Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century
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James Richard Joy >> Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century
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TEN ENGLISHMEN OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
By James Richard Joy
1902
To
My Daughter
Helen
With Her Father's Love
PREFACE
The object of this work is to set forth with as much clearness as
possible the more important facts in the history of England in
the nineteenth century. We have chosen to do this through the
medium of biography, in the belief that the lives of a few
representative men would present better opportunities for
interesting and effective treatment than an historical narrative,
which must have been encumbered by a mass of detail not capable
of effective disposition within the limited space at our command.
An introductory chapter serves to give a general view of the
course of events and to show the relations of the men and
movements which are afterward presented in more detail.
With but one exception our "Ten Englishmen" are men in public
life, political or military. Artists, authors, preachers, and
scholars were purposely left out of the account, because they are
to receive prominence in other parts of the course for which this
volume was written. The exception was made in the case of George
Stephenson, because the revolution in transportation, due to his
improvement of the locomotive engine, has had such a powerful
influence upon the industrial development of the nation.
In bringing these great personages before the reader our
intention has been quite as much historical as biographical. Each
name is linked with some conspicuous problem in statesmanship,
and the endeavor has been to set forth the work as well as the
workman. It is hoped that the library notes appended to each
chapter will be of assistance to the earnest student, in
supplementing the meager outlines of this volume with the
abundance of personal detail and wealth of dramatic incident
which give life and action to history.
The appendix should not be overlooked. Its selections from
authentic speeches, letters, dispatches, and other writings bring
the reader into touch with the men who made England great.
One word more. Our "Ten" are not necessarily "THE Ten." They are
the men whose lives lay in line with the writer's plan. If they
serve to accentuate the leading features of the history we are
not disposed to argue with those who would present other
candidates for the honor of inclusion in the list.
James Richard Joy
Plainfield, N.J., June 4, 1902.
INTRODUCTION
ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
The opening of the nineteenth century found England in the midst
of a great foreign war, which for almost a generation absorbed
the thought and energy of the nation, and postponed for the time
the vital questions of economic and political reform which
clamored for settlement.
THE STRUGGLE WITH NAPOLEON
The war began in 1793, when the French nation, having overturned
its ancient throne, and revolutionized its social and political
institutions, set out on a democratic crusade for "Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity," which involved it in a conflict with
the governments of Europe. William Pitt, who had been Prime
Minister of George III. since 1783, had twice banded the European
states against the French republican armies; but while the
English fleets remained masters of the seas, the enthusiasm of
the French soldiers, and the genius of their young generals, had
thus far proved too strong for the mercenary battalions of
despotism. In the closing month of the year 1800, Pitt's "Second
Coalition" had been shattered by the defeat of the Allies at
Hohenlinden. The Peace of Amiens which shortly ensued (March,
1802, to May, 1803) was but a delusion. England greeted it with
joy and hope, but soon discovered its unreality. From the renewal
of hostilities, in May, 1803, until the final triumph of the
allies, in 1815, the war resolved itself into a struggle between
Napoleon and England. This young Corsican lieutenant had raised
himself by sheer force of genius and unscrupulous ambition to
absolute power. His scheme for the subjugation of Europe beat
down every obstacle except the steady and unbending opposition of
England. Pitt, who had withdrawn from the government because of
the stupid King's refusal to honor his Minister's pledges of
equal rights to the Irish Catholics, was recalled by the
universal voice ot the nation to organize the resistance.
Napoleon had assembled immense armaments upon the Channel coast
of France for a descent on England, and had created a vast
flotilla to transport the force to Kent. Great Britain trembled
with excited apprehension. Three hundred thousand volunteers
offered their services to the government. But, as often in the
past, Britain's best defense was her wooden walls, and the
sagacity, seamanship, and valor of her sailors, who out-
manoeuvered the combined fleets of France and Spain, crushed
their power at Trafalgar (October, 1805), and secured the Channel
against the invader. Pitt's gold had called into existence a
third coalition (England, Russia. Austria, and Sweden), only to
see Napoleon hurl it to the ground on the field of Austerlitz
(December, 1805). England's isolation seemed as complete as the
Emperor's victory. Russia, Austria, and Prussia made humiliating
peace with the victor, who carved his conquests into new states
and kingdoms. Pitt, who, at the news of Austerlitz, had pointed
to the map of Europe with the words "Roll up that map, there will
be no use for it these ten years," survived the calamity scarcely
a month.
