Little Arthur's history of England

by Lady Maria Callcott

FOOTNOTES:

[4] This is the end of little Arthur’s History, as first written by Lady Callcott; but for the benefit of the children of the present day who read this little History, a few more chapters are added.

CHAPTER LIX.
WILLIAM IV.—1830 to 1837.
How the Reform Bill was passed; how Slavery in our colonies was abolished; how there were Revolutions in France and Belgium; how the cholera broke out; how railways were established; and how the Houses of Parliament were burned down.

As King George the Fourth left no child to succeed him, his brothers were the next heirs to the throne. The Duke of York, the second son of George the Third, died three years before George the Fourth, and left no child; so William Henry, Duke of Clarence, the third son of George the Third, now mounted the throne. William the Fourth, who had been brought up as a sailor, was at this time sixty-four years old; he was married to an excellent German Princess, named Adelaide of Saxe Meiningen, and he had had two daughters, but they both died in early infancy.

This reign was a short one, but several important changes took place in it, one of which was the passing of the Bill for a reform in the House of Commons. You know how it was settled by King Edward the First that all the large towns, which in his reign were called burghs, should choose one or two persons to go to Parliament and help to make the law. This was nearly six hundred years ago; and since that time a great many little hamlets and villages had grown into large towns, and a great many of the old burghs had dwindled away until only a few houses were left in them, or even none. The people, who were now living in the towns that had grown so large, thought it very hard not to be able to send members to Parliament to tell what was wanted in their towns; and they also thought it was useless for the little burghs, where only a few people lived, to continue sending members. So it was proposed that the large towns or boroughs should be allowed to send members to the House of Commons, according to the number of people in each town, and that the little decayed towns should leave off sending members. This new plan was called the “Reform Bill.” It was talked over a long time in Parliament before it was agreed to; for, although there were a great many people who wished for the change, there were many others who thought it would be dangerous to the welfare of Old England, and both sides had to tell all their reasons for what they thought. At last it was put to the vote whether the Bill should pass or not; and as the greatest number were for making the change, the Bill became law. But I shall have to tell you of another Reform of Parliament under Queen Victoria.

Nearly the next thing that was done was to put an end to slavery in all the colonies belonging to England. A good man, named William Wilberforce, had tried to do this many years ago, in George the Third’s reign; but it was not an easy thing to do, because all those persons who had large estates in the colonies, and who had bought slaves to cultivate the land, had paid a great deal of money for their slaves; and the masters were afraid they should be ruined if the slaves were set free, as there would be no one to sow and dig their fields.

There is no doubt the Parliament and people of England acted wisely in wiping away so great a disgrace as slavery is; and in order to do this with justice they paid a very large sum of money—twenty millions of pounds. When this was at last done, the slaves were made free.

There was a very sudden revolution in France at the beginning of this reign. It only lasted three days, and was called the “Three Days’ Revolution.” Charles the Tenth, the King of France, was expelled, and came over to this country; his cousin Louis Philippe was then chosen by the French people to be their king, and was called the King of the French.

The example of France was followed in Belgium, a country which had been joined to Holland, so as to make but one kingdom, over which the Dutch king reigned. The Belgians fought hard, and succeeded in completely driving away the Dutch; after which they invited Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg to be their king. Although Prince Leopold would not be King of Greece, he accepted the kingdom of Belgium; and he afterwards married the Princess Louise, daughter of Louis Philippe, the new King of the French. He reigned a long time and wisely, and was succeeded by his son, Leopold the Second.

I will now tell you of some improvements that were made in this reign, the principal of which is perhaps the forming of railways. The first that was opened in England was one between Liverpool and Manchester; and it was a very useful one. You know that the people at Manchester weave great quantities of cotton; so much, indeed, that the town is full of factories, where thousands of spinners and weavers are constantly at work. After the railway was opened, the work went on faster than ever, for as soon as the raw cotton arrived in bales from America to Liverpool, it was sent off by rail to Manchester; and as fast as it was spun and woven at Manchester, a great deal was sent back by rail to Liverpool, to be shipped off to America and other parts of the world. This kept a great many people at work, and as this railway seemed to do so much good, railways were very soon carried from one end of Britain to the other.

