CHAPTER XLI.
THE DAYS OF PALMERSTON.
1852-65.
Expectations of peace.—The Exhibition of 1851.
The time which followed the quieting down of England and Europe after the turbulent years 1848 and 1849, was perhaps the most peaceful which the century had known. The English people, overjoyed to find that Chartism was but a bugbear and Irish rebellion a farce, had settled down to enjoy what they trusted would prove a long spell of tranquil prosperity. There was no great political question pending at home, since the Corn Laws were gone, and the Whigs had refused to take up any Radical programme. The continent was quiet, though its stillness only resulted from the dying down for a space of the flames of rebellion in Italy, Germany, and Hungary, where embers still smouldered beneath the apparent deadness of the surface, and only needed a fresh stirring to make them break out again into a blaze. This fact was not appreciated in England, and the year 1851 saw the high-water mark of a vague and optimistic belief that the troubles of the world were over, and a reign of good-fellowship and brotherly affection among nations about to begin. When the Prince Consort opened the first great International Exhibition in Hyde Park in the May of that year, much wild and visionary talk was heard about the end of war, and the advent of an era when all disputes should be settled by arbitration. No expectation was ever more ill-founded. After forty years of comparative peace, since the fall of Napoleon, the continent was just about to see the commencement of a series of four great wars, and England—whose soldiers had not fired a shot in Europe since Waterloo—was not to be without her share in them.
Steam navigation.
The English people were far from guessing this. Nearly all their attention had been given to matters of domestic policy for the last forty years, and no one thought that other topics were now to engross them. But before passing on to the Crimean war and the struggles that followed it, a few words are needed to show how the England of 1852 differed from the England of the days before the Reform Bill. The first and most striking change visible was the enormous development of the means of internal communication in the land. In 1832 the application of steam to locomotive engines alike on water and on land was just beginning to grow common. The first steam-tug had been seen on the Clyde as far back as 1802, but no serious attempt to utilize the discovery on a large scale, and for long voyages, was made for many years. It was only after 1830 that the steamer began steadily to supersede the sailing-ship for ordinary commercial purposes. But within a few years after that date all passenger traffic was carried on the new paddle-steamer, and a large share of the goods traffic also. It was a sign of the indifference of the nation to things military during the years of the great peace, that ships of war remained unaltered long after the advantages of steam had been discovered. A few small vessels were fitted with paddle-wheels about 1840, and took part in the bombardment of Acre. But even in 1854 most of the line-of-battle ships of Great Britain were still of the old type that Nelson had loved, and depended on their sail power alone.
Growth of railways.
The utilization of steam for locomotion by land had started in the humble shape of the employment of small engines to drag trucks of coal and stone on local tramways at the slowest of paces. After lingering for some thirty years in this embryo stage, it was suddenly and rapidly developed by George Stephenson, a clever north-country engineer. The first railway on which passengers were conveyed, and merchandise of all kinds carried, was a short line between the two towns of Stockton and Darlington, built by Stephenson's advice in 1825. It was not till five years later that the success of the Stockton and Darlington railway led to the construction of a second and greater venture of the same kind, the Liverpool and Manchester railway, opened in 1830. This line achieved an unhappy notoriety owing to the fact that Huskisson, the Tory Free-Trade minister, was killed by the first train that ran upon it. Though the early railways were slow and inconvenient—their average pace was eight miles an hour, and their carriages were converted stage-coaches, strapped on to trucks—they soon conquered the public confidence, though old-fashioned persons refused for many years to trust themselves to the new-fangled and dangerous mode of locomotion. Between 1830 and 1840 the companies began to multiply rapidly, and in 1844-45 there was a perfect mania for railway construction, and schemes were formed to run lines through every corner of England, whether they were likely to pay or not. Many of these plans were never carried out, others were executed and ruined those who invested in them. But the temporary depression which followed this over-speculation had no long continuance, and the competition of the companies with each other was always increasing the rapidity and comfort of railway travelling. By 1852 it had taken its place among the commonplaces of life, and had profoundly modified the condition of England in several ways. The habit of travelling for pleasure which it begot and fostered, the safe, cheap, and quick transportation of goods which it rendered possible, and the easy transfer of labour from market to market which it favoured, have all had their share in the making of modern England.
The Penny Post and the Telegraph.
A part only second to that of the railway in modifying the character and habits of the English people was played by two other inventions of the forties. The Penny Post, introduced by the efforts of Rowland Hill in 1840 into every corner of the kingdom, and superseding the old rates which ranged up to many shillings, had a marvellous effect in facilitating communication. To supplement it by a yet more rapid process, the first public Telegraph offices were opened in 1843; but, for many years after, this invention was in the hands of private companies, and was too dear to suit the pocket of the ordinary citizen, who preferred to trust to his letter sent by the Penny Post.