Unable to meet, as yet, the English troops in battle on the land
as he had met and defeated those of the Continent, and unequal to
England on the seas, Napoleon devised a more insidious plan of
campaign. Believing that a "nation of shop-keepers" might be
attacked through its trade, he issued from the Prussian capital,
in 1806, the famous Berlin Decree, which was the first note of
that "Continental System," which was intended to close the ports
of Europe to British goods. The British government met this
boycott by its "Orders in Council," which placed a blockade upon
French ports, and authorized the capture of neutral vessels
endeavoring to trade with them. This inconclusive commercial
warfare lasted several years, but was far from being successful
in its object of ruining England. Indeed, it is said that the
most stringent enforcement of the "Decrees" and "Orders" did not
prevent the Napoleonic armies from wearing uniforms of English
cloth and carrying English steel in their scabbards.
England first began to make head against the French conqueror
when that far-sighted minister George Canning sent Sir Arthur
Wellesley to Portugal to take command of the British forces in
the Peninsula. Wellesley had recently returned from India, where
he had achieved a brilliant reputation for thoroughness of
organization, precision of manoeuver, and unvarying success,
qualities which at that time were lamentably rare among British
generals. In Portugal first, and later in Spain, the sterling
qualities of the new commander steadily gained ground for
England, driving out the French marshals, and carrying this
Peninsular War to a triumphant conclusion by the invasion of
France (1814). Created Duke of Wellington for his successes in
the Peninsula, Wellesley held command of the allied forces on the
Belgian frontier when, on the 18th of June, 1815, they met and
routed the French at Waterloo. That day made Napoleon an exile,
and "the Iron Duke" the idol of the English lands in which he
continued to be the most conspicuous personage for nearly half a
century.
THE RESETTLEMENT OF EUROPE
Waterloo brought England into new relations with the nations of
Europe. The Congress of Vienna, in which the victors endeavored
to restore the damage wrought by the Corsican intruder, added
Cape of Good Hope, Ceylon, Malta, and a few less important
islands, to the growing colonial empire of Great Britain. The
Holy Alliance, which had been suggested by the Czar in 1815, at
the friendly meeting of the Russian, Austrian, and Prussian
sovereigns at Paris, was in theory a compact between these
powerful rulers--"an intimate union on the basis of morality and
religion"--but it soon degenerated into an unholy league for the
mutual protection of these three despotic dynasties against the
dormant forces of constitutional liberty, which began to stir
again in every European state as soon as the Napoleonic specter
had been laid. The French Revolution had given currency to
opinions which no congress of sovereigns could wholly repress,
and now the policy of the "Alliance," to strangle all
constitutional aspirations and rivet the chains of Bourbonism
upon limbs that had once known the bliss of freedom, led to
fierce intellectual revolt, and sometimes to physical violence.
England had made common cause with Turk and Christian, Kaiser and
King, against Napoleon, and for a time her statesmen viewed with
complacency the Holy Alliance, so reassuring in its name and so
pure in its professions; but when it became evident that this
mighty league was to be thrown against every liberty-loving
people in the Old World and the New, George Canning broke the
irksome bond, and put the land of parliaments and constitutional
liberty in its rightful place as the friend of freedom and the
foe to the oppressor. It was the spirit if not the voice of
Canning which was powerful to save Portugal from the Bourbon, to
recognize the independence of the revolted American colonies of
Spain, and to restrain the enemies of freedom from handing
insurgent Greece back to the Turk. His predecessors had been
accustomed to sink the interests and desires of England in regard
for what the continental power called "the good of Europe." He
was the first statesman of his generation who dared to take an
independent position on "European" questions--"to write
'England,'" as he phrased it, "where it had been the custom to
write 'Europe.'" The policy which he inaugurated marks a turning-
point in the history of British foreign affairs.
Catholic Emancipation
George IV., who had been regent since his father's illness in
1812, reigned in his own name from 1820 to 1830, though his voice
in the affairs of state was small indeed. His Ministers,
Liverpool, Canning, Goderich, and Wellington, were confronted by
serious problems of domestic policy which had sprung up during
the long period of foreign wars and partly in direct consequence
of those disturbing conditions. The one recurrent question which
found definite settlement in this reign was that of Catholic
emancipation. The penal laws against Roman Catholics had
disgraced the English statute-books for two centuries. On the
first of January, 1801, the Legislative Union of Great Britain
and Ireland had gone into effect under the name of the United
Kingdom. The Irish Parliament, which had met in Dublin since
1782, went out of existence, and in the place of "Home Rule"
Ireland was represented in both houses of the Imperial Parliament
at Westminster. Pitt had promised the numerous Catholics of
Ireland that the laws which made them ineligible to represent
their country in Parliament should be repealed, and had abandoned
office in disgust when George III. refused to sanction his
project of Catholic emancipation. In 1807 the Whig ministry
espoused the same cause, and in turn resigned because of the
opposition of the Crown. In Daniel O'Connell the cause at length
found a spokesman whose eloquence, wit, and talent for
"agitation" soon combined his Irish partisans into "The Catholic
Association." Working in conjunction with the Whigs of England,
O'Connell's followers formed a body which could not be neglected.
