What was needed now was unity. A single fixed and resolute purpose, under able and suitable leaders, formed the only conceivable condition of success. But Poland was, of all countries, the least capable of such unity. The landed nobility was full of its old feudal notions; the democracy of the city was inspired by modern sentiments. They could not agree; they quarreled in castle and court, while their hasty levies of troops were marching to meet the Russians in the field. Under such conditions success was a thing beyond hope.
Yet the Poles fought well. Kosciusko, their former hero, would have been proud of their courage and willingness to die for their country. But against the powerful and ably led Russian armies their gallantry was of no avail, and their lack of unity fatal. In May, 1831, they were overwhelmed at Ostrolenka by the Russian hosts. In September a traitor betrayed Warsaw, and the Russian army entered its gates. The revolt was at an end, and Poland again in fetters.
Nicholas the Czar fancied that he had spoiled these people by kindness and clemency. They should not be spoiled in that way any longer. Under his harsh decrees the Kingdom of Poland vanished. He ordered that it should be made a Russian province, and held by a Russian army of occupation. The very language of the Poles was forbidden to be spoken, and their religion was to be replaced by the Orthodox Russian faith. Those brief months of revolution and independence were fatal to the liberty-loving people. Since then, except during their brief revolt in 1863, they have lain in fetters at the feet of Russia, nothing remaining to them but their patriotic memories and their undying aspiration for freedom and independence.
In the preceding chapter mention was made of two regions in which the spirit of revolt triumphed during the period of reaction after the Napoleonic wars—Greece and Spanish America. The revolt in Greece was there described; that in Spanish America awaits description. It had its hero, one of the great soldiers of the Spanish race, perhaps the greatest and ablest of guerilla leaders; “Bolivar the Liberator,” as he was known on his native soil.
Spain had long treated her colonists in a manner that was difficult for a high-spirited people to endure. Only two thoughts seemed to rule in their management, the one being to derive from the colonies all possible profit for the government at home, the other to make use of them as a means by which the leaders in Spain could pay their political debts. The former purpose was sought to be carried out by severe taxation, commercial restriction, and the other methods in which a short-sighted country seeks to enrich itself by tying the hands and checking the industries of its colonists. To achieve the latter purpose all important official positions in the colonies were held by natives of Spain. Posts in the government, in the customs, in all salaried offices were given to strangers, who knew nothing of the work they were to do or the conditions of the country to which they were sent, and whose single thought was to fill their purses as speedily as possible and return to enjoy their wealth in Spain.
All this was galling to the colonists, who claimed to be loyal Spaniards; and they rebelled in spirit against this swarm of human locusts which descended annually upon them, practicing every species of extortion and fraud in their eagerness to grow rich speedily, and carrying much of the wealth of the country back to the mother land. Add to this the severe restrictions on industry and commerce, the prohibition of trade except with Spain, the exactions of every kind, legal and illegal, to which the people were forced to submit, and their deep-seated dissatisfaction is easy to understand.
The war for independence in the United States had no apparent influence upon the colonies of Spanish America. They remained loyal to Spain. The French Revolution seemed also without effect. But during the long Napoleonic wars, when Spain remained for years in the grip of the Corsican, and the people of Spanish America were left largely to govern themselves, a thirst for liberty arose, and a spirit of revolt showed itself about 1810 throughout the length and breadth of the colonies.
Chief among the revolutionists was Simon Bolivar, a native of Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. In 1810 we find him in London, seeking the aid of the British government in favor of the rebels against Spain. In 1811 he served as governor of Puerto Cabello, the strongest fortress in Venezuela. He was at that time subordinate to General Miranda, whom he afterwards accused of treason, and who died in a dungeon in Spain. In the year named Venezuela proclaimed its independence, but in 1813, Bolivar, who had been entitled its “Liberator,” was a refugee in Jamaica, and his country again a vassal of Spain.
The leaders of affairs in Spain knew well where to seek the backbone of the insurrection. Bolivar was the one man whom they feared. He removed, there was not a man in sight capable of leading the rebels to victory. To dispose of him, a spy was sent to Jamaica, his purpose being to take the Liberator’s life. This man, after gaining a knowledge of Bolivar’s habits and movements, bribed a negro to murder him, and in the dead of night the assassin stole up to Bolivar’s hammock and plunged his knife into the sleeper’s breast. As it proved, it was not Bolivar, but his secretary, who lay there, and the hope of the American insurrectionists escaped.
