, and he was aways present at their meetings. With the accession of George I, however, a great change took place. His want of acquaintance with prominent men made it difficult for him to select a Cabinet himself, and his ignorance of English rendered his presence at its meetings wholly useless. For these reasons the new King adopted the expedient of appointing a chief adviser, or Prime Minister, who personally chose his own Cabinet from men of the political party to which he belonged.

Sir Robert Walpole, who held this office of chief adviser for more than twenty years (1721-1742), is commonly considered to have been the first actual Prime Minister, and the founder of that system of Cabinet Government which prevails in England to-day. He was a master hand at managing his fellow ministers in the Cabinet, and when one of them, named Townshend, aspired to share the leadership, Walpole said to him, "The firm must be Walpole and Townshend, not Townshend and Walpole." But later (1741) a minority in the Lords protested "that a sole or even First Minister is an officer unknown to the law of Britain, inconsistent withthe Constitution of this country, and destructive of liberty in any government whatsoever." Then Walpole thought it expedient to disclaim the title; but many years later the younger Pitt declared (1803) that there ought to be "an avowed minister possessing the chief weight in the Council" or Cabinet, and that view eventually prevailed.[1] The Cabinet, or "Government," as it is usually called,[2] generally consists of twelve or fifteen persons chosen by the Prime Minister, or Premier,[3] from the leading members of both houses of Parliament, but whose political views agree in the main with the majority of the House of Commons.[4]

But this system, as it now stands, was gradually developed. It had advanced to such a point under the dictatorial rule of Sir Robert Walpole that George II, chafing under the restriction of his power, said bitterly, "In England the ministers are King." George III, however, succeeded, for a time, in making himself practically supreme, but Cabinet Government soon came to the front again, and, under William IV, the Prime Minister, with his Cabinet, ceased to look to the sovereign for guidance and support, and became responsible to the House of Commons (provided that body reflects the public opinion of the nation).

[1] Feilden's "Constitutional History of England," Taswell-Langmead's "English Constitutional History," and A.L. Lowell's "The Government of England," 2 vols. [2] "The Cabinet, the body to which, in common use, we have latterly come to give the name of Government." Encyclopaedia Britannica (10th edition, VIII, 297). [3] "Premier": from the French premier, first or chief. [4] The existence of the Cabinet depends on custom, not law. Its three essential characteristics are generally considered to be: (1) Practical unanimity of party; (2) Practical unity of action under the leadership of the Prime Minister; (3) Collective responsibility to the party in the House of Commons which represents the political majority of the nation. Its members are never OFFICIALLY made known to the public, nor its proceedings recorded. Its meetings, which take place at irregular intervals, according to pressure of business, are entirely secret, and the sovereign is never present. As the Cabinet agrees in its composition with the majority of the House of Commons, it follows that if the Commons are Conservative, the Cabinet will be so likewise; and if Liberal, the reverse. Theoretically, the sovereign chooses the Cabinet; but practically the selection is now always made by the Prime Minister. If at any time the Prime Minister, with his Cabinet, finds that his political policy no longer agrees with that of the House of Commons, he and the other members of the Cabinet resign, and the sovereign chooses a new Prime Minister from the opposite party, who forms a new Cabinet in harmony with himself and the Commons. If, however, the Prime Minister has good reason for believing that a different House of Commons would support him, the sovereign may, by his advice, dissolve Parliament. A new election then takes place, and according to the political character of the members returned, the Cabinet remains in or goes out of power. The Cabinet, or Government, now invariably includes the following officers:

1. The First Lord of the Treasury (usually the Prime Minister).
2. The Lord Chancellor.
3. The Lord President of the Council.
4. The Lord Privy Seal.
5. The Chancellor of the Exchequer.
6. The Secretary of State for Home Affairs.
7. The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
8. The Secretary of State for the Colonies.
9. The Secretary of State for India.
10. The Secretary of State for War.
11. The First Lord of the Admiralty.

In addition, a certain number of other officers are frequently included, making the whole number about twelve or fifteen.

535. The "Pretender"; "The Fifteen" (1715); the Septennial Act (1716).

The fact that George I exclusively favored the Whigs exasperated the opposite, or Tory, party. The Jacobites or extreme members of that party (S495), in Scotland, with the secret aid of many in England, now rose, in the hope of placing on the throne James Edward Stuart, the son of James II. He was called the "Chevalier"[1] by his friends, but the "Pretender" by his enemies (SS490, 491, 512). The insurrection was led by John, Earl of Mar, who, from his frequent change of politics, had got the nickname of "Bobbing John." Mar encountered the royal forces at Sheriffmuir, in Perthsire, Scotland (1715), where an indecisive battle was fought, which the old ballad thus describes:

"There's some say that we won, and some say that they won,
And some say that none won at a', man;
But one thing is sure, that at Sheriffmuir
A battle there was, which I saw, man."

[1] The Chevalier de St. George: After the birth of the "Chevalier's" son Charles in 1720, the father was known by the nickname of the "Old Pretender," and the son as the "Young Pretender." So far as birth could entitle them to the crown, they held the legal right of succession; but the Revolution of 1688 and the Act of Settlement barred them out (S497).

On the same day of the fight at Sheriffmuir, the English Jacobites
(S495), with a body of Scotch allies, marched into Preston,
Lancashire, and there surrendered, almost without striking a blow.

The leaders of the movement, except the Earl of Mar, who, with one or two others, escaped to the Continent, were beheaded or hanged, and about a thousand of the rank and file were sold as slaves to the West India and Virginia plantations (S487). The "Pretender" himself landed in Scotland a few weeks after the defeat of his friends; but finding no encouragement, he hurried back to the Continent again. Thus ended the rebellion known from the year of its outbreak (1715) as "The Fifteen."

One result of this was the passage of the septennial Act (1716), extending the duration of Parliament from three years, which was the longest time that body could sit (SS439, 517), to seven years (since reduced to five years).[2] The object of this change was to do away with the excitement and tendency to rebellion at that time, resulting from frequent elections, in which party feeling ran to dangerous extremes.

[2] The Triennial Act (SS439, 517) provided that at the end of three years Parliament must be dissolved and a new election held. This was to prevent the sovereign from keeping that body in power indefinitely, contrary, perhaps, to the political feeling of the country, which might prefer a different set of representatives. Under the Septennial Act the time was extended four years, making seven in all, but the sovereign may, of course, dissolve Parliament at any time. In 1911 the Parliament Act (S631) limited the duration of Parliament to five years.

536. The South Sea Bubble, 1720.

A few years later a gigantic enterprise was undertaken by the South Sea Company, a body of merchants originally organized as a company trading in the southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans. A Scotchman named Law had started a similar project in France, known as the "Mississippi Company," which proposed to pay off the national debt of France from the profits of its commerce with the West Indies and the country bordering on the Mississippi River.

Following his example, the South Sea Company now undertook to pay off the English National Debt (S503), mainly, it is said, from the profits of the slave trade between Africa and Brazil.[1] Sir Robert Walpole (S534) had no faith in the scheme, and attacked it vigorously; but other influential members of the Government gave it their encouragement. The directors came out with prospectuses promising dividends of fifty per cent on all money invested. Everybody rushed to buy stock, and the shares rapidly advaced from 100 pounds to 1000 pounds a share.

[1] Loftie's "History of London"; and see S512.

A speculative craze followed, the like of which has never since been known. Bubble companies sprang into existence with objects almost as absurd as those of the philosophers whom Swift ridiculed in "Gulliver's Travel's," where one man was trying to make gunpowder out of ice, and another to extract sunbeams from cucumbers.

A mere list of these companies would fill several pages. One was to give instruction in astrology, by which every man might be able to foretell his own destiny by examining the stars; a second was to manufacture butter out of beech trees; a third was for a wheel for driving machinery, which once started would go on forever, thereby furnishing a cheap perpetual motion.

A fourth projector, going beyond all the rest in audacity, had the impudence to offer stock for sale in an enterprise "which shall be revealed hereafter." He found the public so gullible and so greedy that he sold 2000 pounds worth of the new stock in the course of a single morning. He then prudently disappeard with the cash, and the unfortunate investors found that where he went with their money was not among the things to "be revealed hereafter."

The narrow passage leading to the London stock exchange was crowded
all day long with struggling fortune hunters, both men and women.
Suddenly, when the excitement was at its height, the bubble burst, as
Law's scheme in France had a little earlier.

Great numbers of people were hopelessly ruined, and the cry for vengeance was as loud as the bids for stock had once been. One prominent government official who had helped to blow the bubble was sent to the Tower. Another committed suicide rather than face a parliamentary committee of investigation, one of whose members had suggested that it would be an excellent plan to sew the South Sea directors up in sacks and throw them into the Thames.

537. How a Terrible Disease was conquered, 1721, 1796.

But among the new things which the people were to try in that century was one which led to most beneficient results. For many generations the great scourge of Europe was the smallpox. Often the disease was as violent as the plague (S474), and carried off nearly as many victims. Medical art, seemed powerless to deal with it, and even in years of ordinary health in England about one person out of ten died of this loathsome pestilence. In the early part of George I's reign, Lady Mary Montagu, then traveling to Turkey, wrote that the Turks were in the habit of inoculating their children for the disease, which rendered it much milder and less fatal, and that she was about to try the experiment on her own son.

Later, Lady Montagu returned to England, and through her influence and example the practice was introduced there, 1721. It was tried first on five criminals in Newgate who had been sentenced to the gallows, but were promised their freedom if they would consent to the operation. As it proved a complete success, the Princess of Wales, with the King's consent, caused it to be tried on her daughter, with equally good results.

The medical profession, however, generally refused to sanction the practice, and the clergy in many cases preached against it as an "invention of Satan, intended to counteract the purposes of an all-wise Providence." But through the perseverance and good sense of Lady Montagu, with a few others, the new practice gradually gained ground. Subsequently Dr. Jenner began to make experiments of a different kind, which led, late in the century (1796-1798), to the discovery of vaccination, by which millions of lives have been saved; this, and the discovery of the use of ether in our own time (S615), may justly be called two of the greatest triumphs of the art of medicine.

538. How Sir Robert Walpole governed.

We have seen that Sir Robert Walpole (S534) became the first Prime Minister in 1721, and that he continued in office as head of the Cabinet, or Government, until near the middle of the next reign. He was an able financier, and succeeded in reducing the National Debt (S503). He believed in keeping the country out of war, and also, as we have seen, out of "bubble speculation" (S536). Finally, he was determined at all cost to maintain the Whig party in power, and the Protestant Hanoverian sovereigns on the throne (SS515, 532).

In order to accomplish these objects, he openly bribed members of Parliament to support his party; he bought votes and carried elections by gifts of titles, honors, and bank notes. He thus proved to his own satisfaction the truth of his theory that most men "have their price," and that an appeal to the pocketbook is both quicker and surer than an appeal to the principle. But before the end of his ministry he had to confess that he had found in the House of Commons a "boy patriot," as he sneeringly called him, named William Pitt (afterward Earl of Chatham), whom neither his money could buy nor his ridicule move (SS549, 550).

Bad as Walpole's policy was in its corrupting influence on the nation, it as an admission that the time had come when the King could no longer venture to rule by force, as in hte days of the Stuarts. It meant that the Crown no longer possessed the arbitrary power it once wielded. Walpole was a fox, not a lion; and "foxes," as Emerson tells us, "are so cunning because they are not strong."

539. Summary.

Though George I did little for England except keep the "Pretender" (S535) from the throne by occupying it himself, yet that was no small advantage, since it gave the country peace. The establishment of Cabinet Government under Sir Robert Walpole as the first Prime Minister, the suppression of the Jacobite insurrection, the disastrous collapse of the South Sea Bubble, and the introduction of vaccination are the principle events.

George II—1727-1760

540. Accession and Character.

The second King George, who was also of German birth, was much like his father, though he had the advantage of being able to speak English readily, but with a strong German accent. His tastes were far from being refined and he bluntly declared, "I don't like Boetry, and I don't like Bainting." His wife, Queen Caroline, was an able woman. She possessed the happy art of ruling her husband without his suspecting it, while she, on the other hand, was ruled by Sir Robert Walpole, whom the King hated, but whom he had to keep as Prime Minister (SS534, 538). George II was a good soldier, and decidedly preferred war to peace; but Walpole saw clearly that the peace policy was best for the nation, and he and the Queen managed to persuaded the King not to draw the sword.

541. The War of Jenkins's Ear (1739).

At the end of twelve years, however, trouble arose with Spain. According to the London newspapers of that day, a certain Captain Jenkins, while cruising, or, more probably, smuggling, in the West Indies, had been seized by the Spaniards and barbarously maltreated. They, if we accept his tory, accused him of attempting to land English goods contrary to law, and searched his ship. Finding nothing against him, they vented their rage and disappointment by hanging him to the yardarm of his vessel until he was nearly dead.

They then tore off one of his ears, and bade him take it to the King of England with their compliments. Jenkins, it is said, carefully wrapped up his ear and put it in his pocket. When he reached England, he went straight to the House of Commons, drew out the mutilated ear, showed it to the House, and demanded justice.

The Spanish restrictions on English trade with the Indies and South America[1] had long been a source of ill feeling. The sight of Jenkins's ear brought matters to a climax; even Sir Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister, could not resist the clamor for vengeance, and contrary to his own judgment he had to vote for war (S538).

[1] By the Treaty of Utrecht one English ship was allowed to carry slaves once a year to the colonies of Spanish America (S512, note 1).

Though Jenkins was the occasion, the real object of the war was to compel Spain to permit the English to get a larger share in the lucrative commerce, especially the slave trade, with the New World. It was another proof that America was now rapidly becoming an important factor in he politics of Great Britain (SS421, 422).

The announcement of hostilities with Spain was received in London with delight, and bells pealed from every steeple. "Yes," said Walpole," they may ring the bells now, but before long they will be wringing their hands." This prediction was verified by the heavy losses the English suffered in an expedition against the Spanish settlement of Carthagena, South America. But later the British commander, Commodore Anson, inflicted great damage on the Spanish colonies, and returned to England with vessels laden with large amounts of captured silver.

542. War of the Austrian Succession, 1741; Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748.

On the death of Charles VI, of the House of Austria, Emperor of Germany, his daughter Maria Theresa succeeded to the Austrian dominions. France now united with Spain, Prussia, and other European powers to overturn this arrangement, partly out of jealousy of the Austrian power, and partly from desire to get control of portions of the Austrian possessions. England and Holland, however, both desired to maintain Austria as a check against their old enemy France, and declared war, 1741.

During this war George II went over to the Continent to lead the English forces in person. He was not a man of commanding appearance, but he was every inch a soldier, and nothing exhilarated him like the smell of gunpowder. At the battle of Dettingen, in Bavaria, he got down from his horse, and drawing his sword, cried: "Come, boys, now behave like men, and the French will soon run."

With that, followed by his troops, he rused upon the enemy with such impetuosity that they turned and fled. This was the last battle in which an English king took part in person. It was followed by that of Fontenoy, in the Netherlands (Belgium), in which the French gained the victory. After nearly eight years fighting the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748, secured a peace advantageous for England.

543. Invasion by the "Young Pretender"; "The Forty-Five."[1]

[1] "The Forty-Five": so called from the Scotch rising of 1745.

While the War of the Austrian Succession was in progress, the French encouraged James II's grandson, Princle Charles Edward, the "Young Pretender" (S535), to make an attempt on the English crown. He landed (1745) on the northern coast of Scotland with only seven followers, but with the aid of the Scotch Jacobites (SS495, 535) of the Highlands he gained a battle over the English at Prestonpans, near Edinburgh. Emboldened by his success, he now marched into Derbyshire, England, on his way to London. He hoped that as he advanced the country would rise in his favor; but finding no support, he retreated to Scotland.

The next year he and his adherents were defeated, with great slaughter by "Butcher" Cumberland, as the Scotch called him, at Culloden, near Iverness (1746). (See map facing p. 120.) The "Young Pretender" fled from the battlefield to the Hebrides. After wandering in those islands for many months he escaped to France through the devotion and courage of the Scottish heroine, Flora Macdonald. When he left the country his Highland sympathizers lost all hope. There were no more ringing Jacobite songs, sung over bowls of steaming punch, of "Wha'll be king but Charlie?" "Over the Water to Charlie," and "Wae's me for Prince Charlie"; and when (1788) Prince Charles Edward died in Rome, the unfortunate House of Stuart, which began with James I (1603), disappeared from English history.[2]

[2] Devoted loyalty to a hopeless cause was never more truly or
pathetically expressed than in some of these Jacobite songs, notably
in those of Scotland, in honor of Prince Charles Edward, the "Young
Pretender," of which the following lines from "Over the Water to
Charlie" are an example:
"Over the water, and over the sea,
And over the water to Charlie;
Come weal, come woe, we'll gather and go,
And live or die with Charlie."
Scott, "Redgauntlet"

544. War in the East; the Black Hole of Calcutta; Clive's Victories;
English Empire of India, 1751-1757.

The English acquired Madras, their first trading post in India, in the reign of Charles I (1639). Later, they obtained possession of Bombay, Calcutta, and other points, but they had not got control of the country, which was still governed by native princes. The French also had established an important trading post at Pondicherry, south of Madras, and were now secretly planning through alliance with the native rulers to get possession of the entire country. They had met with some success in their efforts, and the times seemed to favor their gaining still greater influence unless some decided measures should be taken to prevent them.

At this juncture Robert Clive, a young man who had been employed as clerk in the service of the English East India Company, but who had obtained a humble position in the army, obtained permission to try his hand at driving back the enemy. It was a work for which he was fitted. He met with success from the first, and he followed it up by the splendid victory of Arcot, 1751, which practically gave the English control of southern India. Shortly after that, Clive returned to England.

During his absence the native prince of Bengal undertook an expedition against Calcutta, a wealthy British trading post. He captured the fort which protected it (1756), and seizing the principal English residents, one hundred and forty-six in number, drove them at the point of the sword into a prison called the "Black Hole," a dungeon less than twenty feet square, and having but two small windows.

In such a climate, in the fierce heat of midsummer, that dungeon would have been too close for a single European captive; to crowd it with more than sevenscore persons for a night meant death by all the agonies of heat, thirst, and suffocation. In vain they endeavored to bribe the guard to transfer part of them to another room, in vain they begged for mercy, in vain they tried to burst the door. Their jailers only mocked them and would do nothing.

When daylight came the floor was heaped with corpses. Out of the hundred and forty-six prisoners only twenty-three were alive and they were so changed "that their own mothers would not have known them."[1]

[1] Macaulay's "Essay on Clive."

When Clive returned he was met with a cry for vengeance. He gathered his troops, recovered Calcutta, and ended by fighting that great battle of Plassey, 1757, which was the means of permanently establishing the English empire in India on a firm foundation. (See map opposite.)

545. The Seven Years' War in Europe and America, 1756-1763.

Before the contest had closed by which England won her Asiatic dominions, a new war had broken out. In the fifth year, 1756, of the New Style[2] of reckoning time, the aggressive designs of Frederick the Great of Prussia caused such alarm that a grand alliance was formed by France, Russia, Austria, and Poland to check his further advance. Great Britain, however, gave her support to Frederick, in hope of humbling her old enemy France, who, in addition to her attempts to oust the English from India, was also making preparations on a grand scale to get possession of America.

[2] The New Style was introduced into Great Britain in 1752. Owing to a slight error in the calendar, the year had, in the course of centuries, been gradually losing, so that in 1752 it was eleven days short of what the true computation would make it. Pope Gregory corrected the error in 1582, and his calendar was adopted in nearly every country of Europe except Great Britain and Russia, both of which regarded the change as a "popish measure." But in 1751, notwithstanding the popular outcry, September 3, 1752, was made September 14, by an act of Parliament, and by the same act the beginning of the legal year was altered from March 25 to January 1. The popular clamor against the reform is illustrated in Hogarth's picture of an Election Feast, in which the People's party carry a banner, with the inscription, "Give us back our eleven days."

Every victory, therefore, which the British forces could gain in Europe would, by crippling the French, make the ultimate victory of the English in America so much the more certain; for this reason we may look upon the alliance with Frederick as an indirect means employed by England to protect her colonies on the other side of the Atlantic. These colonies now extended along the entire coast, from the Kennebec Riber, in Maine, to the borders of Florida.

The French, on the other hand, had planted colonies at Quebec and Montreal, on the St. Lawrence; at Detroit, on the Great Lakes; at New Orleans and other points on the Mississippi. They had also begun to build a line of forts along the Ohio River, which, when completed, would connect their northern and southern colonies, and thus secure to them the whole country west of the Alleghenies. They expected to conquer the East as well, to erase Virginia, New England, and all other English colonial titles from the map, and in their place to put the name New France.

During the first part of the war, the English were unsuccessful. In an attempt to take Fort Duquesne, General Braddock met with a crushing defeat (1756) from the combined French and Indian forces, which would indeed have proved his utter destruction had not a young Virginian named George Washington saved a remnant of Braddock's troops by his calmness and courage. Not long afterwards, a second expedition was sent out against the French fort, in which Washington led the advance. The garrison fled at his approach, the English colors were run up, and the place was named Pittsburg, in honor of William Pitt, later, Lord Chatham, Secretary of State, but virtually Prime Minister (S534) of England.

About the same time, the English took the forts on the Bay of Fundy, and drove out several thousand French settlers from Acadia, or Nova Scotia. Other successes followed, by which they obtained possession of important points. Finally, Canada was won from the French by Wolfe's victory over Montcalm, at Quebec, 1759.[1] where both gallant soldiers verified the truth of the words, "The paths of glory lead but to the grave,"[2] which the English general had quoted to some brother officers the vening before the attack. This ended the war.