Soon after Canning's untimely death the Duke of Wellington had
taken office. He was a Tory, with all the prejudices of that
political faith deepened by his birth and training as an Irish
Protestant, but the agitation had reached such proportions that
he saw in it a menace of civil war, to avoid which he was willing
to abandon his most cherished opinions on the Catholic question.
Accordingly, in 1829, the Iron Duke faced about and brought in
the bill which, becoming a law by Whig and Canningite votes,
admitted Roman Catholics to Parliament, and to civil rights only
a little short of complete. But instead of removing the Irish
question from politics, it was only prepared for more strenuous
presentation in a new guise, for O'Connell was returned to
Parliament at the head of some fifty Catholic members to agitate
for Irish independence.
RAILWAYS
The perfection of the steam locomotive and the inception and
marvelous development of the system of steam railway
transportation marked the second quarter of the century. The name
of the Stephensons, father and son, is inseparably connected with
this work which has affected so deeply the economic and social
life of the nation, and has contributed in a thousand indirect
ways to the expansion and consolidation of the empire. It has
been said that in 1825 the traveler from London to Rome went no
faster than the courier of the Caesars, eighteen hundred years
before. Thanks to George Stephenson's inventive genius, the
traveler of today consumes scarcely more time between London and
Peking.
THE REFORM OF PARLIAMENT
The reform of Parliament was the next question to come up for
settlement. In 1830 representation in the House of Commons still
remained upon a basis which had been established centuries
before. Meantime the distribution of the voting population had
been totally transformed. The most populous shires had no more
seats than the least of all. There were decayed boroughs which
had dwindled in population until but a handful of voters
remained, yet these "rotten" boroughs retained their right to
choose one or more members of Parliament, while the great modern
manufacturing towns and seaports were totally unrepresented. The
agitation for parliamentary reform, which rose in the middle of
the eighteenth century, was directed against the sale of seats in
the rotten boroughs, and the shameless bribery. As early as 1770
Lord Chatham had predicted reform or revolution. His son, the
younger Pitt, had proposed remedies, but the deluge which
overwhelmed the government of France in the closing years of the
century stiffened English conservatism for a century against any
radical political change. Meanwhile the rapid industrial
expansion of the kingdom, with its unprecedented increase of
population, and the sudden growth of insignificant hamlets into
teeming factory towns, had emphasized the injustice of existing
arrangements. Earl Grey, who had been an advocate of reform for
forty years, and Lord John Russell, who had championed the cause
for a decade, were united in the Whig ministry which succeeded
Wellington in 1830. Supported by a tremendous popular demand
which seemed to stir the nation to its depths they brought in
their first bill in 1831. It prevailed in the Commons by a bare
majority, but the Tory House of Lords threw it out. This action
by the privileged class was a signal for an indignant outburst
from the nation. The "Radicals," as the advanced Whigs were
already beginning to be called, did not conceal their lack of
respect for the Upper House, and used revolutionary threats
against it as a relic of mediaevalism which should no longer be
tolerated in a free state. But the time had passed when the peers
could flout an aroused nation. When the Third Reform Bill was
ready for passage, the ministers secured the King's promise to
frustrate the opposition of the Lords by filling up the House
with new peers created expressly to vote for reform. The threat
sufficed. Wellington and the most stern and unbending Tories
absented themselves from the decisive division, and allowed the
Reform Bill to become a law in June, 1832.
ADMINISTRATIVE REFORMS
Great things were expected of the first Parliament which was
chosen on the basis of the new law. The seats gained by the
disfranchisement of the small and corrupt boroughs were
distributed to new constituencies in London, Liverpool,
Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Newcastle, and the other modern
cities. The more populous counties were subdivided into
districts, and the divisions received additional representation.
The franchise had also been extended and based upon a moderate
property qualification. The result was, that the center of
political power passed from the nobility and landed gentry, with
whom it had resided for centuries, and came to the farmers and
shop-keepers, the so-called middle class, lying between the
ancient aristocracy of birth and landed possessions and the still
unenfranchised masses of mill operatives and agricultural
laborers. That the new Parliament would show a new temper and be
dominated by new ideas was but natural. But those who inferred
from the bitterness of the struggle for reform that the nation
was on the verge of an abyss into which the Lords and the Crown
should shortly topple, greatly deceived themselves.