Leaving Jamaica, Bolivar proceeded to San Domingo, where he found a warm supporter in the president, Petion. Here, too, he met Luis Brion, a Dutch shipbuilder of great wealth. His zeal for the principles of liberty infused Brion with a like zeal. The result was that Brion fitted out seven schooners and placed them at Bolivar’s disposal, supplied 3,500 muskets to arm recruits who should join Bolivar’s standard, and devoted his own life and services to the sacred cause. Thus slenderly equipped, Bolivar commenced operations in 1816 at the port of Cayos de San Luis, where the leading refugees from Cartagena, New Granada, and Venezuela had sought sanctuary. By them he was accepted as leader, and Brion, with the title of “Admiral of Venezuela,” was given command of the squadron he had himself furnished. The growing expedition now made for the island of Margarita, which Arismendi had wrested from the Spanish governor; and here, at a convention of officers, Bolivar was named “Supreme Chief,” and the third Venezuelan war began. It was marked by many a disaster to the patriot arms, and so numerous vicissitudes that, until the culminating triumph of Boyaca on August 7th, 1819, it remained doubtful upon which side victory would ultimately rest.
The war was conducted on the part of the Spaniards with the most fiendish cruelty, prisoners taken in war and the unarmed people of the country alike being tortured and murdered under circumstances of revolting barbarity. “The people of Margarita,” writes an English officer who served in Venezuela, “saw their liberties threatened and endangered; their wives, children, and kindred daily butchered and murdered; and the reeking members of beings most dear to them exposed to their gaze on every tree and crag of their native forests and mountains; nor was it until hundreds had been thus slaughtered that they pursued the same course. The result was that the Spaniards were routed. I myself saw upwards of seven thousand of their skulls, dried and heaped together in one place, which is not inaptly termed ‘Golgotha,’ as a trophy of victory.”
Another writer tells us: “I saw several women whose ears and noses had been cut off, their eyes torn from their sockets, their tongues cut out, and the soles of their feet pared by the orders of Monteverde, a Spanish brigadier-general.” The result of these excesses of cruelty was an implacable hatred of the Spaniard, and a determination to carry on the war unto death.
In 1815 Ferdinand of Spain determined to put an end once for all to the movement for independence that, in varying forms, had, been agitating for five years the whole of Spanish America. Accordingly, strong reinforcements to the royalist armies were sent out, under General Morillo. These arrived at Puerto Cabello, and, besides ships of war, comprised 12,000 troops—a force in itself many times larger than all the scattered bands of patriots then under arms put together. Morillo soon had Venezuela under his thumb, and, planting garrisons throughout it, proceeded to lay siege to Cartagena. Capturing this city in four months, he marched unopposed to Santa Fe de Bogota, the capital of New Granada, ruin and devastation marking his progress. In a despatch to Ferdinand, which was intercepted, he wrote: “Every person of either sex who was capable of reading and writing was put to death. By thus cutting off all who were in any way educated, I hoped to effectually arrest the spirit of revolution.”
An insight into Morillo’s methods of coping with the “spirit of revolution” is furnished by his treatment of those he found in the opulent city of Maturin on its capture. Dissatisfied with the treasure he found there, he suspected the people of wealth to have anticipated his arrival by burying their property. To find out the supposed buried treasure, he had all those whom he regarded as likely to know where it was hidden collected together, and, to make them confess, had the soles of their feet cut off, and then had them driven over hot sand. Many of the victims of this horrid piece of cruelty survived, and were subsequently seen by those that have narrated it.
