I. The first five-and-twenty years of George III.'s reign CHAP. form, then, an unfortunate era in the history of Great Britain. But, before the five-and-twenty years were quite concluded, a new statesman, cast in a different mould from either Bute or Grenville, had unexpectedly risen on the political horizon. William Pitt had inherited from his father the great qualities which had enrolled Lord Chatham's name amongst the chief worthies of England. A feeble body had not interfered with the growth of a vigorous mind, and the beardless young man, only twenty-three years of age, proved himself at the very outset of his career a match for the most formidable of his opponents. A financier at a time when many men are still reading for their degree, prime minister of England at an age when most barristers are still studying for their profession, Pitt undoubtedly owed much to his father's reputation, but he owed more to his own abilities, and the confidence which he had in them. There is nothing more remarkable in history than the spectacle of the youthful minister standing up night after night to battle with an Opposition, confident in its numbers and formidable for its parliamentary ability. There is nothing more memorable in history than the victory which he gained over his adversaries, and the use which he made of the power secured for him by his triumph. Pitt, as a minister, had two difficulties to contend with. He had to deal with the unconstitutional claims of a sovereign to whom he was personally indebted; he had to reform the abuses of a government which was founded on a system of exclusion, and which drew its chief revenue from duties whose very existence hampered the trade and fettered the industry of the nation. It is to Pitt's immortal honour that he should have remedied one of these evils, and that he should have attempted to deal with the other of them. George III. found in Pitt an adviser, not a minister, and, though on CHAP. one memorable occasion, conscientious scruples unfortu nately induced the monarch to adhere to his own principles, the obstinacy which obtained for Protestantism a few years more of superiority deprived the throne of the services of the man who was really most capable of upholding it. It is even more creditable to Pitt that he should have promoted a large scheme of parliamentary reform, and that he should have honestly attempted to relieve the trade of the kingdom from the fetters which shackled it. The revolutionary wave which swept over Europe, whose influence was even perceptible on these shores, drove him indeed from his admirable purpose into an opposite policy; but the man who blames Pitt for his later conduct should in justice remember the liberal spirit which pervaded his earlier administration. It is easy to see now that neither Europe generally, nor this country in particular, had any reason to interfere in the lamentable scenes which deluged France with blood in the closing decade of the eighteenth century. We had not interfered with the monstrous abuses which had disfigured the government of the Bourbons; we had no concern with the monstrous excesses which discredited the cause of popular liberty. The horrible scenes which were acted in Paris, the flight of the king, his capture, his judicial murder, ought to have excited the indignation of Europe; they ought not to have demanded its interposition. Unhappily, however, in the eighteenth century the cause of monarchy was identified with the cause of order, and other European nations witnessed the degradation of a king in France with much the same feelings with which the Americans would contemplate the creation of a king in Canada. The cause of monarchy was supposed to be universally attacked by the destruction of monarchy in France, and the great sovereigns of Europe interfered, not so much to restore Louis XVI. as to prevent their own dethronement. If, however, the sovereigns of Europe should have refrained from intervention, it is evident that, if they intervened at all, they should at least have done so effectually. The road to Paris was open, the French people were broken up into parties; they had no army, no money, and no credit. A really determined general, at the head of a really well organised expedition, must have succeeded in forcing his way to Paris and in restoring order. Unhappily the allies were jealous of each other, and uncertain what to do. Their generals, instead of marching, manoeuvred; they indulged in purposeless cannonades, and abstained from direct attacks. Their imbecility and vacillation served a double purpose. Their own troops were dispirited, their enemies were educated. The revolutionary wave which was deluging France with blood found an outlet in military ambition. The fearful war which was thus wantonly commenced continued with short intervals for fourteen years. During the course of it every power but one deserted in turn the cause which had been undertaken in common; every power but one suffered the penalty of a French invasion. England alone, with one short interval of peace, persevered from the commencement to the close of the struggle. England alone was saved from the humiliation of invasion. Yet Englishmen can look back at the earlier events of the war with only slight satisfaction. The brilliant victories at sea, which made this country the first naval power in the world, barely atoned for the discreditable part which she played on land. The most important expedition which she attempted ended in a mere military parade. The largest subsidies which she lavished on her allies did not save them from defeat or deter them from deserting her. During the whole of Pitt's short life-though not solely from Pitt's fault-this state of things continued. When he died, Trafalgar had made his country absolute mistress of the seas. Austerlitz had made Napoleon the CHAP. CHAP. I. Description. master of the Continent. Jena, Friedland, Wagram, Tilsit, and Vienna confirmed the supremacy which the French emperor had thus acquired; and, at the commencement of 1809, Napoleon could almost boast that he had no more enemies to subdue. It would be useless, in these prefatory remarks, to refer to the well known circumstances which ultimately led to the prostration of the French empire. The monstrous determination of Buonaparte to seat his own brother on the throne of Spain; the fortunate decision of the Portland ministry to support the waning cause of Europe in the Peninsula; the happy selection of the great Duke of Wellington as the commander of the British troops; the steady perseverance of successive British niinisters, the ability of the commander, the bravery of the army, the outbreak of the Russian war, the retreat of the French from the Kremlin and the simultaneous bursting by the British of the southern barrier of France-these are all events with which every child is familiar, and which it cannot be necessary to detail. Waterloo fixed a stamp to the supremacy which England had acquired, and the British empire rose from the struggle the first power in the world. The country, which had thus acquired the first place in the world, comprises a group of islands situated on the north-western flank of continental Europe. The two largest of these islands are popularly known as Great Britain and Ireland, and contain respectively an area of about 89,000 and 32,000 square miles. Great Britain, the larger of the two, is divided into three parts, England, Scotland, and Wales; of these, Wales is chiefly peopled by the descendants of the original Keltic inhabitants of Britain, who retreated into the Welsh fastnesses before a succession of invaders. Scotland is mainly inhabited by the descendants of the Kelts and Gaels, who maintained in the rudest ages an impregnable position in their CHAP. tion. I. mountain highlands. Kelt and Roman, Saxon and Dane, Norseman and Norman, have mingled their blood and speech, and produced by their union the English race and the English language. Before the commencement of the present century nothing was known exactly about the population of the three kingdoms. Macaulay, indeed, infers from comparatively reliable data that the entire population of England and Wales in the closing decade of the seventeenth century did not exceed 5,500,000, Populaor fall short of 5,000,000 persons.1 Respectable authorities may, however, be cited to prove that Macaulay has rather under-estimated than exaggerated the number,2 and 5,500,000 persons is the very lowest estimate which can be fairly made of the inhabitants of England and Wales in 1690. One hundred and eleven years afterwards, or in 1801, the same country only contained 8,873,000 persons. More than a century of progress had only added some 3,000,000 to the number of its people. Ten years later on, or in 1811, the number had increased to 10,150,000; while in 1816 it probably amounted (taking the mean between the populations of 1811 and 1821) to upwards of 11,000,000. Notwithstanding the war which this country had been conducting, the increase of its population in only fifteen years had been two-thirds as great as that which had taken place during the previous century. Scotland, in one sense, had been a much more backward country than England. In the middle of the eighteenth century, English roads were intolerably bad; See 1 Mr. Rickman calculated the number at 6,045,008 in 1700. Preface to Census Returns of 1841, pp. 36, 37, and note to Porter's Progress of the Nation, p. 13. This estimate is probably much more accurate than Macaulay's. The reader who is curious on this point will find some interesting information npon it in Somers' Tracts, where (vol. x. p. 596) Houghton |