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Title: Beacon Lights of History, Volume 10: European Leaders

Author: John Lord

Release date: January 1, 2004 [eBook #10641]
Most recently updated: December 20, 2020

Language: English

Credits: E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY, VOLUME 10: EUROPEAN LEADERS ***

E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

LORD'S LECTURES

BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY.

BY JOHN LORD, LL.D.

AUTHOR OF "THE OLD ROMAN WORLD," "MODERN EUROPE," ETC., ETC.

VOLUME X.

EUROPEAN LEADERS.

CONTENTS.

WILLIAM IV.

ENGLISH REFORMS.

Social evils in England on the accession of William IV.

Political agitations.

Premiership of Lord Grey.

Aristocratic character of the reformers.

Lord John Russell.

The Reform Bill.

Its final passage.

Henry Brougham.

Lord Melbourne, Prime Minister.

Troubles in Ireland.

O'Connell.

Sir Robert Peel, Prime Minister.

His short administration.

Succeeded by Lord Melbourne.

Abolition of West India slavery.

Thomas Babington Macaulay.

Popular reforms.

Trades unions.

Reform of municipal corporations.

Death of William IV.

Penny postage.

Second ministry of Sir Robert Peel.

The Duke of Wellington.

Agitations for repeal of the Corn Laws.

SIR ROBERT PEEL.

POLITICAL ECONOMY.

Birth and education of Sir Robert Peel.

His conservative views.

His High Church principle.

Enters the Cabinet of Lord Liverpool.

Catholic Emancipation.

Resigns the representation of Oxford.

Member of Tamworth.

Opposes the Reform Bill.

Prime Minister in 1841.

Financial genius.

His sliding scale.

O'Connell's death.

The Factory Question.

Renewed charter of the Bank of England.

Financial measure.

Maynooth Grant.

Agitation for Free Trade.

Anti-Corn Association.

Cobden and Bright.

Free Trade leagues.

Free Trade Hall in Manchester.

Peel converted to Free Trade.

Disraeli leader of the Protectionists.

His virulent assaults on Peel.

Abolition of the Corn Laws.

Irish Coercion Bill.

Fall of the Peel Ministry.

Peel's great speech.

Chartist movement.

Its collapse.

Death of Sir Robert Peel.

Character of Sir Robert Peel.

CAVOUR.

UNITED ITALY.

The Roman Catholic Church.

The temporal power.

General desire of Italians for liberty.

Popular leaders.

The Carbonari.

Charles Albert.

Joseph Mazzini.

Young Italy.

Varied fortunes of Mazzini.

Marquis d'Azeglio.

His aspirations and labors.

Battle of Novara.

King Victor Emmanuel II.

Count Cavour.

His early days.

Prime Minister.

His prodigious labors.

His policy and aims.

His diplomacy.

Alliance with Louis Napoleon.

Garibaldi.

His wanderings and adventures.

Daniele Manin.

Takes part in the freedom of Italy.

Garibaldi in Caprera.

Peace of Villa-Franca.

Liberation of Naples and Sicily.

Flight of Francis II. of Naples.

Battle of Volturno.

Annexation of Naples to Sardinia.

Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy.

Venetian provinces annexed to Italy.

Withdrawal of French troops from Italy.

All Italy united under Victor Emmanuel.

CZAR NICHOLAS.

THE CRIMEAN WAR.

Origin of the Russians.

Extension of Russian conquests.

Conquests of Catherine I.

Conquests of Alexander I.

Conquests of Nicholas.

Treaty of Adrianople.

Ambition and aims of Nicholas.

His character.

Prince Mentchikof.

Lord Stratford.

Causes of the Crimean War.

England and France in alliance with Turkey.

Occupation by Russia of the Danubian provinces.

War declared.

Lord Palmerston.

Lord Aberdeen.

Lord Raglan.

Marshal Saint-Arnaud.

English and French at Varna.

Invasion of the Crimea.

Battle of Alma.

Colonel Todleben.

Siege of Sebastopol.

Battle of Balaklava.

"The Light Brigade".

"The Heavy Brigade".

Battle of Inkerman.

Horrors of the siege.

General disasters.

Florence Nightingale.

Sardinia joins the allies.

Assault of Sebastopol.

Death of Lord Raglan.

Treaty of Paris.

Indecisive results of the war.

The Eastern Question.

LOUIS NAPOLEON.

THE SECOND EMPIRE.

Fortunes and adventures of Louis Napoleon.

The political agitations of 1848.

Louis Napoleon, President of the French Republic.

His Ministers.

The Coup d'État.

Usurpation of Louis Napoleon.

His tools.

His enemies.

Hostility of the leading statesmen of France.

Character of Louis Napoleon.

The Crimean War.

Alliance of France and England.

Lord Palmerston.

Stability of the Empire.

Prosperity of France.

Public Works.

Splendid successes of Napoleon III.

War with Austria.

Peace of Villa-Franca.

Improvements of Paris.

Haussmann.

Mexican War.

Archduke Maxmilian.

Humiliations and shifts of Louis Napoleon.

War with Germany.

Indecision and incapacity of Louis Napoleon.

Battle of Worth.

Marshal Bazaine.

Gravelotte.

Battle of Sedan.

Fall of Napoleon III.

Calamities of France.

PRINCE BISMARCK.

THE GERMAN EMPIRE.

Humiliation of Prussia.

Her great deliverers.

Baron von Stein.

His financial genius.

His intense hatred of Napoleon.

His great reforms.

Disgrace of Stein.

Prince Hardenberg.

Baron von Humboldt.

Scharnhorst.

New military organization.

Frederick William III.

German Confederation.

Diet of Frankfort.

Reaction of liberal sentiments.

Influence of Metternich.

Frederick William IV.

Rise of Bismarck.

Early days.

Politician.

His unpopularity.

Diplomatist at the Diet of Frankfort.

Ambassador at St. Petersburg.

Death of Frederick William IV.

Bismarck, Prime Minister.

Increase of the army.

The Schleswig-Holstein Question.

Treaty of Vienna, 1864.

War between Austria and Prussia.

Count von Moltke.

Battle of Sadowa.

Great increase of Prussian territory and population.

New German Constitution.

War clouds--France and Luxembourg.