At the commencement of the war, with the exception of the little band on the island of Margarita, the patriotic cause was represented by a few scattered groups along the banks of the Orinoco, on the plains of Barcelona and of Casanare. These groups pursued a kind of guerilla warfare, quite independently of one another, and without any plan to achieve. They were kept together by the fact that submission meant death. The leader of one of these groups, Paez by name, presents one of the most picturesque and striking characters that history has produced. He was a Llanero, or native of the elevated plains of Barinas, and quite illiterate. As owner of herds of half-wild cattle, he became chief of a band of herdsmen, which he organized into an army, known as the “Guides of the Apure,” a tributary of the Orinoco, and whose banks were the base of Paez’s operations. Only one of his many daring exploits can be here recorded. That occurred on the 3rd of June, 1819, when Paez was opposing the advance of Morillo himself. With 150 picked horsemen, he swam the river Orinoco and galloped towards the Spanish camp. “Eight hundred of the royalist cavalry,” writes W. Pilling, General Mitre’s translator, “with two small guns, sallied out to meet him. He slowly retreated, drawing them on to a place called Las Queseras del Medio, where a battalion of infantry lay in ambush by the river. Then, splitting his men into groups of twenty, he charged the enemy on all sides, forcing them under the fire of the infantry, and recrossed the river with two killed and a few wounded, leaving the plain strewn with the dead of the enemy.”
While Paez’s dashing exploits were inspiring the revolutionary leaders with fresh courage, which enabled them at least to hold their own, a system of enlisting volunteers was instituted in London by Don Luis Lopes Mendez, representative of the republic. The Napoleonic wars being over, the European powers were unable to reduce their swollen armaments, and English and German officers entered into contracts with Mendez to take out to Venezuela organized corps of artillery, lancers, hussars, and rifles. On enlisting, soldiers received a bounty of £20; their pay was 2s. a day and rations, and at the end of the war they were promised £125 and an allotment of land. The first expedition to leave England comprised 120 hussars and lancers, under Colonel Hippisley; this body became the basis of a corps of regular cavalry. The nucleus of a battalion of riflemen was taken out by Colonel Campbell; and a subaltern, named Gilmour, with the title of colonel, formed with 90 men the basis of a brigade of artillery. General English, who had served in the Peninsular War under Wellington, contracted with Mendez to take out a force of 1,200 Englishmen; 500 more went out under Colonel Elsom, who also brought out 300 Germans under Colonel Uzlar. General MacGregor took 800, and General Devereux took out the Irish Legion, in which was a son of the Irish tribune, Daniel O’Connell. Smaller contingents also went to the seat of war; these mentioned, however, were the chief, and without their aid Bolivar was wont to confess that he would have failed.
Now it was that a brilliant idea occurred to Bolivar. He had already sent 1,200 muskets and a group of officers to General Santander, who was the leader of the patriots on the plains of Casanare. This enabled Santander to increase his forces from amongst the scattered patriots in that neighborhood. He thereupon began to threaten the frontier of New Granada, with the result that General Barreiro, who had been left in command of that province by Morillo, deemed it advisable to march against him and crush his growing power. Santander’s forces, however, though inferior in number, were too full of enthusiasm for Barreiro’s soldiers—reduced to a half-hearted condition from being forced to take part in cruelties that they gained nothing from, except the odium of the people they moved amongst. Barreiro, accordingly, was driven back; and, on receiving the news of Santander’s success, Bolivar at once formed the conception of crossing the Andes and driving the Spaniards out of New Granada. The event proved that this was the true plan of campaign for the patriots. Already they had lost three campaigns through endeavoring to dislodge the Spaniards from their strongest positions, which were in Venezuela; now, by gaining New Granada, they would win prestige and consolidate their power there for whatever further efforts circumstances might demand.
Thus, as it has been described, did the veil drop from Bolivar’s eyes; and so confident was he of ultimate success, that he issued to the people of New Granada this proclamation: “The day of America has come; no human power can stay the course of Nature guided by Providence. Before the sun has again run his annual course, altars to Liberty will arise throughout your land.”
Bolivar immediately prepared to carry out his idea, and on the 11th of June, 1819, he joined Santander at the foot of the Andes, bringing with him four battalions of infantry, of which one—the “Albion”—was composed entirely of English soldiers—two squadrons of lancers, one of carabineers, and a regiment called the “Guides of the Apure,” part of which were English—in all 2,500 men. To join Santander was no easy task, for it involved the crossing of an immense plain covered with water at this season of the year, and the swimming of seven deep rivers—war materials, of course, having to be taken along as well. This, however, was only a foretaste of the still greater difficulties that lay before the venturesome band.