[1] See "Leading Facts of American History," in this series, S142. [2] "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour; The paths of glory lead but to the grave." Gray, "Elegy" (1750) "I would rather be the author of that poem," said Wolfe, "than to have the glory of beating the French to-morrow." Wolfe and Montcalm were both mortally wounded and died within a few hours of each other.

Spain now ceded Florida to Great Britain, so that, when peace was made in 1763, the English flag waved over the whole eastern half of the American continent, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. Thus, within a comparatively few years, England had gained an empire in the east (India) (S544) and another in the west (America).

Six years later (1769) Captain Cook explored and mapped the coast of New Zealand, and next the eastern coast of the island continent of Australia. Before the middle of the following century both these countries were added to the possessions of Great Britain. Then, as Daniel Webster said, her "morning drum beat, following the sun and keeping company with the hours," literally circled "the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England."

546. Moral Condition of England; Intemperance; Rise of the Methodists, 1738.

But grand as were the military successes of the British arms, the reign of George II was morally torpid. With the exception of a few public men like Pitt, the majority of the Whig party (S479) seemed animated by no higher motive than self-interest. It was an age whose want of faith, coarseness, and brutality were well protrayed by Hogarth's pencil and Fielding's pen.

For a long time intemperance had been steadily on the increase; strong drink had taken the place of beer, and every attempt to restrict the traffic was met at the elections by the popular cry, "No gin, no king." The London taverns were thronged day and night, and in the windows of those frequented by the lowest class placards were exhibited with the tempting announcement, "Drunk for a penny; dead drunk for twopence; clean straw for nothing." On the straw lay men and women in beastly helplessness.

Among the upper classes matters were hardly better. It was a common thing for great statesmen to drink at public dinners until one by one they slid out of their seats and disappeared under the table; and Sir Robert Walpole, the late Prime Minister of England (S534, 538), said that when he was a young man his father would say to him as he poured out the wine, "Come, Robert, you shall drink twice while I drink once, for I will not permit the son in his sober senses to be witness of the intoxication of his father."[1]

[1] Coxe's "Memoirs of Walpole" and Lecky's "England."

Such was the condition of England when a great religious revival began, 1738. Its leader was John Wesley. A number of years earlier, while a tutor at Oxford, he and his brother Charles, with a few others, were accustomed to meet at certain hours for devotional exercises. The regularity of their meetings, and of their habits generally, got for them the name of "Methodists," which, like "Quaker" and many another nickname of the kind, was destined to become a title of respect and honor.

At first Wesley had no intention of separating from the Church of England, but labored only to quicken it to new life; eventually, however, he found it best to begin a more extended and independent movement. The revival swept over England with its regenerating influence, and was carried by Whitefield, Wesley's lifelong friend, across the sea to America. It was especially powerful among those who had hitherto scoffed at both Church and Bible. Rough and hardened men were touched and melted to tears of repentance by the fervor of this Oxford graduate, whom neither threats nor ridicule could turn aside from his one great purpose of saving souls.

Unlike the Church, Wesley did not ask the multitude to come to him; he went to them. In this respect his work recalls that of the "Begging Friars" of the thirteenth century (S208), and of Wycliffe's "Poor Priests" in the fourteenth (S254). For more than thirty years he rode on horseback from one end of England to the other, making known the glad tidings of Christian hope. He preached in the fields, under trees which are still known by the expressive name of "Gospel Oaks"; he spoke in the abandoned mining pits of Cornwall, at the corners of the streets in cities, on the docks, in the slums; in fact, wherever he could find listening ears and responsive hearts.

The power of Wesley's appeal was like that of the great Puritan movement of the seventeenth century (SS378, 417). Nothing more effective had been heard since the days when Augustine and his band of monks set forth on their mission among the barbarous Saxons (S42). The results answered fully to the zeal that awakened them. Better than the growing prosperity of extending commerce, better than all the conquests made by the British flag in the east or west, was the new religious spirit which stirred the people of both England and America. It provoked the National Church to emulation in good works; it planted schools, checked intemperance, and brought into vigorous activity whatever was best and bravest in a race that when true to itself is excelled by none.

547. Summary.

The history of the reign may be summed up in the great Religious Movement begun by John Wesley, which has just been described, and in the Asiatic, Continental, and American wars with France, which ended in the extension of the power of Great Britain in both hemispheres,— in India in the Old World and in North America in the New.

George III—1760-1820

548. Accession and Character; the King's Struggle with the Whigs.

By the death of George II his grandson,[1] George III, now came to the throne. The new King was a man of excellent character, who prided himself on having been born an Englishman. He had the best interests of his country at heart, but he lacked many of the qualities necessary to be a great ruler. He was thoroughly conscientious, but he was narrow and stubborn to the last degree and he was at times insane.

[1] Frederick, Prince of Wales, George II's son, died before his father, leaving his son George heir to the throne. See Genealogical Table, p. 323.

His mother, who had seen how ministers and parties ruled in England (S534), resolved that her son should have the control. Her constant injunction to the young Prince was, "Be King, George, be King!" so that when he came to power George was determined to be King if self-will could make him one.[2]

[2] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p.xxv, S28.

But beneath this spirit of self-will there was a moral principle. In being King, George III intended to carry out a reform such as neither George I nor George II could have accomplished, supposing that either one had possessed the desire to undertake it.

The great Whig (SS479, 507) families of rank and wealth had now held uninterrupted possession of the government for nearly half a century. Their influence was so supreme that the sovereign had practically become a mere cipher, dependent for his authority on the political support which he received. The King was resolved that this state of things should continue no longer. He was determined to reassert the royal authority, secure a government which should reflect his principles, and have a ministry to whom he could dictate, instead of one that dictated to him.

For a long time he struggled in vain, but at last succeeded, and found in Lord North a Prime Minister (S534) who bowed to the royal will, and endeavored to carry out George III's favorite policy of "governing for, but never by, the people." That policy finally called forth Mr. Dunning's famous resolution in the House of Commons (1780). It boldly declared the King's influence "had increased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished." But his Majesty's measures had other consequences, which were more far-reaching and disastrous than any one in the House of Commons then imagined.

549. Taxation of the American Colonies.

The wars of the two preceding reigns had largely increased the National Debt (S503), and the Government resolved to compel the American colonies to share in a more direct degree than they had yet done the constantly increasing burden of taxation. England then, like all other European countries, regarded her colonies in a totally different way from that in which she considers the colonies she now holds.

It was an open question at that time whether colonial legislative rights existed save as a matter of concession or favor on the part of the Home Government. It is true that the Government had found it expedient to grant or recognize such rights, but it had seldom defined them clearly, and in many important respects no one knew just what the settlers of Virginia or Massachusetts might or might not lawfully do.[1]

[1] Story's "Constitution of the United States."

The mother country, however, was perfectly clear on three points:

1. That the American colonies were convenient receptacles for the surplus population, good or bad, of the British Islands. 2. That they were valuable as sources of revenue and profit, politically and commercially. 3. That, finally, they furnished excellent opportunities for the King's friends to get office and make fortunes.

Such had long been the feeling about India, and such too was the feeling, modified by difference of circumstances, about America.

Politically the English colonists in America enjoyed a large measure of liberty. So far as local legislation was concerned, they were in most cases preactically self-governing and independent. So, too, their personal rights were carefully safeguarded. On the other hand, the commercial policy of England toward her colonies, though severely restrictive, was far less so than that of Spain or France toward theirs. The Navigation Laws (S459) compelled the Americans to confine their trade to England alone, or to such foreign ports as she directed. If they sent a hogshead of tobacco or a barrel of salt fish to another country by any but an English or a colonial built bessel, they were legally liable to forfeith their goods. On the other hand, they enjoyed the complete monopoly of the English tobacco market, and in certain cases they received bounties on some of their products. Furthermore, the Navigation Laws had not been rigidly enforced for a long time, and the New England colonists generally treated them as a dead letter.

When George III came to the throne he resolved to revive the enforcement of the Navigation Laws, to build up the British West Indies, and to restrict the colonial trade with the Spanish and French West Indies. This was done, not for the purpose of crippling American commerce, but either to increase English revenue or to inflict injury on foreign rivals or enemies.

Furthermore, British manufacturers had at an earlier period induced the English Government to restrict certain American home manufactures. In accordance with that policy, Parliament had enacted statutes which virtually forbade the colonists making their own woolen cloth, or their own beaver hats, except on a very limited scale. They had a few ironworks, but they were forbidden to erect another furnace, or another mill for manufacturing iron rods or plates, and such industries were declared to be a nuisance.

William Pitt, who later became Lord Chatham (S538), was one of the warmest friends that America had; but he openly advocated this narrow policy, saying that if British interests demanded it he would not permit the colonists to make so much as a "horseshoe nail." Adam Smith, an eminent English political economist of that day, vehemently condemned the British Government's colonial mercantile system as suicidal; but his condemnation came too late to have any effect. The fact was that the world was not ready then—if indeed it is yet—to receive the gospel of "Live and let live."

550. The Stamp Act, 1765.

In accordance with these theories about the colonies, and to meet the pressing needs of the Home Government, the English ministry proceeded to levy a tax on the colonies (1764) in return for the protection they granted them against the French and the Indians. The colonists, however, had paid their full proportion of the expense of the French and Indian wars out of their own pockets, and they now felt abundantly able to protect themselves.

But notwithstanding this plea, a form of direct tax on the American colonies, called the stamp tax, was brought forward in 1765. The proposed law required that a multitude of legal documents, such as deeds, wills, notes, receipts, and the like, should be written upon paper bearing stamps, purchased from the agents of the Home Government. The colonists, generally, protested against the passage of the law, and Benjamin Franklin, with other agents, was sent to England to sustain their protests by argument and remonstrance. But in spite of their efforts the law was passed, and the stamps were sent over to America. The people, however, refused to use them, and serious riots ensued.

In England strong sympathy with the colonists was expressed by William Pitt (Lord Chatham), Burke, Fox, and generally by what was well called "the brains of Parliament." Pitt in particular was extremely indignant. He urged the immediate repeal of the act, saying, "I rejoice that America has resisted."

Pitt further declared that any taxation of the colonies without their representation in Parliament was tyranny, and that opposition to such taxation was a duty. He vehemently insisted that the spirit shown by the Americans was the same that had withstood the despotism of the Stuarts in England (S436), and established the principle once for all that the King cannot take his subject's money without that subject's consent (S436). So, too, Fox ardently defended the American colonists, and boldly maintained that the stand they had taken helped "to preserve the liberties of mankind."[1]

[1] See Bancroft's "United States," III, 107-108; "Columbia University
Studies," III, No. 2, "The Commercial Policy of England toward the
American Colonies"; Lecky's "American Revolution"; and C. K. Adams's
"British Orations."

Against such opposition the law could not stand. The act was accordingly repealed (1766), amid great rejoicing in London; the church bells rang out in triumph, and the shipping in the Thames was illuminated. But the good effect on America was lost by the passage of another act which maintained the unconditional right of Parliament to legislate for the colonies, and to tax them, if it saw fit, without their consent.

551. The Tea Tax and the "Boston Tea Party," 1773, with its Results.

Another plan was now devised for getting money from the colonies. Parliament enacted a law (1767) compelling the Americans to pay taxes on a number of imports, such as glass, paper, and tea. In opposition to this law, the colonists formed leagues refusing to use these taxed articles, while at the same time they encouraged smugglers to land them secretly, and the regular trade suffered accordingly.

Parliament, finding that this was bad both for the government and for commerce, now abolished all of these duties except that on tea (1770). That duty was retained for a double purpose: first, and chiefly, to maintain the principle of the right of Great Britain to tax the colonies; and, next, to aid the East India Company, which was pleading piteeously for help.

In consequence mainly of the refusal of the American colonies to buy tea, the London warehouses of the East India Company were full to overflowing with surplus stock, and the company itself was in a half-bankrupt condition. The custom had been for the company to bring the tea to England, pay a tax on it, and then sell it to be reshipped to America. To aid the company in its embarrassment, the Government now agreed to remit this first duty altogether, and to impose a tax of only threepence (six cents) a pound on the consumers in America.

In itself the threepenny tax was a trifle, as the ship-money tax of twenty shillnigs was to John Hampden (S436); but underlying it was a principle which seemed to the Americans, as it had seemed to Hampden, no trifle; for such principles revolutions had been fought in the past; for such they would be fought in the future.

The colonists resolved not to have the tea at any price. A number of ships laden with the taxed herb arrived at the port of Boston. The tea was seized by a band of men disguised as Indians, and thrown into the harbor, 1773. The news of that action made the King and his ministry furious. Parliament sympathized with the Government, and in retaliation passed four laws of such severity that the colonists nicknamed them the "Intolerable Acts."

The first law was the "Boston Port Act," which closed the harbor to all trade; the second was the "Regulating Act," which virtually annulled the charter of Massachusetts, took the government away from the people, and gave it to the King; the third was the "Administration of Justice Act," which ordered that Americans who committed murder in resistance to oppression should be sent to England for trial; the fourth was the "Quebec Act," which declared the country north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi a part of Canada.[1] The object of this last act was to conciliate the French Canadians, and secure their help against the colonists in case of rebellion.

[1] Embracing territory now divided into the five states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, with eastern Minnesota.

Even after Parliament had enacted these four drastic measures a compromise might have been effected, and peace maintained, if the counsels of the best men had been followed; but George III would listen to no policy short of coercion. He meant well, but his brain was not well balanced, he was subject to attacks of mental derangement, and his one idea of BEING KING at all hazards had become a kind of monomania (S548). Pitt condemned such oppression as morally wrong, Burke denounced it as inexpedient, and Fox, another prominent member of Parliament, wrote, "It is intolerable to think that it should be in the power of one blockhead to do so much mischief."

For the time, at least, the King was as unreasonable as any of the Stuarts. The obstinacy of Charles I cost him his head, that of James II his kingdom, that of George III resulted in a war which saddled the English taxpayer with an additional debt of 120,000,000 pounds, and forever detached from Great Britain the fairest and richest dominions that she ever possessed.

552. The American Revolution; Independence declared, 1776.

In 1775 war began, and the stand made by the patriots at Lexington and the fighting which followed at Concord and Bunker Hill showed that the Americans were in earnest. The cry of the colonists had been, "No taxation without representation"; now they had got beyond that, and demanded, "No legislation without representation." But events moved so fast that even this did not long suffice, and on July 4, 1776, the colonies, in Congress assembled, solemnly declared themselves free and independent.

As far back as the French war there was at least one man who foresaw this declaration. After the English had taken Quebec (S545), an eminent French statesman said of the American colonies with respect to Great Britain, "They stand no longer in need of her protection; she will call on them to contribute toward supporting the burdens they have helped to bring on her; and they will answer by striking off all dependence."[2]

[2] This was Vergennes; see Bancroft's "History of the United States."

This prophecy was now fulfilled. After the Americans had defeated Burgoyne in 1777 the English ministry became alarmed; they declared themselves ready to make terms; they offered to grant everything but independence;[3] but they had opened their eyes to the facts too late, and nothing short of independence would now satisfy the colonists. Attempts were made to open negotiations with General Washington, but the commander in chief declined to receive a letter from the English Government addressed to him, not in his official capacity, but as "George Washington, Esq.," and so the matter came to nothing.

[3] This was after France had recognized the independence of the United States, 1778.

553. The Battle of Yorktown; the King acknowledges American
Independence, 1782.

The war against the rebellious states was never really popular in England. From the outset great numbers refused to enlist to fight the Americans, and spoke of the contest as the "King's War" to show that the bulk of the English people did not encourage it. The struggle went on with varying success through seven heavy years, until, with the aid of the French, the Americans defeated Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781.[1] By that battle France got her revenge for the loss of Quebec in 1759 (S545), and America finally won the cause for which she had spent so much life and treasure.

[1] It is pleasant to know that a hundred years later, in the autumn of 1881, a number of English gentlemen were present at the centennial celebration of the taking of Yorktown, to express their hearty good will toward the nation which their ancestors had tried in vain to keep a part of Great Britain.

George III could hold out no longer; on a foggy December morning in 1782, he entered the House of Lords, and with a faltering voice read a paper in which he acknowledged the independence of the United States of America. He closed his reading with the prayer that neither Great Britain nor America might suffer from the separation; and he expressed the hope that religion, language, interest, and affection might prove an effectual bond of union between the two countries.

Eventually the separation proved "a mutual advantage, since it removed to a great extent the arbitrary restrictions on trade, gave a new impetus to commerce, and immensely increased the wealth of both nations."[2]

[2] Goldwin Smith's lectures on "The Foundation of the American
Colonies." In general see "Lecky's American Revolution," and the
"Leading Facts of American History" or the "Student's American
History," in this series.

554. The Lord George Gordon Riots (1780).

While the American war was in progress, England had not been entirely quiet at home. A prominent Whig leader in Parliament had moved the repeal of some of the most severe laws against the Roman Catholics.[3] The greater part of these measures had been enacted under William III, "when England was in mortal terror" of the restoration of James II (S491). The Solicitor-General said, in seconding the motion for repeal, that these lwas were "a disgrace to humanity." Parliament agreed with him in this matter. Because these unjust acts were stricken from the Statute Book, Lord George Gordon, a half-crazed fanatic,[1] who was in Parliament, led an attack upon the government (1780).

[3] The worst of these laws was that which punished a priest who should celebrate mass, with imprisonment for life. See Taswell-Langmead's "English Constitutional History," p.627, and compare J.F. Bright's "History of England," III, 1087. [1] Gordon seems to have been of unsound mind. He used to attack both political parties with such fury that it was jocosely said there were "three parties in Parliament—the ministry, the opposition, and Lord George Gordon."

For six days London was at the mercy of a furious mob of 50,000 people, who set fire to Catholic chapels, pillaged many dwellings, and committed every species of outrage. Newgate prison was broken into, the prisoners were released, and the prison was burned. No one was safe from attack who did not wear a blue cockade to show that he was a Protestant, and no man's house was secure unless he chalked "No Popery" on the door in conspicuous letters. In fact, one individual, in order to make doubly sure, wrote over the entrance to his residence: "No Religion Whatever." Before the riot was subdued a large amount of property had been destroyed and many lives sacrificed.

555. Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1788).

Six years after the American Revolution came to an end Warren Hastings, Governor-General of India, was impeached for corrupt and cruel government in that distant province. He was tried before the House of Lords, gathered in Westminster Hall. On the side of Hastings was the powerful East India Company, ruling over a territory many times larger than the whole of Great Britain. Against him were arrayed the three ablest and most eloquent men in England,—Burke, Fox, and Sheridan.

"Raising his voice until the oak ceiling resounded, Burke exclaimed at the close of his fourth great speech, `I impeach Warren Hastings of high crimes and misdemeanors. I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain, whose trust he has betrayed. I impeach him in the name of the English nation, whose ancient honor he has sullied. I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose rights he has trodden under foot, and whose country he has turned into a desert. Lastly, in the name of human nature itself, in the name of both sexes, in the name of every age, in the name of every rank, I impeach the common enemy and oppressor of all!'"

The trial was continued at intervals for over seven years. It resulted in the acquittal of the accused (1795); but it was proved that the chief business of those who went out to India was to wring fortunes from the natives, and then go back to England to live like "nabobs," and spend their ill-gotten money in a life of luxury. This fact, and the stupendous corruption that was shown to exist, eventually broke down the gigantic monopoly, and British India was thrown open to the trade of all nations.[1]

[1] See Macaulay's "Essay on Warren Hastings"; also Burke's "Speeches."

556. Liberty of the Press; Law and Prison Reforms; Abolition of the
Slave Trade.

Since the discontinuance of the censorship of the press (S498), though newspapers were nominally free to discuss public affairs, yet the Government had no intention of permitting any severe criticism. On the other hand, there were men who were determined to speak their minds through the press on political as on all other matters. In the early part of the reign, John Wilkes, an able but scurrilous writer, attacked the policy of the Crown in violent terms (1763). Some years later (1769), a writer, who signed himself "Junius," began a series of letters in a daily paper, in which he handled the King and the "King's friends" still more roughly. An attempt was made by the Government to punish Wilkes and the publisher of the "Junius" letters, but it signally failed in both cases. Public feeling was plainly in favor of the freest political expression,[2] which was eventually conceded.

[2] Later, during the excitement caused by the French Revolution, there was a reaction from this feeling, but it was only temporary.

Up to this time parliamentary debates had rarely been reported. In fact, under the Tudors and the Stuarts, members of Parliament would have run the risk of imprisonment if their criticisms of royalty had been made public; but now, in 1771, the papers began to contain the speeches and votes of both Houses on important questions. Every effort was made to suppress these reports, but again the press gained the day. Henceforth the nation could learn how far its representatives really represented the will of the people, and so could hold them strictly accountable,—a matter of vital importance in every free government.[3]

[3] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xxvi, S30.

Another field of reform was also found. The times were brutal. The pillory still stood in the center of London;[4] and if the unfortunate offender who was put in it escaped with a shower of mud and other unsavory missiles, instead of clubs and brickbats, he was lucky indeed. Gentlemen of fashion arranged pleasure parties to visit the penitentiaries for women to see the wretched inmates whipped. The whole code of criminal law was savagely vindictive. Capital punishment was inflicted for about two hundred offenses, many of which would now be thought to be sufficiently punished by one or two months' imprisonment in the house of correction.

[4] The pillory (S531) was not abolished until the accession of Queen Victoria.

Not only men, but women and children even, were hanged for pilfering goods or food worth a few shillings.[1] The jails were crowded with poor wretches whom want had driven to theft, and who were "worked off" on the gallows every Monday morning in batches of a dozen or twenty, in sight of the jeering, drunken crowds who gathered to witness their death agonies.

[1] Five shillings, or $1.25, was the hanging limit; anything stolen above that sum in money or goods might send the thief to the gallows.

