The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain / Nineteenth Century Europe

by J. A. Cramb

In the political as in the religious ideals of men transformation is endless and unresting. The moment of collision between an old and a new principle of human action is a revolution. Such a turning-point is the movement which finds its climax in Europe in the year 1848. Two forces there present themselves, hostile to each other, yet indissolubly united in their determining power upon modern as opposed to ancient Republicanism—the principle of Nationality and the principle of the organization of Labour against Capital, which under various appellations is one of the most profoundly significant forces of the present age. The freedom of the nation was the form into which the older ideal of the freedom of man had dwindled. Saint-Simonianism preserved for a time the old tradition. But the devotees of Saint-Simon's greatest work, Le Nouveau Christianisme, after anticipating in their banquets, graced sometimes by the presence of Malibran, the glories of the coming era, quarrelled amongst themselves, and, returning to common life, became zealous workers not for humanity, but for France, for Germany, or for Italy. Patriotism was taking the place of Humanism.

To Lamartine, indeed, and to Victor Hugo, as to cultured Liberalism throughout Europe, the incidents in Paris of February, 1848, and the astounding rapidity with which the spirit of Revolutions sped from the Seine to the Vistula, to the Danube and the frontiers of the Czar—the barricades in the streets of Vienna and Berlin, the flight of the Emperor and the hated Metternich, the Congress at Prague, and all Hungary arming at the summons of Kossuth, the daring proclamation of the party of Roumanian unity—appeared as a glorious continuance, or even as an expansion, of the ideals of 1789 and 1792. Louis Napoleon, entering like the cut-purse King in Hamlet, who stole a crown and put it in his pocket, the flight of Kossuth, the surrender or the treason of Gorgei, the coup d'état of December, 1851, shattered these airy imaginings. Yet Napoleon III understood at least one aspect of the change which the years had brought better than the rhetorician of the Girondins or the poet of Hernani. For the principle of Nationality, which in 1848 they ignored, became the foundation of the second French Empire, of the unity of Italy, and of that new German Empire which, since 1870, has affected the State system of Europe more potently and continuously than any other single event since the sudden unity of Spain under Ferdinand at the close of the fifteenth century. It was his dexterous and lofty appeal to this same principle which gave the volumes of Palacky's History of Bohemia a power like that of a war-song. Nationality did not die in Vienna before the bands of Windischgratz and Jellachlich, and from his exile Kossuth guided its course in Hungary to a glorious close—the Magyar nation. Even in Russia, then its bitter enemy, this principle quickened the ardour of Pan-Slavism, which the war of 1878—the Schipka Pass, Plevna, the dazzling heroism of Skobeleff—has made memorable. In the triumph of this same principle lies the future hope of Spain. Spain has been exhausted by revolution after revolution, by Carlist intrigue, by the arrogance of successive dictators, and by the bloody reprisals of faction; she has lost the last of her great colonies; but to Alphonso XIII fate seems to reserve the task of completing again by mutual resignation that union with Portugal of which Castelar indicated the basis—a common blood and language, the common graves which are their ancient battle-fields, and the common wars against the Moslem, which are their glory.