General Santander led the van with his Casanare troops, and entered the mountain defiles by a road leading to the centre of the province of Tunja, which was held by Colonel Barreiro with 2,000 infantry and 400 horse. The royalists had also a reserve of 1,000 troops at Bogota, the capital of New Granada; at Cartagena, and in the valley of Cauca were other detachments, and there was another royalist army at Quito. Bolivar, however, trusted to surprise and to the support of the inhabitants to overcome the odds that were against him. As the invading army left the plains for the mountains the scene changed. The snowy peaks of the eastern range of the Cordillera appeared in the distance, while, instead of the peaceful lake through which they had waded, they were met by great masses of water tumbling from the heights. The roads ran along the edge of precipices and were bordered by gigantic trees, upon whose tops rested the clouds, which dissolved themselves in incessant rain. After four days’ march the horses were foundered; an entire squadron of Llaneros deserted on finding themselves on foot. The torrents were crossed on narrow trembling bridges formed of trunks of trees, or by means of the aerial “taravitas.”[A] Where they were fordable, the current was so strong that the infantry had to pass two by two with their arms thrown round each other’s shoulders; and woe to him who lost his footing—he lost his life too. Bolivar frequently passed and re-passed these torrents on horseback, carrying behind him the sick and weakly, or the women who accompanied his men.
The temperature was moist and warm; life was supportable with the aid of a little firewood; but as they ascended the mountain the scene changed again. Immense rocks piled one upon another, and hills of snow, bounded the view on every side; below lay the clouds, veiling the depths of the abyss; an ice-cold wind cut through the stoutest clothing. At these heights no other noise is heard save that of the roaring torrents left behind, and the scream of the condor circling round the snowy peaks above. Vegetation disappears; only lichens are to be seen clinging to the rock, and a tall plant, bearing plumes instead of leaves, and crowned with yellow flowers, resembling a funeral torch. To make the scene more dreary yet, the path was marked out by crosses erected in memory of travellers who had perished by the way.
On entering this glacial region the provisions gave out; the cattle they had brought with them as their chief resource could go no farther. They reached the summit by the Paya pass, where a battalion could hold an army in check. It was held by an outpost of 300 men, who were dislodged by the vanguard under Santander without much difficulty.
Now the men began to murmur, and Bolivar called a council of war, to which he showed that still greater difficulties lay before them, and asked if they would persevere or return. All were of opinion that they should go on, a decision which infused fresh spirit into the weary troops.
In this passage more than one hundred men died of cold, fifty of whom were Englishmen; no horse had survived. It was necessary to leave the spare arms, and even some of those that were carried by the soldiers. It was a mere skeleton of an army which reached the beautiful valley of Sagamoso, in the heart of the province of Tunja, on the 6th of July, 1819. From this point Bolivar sent back assistance to the stragglers left behind, collected horses, and detached parties to scour the country around and communicate with some few guerillas who still roamed about.
Meanwhile, Barreiro was still in ignorance of Bolivar’s arrival. Indeed, he had supposed the passage of the Cordillera at that season impossible. As soon, however, as he did learn of his enemy’s proximity, he collected his forces and took possession of the heights above the plains of Vargas, thus interposing between the patriots and the town of Tunja, which, being attached to the independent cause, Bolivar was anxious to enter. The opposing armies met on the 25th of July, and engaged in battle for five hours. The patriots won, chiefly through the English infantry, led by Colonel James Rooke, who was himself wounded and had an arm shot off. Still, the action had been indecisive, and the royalist power remained unbroken. Bolivar now deceived Barreiro by retreating in the daytime, rapidly counter-marching, and passing the royalist army in the dark through by-roads. On August 5th he captured Tunja, where he found an abundance of war material, and by holding which he cut Barreiro’s communication with Bogota, the capital. It was in rapid movements like these that the strength of Bolivar’s generalship lay. Freed from the shackles of military routine that enslaved the Spanish officers, he astonished them by forced marches over roads previously deemed impracticable to a regular army. While they were manœuvring, hesitating, calculating, guarding the customary avenues of approach, he surprised them by concentrating a superior force upon a point where they least expected an attack, threw them into confusion, and cut up their troops in detail. Thus it happens that Bolivar’s actions in the field do not lend themselves to the same impressive exposition as do those of less notable generals.