Through the efforts of Sir Samuel Romilly, Jeremy Bentham, and others, a reform was effected in this bloody code. Next, the labors of the philanthropic John Howard, and later of Elizabeth Fry, purified the jails of abuses which had made them not only dens of suffering and disease, but schools of crime as well.

The laws respecting the pubishment for debt were also changed for the better, and thousands of miserable beings who were without means to satisfy their creditors were set free, instead of being kept in useless lifelong imprisonment. At the same time Clarkson, Wilberforce, Fox, and Pitt were endeavoring to abolish that relic of barbarism, the African slave trade. After twenty years of persistent effort both in Parliament and out, they at last accomplished that great and beneficent work in 1807.

557. War with France (1793-1805); Battle of the Nile; Trafalgar, 1805.

Near the close of the century (1789) the French Revolution broke out. It was a violent and successful attempt to destroy those feudal institutions which France had outgrown, and which had, as we have seen, disappeared gradually in England after the rebellion of Wat Tyler (SS250, 252). At first the revolutionists received the hearty sympathy of many of the Whig party (S479), but after the execution of Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette,[1] England became alarmed not only at the horrible scenes of the Reign of Terror but at the establishment of the French democratic republic which seemed to justify them, and joined an alliance of the principal European powers for the purpose of restoring monarchy in France.

[1] See "Death of Marie Antoinette," in Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution."

Napoleon had now become the real head of the French nation, and seemed bent on making himself master of all Europe. He undertook an expedition against Egypt and the East, which was intended as a stepping-stone toward the ultimate conquest of the English empire in India, but his plans were frustrated by Nelson, who completely defeated the French fleet at the battle of the Nile (1798).

With the assistance of Spain, Napoleon next prepared to invade England, and was so confident of success that he caused a gold medal to be struck, bearing the inscription, "Descent upon England." "Struck at London, 1804." But the English warships drove the French and Spanish fleets into the harbor of Cadiz, and Napoleon had to postpone his great expedition for another year.[2] In the autumn of 1805, the French and Spanish fleets sallied forth determined to win. But Lord Nelson, that frail little man who had lost his right arm and the sight of his right eye fighting his country's battles, lay waiting for them off Cape Trafalgar,[3] near by.

[2] In 1801 Robert Fulton, of Pennsylvania, proposed to Napoleonthat he should build warships propelled by steam. The proposal was submitted to a committee of French scientists, who reported that it was absurd. Had Napoleon acted on Fulton's suggestion, his descent on England might have been successful. [3] Cape Trafalgar, on the southern coast of Spain.

Two days later he descried the enemy at daybreak. Both sides felt that the decisive struggle was at hand. With the exception of a long, heavy swell the sea was calm, with a light breeze, but sufficient to bring the two fleets gradually within range.

"As they drifted on their path
There was silence deep as death;
And the boldest held his breath
For a time."[4]

[4] Campbell's "Battle of the Baltic," but applicable as well to Trafalgar.

Just before the action Nelson ran up this signal to the masthead of his ship, where all might see it: "England explects Every Man to do his Duty." The answer to it was three ringing cheers from the entire fleet, and the fight began. When it ended, Napoleon's boasted navy was no more. Trafalgar Square, in the heart of London, with its tall column bearing aloft a statue of Nelson, commemorates the decisive victory, which was dearly bought with the life of the great admiral.

The battle of Traflagar snuffed out Napoleon's projected invasion of England. He had lost his ships, and their commander, in his despair, committed suicide. The French Emperor could no longer hope to bridge "the ditch," as he derisively called the boisterous Channel, whose waves rose like a wall between him and the island which he hated (S14). A few years later, Napoleon, who had taken possession of Spain and placed his brother on the throne, was driven from that country by Sir Arthur Wellesly, destined to be better known as the Duke of Wellington, and the crown was restored to the Spanish nation.

558. Second War with the United States, 1812-1815.

The United States waged its first war with Great Britain to gain an independent national existence; in 1812 it declared a second war to secure its rights upon the sea. During the long and desperate struggle between England and France, each nation had prohibited neutral powers from commercial intercourse with the other, or with any country friendly to the other.

Furthermore, the English Government had laid down the principle that a person born on British soil could not become a citizen of another nation, but that "once an Englishman always an Englishman" was the only true doctrine. In accordance with that theory, it claimed the right to search American ships and take from them and force into their own service any seaman supposed to be of British birth. In this way Great Britian had seized more than six thousand men, and notwithstanding their protest that they were American citizens, either by birth or by naturalization, had compelled them to enter the English navy.

Other points in dispute between the two countries were in a fair way of being settled amicably, but there appeared to be no method of coming to terms in regard to the question of search and impressment, which was the most important of all, since though the demand of the United States was, in the popular phrase of the day, for "Free Trade and Sailors' Rights," it was the last which was especially emphasized.

In 1812 war against Great Britain was declared, and an attack made on
Canada which resulted in the American forces being driven back.
During the war British troops landed in Maryland, burned the Capitol
and other public buildings in Washington, and destroyed the
Congressional Library.

On the other hand, the American navy had unexpected and extraordinary successes on the ocean and the lakes. Out of fifteen sea combats with approximately equal forces, the Americans gained twelve. The contest closed with the signal defeat of the English at New Orleans, when General Andrew Jackson (1815) completely routed the forces led by Sir Edward Pakenham, brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington. The right of search was thenceforth dropped, although it was not formally abandoned by Great Britain until more than forty years later (1856).

559. Battle of Waterloo, 1815.

In the summer of 1815, the English war against Napoleon (S557), which had been carried on almost constantly since his accession to power, culminated in the decisive battle of Waterloo.[1] Napoleon had crossed the Belgian frontier in order that he might come up with the British before they could form a junction with their Prussian allies. All the previous night rain had fallen in torrents, and when the soldiers rose from their cheerless and broken sleep in the trampled and muddy fields of rye, a drizzling rain was still falling.

[1] Waterloo, near Brussels, Belgium.

Napoleon planned the battle for the purpose of destroying first the English and then the Prussian forces, but Wellington held his own against the furious attacks of the French. It was evident, however, that even the "Iron Duke," as he was called, could not continue to withstand the terrible assaults many hours longer.

As time passed on, and he saw his solid squares melting away under the murderous French fire, as line after line of his soldiers coming forward silently stepped into the places of their fallen comrades, while the expected Prussian reenforcements still delayed their appearance, the English commander exclaimed, "O that night or Blucher would come!" At last Blucher with his Prussians did come, and as Grouchy, the leader of a division on which Napoleon was counting, did not, Waterloo was finally won by the combined strength of the allies. Not long afterwards Napoleon was sent to die a prisoner on the desolate rock of St. Helena.

When all was over, Wellington said to Blucher, as he stood by him on a little eminence looking down upon the field covered with the dead and dying, "A great victory is the saddest thing on earth, except a great defeat."

With that victory ended the second Hundred Years' War of England with France, which began with the War of the Spanish Succession (1704) under Marlborough (S508). At the outset the object of that war was, first, to humble the power of Louis XIV that threatened the independence of England; and, secondly, to protect those American colonies which later separated fromthe mother country and became, partly through French help, the republic of the United States.

560. Increase of the National Debt; Taxation.

Owing to these hundred years and more of war (S559) the National Debt of GReat Britain and Ireland (S503), which in 1688 was much less than a million of pounds, had now reached the enormous amount of over nine hundred millions (or $4,500,000,000), bearing yearly interest at the rate of more than $160,000,000.[1] So great had been the strain on the finances of the country, that the Bank of England (S503) suspended payment, and many heavy failures occurred. In addition to this, a succession of bad harvests sent up the price of wheat to such a point that at one time an ordinary-sized loaf of bread cost the farm laborer more than half a day's wages.

[1] Encyclopaedia Britannica, under "National Debt."

Taxes had gone on increasing until it seemed as though the people could no longer endure the burden. As Sydney Smith declared, with entire truth, there were duties on everything. They began, he said, in childhood, with "the boy's taxed top"; they followed to old age, until at last "the dying Englishman, pouring his taxed medicine into a taxed spoon, flung himself back on a taxed bed, and died in the arms of an apothecary who had paid a tax of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death."[1]

[1] Sydney Smith's Essays, "Review of Seybert's Annals of the United States."

561. The Irish Parliament; the Irish Rebellion (1798).

For a century after the battle of the Boyne (S500) Ireland can hardly be said to have had a history. The iron hand of English despotism had crushed the spirit out of the inhabitants, and they suffered in silence. During the first part of the eighteenth century the destitution of the people was so great that Dean Swift, in bitter mockery of the government's neglect, published what he called his "Modest Proposal." He suggested that the misery of the half-starved peasants might be relieved by allowing them to eat their own children or else sell them to the butchers.

But a new attempt was now made to improve the political condition of the wretched country. That distinguished statesman, Edmund Burke (S550), had already tried to secure a fair measure of commercial liberty for the island, but without success. Since the reign of Henry VII the so-called "free Parliament" of Ireland had been bound hand and foot by Poynings's Act (S329, note 1). The eminent Protestant Irish orator, Henry Grattan, now urged the repeal of that law with all his impassioned eloquence. He was seconded in his efforts by the powerful influence of Fox in the English House of Commons. Finally, the obnoxious act was repealed (1782), and a, so-called, independent Irish Parliament, to which Grattan was elected, met in Dublin.

But although more than three quarters of the Irish people were Catholics, no person of that faith was permitted to sit in the new Parliament or to vote for the election of a member. This was not the only injustice, for many Protestants in Belfast and the north of Ireland had no right to be represented in it. Such a state of things could not fail to excite angry protest, and Grattan, with other Protestants in Parliament, labored for reform. The discontent finally led to the organization of an association called the "Society of United Irishmen." The leaders of that movement hoped to secure the cooperation of Catholics and Protestants, and to obtain fair and full representation for both in the Irish Parliament. A measure of political reform was secured (1793), but it did not go far enough to give the relief desired.

Eventually the Society of United Irishmen became a revolutionary organization which sought, by the help of the French, to make Ireland an independent republic. The sprigs of shamrock or shamrock-colored badges displayed by these men gave a new significance to "the wearing of the green."[1] By this time many Protestants had withdrawn from the organization, and many Catholics refused to ask help from the French revolutionary party, who were hostile to all churches and to all religion.

[1] See a quotation from the famous Irish song, "The Wearin' o' the Green," in the "Shan Van Vocht," in the "Heroic Ballads," published by Ginn and Company.

Then a devoted band of Catholics in the south of Ireland resolved to rise and, trusting to their own right arms, to strike for independence. A frightful rebellion broke out (1798), marked by all the intense hatred springing from rival races and rival creeds, and aggravated by the peasants' hatred of oppressive landlords. Both sides perpetuated horrible atrocities. The government employed a large force of Orangemen,[2] or extreme Protestants, to help suppress the insurrection. They did their work with remorseless cruelty.

[2] Orangemen: the Protestants of the north of Ireland, who had taken the side of William of Orange in the Revolution of 1688-1689 (S499). They wore an orange ribbon as their badge, to distinguish them from the Catholic party, who wore green badges.

562. Union of Great Britain and Ireland, 1800; Emmet.

Matters now came to a crisis. William Pitt, son of the late Earl of Chatham (S550), was Prime Minister. He believed that the best interests of both Ireland and England demanded their political union. He devoted all his energies to accomplishing the work. The result was that in the last year of the eighteenth century the English Government succeeded, by the most unscrupulous use of money, in gaining the desired end. Lord Cornwallis, acting as Pitt's agent, confessed with shame that he bought up a sufficient number of members of the Irish Parliament to secure a vote in favor of union with Great Britain. In 1800 the two countries were joined—in name at least—under the title of the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland."[3]

[3] The first Parliament of the United Kingdom met in 1801.

Pitt used all his powerful influence to obtain for Ireland a full and fair representation in the united Parliament (1801). He urged that Catholics as well as Protestants should be eligible for election to that body. But the King positively refused to listen to his Prime Minister. He even declared that it would be a violation of his coronation oath for him to grant such a request. The consequence was that not a single Catholic was admitted to the Imperial Parliament until nearly thirty years later (S573).

Two years after the first Imperial Parliament met in London the Irish patriot, Robert Emmet, made a desperate effort to free his country (1803). To his mind the union of England with Ireland was simply "the union of the shark with its prey." He staked his life on the cause of independence; he lost, and paid the forfeit on the scaffold.

But notwithstanding Emmet's hatred of the union, it resulted advantageously to Ireland in at least two respects. First, more permanent peace was secured to that distracted and long-suffering country. Secondly, the Irish people made decided gains commercially. The duties on their farm products were removed, at least in large degree, and the English ports hitherto closed against them were thrown open. The duties on their manufactured goods seem to have been taken off at that time only in part.[1] Later, absolute freedom of trade was secured.

[1] See May's "Constitutional History of England," Lecky's "England in the Eighteenth Century"; but compare O'Connor Morris's work on "Ireland, from 1798 to 1898," p.58.

563. "The Industrial Revolution" of the Eighteenth Century; Material Progress; Canals; the Steam Engine, 1785.

The reign of George III was in several directions one of marked progress, especially in England. Just after the King's accession the Duke of Bridgewater constructed a canal from his coal mine in Worsley to Manchester, a distance of seven miles. Later, he extended it to Liverpool; eventually it was widened and deepened and became the "Manchester and Liverpool Ship Canal." The Duke of Bridgewater's work was practically the commencement of a system which has since developed to such a degree that the canals of England now extend nearly 5000 miles, and exceed in length its navigable rivers. The two form such a complete network of water communication that it is said no place in the realm is more than fifteen miles distant from this means of transportation, which connects all the large towns with each other and with the chief ports.

In the last half of the eighteenth century James Watt obtained the first patent (1769) for his improved steam engine (S521), but did not succeed in making it a business success until 1785. The story is told[1] that he took a working model of it to show to the King. His Majesty patronizingly asked him, "Well, my man, what have you to sell?" The inventor promptly answered, "What kings covet, may it please your Majesty,—POWER!" The story is perhaps too good to be true, but the fact of the "power" could not be denied,—power, too, not simply mechanical, but, in its results, moral and political as well.

[1] This story is told also of Boulton, Watt's partner. See Smile's "Lives of Boulton and Watt," p.1. Newcomen had invented a rude steam engine in 1705, which in 1712 came into use to some extent for pumping water out of coal mines. But his engine was too clumsy and too wasteful of fuel to be used by manufacturers. Boulton and Watt built the first steam-engine works in England at Soho, a suburb of Birmingham, in 1775; but it was not until 1785 that they began to do sufficient business to make it evident that they were on their way to success.

Such was the increase of machinery driven by steam, and such were the improvements made by Hargreaves, Arkwright, and Crompton in machinery for spinning and weaving cotton, that much distress arose among the hand spinners and hand weavers. The price of bread was growing higher and higher, while in many districts skilled operatives working at home could not earn by their utmost efforts eight shillings a week. They saw their hand labor supplanted by great cotton mills filled with machinery driven by "monsters of iron and fire," which never grew weary, which subsisted on water and coal, and never asked for wages.

Led by a man named Ludd (1811), the starving workmen attacked a number of these mills, broke the machinery to pieces, and sometimes burned the buildings. The riots were at length suppressed, and a number of the leaders executed; but a great change for the better was at hand, and improved machinery driven by steam was soon to remedy the evils it had seemingly created. It led to an enormous demand for cotton. This helped to stimulate cotton growing in the United States of America as well as to encourage the manufacture of cotton in Great Britain.

Up to this period the north of England had remained the poorest part of the country. The population was sparse, ignorant, and unprosperous. It was in the south that improvements originated. In the reign of Henry VIII, the North fought against the dissolution of the monasteries (SS352, 357); in Elizabeth's reign it resisted Protestantism; in that of George I it sided with the so-called "Pretender" (S535).

But steam transformed an immense area. Factories were built, population increased, cities sprang up, and wealth grew apace. Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Nottingham, Leicester, Sheffield, and Liverpool made the North a new country. (See Industrial Map of England, p.10.) Lancashire is the busiest cotton-manufacturing district in Great Britain, and the saying runs that "what Lancashire thinks to-day, England will think to-morrow." So much for James Watt's POWER and its results.

564. Discover of Oxygen (1774); Introduction of Gas (1815).

Notwithstanding the progress that had been made in many departments of knowledge, the science of chemistry remained almost stationary until (1774) Dr. Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen, the most abundant, as well as the most important, element in nature.

That discover "laid the foundation of modern chemical science." It enlarged our knowledge of the composition of the atmosphere, of the solid crust of the earth, and of water. Furthermore, it revealed the interesting fact that oxygen not only enters into the structure of all forms of animal and vegetable life, but that no kind of life can exist without it. Finally, Priestley's great discovery proved to be of direct practical utility, since the successful pursuit of innumerable trades and manufactures, with the profitable separation of metals from their ores, stands in close connection with the facts which his experiments with oxygen made known.

As intellectual light spread, so also did material light. In London, up to near the close of the reign of George III, only a few feeble oil lamps were in use. Many miles of streets were dark and dangerous, and highway robberies were frequent. At length (1815) a company was formed to light the city with gas. After much opposition from those who were in the whale-oil interest the enterprise succeeded. The new light, as Miss Martineau said, did more to prevent crime than all the Government had accomplished since the days of Alfred. It changed, too, the whole aspect of the English capital, though it was only the forerunner of the electric light, which has since changed it even more.

The sight of the great city now, when viewed at night from Highgate archway on the north, or looking down the Thames from Westminster Bridge, is something never to be forgotten. It gives one a realizing sense of the immensity of "this province covered with houses," which cannot be got so well in any other way. It bring to mind, too, those lines expressive of the contrasts of wealth and poverty, success and failure, inevitable in such a place:

"O gleaming lamps of London, that gem the city's crown,
What fortunes lie within you, O lights of London town!
. . . . . . . . . . .
O cruel lamps of London, if tears your light could drown,
Your victims' eyes would weep them, O lights of London town."[1]

[1] From the play, "The Lights of London."

The same year in which gas was introduced, Sir Humphry Davy invented the miner's safety lamp. Without seeking a patent, he generously gave his invention to the world, finding his reward in the knowledge that it would be the means of saving thousands of lives wherever men are called to work underground.

565. Steam Navigation, 1807, 1819, 1840.

Since Watt had demonstrated the value of steam for driving machinery (S563), a number of inventors had been experimenting with the new power, in the hope that they might apply it to propelling vessels. In 1807 Robert Fulton, an American, built the first successful steamboat, and made the voyage from New York to Albany in it. Shortly afterwards his vessel began to make regular trips on the Hudson. A number of years later a similar boat began to carry passengers on the Clyde, in Scotland. Finally, in 1819, the bold undertaking was made of crossing the Atlantic by steam. An American steamship, the Savannah, of about three hundred tons, set the example by a voyage from the United States to Liverpool. Dr. Lardner, an English scientist, had proved to his own satisfaction that ocean steam navigation was impracticable. The book containing the doctor's demonstration was brought to America by the Savannah on her return.

Twenty-one years afterward, in 1840, the Cunard Company established the first regular line of ocean steamers. They sailed between England and the United States. Since then fleets of steamers ranging from two thousand to more than forty thousand tons each have been built. They now make passages from continent to continent with the regularity of clockwork, and in fewer days than the ordinary sailing vessels formerly required weeks. The fact that during a period of more than seventy years one of these lines has never lost a passenger is conclusive proof that Providence is on the side of steam, when steam has men that know how to handle it.

566. Literature; Art; Education; Travel; Dress.

The reign of George III is marked by a long list of names eminent in letters and art. First in point of time among these stands Dr. Samuel Johnson, the compiler of the first English dictionary worthy of the name, and that on which those of our own day are based to a considerable extent. He was also the author of the story of "Rasselas,"—that notable satire on discontent and the search after happiness. Next stands Johnson's friend, Oliver Goldsmith, famous for his genius, his wit, and his improvidence,—which was always getting him into trouble,—but still more famous for his poems, and his novel, "The Vicar of Wakefield."

Edward Gibbon, David Hume, author of the well-known "History of England," and Adam Smith come next in time. In 1776 Gibbon published his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," which after more than a hundred years stands the ablest history of the subject in our language. In the same year Adam Smith issued "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations," which had a great effect on legislation respecting commerce, trade, and finance. During this period, also, Sir William Blackstone became prominent as a writer on law, and Edmund Burke, the distinguished orator and statesman, wrote his "Reflections on the French Revolution."

The poets, Burns, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, with Sheridan, the orator and dramatist, and Sterne, the humorist, belong to this reign; so, too, does the witty satirist, Sydney Smith, and Sir Walter Scott, whose works, like those of Shakespeare, have "made the dead past live again." Then again, Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen have left admirable pictures of the age in their stories of Irish and English life. Coleridge and Wordsworth began to attract attention toward the last of this period, and to be much read by those who loved the poetry of thought and the poetry of nature; while, early in the next reign, Charles Lamb published his delightful "Essays of Elia."

In art we have the first English painters and engravers. Hogarth, who died a few years after the beginning of the reign, was celebrated for the coarse but perfect representations of low life and street scenes; and his series of Election pictures with his "Beer Lane" and "Gin Alley" are valuable for the insight into the history of the times.

The chief portrait painters were Reynolds, Lawrence, and Gainsborough, the last of whom afterwards became noted for his landscapes. They were followed by Wilkie, whose pictures of "The Rent Day," "The Reading of the Will," and many others, tell a story of interest to every one who looks at them.

Last came Turner, who in some respects surpassed all former artists in his power of reproducing scenes in nature. At the same time, Bewick, whose cuts used to be the delight of every child that read "Aesop's Fables," gave a new impulse to wood engraving, while Flaxman rose to be the leading English sculptor, and Wedgwood introduced useful and beautiful articles of pottery.

