Among the more conspicuous metropolitan improvements of this age may be mentioned the introduction of gas and the incipient construction of new bridges over the Thames, in which the engineer Rennie took a leading part. Before the end of the eighteenth century the workshops of Boulton and Watt had been lit by gas, and Soho was illuminated by it to celebrate the peace of Amiens. By 1807 it was used in Golden Lane, and by 1809, if not earlier, it had reached Pall Mall, but it scarcely became general in London until somewhat later. At the beginning of the century the metropolis possessed but three bridges, old London bridge and the old bridges at Blackfriars and Westminster. The first stone of the Strand Bridge (afterwards to be called Waterloo Bridge) was laid on October 11, 1811, and Southwark Bridge was commenced in 1814, but these bridges were not completed till 1817 and 1819 respectively. The existing London Bridge, designed by Rennie, but built after his death, was completed in 1831. In 1812, the architect Nash was employed in laying out the Regent's Park, and in 1813 an act was passed for the construction of Regent Street, as a grand line of communication between it and Carlton House, the residence of the regent.
The work of geographical discovery had been well commenced before the end of the eighteenth century, and was inevitably checked during the great war. The wonderful voyages of Cook had revealed Australia and New Zealand; Flinders had carried on the survey of the Australian coast; Vancouver had explored the great island which bears his name with the adjacent shores; Rennell had produced his great map of India; Bruce had published his celebrated travels in Abyssinia; and an association had been formed to dispel the darkness that hung over the whole interior of Africa. Among its first emissaries was Mungo Park, who afterwards was employed by the British government, and died in the course of his second expedition in 1805-6. The idea of Arctic discovery was revived early in the nineteenth century, and was no longer confined to commercial aims, such as the opening of a north-east or north-west passage, but was rather directed to scientific objects, not without the hope of reaching the North Pole itself. Meanwhile, the ordnance survey of Great Britain itself was in full progress, and that of British India was commenced in 1802, while the hydrographical department of the admiralty, established in 1795, was organising the system of marine-surveying which has since yielded such valuable fruits.
The progress of philanthropy, based on religious sentiment was very marked during the later years of the war. The institution of Sunday schools between 1780 and 1790 had awakened a new sense of duty towards children in the community, and the growing use of child-labour, keeping pace with the constant increase of machinery, forced upon the public the necessity of legislative restrictions, which have been noticed in an earlier chapter. Banks of savings, the forerunners of savings banks under parliamentary regulation, had been suggested by Jeremy Bentham, and one at least was instituted in 1802. The idea of penitentiaries, for the reformation as well as for the punishment of criminals, had originated with the great philanthropist, John Howard. It was adopted and popularised by Jeremy Bentham, and might have been further developed but for the introduction of transportation, which promised the well-conducted convict the prospect of a new life in a new country. Meanwhile, prison reform became a favourite study of benevolent theorists in an age when the criminal law was still a relic of barbarism, when highway robbery was rife in the neighbourhood of London, when sanitation was hardly in its infancy, when pauperism was fostered by the poor law, and when the working classes in towns were huddled together, without legal check or moral scruple, in undrained courts and underground cellars. So capricious and shortsighted is the public conscience in its treatment of social evils.
CANADA.
At the opening of the nineteenth century the colonial empire of Great Britain was in a transitional state. The secession of thirteen American colonies had not only robbed the mother country of its proudest inheritance, but had also shattered the old colonial system of commercial monopoly for the supposed benefit of British interests. Its immediate effect was to annul the navigation act as affecting American trade, which became free to all the world, and by which Great Britain itself profited largely. Canada at once gained a new importance, and a new sense of nationality, which Pitt recognised by dividing it into two provinces, and giving each a considerable measure of independence, both political and commercial. It was troubled by the presence of a conquered race of white colonists side by side with new colonists of English blood, who were, however, united in their resistance to the revolted colonies in the war of 1812-14. After the war a steady stream of immigration poured into Canada. In 1816 the population was estimated at 450,000; between 1819 and 1829 Canada received 126,000 immigrants from England, and during the next ten years 320,000. The result was that the French element ceased to be preponderant, except in Lower Canada. The French Canadians felt that they did not enjoy their share of the confidence of government; the home government, ready enough to grant any favour that home opinion would permit, was trammelled by a public opinion, which suspected all who were of a French origin of a desire to restore the supremacy of the Roman Catholic religion and to assert political independence. A vacillating policy was the result, which only increased suspicions, and led in the first year of the reign of Victoria to a civil war.
In the Mauritius and the West Indies the one event of importance in this period is the abolition of slavery. It was found impossible to obtain from free negroes as much work as had been obtained from slaves, and their place had to be supplied by Indian coolies in the Mauritius, and by Chinese in Jamaica. At the same time the West Indies had begun to suffer from the competition of the United States.
The colony of the Cape of Good Hope was still peopled almost entirely by blacks or by the descendants of Dutch settlers, known as boers, or peasants. Four thousand British colonists went out in 1820 to Algoa Bay, but these were a mere handful compared with the Dutch. Unfortunately the government adopted a line of policy which produced great irritation in the Dutch population. They were granted no self-government, and in 1826 English judicial forms were introduced, and English was declared the sole official language. The reform administration made matters worse by defending the blacks against the boers. In 1834 it set free the slaves, offering £1,200,000, payable in London, very little of which ever reached the boers, as compensation for slaves valued at £3,000,000. A Kaffir war in 1834 had led to the conquest of Kaffraria, but in 1835 the home government restored the independence of the Kaffirs, and appointed a lieutenant-governor to defend their rights. After this the boers considered their position intolerable, and in 1835 began their first "trek" into the country now known as Natal.
AUSTRALIA.
Meanwhile, the great discoveries of Captain Cook, and the first settlement of New South Wales, brought within view a possible extension of our colonial dominion, which might go far to compensate for its losses on the North American continent. Governor Phillip had been sent out by Pitt to Botany Bay in 1787-88, but it was many years before the earliest of Australian colonies outgrew the character of a penal refuge for English convicts. The first convict establishments were at Sydney and Norfolk Island, but another settlement was founded on Van Diemen's Land in 1805, and in 1807, after this island had been circumnavigated by Flinders and Bass, it became the headquarters of that convict system, whose horrors are not yet forgotten. Between 1810 and 1822 the resources of New South Wales were vastly developed by the energetic policy of Governor Macquarie. While his efforts to utilise convict labour, and to educate convicts into free men, may have retarded the influx of genuine colonists, he prepared the way for settlement by constructing roads, promoting exploration, and raising public buildings, so that when he returned home the population of New South Wales had increased fourfold, and its settled territory in a much greater proportion. This territory comprised all English settlements on the east coast, and included large tracts of what is now known as Queensland, which did not become a separate colony until 1859.
The early history of Australia, it has been said, is chiefly a tale of convict settlements, bush-ranging, and expeditions of discovery. There is much truth in this saying, but the real basis of Australian prosperity was the introduction of sheep-farming on a large scale, after the merino-breed had been imported and acclimatised by Macarthur at the beginning of the century. Long before the region stretching northward from the later Port Phillip grew into the colony of Victoria, sheep-owners were spreading over the vast pastures of the interior, though many years elapsed before the explorer Sturt opened out the great provinces further westward.