Barreiro, finding himself shut out from Tunja, fell back upon Venta Quemada, where a general action took place. The country was mountainous and woody, and well suited to Bolivar’s characteristic tactics. He placed a large part of his troops in ambush, got his cavalry in the enemy’s rear, and presented only a small front. This the enemy attacked furiously, and with apparent success. It was only a stratagem, however, for as they drove back Bolivar’s front, the troops in ambush sallied forth and attacked them in the flanks, while the cavalry attacked them in the rear. Thus were the Spaniards surrounded. General Barreiro was taken prisoner on the field of battle. On finding his capture to be inevitable, he threw away his sword that he might not have the mortification of surrendering it to Bolivar. His second in command, Colonel Ximenes, was also taken, as were also almost all the commandants and majors of the corps, a multitude of inferior officers, and more than 1,600 men. All their arms, ammunition, artillery, horses, etc., likewise fell into the patriots’ hands. Hardly fifty men escaped, and among these were some chiefs and officers of cavalry, who fled before the battle was decided. Those who escaped, however, had only the surrounding country to escape into, and there they were captured by the peasantry, who bound them and brought them in as prisoners. The patriot loss was incredibly small—only 13 killed and 53 wounded.
At Boyaca the English auxiliaries were seen for the first time under fire, and so gratified was Bolivar with their behavior, that he made them all members of the Order of the Liberator.
Thus was won Boyaca, which, after Maypu, is the great battle of South America. It gave the preponderance to the patriot arms in the north of the continent, as Maypu had done in the south. It gave New Granada to the patriots, and isolated Morillo in Venezuela.
Nothing now remained for Bolivar to do but to reach Bogota, the capital, and assume the reins of government, for already the Spanish officials, much to the relief of the inhabitants, had fled. So, with a small escort, he rode forward, and entered the city on August 10th, amid the acclamations of the populace.
The final battle in this implacable war took place in 1821 at Carabobo, where the Spaniards met with a total defeat, losing more than 6,000 men. This closed the struggle, the Spaniards withdrew, and a republic was organized with Bolivar as president. In 1823 he aided the Peruvians in gaining their independence, and was declared their liberator and given supreme authority. For two years he ruled as dictator, and then resigned, giving the country a republican constitution. The people of the upper section of Peru organized a commonwealth of their own, which they named Bolivia, in honor of their liberator, while the congress of Lima elected him president for life.
Meanwhile Chili had won its liberty in 1817 as a result of the victory of Maypu, above mentioned, and Buenos Ayres had similarly fought for and gained independence. In North America a similar struggle for liberty had gone on, and with like result, Central America and Mexico winning their freedom after years of struggle and scenes of devastation and cruelty such as those above mentioned. At the opening of the nineteenth century Spain held a dominion of continental dimensions in America. At the close of the first quarter of the century, as a result of her mediæval methods of administration, she had lost all her possessions on the western continent except the two islands of Cuba and Porto Rico. Yet, learning nothing from her losses, she pursued the same methods in these fragments of her dominions, and before the close of the century these also were torn from her hands. Cruelty and oppression had borne their legitimate fruits, and Spain, solely through her own fault, had lost the final relics of her magnificent colonial empire.
On the western edge of the continent of Europe lies the island of Great Britain, in the remote past a part of the continent, but long ages ago cut off by the British Channel. Divorced from the mainland, left like a waif in the western sea, peopled by men with their own interests and aims, it might naturally be expected to have enough to attend to at home and to take no part in continental affairs.
Such was the case originally. The island lay apart, almost unknown, and was, in a sense, “discovered” by the Roman conquerors. But new people came to it, the Anglo-Saxons, and subsequently the Normans, both of them scions of that stirring race of Vikings who made the seas their own centuries ago and descended in conquering inroads on all the shores of Europe, while their daring keels cut the waters of far-off Greenland and touched upon the American coast. This people—stirring, aggressive, fearless—made a new destiny for Great Britain. Their island shores were too narrow to hold them, and they set out on bold ventures in all seas. Their situation was a happy one for a nation of daring navigators and aggressive warriors. Europe lay to the east, the world to the west. As a result the British islands have played a leading part alike in the affairs of Europe and of the world.