In common-school education little advance had been made for many generations. In the country the great mass of the people were nearly as ignorant as they were in the darkest part of the Middle Ages. Hardly a peasant over forty years of age could be found who could read a verse in the Bible, and not one in ten could write his name.

There were no cheap books or newspapers, and no proper system of public instruction. The poor seldom left the counties in which they were born. They knew nothing of what was going on in the world. Their education was wholly of the practical kind which comes from work and things, not from books and teachers; yet many of them with only these simple helps found out two secrets which the highest culture sometimes misses,—how to be useful and how to be happy.[1]

[1] See Wordsworth's poem "Resolution and Independence."

The ordinary means of travel were still very imperfect. Stage-coaches had been in use for more than a hundred and fifty years. They crawled along at the rate of about three miles an hour. Mail coaches began to run in 1784. They attained a speed of six miles an hour, and later of ten. This was considered entirely satisfactory.

The close of George III's reign marks the beginning of the present age. It was indicated in many ways, and among others by the declining use of sedan chairs, which had been the fashion for upwards of a century, and by the change in dress. Gentlemen were leaving off the picturesque costumes of the past,—the cocked hats, elaborate wigs, silk stockings, ruffles, velvet coats, and swords,—and gradually putting on the plain democratic garb, sober in cut and color, by which we know them to-day.

567. Last Days of George III.

George III died (1820) at the age of eighty-two. During ten years he had been blind, deaf, and crazy, having lost his reason not very long after the jubilee, which celebrated the fiftieth year of his reign (1809). Once, in a lucid interval, he was found by the Queen singing a hymn and playing an accompaniment on the harpsichord.

He then knelt and prayed aloud for her, for his family, and for the nation; and in closing, for himself, that it might please God to avert his heavy calamity, or grant him resignation to bear it. Then he burst into tears, and his reason again fled.[1] In consequence of the incapacity of the King, his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, was appointed regent (1811), and on the King's death came to the throne as George IV.

[1] See Thackeray's "Four Georges."

568. Summary.

The long reign of George III covered sixty very eventful years. During that time England lost her possessions in America, but gained India and prepared the way for getting possession of New Zealand and Australia. During that period, also, Ireland was united to Great Britain. The wars with France, which lasted more than twenty years, ended in the great naval victory of Trafalgar and the still greater victory on the battlefield of Waterloo. In consequence of these wars, with that of the American Revolution, the National Debt of Great Britain rose to a height which rendered the burden of taxation well-nigh insupportable.

The second war with the United States in 1812 made America independent on the sea, and eventually compelled England to give up her assumed right to search American vessels. The two greatest reforms of the period were the abolition of the slave trade and the mitigation of the laws against debt and crime; the chief material improvement was the extension of canals and the application of steam to manufacturing and to navigation. The "Industrial Revolution" transformed the North of England.

GEORGE IV—1820-1830

569. Accession and Character of George IV.

George IV, eldest son of the late King, came to the throne in his fifty-eighth year; but, owing to his father's insanity, he had virtually been King for nearly ten years (S567). His habits of life had made him a selfish, dissolute spendthrift, who, like Charles II, cared only for pleasure. Though while Prince of Wales he had received for many years an income upwards of 100,000 pounds, which was largely increased at a later period, yet he was always hopelessly in debt.

Parliament (1795) appropriated over 600,000 pounds to relieve him from his most pressing creditors, but his wild extravagance soon involved him in difficulties again, so that had it not been for help given by the long-suffering taxpayers, His Royal Highness must have become as bankrupt in purse as he was in character.

After his accession matters became worse rather than better. At his coronation, which cost the nation over 200,000 pounds, he appeared in hired jewels, which he forgot to return, and which Parliament had to pay for. Not only did he waste the nation's money more recklessly than ever, but he used whatever political influence he had to opposesuch measures of reform as the times demanded.

570. Discontent; the "Manchester Massacre" (1819).

When (1811) George, then Prince of Wales, became regent (S567), he desired to form a Whig ministry, not because he cared for Whig principles (S479), but solely because he would thereby be acting in opposition to his father's wishes. Finding his purpose impracticable, he accepted Tory rule (S479), and a Cabinet (S534) was formed with Lord Liverpool as Prime Minister. It had for its main object the continued exclusion of Catholics from representation in Parliament (S478).

Lord Liverpool was a dull, well-meaning man, who utterly failed to comprehend the real tendency of the age. He was the son of a commoner who had been raised to the peerage. He had always had a reputation for honest obstinacy, and for little else. After he became Premier, a prominent French lady, who was visiting England, asked him one day, "What has become of that VERY stupid man, Mr. Jenkinson?" "Madame," answered the unfortunate Prime Minister, "he is now Lord Liverpool."[1]

[1] Earl's "English Premiers," Vol. II.

From such a Cabinet or Government, which continued in power for fifteen years, nothing but trouble could be expected. The misery of the country was great. Food was selling at famine prices. Thousands were on the verge of starvation, and tens of thousands did not get enough to eat. Trade was seriously depressed, and multitudes were unable to obtain work. Under these circumstances, the suffering masses undertook to hold public meetings to discuss the cause and cure of these evils; but as violent speeches against the Government were often made at the meetings, the authorities dispersed them on the ground that they were seditious and tended to riot and rebellion.

Many large towns at this period had no voice in legislation. At Birmingham, which was one of this class, the citizens had met and chosen, though without legal authority, a representative to Parliament. Machester, another important manufacturing town, now determined to do the same thing. The people were warned not to assemble, but they persisted in doing so, on the ground that peaceful discussion, with the election of a representative, was no violation of law. The meeting was held in St. Peter's Fields, and, through the blundering of a magistrate, it ended in an attack by a body of troops, by which many people were wounded an a number killed (1819).

571. The Six Acts (1819); the Conspiracy.

The bitter feeling caused by the "Manchester Massacre," or "Peterloo," as it was called, was still further aggravated by the passage of the Six Acts (1819). The object of these severe coercive measures was to make it impossible for men to take any public action demanding political reform. They restricted freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the right of the people to assemble for the purpose of open discussion of the course taken by the Government. These harsh laws coupled with other repressive measures taken by the Tories (S479), who were still in power, led to the "Cato Street Conspiracy." Shortly after the accession of George IV a few desperate men banded together, and meeting in a stable in Cato Street, London, formed a plot to murder Lord Liverpool and his entire cabinet at dinner at which all the ministers were to be present.

The plot was discovered, and the conspirators were speedily disposed of by the gallows or transportation, but nothing was done to relieve the suffering which had provoked the intended crime. No new conspiracy was attempted, but in the course of the next ten years a silent revolution took place, which, as we shall see later, obtained for the people that fuller representation in Parliament which they had hitherto vainly attempted to get (S582).

572. Queen Caroline.

While he was Prince of Wales, George IV had, contrary to law, privately married Mrs. Fitzherbert (1785),[1] a Roman Catholic lady of excellent character, and possessed of great beauty. Ten years later, partly through royal compulsion and partly to get money to pay off some of his numerous debts, the Prince married his cousin, the Princess Caroline of Brunswick. The union proved a source of unhappiness to both. The Princess lacked both discretion and delicacy, and her husband, who disliked her from the first, was reckless and brutal toward her.

[1] By the Royal Marriage Act of 1772, no descendant of George II could make a legal marriage without the consent of the reigning sovereign, unless twenty-five years of age, and unless the marriage was not objected to by Parliament.

He separated from her in a year's time, and as soon as she could, she withdrew to the Continent. When he became King he excluded Queen Caroline's name from the Prayer Book, and next applied to Parliament for a divorce on the ground of the Queen's unfaithfulness to her marriage vows.

Henry Brougham, afterwards Lord Brougham, acted as the Queen's counsel. No sufficient evidence was brought against her, and the ministry declined to take further action. It was decided, however, that she could not claim the honor of coronation, to which, as Queen Consort, she had a right sanctioned by custom but not secured by law. When the King was crowned (1821), no place was provided for her. By the advice of her counsel, she presented herself at the entrance of Westminster Abbey as the coronation ceremony was about to begin; but, by order of her husband, admission was refused, and she retired to die, heartbroken, a few days after.

573. Three Great Reforms.

Seven years later (1828) the Duke of Wellington, a Tory (S479) in politics, became Prime Minister. His sympathies in all matters of legislation were with the King, but he made a virtue of necessity, and for the time acted with those who demanded reform. The Corporation Act (S472), which was originally passed in the reign of Charles II, and had for its object the exclusion of Dissenters (S472) from all town or corporate offices, was now repealed; henceforth a man might become a mayor, alderman, or town officer, without belonging to the Church of England. At the same time the Test Act (S477), which had also been passed in Charles II's reign to keep both Catholics and Dissenters out of government offices, whether civil or military, was repealed. As a matter of fact "the teeth of both acts had long been drawn" by by an annual Indemnity Act (1727).[1]

[1] This act virtually suspended the operation of the Corporation Act (S472) and the Test Act against dissenters so that they could obtain civil offices from which these two acts had excluded them.

In 1829 a still greater reform was carried. For a long period the Catholic Association had been laboring to obtain the abolition of the laws which had been on the statute books for over a century and a half, by which Catholics were excluded from the right to sit in Parliament. These laws, it will be remembered, were enacted at the time of the alleged Popish Plot, and in consequence of the perjured evidence given by Titus Oates (S478).[2] The King, and the Tory party marshaled by the Duke of Wellington, strenuously resisted the repeal of these statutes; but finally the Duke became convinced that further opposition was useless. He therefore suddenly changed about and solely, as he declared, to avert civil war, took the lead in securing the success of a measure which he heartily hated.

[2] See Sidney Smith's "Peter Plymley's Letters."

But at the same time that Catholics were admitted to both Houses of Parliament, an act was passed raising the property qualification of a very large class of small Irish landholders from 2 pounds to 10 pounds. This measure deprived many thousands of their right to vote. The law was enacted on the pretext that the small Irish landholders would be influenced by their landlord or their priest.

Under the new order of things, Daniel O'Connell, an Irish gentleman of an old and honorable family, and a man of distinguished ability, came forward as leader of the Catholics. After much difficulty he succeeded in taking his seat in the House of Commons (1829). He henceforth devoted himself, though without avail, to the repeal of the act uniting Ireland with England (S562), and to the restoration of an independent Irish Parliament.

574. The New Police (1829).

Although London had now a population of a million and a half, it still had no effective police. The guardians of the peace at that date were infirm old men, who spent their time dozing in sentry boxes, and had neither the strength nor energy to be of service in any emergency. The young fellows of fashion considered these venerable constables as legitimate game. They often amused themselves by upsetting the sentry boxes with their occupants, leaving the latter helpless in the street, kicking and struggling like turtles turned on their backs, and as powerless to get on their feet again.

During the last year of the reign Sir Robert Peel got a bill passed (1829) which oganized a new and thoroughly efficient police force, properly equipped and uniformed. Great was the outcry against this innovation, and the "men in blue" were hooted at, not only by London "roughs," but by respectable citizens, as "Bobbies" or "Peelers," in derisive allusion to their founder. But the "Bobbies," who carry no visible club, were not to be jeered out of existence. They did their duty like men, and have continued to do it in a way which long since gained for them the good will of all who care for the preservation of law and order.

575. Death of the King (1830).

George IV died soon after the passage of the new Police Bill (1830). Of him it may well be said, though in a very different sense from that in which the expression was originally used, that "nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it." During his ten years' reign he had squandered enormous sums of money in gambling and dissipation, and had done his utmost to block the wheels of political progress.

How far this son of an insane father (S567) was responsible, it may not be for us to judge. Walter Scott, who had a kind word for almost every one, and especially for any one of the Tory party (S479), did not fail to say something in praise of the generous good nature of his friend George IV. The sad thing is that his voice seems to have been the only one. In a whole nation the rest were silent; or, if they spoke, it was neither to commend nor to defend, but to condemn.

576. Summary.

The legislative reforms of George IV's reign are its chief features. The repeal of the Test and Corporation acts and the grant to Catholics of the right to reenter Parliament were tardy measures of justice. Neither the King nor his ministers deserve any credit for them, but, none the less, they accomplished great and permanent good.

WILLIAM IV—1830-1837

577. Accession and Character of William IV.

As George IV left no heir, his brother William, a man of sixty-five, now came to the throne. He had passed most of his life on shipboard, having been placed in the navy when a mere lad. He was somewhat rough in his manner, and cared nothing for the ceremony and etiquette that were so dear to both George III and George IV. His faults, however, were on the surface. He was frank, hearty, and a friend to the people, to whom he was familiarly known as the "Sailor King."

578. Need of Reform in Parliamentary Representation.

From the beginning of this reign it was evident that the great question which must soon come up for settlement was that of parliamentary representation. Large numbers of the people of England had now no voice in the government. This unfortunate state of things was chiefly the result of the great changes which had taken place in the growth of the population of the Midlands (or the central portion of England) and the North (S563).

Since the introduction of steam (S563) the rapid increase of manufactures and commerce had built up Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, and other large towns in the iron, coal, pottery and manufacturing districts. (See Industrial Map of England, p.10.) These important towns could not send a member to Parliament; while, on the other hand, many places in the south of England which did send members had long ceased to be of any importance. Furthermore, the representation was of the most haphazard description. In one section no one could vote except substantial property holders, in another none but town officers, while in a third every man who had a tenement big enough to boil a pot in, and hence called a "Pot-walloper," possessed the right.

To this singular state of things the nation had long been indifferent. During the Middle Ages the inhavitants often had no desire either to go to Parliament themselves or to send others. The expense of the journey was great, the compensation was small, and unless some important matter of special interest to the people was at stake, they preferred to stay at home. On this account it was often almost as difficult for the sheriff to get a distant county member up to the House of Commons in London as it would have been to carry him there a prisoner to be tried for his life.

Now, however, everything was changed; the rise of political parties (S479), the constant and heavy taxation, the jealousy of the increase of royal authority, the influence and honor of the position of a Parliamentary representative, all conspired to make men eager to obtain their full share in the management of the government.

This new interest had begun as far back as the civil wars of the seventeenth century, and when Cromwell came to power he effected many much-needed reforms. But after the restoration of the Stuarts (S467), the Protector's wise measures were repealed or neglected. Then the old order, or rather disorder, again asserted itself, and in many cases matters became worse than ever.

579. "Rotten Boroughs."

For instance, the borough or city of Old Sarum, in Wiltshire, which had once been an important place, had, at an early period, gradually declined through the growth of New Sarum, or Salisbury, near by. (See map, p.436.) In the sixteenth century the parent city had so completely decayed that not a single habitation was left on the desolate hilltop where the caste and cathedral once stood. At the foot of the hill was an old tree. The owner of that tree and of the field where it grew sent (1830) two members to Parliament,—that action represented what had been regularly going on for something like three hundred years!

In Bath, on the other hand, none of the citizens, out of a large population, might vote except the mayor, alderman, and common council. These places now got the significant name of "rotten boroughs" from the fact that whether large or small there was no longer any sound political life existing in them. Many towns were so completely in the hands of the squire or some other local "political boss" that, on one occasion when a successful candidate for Parliament thanked the voters for what they had done, a man replied that he need not take the trouble to thank them; for, said he, "if the squire had zent his great dog we should have chosen him all one as if it were you, zur."[1]

[1] See Hindon, in Murray's "Wiltshire."

580. The Great Reform Bill.

For fifty years after the coming in of the Georges the country had been ruled by a powerful Whig (SS479, 548) monopoly. Under George III that monopoly was broken (S548), and the Tories (S479) got possession of the government. But whichever party ruled, Parliament, owing to the "rotten-borough" system, no longer represented the nation, but simply stood for the will of certain wealthy landholders and town corporations. A loud and determined demand was now made for reform. In this movement no one was more active or influential among the common people than William Cobbett. He was a vigorous and fearless writer, who for years published a small newspaper called the Political Register, which was especially devoted to securing a just and uniform system of representation.

On the accession of William IV the pressure for reform became so great that Parliament was forced to act. Lord John Russell brought in a bill (1831) providing for the abolition of the "rotten boroughs" and for a fair system of elections. But those who owned or controlled those boroughs had no intention of giving them up. Their opponents, however, were equally determined, and they knew that they had the support of the nation.

In a speech which the Reverend Sydney Smith made at Taunton, he compared the futile resistance of the House of Lords to the proposed reform, to Mrs. Partington's attempt to drive back the rising tide of the Atlantic with her mop. The ocean rose, and Mrs. Partington, seizing her mop, rose against it; yet, notwithstanding the good lady's efforts, the Atlantic got the best of it; so the speaker prophesied that in this case the people, like the Atlantic, would in the end carry the day.[1]

[1] Sydney Smith's "Essays and Speeches."

When the bill came up, the greater part of the Lords and the bishops, who, so far as they were concerned personally, had all the rights and privileges they wanted, opposed it; so too did the Tories (S479), in the House of Commons. They thought that the proposed law threatened the stability of the government. The Duke of Wellington (S573) was particularly hostile to it, and wrote, "I don't generally take a gloomy view of things, but I confess that, knowing all that I do, I cannot see what is to save the Church, or property, or colonies, or union with Ireland, or, eventually, monarchy, if the Reform Bill passes."[2]

[2] Wellington's "Dispatches and Letters," II, 451.

581. The Lords reject the Bill; Serious Riots (1831).

The King dissolved Parliament (S534, note 2); a new one was elected, and the Reform Bill was passed by the House of Commons; but the upper House rejected it. Then a period of wild excitement ensued. The people in many of the towns collected in the public squares, tolled the church bells, built bonfires in which they burned the bishops in effigy, with other leading opponents of the bill, and cried out for the abolition of the House of Lords.

In London the rabble smashed the windows of Apsley House, the residence of the Duke of Wellington. At Nottingham the mob fired and destroyed the castle of the Duke of Newcastle because he was opposed to reform. In Derby a serious riot broke out. In Bristol matters were still worse. A mob got possession of the city, and burned the Bishop's Palace and a number of public buildings. The mayor was obliged to call for troops to restore order. Many persons were killed, and four of the ringleaders of the insurrection were hanged. All over the country shouts were heard, "The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill!"

582. Passage of the Great Reform Bill, 1832; Results.

In the spring of 1832 the battle began again more fiecely than ever.
Again the House of commons voted the bill, and once again the House of
Lords defeated it.

Earl Grey, the Whig Prime Minister (S479), had set his heart on carrying the measure. In this crisis he appealed to the King for help. If the Tory Lords would not pass the bill, the King had the power to create a sufficient number of new Whig Lords who would. William refused to exercise this power. Thereupon Earl Grey, with his Cabinet (S534), resigned, but in a week the King had to recall them. Then William, much against his will, gave the following document to his Prime Minister:

"The King grants permission to Earl Grey, and to his Chancellor,
Lord Brougham, to create such a number of Peers as will be
sufficient to insure the passing of the Reform Bill—first calling
up Peers' eldest sons.
"William R., Windsor, May 17, 1832"[1]

[1] "First calling up Peers' eldest sons": that is, in creating new Lords, the eldest sons of Peers were to have the preference. William R. (Rex, King): this is the customary royal signature. Earl Grey was the leader of that branch of the Whig party known as the "Aristocratic Whigs," yet to him and his associate Cabinet minsiters the people were indebted for the great extension of the suffrage in 1832.

But there was no occasion to make use of this permission. As soon as the Lords found that the Cabinet (S534), with Earl Grey at the head, had actually compelled the King to bow to the demands of the people, they withdrew their opposition. The "Great Charter of 1832" was carried, received the royal signature, and became law.

The passage of this memorable act brought about these beneficent changes:

(1) It abolished nearly sixty "rotten boroughs" (S579). (2) It gave every householder who paid a rent of ten pounds in any town a vote, and largely extended the list of county voters as well. (3) It granted two representatives to Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, and nineteen other large towns, and one representative each to twenty-one other places, all of which had hitherto been unrepresented, besides granting fifteen additional members to the counties. (4) It added, in all, half a million voters to the list, mostly men of the middle class, and it helped to purify the elections from the violence which had disgraced them.[1]

[1] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p.xxvi, S31.

Before the passing of the Reform Bill, and the legislation which supplemented it, the election of a member of Parliament was a kind of local reign of terror. The smaller towns were sometimes under the control of drunken ruffians for several weeks. During that time they paraded the streets in bands, assaulting voters of the opposite party with clubs, kidnaping prominent men and confining them until after the election, and perpetrating other outrages, which so frightened peacable citizens that often they did not dare attempt to vote at all.

Finally, the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832 effected, in its own way, a change which was perhaps as momentous as that which the Revolution of 1688 had accomplished.[2] That, as we have seen (S497), made the King dependent for his crown on his election to office by Parliament. On the other hand, the Reform Bill practically took the last vestige of real political authority from the King and transferred it to the Cabinet (S534), who had now become responsible to the House of Commons, and hence to the direct will of the majority of the nation. But though the Sovereign had laid down his political scepter, never to resume it, he would yet, by virtue of his exalted position, continue to wield great power,—that of social and diplomatic influence, which is capable of accomplishing most important results both at home and abroad. To-day then, though the King still reigns, the People, and the People alone, govern.

[2] Compare the three previous Revolutions represented by (1) Magna Carta (S199); (2) De Montfort's House of Commons (S213); (3) the Civil War and its effects (SS441, 450, 451).

583. Abolition of Slavery, 1833; Factory Reform, 1833-1841.

With the new Parliament that came into power the names of Liberal and Conservative began to supplant those of Whig and Tory (S479), for it was felt that a new political era needed new party names. Again, the passage of the Reform Bill (S582) changed the policy of both these great political parties. It made Liberals and Conservatives bid against each other for the support of the large number of new voters (S582 (4)), and it acted as an entering wedge to prepare the way for the further extension of suffrage in 1867 and 1884 (S534), representing the Commons, had gained a most significant victory; and further reforms were accordingly carried against the strenuous opposition of the King.