With the names of Marx and Lassalle is associated the second great principle which, in 1848, definitely takes its place on the front of the European stage. This is the principle whose votaries confronted Lamartine at the Hôtel-de-Ville on the afternoon of the 25th February. The famous sentence, fortunate as Danton's call to arms, yet by its touch of sentimentality marking the distinction between September, 1792, and February, 1848, "The tricolour has made the tour of the world; the red flag but the tour of the Champ de Mars," has been turned into derision by subsequent events. The red flag has made the tour of the world as effectively as the tricolour and the eagles of Bonaparte. The origins of Communism, Socialism, Anarchism, Nihilism—for all four, however diverging or antagonistic in the ends they immediately pursue, spring from a common root—have been variously ascribed in France to the work of Louis Blanc, Fourier, Proudhon, or in Germany to Engels, Stirner, and Rodbertus, or to the countless secret societies which arose in Spain, Italy, Austria, and Russia, as a protest against the broken pledges of kings and governments after the Congress of Vienna. But the principle which informs alike the writings of individual thinkers and agitators, though deriving a peculiar force in the first half of the century from the doctrines and teachings of Fichte and Schleiermacher, is but the principle to which in all ages suffering and wrong have made their vain appeal—the responsibility of all for the misery of the many and the enduring tyranny of the few. Indignant at the spectacle, the Nihilist in orthodox Russia applies his destructive criticism to all institutions, civil, religious, political, and finding all hollow, seeks to overwhelm all in one common ruin. The Emancipation of 1861 was to the Nihilist but the act of Tyranny veiling itself as Justice. It left the serf, brutalized by centuries of oppression, even more completely than before to the mercy of the boyard and the exploiters of human souls. Michel Bakounine, Kropotkine, Stepniak, Michaelov, and Sophia Perovskaya, whose handkerchief gave the signal to the assassins of Alexander II, were but actualisations of Tourgenieff's imaginary hero Bazaroff, and for a time, indeed, Bazaroffism was in literary jargon the equivalent of Nihilism. If at intervals in recent years a shudder passes across Europe at some new crime, attempted or successful, of Anarchy, if Europe notes the singular regularity with which the crime is traced to Italy, and is perplexed at the absence of all the usual characteristics of conspiracy against society—for what known motives of human action, vanity or fear, hope or the gratification of revenge, can explain the silence of the confederates of Malatesta, and the blind obedience of the agents of his will?—if Europe is perplexed at this apparition of a terror unknown to the ancient world, the Italian sees in it but the operation of the law of responsibility. To the nameless sufferings of Italy he ascribes the temper which leads to the mania of the anarchist; and the sufferings of Italy in their morbid stage he can trace to the betrayal of Italy by Europe in 1816, in 1821, in 1831, in 1848, and supremely in 1856. As Europe has grown more conscious of its essential unity as one State system, diplomacy has wandered from such conceptions as the Balance of Power, through Gortschakoff's ironic appeal to the equality of kings, to the derisive theory of the Concert of Europe. But Communism and Anarchism have afforded a proof of the unity of Europe more convincing and more terrible, and full of sinister presage to the future.

A third aspect of this revolt of misery is Socialism. Karl Marx may be regarded as the chief exponent, if not the founder, of cosmopolitan or international Socialism, and Lassalle as the actual founder of the national or Democratic Socialism of Germany. Marx, whose countenance with its curious resemblance to that of the dwarf of Velasquez, Sebastian de Morra, seems to single him out as the apostle and avenger of human degradation and human suffering, published the first sketch of his principles in 1847, but more completely in the manifesto adopted by the Paris Commune in 1849. As the Revolution of 1789 is to be traced to the oppression of the peasantry by feudal insolence, never weary in wrong-doing, as described by Boisguilbert and Mirabeau père, so the new revolutionary movement of the close of the nineteenth century has its origin in the oppression of the artisan class by the new aristocracy, the bourgeoisie. Factory owners and millionaires have taken the place of the noblesse of last century. And the sufferings of the proletariat, peasant and artisan alike, have increased with their numbers. Freedom has taught the myriads of workers new desires. Heightened intelligence has given them the power to contrast their own wretchedness with the seeming happiness of others, and a standard by which to measure their own degradation, and to sound the depths of their own despair.

Marx's greatest work, Das Kapital, published in 1867, was to the new revolution just such an inspiration and guide as the Contrat Social of Rousseau was to the revolution of '89. The brilliant genius of Lassalle yielded to the sway of the principle of Nationality, and ultimately of Empire, as strongly as the narrower and gloomier nature of Marx was repelled by these principles. It was this trait in his writings, as well as the fiery energy of his soul and his faith in the Prussian peasant and the Prussian artisan, that attracted for a time the interest of Bismarck. Even a State such as Austria Lassalle regarded as higher than any federal union whatever. The image of Lassalle's character, his philosophy, and too swift career, may be found in his earliest work, Heracleitus, the god-gifted statesman whom Plato delineated, seeking not his own, but realizing his life in that of others, toiling ceaselessly for the oppressed, the dumb, helpless, leaderless masses who suffer silently, yet know not why they suffer. A monarchy resting upon the support of the artisan-myriads against the arrogance of the bourgeois, as the Tudor monarchy rested upon the support of the yeomen and the towns against the arrogance of the feudal barons—this, in the most effective period of his career, was Lassalle's ideal State. And it is his remarkable pamphlet in reply to the deputation from Leipsic in 1863 that has fitly been characterized as the charter of the whole movement of democratic socialism in Germany down to the present hour.