Amongst the sad events of this reign, may be mentioned the appearance of the cholera in England, and a great fire which destroyed the Houses of Parliament at Westminster.

William the Fourth died, after a reign of seven years, at the age of seventy-one; and his widowed queen, who then became Queen Dowager, survived him about twelve years, when she died, much loved and respected by the English people.

CHAPTER LX.
QUEEN VICTORIA.—1837.
How Hanover was separated from England; how the Queen married her cousin, Prince Albert; how a fresh Revolution broke out in Paris, and how Louis Philippe escaped to England; how the Chartists held meetings; how we went to war with Russia; how the Sepoys mutinied in India; how the young men in Great Britain became Volunteers; how Parliament was reformed the second time, and means taken to educate the people; how there were a great many discoveries and improvements made.

The Princess Victoria, niece of William the Fourth, succeeded him on the throne. She was the daughter of Edward Duke of Kent, the next brother of the late king. Her mother, the Duchess of Kent, was sister to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, King of the Belgians.

A princess is of age to reign at eighteen; the Princess Victoria had happily attained that age a few weeks before she was called to be Queen of England.

Since the reign of George the First, who was Elector of Hanover, the kings of England had also ruled over that kingdom; but in Hanover there is a law which prevents females from reigning there; so that, when William the Fourth died, Hanover was separated from England; and at the same time that the Princess Victoria ascended the English throne, Ernest Duke of Cumberland, the fifth son of George the Third (and the Queen’s eldest surviving uncle), became King of Hanover. But Hanover has since been made part of the German Empire.

The reign of Victoria, the happiest and best that ever was for England, has yet been marked by a great deal of fighting in all parts of the world.

First, there were riots in Canada, and it was three years before they were entirely put down; then a number of people who called themselves Chartists created some uneasiness at home, but their meetings were soon stopped, and their ringleaders were transported; next, a war broke out in China and another in India, and it was eight years before all these disturbances were settled.

Meanwhile the people were glad to turn their minds from these troubles to an event that gave every one pleasure, namely, the marriage of the Queen with her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, nephew of Leopold, the wise King of the Belgians. There were great rejoicings on this occasion, and with reason, for it proved one of the happiest events, not only for the Queen, but for her people.

The French had for some time been growing more and more dissatisfied with the government of Louis Philippe, whom they had chosen, in 1830, to be their king; and every now and then they had shown their discontent by insurrections, which led to fighting in the streets of Paris. At length their displeasure vented itself in a complete revolution, and Louis Philippe, in terror for his life, made his escape and came for refuge to England.

The Marriage of Queen Victoria.

The Chartists, misled by some designing persons who fancied they might make a similar revolution in Old England, thought this would be a good time to try and frighten the Queen and Government of England into granting their foolish and dangerous wishes; so they collected a very large multitude, intending to go in a body to the House of Commons and demand what they wanted. But the people of England loved the Queen too well, and were too well satisfied with the government of their country, to let the Chartists do any mischief; so, at the command of the Duke of Wellington, soldiers were placed in various parts of London, to be in readiness if wanted; and the principal citizens undertook to guard the City, while they spared all the policemen to go and keep the bridges which cross the Thames. The Chartists, when they saw that they could not gain their ends, and that they would only bring harm to themselves if they resorted to violence, agreed that the best thing they could do, was to disperse and go quietly home. Thus, whereas there had been fighting between the people and the soldiers in almost all the other great cities of Europe, peace was maintained in London on that memorable and peaceful day, the Tenth of April, 1848, without a single soldier being seen.