Buxton, Wilberforce, Brougham, and other noted philanthropists secured the passage through Parliament of a bill, 1833, for which they, with the younger Pitt, had labored in vain for half a century. By this act all negro slaves in the British West India colonies, numbering about eight hundred thousand, were set free, and the sum of 20,000,000 pounds was appropriated to compensate the owners.

It was a grand deed grandly done. Could America have followed that noble example, she might thereby have saved a million of human lives and many thousand millions of dollars which were cast into the gulf of civil war, while the corrupting influence of five years of waste and discord would have been avoided.

But negro slaves were not the only slaves in those days. There were white slaves as well,—women and children born in England, but condemned by their necessities to work underground in the coal mines, or to exhaust their strength in the cotton mills. They were driven by brutal masters who cared as little for the welfare of those under them as the overseer of a West India plantation did for his gangs of black toilers in the sugar-cane fields. On investigation it was found that children only six and seven years of age were compelled to labor for twelve and thirteen hours continuously in the factories. In the coal mines their case was even worse. All day long these poor creatures sat in absolute darkness, opening and shutting doors for the passage of coal cars. If, overcome with fatigue, they fell asleep, they were cruelly beaten with a strap.[1]

[1] See Gibbin's "Industrial History of England," E.F. Cheyney's "Industrial History of England," and Mrs. E. B. Browning's poem, "The Cry of the Children."

Parliament at length turned its attention to these abuses, and passed acts, 1833, forbidding the employment of women and young children in such work; a later act put an end to the barbarous practice of forcing children to sweep chimneys.

584. The First Steam Railway, 1830; the Railway Craze; the Friction Match, 1834.

Ever since the application of steam to machinery, the inventors had been discussing plans for placing the steam engine on wheels and using it as a propelling power in place of horses. Macadam, a Scotch surveyor, had constructed a number of very superior roads made of gravel and broken stone in the south of England, which soon made the name of "macadamized turnpike" celebrated.

The question then arose, Might not a still further advance be made by employing steam to draw cars on these roads, or, better still, on iron rails? The first locomotives built were used in hauling coal at the mines in the North of England. Puffing Billy, the pioneer machine (1813), worked for many years near Newcastle. At length George Stephenson, an inventor and engineer, together with certain capitalists, succeeded in getting Parliament to pass an act for constructing a passenger railway between Liverpool and Manchester, a distance of about thirty miles.

When the line was completed by Stephenson, he had great difficulty in getting permission to use an engine instead of horse power on it. Finally, Stephenson's new locomotive, The Rocket,—which first introduced the tubular boiler, and employed the exhaust, or escaping, steam to increase the draft of the fire,—was tried with entire success.[1]

[1] Stephenson's Rocket and Watt's stationary steam engine (S563) are both preserved in the South Kensington Museum, London. The boiler of the Rocket was traversed by a number of tubes communicating with the smoke pipe. The steam, after it hada done its work in the cylinders of the engine, escaped with great force through the smoke pipe and so created a very powerful draft. Without these two important improvements the locomotive would probably never have made an average speed of more than six or seven miles an hour.

The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was formally opened in the autumn of 1830, and the Duke of Wellington, then Prime Minister, was one of the few passengers who ventured on the trial trip. The growth of this new mode of transportation was so rapid that in five years from that time London and the principal seaports were connected with the great manufacturing towns, while local steam navigation had also nearly doubled its vessels and its tonnage.

Later on (1844-1847), Stephenson might easily have made himself "rich beyond the dreams of avarice,"—or at least of the avarice of that day. All he had to do was to lend the use of his name to new and doubtful railway projects; but he refused on the ground that he did not care "to make money without labor or honor." Meanwhile the whole country became involved in a speculative craze for building railways. Scores of millions of pounds were invested; for a time Hudson, the so-called "Railway King," ruled supreme, and Dukes and Duchesses, and members of Parliament generally, did homage to the man whose schemes promised to cover the whole island with a network of iron roads, every one of which was expected to be as profitable as a gold mine. These projects ended in a panic, second only to that of the South Sea Bubble (S536), and thousands found that steam could destroy fortunes even faster than it made them.

Toward the close of William's reign (1834-1835) a humble invention was perfected of which little was said at the time, but which contributed in no small degree to the comfort and convenience of every one. Up to this date two of the most important of all civilizing agents—fire and light—could be produced only with much difficulty and at considerable expense.

Various deviced had been contrived to obtain them, but the common method continued to be the primitive one of striking a bit of flint and steel sharply together until a falling spark ignited a piece of tinder or half-burned rag, which, when it caught, had, with no little expense of breath, to be blown into a flame. The progress of chemistry suggested the use of phosphorus, and after years of experiments the friction match was invented by an English apothecary, who thus gave to the world what is now the commonest, and perhaps at the same time the most useful, domestic article in existence.

585. Summary.

William IV's short reign of seven years was marked (1) by the great Reform Bill of 1832, which, to a great extent, took Parliament out of the hands of rich men and "rotten boroughs" and put it under the control of the people; (2) by the abolition of slavery in the British colonies, and factory reform; (3) by the introduction of the friction match, and by the building of the first successful line of steam railway.

VICTORIA—1837-1901

586. The Queen's Descent; Stability of the Government.

As William IV left no child to inherit the crown, he was succeeded by his niece, the Princess Victoria, daughter of his brother Edward, Duke of Kent. (See Genealogical Table, p.323.) In her lineage the Queen represented nearly the whole past sovereignty of the land over which she reigned.[1] The blood of both Cerdic, the first Saxon king, and of William the Conqueror,[2] flowed in her veins,—a fact which strikingly illustrates the vitality of the hereditary and conservative principles in the history of the English Crown.

[1] The only exceptions are the four Danish sovereigns and Harold II. [2] See Genealogical Table of the Descent of English Sovereigns in the Appendix.

The fact stands out in stronger relief if we call to mind what England had passed through in that intervening period of time.

In 1066 the Normans crossed the Channel, invaded the island, conquered its inhabitants, and seized the throne. In the course of the next five centuries two kings were deposed, one died a captive in the Tower of London,[3] and the Catholic religion, as an established Church, was supplanted in England by the Protestant faith of Luther.

[3] Namely, Edward II (S233), Richard II (S257), and Henry VI (S305).

Somewhat less than a hundred years after that event, Civil War broke out in 1642; the King was dethroned and beheaded, and in 1648 a republic established. The monarchy was restored in 1660, only to be followed by the Revolution of 1688, which changed the order of royal succession, drove one line of sovereigns from the land, and called in another from Germany to take its place. Meanwhile the House of Commons had gained enormously in political power, and Cabinet Government had been fully and finally established (S534). In 1832 the Reform Bill was passed, by which the power of the people was largely extended in Parliament; the two great political parties had been reorganized; yet after all these events, at the end of more than ten centuries from the date when Egbert first became Overlord of all the English, in 829 (S49), we find England governed by a descendant of her earliest rulers!

587. The Power of the House of Commons and of the Cabinet fully and finally recognized.

Queen Victoria was but little over eighteen when called to the throne. At her accession a new order of things began. The Georges insisted on dismissing their Cabinet ministers, or chief political advisers, when they pleased, without condescending to give Parliament any reason for the change. We have seen too that William IV tried to do the same thing, but had to acknowledge that he was beaten (S582). William's unsuccessful attempt was never repeated. The last vestige of "personal government,"[1] that is, of the determination of the Crown to act contrary to the will of the majority of the nation, as expressed by the Cabinet, died with the late King.

[1] See the reign of Victoria in McCarthy's "History of Our Own Times."

With the coronation of Victoria the principle was established, once for all, that henceforth the Sovereign of the British Empire cannot remove the Prime Minister or his Cabinet (S582) without the consent of the House of Commons; nor, on the other hand, would the Sovereign now venture to retain a ministry which the Commons refused to support.[2] This limitation of the prerogatives of royalty emphasized the fact that the House of Commons had practically become the ruling power in England; and since that House is freely elected by the great body of the people, in order that it may declare and enforce their will, it follows that the government of the realm is essentially democratic. In fact, so far as reflecting public opinion is concerned, no republic in the world is more democratic.

[2] In order to guard herself against any political influence adverse to that of the Cabinet (S582), and hence of the majority of the House of Commons, the Queen was compelled to consent (1841) that the Mistress of the Robes, or head of her Majesty's household, should change at the demand of the incoming Prime Minister; and it was furthermore agreed that any ladies under her whose presence might be politically inconvenient to the Prime Minister, should retire "of their own accord." In other words, the incoming Prime Minister, with his Cabinet, has the right to remodel the Sovereign's household—or any other body of offices—in whatever degree he may think requisite, and the late Prince Albert could not even appoint his own private secretary, but much to his chagrin had to accept one appointed for him by the Prime Minister. See May's "Constitutional History of England" and Martin's "Life of the Prince Consort."

Custom, too, has decided that the Sovereign must sanction every bill which Parliament approves and resolves to make law. Queen Anne was the last occupant of the English throne who ventured to veto a bill, by refusing to assent to it. That was in 1707, or more than two hundred years ago, and there is little probability that any wearer of the crown will ever attempt to do what she did. In fact, an able and authoritative English writer has not hesitated to declare that if the two Houses of Parliament should agree to send the reigning Sovereign his own death warrant, he would be obliged to sign it, or abdicate.[1]

[1] See Bagehot's "The English Constitution."

An English sovereign's real position to-day is that of a person who has much indirect influence and but little direct power,—far less in fact than that of the President of the United States; for the latter can veto a bill, and can remove any or all of his cabinet officers at pleasure.

588. The House of Lords in the Past and To-day.

A change equally great was taking place with respect to the Peers, or Lords.[2] As that body has played a most important part in the government of England and still retains considerable influence, it may be well to consider its history and present condition.

[2] Peers (from the Latin pares, equals): The word first occurs in an act of Parliament, 1321,—"Pares et proceres regni Angliae spirituales et temporales." The name Peers, referring to the House of Lords, is here limited, as it has been ever since, to the higher clergy (now consisting of certain bishops) and to the hereditary nobility.

It will be remembered that the peerage originated with the Norman Conquest. William rewarded the barons, or chief men, who fought under him at Hastings[3] with grants of immense estates, which were given on two conditions: one of military service at the call of the Sovereign (S150); the other their attendance, when required, at the Great or Royal Council (S144), an advisory and legislative body which contained the germ of what later came to be called Parliament.

It will thus be seen that the Conqueror made the possession of landed property directly dependent on the discharge of public duties. So that if, on the one hand, the Conquest carried out the principle

"That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can,"[1]

on the other, it insisted on the higher principle that in return for such *taking* and *keeping* the victors should bind themselves by oath to help defend the kingdom, and to help govern it.

[1] Wordsworth's "Rob Roy's Grave."

In later reigns the King summoned other influential men to attend Parliament. To distinguish them from the original barons by land tenure, they were called "barons by writ" (S263). Subsequently it became customary for the Sovereign to create barons by letters patent, as is the method at present (S263).

Edward I, 1295, is generally considered to have been the "Creator of the House of Lords" in the form in which it has since stood.[2] From his time the right to sit in the House of Lords was limited to those whom the King summoned, namely, the hereditary Peers (save in the case of a very limited number of life Peers), and to the upper clergy.

[2] W. Stubb's "English Constitutional History," II, 184, 203; also Feilden's "Short Constitutional History of England," pp. 121-122.

The original baronage continued predominant until the Wars of the Roses (S316) destroyed so many of the ancient nobility that, as Lord Beaconsfield says, "A Norman baron was almost as rare a being in England then as a wolf is now." With the coming in of the Tudors a new nobility was created (S352). Even this has become in great measure extinct. Perhaps not more than a fourth of those who now sit in the House of Lords can trace their titles further back than the Georges, who created great numbers of Peers in return for political services either rendered or expected.

Politically speaking, the nobility of England, unlike the old nobility of France, is strictly confined and strictly descends to but one member of the family,—the eldest son receiving the preference. None of the children of the most powerful Duke or Lord has, during his father's life, any civil or legal rights or privileges above that of the poorest and most obscure native-born day laborer in Great Britain.[1]

[1] Even the younger children of the Sovereign are no exception to this rule. The only one born with a title is the eldest, who is Duke of Cornwall by birth, and is created Prince of Wales. The others are simply commoners. See E.A. Freeman's "Growth of the English Constitution."

The whole number of Peers is about six hundred.[2] They own a very large part of the land of England[3] and possess all the social and political influence naturally belonging to such a body. Yet notwithstanding the exclusive and aristocratic spirit of this long- established class, it has always been ready to receive recruits from the ranks of the people. For just as any boy in America feels himself a possible senator or President, so any one born or naturalized in England, like Pitt, Disraeli, Churchill, Nelson, Wellesley, Brougham, Tennyson, Macaulay, Lord Lyndhurst,[4] and many others, may win his way to a title, and also to a seat in the House of Lords, since brains and character go to the front in England just as surely as they do everywhere else.

[2] The full assembly of the House of Lords would consist of five hundred and sixty-two temporal Peers and twenty-six spiritual Peers (archbishops and bishops). [3] So strictly is property entailed that there are proprietors of large estates who cannot so much as cut down a tree without permission of the heir. See Badeau's "English Aristocracy." [4] J.S. Copley (Lord Lyndhurst), son of the famous artist, was born in Boston in 1772. He became Lord Chancellor. All of the eminent men named above rose from the ranks of the people and were made Peers of the realm, either for life or as a hereditary right; and in a number of cases, as the elder Pitt (Earl of Chatham), Wellesley (Duke of Wellington), Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield), Copley (Lord Lyndhurst), they received seats in the House of Lords.

In their legislative action the Lords are, with very rare exceptions, extremely conservative. It is a "galling fact"[5] that they have seldom granted their assent to any liberal measure except from pressure of the most unmistakable kind. They opposed the Habeas Corpus Act under Charles II, Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the Great Reform Bill of 1832, the Education Bill of 1834, the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, the admission of the Jews to Parliament in 1858, and they very reluctantly consented to the necessity of granting later extensions of the elective franchise.

[5] See A.L. Lowell's "The Government of England," I, 414, 422.

But, on the other hand, it was their influence which compelled John to sign Magna Carta in 1215; it was one of their number—Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester—who called the House of Commons into being in 1265; and it was the Lords as leaders who inaugurated the Revolution of 1688, and established constitutional sovereignty under William and Mary in the place of the despotic self-will of James II. Again, it was Lord Derby, the Prime Minister, and Mr. Disraeli, later known as Lord Beaconsfield, who, as leaders of the Tory, or Conservative, Party, felt obliged to carry the Reform Bill of 1867, by which the right to vote was greatly extended among the people (S600).

Seven hundred years ago the House of Lords was the only legislative and executive body in the country; now, nearly all the most important business of Parliament is done in the House of Commons (consisting of some six hundred and seventy members), and the Lords cannot vote a penny of money for any purpose whatever unless Commons first passes a bill to that effect (S281). Thus taxation, which is generally regarded as the most important of all measures, has passedf from the Lords to the direct representatives of the people.

At one time certain impatient Radicals in the House of Commons denounced the Peers as "titled obstructionists." In fact, late in the nineteenth century (1894) a resolution to put an end to their obstructive power was carried in the Commons (when half the members were absent) by a majority of two. But the vote was not taken seriously, and the Lords were not called upon to go out of business. The upper House has continued, on occasion, to exercise its constitutional righ of vetoing bills sent up to it by the House of Commons, though since 1860 it has rejected but one "Money Bill" (1909), and that only temporarily (SS629, 631).[1] Since then the Liberal Party has demanded more strenuously than ever that the veto power of the Lords should be either greatly limited or abolished altogether (SS629, 632).

[1] As far back as 1671, the House of Commons resolved "that in all aids given to the King by the Commons, the rate or tax ought not to be altered by the Lords." In 1678 they emphatically repeated this resolution. In 1860 when the Lords rejected a "Money Bill" (for the repeal of paper duties) the Commons vigorously protested, declaring that they regarded the exercise of that power by the upper House with "particular jealousy." From that time the Commons were careful to include all the financial measures of the year in one bill, which the Lords "were forced to accept or reject as a whole." See H.S. Feilden's "Short Constitutional History of England," pp. 114-115, and A.L. Lowell's "The Government of England," I, 400-401.

The House of Lords always includes a number of members eminent for their judicial ability, some of whom have been created Peers for that reason. This section acts as the National Court of Appeal and sits to decide the highest questions of constitutional law. In this respect it corresponds to the Supreme Court of the United States.

589. The Queen's Marriage (1840).

In her twenty-first year, Queen Victoria married her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, a duchy of Central Germany. The Prince was about her own age, of fine personal appearance, and had just graduated from one of the German universities. He was particularly interested in art and education, and throughout his life used his influence to raise the standard of both.

590. Sir Rowland Hill's Postal Reforms, 1839.

The preceding year Sir Rowland Hill introduced a uniform system of cheap postage. The rate had been as high as a shilling for a single letter.[1] Such a charge was practically prohibitive, and, as a rule, no one wrote in those days if he could possibly avoid it. Sir Rowland reduced it to a penny (paid by stamp) to any part of the United Kingdom.[2] Since then the government has taken over all the telegraph lines, and cheap telegrams and the cheap transportation of parcels by mail (a kind of government express known as "parcels post") have followed. They are all improvements of immense practical benefit.

[1] An illustration of the effects of such high charges for postage is related by Coleridge. He says that he met a poor woman at Keswick just as she was returning a letter from her son to the postman, saying she could not afford to pay for it. Coleridge gave the postman the shilling, and the woman told the poet that the letter was really nothing more than a blank sheet which her son had agreed to send her every three months to let her know he was well; as she always declined to take this dummy letter, it of course cost her nothing. See G.B. Hill's "Life of Sir Rowland Hill," I, 239, note. [2] The London papers made no end of fun of the first envelopes and the first postage stamps (1840). See the facsimile of the ridiculous "Mulready Envelope" in Hill's "Life of Sir Rowland Hill," I, 393.

591. Rise of the Chartists (1838-1848).

The feeling attending the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832 (S582) had passed away; but now a popular agitation began which produced even greater excitement. Although the act of 1832 had equalized parliamentary representation and had enlarged the elective franchise to a very considerable degree, yet the great body of workingmen were still shut out from the right to vote. A Radical Party called the "Chartists" now arose, which undertook to secure further measures of reform.

They embodied their measures in a document called the "People's
Charter," which demanded:

1. Universal male suffrage. 2. That the voting at elections should be by ballot. 3. Annual Parliaments. 4. The payment of memebers of Parliament. 5. The abolition of the property qualification for parliamentary candidates.[1] 6. The division of the whole country into equal electoral districts.

[1] Property qualification: In 1711 an act was passed requiring candidates for election to the House of Commons to have an income of not less than 300 pounds derived from landed property. The object of this law was to secure members who would be comparatively free from the temptation of receiving bribes from the Crown, and also to keep the landed proprietors in power to the exclusion of rich merchants. This law was repealed in 1858.

The Chartists held public meetings, organized clubs, and published newpapers to disseminate their principles, but for many years made very little progress. The French revolution which dethroned King Louis Philippe (1848) imparted fresh impetus to the Chartist movement. The leader of that movement was Feargus O'Connor. He formed the plan of sending a monster petition to Parliament, containing, it was claimed, nearly five million signatures, praying for the passage of the People's Charter.

A procession of a million or more signers was to act as an escort to the document, which made a wagonload in itself. The Government became alarmed at the threatened demonstration, forbade it, on the ground that it was an attempt to coerce legislation, and organized a body of 250,000 special policemen to preserve order.

The Duke of Wellington took command of a large body of troops held in reserve to defend the city; and the Bank of England, the Houses of Parliament, the British Museum, and other public buildings were made ready to withstand a siege.

It was now the Chartists' turn to be frightened. When they assembled (1848) on Kennington Common in south London, they numbered less than thirty thousand, and the procession of a million which was to march across Westminster Bridge, to the Houses of Parliament, dwindled to half a dozen. When the huge petition was unrolled it was found to contain only about a third of the boasted number of names. Further examination showed that many of the signatures were spurious, having been put down in jest, or copied from gravestones and old London directories. With that discovery the whole movement collapsed, and the House of Commons rang with "inextinguishable laughter" over the national scare.

Still the demands of the Chartists had a solid foundation of good sense, which the blustering bravado of the leaders of the movement could not wholly destroy. Most, if not all, of the reforms asked for were needed. Since then, the steady, quiet influence of reason and of time has compelled Parliament to grant the greater part of them.[1]

[1] Sir Thomas Erskine May, in his "Constitutional History of England," says: "Not a measure has been forced upon Parliament which the calm judgment of a later time has not since approved; not an agitation has failed which posterity has not condemned."

The printed or written ballot has been substituted for the old method of electing candidates by a show of hands or by shouting yes or no,— a method by which it was easy to make blunders, and equally easy to commit frauds. Every voter must now have his name and address registered in a printed list. Every voter, too, casts a secret ballot and so safeguards his political independence (S609). The property qualification has been abolished (S591, note 1), so that the day laborer may now run for Parliament. He is sure, too, of being well paid, for Parliament voted (1911) to give 400 pounds a year to every member of the House of Commons. The right of "manhood suffrage" has been greatly extended, and before the twentieth century has advanced much farther every man in England will probably have a voice in the elections.

592. The Corn Laws (1841).

At the accession of the Queen protective duties or taxes existed in Great Britain on all imported breadstuffs and on many manufactured articles. Sir Robert Peel, the Conservative Prime Minister (1841), favored a reduction in the last class of duties, but believed it necessary to maintain the former in order to keep up the price of grain and thus encourage the English farmers. The result of this policy was great distress among the poorly paid, half-fed workingmen, who could not afford to buy dear bread. A number of philanthropists led by Richard Cobden and John Bright organized an Anti-Corn Law League[1] to obtain the repeal of the grain duties.