Conference at London.

King William at Paris.

Preparations and pretext for war with France.

Mobilization of German troops.

King William at Mayence.

Battle of Gravelotte.

Fall of Louis Napoleon at Sedan.

Siege and surrender of Paris.

King William crowned Emperor of Germany.

Labors of Bismarck.

His character.

Quarrel with the Catholics.

Socialism in Germany.

Bismarck's domestic policy.

Bismarck's famous speech, 1888.

Death of Emperor William.

Retirement of Bismarck.

WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE.

THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF THE PEOPLE.

Precocity of Gladstone.

Life at Oxford.

Enters Parliament.

Negro Emancipation.

Under-Secretary for the Colonies.

Ultra-Conservative principles.

His eloquence as member of Parliament.

His marriage.

Essay on Church and State.

Parliamentary leader.

Represents Oxford.

Letter on the Government of Naples.

Benjamin Disraeli.

Gladstone Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Opposes the Crimean War.

Great abilities as finance minister.

Conversion to Free Trade.

"Studies on Homer".

His mistake about the American War.

Defeat at Oxford.

Irish Questions.

Rivalry between Gladstone and Disraeli.

Gladstone, Prime Minister.

His great popularity.

Disestablishment of Irish Church.

Irish Land Bill.

Radical army changes.

Settlement of the Alabama claims.

Irish University Bill.

Fall of Gladstone's Ministry.

Influence of Gladstone in retirement.

Disraeli as Prime Minister.

Return of Gladstone to power.

His second administration.

Parliamentary defeat of Gladstone.

The Irish Question.

Death.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME X.

Bismarck at Versailles

After the painting by Carl Wagner

.

William IV., King of England

After the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence

.

Sir Robert Peel

From the engraving by Sartain

.

Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield

From a photograph

.

Camillo Benso di Cavour

From a photograph

.

Assassination of the Emperor Paul I. of Russia

After the painting by H. Merté

.

Czar Nicholas I.

After the painting by Horace Vernet

.

Capture of Napoleon III. at Boulogne

After the painting by R. Gutschmidt

.

Louis Napoleon III.

From a photograph

.

Bismarck

After the painting by Franz von Lenbach

.

Count Von Moltke

From a photograph from life

.

Proclamation of King William of Prussia as Emperor of Germany, at Versailles

After the painting by Anton von Werner

.

William Ewart Gladstone

After a photograph from life

.

BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY.

WILLIAM IV.

1765-1837.

ENGLISH REFORMS.

On the death of George IV. in 1830, a new political era dawned on England. His brother, William IV., who succeeded him, was not his equal in natural ability, but was more respectable in his character and more liberal in his views. With William IV. began the undisputed ascendency of the House of Commons in national affairs. Before his day, no prime minister could govern against the will of the sovereign. After George IV., as in France under Louis Philippe, "the king reigned, but did not govern." The chief of the ascendent political party was the real ruler.

When William IV. ascended the throne the Tories were still in power, and were hostile to reform. But the agitations and discontents of the latter days of George IV. had made the ministry unpopular. Great political reformers had arisen, like Lords Grey, Althorp, and Russell, and great orators like Henry Brougham and Macaulay, who demanded a change in the national policy. The social evils which stared everybody in the face were a national disgrace; they made the boasted liberty of the English a mockery. There was an unparalleled distress among the laboring classes, especially in the mining and manufacturing districts. The price of labor had diminished, while the price of bread had increased. So wretched was the condition of the poor that there were constant riots and insurrections, especially in large towns. In war times unskilled laborers earned from twelve to fifteen shillings a week, and mechanics twenty-five shillings; but in the stagnation of business which followed peace, wages suffered a great reduction, and thousands could find no work at all. The disbanding of the immense armies that had been necessary to combat Napoleon threw out of employ perhaps half a million of men, who became vagabonds, beggars, and paupers. The agricultural classes did not suffer as much as operatives in mills, since they got a high price for their grain; but the more remunerative agriculture became to landlords, the more miserable were those laborers who paid all they could earn to save themselves from absolute starvation. No foreign grain could be imported until wheat had arisen to eighty shillings a "quarter," [1]--which unjust law tended to the enrichment of land-owners, and to a corresponding poverty among the laboring classes. In addition to the high price which the people paid for bread, they were taxed heavily upon everything imported, upon everything consumed, upon the necessities and conveniences of life as well as its luxuries,--on tea, on coffee, on sugar, on paper, on glass, on horses, on carriages, on medicines,--since money had to be raised to pay the interest on the national debt and to provide for the support of the government, including pensions, sinecures, and general extravagance.

[1]

A quarter of a gross ton.

In the poverty which enormous taxes and low wages together produced, there were not only degradation and squalid misery in England at this time, but violence and crime. And there was also great injustice in the laws which punished crime. There were two hundred and twenty-three offences punishable with death. If a starving peasant killed a hare, he was summarily hanged. Catholics were persecuted for their opinions; Jews were disqualified from holding office. Only men of comfortable means were allowed to vote. The universities were closed against Dissenters. No man stood any chance of political preferment unless he was rich or was allied with the aristocracy, who controlled the House of Commons. The nobles and squires not merely owned most of the landed property of the realm, but by their "rotten boroughs" could send whom they pleased to Parliament. In consequence the House of Commons did not represent the nation, but only the privileged classes. It was as aristocratic as the House of Lords.

In the period of repose which succeeded the excitements of war the people began to see their own political insignificance, and to agitate for reforms. A few noble-minded and able statesmen of the more liberal party, if any political party could be called liberal, lifted up their voices in Parliament for a redress of scandalous evils; but the eloquence which distinguished them was a mere protest. They were in a hopeless minority; nothing could be done to remove or ameliorate public evils so long as the majority of the House of Commons were opposed to reform. It is obvious that the only thing the reformers could do, whether in or out of Parliament, was to agitate, to discuss, to hold public meetings, to write political tracts, to change public opinion, to bring such a pressure to bear on political aspirants as to insure an election of members to the House of Commons who were favorable to reform. For seven years this agitation had been going on during the later years of the reign of George IV. It was seen and felt by everybody that glaring public evils could not be removed until there should be a reform in Parliament itself,--which meant an extension of the electoral suffrage, by which more liberal and popular members might be elected.