The Revolution of 1848 revealed to European Liberalism a more formidable adversary than Metternich. The youth of Nicholas I had been formed by the same tutors as that of his elder brother, the Czar Alexander. The Princess Lieven and his mother, Maria Federovna, the friend of Stein, and the implacable enemy of Napoleon, had found in him a pupil at once devoted, imaginative, and unwearied. A resolute will, dauntless courage, a love of the beautiful in nature and in art, a high-souled enthusiasm for his country, made him seem the fate-appointed leader of Russia's awakening energies. The Teuton in his blood effaced the Slav, and the fixed, the unrelenting pursuit of one sole purpose gives his career something of the tragic unity of Napoleon's, and leaves him still the supreme type of the Russian autocrat. One God, one law, one Church, one State, Russian in language, Russian in creed, Russian in all the labyrinthine grades of its civic, military, and municipal life—this was the dream to the realization of which the thirty crowded years of his reign were consecrated. There is grandeur as well as swiftness of decision in the manner in which he encounters and quells the insurrection of the 26th December. Then, true to the immemorial example of tyrants, he found employment for sedition in war. He tore from Persia in a single campaign two rich provinces and an indemnity of 20,000,000 roubles. The mystic Liberalism of Alexander was abandoned. The free constitution of Poland, the eyesore of the boyards and the old Russian party, was overthrown, and a Russian, as distinct from a German, policy was welcomed with surprise and tumultuous delight. "Despotism," he declared, "is the principle of my government; my people desires no other." Yet he endeavoured to win young Russia by flattery, as he had conquered old Russia by reaction. He encouraged the movement in poetry against the tasteless imitation of Western models, and in society against the dominance of the French language. In the first years of his reign French ceases to be a medium of literary expression, and Russian prose and Russian verse acquire their own cadences. Yet liberty is the life-blood of art; and liberty he could not grant. The freedom of the Press was interdicted; liberty of speech forbidden, and a strict censorship, exercised by the dullest of officials, stifled literature. "How unfortunate is this Bonaparte!" a wit remarked when Pichegru was found strangled on the floor of his dungeon, "all his prisoners die on his hands." How unfortunate was the Czar Nicholas! All his men of genius died by violent deaths. Lermontoff and Poushkine fell in duels before antagonists who represented the tchinovnik class. Rileyev died on the scaffold; Griboiédov was assassinated at Teheran.

His foreign policy was a return to that of Catherine the Great—the restoration of the Byzantine Empire. Making admirable use of the Hellenic enthusiasm of Canning, he destroyed the Turkish fleet at Navarino. Thus popular at home and abroad, regarded by the Liberals of Europe as the restorer of Greek freedom, and by the Legitimists as a stronger successor to Alexander, he was able to crush the Poles. Enthusiastic Berlin students carried the effigies of Polish leaders in triumph; but not a sword was drawn. England, France, Austria looked on silent at the work of Diebitch and Paskievitch, "my two mastiffs," as the Czar styled them, and the true "finis Poloniae" had come. A Russian Army marching against Kossuth, and the Czar's demand for the extradition of the heroic Magyar, unmasked the despot. Yet his European triumph was complete, and the war in the Crimea seemed his crowning chance—the humiliating of the two Powers which in his eyes represented Liberty and the Revolution. Every force that personal rancour, and the devotion of years to one sole end, every measure that reason and State policy could dictate, lent their aid to stimulate the efforts of the monarch in this enterprise. The disaster was sudden, overwhelming, irremediable. Yet in one thing his life was a success, and that a great one—he had Russianised Russia.

The Crimean War marks a turning-point in the History of Europe only less significant than the Revolution of 1848. The isolating force of religion was annulled, and the slowly increasing influence of the East upon the West affected even the routine of diplomacy. The hopes of the Carlists and the Jesuits in Spain were frustrated, and Austria, deprived of the reward of her neutrality, could look no more to the Muscovite for aid in crushing Italian freedom, as she had crushed Hungary. From his deep chagrin at the treason of the Powers, Cavour seemed to gather new strength and a political wisdom which sets his name with those of the greatest constructive statesmen of all time. The defeat at Novara was avenged, the policy of Villafranca, and the designs of that singular saviour of society, Louis Napoleon, were checked. Venetia was recovered, and when in 1870 the lines around Metz and Sedan withdrew the French bayonets which hedged in Pio Nono, Victor Emmanuel entered Rome as King of Italy. Thirty years have passed since the 20th September, and the burdens of taxation and military sacrifices which Italy has borne, with the prisoner in the Vatican like a conspirator on her own hearth, can be compared only with the burdens which Prussia endured for the sake of glory and her kings before and after Rossbach. But instead of a Rossbach, Italy has had an Adowa; instead of justice, a corrupt official class and an army of judges who make justice a mockery, anarchism in her towns, a superstitious peasantry, an aristocracy dead to the future and to the memory of the past. This heroic patriotism, steadfast patience, and fortitude in disaster have their roots in the noblest hearts of Italy herself, but there is not one which in the trial hour has not felt its own strength made stronger, its own resolution made loftier, by the genius and example of a single man—Giuseppe Mazzini. To modern Republicanism, not only of Italy, but of Europe, Mazzini gave a higher faith and a watchword that is great as the watchwords of the world. Equal rights mean equal duties. The Rights of Man imply the Duties of Man. He taught the millions of workers in Italy that their life-purpose lay not in the extortion of privileges, but in making themselves worthy of those privileges; that it was not in conquering capitalists that the path of victory lay, but in all classes of Italians striving side by side towards a common end, the beauty and freedom of Italy, by establishing freedom and beauty in the soul.