[1] Corn is the name given in England to wheat or other grain used for food. Indian corn or maize cannot be grown in that climate, and is seldom eaten there.

At the same time, Ebenezer Elliott, the "Corn-Law Rhymer," gave voice to the sufferings of the poor in rude but vigorous verse, which appealed to the excited feelings of thousands in such words as these:

"England! what for mine and me,
What hath bread tax done for thee?
. . . . . . . .
Cursed thy harvest, cursed thy land,
Hunger-stung thy skill'd right hand."

When, however, session after session of Parliament passed and nothing was done for the relief of the perishing multitudes, many began to despair, and great numbers joined in singing Elliott's new national anthem:

"When wilt Thou save the people?
O God of mercy! when?
Not kings or lords, but nations!
Not thrones and crowns, but men!
Flowers of thy heart, O God, are they!
Let them not pass, like weeds, away!
Their heritage a sunless day!
God save the people!"

Still the Government was not covinced; the Corn Laws were enforced, the price of bread showed no signs of falling, and the situation grew daily more desperate and more threatening.

593. The Irish Famine, 1845-1846.

At last the Irish famine opened the Prime Minister's eyes (S592). When in Elizabeth's reign Sir Walter Raleigh brought over the cheap but precarious potato from America and planted it in Ireland, his motive was one of pure good will. He could not foresee that it would in time become in that country an almost universal food, that through its very abundance the population would rapidly increase, and that then, by the sudden failure of the crop, terrible destitution would ensue. Such was the case in the summer of 1845. It is said by eyewitnesses that in a single night the entire potato crop was smitten with disease, and the healthy plants were transformed into a mass of putrefying vegetation. Thus at one fell stroke the food of nearly a whole nation was cut off.[1]

[1] O'Connor's "The Parnell Movement."

In the years that followed, the famine became appalling. The starving peasants left their miserable huts and streamed into the towns for relief, only to die of hunger in the streets.

Parliament responded nobly to the piteous calls for help, and voted in all no less than 10,000,000 pounds to relieve the distress.[2] Subscriptions were also taken up in London and the chief towns, by which large sums were obtained, and America contributed shiploads of provisions and a good deal of money; but the misery was so great that even these measures failed to accomplish what was hoped. When the famine was over, it was found that Ireland had lost about two million (or one fourth) of her population.[3] This was the combined effect of starvation, of the various diseases that followed in its path, and of emigration.[4]

[2] Molesworth's "History of England from 1830." [3] The actual number of deaths from starvation, or fever caused by insufficient food, was estimated at from two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand. See the Encyclopaedia Britannica under "Ireland." [4] McCarthy's "History of Our Own Times," Vol. I.

594. Repeal of the Corn Laws, 1846-1849; Free Trade established, 1869.

In the face of such appalling facts, and of the bad harvests and distress in England, Sir Robert Peel (S592) could hold out no longer, and by a gradual process, extending from 1846 to 1849, the obnoxious Corn Laws were repealed, with the exception of a trifling duty, which was finally removed in 1869.

The beginning once made, free trade in nearly everything, except wine, spirits, and tobacco, followed. They were, and still are, subject to a heavy duty, perhaps because the government believes, as Napoleon did, that the vices have broad backs and can comfortably carry the heaviest taxes. A few years later (1849) the old Navigation Laws (S459) were totally repealed. This completed the English free-trade measures. But, by a singular contrast, while nearly all goods and products now enter England free, yet Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa—in a word, all the great self-governing English colonies—continue to impose duties on imports from the mother country (S625).

595. The World's Fair (1851); Repeal of the Window and the Newspaper Tax; the Atlantic Cable, 1866.

The great industrial exhibition known as the "World's Fair" was opened in Hyde Park, London (1851). The original plan of it was conceived by Prince Albert. It proved to be not only a complete success in itself, but it led to many similar fairs on the part of different nations. For the first time in history the products and inventions of all the countries of the globe were brought together under one roof, in a gigantic structure of glass and iron called the "Crystal Palace," which is still in use for exhibition purposes at Sydenham, a suburb of London.

The same year (1851) the barbarous tax on light and air, known as the "Window Tax,"[1] was repealed and the House Tax (which is still in force) was substituted for it. From that date the Englishman, whether in London or out, might enjoy his sunshine, when he could get it, without having to pay for every beam,—a luxury which only the rich could afford.

[1] This tax, which took the place of the ancient Hearth Tax (1663-1689), was first imposed in 1695.

A little later (1855) a stamp tax on newspapers, which had been devised in Queen Anne's time in the avowed hope of crushing them out, was repealed. The result was that henceforth cheap papers could be published, and the workingman, as he sat by his fireside, could inform himself of what the world was doing and thinking,—two things of which he had before known almost nothing, and cared, perhaps, even less.

To get this news of the world's life more speedily, England had established the first line of Atlantic steamers (S565); next, the first Atlantic cable, connecting England with America, was laid (1858). It soon gave out, but was permanently relaid not long afterwards, in 1866. Since then a large part of the globe has been joined in like manner,[1] and the great cities of every civilized land are practically one in their knowledge of all important events. So many improvements have also been made in the use of electricity, not only for the transmission of intelligence, but as an illuminator, and more recently still as a motive power, that it now seems probable that "the age of steam" will be superseded by the higher "age of electricity."

[1] There are now over 250,000 miles of submarine electric cables in operation in the world.

596. The Opium War (1839); the War in the Crimea (1854).

For nearly twenty years after Victoria's accession no wars occurred in her reign worthy of mention, with the exception of that with China (1839). At that time the Chinese Emperor, either from a desire to put a stop to the consumption of opium in his dominions, or because he wished to encourage the home production of the drug, prohibited its importation. As the English in India were largely engaged in the production of opium for the Chinese market,—the people of that country smoking it instead of tobacco,—the British government insisted that the Emperor should not interfere with so lucrative a trade. War ensued.

The Chinese, being unable to contend against English gunboats, were soon forced to withdraw their prohibition of the foreign opium traffic. The English government, with the planters of India, reaped a golden reward of many millions for their deliberate violation of the rights of a heathen and half-civilized people. The war opened five important ports to the British trade, and subsequent wars opened a number more on the rivers in the interior. This action, with the later aggressions of other European powers, roused an intensely bitter feeling among large numbers of the Chinese. Their hatred of foreigners finally led to a desperate but unsuccessful attempt (1900) to drive all Europeans and Americans, including missionaries, out of the country.

Eventually, the pressure of the great powers of Europe and the diplomatic influence of the United States induced China to grant the "Open Door" to the demands of foreign trade. Later, England and China made an agreement (1911) which bids fair to stop the exportation of opium to that country.

Next, Turkey declared war against Russia (1853). The latter Power had insisted on protecting all Christians in the Turkish dominions against the oppression of the Sultan. England and France considered the Czar's championship of the Christians as a mere pretext for occupying Turkish territory. To prevent this aggression they formed an alliance with the Sultan, which resulted in the Russo-Turkish war, and ended in the taking of Sebastopol by the allied forces. Russia was obliged to retract her demands, and peace was declared (1856).

597. The Great Rebellion in India, 1857.

The following year, 1857, was memorable for the outbreak of rebellion in India. The real cause of the revolt was probably a long-smothered feeling of resentment on the part of the Sepoy, or native, troops against English rule,—a feeling that dates back to the extortion and misgovernment of Warren Hastings (S555). The immediate cause of the uprising was the introduction of an improved rifle using a greased cartridge, which had to be bitten off before being rammed down.

To the Hindu the fat of cattle or swine is an abomination, and his religion forbids his tasting it. An attempt on the part of the British Government to enforce the use of the new cartridge brought on a general mutiny among three hundred thousand Sepoys. During the revolt the native troops perpetrated the most horrible atrocitise on the English women and children who fell into their hands. When the insurrection was finally quelled under Havelock and Campbell, the English soldiers retaliated by binding numbers of prisoners to the mouths of cannon and blowing them to shreds. At the close of the rebellion, the government of India was wholly transferred to the Crown, and later the Queen received the title of "Empress of India" (1876).

598. Death of Prince Albert; the American Civil War, 1861.

Not long after the Sepoy rebellion was quelled, Prince Albert (S589) died suddenly (1861). In him the nation lost an earnest promoter of social, educational, and industrial reforms, and the United States a true and judicious friend, who, at a most critical period in the Civil War, used his influence to maintain peace between the two countries.

After his death the Queen held no court for many years, and so complete was her seclusion that Sir Charles Dilke, a well-known Radical, suggested in Parliament (1868) that her Majesty be invited to abdicate or choose a regent. The suggestion was indignantly rejected; but it revealed the feeling, which quite generally existed, that "the real Queen died with her husband," and that only her shadow remained.

In the spring of the year 1861, in which Prince Albert died, the American Civil War broke out between the Northern and Southern States. Lord Palmerston, the Liberal Prime Minister, preferred to be considered the minister of the nation rather than the head of a political party. At the beginning of the war he was in favor of the North. As the conflict threatened to be bitter the Queen issued a proclamation declaring her "determination to maintain a strict and impartial neutrality in the contest between the said contending parties." The rights of belligerents—in other words, all the rights of war according to the law of nations—were granted to the South equally with the North; and her Majesty's subjects were warned against aiding either side in the conflict.

The progress of the war caused terrible distress in Lancashire, owing to the cutting off of supplies of cotton for the mills through the blockade of the ports of the Confederate States. The starving weavers, however, gave their moral support to the North, and continued steadfast to the cause of the Union even in the sorest period of their suffering. The great majority of the manufacturers and business classes generally, and the nobility, with a few exceptions, sympathized with the efforts of the South to establish an independent Confederacy. Most of the distinguished political and social leaders, in Parliament and out, with nearly all the influential journals, were on the same side, and were openly hostile to the Union.[1]

[1] Lord John Russell (Foreign Secretary), Lord Brougham, Sir John Bowring, Carlyle, Ruskin, and the London Times and Punch espouses the cause of the South more or less openly; while others, like Mr. Gladstone, declared their full belief in the ultimate success of the Confederacy. On the other hand, Prince Albert, the Duke of Argyll, John Bright, John Stuart Mill, Professor Newman, Lord Palmerston, at least for a time, and the London Daily News defended the cause of the North. After the death of President Lincoln, Punch manfully acknowledged (see issue of May 6, 1865) that it had been altogether wrong in its estimation of him and his measures; and Mr. Gladstone, in an essay on "Kin beyond Sea" in his "Gleanings of Past Years," paid a noble tribute to the course pursued by America since the close of the war.

Late in Autumn (1861) Captain Wilkes, of the United States Navy, boarded the British mail steamer Trent, and seized two Confederate commissioners (Mason and Slidell) who were on their way to England. When intelligence of the act was conveyed to President Lincoln, he expressed his unqualified disapproval of it, saying: "This is the very thing the British captains used to do. They claimed the right of searching American ships, and taking men out of them. That was the cause of the War of 1812. Now, we cannot abandon our own principles; we shall have to give up these men, and apologize for what we have done."

The British Government made a formal demand that the commissioners should be given up. Through the influence of Prince Albert, and with the approval of the Queen, this demand was couched in most conciliatory language. Slidell and Mason were handed over to Great Britain, and an apology was made by Secretary Seward.

During the progress of the Civil War a number of fast-sailing vessels were fitted out in England, and employed in running the blockade of the Southern ports, to supply them with arms, ammunition, and manufactured goods of various kinds. Later, several gunboats were built in British shipyards by agents of the Confederate government, for the purpose of attacking the commerce of the United States. The most famous of these vessels was the Alabama, built expressly for the Confederate service by the Lairds, of Birkenhead, armed with British cannon, and manned chiefly by British sailors.

Charles Francis Adams, the American Minister at London, notified Lord Palmerston, the Prime Minister, of her true character. But Palmerston permitted the Alabama to leave port (1862), satisfied with the pretext that she was going on a trial trip.[1] She set sail on her career of destruction, and soon drove nearly every American merchant vessel from the seas. Two years later (1864) she was defeated and sunk by the United States gunboat Kearsarge. After the war the Government of the United States demanded damages from Great Britain for losses caused by the Alabama and other English-built privateers.

[1] The Queen's advocate gave his opinion that the Alabama should be detained, but it reached the Foreign Secretary (Lord Russell) just after she had put out to sea.

A treaty was agreed to by the two nations; and by its provisions an international court was held at Geneva, Switzerland (1872), to deal with the demands made by the United States on Great Britain. The court awarded $15,500,000 in gold as compensation to the United States, which was duly paid. One very important result of this decision was that it established a precedent for settling by arbitration on equitable and amicable terms whatever questions might arise in future between the two nations.[1]

[1] This treaty imposed duties on neutral governments of a far more stringent sort than Great Britain had hitherto been willing to concede. It resulted, furthermore, in the passage of an act of Parliament, punishing with severe penalties such illegal shipbuilding as that of the Alabama. See Sheldon Amos's "Fifty Years of the English Constitution, 1830-1880."

599. Municipal Reform (1835); Woman Suffrage; the Jews.

Excellent as was the Reform Bill of 1832 (S582), it did not go far enough. There was also great need of municipal reform, since in many cities the taxpayers had no voice in the management of local affairs, and the city officers sometimes spent the income of large charitable funds in feasting and merrimaking while the poor got little or nothing.

A law was passed (1835) giving taxpayers in cities (except London) control of municipal elections. By a subsequent amendment, the ballot in such cases was extended to women,[2] and for the first time perhaps in modern history partial woman suffrage was formally granted by supreme legislative act. A number of years later the political restrictions imposed on the Jews were removed.

[2] Woman suffrage in municipal elections was granted to single women and widows (householders) in 1869. In 1870 an act was passed enabling them to vote at schoolboard elections, and also to become members of such boards. By act of 1894 women were made eligible to sit and vote in district and parish councils (or local-government elections).

There was a considerable number of Jews in London and in other large cities who were men of wealth and influence. They were entitled to vote and hold municipal office, but they were debarred from election to Parliament by a law which required them to make oath "on the faith of a Christian." The law was now so modified (1859) that a very prominent Jew, Baron Rothschild, took his seat in Parliament. Finally the Oaths Act (1888) abolished all religious tests in Parliament.

600. Second and Third Reform Acts, 1867, 1884; County and Parish Councils (1884, 1894).

In 1867 the pressure of public opinion moved Mr. Disraeli (later Lord Beaconsfield), a member of Lord Derby's Conservative Cabinet (S479), to bring in a second Reform Bill (S582), which became law. This bill provided "household suffrage." It gave the right to vote to all male householders in the English parliamentary boroughs (that is, towns having the right to elect one or more members to Parliament), who paid a tax for the support of the poor, and to all lodgers paying a rental of 10 pounds yearly; it also increased the number of voters among small property holders in counties.[1]

[1] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p.xxvi, S31. Lord Derby held the office, but Mr. Disraeli was really Prime Minister.

There still remained, however, a large class in the country districts for whom nothing had been done. The men employed by the farmers to till the soil were wretchedly poor and deplorably ignorant. Joseph Arch, a Warwickshire farm laborer, who had been educated by hunger and toil, succeeded in establishing a national union among men of his class (1872). In 1884 Mr. Gladstone, the Liberal Prime Minister, secured the ballot for agricultural laborers by the passage of the third Reform Act, which gave all residents of counties throughout the United Kingdom the right to vote on the same liberal conditions as the residents of the towns.

It is estimated that this last law added about two and a half millions of voters; this gave one voter to every six persons of the total population, whereas, before the passing of the first Reform Bill in 1832, thre was not over one in fifty. When the new or so-called "People's Parliament" convened (1886), Joseph Arch and several other candidates took their seats in the House of Commons as representatives of classes of the population who, up to that date, had no voice in the legislation of the country.

The next step may bring universal "manhood suffrage." The County Council and Parish Council acts (1888, 1894) greatly extended the power of the people in all matters of local government, so that now every village in England controls its own affairs.

601. Compulsory Church Rates abolished; Disestablishment in Ireland (1869).

While these great reforms were taking place with respect to elections, others of great importance were also being effected. From its origin in 1549 the established Protestant Church of England (S362) had compelled persons of all religious beliefs to pay rates or taxes for the maintenance of the Established Cuhrch in the parish where they resided. Methodists, Baptists, and other Dissenters (SS472, 496, 507) objected to this law as unjust, since, in addition to the expense of supporting their own form of worship, they were obliged to contribute toward maintaining one with which they had no sympathy. So great had the opposition become to paying these "church rates," that in over fifteen hundred parishes in England (1859) the authorities could not collect them. After long debate Mr. Gladstone carried through a bill (1868) which abolished this mode of taxation and made the payment of these rates purely voluntary.[1]

[1] Church rates were levied on all occupiers of land or houses within the parish. The Church of England is now supported by a tax on landowners, by its endowments, and by voluntary gifts.

A similar act of justice was soon after granted to Ireland (1869).[2] At the time of the union of the two countries in 1800 (S562), the maintenance of the Protestant Episcopal Church continued to remain obligatory upon the Irish people, although only a small part of them were of that faith. Mr. Gladstone, now Liberal Prime Minister, succeeded in getting Parliament to enact a law which disestablished this branch of the National Church and left all religious denominations in Ireland to the voluntary support of those who belonged to them. Henceforth the English Protestants residing in that country could no longer claim the privilege of worshiping God at the expense of his Roman Catholic neighbor.

[2] The Disestablishment Bill was passed in 1869 and took effect in 1871.

602. The Elementary Education Act, 1870.

In 1870 Mr. Forester, a member of Mr. Gladstone's Liberal Cabinet (SS534, 601), succeeded in passing a measure of the highest importance, entitled The Elementary Education Act. This act did not undertake to establish a new system of instruction, but to aid and improve that which was then in use. In the course of time, however, it effected such changes for the better in the common schools that it practically re-created most of them.

It will be remembered that before the Reformation the Catholic monasteries took the leading part in educating the children of the country (SS45, 60). The destruction of the monasteries by Henry VIII (S352) put a stop to their work; but after Henry's death, his son, Edward VI, established many Protestant schools (SS364, 365), while tohers were founded by men who had grown suddenly rich through getting possession of monastic lands. These new schools did good work, and are still doing it; but they seldom reached the children of the poor. Later on, many wealthy persons founded Charity Schools to help the class who could not afford to pay anything for their tuition. The pupils who lived in these institutions (of which a number still exist) were generally obliged to wear a dress which, by its peculiarity of cut and color, always reminded them that they were "objects of public or private benevolence." Furthermore, while the boys in these institutions were often encouraged to go on and enter Grammar Schools, the girls were informed that a very little learning would be all that they would ever need in the humble station in life to which Providence had seen fit to call them.

Meanwhile, the Church of England, and other religious denominations, both Catholic and Protestant, established many common schools (1781- 1811) for the benefit of the poor. The cost of carrying them on was usually met by private contributions. All of these schools gave some form of denominational religious instruction. As the population increased many more schools were required. At length Parliament began (1833) to grant money to help the different religious societies in maintaining their systems of instruction. When able, the parents of the children were also called on to pay a small sum weekly. In 1870 the Liberal Government took hold of the education question with great vigor. It provided that in all cases where the existing Church of England or other denominational schools were not able to accomodate the children of a given district, School Boards should be established to open new schools, which, if necessary, should be maintained entirely at the public expense. In these "Board Schools," as they were called, no denominational religious instruction whatever could be given.

This very important act "placed a school within the reach of every child," but, except in very poor districts, these schools were not made free schools; in fact, free schools, in the American sense, cannot be said to exist in Great Britain. Later on (1880) compulsory attendance was required, and subsequent acts of Parliament (1902, 1904) transferred the management of these schools from the School Boards to the Town and County Councils.[1] Again, these new measures make it practicable for a boy or girl, who has done well in the primary course, to secure assistance which will open opportunities for obtaining a higher education. Thus, as a recent writer declares, "There is now a path leading from the workman's home even to the University."[2]

[1] But many men and women who belong to the Dissenting Denominations complain that the Educational Acts of 1870-1904 compel them to pay taxes for the support of a great number of public elementary schools which are under the control of the English Church, and furthermore, that teachers who are members of Dissenting societies, such as the Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, etc., can seldom, if ever, get appointments in the class of schools mentioned. Quite a number of these Dissenters who call themselves "Passive Resisters" have refused to pay the school tax and have had their property seized or have been sent to jail year after year. [2] A.L. Lowell's "The Government of England," II, 323.

Meanwhile (1871) the universities and colleges, with most of the offices and professorships connected with them, were thrown open to all persons without regard to religious belief; whereas, formerly, no one could graduate from Oxford or Cambridge without subscribing to the doctrines of the Church of England.

603. The First Irish Land Act, 1870.

In 1870, the same year that the Government undertook to provide for the education of the masses (S602), Mr. Gladstone, who was still Prime Minister and head of the Liberal Party (S601), brought in a bill for the relief of small Irish farmers, those who had to support themselves and their families from the little they could get from a few hired acres. Since the union (S562) much of the general policy of England toward Ireland had been described as "a quick alternation of kicks and kindness." Mr. Gladstone did not hesitate to say that he believed the misery of the island sprang mainly from its misgovernment. He thought that the small farmer needed immediate help and that it was the duty of the Liberal Party to grant it.