France, the next door neighbor of Great Britain, was long its prey. While, after the memorable invasion of William of Normandy, France never succeeded in transporting an army to the island shores, and even Napoleon failed utterly in his stupendous expedition, the islanders sent army after army to France, defeated its chivalry on many a hard-fought field, ravaged its most fertile domains, and for a time held it as a vassal realm of the British King.
All this is matter of far-past history. But the old feeling was prominently shown again in the Napoleonic wars, when Great Britain resumed her attitude of enmity to France, and pursued the conqueror with an unrelenting hostility that finally ended in his overthrow. Only for this aggressive island Europe might have remained the bound slave of Napoleon’s whims. He could conquer his enemies on land, but the people of England lay beyond his reach. Every fleet he sent to sea was annihilated by his island foes. They held the empire of the waters as he did that of the land. Enraged against these ocean hornets, he sought to repeat the enterprise of William of Normandy, but if his mighty Boulogne expedition had put to sea it would probably have met the fate of the Armada of Spain. Great Britain was impregnable. The conqueror of Europe chafed against its assaults in vain. This little island of the west was destined to be the main agent in overthrowing the great empire that his military genius had built.
Great Britain, small as it was, had grown, by the opening of the nineteenth century, to be the leading power in Europe. Its industries, its commerce, its enterprise had expanded enormously. It had become the great workshop and the chief distributor of the world. The raw material of the nations flowed through its ports, the finished products of mankind poured from its looms, London became the great money centre of the world, and the industrious and enterprising islanders grew enormously rich, while few steps of progress and enterprise showed themselves in any of the nations of the continent.
It was with its money-bags that England fought against the conqueror. It could not conveniently send men, but it could send money and supplies to the warring nations, and by its influence and aid it formed coalition after coalition against Napoleon, each harder to overthrow than the last. Every peace that the Corsican won by his victories was overthrown by England’s influence. Her envoys haunted every court, whispering hostility in the ears of monarchs, planning, intriguing, instigating, threatening, in a thousand ways working against his plans, and unrelentingly bent upon his overthrow. It was fitting, then, that an English general should give Napoleon the coup de grace, and that he should die a prisoner in English hands.
Chief among those to whom Napoleon owes his overthrow was William Pitt, prime minister of England during the first period of his career of conquest, and his unrelenting enemy. It was Pitt that organized Europe against him, that kept the British fleet alert and expended the British revenues without stint against this disturber of the peace of the nations, and that formed the policy which Great Britain, after the short interval of the ministry of Fox, continued to pursue until his final defeat was achieved.
Whether this policy was a wise one is open to question. It may be that Great Britain caused more harm than it cured. Only for its persistent hostility the rapid succession of Napoleonic wars might not have taken place, and much of the terrible bloodshed and misery caused by them might have been obviated. It seems to have been, in its way, disastrous to the interests of mankind. Napoleon, it is true, had no regard for the stability of dynasties and kingdoms, but he wrought for the overthrow of the old-time tyranny, and his marches and campaigns had the effect of stirring up the dormant peoples of Europe, and spreading far and wide that doctrine of human equality and the rights of man which was the outcome of the French Revolution. Had he been permitted to die in peace upon the throne and transmit his crown to his descendant, the long era of reaction would doubtless have been avoided and the people of Europe have become the freer and happier as a result of Napoleon’s work.
The people of Great Britain had no reason to thank their ministers for their policy. The cost of the war, fought largely with the purse, had been enormous, and the public debt of the kingdom was so greatly increased that its annual interest amounted to $150,000,000. But the country emerged from the mighty struggle with a vast growth in power and prestige. It was recognized as the true leader in the great contest and had lifted itself to the foremost position in European politics. On land it had waged the only successful campaign against Napoleon previous to that of the disastrous Russian expedition. At sea it had destroyed all opposing fleets, and reigned the unquestioned mistress of the ocean except in American waters, where alone her proud ships had met defeat.