The movement towards unity in Germany is old as the war of Liberation against Napoleon, old as Luther's appeal to the German Princes in 1520. The years following Leipsic were consumed by German Liberalism in efforts to invent a constitution like that of England. It was the happy period of the doctrinaire, of the pedant, and of the student of 1688 and the pupils of Siéyès. Heine's bitter address to Germany, "Dream on, thou son of Folly, dream on!" sprang from a chagrin which every sincere German, Prussian, Bavarian, Würtemberger, or Rheinlander felt not less deeply. The Revolution of 1848, the blood spilt at the barricades in the streets of Vienna and Berlin, did not end this; but it roused the better spirits amongst the opposition to deeper perception of the aspiration of all Germany. Which of the multifarious kingdoms and duchies could form the centre of a new union, federal or imperial? Austria, with her long line of Hapsburg monarchs, her tyranny, her obscurantism, her tenacious hold upon the past, had been the enemy or the oppressor of every State in turn. The Danubian principalities, Bohemia, Hungary, pointed out to Vienna a task in the future calculated to try her declining energy to the utmost. Prussia alone possessed the heroic past, the memory of Frederick, of Blücher, of Stein, Scharnhorst, and Yorck; and, if politically despotic, she was essentially Protestant in religion, and Protestantism offered the hope of religious tolerance. After Austria's defeat in Italy, the issue north of the Alps was inevitable. The question was how and in what shape the end would realize itself. Montesquieu insists that, even without Caius Julius, the fall of the oligarchy and the establishment of the Roman Empire was fixed as by a law of fate. Yet, with data before us, it is hard to imagine the creation of the new German Empire without Bismarck. His downright Prussianism rises like a rock through the mists, amid the vaporous Liberalism of the pre-Revolutionary period. His unbroken resolution gave strength to the wavering purpose of Frederick William IV. His diplomacy led to Königgrätz, and the manipulated telegram from Ems turned, as Moltke said, a retreat into a call to battle. And in front of Metz his wisdom kept the Bavarian legions in the field. From his first definite entry into a State career in 1848 to the dismissal of 1887, his deep religion, wisdom, and simplicity of nature are as distinctly Prussian as the glancing ardour of Skobeleff is distinctly Russian. From the Hohenzollern he looked for no gratitude. His loyalty was loyalty to the kingship, not to the individual. He had early studied the career of Strafford, and knew the value of the word of a King. False or true to all men else, he was unwaveringly true to Prussia, which to Bismarck meant being true to himself, true to God. He could not bequeath his secret to those who came after him any more than Leonardo could bequeath his secret to Luini. But the Empire he built up has the elements of endurance. It possesses in the Middle Age common traditions, deep and penetrating, a common language, and the recent memory of a marvellous triumph. Protestantism and the Prussian temper ensure religious freedom to Bavaria. Even in 1870 the old principles of the Seven Years' War, Protestantism and the neo-Romanism of Pius IX, reappear in the opposing ranks at Gravelotte and Sedan. The new Empire, whether it be to Europe a warrant of peace or of war, is at least a bulwark against Ultramontanism.

The change in French political life finds its expression in the Russian alliance. Time has atoned for the disasters at the Alma and Inkermann. Would one discover the secret at the close of the century of the alliance of Russia and France, freedom's forlorn hope when the century began? It is contained in the speech of Skobeleff which once startled Europe: "The struggle between the Slav and the Teuton no human power can avert. Even now it is near, and the struggle will be long, terrible, and bloody; but this alone can liberate Russia and the whole Slavonic race from the tyranny of the intruder. No man's home is a home till the German has been expelled, and the rush to the East, the 'Drang nach Osten' turned back for ever."