The circumstances under which the land was held in Ireland were peculiar. A very large part of it was owned by Englishmen whose ancestors obtained it through the wholesale confiscations of James I, Cromwell, and later rulers (SS423, 453). Very few of these English landlords cared to reside in the country or to do anything for its improvement. Their agents or overseers generally forced the farm tenants to pay the largest amount of rent that could be wrung from them, and they could dispossess a tenant of his land whenever they saw fit, without giving a reason for the act. If, by his labor, the tenant made the land more fertile, he seldom reaped any additional profit from his industry, for the rent was usually increased, and swallowed up all that he raised. Such a system of extortion was destructive to those who tilled the soil, and if it brought in more money for the landlord, it produced nothing but misery and discontent for his tenant.

Mr. Gladstone's new law endeavored to remedy these evils by the following provisions:

1. In case a landlord ejected a rent-paying tenant, he was to pay him
damages, and allow him a fair sum for whatever improvement he had
made.
2. It secured a ready means of arbitration between landlord and
tenant, and if a tenant failed to pay an exorbitant rate he could
not be hastily or unjustly driven from his farm.
3. It made it possible for the tenant to borrow a certain sum from the
government for the purpose of purchasing the land in case the owner
was willing to sell.

604. Distress in Ireland; the Land League (1879).

The friends of the new Irish land law hoped it would be found satisfactory; but the potato crop again failed in Ireland (1876-1879), and the country seemed threatened with another great famine (S593). Thousands who could not get the means to pay even a moderate rent were now forced to leave their cabins and seek shelter in the bogs, with the prospect of dying there of starvation.

The wrected condition of the people led an number of influential Irishmen to for a Land League (1879). This organization sought to abolish the entire landlord system in Ireland and to secure legislation which should eventually give the Irish peasantry possession of the soil they cultivated.

In time the League grew to have a membership of several hundred thousand persons, extending over the greater part of Ireland. Finding it difficult to get parliamentary help for their grievances, the League resolved to try a different kind of tactics. Its members refused to work for, buy from, sell to, or have any intercourse with landlords, or their agents, who extorted exhorbitant rent, ejected tenants unable to pay, or took possession of land from which tenants had been unjustly driven. This process of social excommunication was first tried on an English agent, or overseer, named Boycott, and soon became famous under the name of "boycotting."

As the struggle went on, many of the suffering poor became desperate. Farm buildings belonging to landlords and their agents were burned, many of their cattle were horribly mutilated, and a number of the agents shot. At the same time the cry rose of "No Rent, Death to the Landlords!" Hundreds of Irish tenants now refused to pay anything for the use of the land they cultivated, and attacked those who did.

Eventually the lawlessness of the country compelled the Government to take severe measures. It suppressed the Land League (1881), which was believed to be responsible for the refusal to pay rent, and for the accompanying outrages; but it could not extinguish the feeling which gave rise to that organization, and the angry discontent soon burst forth more violently than ever.

605. The Second Irish Land Act (1881); Fenian and Communist Outrages.

Mr. Gladstone (S603) now succeeded in carrying through a second Irish Land Law (1881) (S603), which he hoped might be more effective in relieving the Irish peasants than the first had been. This measure was familiarly known as the "Three F's,"—meaning Fair rent, Fixity of tenure, and Free sale. By the provisions of this act the tenant could appeal to a board of land commissioners appointed to fix the rate of his rent in case the demands made by the landlord seemed to him excessive.

Next, he could continue to hold his farm, provided he paid the rate determined on, for a period of fifteen years, during which time the rent could not be raised nor the tenant evicted except for violation of agreement or persistent neglect or waste of the land. Finally, he could sell his tenancy whenever he saw fit to the highest bidder. This law was later amended and extended in the interest of the peasant farmer (1887).

The year following the passage of this second Land Act, Lord Frederick Cavendish, chief secretary of Ireland, and Mr. Burke, a prominent government official, were murdered in Phoenix Park, Dublin (1882). Later, members of the Fenian society, and of other secret organizations sympathizing with the small Irish farmers, perpetrated dynamite outrages in London and other parts of England for the purpose of intimidating the Government. These acts were denounced by the leaders of the Irish National Party. They declared that "the cause of Ireland was not to be served by the knife of the assassin or by the infernal machine."

Notwithstanding the vindictive feeling caused by these rash deeds, despite also the passage of the Coercion Bill (1887), the majority of the more intelligent and thoughtful of the Irish people had faith in the progress of events. They believed that the time would come when their country would obtain the enjoyment of all the political rights which England so fully possesses. It will be seen (S620) that about ten years later they did gain a very important extension of the right of local self-government.[1]

[1] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p.xxvii, S33.

606. The Darwinian Theory of Evolution, 1859; the Persistence of
Force.

In the progress of science the Victorian period surpassed all previous records in England except that made by Sir Isaac Newton's discovery of the law of gravitation (S481). That great thinker demonstrated in 1684 that all forms of matter, great or small, near or distant, are governed by one universal force of attraction. In like manner the researches and investigations of the nineteenth century led to the conviction that all forms of life upon the earth obey a universal law of development. By this law the higher are evolved from the lower through a succession of gradual but progressive changes.

This conception originated long before the beginning of the Victorian era, but it lacked the support of carefully examined facts, and most sensible men regarded it as nothing more than a plausible conjecture. The thinker who did more than any other to supply the facts, and to put the theory, so far as it relates to natural history, on a solid and lasting foundation, was the distinguished English naturalist, Charles Darwin.[1]

[1] Alfred Russel Wallace, also noted as a naturalist, worked out the thoery of evolution by "natural selection" about the same time, though not so fully, with respect to details, as Darwin; as each of these investigators arrived at his conclusions independently of the other, the theory was thus doubly confirmed.

On his return (1837) from a voyage of scientific discovery round the world, Darwin began to examine and classify the facts which he had collected, and continued to collect, relating to certain forms of animal life. After twenty-two years of uninterrupted labor he published a work in 1859, entitled "The Origin of Species," in which he aimed to show that life generally owes its course of development ot the struggle for existence and to "the survival of the fittest."

Darwin's work may truthfully be said to have wrought a revolution in the study of nature as great as that accomplished by Newton in the seventeenth century. Though it excited heated and prolonged discussion, the Darwinian theory gradually made its way, and is now generall received, though sometimes in a modified form, by practically every eminent man of science throughout the world.

After Mr. Darwin began his researches, but before he completed them, Sir William Grove, an eminent electrician, commenced a series of experiments which resulted in his publishing his remarkable book[2] on the connection of the physical forces of nature. He showed that heat, light, and electricity are mutually convertible; that they must be regarded as modes of motion; and, finally, that all force is persistent and indestructible, thus proving, as Professor Tyndall says, that "to nature, nothing can be added; from nature, nothing can be taken away." Together, the work of Darwin and Grove, with kindred discoveries, resulted in the theory of evolution, or development. Later on, Herbert Spencer and other students of evolution endeavored to make it the basis of a system of philosophy embracing the whole field of nature and life.

[2] "The Correlation of the Physical Forces" (1846).

The Victorian period was also noted for many other great names in science, philosophy, literature, and art. The number was so great that it would manifestly be impracticable to devote any adequate space to them here.[1]

[1] It will be sufficient to mention the novelists, Dickens,
Thackeray, Bronte, and "George Eliot"; the historians, Stubbs, Hallam,
Arnold, Grote, Macaulay, Alison, Buckle, Froude, Freeman, and
Gardiner; the essayists, Carlyle, Landor, and De Quincey; the poets,
Browning and Tennyson; the philosophical writers, Hamilton, Mill, and
Spencer; with Lyell, Faraday, Carpenter, Tyndall, Huxley, Darwin,
Wallace, and Lord Kelvin in science; John Ruskin, the eminent art
critic; and, in addition, the chief artists of the period, Millais,
Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Watts, and Hunt.

607. The Queen's Two Jubilees; Review of Sixty Years of English
History (1837-1897).

Queen Victoria celebrated the fiftieth year of her reign (1887); ten years later (1897) the nation spontaneously rose to do honor to her "Diamond Jubilee." The splendid military pageant which marked that event in London was far more than a brilliant show, for it demonstrated the enthusiastic loyalty of the English people and of the English colonies.

The real meaning of the occasion is best sought in a review of the record of those threescore years. They were, in large degree, a period of progress; perhaps, in fact, no similar period in European history has been so "crowded with benefit to humanity."

When Victoria came to the throne in her nineteenth year (1837) she found the kingdom seething with discontent, and the province of Canada approaching rebellion. In business circles reckless speculation and the bursting of "Bubble Companies" had been followed by "tight money" and "hard times." Among the poor matters were far worse. Wages were low, work was scarce, bread was dear. In the cities half-fed multitudes lived in cellars; in the country the same class occupied wretched cottages hardly better than cellars.[2]

[2] See Cobbett's "Rural Rides, 1821-1832."

The "New Poor Law" (S403),[3] which went into effect in 1834, or shortly before the Queen's accession, eventually accomplished much good; but for a time it forced many laborers into the workhouse. The result aggravated the suffering and discontent, and the predominant feeling of the day may be seen reflected in the pages of Dickens, Carlyle, and Kingsley.[1]

[3] The "New Poor Law": Between 1691 and 1834 the administration of relief for the poor was in the hands of justices of the peace, who gave aid indiscriminately to those who begged for it. In 1795 wages for ordinary laborers were so low that the justices resolved to grant an allowance to every poor family in accordance with its numbers. The result of this mistaken kindness was speedily seen; employers cut down wages to the starvation point, knowing that the magistrates would give help out of the poor fund. The consequence was that the tax rate for relief of the poor rose to a degree that became unbearable. The "New Law" of 1834 effected a sweeping reform: (1) it forbade outdoor relief to the able-bodied poor, and thus, in the end, compelled the employer to give better wages (but outdoor relief is now frequently granted); (2) it restricted aid to that given in workhouses, where the recipient, if in good health, was obliged to labor in return for what he received; (3) it greatly reduced the expense of supporting the poor by uniting parishes in workhouse "unions"; (4) it modified the old rigid Law of Settlement, thereby making it possible for those seeking employment to take their labor to the best market. [1] See Dickens's "Oliver Twist" (1838), Carlyle's "Chartism" (1839), and Kingsley's "Yeast" and "Alton Locke" (1849).

Notwithstanding the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832 (S582), political power was still held chiefly by men of property who distrusted the masses of the people. They feared that the widespread distress would culminate in riots, if not in open insurrection.

The Chartist movement (S591) which speedily began (1838) seemed to justify their apprehension. But the dreaded revolt never came; the evils of the times were gradually alleviated and, in some cases, cured. Confidence slowly took the place of distrust and fear. When, in June (1897), the Queen's "Diamond Jubilee" procession moved from Buckingham Palace to St. Paul's, and thence through some of the poorest quarters of London, none of the dense mass that filled the streets cheered more lustily than those who must always earn their daily bread by their daily toil.

The explanation of that change was to be found in the progress of good government, the extension of popular rights, and the advance of material improvements. Let us consider these changes in their natural order.

608. Further Extension of the Right to Vote, 1832-1894.[2]

We have already described the far-reaching effects of the Reform Bill (S582) of 1832, which, on the one hand, put an end to many "rotten boroughs," and on the other, granted representation in Parliament to a number of large towns hitherto without a voice in that body. Three years later (1835) came the Municipal Reform Act. It placed the government of towns, with the exception of London,[1] in the hands of the taxpayers who lived in them.

[2] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p.xxvi, S31. [1] The ancient city of London, or London proper, is a district covering about a square mile, and was once enclosed in walls; it is still governed by a lord mayor, court of aldermen, and a common council elected mainly by members of the "city" companies, representing the medieval trade guilds (S274). The metropolis outside the "city" is governed by the London County Council and a number of associate bodies, among which are the councils of twenty-eight metropolitan boroughs.

This radical measure put a stop to the arbitrary and corrupt management which had existed when the town officers elected themselves and held their positions for life (S599). Futhermore, it prevented parliamentary candidates from buying up the entire municipal vote,—a thing which frequently happened so long as the towns were under the absolute control of a few individuals.

A generation passed before the next important step was taken. Then, as we have seen, the enactment of the Second Reform Bill (1867) (S600) doubled the number of voters in England. The next year an act reduced the property qualification for the right to vote in Scotland and Ireland; thus the ballot was largely increased throughout the United Kingdom.

The Third Reform Act (1884) (S600) granted the right to vote for members of Parliament to more than two million persons, chiefly to the farm laborers and other workingmen. Since that date, whether the Liberals or the Conservatives[2] have been in power, "the country," as Professor Gardiner says, "has been under democratic influence."

[2] The Whigs (S479) included two elements, one aristocratic and the other radical. After the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832 they took the name of Liberals; and the Tories (S479), who found their old name unpopular, adopted that of Conservatives.

But though these acts wrought an immense change by transferring political power from the hands of the few to the greater part of the nation, further progress in this direction was destined to come soon. Originally the government of the shires, or counties, was in the hands of the people; they gradually lost it, and the wealthy landed proprietors obtained control. The Local Government, or County Councils, Act (1888) restored the power in great measure to those who had parted with it, by putting the management of county affairs under the direction of the County Councils elected by the householders of the counties or shires. These Councils look after the highways, the sanitary condition of the towns, the education of children, and the care of the poor.

Six years later (1894) the principle of self-government was carried almost to the farthest point by the passage of the Parish Councils Bill.[1] This measure did for country villages and other small places what the Local Government Act did for the counties. It gave back to the inhabitants of the parishes certain rights which they had once possessed, but which had gradually come under the control of the squire, the parson[2], and a few privileged families.

[1] Parish: This name was given originally to a district assigned to a bishop or priest; at present it generally refers simply to the area which was formerly contained in such a district. [2] The squire was the chief landholder in a village or parish; the parson, the minister of the parish church.

Now every man and woman who has resided in the parish for a twelvemonth has the right not only to vote for the members of the Parish Council but to run as candidate for election to that body. The village parliament discusses all questions which are of public interest to the parish. It is in some respects more democratic even than a New England town meeting, since it gives women a voice, a vote, and opportunity to hold office. Its work supplements that of the County Councils and of Parliament.

609. Overthrow of the "Spoils System"; the Army; the "Secret Ballot," 1870-1872.

Meanwhile reforms not less important had been effected in the management of the civil service. The ancient power of the Crown to give fat pensions to its favorites had been pared down to very modest proportions, but another great abuse still flourished like an evil weed in rich soil.

For generations, public offices had been regarded as public plunder, and the watchword of the politicians was, "Every man for himself, and the National Treasury for us all." Under this system of pillage the successful party in an election came down like a flock of vultures after a battle. They secured all the "spoils," form petty clerkships worth 100 pounds a year up to places worth thousands.

About the middle of the last century (1855) an effort was made to break up this corrupt and corrupting system, but the real work was not accomplished until 1870. In that year England threw open the majority of the positions in the civil service to competitive examination. Henceforth the poorest day laborer, whether man or woman, might, if competent, ask for any one of many places which formerly some influential man or political "boss" reserved as gifts for those who obeyed his commands.

The next year (1871) the purchase of commissions in the army was abolished.[1] This established the merit system in the ranks, and now military honors and military offices are open to all who can earn them.

[1] Up to 1871 an officer retiring from the army could sell his commission to any officer next below him in rank who had the money to buy the position; whereas under the present system the vacancy would necessarily fall to senior officers in the line of promotion. In the year following this salutary change the entire British army was reorganized.

The Registration Act of 1843 required every voter to have his name and residence recorded on a public list. This did away with election frauds to a large extent. It was supplemented in 1872 by the introduction of the "secret ballot" (S591). This put an end to the intimidation of voters and to the free fights and riots which had so frequently made the polls a political pandemonium. The Bribery Act of 1883 was another important measure which did much toward stopping the wholesale purchase of votes by wealthy candidates or by powerful corporations.

610. Reforms in Law Procedures.

During Queen Victoria's reign great changes for the better were effected in simplifying the laws and the administration of justice. When she came to the throne the Parliamentary Statutes at Large filled fifty-five huge folio volumes, and the Common Law, as contained in judicial decisions from the time of Edward II (1307), filled about twelve hundred more. The work of examining, digesting, and consolidating this enormous mass of legislative and legal lore was taken in hand (1863) and has been slowly progressing ever since.

The Judicature Acts (1873, 1877) united the chief courts in a single High Court of Justice. This reform did away with much confusion and expense. But the most striking changes for the better were those made in the Court of Chancery (S147) and the criminal courts.

In 1825 the property belonging to suitors in the former court amounted to nearly forty millions of pounds.[1] The simplest case might require a dozen years for its settlement, while difficult ones consumed a lifetime, or more, and were handed down from father to son,—a legacy of baffled hopes, of increasing expense, of mental suffering worse than that of hereditary disease.

[1] See Walpole's "History of England," Vol. III.

Much has been done to remedy these evils, which Dickens set forth with such power in his novel of "Bleak House." At one time the prospect of reform seemed so utterly hopeless that it was customary for a prize fighter, when he had got his opponent's neck twisted under his arm, and held him absolutely helpless, to declare that he had his head "in chancery"!

611. Reforms in Criminal Courts and in the Treatment of the Insane.

In criminal courts an equal reform was effected, and men accused of burglary and murder are now allowed to have counsel to defend them, and the right of appeal is secured; whereas, up to the era of Victoria, they were obliged to plead their own cases as best they might against skilled public prosecutors, who used every resource known to the law to convict them.

Great changes for the better have also taken place in the treatment of the insane. Until near the close of the eighteenth century this unfortunate class was quite generally regarded as possessed by demons, and dealt with accordingly. William Tuke, a member of the Society of Friends, inaugurated a better system (1792); but the old method continued for many years longer. In fact, we have the highest authority for saying that down to a pretty late period in the nineteenth century the inmates of many asylums were worse off than the most desperate criminals.

They were shut up in dark, and often filthy, cells, where "they were chained to the wall, flogged, starved, and not infrequently killed."[2] Since then, mechanical restraints have, as a rule, been abolished, and the patients are generally treated with the care and kindness which their condition demands.

[2] Encyclopaedia Britannica (10th and 11th editions) under "Insanity."

612. Progress in the Education of the Masses.

We have seen that since 1837 the advance in popular education equaled that made in the extension of suffrage and in civil service reform. When Victoria began her reign a very large proportion of the children of the poor were growing up in a stat bordering on barbarism. Many of them knew little more of books or schools than the young Hottentots in Africa.

The marriage register shows that as late as 1840 forty per cent of the Queen's adult subjects could not write their names in the book; by the close of her reign (1901) the number who had to "make their mark" in that interesting volume was only about one in ten. This proves, as Lord Brougham said, that "the schoolmaster" has been "abroad" in the land.

The national system of education began, as we have already seen, in 1870 (S602). Later, the Assisted Education Act (1891) made provision for those who had not means to pay even a few pence a week for instruction. That law practically put the key of knowledge within reach of every child in England.

613. Religious Toleration in the Universities; Payment of Church Rates abolished.

The universities felt the new impulse. The abolition of religious tests for degrees at Oxford and Cambridge (1871) threw open the doors of those venerable seats of learning to students of every faith. Since then colleges for women have been established at Oxford and in the vicinity of Cambridge, and the "university-extension" examinations, with "college settlements" in London and other large cities, have long been doing excellent work.

The religious toleration granted in the universities was in accord with the general movement of the age. It wil be remembered that the Catholics were readmitted to sit in Parliament (S573) late in the reign of George IV (1829), and that under Victoria the Jews were admitted (1858) to the same right (S599). Finally Mr. Bradlaugh got his Oaths Bill passed (1888), and so opened PArliament to persons not only of all religious beliefs but of none.

In the meantime the compulsory payment of rates for the support of the
Church of England had been abolished (1868) (S601); and the next year
(1869) was made memorable by the just and generous act by which
Mr. Gladstone disestablished the Irish branch of the English Church
(S601).

614. Transportation and Communication.

When the Queen ascended the throne (1837), the locomotive (S584) was threatening to supersede the stagecoach; but the progerss of steam as a motor power on land had not been rapid, and England then had less than 200 miles of railway open;[1] but before the end of her reign there were nearly 22,000 miles in operation, and there are now 24,000. At first, the passenger accommodations were limited. Those who could indulge in such luxuries sometimes preferred to travel in their own private carriages placed on platform cars for transportation. For those who took first-class tickets there were excellent and roomy compartments at very high prices. The second class fared tolerably well on uncushioned seats, but the unfortunate third class were crowded like cattle into open trucks, without seats, and with no roofs to keep the rain out. But time remedied this. Long before the Queen celebrated her first Jubilee (S607) the workingman could fly through the country at the rate of from thirty to fifty miles an hour, for a penny a mile, and could have all the comforts that a reasonable being should ask for.

[1] A part of what is now the London and Northwestern Railway.

Cheap postage (S590) came in (1840) with the extension of railways, and in a few years the amount of mail carried increased enormously. Every letter, for the first time, carried on it a stamp bearing a portrait of the young Queen, and in this way the English people came to know her better than they had ever known any preceding sovereign. The London papers now reached the country by train.

The Telegraph began to come into use in January, 1845, between the railway station at Paddington, a western district of London, and Slough, near Windsor. The government eventually purchased all the lines, and reduced the charge on a despatch of twelve words to sixpence to any part of the United Kingdom. The Telephone followed (1876), and then Wireless Telegraphy (1899).

615. Light in Dark Places; Photography; the New Surgery (1834-1895).

The invention of the friction match, 1834 (S584), the abolition of the tax on windows (1851) (S595), with the introduction of American petroleum, speedily dispelled the almost subterraneous gloom of the laborer's cottage. Meanwhile photography, which began to be used in 1839, revealed the astonishing fact that the sun is always ready not only to make a picture but to take one, and that nothing is so humble as to be beneath his notice.

News came across the Atlantic from Boston, 1846, that Dr. Morton had rendered surgery painless by the use of ether. Before a year passed the English hospitals were employing it. Sir James Y. Simpson of Edinburgh introduced chloroform (1847). These two agents have abolished the terror of the surgeon's knife, and have lengthened life by making it possible to perform a class of operations which formerly very few patients had been able to bear.