On the accession of the new king, there was of course a new election of members to the House of Commons. In consequence of the agitations of reformers, public opinion had been changed, and a set of men were returned to Parliament pledged to reform. The old Tory chieftains no longer controlled the House of Commons, but Whig leaders like Brougham, Macaulay, Althorp, and Lord John Russell,--men elected on the issue of reform, and identified with the agitations in its favor.

The old Tory ministers who had ruled the country for fifty years went out of office, and the Whigs came into power under the premiership of Lord Grey. Although he was pledged to parliamentary reform, his cabinet was composed entirely of noblemen, with only one exception. There was no greater aristocrat in all England than this leader of reform,--a cold, reticent, proud man. Lord Russell was also an aristocrat, being a brother of the Duke of Bedford; so was Althorp, the son and heir of Earl Spencer. The only man in the new cabinet of fearless liberality of views, the idol of the people, a man of real genius and power, was Brougham; but after he was made Lord Chancellor, the presiding officer of the Chamber of Peers, he could no longer be relied upon as the mouthpiece of the people, as he had been for years in the House of Commons. It would almost seem that the new ministry thought more and cared more for the dominion of the Whigs than they did for a redress of the evils under which the nation groaned. But the Whigs were pledged to parliamentary reform, and therefore were returned to Parliament. More at least was expected of them by the middle classes, who formed the electoral body, than of the Tories, who were hostile to all reforms,--men like Wellington and Eldon, both political bigots, great as were their talents and services. In politics the Tories resembled the extreme Right in the French Chamber of Deputies,--the ultra-conservatives, who sustained the throne of Charles X. The Whigs bore more resemblance to the Centre of the Chamber of Deputies, led by such men as Guizot, Broglie, and Thiers, favorable to a constitutional monarchy, but by no means radicals and democrats like Louis Blanc, Ledru Rollin, and Lamartine. The Whigs, at the best, were as yet inclined only to such measures as would appease popular tumults, create an intelligent support to the throne, and favor necessary reform. It was, with them, a choice between revolution and a fairer representation of the nation in Parliament. It may be reasonably doubted whether there were a dozen men in the House of Commons that assembled at the beginning of the reign of William IV. who were democrats, or even men of popular sympathies. What the majority conceded was from fear, rather than from a sense of justice. The great Whig leaders of the reform movement probably did not fully foresee the logical consequences of the Reform Bill which was introduced, and the change which on its enactment would take place in the English Constitution.

Even as it was, the struggle was tremendous. It was an epoch in English history. The question absorbed all other interests and filled all men's minds. It was whether the House of Commons should represent the privileged and well-to-do middle classes or the nation,--at least a larger part of the nation; not the people generally, but those who ought to be represented,--those who paid considerable taxes to support the government; large towns, as well as obscure hamlets owned by the aristocracy. The popular agitation was so violent that experienced statesmen feared a revolution which would endanger the throne itself. Hence Lord Grey and his associates determined to carry the Reform Bill at any cost, whatever might be the opposition, as the only thing to be done if the nation would escape the perils of revolution.

Lord John Russell was selected by the government to introduce the bill into the House of Commons. He was not regarded as the ablest of the Whig statesmen who had promised reform. His person was not commanding, and his voice was thin and feeble; but he was influential among the aristocracy as being a brother of the Duke of Bedford, head of a most illustrious house, and he had no enemies among the popular elements. Russell had not the eloquence and power and learning of Brougham; but he had great weight of character, tact, moderation, and parliamentary experience. The great hero of reform, Henry Brougham, was, as we have said, no longer in the House of Commons; but even had he been there he was too impetuous, uncertain, and eccentric to be trusted with the management of the bill. Knowing this, his party had elevated him to the woolsack. He would have preferred the office of the Master of the Rolls, a permanent judicial dignity, with a seat in the House of Commons; but to this the king would not consent. Indeed, it was the king himself who suggested the lord chancellorship for Brougham.

Lord Russell was, then, the most prominent advocate of the bill which marked the administration of Lord Grey. It was a great occasion, March 1, 1831, when he unfolded his plan of reform to a full and anxious assembly of aristocratic legislators. There was scarcely an unoccupied seat in the House. At six o'clock he arose, and in a low and humble manner invoked reason and justice in behalf of an enlarged representation. He proposed to give the right of franchise to all householders who paid £10 a year in rates, and who qualified to serve on juries. He also proposed to disfranchise the numerous "rotten boroughs" which were in the gift of noblemen and great landed proprietors,--boroughs which had an insignificant number of voters; by which measure one hundred and sixty-eight parliamentary vacancies would occur. These vacancies were to be partially filled by sending two members each from seven large towns, and one member each from twenty smaller towns which were not represented in Parliament. Lord Russell further proposed to send two members each from four districts of the metropolis, which had a large population, and two additional members each from twenty-six counties; these together would add ninety-four members from towns and counties which had a large population. To obviate the great expenses to which candidates were exposed in bringing voters to the polls (amounting to £150,000 in Yorkshire alone), the bill provided that the poll should be taken in different districts, and should be closed in two days in the towns, and in three days in the counties. The general result of the bill would be to increase the number of electors five hundred thousand,--making nine hundred thousand in all. We see how far this was from universal suffrage, giving less than a million of voters in a population of twenty-five millions. Yet even so moderate and reasonable an enlargement of the franchise created astonishment, and was regarded by the opponents as subversive of the British Constitution; and not without reason, since it threw political power into the hands of the middle classes instead of into those of the aristocracy.

Lord Russell's motion was, of course, bitterly opposed by the Tories. The first man who arose to speak against it was Sir H. Inglis, member of the university of Oxford,--a fine classical scholar, an accomplished gentleman, and an honest man. He maintained that the proposed alteration in the representation of the country was nothing less than revolution. He eulogized the system of rotten boroughs, since it favored the return to Parliament of young men of great abilities, who without the patronage of nobles would fail in popular elections; and he cited the cases of Pitt, Fox, Burke, Canning, Perceval, and others who represented Appleby, Old Sarum, Wendover, and other places almost without inhabitants. Sir Charles Wetherell, Mr. Croker, and Sir Robert Peel, substantially took the same view; Lord Althorp, Mr. Hume, O'Connell, and others supported the government. Amid intense excitement, for everybody saw the momentous issues at stake, leave was at length granted to Lord John Russell to bring in his bill. No less than seventy-one persons in the course of seven nights spoke for or against the measure. The Press, headed by the "Times," rendered great assistance to the reform cause, while public meetings were everywhere held and petitions sent to Parliament in favor of the measure. The voice of the nation spoke in earnest and decided tones.