THE POOR LAWS
The reformed Parliaments devoted themselves to certain long-
deferred and intensely practical reforms which were social and
economic in their nature, leaving the constitution alone for the
next twenty years. In these Parliaments and ministries for the
next forty years the Whig party usually had the upper hand. In
1834 Parliament revolutionized the system of public relief to the
needy which had existed for fifty years, to the extreme
demoralization of the poorer working-classes and the frustration
of really benevolent purpose. The old law had assumed that each
parish owed every native a living. A sliding scale was
accordingly provided by which, as the rate of wages declined, the
parish should pay to the workman enough to bring his receipts up
to the standard amount. Employers took advantage of this system
cut wages to a minimum, the parish making up the difference.
Another mischievous clause increased the pauper's dole in
proportion to the number of his children, with the direct result
of early and improvident marriages. To put it bluntly, children
were bred for the bounty. The number of persons receiving parish
aid was enormously increased. The self-respect of the poor was
destroyed, and the poor-rate became a burden of millions of
pounds annually upon the treasury. The act of 1834 put an end to
these abuses by restricting outdoor relief to the aged and
destitute, and requiring all other paupers to go to the union
workhouse. Within two years the poor-rate was diminished fully
one-third.
ABOLITION OF SLAVERY
In 1834 slavery was abolished throughout the British dominions.
The earnest labors of the Abolitionists, Clarkson, Wilberforce,
Macaulay, and others, had secured the abolition of the slave
trade thirty years before (1807), but the united opposition of
the colonial planters to a reform which would deprive them of the
services of their chattel laborers postponed the consummation of
the humanitarian measure. The reformed Parliament proved less
sensitive to the planters' arguments. It destroyed the system
forever, making a cash compensation to the owners.
A third question, on which Earl Grey's ministry took high moral
ground, was a redress of another of the ancient wrongs of
Ireland. The Church of England was by law established in that
most distressful country, and the people, though mostly Roman
Catholics, were under the necessity of paying tithes for the
support of a church which they detested, and which indeed, in a
large part of the island, had no existence except for purposes of
taxation. The Irish protest, as has often been the case, took the
form of violence and outrage, the so-called "Tithe War," which
postponed rather than hastened the redress of their grievance.
But in 1835 the ministry of Lord Melbourne relieved the peasants
of this part of their many burdens.
ACCESSION OF VICTORIA
The name of Lord Melbourne has been kept green not only by the
Australasian metropolis, but by the fact that it was his duty as
Prime Minister to announce to the Princess Alexandrina Victoria
the fact--to her so momentous--that her uncle, William IV., was
dead (June 20, 1837), and that she, a girl of eighteen, was Queen
of England. Victoria, as she was known thenceforward, lived to
see the dawn of the twentieth century, to witness the enormous
development of the British empire in population, wealth, and
power, and it is perhaps not too much to say, to win all hearts
among her subjects by the simplicity, purity, and strength of her
character. Had she displayed the stubborn stupidity of her
grandfather, George III., or the immorality of some of his sons,
it is not rash to believe that the tide of radicalism might have
thrown down all barriers and swept away the throne on the flood
of democracy. By grace of character she was a model
constitutional sovereign, and her benign reign, the longest in
English annals, contributed more than the policy of any of her
ministers to make the monarchy popular and permanent.
The first decade of the Victorian era witnessed three great
agitations, two of which ended in fiasco and the third in a
triumph which wrought tremendous changes in the kingdom.
"Chartism," "Repeal," and "Free Trade" were the three topics on
which the thought of multitudes was engaged.
CHARTISM
Chartism was the name applied to the agitation in favor of a
statement of principles called "The People's Charter." The six
points of Chartism were: (l) annual Parliaments, (2) salaries for
members, (3) universal suffrage, (4) vole by ballot, (5)
abolition of property qualification for membership in the House
of Commons, and (6) equal electoral districts. The demand came
from the workingmen, who were dissatisfied because the Reform
Bill of 1832 had stopped short of their political stratum. The
Chartists copied the method of agitation which O'Connell had
employed in extorting Catholic emancipation. Monster meetings,
mile-long petitions, copious effusions of printer's ink and
oratory, and a National Charter Association were a part of the
machinery. In 1848, when the prevalent hard times increased the
restless discontent of the masses, the movement culminated in a
vast assembly on Kennington Common. A respectful half-million
were to march to Westminster and lay their demands, the six
points backed by six million signatures, before the Commons. The
year 1848 was one of widespread discontent, the revolution year
of the century, and the authorities took pains to guard the peace
of London with especial care, even Wellington being called into
service to direct the military. But nine-tenths of the mob failed
to put in appearance, and the monster petition turned out to be a
monstrous and clumsy fraud. Nothing came of it at the moment. The
return of better times took the heart out of the agitation, and
the progress of orderly political development gradually
incorporated three of the Chartist points in the law of the land
without seriously affecting the constitution.
