A History of England, Period III. Constitutional Monarchy

by J. Franck Bright

The rising influence of Russia was the great object of Pitt's dread. The progress of that country was very threatening; its vast bulk and unknown resources, and the success which had hitherto attended its progress since the time of Peter the Great, had rendered it a very formidable element in the European system. Chatham had indeed regarded its growth as advantageous to Europe, the counterpoise at once to the power of the French and of the Prussians. His son took a different view, justified by the evident attempts of the Empress to increase her power at the expense of Turkey, and thus to secure the Black Sea, if not the Mediterranean, and by the ever-increasing influence which she exercised over both Prussia and Austria. Even the great Frederick had found himself obliged to court his formidable neighbour; again and again his brother, Prince Henry, had visited St. Petersburg; while Joseph II. of Austria was entirely led away by the Czarina's greatness. Already the greater part of Poland had been absorbed by that Empire; there now remained two powers at either extremity of the great mass of Russia which might easily have suffered a similar treatment. These were Turkey and Sweden. In the year 1787 the aggression for which Europe was waiting took place. The Emperor Joseph had a meeting with the Czarina, and travelled with her in her carriage as she went to visit the Crimea. He was there thoroughly dazzled by the greatness of the scheme which she unfolded to him. Turkey and Greece were to be conquered, and the old Empire of the East to be re-established. In exchange, it was hinted that something like a Western Empire should be constituted, and Italy, as of old, be placed under the Austrian sway. But the success of the Czarina and the Emperor was hampered by the sudden and vigorous assaults upon Russia from the side of Sweden under its King Gustavus III. This attack in its turn threatened to be neutralized by the intervention of the Danes, who were connected in friendship with the Czarina. Such, then, was the position of affairs which Pitt had to consider, in reference always to what he believed of vital importance, the European balance,—on the one side, Austria, Russia, and Denmark; on the other, Turkey and Sweden.

Alliance with Prussia, Holland and Sweden.

There were three countries against which Pitt could put in practice what appears to have been his fixed plan of European action; desirous of peace, and thinking few questions of sufficient importance to authorise him in plunging Europe into war, he hoped, by a show of superior power on the part of himself and his allies, to uphold the dignity of England and the existing balance of power. He began with the weakest. He drew closer his friendship with Prussia, and his threats in union with that power were sufficient to detach Denmark from its allies, thus to rid Sweden of the enemy in its rear, and to allow it to carry on its aggressive movements, which seemed so successful as a diversion in favour of Turkey. An alliance with Holland, Sweden, and Prussia secured the maintenance of peace on the part of Denmark. He then turned to Austria; for the danger from the joint attack on Turkey had become really imminent when the strong fortress of Oczakow had fallen into the hands of the Czarina's favourite Potemkin. The opportunity was favourable. Joseph II. had died, in 1790, just as all his plans, whether of aggressive ambition on the side of Turkey or of domestic reform in Flanders, had seemed to terminate in failure; while in Flanders a spirit of insurrection, too powerful for him to suppress, had been excited by certain reforms which he there introduced. Indeed, domestic dangers had threatened him on all sides. His successor, Leopold, was desirous of securing the friendship of French and German powers to aid him in his election to the Imperial Crown; and under threat of an immediate invasion Procures the Convention of Reichenbach. from Prussia, which Pitt had instigated, and impressed with the rising danger to all monarchies from the events which were occurring in France, he consented to conclude in August 1790 the Convention of Reichenbach and to withdraw from the Turkish war. Twice, then, Pitt's policy of intervention, combined with threats, but without actual warfare, had been thoroughly successful. The position of England began to stand higher abroad, and the country had again been brought into close connection with its old German allies.

Fails in his intervention with Russia.

His third intervention was less successful. The Czarina, left to herself both by friends and enemies, persisted in her course, and the fall of Ismail in December was marked by astonishing barbarities. Pitt thought to act upon the Russian Empress as, in conjunction with Prussia, he had acted upon Austria. He demanded that a peace should be made upon the status quo before the war, and threatened to support his demand by arms. An increase of the fleet was indeed ordered, but Pitt was mistaken both in the temper of the English and in that of the Russian Empress. The isolated threat of one country standing without allies did not seem to her very terrible; to the people of England the danger of a Russian aggression was of little importance. Pitt found it necessary to change his policy and withdraw his threat, and was content to allow Russia to conclude a peace by which she obtained the territory between the Bug and the Dniester and the fortress of Oczakow.

Industrial development of England.

But it was not only in its political position that England had developed with extraordinary rapidity after the American War. The whole condition of those industrial arts which give work to the lower orders was changed, and an enormous impulse given to the employment of industry. In spite of the constant complaints of those who were bent upon asserting the decline of the nation, the population had been gradually increasing ever since the Revolution of 1688; the rate of increase in the thirty years preceding 1780 was about 400,000 a year. This increase of population had already begun to call fresh land into cultivation; between 1760 and 1770 no less than a thousand enclosure Bills were passed. The improved processes of husbandry did even more than the mere extent of cultivable area to increase the productive power of agriculture. But this agricultural production could never have increased at the rate it did had it not been that the proportion between consumers and producers of food was rapidly being altered; for it was this period which changed England from an agricultural to a manufacturing country, and placed the weight of population, which had hitherto been greater in the South, entirely in the North. By successive steps all the great improvements in spinning and weaving were introduced; the discovery that iron could be worked as well with pit coal as with charcoal gave an immense impetus to the second great branch of industry; and the improvement in the steam engine, which enabled machinery to be worked irrespective of local peculiarities, spread the manufactures, which had hitherto nestled among the hills for the sake of obtaining water-power, into all parts of the coal-producing districts. This burst of industry of necessity produced great economic changes. The employment of labour in manufactories tended to increase the population rapidly. The increase of numbers, the growth of wealth among the manufacturers, called into activity more skill in agriculture, and demanded the occupation of more land. Land to which recourse is had under this pressure is naturally the worse land; it therefore requires more labour to produce its crop, and the most laboriously produced crop sets the value of the whole; the prices of the necessaries of life began rapidly to rise. Though the use of machinery made many things cheaper, and improved methods of husbandry prevented prices from rising as they would otherwise have done, as a general rule, while the price of luxuries decreased, the price of necessaries rose. Wages did not rise with a proportionate rapidity, and it was still a question whether, if the French war had not intervened, the relation between food and consumption, between prices and wages, would have been satisfactorily arranged. It was however evident that all these improvements, while they created great wealth for the middle and mercantile classes, by no means rendered the position of the mechanic and artisan easier, while, at the same time, higher and more intelligent employment, and the more sedentary life led by the mechanic, were well suited to foster habits of thought, and to make the half-educated man a shallow reasoner, ready to accept crude ideas as to the measures best fitted to produce improvement in the social position of himself and his class; and such ideas, emanating from France, had been for some time widely spread among the people.

Active condition of England abroad and at home.

Thus, while England had gradually resumed her commanding position abroad, and was ready with allies to join in any external movement, and while the growing wealth of the mercantile world was rendering it daily more certain that any such movement would be in a conservative direction, the people—increased in numbers and intelligence, but not bettered in their general condition—were becoming ready to lend a willing ear to any measures which promised to improve the political position of their class. And it was just at this time that the French Revolution broke out.