On the 21st of March, 1831, Lord John Russell moved the second reading of the bill; but the majority for it was so small that ministers were compelled to make modifications. After a stormy debate there was a majority of seventy-eight against the government. The ministers, undaunted, at once induced the king to dissolve Parliament, and an appeal was made to the nation. A general election followed, which sent up an overwhelming majority of Liberal members, while many of the leading members of the last Parliament lost their places. On the 21st of June the new Parliament was opened by the king in person. He was received with the wildest enthusiasm by the populace, as he proceeded in state to the House of Lords in his gilded carriage, drawn by eight cream-colored horses. On the 24th of June Lord John Russell again introduced his bill, this time in a bold, manly, and decisive manner, in striking contrast with the almost suppliant tone which he assumed before. On the 4th of July the question of the second reading was brought forward. The discussion was carried on for three nights, and on division the great majority of one hundred and thirty-six was with the government. The only hope of the opposition was now in delay; and factious divisions were made on every point possible as the bill went through the committee. The opposition was most vexatious. Praed made twenty-two speeches against the bill, Sugden eighteen, Pelham twenty-eight, Peel forty-eight, Croker fifty-seven, and Wetherell fifty-eight. Of course the greater part of these speeches were inexpressibly wearisome, and ministers were condemned to sit and listen to the stale arguments, which were all that the opposition could make. Never before in a legislative body was there such an amount of quibbling and higgling, and "speaking against time;" and it was not till September 19 that the third reading came on, the obstructions in committee having been so formidable and annoying. On the 22d of September the bill finally passed in the House of Commons by a majority of one hundred and six, after three months of stormy debate.

But the parliamentary battles were only partially fought; victory in the end was certain, but was not yet obtained. It was necessary that the bill should pass the House of Lords, where the opposition was overwhelming.

On the very evening of September 22 the bill was carried to the Lords, and Lords Althorp and Russell, with one hundred other members of the Commons, entered the Upper House with their message. The Lord Chancellor Brougham advanced to the bar with the usual formalities, and received the bill from the hands of Lord John Russell. He then resumed his seat on the woolsack, and communicated to the assembled peers the nature of the message. Earl Grey moved that the bill be read a first time, and the time was agreed to. On the 3d of October the premier addressed the House in support of the bill,--a measure which he had taken up in his youth, not so much from sympathy with the people as from conviction of its imperative necessity. There was great majesty in the manner of the patrician minister as he addressed his peers; his eye sparkled with intelligence, and his noble brow betokened resolution and firmness, while his voice quivered with emotion. Less rhetorical than his great colleague the Lord Chancellor, his speech riveted attention. For forty-five years the aged peer had advocated parliamentary reform, and his voice had been heard in unison with that of Fox before the French Revolution had broken out. Lord Wharncliffe, one of the most moderate and candid of his opponents, followed. Lord Melbourne, courteous and inoffensive, supported the bill, because, as he said, he dreaded the consequences of a refusal of concession to the demands of the people, rather than because he loved reform, which he had previously opposed. The Duke of Wellington of course uttered his warning protest, and was listened to more from his fame as a warrior than from his merits as a speaker. Lord Brougham delivered one of the most masterly of his great efforts in favor of reform, and was answered by Lord Lyndhurst in a speech scarcely inferior in mental force. The latter maintained that if the bill became a law the Constitution would be swept away, and even a republic be established on its ruins. Lord Tenterden, another great lawyer, took the side of Lord Lyndhurst, followed in the same strain by Dr. Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury. On a division, there was a majority of forty-one peers against the bill.

The news spread with rapidity to every corner of the land that the Lords had defeated the reform for which the nation clamored. Never in England was there greater excitement. The abolition of the House of Lords was everywhere discussed, and in many places angrily demanded. People could do nothing but talk about the bill, and politics threw all business into the shade. An imprudent speech from an influential popular leader might have precipitated the revolution which the anti-reformers so greatly dreaded. The disappointed people for the most part, however, restrained their wrath, and contented themselves with closing their shops and muffling their church bells. The bishops especially became objects of popular detestation. The Duke of Newcastle and the Marquis of Londonderry, being peculiarly obnoxious, were personally assailed by a mob of incensed agitators. The Duke of Cumberland, brother of the king, was dragged from his horse, while the mob demolished the windows of the palace which the nation had given to the Duke of Wellington. Throughout the country in all the large towns there were mobs and angry meetings and serious disturbances. At Birmingham a rude and indignant meeting of one hundred and fifty thousand people vented their wrath against those who opposed their enfranchisement. The most alarming of the riots took place in Bristol, of which Sir Charles Wetherell was the recorder, and he barely escaped being murdered by the mob, who burned most of the principal public buildings. The example of Bristol was followed in other towns, and the whole country was in a state of alarm.

In the midst of these commotions Parliament was prorogued. But the passage of the bill became more than ever an obvious necessity in order to save the country from violence; and on December 12 Lord John Russell brought forward his third Reform Bill, which, substantially like the first, passed its second reading January 17, 1832, by the increased majority of one hundred and sixty-two. When considered in committee the old game of obstruction and procrastination was played by the opposition; but in spite of it, the bill finally passed the House on the 23d of March.

The question which everybody now asked was, What will the Lords do? It was certain that they would throw out the bill, as they did before, unless extraordinary measures were taken by the government. The creation of new peers, enough to carry the bill, was determined upon if necessary, although regretted by Lord Grey. To this radical measure there was great opposition on the part of the king, although he had thus far given the bill his support; but the reformers insisted upon it, if reform could not be accomplished in any other way. To use a vulgar expression, Lord Brougham fairly "bulldozed" his sovereign, and the king never forgave him. His assent was at last most reluctantly given; but the peers, dreading the great accession to their ranks of sixty or severity Liberal noblemen, concluded to give way, led by the Duke of Wellington, and the bill passed the House of Lords on the 4th of June.

