Liberty in the Nineteenth Century

by Frederic May Holland

"Freedom calls Famine, her eternal foe,
To brief alliance."

He spoke as well as wrote for the independence of Ireland; and he would have done much for that of Greece, if he had not died soon after publishing a magnificent tragedy, in which he showed what cruel massacres were perpetrated while the rulers of Christendom refused to help Christian patriots against the Turks. Byron is called the poet of revolution; but Shelley was the poet of liberty. One was like a painter who captivated the multitude, sometimes by his brilliancy of colour, sometimes by his tragic pathos, and sometimes by his amorous warmth. The other was like a sculptor who left a few statues and tablets, fanciful in design and majestic in execution, for the delight of connoisseurs. Fortunately the marble is likely to outlast the canvas.

III. These poets and philanthropists helped the people of England contrast the wrongs they were suffering with the rights they ought to have. That love of liberty which drove out the Stuarts revived, as despotism was seen to increase pauperism and excite more crime than it suppressed. The conflict between republicanism and monarchy in Europe had changed to one between despotism and constitutionalism; and peace made England free to resume the advanced position she had held in the eighteenth century. The declaration of President Monroe, in December, 1823, that the United States would not permit the South American republics to be overthrown by any despot in Europe, gained much authority from the concurrence of the British Ministry; and the latter was induced by Canning to form that alliance with France and Russia which gave independence to Greece.

The attack on the slave-trade, which began while England was at peace with her neighbours, had slackened in the shadow of the long war. The wicked traffic was prohibited in 1807; but little more could be done before 1823. Then an appeal for emancipation in the West Indies was made to Parliament by Wilberforce and other organised abolitionists; and the agitation went on until victory was made possible by the rescue of the House of Commons from the aristocrats. The acts forbidding workingmen to combine for higher wages, or to emigrate were repealed in 1824. The criminal laws had already been mitigated, and some protection given to children in factories; and the duties on wool and raw silk were now reduced, to the common benefit of consumer, manufacturer, and operative.

The Whigs were strong enough in 1828 to repeal the Test Act, which had been passed in 1673, for the purpose of enabling the Episcopalians to hold all the offices, but had become a dead letter so far as regarded Protestants. The House of Lords gave way unwillingly; and one of the bishops secured such a compromise as kept Jews out of Parliament for the next thirty years. Conscientious scruples against taking oaths were treated at this time with due respect; and all British Protestants became equals before the law. Canning had already made the House of Commons willing to emancipate Catholics; but neither this reform nor that of abolishing rotten boroughs could pass the bench of bishops; and the Church stood in the way of a plan for free public schools. It was the organised resistance of all Ireland to disfranchisement of Catholics which won toleration from a Tory Ministry. Its leader, Wellington, cared nothing for public opinion or the people's rights; but he was too good a general to risk a war with a united nation. Even the minister whose sympathy with Orangemen had won the nickname of "Orange Peel" declared that it was time to yield. Popular prejudice against Romanism had been much diminished by gratitude for the aid given by Catholic allies against Napoleon. The bishops rallied around the King, who had never before been influenced by what he called religion; but he was forced to sign, on April 13, 1829, the bill which ended a strife that had cursed Europe for three hundred years. Two-thirds of the bishops resisted to the last; and the Tory party was so badly divided as to be unable to prevent England from following the example set next year by France.

IV. By the Constitution of 1814, the power belonged mainly to the Parisian bankers, merchants, and manufacturers. These men preferred constitutional monarchy to either democracy or military despotism; but they meant to maintain their own rights; and they were much offended at the attempts of Charles X. to check mental progress and revive superstition. His plans for fettering the press were voted down in the Chamber of Nobles; journalists prosecuted by his orders were acquitted by the courts; and he could not enforce a law under which burglars who robbed a Catholic church would have mounted the guillotine.

Early in 1830, he dissolved the Legislature for declaring that he was not governing according to the wish of the people. The candidates next elected were two to one against him. On Monday, July 26, appeared his ordinances forbidding publication of newspapers without his permission, unseating all the deputies just chosen, and threatening that subsequent elections would be empty formalities. The plan was like that of 1797; but this time the soldiers in Paris were few in number and ill-supplied with provisions, while their general was not even notified of his appointment. The police allowed the journalists to spread the news throughout Paris and publish a protest declaring that they would not obey the ordinances and appealing to the people for support. The leader, Thiers, had already called for a king who would reign but not govern. Lawyers and magistrates pronounced the ordinances illegal. Printers and other employers told their men that the next day would be a holiday.

On Tuesday, the crowds of operatives, clerks, students, ragged men and boys could not be dispersed by the police. Marmont took command of the troops that afternoon, and shot a few insurgents. That night all the street-lamps were put out; thousands of barricades went up, after plans but recently invented; and gun-shops, powder-magazines, arsenals, and even museums were broken open. On Wednesday, there was a new city government in the Hôtel de Ville; everywhere hung the tri-coloured banner of Napoleon and the Republic; and the tocsin called out a hundred thousand rebels in arms. The weapons of Crusaders were seen side by side with the bayonets and uniforms of the National Guard, which had been revived by Napoleon but disbanded by Charles X.

Marmont's orders were to clear the streets that afternoon; but the soldiers were met everywhere by a heavy fire and a shower of paving stones and furniture. One patriotic girl was said to have sacrificed her piano. All the detachments were finally hemmed in between barricades and crowds of rebels with pikes, muskets, and bayonets. During the night they were concentrated around the Tuileries, where they suffered greatly from hunger and thirst, as they had done during the day. Their ammunition was almost exhausted; and new barricades were put up around them. Marmont ordered that there should be no more firing, except in self-defence, and tried in vain to make truce with the rebels. The latter were joined on Thursday by the regiments in the Place Vendôme. This position was entrusted to part of the Swiss who had defended the Louvre; but the others were soon driven out by men and boys who swarmed in at unguarded doors and windows. All the soldiers took flight that noon from Paris.

All this time the King was amusing himself at St. Cloud, and boasting that there would be no concessions. He now offered to dismiss his Ministry and revoke the ordinances; but more than a thousand lives had been lost. The Parisians marched against him: he abdicated and fled: the Bourbons had ceased to reign. The men who had fought against him called for a republic with universal suffrage and no State church; but the wealthier citizens were afraid of war with Russia and Austria. A descendant of Louis XIII. and a friend of Thiers was made King by the Legislature. He called himself Louis Philippe, and promised cordially to carry out the Constitution, which now meant freedom of the press, and equal privileges for all Christian churches. The supremacy of Rome in France was at an end. Seats in the Upper House could no longer be inherited; and the right to vote for deputies was given to twice as many Frenchmen as before. Patriots in all nations were encouraged; and the Swiss cantons became more democratic; but Hegel was frightened to death.