The islands of Great Britain and Ireland had ceased to represent the dominions under the rule of the British king. In the West Indies new islands had been added to his colonial possessions. In the East Indies he had become master of an imperial domain far surpassing the mother country in size and population, and with untold possibilities of wealth. In North America the great colony of Canada was growing in population and prosperity. Island after island was being added to his possessions in the Eastern seas. Among these was the continental island of Australia, then in its early stage of colonization. The possession of Gibraltar and Malta, the protectorate over the Ionian Islands, and the right of free navigation on the Dardanelles gave Great Britain the controlling power in the Mediterranean. And Cape Colony, which she received as a result of the Treaty of Vienna, was the entering wedge for a great dominion in South Africa.
Thus Great Britain had attained the position and dimensions of a world-empire. Her colonies lay in all continents and spread through all seas, and they were to grow during the century until they enormously excelled the home country in dimensions, population, and natural wealth. The British Islands were merely the heart, the vital centre of the great system, while the body and limbs lay afar, in Canada, India, South Africa, Australia and elsewhere.
But the world-empire of Great Britain was not alone one of peaceful trade and rapid accumulation of wealth, but of wars spread through all the continents, war becoming a permanent feature of its history in the nineteenth century. After the Napoleonic period England waged only one war in Europe, the Crimean; but elsewhere her troops were almost constantly engaged. Now they were fighting with the Boers and the Zulus of South Africa, now with the Arabs on the Nile, now with the wild tribes of the Himalayas, now with the natives of New Zealand, now with the half savage Abyssinians. Hardly a year has passed without a fight of some sort, far from the centre of this vast dominion, while for years England and Russia have stood face to face on the northern borders of India, threatening at any moment to become involved in a terrible struggle for dominion.
And the standing of Great Britain as a world power lay not alone in her vast colonial dominion and her earth-wide wars, but also in the extraordinary enterprise that carried her ships to all seas, and made her the commercial emporium of the world. Not only to her own colonies, but to all lands, sailed her enormous fleet of merchantmen, gathering the products of the earth, to be consumed at home or distributed again to the nations of Europe and America. She had assumed the position of the purveyor and carrier for mankind.
This was not all. Great Britain was in a large measure, the producer for mankind. Manufacturing enterprise and industry had grown immensely on her soil, and countless factories, forges and other workshops turned out finished goods with a speed and profusion undreamed of before. The preceding century had been one of active invention, its vital product being the steam engine, that wonder-worker which at a touch was to overturn the old individual labor system of the world, and replace it with the congregate, factory system that has revolutionized the industries of mankind. The steam engine stimulated invention extraordinarily. Machines for spinning, weaving, iron-making, and a thousand other purposes came rapidly into use, and by their aid one of the greatest steps of progress in the history of mankind took place, the grand nineteenth century revolution in methods of production.
Great Britain did not content herself with going abroad for the materials of her active industries. She dug her way into the bowels of the earth, tore from the rocks its treasures of coal and iron, and thus obtained the necessary fuel for her furnaces and metal for her machines. The whole island resounded with the ringing of hammers and rattle of wheels, goods were produced very far beyond the capacity of the island for their consumption, and the vast surplus was sent abroad to all quarters of the earth, to clothe savages in far-off regions and to furnish articles of use and luxury to the most enlightened of the nations. To the ship as a carrier was soon added the locomotive and its cars, conveying these products inland with unprecedented speed from a thousand ports. And from America came the parallel discovery of the steamship, signalling the close of the long centuries of dominion of the sail. Years went on and still the power and prestige of Great Britain grew, still its industry and commerce spread and expanded, still its colonies increased in population and new lands were added to the sum, until the island-empire stood foremost in industry and enterprise among the nations of the world, and its people reached the summit of their prosperity. From this lofty elevation was to come, in the later years of the century, a slow but inevitable decline, as the United States and the leading European nations developed in industry, and rivals to the productive and commercial supremacy of the British islanders began to arise in various quarters of the earth.