The Reform Bill of 1832 was the protest of the middle classes against evils which had been endured for centuries,--a protest to which the aristocracy was compelled to listen. Amid terrible animosities and fearful agitations, reaching to the extremities of the kingdom, the bill was finally passed by the Liberal members, who set aside all other matters, and acted with great unanimity and resolution.

As noted above, during this exciting parliamentary contest the great figure of Henry Brougham had disappeared from the House of Commons; but more than any other man, he had prepared the way for those reforms which the nation had so clamorously demanded, and which in part they had now achieved. From 1820 to 1831 he had incessantly labored in the lower House, and but little was done without his aid. It would have been better for his fame had he remained a commoner. He was great not only as a parliamentary orator, but as a lawyer. His labors were prodigious. Altogether, at this period he was the most prominent man in England, the most popular among the friends of reform, and the most hated by his political enemies,--a fierce, overbearing man, with great talent for invective and sarcasm, eccentric, versatile, with varied rather than profound learning. When Lord Melbourne succeeded Lord Grey as premier, Brougham was left out of the cabinet, being found to be irascible, mischievous, and unpractical; he retired, an embittered man, to private life, but not to idleness, He continued to write popular and scientific essays, articles for reviews, and biographical sketches, taking an interest in educational movements, and in all questions of the day. He was always a lion in society, and, next to Sir Walter Scott, was the object of greatest curiosity to American travellers. Although great as statesman, orator, lawyer, and judge, his posthumous influence is small compared with that which he wielded in his lifetime,--which, indeed, may be said of most statesmen, the most noted exception to the rule being Lord Bacon.

With Brougham in the upper House, Lord John Russell had become the most prominent man in the lower; but being comparatively a poor man, he was contented to be only paymaster of the forces,--the most lucrative office in the government. His successful conduct of the great Reform Bill gave him considerable prestige. In the second ministry of Lord Melbourne, 1834-1841, Lord Russell was at first colonial and afterward home secretary. Whatever the post he filled, he filled it with credit, and had the confidence of the country; for he was honest, liberal, and sensible. He was not, however, an orator, although he subsequently became a great debater. I have often heard him speak, both in and out of Parliament; but I was never much impressed, or even interested. He had that hesitating utterance so common with aristocratic speakers, both clerical and lay, and which I believe is often assumed. In short, he had no magnetism, without which no public speaker can interest an ordinary audience; but he had intelligence, understood the temper of the House, and belonged to a great historical family, which gave him parliamentary influence. He represented the interests of the wealthy middle classes,--liberal as a nobleman, but without any striking sympathy with the people. After the passage of the Reform Bill, he was unwilling to go to any great lengths in further reforms, and therefore was unpopular with the radicals, although his spirit was progressive. It was his persistent advocacy of parliamentary reform which had made him prominent and famous, and it was his ability as a debater which kept him at the head of his party. Historians speak of him without enthusiasm, but with great respect. The notable orators of that day were O'Connell and Brougham. As a platform speaker, probably no one ever surpassed the Irish leader.

After the passage of the Reform Bill, the first thing of importance to which the reform Parliament turned its attention was the condition of Ireland. The crimes committed in that unfortunate country called loudly for coercive measures on the part of the government. The murders, the incendiary fires, the burglaries and felonious assaults, were unprecedented in number and atrocity. The laws which had been passed for the protection of life and property had become a dead letter in some of the most populous districts. Jurors were afraid to attend the assizes, and the nearest relatives of the victims dared not institute proceedings; even magistrates were deterred from doing their duty. In fact, crime went unpunished, and the country was rapidly sinking into semi-barbarism. In the single year of 1832 there were two hundred and forty-two homicides, eleven hundred and seventy-nine robberies, four hundred and one burglaries, five hundred and sixty-eight house-burnings, one hundred and sixty-one serious assaults, two hundred and three riots, besides other crimes,--altogether to the number of over nine thousand. A bill was accordingly brought into the Upper House by Lord Grey to give to the lord-lieutenant power to substitute courts-martial for the ordinary courts of justice, to enter houses for the purpose of searching for arms, and to suspend the act of habeas corpus in certain districts. The bill passed the Lords without difficulty, but encountered severe opposition in the House of Commons from the radical members and from O'Connell and his followers. Nevertheless it passed, with some alterations, and was at once put in force in the county of Kilkenny, with satisfactory results. The diminution of crime was most marked; and as the excuse for disturbances arose chiefly from the compulsory tithes which the Catholic population were obliged to pay in support of the Protestant Church, the ministry wisely attempted to alleviate the grievance. It was doubtless a great injustice for Catholics to be compelled to support the Established Church of England; but the ministry were not prepared to go to the length which the radicals and the Irish members demanded,--the complete suppression of the tithe system; in other words, "the disestablishment of the Irish Church." They were willing to sacrifice a portion of the tithes, to reduce the number of bishops, and to apply some of the ecclesiastical property to secular purposes. But even this concession called out a fierce outcry from the conservatives, in and out of Parliament. A most formidable opposition came from the House of Lords, headed by Lord Eldon; but the ministers were at last permitted to carry out their measure.

Nothing satisfactory, however, was accomplished in reference to the collection of tithes, in spite of the concession of the ministers. The old difficulty remained. Tithes could not be collected except at the point of the bayonet, which of course was followed by crimes and disturbances that government could not prevent. In 1833 the arrears of tithes amounted to over a million of pounds, and the Protestant clergy were seriously distressed. The cost of collecting tithes was enormous, from the large coercive force which the government was obliged to maintain. When the pay of soldiers and policemen is considered, it took £25,000 to collect £12,000. The collection of tithes became an impossibility without a war of extermination. Every expedient failed. Even the cabinet was divided on all the schemes proposed; for every member of it was determined to uphold the Established Church, in some form or other.