O'CONNELL AND REPEAL
The second popular war cry was "Repeal." In this agitation, again
O'Connell's was the chief personage, and his eloquence the chief
factor. It was in effect another phase of the Irish demand for
Home Rule. Since the first day of the new century Ireland had
been, for legislative purposes, a part of the United Kingdom. It
was the act which had established this "Legislative Union" and
abolished the Irish Parliament which O'Connell was determined to
repeal. All that monster meetings, soul-moving oratory, secret
associations, printer's ink, could do to influence the government
by parliamentary manoeuver, demonstration of popular feeling,
intimidation, and threats of insurrection was done. As a member
of Parliament, and the dictator to his "tail" of half a hundred
Irish members, the silver-tongued "Irish tribune" exerted a
considerable political power so long as parties were somewhat
evenly divided so as to make his support desirable. But when, in
1841, the Tories came back into office under Sir Robert Peel,
backed by a strong majority, this influence declined. The arrest
of O'Connell, in 1843, for treasonable utterances, discredited
him with his following, which soon fell apart-the more determined
section to carry Ireland's cause to the extreme of violent
outbreak, the milder partisans to await a more opportune moment
to press their agitation for Home Rule.
THE REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS
The names of Sir Robert Peel and Richard Cobden are indissolubly
connected with the legislation which repealed the "Corn Laws" and
placed English commerce upon the basis of free trade--Cobden as
the theorist and untiring agitator, whose splendid talents were
unsparingly devoted to preparing public opinion for the economic
revolution, and Peel as the protectionist Prime Minister, who was
open-minded enough to become convinced of his error in persisting
in the policy in which he had been trained. The necessity for a
change of commercial policy grew out of the altered conditions in
the nation. The agricultural England of the eighteenth century
had in a generation been transformed into a hive of manufacturing
industry. The rapid adoption of steam power and improved
machinery in England on the one hand, and the paralysis of
industry on the Continent during the Napoleonic wars, had wrought
the change, while the commercial marine, guarded by her powerful
navy, had brought the carrying trade of the world under her flag.
The weakest point in the English system was the protective
tariff, which lay heaviest on imports of grain--or "corn," to use
the insular term. The Corn Laws were a body of legislation
enacted from time to time by Parliaments which were controlled by
the great land-owning interests. The land-owner, whose income was
derived chiefly from rents upon agricultural lands, consistently
favored a scale of tariffs which would maintain the price of
cereal grains at the highest figure. At the close of the great
war (1815) the nation was confronted with business disaster. "War
prices" for grain fell rapidly, the markets were stocked with
more manufactured goods than impoverished Europe could absorb,
while the English labor market was glutted by the influx of
several hundred thousand able-bodied soldiers and sailors in
quest of industrial employment. As early as 1821 Mr. Huskisson, a
cabinet colleague of Mr. Canning, had endeavored to lighten the
burden of British manufactures by reducing the import duties upon
the raw material used by the English looms. He was for getting at
the root of the matter and disposing of the Corn Laws, so as to
provide "free food" as well as "free raw materials," but his Tory
companions believed that such legislation would vote the bread
out of their own mouths. In 1838 an Anti-Corn Law Association was
formed at Manchester. Under the direction of Richard Cobden, a
young and successful manufacturer, who had become the most ardent
of free traders, a league of similar clubs was organized
throughout the country, and through it an agitation unsurpassed
in the history of politics was prosecuted until its object was
attained. In Parliament he became one of the most effective
orators, and the chief target of his argument was Peel, the
leader of the protectionists. In 1845-46 a more powerful argument
than Cobden's was thrown into the scale. The failure of the Irish
potato crop, the sole food supply of that unhappy island, "forced
Peel's hand." In the face of two-thirds of his own party, in
opposition to his own life-long political creed, he gave notice
as Prime Minister that he should introduce a bill for the
immediate reduction and ultimate repeal of the laws which were
responsible for the high price of food. He had become a convert
to free trade, and was ready to carry it into practice. The young
Disraeli as the representative of the Protectionist element of
his party, lashed the premier in the speech which first gave him
a following in the Parliament that he was soon to control. But
enough Peelites followed their leader into the camp of the free
traders to carry the bill. The Corn Laws disappeared from the
statute-book.
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