It cannot be said that the industrial prosperity of Great Britain, while of advantage to her people as a whole, was necessarily so to individuals. While one portion of the nation amassed enormous wealth, the bulk of the people sank into the deepest poverty. The factory system brought with it oppression and misery which it would need a century of industrial revolt to overcome. The costly wars, the crushing taxation, the oppressive corn-laws, which forbade the importation of foreign corn, the extravagant expenses of the court and salaries of officials, all conspired to depress the people. Manufacturies fell into the hands of the few, and a vast number of artisans were forced to live from hand to mouth, and to labor for long hours on pinching wages. Estates were similarly accumulated in the hands of the few, and the small land-owner and trader tended to disappear. Everything was taxed to the utmost it would bear, while government remained blind to the needs and sufferings of the people and made no effort to decrease the prevailing misery.
Thus it came about that the era of Great Britain’s greatest prosperity and supremacy as a world-power was the one of greatest industrial oppression and misery at home, a period marked by rebellious uprisings among the people, to be repressed with cruel and bloody severity. It was a period of industrial transition, in which the government flourished and the people suffered, and in which the seeds of revolt and revolution were widely spread on every hand.
This state of affairs cannot be said to have ended. In truth the present condition of affairs is one that tends to its aggravation. Neither the manufacturing nor commercial supremacy of Great Britain are what they once were. In Europe, Germany has come into the field as a formidable competitor, and is gaining a good development in manufacturing industry. The same must be said of the United States, the products of whose workshops have increased to an enormous extent, and whose commerce has grown to surpass that of any other nation on the earth. The laboring population of Great Britain has severely felt the effects of this active rivalry, and is but slowly adapting itself to the new conditions which it has brought about, the slow but sure revolution in the status of the world’s industries.
At the close of the last chapter we depicted the miseries of the people of Great Britain, due to the revolution in the system of industry, the vast expenses of the Napoleonic wars, the extravagance of the government, and the blindness of Parliament to the condition of the working classes. The situation had grown intolerable; it was widely felt that something must be done; if affairs were allowed to go on as they were the people might rise in a revolt that would widen into revolution. A general outbreak seemed at hand. To use the language of the times, the “Red Cock” was crowing in the rural districts. That is, incendiary fires were being kindled in a hundred places. In the centres of manufacture similar signs of discontent appeared. Tumultuous meetings were held, riots broke out, bloody collisions with the troops took place. Daily and hourly the situation was growing more critical. The people were in that state of exasperation that is the preliminary stage of insurrection.
Two things they strongly demanded, reform in Parliament and repeal of the Corn Laws. It is with these two questions, reform and repeal, that we propose to deal in this chapter.
The British Parliament, it is scarcely necessary to say, is composed of two bodies, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The former represents the aristocratic element of the nation;—in short, it represents simply its members, since they hold their seats as a privilege of their titles, and have only their own interests to consider, though the interests of their class go with their own. The latter are supposed to represent the people, but up to the time with which we are now concerned they had never fully done so; and they did so now less than ever, since the right to vote for them was reserved to a few thousands of the rich.
In the year 1830, indeed, the House of Commons had almost ceased to represent the people at all. Its seats were distributed in accordance with a system that had scarcely changed in the least for two hundred years. The idea of distributing the members in accordance with the population was scarcely thought of, and a state of affairs had arisen which was as absurd as it was unjust. For during these two hundred years great changes had taken place in England. What were mere villages or open plains had become flourishing commercial or manufacturing cities. Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool, and other centres of industry had become seats of great and busy populations. On the other hand, flourishing towns had decayed, ancient boroughs had become practically extinct. Thus there had been great changes in the distribution of population, but the distribution of seats in Parliament remained the same.
As a result of this state of affairs the great industrial towns, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, and others, with their hundreds of thousands of people, did not send a single member to Parliament, while places with only a handful of voters were duly represented, and even places with no voters at all sent members to Parliament. Land-holding lords nominated and elected those, generally selecting the younger sons of noble families, and thus a large number of the “representatives of the people” really represented no one but the gentry to whom they owed their places. “Rotten” boroughs these were justly called, but they were retained by the stolid conservatism with which the genuine Briton clings to things and conditions of the past.