At last Mr. Ward, member for St. Albans, in 1834 brought forward in the Commons a measure which had both reason and justice to commend it. After showing that the collection of tithes was the real cause of Irish discontents, that only a fourteenth of the population of Ireland were in communion with the English Church, that nearly half of the clergy were non-residents, and that there was a glaring inequality in the salaries of clergymen,--so that some rectors received from £500 to £1,000 in parishes where there were only ten or twelve Protestants, while some of the resident clergy did duty for less than £20 per annum,--he moved the following: "Resolved, that as the Protestant Episcopal Establishment of Ireland exceeds the spiritual wants of the Protestant population, it is the opinion of the House that the temporal possessions of the Church of Ireland ought to be reduced." The motion was seconded by Mr. Grote, the celebrated historian; but Lord Althorp rose and requested the House to adjourn, in consequence of circumstances he was not prepared to mention. All understood that there was trouble in the cabinet itself; and when the House reassembled, it was found that the Duke of Richmond, Earl Ripon, Lord Stanley (colonial secretary), and Sir James Graham, being opposed to the appropriation of the funds of the Irish Church to other than ecclesiastical purposes, had resigned. The king himself was strongly opposed to the motion, to say nothing of the peers; and the conservative part of the nation, from the long-inherited jealousy of the Catholic Church, stood upon the same ground.

While ministers were tinkering on the affairs of Ireland, without lofty purpose or sense of justice or enlightened reason even, the gigantic figure of O'Connell appeared in striking contrast with the statesmen who opposed him and tried in vain to intimidate him. The great agitator had made his power felt long before the stormy debates in favor of reform took place, which called out the energies of Brougham,--the only man in England to be compared with O'Connell in genius, in eloquence, in intellect, and in wrath, but inferior to him in the power of moving the passions of an audience, yet again vastly superior to him in learning. While Brougham was thundering in the senate in behalf of reform,--the most influential and the most feared of all its members, without whose aid nothing could be done,--O'Connell was haranguing the whole Catholic population of Ireland in favor of a repeal of the Union, looking upon the evils which ground down his countrymen as beyond a remedy under the English government. He also made his voice ring with startling vehemence in the English Parliament, as soon as the Catholic Emancipation bill enabled him to enter it as the member from Clare, always advocating justice and humanity, whatever the subject under consideration might be. So long as O'Connell was "king of Ireland," as William IV declared him to be, nothing could be done by English ministers on Irish matters. His agitations were tremendous, and yet he kept within the laws. His mission was to point out evils rather than to remove them. No man living was capable of pointing out the remedy. On all Irish questions the wisdom and experience of English statesmen were in vain. Yet amid the storms which beat over the unhappy island, the voice of the great pilot was louder than the tempests, which he seems to control as if by magic. Mr. Gladstone, in one of his later contributions to literature, has done justice to the motives and the genius of a man whom he regards as the greatest that Ireland has ever produced, if Burke may be excepted, yet a man whom he bitterly opposed in his parliamentary career. Faithful alike to the interests of his church and his country, O'Connell will ever be ranked among the most imposing names of history, although he failed in the cause to which he consecrated his talents, his fortune, his energies, and his fame. Long and illustrious is the list of reformers who have been unsuccessful; and Mr. O'Connell must be classed with these. Yet was he one who did not live in vain.

Incapable of effectively dealing with the problem, the government temporized and resolved to stave off the difficulty. A commission was appointed to visit every parish in Ireland and report the state of affairs to Parliament, when everybody already knew what this state was,--one of glaring inequality and injustice, exceedingly galling to the Catholic population. Nor was this the only Irish Church question that endangered the stability of the ministry. Tithe bill after tithe bill had been passed, and all alike had failed. Mr. Ward had argued for the entire abolition of the tithe system, from the expense and difficulty of collecting tithes, leaving the clergy to be supported by the crown. A new tithe bill was, however, introduced, by which the clergy should accept something short of what they were entitled to by law. Not only was the tithing system an apparently inextricable tangle, but there was trouble about the renewal of the Coercion Act. Lord Grey, wearied with political life, resigned the premiership, and Lord Melbourne succeeded him,--a statesman who cared next to nothing for reform; not an incapable man, but lazy, genial, and easy, whose watchword was, "Can't you let it alone?" But he did not long retain office, the king being dissatisfied with his ministers; and Sir Robert Peel, being then at Rome, was sent for to head the new administration in July, 1834. It may be here remarked that Mr. Gladstone first took office under this government. Parliament, of course, was dissolved, and a new election took place. The Whigs lost thereby much of their power, but still were a majority in the House, and the new Tory government found that the Irish difficulties were a very hard nut to crack.

The new Parliament met Feb. 15, 1835; and as the new government came into power by defeating the Whigs on the subject of the Irish Church, it was bound to offer some remedy for the trouble which existed. Accordingly, Lord Morpeth, the eldest son of the Earl of Carlisle, and closely allied with the Duke of Sutherland and other great families,--agreeable, kindly, and winning in his manners, and of very respectable abilities,--on June 26 introduced his Tithe Bill, by which he proposed to convert the tithe itself into a rent-charge, reducing it to a lower amount than the late Whig government had done. His bill, however, came to nothing, since any appropriation clearly dealing with surplus revenues failed to satisfy the Lords.

Before anything could be done with Ireland, the Peel ministry was dissolved, and the Whigs returned to power, April 18, 1835, with Lord Melbourne again as prime minister. But the Irish difficulties remained the same, the conservatives refusing to agree to any bill which dealt with any part of the revenues of the State church; and the question was not finally settled for Ireland till after it was settled in England.

Thus the reformed Parliament failed in its attempt to remove the difficulties which attended Irish legislation. It failed from the obstinacy of the conservatives, among Whigs as well as Tories, to render justice in the matter of rates and tithes,--the great cause of Irish discontent and violence at that time. It will be seen that new complications arose with every successive Parliament from that time to this, landlords finding it as difficult to collect their rents as the clergy did their tithes. And these difficulties appear to be as great to-day as they were fifty years ago. It still remains to be seen how Ireland can be satisfactorily governed by any English ministry likely to be formed. On that rock government after government, both liberal and conservative, has been wrecked, and probably will continue to be wrecked long after the present generation has passed away, until the English nation itself learns to take a larger view, and seeks justice rather than the conservation of vested interests.

But if the reformed Parliament failed to restore order in Ireland, and to render that justice which should have followed the liberal principles it invoked, yet in matters strictly English great progress was made in the removal of crying evils.

