Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading

by George Park Fisher

LEGAL REFORMS.—In the same year the monopoly of the East-India Company was abolished, and trade with the East was made free to all merchants. A new Poor Law (1834) checked the growth of pauperism. In 1835, by the Municipal Corporations Act, the ancient rights of self-government by the towns, which had been lost since the fourteenth century, were restored to them. Civil marriage was made legal, in compliance with a demand of the Dissenters, who were likewise relieved of other grounds of complaint (1836). Increased attention began to be paid to popular education.

CHARTISM.—Notwithstanding the constitutional changes in England, the distress and discontent of the poorer classes occasioned the riotous "Chartist" movement in 1839, when universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and other radical changes were in vain demanded. Mass meetings were held, and outbreakings of violence were feared; but order was preserved.

CHINA: AFGHANISTAN.—A war with China (1839) had no better ground than the refusal of the Chinese government to allow the importation of opium. The occupation of Kabul in 1839 caused a general revolt of the Afghans. A British army was destroyed in the Khyber Pass. The British then conquered, but did not care to retain, Afghanistan.

REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS.—Victoria, the only child of the Duke of Kent, the brother of William IV., succeeded the latter in 1837. She married her cousin, Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1840). In 1846 the party which had long advocated free trade gained a triumph in the repeal of the Corn Laws, which had existed since 1815, imposing duties on imported grain. In the agitation which preceded the repeal, Richard Cobden was the leader: he was effectively aided by John Bright. But the measure was carried by Sir Robert Peel, who on this question abandoned his former views and those of the Conservatives, by whom he had been raised to power. He was bitterly assailed, especially by D'Israeli, who was rising to the position of a leader among them.

LOUIS PHILIPPE.—Louis Philippe made up his first ministry from the party which had raised him to the throne. Among its members were Broglie, Guizot, and Casimir Périer. The king aimed by shrewd management to maintain his popularity at home, and to keep the peace with foreign powers, by taking care to encourage liberal movements abroad, yet without taking any step in that direction which would bring on war. He did nothing for the Poles in their mortal struggle, and nothing really effectual for the Italians. Several abortive attempts upon his life were made by secret societies; one of a dangerous character, by Fieschi (1835), who fired "an infernal machine" from his window when the king was passing. This was followed by the "Laws of September," to curb the license of the press. They reminded the public of the royalist laws of 1820. They were opposed by the more liberal men: Royer-Collard and Villemain spoke against them. They went by the name of the "Fieschi laws." An effort to raise an insurrection among the French troops in Strasburg was made by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (1836), who, after his flight from Italy, had resided in Switzerland, where he had busied himself in study, and had written several books. The enterprise proved a ridiculous failure: its author was allowed to go to America.

FRENCH POLICY IN THE EAST.—Various causes conspired to undermine Louis Philippe's government. One of these was its connection with the war of Mehemet Ali with the Sultan. In the former war with his over-lord, the Sultan, the viceroy of Egypt had been invested with Syria as a fief. He now sent an army into Syria, under his son Ibrahim, who overran that country, advanced victoriously into Asia Minor, and threatened Constantinople (1832). The European powers intervened, and obliged Mehemet Ali to content himself with Syria, together with the district of Adana in Asia Minor, and the island of Candia, which the Sultan had ceded to him before. In 1839 the Sultan tried to recover Syria, but encountered an overwhelming defeat, and lost the entire Turkish fleet. England now combined with Austria, Prussia, and Russia, and the Western powers once more saved the Turkish Empire; although France, under the ministry of Thiers, had strongly favored the cause of Mehemet Ali (1840). Contrary to the wish of the French, he had to give up Syria. He secured for himself and his descendants the pashalic of Egypt (1841). The failure of the French policy in the East, by this action of the Quadruple Alliance, caused indignation and chagrin in France. Even Thiers, who was in sympathy with the cause of Mehemet Ali, was loudly blamed. There was danger of a rupture with England. Thiers was a principal author of the plan for fortifying Paris by encircling the city with forts. The king judged that they might prove to be of use in putting down insurrections. Louis Napoleon thought the occasion favorable for another attempt to seize the crown. He landed from England at Boulogne with a few followers, and proclaimed himself emperor. He was captured, tried, and imprisoned in the fortress of Ham, where he spent six years. His time there was mostly given to study and writing. A few months before this attempt of Louis Napoleon, the French government had arranged for the bringing of the body of the first Napoleon from St. Helena to Paris. It was one of various impolitic measures, in which Thiers was actively concerned, for doing honor to the emperor and his military achievements. But at that time Louis Napoleon, who was known to be a man of slow mind, but whose capacity for intrigue was not understood, was regarded with contempt, and the Bonapartists excited no alarm. In 1841, in the presence of the royal family and of a vast concourse, the remains of Napoleon were deposited with great pomp in a magnificent tomb under the dome of the Church of the Invalides. Marshal Soult superseded Thiers at the head of the ministry (1840); but Guizot was the ruling spirit in the cabinet, and was associated with the king until his dethronement. The death of the Duke of Orleans, the eldest son of Louis Philippe, by a fall from his carriage (July 13, 1842), endangered the new dynasty. The duke's eldest son, the Count of Paris, was then only four years of age.