A short while after, the great Duke of Wellington, who had served his country so long and so well, died. By the victories he had won he had procured peace for Europe which lasted more than forty years. The English had cause to lament his loss, not many years after, when they engaged in a terrible war with Russia. The Russians, whose country, you know, is the largest in Europe, tried to get possession of Turkey, and of the mouths of the River Danube, and the rich corn countries on its banks. Several of the other European countries thought it was not fair for Russia to tyrannize over Turkey, and they also thought it would not be safe for the rest of Europe, that the Emperor of Russia should rule from the Baltic to the Black Sea and Mediterranean, as he certainly would do if he succeeded in overpowering the Turks. So the English and French, and afterwards the Sardinians, joined in helping the Turks to drive back the Russians into their own country. This war lasted two years, and half a million of lives were lost in it, far the greater number on the side of Russia. The allied armies, as those who joined the Turks were called, fought hard, and suffered a great deal from cold, illness, and fatigue, but they succeeded at last in freeing the Turks from their Russian enemies. The fighting took place chiefly in the Crimea, where the Russians had a very strong fortress and a large harbour for their ships of war, at a place called Sevastopol. The Russians strove with all their might to defend the fortress; but, after it had been besieged for twelve months, it was taken at last, with great difficulty, by the Allies, and was destroyed.

This war was scarcely over when a dreadful mutiny broke out in India amongst the Sepoys. The Sepoys are Indians whom the English have trained to be soldiers. They make very good soldiers, and are sometimes very faithful; but their religion makes them see some things in a very different light from that in which Christians look at the same things; and one of the supposed grievances of the Sepoys was that their cartridges were greased with the fat of cows—animals which are sacred amongst the Indians. The Sepoys turned upon the English, who were few in number compared with themselves, and killed numbers of them, with their wives and children, without mercy. The massacre was dreadful, but the English were not daunted, and they everywhere showed the greatest courage and presence of mind in the midst of these scenes of horror, until at length the officers and soldiers, sent from England to relieve and defend them, entirely put down the rebellion. The chieftain of the mutineers was one Nana Sahib, who disappeared, and is supposed to have been slain; and amongst the brave men who subdued the mutiny were General Havelock, Sir Henry Lawrence, and Sir Colin Campbell, afterwards Lord Clyde.

The year after this mutiny the rule of the East India Company was entirely done away with, and an Act of Parliament declared that all those parts of India which had been conquered by the English should in future be governed by the Queen.

I am afraid I should never finish if I tried to tell you all that was done in this reign; but I cannot leave off without speaking of one thing which shows how much the British people love their Queen and their country, and how determined they are to defend them. It was thought at one time that the Emperor Napoleon, who ruled in France after Louis Philippe, had some intention of invading England. As soon as ever this was thought possible, nearly all the young gentlemen, and men of every class throughout the country, came forward of their own accord to be trained as soldiers, and drilled, and they continued steadily practising until they made themselves good soldiers. The invasion did not take place, but such resolution and unity of feeling on the part of Great Britain must make all foreigners see what reception they would meet with, if they came to our land as enemies.

I might tell you long stories of the wonderful wars and changes that have happened all over the world since this time; but they hardly belong to the History of England. And the reason for this is one to make us very thankful. You have seen all through this little book how British freedom has been always growing; so that the people are governed according to their own wishes, and all needful changes can be made without violence. And we have been able to have nothing to do with the great wars abroad, except to send help to the wounded soldiers and the starving people.

In our good Queen’s long reign many new laws have been made; but I need only tell you now of one or two. There was another Reform of the House of Commons, giving a vote to nearly all people who live in houses and lodgings and pay their share of the expenses of government. And, as people cannot be good citizens, or good at all, without being well taught, Parliament has provided for the education of all the children in the country.

The discoveries and improvements of this reign have been greater and more numerous than have ever been made in the same space of time since the world began; so I can only tell you some of the chief of them.