Among these was the abolition of slavery in the British West India Islands, which as early as 1833 occupied the attention of the House, even before the discussion on Irish affairs. The slave-trade had been suppressed long before this, through the untiring labors and zeal of Wilberforce, Zachary Macaulay (father of the historian), and other philanthropists. But the evils of slavery still existed,--cruelty and oppression on the part of slave-owners, and hardships and suffering on the part of slaves. Half-caste women were bought and sold, and flogged and branded. As early as 1823 Fowell Buxton, then in Parliament, furnished with facts by Zachary Macaulay, who had been manager of a West India estate, brought in a motion for the abolition of slavery. Canning was then the leading member of the House of Commons; although he did not go so far as Buxton, still he did something to remedy the evils of the system, and was supported by Brougham, Mackintosh, and Lushington,--so that the flogging of women was abolished, and married slaves were not separated from their children. In 1830, Henry Brougham introduced a motion for the total abolition of slavery in the British colonies, and thrilled the House by his eloquence and passion; but his motion was defeated. When the new reform Parliament met in 1831, more pressing questions occupied its attention; but at length, in 1833, Buxton made a forcible appeal to ministers to sweep away the greatest scandal of the age. He was supported by Lord Stanley, then colonial secretary, who eloquently defended the cause of liberty and humanity; and he moved that effectual measures be at once taken to abolish slavery altogether, with some modifications. Thomas Babington Macaulay, who had entered Parliament in 1830, also brought all his eloquence to bear in behalf of the cause; and the upshot of the discussion was that Parliament set free the slaves, and their masters received twenty millions of pounds as a compensation. Thus the long agitation of fifty years pertaining to negro emancipation in the British dominions was closed forever. The heart of England was profoundly moved by this act of blended justice, humanity, and generosity, which has been quoted with pride by every Englishman from that time to this. Possibly a similar national assumption of the vast expense of recompensing English owners of Irish lands may at some time relieve Ireland of alien landlordism and England of her greatest reproach.

The condition of Hindostan next received the attention of Parliament; and on the renewal of the charter of the East India Company, in 1833, its commercial monopoly was abolished, and trade with the East was thrown open to the merchants of all the world. The political jurisdiction of the Company was, however, retained.

The new Parliament then turned its attention to a reduction of taxes. The duty on tiles was repealed; also the two-shilling stamp duty on advertisements, together with the vexatious duty on soap. Dramatic copyrights also received protection, and an improvement in the judicial administration was effected. Sinecure offices were abolished in the Court of Chancery, and the laws of dower and inheritance were amended.

The members most active in these reforms were Lord Althorp, Daniel O'Connell, Joseph Hume, and William Cobbett. Lord Althorp, afterward Earl Spencer, made not less than one thousand speeches, and O'Connell six hundred, in support of these reforms,--all tending to a decrease in taxation, made feasible by the great increase of wealth and the abolition of useless offices.

The Trade Unions (a combination of operatives to secure improvement in their condition) marked the year 1834, besides legislative enactments to reduce taxation. Before 1824 it was illegal for workmen to combine, even in the most peaceable manner, for the purpose of obtaining an increase of wages. This injustice was removed the following year, and strikes became numerous among the different working-classes, but were generally easily suppressed by the capitalists, who were becoming a great power with the return to national prosperity. For fifty years the vexed social problem of "strikes" has been discussed, but is not yet solved, giving intense solicitude to capitalists and corporations, and equal hope to operatives. The year 1834, then, showed the commencement of the great war between capital and labor which is so damaging to all business operations, and the ultimate issue of which cannot be predicted with certainty,--but which will probably lead to a great amelioration of the condition of the working-classes and the curtailment of the incomes of rich men, especially those engaged in trade and manufactures. There will always be, without doubt, disproportionate fortunes, and capitalists can combine as well as laborers; but if the strikes which are multiplying year by year in all the countries of Europe and the United States should end in a great increase of wages, so as to make workmen comfortable (for they will never be contented), the movement will prove beneficent. Already far more has been accomplished for the relief of the poor by a combination of laborers against hard-hearted employers than by any legislative enactments; but when will the contest between capital and labor cease? Is it pessimism to say that it is likely to become more and more desperate?

The "Poor Law Amendment" was passed July, 1834, during the administration of Lord Melbourne,--Lord Grey having resigned, from the infirmities of age and the difficulties of carrying on the government. He had held office nearly four years, which exceeded the term of his predecessor the Duke of Wellington; and only four premiers have held office for a longer period since 1754. The Poor Law Amendment, supported by all political parties, was passed in view of the burdensome amount of poor rates and the superior condition of the pauper to that of many an independent laborer.

The ill management of the beer-houses led to another act in 1834, requiring a license to sell beer, which was granted only to persons who could produce a certificate of good character from six respectable inhabitants of a parish.

The session of Parliament in 1834 was further marked by a repeal of the house tax, by grants for building schoolhouses, by the abolition of sinecure offices in the House of Commons, and by giving new facilities for the circulation of foreign newspapers through the mails. There was little or no opposition to reforms which did not interfere with landed interests and the affairs of Ireland. Even Sir Robert Peel, in his short administration, was not unfriendly to extending privileges to Dissenters, nor to judicial, municipal, and economical reform generally.

The most important of the measures brought forward by Whig ministers under Lord Melbourne was the reform of municipal corporations. For two hundred years the abuses connected with these corporations had been subjects of complaint, but could not easily be remedied, in consequence of the perversion of municipal institutions to political ends. The venal boroughs, which both Whig and Tory magnates controlled, were the chief seats of abuses and scandals. When these boroughs were disfranchised by the Reform Bill, a way was opened for the local government of a town by its permanent residents, instead of the appointment of magistrates by a board which perpetuated itself, and which was controlled by the owners of boroughs in the interests of the aristocracy. In consequence of the passing of the municipal reform act, through the powerful advocacy of Lord John Russell, the government of the town passed to its own citizens, and became more or less democratic, not materially differing from the government of cities in the United States. Under able popular leaders, the towns not only became a new political power in Parliament, but enjoyed the privilege of electing their own magistrates and regulating their domestic affairs,--such as the police, schools, the lighting of streets, and public improvements generally.