A score of years later Sir Joseph Lister called attention to the important results obtained by antiseptic methods in surgery; next came (1895) the introduction from Germany of the marvelous X ray, by whose help the operator can photograph and locate a bullet or other foreign substance which he is endeavoring to extract. Together, these discoveries have saved multitudes of lives.

616. Progress of the Laboring Classes; Free Trade, 1846.

At the date of the Queen's accession a number of laws existed restricting the free action of workingmen. Only three years before Victoria's coronation six poor agricultural laborers in Dorsetshire were transported (1834) to penal servitude at Botany Bay, Australia, for seven years, for peacefully combining to secure an increase of their wages, which at that time were only six shilling a week. In fact, the so-called "Conspiracy Laws," which made Labor Unions liable to prosecution as unlawful, if not actually criminal organizations, were not wholly repealed until after the opening of the twentieth century.

Meanwhile Parliament passed the Trade Union Acts, in 1871 and 1876, which recognized the right of workingmen to form associations to protect their interests by the use of all measures not forbidden by the Common Law.[1] In 1906 the persistent political pressure of organized labor induced a Liberal Cabinet (of which Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was Prime Minister) and the invariably Conservative House of Lords to pass a still more important act. That measure exempted Trade Unions from liability to pay damages for a certain class of injuries which they might commit in carrying on a strike.[2] During the above period of more than thirty years the unions have gained very largely in numbers and in financial as well as political strength. On the other hand they now have to contend with the radical Socialists who are seeking to convert England into a republic in which the government would carry on all industries and would prohibit private individuals from conducting any business whatever.

[1] One result of the organization of Trades or Labor Unions has been the shortening of the hours of labor. In 1894 the Government established an eight-hour day for workingmen in dockyards and in ordnance factories. [2] The Trade Disputes Act of 1906. This forbids any suit for tort against a Trade Union. See A. L. Lowell's "The Government of England," II, 534; and S. Gompers in The Outlook for February, 1911, p. 269.

The unions will accomplish more still if they succeed in teaching their members to study the condition of industry in England, to respect the action of those workers who do not join associations, and to see clearly that "if men have a right to combine," they must also "have an equal right to refuse to combine."

In 1837 the English Corn Laws (S592) virtually shut out the importation of grain from foreign countries. The population had outgroiwn its food supply, and bread was so dear that even the agricultural laborer cried out. "I be protected," said he, "but I be starving." The long and bitter fight against the Corn Laws resulted not only in their gradual abolition, 1846, but in the opening of English ports to the products and manufactures of the world. With the exception of tobacco, wines, spirits, and a few other articles, all imports enter the kingdom free.

But though Great Britain carries out the theory that it is better to make things cheap for the sake of those who buy them, than it is to make them dear for the sake of those who produce them, yet all of the great self-governing English colonies impose protective duties[1] even against British products (S625). One of the interesting questions suggested by the Queen's "Diamond Jubilee" (1897) (S607) was whether England's children in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada would take any steps toward forming a commercial fre-etrade union with the mother country. More than ten years later that point still remained under discussion (S625).

[1] Except in certain cases, where the colonies, e.g. Canada, grant preferential duties, or practical free trade, in certain articles exported to the British Isles.

617. The Small Agricultural Holdings Act; the Agricultural Outlook.

Through the influence of the greatly increased popular vote, which resulted from the Third Reform Act (S600), the farm laborers made themselves felt in the House of Commons. They secured the passage of the Small Agricultural Holdings Act (1892). This gave those who worked on the land the privilege of purchasing from one to fifty acres, or of taking it on lease if they preferred.[2] But, notwithstanding the relief granted by this measure, the agricultural problem is to-day one of the most serious England has to solve. Just as New England now depends in large measure on the West for its food supply, so the British Isles depend in great measure on America for breadstuffs. Thousands of acres of fertile soil have gone out of cultivation in the eastern half of the island, mainly because the farmers cannot compete with foreign wheat.

[2] The Small Agricultural Holdings Act enables the County Council (S600) to acquire, by voluntary arrangement, suitable land for the purpose of reletting or reselling it to agricultural laborers and men of small means. Under certain safeguards the Council may advance up to three fourths of the purchase money.

The Royal Agricultural Commission, in a report made a number of years ago (1897), could suggest no remedy, and believed matters must grow worse. A leading English journal,[3] in commenting on the report, said, "The sad and sober fact is that the English farmer's occupation is gone, or nearly gone, never to return."

[3] The Bristol Times and Mirror, August 5, 1897.

The continued agricultural depression ruined many tillers of the soil, and drove the rural population more and more into the already overcrowded towns. There they bid against the laboring men for work, and so reduced wages to the lowest point. If they failed to get work, they became an added burden on the poor rates, and taxes rose accordingly.

Should no remedy be found, and should land in England continue to go out of cultivation, it is difficult to see how the majority of proprietors can resist the temptation to break up and sell their estates. The tendency of an important act of Parliament (1894) is believed by many to work in the same direction.[1] It imposes an inheritance tax on the heirs to landed property, which they find it hard to meet, especially when their tenants have abandoned their farms rather than try to pay the rent.

[1] The Consolidated Death Duties Act.

To-day a few thousand wealthy families hold the title deeds to a large part of the soil on which more than forty millions live. Generally speaking, the rent they demand does not seem to be excessive.[2] It is an open question whether England would be the gainer if, as in France, the land should be cut up into small holdings, worked by men without capital, and hence without power to make improvements.

[2] This is the opinion of the Royal Commission; but Gibbins's "Industry in England" (1896), p. 441, takes the opposite view.

618. The Colonial Expansion of England.

Meanwhile, whether from an economic point of view England is gaining or losing at home, there can be no question as to her colonial expansion. A glance at the accompanying maps of the world (see double map opposite and map facing p. 420) in 1837 and in 1911 shows the marvelous territorial growth of the British Empire.

When Victoria was crowned it had an area of less than three million square miles; to-day it has over eleven million, or more than one fifth of the entire land surface of the globe. England added to her dominions, on the average, more than one hundred and forty-five thousand square miles of territory every year of Victoria's reign.

Canada's wonderful growth in population and wealth is but one example. Australia began its career (1837) as a penal colony with a few shiploads of convicts; now it is a prosperous, powerful, and loyal patr of the Empire (S545). Later than the middle of the nineteenth century, New Zealand was a mission field where cannibalism still existed (1857); now it is one of the leaders in English civilization.

Again, when Victoria came to the throne (1837) the greater part of Africa was simply a geographical expression; the coast had been explored, but scarcely anything was known of the country back of it. Through the efforts of Livingstone and those who followed him (1840- 1890), the interior was explored and the source of the Nile was discovered (1863). Stanley undertook the great work on the Congo River and the "dark continent" ceased to be dark. Trade was opened with the interior, and the discovery of diamond mines and gold mines in South Africa (1867, 1884) stimulated emigration. Railways have been pushed forward in many directions (S622), new markets are springing up, and Africa, once the puzzle of the world, seems destined to become one of the great fields which the Anglo-Saxon race is determined to control, if not to possess.

On the other hand, the British West Indies have of late years greatly declined from their former prosperity. The English demand for cheap sugar has encouraged the importation of beet-root sugar from Germany and France. This has reduced the market for cane sugar to so low a point that there has been but little, if any, profit in raising it in the West Indies;[1] but fruit is a success.

[1] See Brooks Adams's "America's Economic Supremacy."

619. England's Change of Feeling toward her Colonies.

One of the most striking features of the "Diamond Jubilee" celebration (S607) was the prominence given to the Colonial Prime Ministers. There was a time, indeed, when the men who governed England regarded Canada and Australia as "a source of weakness," and the Colonial Office in London knew so little of the latter country that it made ridiculous blunders in attempting to address official despatches to Melbourne, Australia.[2] Even as late as the middle of the last century Disraeli, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote to Lord Malmesbury in regard to the Newfoundland fisheries, "These wretched colonies will all be independent, too, in a few years, and are a millstone around our necks."

[2] See Traill's "Social England," VI, 684.

Twenty years afterwards Disraeli, later Lord Beaconsfield, declared that one of the great objects he and his party had in view was to uphold the British Empire and to do everything to maintain its unity. That feeling has steadily gained in power and was never stronger than it is to-day. Canada, Australia, and the other governing colonies (S625) have since responded by actions as well as words, and "Imperial Federation" has become something more than a high-sounding phrase (SS625, 626).

620. The Condition of Ireland; International Arbitration.

But to make such federation harmonious and complete, the support of Ireland must be obtained. That country is the only member of the United Kingdom whose representatives in Parliament refused, as a rule, to take part in the celebration of the Queen's reign. They felt that their island had never been placed on a true equality with its stronger and more prosperous neighbor. In fact, the Royal Commission, appointed to inquire into the relative taxation of England and Ireland, reported (1897) nearly unanimously that "for a great many years Ireland had paid annually more than 2,000,000 pounds beyond her just proportion of taxation."[1] It has been estimated that the total excess obtained during the Queen's reign amounted to nearly 100,000,000 pounds.

[1] McCarthy's "History of Our Own Times," V, 487.

Mr. Gladstone, the Liberal Prime Minister (1893) made a vigorous effort to secure "Home Rule" for Ireland. His bill granting that country an independent Parliament passed the House of Commons by a very large majority, but was utterly defeated in the House of Lords. Five years later (1898) Lord Salisbury, the Conservative Prime Minister, passed a bill which, though it did not give Ireland "Home Rule," did give it local self-government on the same popular foundation on which it rests in England (S608) and Scotland. Mr. Bryce, the British Ambassador at Washington, recently said (1911) that he was convinced that the condition of the people of Ireland had greatly improved and was "still advancing," and that "before long nearly all the land wouyld belong to the cultivators" (S605).

The recognition of the principle of international arbitration by England in the Alabama case (S598), in the Bering Sea Seal Fisheries dispute (1893), in the Venezuela boundary controversy (1896), and in the Newfoundland Fisheries case (1910) proved that the English people saw that the victories of peace are worth as much to a nation as the victories of war. The Hague Peace Conference Treaty, ratified by Great Britain with the United States and the leading nations of Europe and the Far East (1899), provided for the establishment of a permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague between all of the great powers which signed it. All appeals to it, however, are entirely voluntary.

Ten years earlier, a proposition to establish such a court for the purpose of strengthening the cause of international peace would have been looked upon as "a splendid but delusive dream." To-day many of the ablest men on both sides of the Atlantic believe that the time is not far off when England and America will agree to settle by arbitration all questions which diplomacy cannot deal with, which may arise between them. Sir Edward Grey, Secretary for Foreign Affairs in Mr. Asquith's Liberal Cabinet, fears that the continued expenditure on larger and larger armaments "will end in international revolution." On the other hand, those who are constantly advocating the building of more and bigger battleships admit that the Peace Party presents strong arguments in support of its views, and that "the war against war" is making progress.

621. Death of Gladstone; the Cabot Tower; Centennial of the First Savings Bank, 1899.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gladstone, the great Liberal leader, died, full of years and honors, at his residence, Hawarden Castle, in North Wales (1898). The "Grand Old Man"—as his friends delighted to call him— was buried in that Abbey at Westminster which holds so much of England's most precious dust. His grave is not far from the memorial to Lord Beaconsfield, the eminent Conservative leader, who was his lifelong rival and political opponent.

In the autumn (1898) the Cabot monument was opened at Bristol. It is a commanding tower, overlooking the ancient city and port from which John Cabot (S335) sailed in the spring of 1497. The monument commemorates that explorer's discovery of the mainland of the New World. An inscription on the face of the tower expresses "the earnest hope that Peace and Friendship may ever continue between the kindred peoples" of England and America.

In May of the next year, 1899, the one hundredth anniversary of the establishment of savings banks in Great Britain was celebrated. Near the closing year of the eighteenth century, 1799, Reverend Joseph Smith, Vicar of Wendover in Buckinghamshire, invited the laborers of his parish to deposit their savings with him on interest. "Upon the first day of the week," said he, quoting St. Paul's injuction, "let every one of you lay by him in store."[1] He offered to receive sums as small as twopence. Before the end of the year he had sixty depositors. Eventually the government took up the scheme and established the present system of national postal savings banks.

[1] The quotation is from I Corinthians xvi, 2.

They have done and are doing incalculable good. At present there are over eleven million depositors in the United Kingdom. Most of them belong to the wage-earning class, and they hold more than 212,000,000 pounds. In this case certainly the grain of mustard seed, sown a few generations ago, has produced a mighty harvest.

622. England in Egypt; Progress in Africa.

While busy at home, the English had been busy outside of their island. Five years after the opening of the Suez Canal (1869), Lord Beaconsfield, then the Conservative Prime Minister, bought nearly half of the canal property from the Governor of Egypt. Since then England has kept her hand on the country of the Pharaohs and the pyramids, and kept it there greatly to the advantage of the laboring class.

About ten years later (1881), Arabi Pasha, an ambitious colonel in the native army, raised the cry, "Down with all foreigners—Egypt for the Egyptians!" Lord Wolseley defeated Arabi's forces, and the colonel was banished from the country.

Two years afterwards (1883) a still more formidable rebellion broke out in the Sudan,—a province held by Egypt. (See map facing p. 428.) The leader of the insurrection styled himself the Mahdi, or great Mohammedan Prophet. Then (1884) Gladstone sent General Gordon to withdraw the Egyptian troops from Khartoum, the capital of the Sudan. The Mahdi's forces shut up the heroic soldier in that city, and before help could reach him, he and all his Egyptian troops were massacred. No braver or truer man ever died at the post of duty, for in him was fulfilled Wordsworth's eloquent tribute to the "Happy Warrior."[1]

[1] See Wordsworth's poems "The Happy Warrior."

Many years later, Lord Kitchener advanced against the new Mahdi, and at Omdurman his terrible machine guns scattered the fanatical Dervishes, or Mohammedan monks, like chaff before the whirlwind. The next autumn (1899) the British overtook the fugitive leader of the Dervishes and annihilated his army.

Since then British enterprise, British capital, and American inventive skill have transformed Egypt. The completion of the great dam across the Nile, at Assouan (1902), regulates the water supply for lower Egypt. The creation of this enormous reservoir promises to make the Nile valley one of the richest cotton-producing regions in the world.

The "Cape to Cairo" railway, which is more than half finished, is another British undertaking of immense importance. (See map opposite.) When ready for traffic, through its whole length of nearly six thousand miles, besides its branch lines, it will open all Eastern Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope to the Mediterranean, to the spread of commerce and civilization.

623. The Boers; the Boer War, 1899; Death of Queen Victoria (1901).

The history of the British in South Africa has been even more tragic than their progress in Egypt (S622).

In the middle of the seventeenth century (1652) the Dutch took possession of Cape Colony. (See map opposite.) Many Boers, or Dutch farmers, and cattle raisers emigrated to that far distant land. There they were joined by Huguenots, or French Protestants, who had been driven out of France. All of them became slaveholders. Early in the nineteenth century (1814) England purchased the Cape from Holland. Twenty years later the English Parliament bought all the negroes held by the Boers and set them free.

Eight thousand Boers, disgusted with the loss of their slaves and with the small price they had received for them, left the Cape (1836) and pushed far northward into the wilderness. Crossing the Orange River, they founded the "Orange Free State." Another party of Boers, going still further north, crossed the Vaal River (a tributary of the Orange) and set up the Transvaal, or "South African Republic," on what was practically a slaveholding foundation. Later (1852), England, by a treaty known as the Sand River Convention, virtually recognized the independence of the settlers in the Transvaal, and two years afterwards made a still more explicit recognition of the independence of the Orange Free State.

The Zulus and other fierce native tribes bordering on the Transvaal hated the Boers and threatened to "eat them up." Later (1877), England thought it for her interest, and for that of the Boers as well, to annex the Transvaal. The English Governor did not grant the Boers the measure of political liberty which he had promised; this led to a revolt, and a small body of English soldiers was beaten at Majuba Hill (1881).

Mr. Gladstone, the Liberal Prime Minister, did not think that the conquest of the Transvaal, supposing it to be justifiable, would pay for its cost, and he accordingly made a treaty with the people of that country (1881). Lord Beaconsfield thought this policy a serious mistake, and that it would lead to trouble later on. He said, "We have failed to whip the boy, and we shall have to fight the man." The Gladstone Treaty acknowledged the right of the Boers to govern themselves, but subject to English control. Three years later (1884) that treaty was modified. The Boers declared that the English then gave up all control over them, except with regard to the power to make treaties which might conflict with the interests of Great Britain. But this statement the English Government emphatically denied.[1]

[1] The preamble of the Convention or agreement made between England and the Boers in 1881 at Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal, secured to the Boers "complete self-government, subject to the suzerainty of her Majesty," Queen Victoria. In the Convention of 1884, made at London, the word "suzerainty" was dropped; but Mr. Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary of Great Britain, contended that it was implied or understood. This interpretation of the agreement President Kruger of the South African or Boer Republic absolutely rejected.

The discovery of diamond fields in Cape Colony (1867) and of the richest gold mines in the world (1884) in the Transvaal stimulated a great emigration of English to South Africa. In a few years the "Outlanders"—as the Boers called all foreigners—outnumbered the Boers themselves. The "Outlanders," who worked the gold mines and paid nearly all the taxes, complained that the laws made by the Boers were unjust and oppressive. They demanded the right to vote. The Boers, on the other hand, refused to give them that right, except under arduous restrictions, lest the foreigners should get the upper hand in the Transvaal Republic, and then manage it to suit themselves.

Things went on from bad to worse. At length (1895) a prominent Englishman of Cape Colony, Dr. Jameson, armed a small body of "Outlanders," who undertook to get by force what they could not get by persuasion. The Boers captured the Revolutionists and compelled some of the leaders to pay, in all, about a million dollars in fines. Dr. Jameson was sent to England and imprisoned for a short time. A committee appointed by Parliament investigated the invasion of the Transvaal and charged Cecil J. Rhodes, then Prime Minister of Cape Colony, with having helped on the raid. From this time the feeling of hatred between the Boers and the "Outlanders" grew more and more intense. Lord Salisbury, the Conservative Prime Minister, believed, with his party, that the time had come for decisive action on the part of the Government. The fires so long smoldered now burst into flame, and England resolved to fight to maintain her authority in the Transvaal.

War began in the autumn of 1899, and the Orange Free State united with the Transvaal against Great Britain. (See map facing p. 428.) The Boers took up arms for independence. The English forces under Lord Roberts began fighting, first in behalf of the "Outlanders," next to keep the British Empire together, and, finally, "to extend English law, liberty, and civilization."

Mr. Chamberlain, who was in Lord Salisbury's Cabinet (S534), agreed with his chief that the sword must settle the question, but he said that the contest in South Africa would be "a long war, a bitter war, and a costly war." Events proved the truth of part of his prediction. The contest was certainly "bitter," for it carried sorrow and death into many thousand homes. It was "costly," too, for the total expense to England amounted to nearly 200,000,000 pounds.

England finally overthrew and formally annexed (1901) the two Boer republics, aggregating over one hundred and sixty-seven thousand square miles. But to accomplish that work she was forced to send two hundred and fifty thousand men to South Africa,—the largest army she ever put into a field in the whole course of her history. The great majority of the English people believed that the war was inevitable. But there was an active minority who insisted that it was really undertaken in behalf of the South African mine owners. They did not hesitate to condemn the "Jingo" policy[1] of the Government as disastrous to the best interests of the country. In the midst of the discussion Queen Victoria died (January 22, 1901). The Prince of Wales succeeded to the crown under the title of King Edward VII.

[1] Lord Beaconsfield, the Conservative Prime Minister (1874-1880),
made several petty wars in South Africa and in Afghanistan. A popular
music-hall song glorified his work, declaring:
"We don't want to fight, but by Jingo, if we do,
We've got the ships, we've got the men,
We've got the money, too."

624. Summary.

Queen Victoria's reign of sixty-three years—the longest in English history—was remarkable in many ways.

The chief political events were:

1. The establishment of the practical supremacy of the House of
Commons, shown by the fact that the Sovereign was now obliged to
give up the power of removing the Prime Minister or members of his
Cabinet without the consent of the House, or of retaining them
contrary to its desire.
2. The broadening of the basis of suffrage and the extension of the
principle of local self-government.
3. The abolition of the requirement of property qualification for
Parliamentary candidates; the admission of Jews to Parliament; and
the overthrow of the Spoils System.
4. The repeals of the Corn Laws; the adoption of the Free-Trade
policy; and the Emancipation of Labor.
5. The Small Agricultural Holdings Act; the Irish Land Acts; the
abolition of Church rates; and the disestablishment of the Irish
branch of the Church of England.
6. The arbitration of the Alabama case.
7. The progress of transportation and of the rapid transmission of
intelligence was marked by the extension of railways to all parts
of hte British Isles and to many other parts of the Empire; the
introduction of the telegraph and the telephone; the laying of the
Atlantic cable; the introduction of penny postage; the rise of
cheap newspapers, of photography, of wireless telegraphy, and of
the use of electricity to drive street cars and machinery.
8. The progress of education was marked by the establishment of
practically free elementary schools, free libraries, and the
abolition of religious tests in the universities.
9. The progress of science and philosophy was shown by the
introduction of painless and also of antiseptic surgery, the use of
the German X ray, and the rise and spread of the Darwinian theory
of Evolution.
10. Other events having far-reaching results were the terrible Irish
famine, the Opium War, the Crimean War, the rebellion in India,
the Trent affair, the war in the Sudan, and the great Boer War.
11. Finally, we see the important work accomplished in India, Egypt,
and other parts of Africa; the acquisition of the control of the
Suez Canal; and the great expansion of the power of the Empire in
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.