GUIZOT'S ADMINISTRATION.—From 1840 Guizot was the principal minister of Louis Philippe, and Thiers was in the opposition. They differed both as regards foreign and domestic policy. Thiers, who in his convictions was a decided liberal, and in full sympathy with the spirit of the French Revolution, was for the extension of suffrage, and for making the influence of France felt and respected in matters of European concern, even at the risk of war. Guizot, on the contrary, clung to the English alliance, and he considered that a foreign war—for example, in defense of Mehemet Ali,—would be to France a great and needless calamity. Claiming to be a fast friend of representative government, Guizot nevertheless inflexibly resisted movements for the extension of popular rights,—movements which he believed would lead, if they were not withstood, to revolution and anarchy. On the one hand were the legitimists, aiming at the restoration of the elder branch of the Bourbons; on the other hand there were the republicans, who wished to be rid of monarchy altogether. The government of Louis Philippe satisfied neither. It served as a transition, or temporary halting-place, in the progress of France towards the goal of rational and stable republicanism, to which the great Revolution tended. It was an "attempt to put new wine in old bottles." This inherent weakness of the Orleans rule, it would have been difficult by any means to neutralize in such a way as to avert, sooner or later, a catastrophe. The unbending conservatism of Guizot—as seen, for instance, in his refusal to extend suffrage—hastened this result. A government over which less than half a million of voters of the middle class alone had an influence, could not stand against the progressive feeling of the country. The middle class, on which the throne depended, became separated from the advanced party, to which the youth of France more and more rallied. Guizot was personally upright; but official corruption was suffered to spread in the last years of his administration, and bribery was used in the elections. These circumstances, added to the mortification of national pride from the little heed paid to France by the other powers, weakened the throne. The failure of the government to support the cause of liberty in Poland and Italy was another important source of its growing unpopularity.

Guizot, in the personal Memoirs written by him after the fall of Louis Philippe, has defended himself against the charge of a want of loyal support of Thiers, the head of the ministry, while he (Guizot) was ambassador to England (1840). There was a private understanding that he should go no farther than his sympathy with the views of Thiers extended. Guizot has undertaken, also, to show that a war in behalf of Mehemet Ali would have been most unwise; and that it was for the interest of France to regain its weight in European affairs, not by the renewal of the bloody and fruitless contests of the past, but by methods of peace. He deemed it his duty not to give way to the "warlike tastes and inclinations" of the French people. The effort, however, to tie down so spirited a nation to so tame a policy, proved to be futile. The recollections of the empire, which the government itself did so much to arouse, moved the people to compare the achievements of the past with the humiliating position of their country under the Orleans rule.

Guizot has left this interesting exposition of his principles and policy: "In the diplomatic complication which agitated Europe, I saw a brilliant opportunity of exercising and loudly proclaiming a foreign policy, extremely new and bold in fact, though moderate in appearance, the only foreign policy which in 1840 suited the peculiar position of France and her government, as also the only course in harmony with the guiding principles and permanent wants of the great scheme of civilization to which the world of to-day aspires and tends.

"The spirit of conquest, of propagandism, and of system, has hitherto been the moving cause and master of the foreign policy of states. The ambition of princes or peoples has sought its gratification in territorial aggrandizement. Religious or political faith has endeavored to expand by imposing itself. Great heads of government have attempted to regulate the destinies of nations according to profound combinations, the offspring rather of their own thought than the natural result of facts. Let us cast a glance over the history of international European relations. We shall see the spirit of conquest, or of armed propagandism, or of some systematic design upon the territorial organization of Europe, inspire and determine the foreign policy of governments. Let one or other of these impulses prevail, and governments have disposed arbitrarily of the fate of nations. War has ever been their indispensable mode of action.