Besides this important act, some other salutary measures for the general good were carried by parliamentary leaders,--such as enlarging the copyrights of authors, lecturers, and dramatists; abolishing imprisonment for debt for small sums; amending the highway and the marriage laws; enforcing uniformity in weights and measures, regulating prison discipline, and commuting death punishment for many crimes. These reforms, having but little reference to partisan politics, received the approbation of both Whigs and Tories. Most of the important bills which passed the Parliament from the accession of William IV., however, were directly or indirectly the result of the Reform Bill of 1832, which had enlarged the representation of the people.

William IV. died in January, 1837, after a short but prosperous reign of seven years, much lamented by the nation. He was a frank, patriotic, and unconventional king, who accepted the reforms which made his reign an epoch. At his death there were more distinguished men in all departments of politics, literature, science, and art in Great Britain than at any previous period, and the condition of the people was more ameliorated than had been known since the Reformation. A great series of reforms had been peaceably effected without revolution; the kingdom was unusually prosperous; so that Queen Victoria, William's niece, the daughter of his brother the Duke of Kent (whose previous death had made Victoria heir-apparent to the throne), entered upon her illustrious reign under hopeful auspices, June 21, 1837. The reform spirit had passed through no reactions, and all measures which were beneficent in their tendency were favorably considered.

In 1837 Mr. Rowland Hill proposed the startling suggestion that all existing rates of postage should be abolished, and the penny postage substituted for all parts of the kingdom, irrespective of distance. This was not at first accepted by the government or post-office officials; but its desirableness was so apparent that Parliament yielded to the popular voice and it became a law, with increased gain ultimately to the national finances, to say nothing of its immense influence in increasing knowledge. The old postage law had proved oppressive to all classes except members of Parliament, who had the franking privilege, which the new law abolished. Under the old system, the average of letters mailed was annually only four to each person. In 1875 it was thirty-three, and the net revenue to the nation was nearly two million pounds sterling.

Another great reform was effected in the early part of the reign of Victoria,--that of the criminal code, effected chiefly through the persevering eloquence of Sir James Mackintosh; although Sir Samuel Romilly, an eminent and benevolent barrister, as early as 1808, had labored for the same end. But thirty years had made a great change of opinion in reference to the punishment of crime, which was cruelly severe. Capital offences numbered at the beginning of the century nearly two hundred and fifty, some of which were almost venial; but in 1837 only seven crimes were punishable with death, and the accused were allowed benefit of counsel. Before this, the culprit could be condemned without a hearing,--a gross violation of justice, which did not exist even under the imperial despotism of the Caesars.

Such were the most important measures passed by the reformed Parliament during the ten years' administration of the Whigs, most of which were the logical results of the Reform Bill of 1832, which made the reign of William IV. the most memorable in the domestic history of England since the great Revolution which hurled the Stuarts from their throne. But the country was not satisfied with these beneficent reforms. A great agitation had already begun, under the leadership of Cobden and Bright, for a repeal of the Corn Laws. The half measures of the Liberal government displeased all parties, and the annual deficit had made it unpopular. After vainly struggling against the tide of discontent, the Melbourne ministry was compelled to resign, and in 1841 began the second ministry of Sir Robert Peel, which gave power to the Tories for five or six years. Lord Lyndhurst returned to his seat on the woolsack, Mr. Goulburn was appointed chancellor of the exchequer, Sir James Graham became home secretary, Lord Aberdeen took the foreign department, and Lord Stanley the colonial office. Into this cabinet Mr. Gladstone entered as president of the board of trade, on the retirement of Earl Ripon.

The Duke of Wellington also had a seat in the cabinet, but held no office, his age and infirmities preventing him from active duties. He was "the grand old man" of his generation, and had received unparalleled honors, chiefly for his military services,--the greatest general whom England has produced, if we except Marlborough. Although his fame rests on his victories in a great national crisis, he was also an able statesman,--sensible, practical, patriotic; a man of prejudices, yet not without tact; of inflexible will, yet yielding to overpowering necessities, and accepting political defeat as he did the loss of a battle, gracefully and magnanimously. If he had not, however, been a popular idol for his military exploits, he would have been detested by the people; for no one in England was more aristocratic in his sympathies than he, no one was fonder of honors and fashionable distinctions, no one had a more genuine contempt for whatever was plebeian and democratic.

In coming lectures,--on Sir Robert Peel, Gladstone, etc.,--we shall find occasion to trace the course of Victoria's beneficent reign over Great Britain, beginning (as it did) after the abuses and distresses culminating under George IV. had been largely relieved during the memorable reform epoch under William IV.

AUTHORITIES.

Miss Martineau's History of England; Molesworth's History of England; Mackenzie's History of the Nineteenth Century, Alison's History of Europe; Annual Register; Lives of Lord Brougham, Wellington, Lord Melbourne, Lord John Russell, Lord Liverpool, and Sir Robert Peel. These are the most accessible authorities, but the list is very large.

SIR ROBERT PEEL.

1788-1850.

POLITICAL ECONOMY.

Among the great prime ministers of England Sir Robert Peel is to be classed. He ranks with Pitt, Canning, and Gladstone for his intellectual force, his services, and his patriotism. He was to England what Guizot and Thiers were to France,--a pre-eminent statesman, identified with great movements, learned, eloquent, and wise. He was a man of unsullied character, commanding the respect and veneration of superior minds,--reserved and cold, perhaps; not a popular idol like Fox and O'Connell, but a leader of men.

There was no man in his cabinet more gifted or influential than he. Lord Liverpool, Lord Melbourne, and Lord Aberdeen were placed in their exalted posts, not for remarkable abilities, but by the force of circumstances, for the purpose of uniting greater men than they in a coalition in order to form a strong government. Thus, Canning really was the master spirit in the cabinet of Lord Liverpool, as Lord Palmerston was in that of Lord Aberdeen. Peel, however, was himself the controlling intellect of the government of which he was the head, and was doubtless superior in attainments and political genius to Wellington, to Earl Grey, and Lord John Russell,--premiers like him, and prominent as statesmen. Lord Goderich, Lord Stanley, Lord Althorp, Sir James Graham, Mr. Goulburn, Lord Wharncliffe, Lord Howick, Earl Ripon, Mr. C. Wood, Mr. Macaulay, