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 twenty-four 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 СНАР. СНАР. 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 ministers, 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 tion. I. mountain highlands Kelt and Roman, Saxon and Dane, CHAP. 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; 1 Mr. Rickman calculated the number at 6,045,008 in 1700. See 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 upon it in Somers' Tracts, where (vol. x. p. 596) Houghton СНАР. I. but Scotland, it might almost have been said, had no roads. English agriculture was backward; but Scotland was uncultivated. English industry was unimportant; but Scotland had neither industries nor trade. A journey from London to Edinburgh was a more difficult and a more hazardous undertaking than a journey from London to New York is now; and the traveller, like Johnson or Wordsworth, who attempted a tour in the Highlands, was forced to ride, and to submit to more inconveniences than a tourist would meet with now in the wildest parts of Europe. Yet the development of Scotland was proceeding at least as rapidly as that of England and Wales. The events of 1745 taught the Government the necessity of military roads; and roads formed for military purposes materially promoted the prosperity of the kingdom. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, Scotland made unexpected progress. Her lowlands were gradually converted from a barren waste into the garden of Great Britain. The Clyde, improved by Scotch enterprise, shared the trade of the Mersey; the manufactories of Dundee robbed Belfast of its supremacy in linen; and Edinburgh, deprived of the pomp which is usually associated with a capital, increased with a rapidity which, in former days, it had never known. In 1801 Scotland was found to contain 1,599,000 persons. The population rose in 1811 to 1,805,000; and exceeded in 1821 2,093,000. It may fairly be computed to have consisted in 1816 of 1,950,000 persons. No census was taken in Ireland till the year 1813. Nothing, therefore, is known exactly of the increase of the population of that unhappy country before that time. Ireland is said to have contained only 2,372,634 persons in 1754; Lord Colchester, who was chief secretary for Ireland in 1802, says that the population at that time was estimated by one leading Irishman at 3,000,000, and by another at 4,000,000. The census of 1813 was in many respects incomplete. The numbers were never made up for Louth, Westmeath, Wexford, Cavan, Donegal, and Sligo. There are fair grounds, however, for believing that the population at that time was not less than 5,400,000, and did not exceed 5,600,000. The number of the people in 1821 was found to have increased to 6,801,000; and it is, probably, therefore not very inaccurate to conclude that the population of Ireland in 1816 amounted to about 6,000,000 souls. At the conclusion of the great war, then, England and Wales had a population of about 11,000,000; Ireland of about 6,000,000; Scotland of about 1,950,000 persons. The entire population of the United Kingdom (including the smaller islands) must have exceeded 19,000,000. At the commencement of the war, England and Wales had not, probably, more than 8,500,000; Scotland had not more than 1,500,000; and Ireland had not more than 4,000,000 inhabitants. At the very highest estimate, therefore, the United Kingdom had commenced the struggle with only 14,000,000 of persons. At the very lowest estimate she retired from it with 19,000,000. The growth of the people, which had taken place in the interval, was the more remarkable when it was compared with that of our great rival. France had entered the revolutionary war with a population of 26,363,000. In 1817, when she had again been reduced to her 'ancient limits, the population returns gave a total of 29,217,465.'2 The United Kingdom, in the interval, had added 5,000,000 souls to its 14,000,000 inhabitants. France, on the contrary, had added only 1,500,000 to every 14,000,000 of her people. The disparity between the rival nations was being rapidly 1 Haydn's Dict. of Dates, sub verb. Population. Colchester, vol. i. p. 273. * Porter's Progress of the Nation, p. 18. CHAP. |