For two hundred years and more, English sailors have been striving to find a shorter way of going to India and China, than by going either round the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn. They hoped to be able to do so, by sailing through the seas at the North Pole, along the north coast of America. But these seas are filled with ice, which is quite fast in winter, and breaks up only a little in summer; so that the brave men, who sought a passage through them, nearly always got blocked up in the ice, and had to spend the winter in the dark. One of the bravest of those who tried to find this passage was Sir John Franklin, who, unhappily, never returned; and after many years it was found by those who went to seek him, that he and all his companions had died of cold and starvation. Before his death, however, he had pushed through the ice far enough to prove that the ocean extends all along the north coast of America, from Baffin’s Bay to Behring Straits; though he could not take a ship through. So the North-West Passage was at last discovered, and it shows how daring English sailors are, and what difficulties they will overcome.

Dr. Livingstone made great discoveries in Africa, where he found rivers and great lakes, whose names were before unknown; and other travellers have traced nearly to its source the celebrated river of Egypt, the Nile.

In the part of the globe opposite to us, the great Australian colonies have grown up—greater than those we lost in America under George the Third. And an immense quantity of gold has been discovered there. But you must know that gold is only useful to help people in exchanging one useful thing for another; and times of abundant gold have always been times of great prosperity for the world. And now meat is brought all the way from Australia for us to eat. And we have colonies in the two great islands of New Zealand, which are almost the Antipodes to us. This word means that the people there stand right on the other side of the round world, with their feet pointing to our feet. In North America, too, the colonies that we won from the French under George the Second have been formed into a great united state, called the Dominion of Canada. It would take me much too long to tell you how rich Great Britain has grown during this reign by its trade with all the world.

The postage of letters was made so cheap, that all people can write to their friends as often as they like. Railroads were made everywhere, even, as you know, under the streets of London. Electric telegraphs were invented, and made to carry messages to almost every part of the world, not only overland, but even across the bed of the seas. Most ships are now made of iron instead of wood, and by the help of steam are able to cross the seas to America and to go round the world; and railways have been made in almost every country upon the earth.

The Thames Tunnel was finished and opened; the Royal Exchange, which had been burnt down, was re-built, and opened by the Queen; the Great Exhibition, a vast house of glass half a mile long, was built at the suggestion of the Queen’s husband, the Prince Consort, and all the people of the world were invited to bring all the best things their countries could produce, and display them in it. The new Houses of Parliament, one of the grandest buildings in the world, have arisen; many new streets of splendid houses for the rich, and many new lodging-houses for working people have been made; and instead of burying dead people in churchyards in the middle of towns, cemeteries (that is, “sleeping places”) have been formed outside the towns for all people to be buried in.

But what I think the most useful of all are the improvements made in printing books and newspapers. Great machines have been invented to print several thousand of sheets of paper in an hour. New materials have been used for making paper. Besides this, the taxes have been taken off paper and newspapers; so that I can now buy a newspaper for one penny, for which I used to pay seven-pence half-penny when I was little Arthur’s age. I might tell you a great deal more about the taxes that have been taken off all manner of necessary and useful things, and how we have now bread and tea and coffee and sugar and salt and spice and wine, and bricks and timber and glass, and gloves and boots and silks and ribands, and even toys, and many other things, much cheaper because they are not taxed. And yet the Government has plenty of money, because the people can better afford to pay other taxes.

This work of lightening the burdens of the people was begun after the battle of Waterloo, when the great Duke of Wellington was Prime Minister to George the Fourth. Indeed, more taxes were taken off in the ten years before the Reform Bill than in the twenty years after it.

I must now tell you a few sad things which have happened in this reign.

There was a terrible famine in Ireland, caused by a disease, before unknown, which destroyed the potato crop. The potato is the chief food of the poor people in Ireland, and, when the potato rotted in the ground, there was nothing for them to live upon. The rich people of England did all they could to help the poor creatures, and a great deal of money was sent from this country to buy food and clothes for them; but, notwithstanding all that was done, thousands and thousands died of disease and starvation. This was a dreadful visitation; but it has providentially led to some good; for more care has been taken since then to cultivate land in Ireland, and everything done to try and keep off such a misfortune in future.

And there have been rebellions in Ireland, because many of the people want to have a separate government of their own. But this would do them more harm than good, for they have a full share in making laws for the United Kingdom; and the Irish have equal liberty with the English and the Scotch. All three countries help one another; and there have been natives of all three among the great and good men who have raised the united British Isles to power and prosperity. So it is foolish and wicked to want to divide them again.

Another sad thing was the return of the cholera, which carried off great numbers of people; but this misfortune has also led to some good, for, although it is not known what brings the cholera, it has always been found that fewer people die of it where towns are kept clean, and houses are airy, and where people live on good food and wholesome water. So more care has since been taken of these things, and it may be that not only cholera, but fevers and other illnesses, may have been kept off by the care that is taken. But a great deal more has to be done to keep the air pure and provide plenty of pure water for our towns.

There was very great distress for some time in Lancashire, where so many thousands of people live by weaving cotton. The reason of this was, that a civil war broke out in America, where the cotton was grown. As long as there was fighting in America, no cotton came from that country to this; and there was no work for the weavers to do, so that they were in the greatest distress. They bore their troubles patiently and well, and nearly every one in the country, and even some of the Americans themselves, sent money and clothes for the suffering workpeople, and did everything possible to help them until they could go to work again. And since then, a rich American merchant, Mr. Peabody, has given hundreds of thousands of pounds to build proper houses for workmen and poor people in London.

But of all the sad events of this reign, the one which has been longest and most deeply felt is the death of the Prince Consort, the good and beloved husband of the Queen. Until he died, the people themselves did not know how needful he was to her in relieving her of the cares of governing, how much good he had otherwise done them, and how truly he loved them. Many of the improvements made in this reign were owing to him: he planned better houses for the poor to live in; he encouraged farmers to cultivate their land more carefully and to rear good cattle; he patronised and encouraged Arts and Sciences; in short, I cannot tell you how wise and prudent he was, and how many good things he did, nor how much and how sincerely he is regretted.

Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort had nine children; the eldest of whom, the Princess Royal, is married to the Crown Prince of Prussia; the second, the Prince of Wales and heir to the throne, is married to the Princess Alexandra of Denmark; and the third, the Princess Alice, who was married to Prince Louis of Hesse, died in 1878; the Princess Helena is married to Prince Christian; the Princess Louise, to the Marquis of Lorne, son of the Duke of Argyle; the Duke of Edinburgh is married to the only daughter of the Emperor of Russia, and the Duke of Connaught to the daughter of Prince Charles of Prussia; Prince Leopold, and Princess Beatrice.

And now, dear Arthur, before I end the story of what has happened thus far in our beloved Queen’s reign, I have to add something that seemed likely to be one of its saddest events, but I trust may prove, by God’s blessing, one of the happiest. Just ten years after the death of the good Prince Consort, the Prince of Wales was seized with the same sort of fever, at the age of thirty. He was so ill that prayer was made for him in all the churches; but three days afterwards he began to get better. The love shown by the Queen and all the Royal family in watching round his bed made them dearer than ever to the nation; and the deep anxiety of all the people for their Prince gave such a proof of their loyalty as I scarcely remember. I want my dear Arthur to learn well the great lesson of loyalty as well as liberty. It is our happiness always to enjoy a settled government, not subject to change, under a royal family, kept quietly and regularly at the head of the state; so that we may show love and honour to our country by loving and honouring them; and especially when we have a Queen and royal family whose virtues deserve all our love and loyalty.

But it is time to finish our little History, which I hope you will remember; and I also hope that it will help you to understand larger and better histories by-and-by.

THE END.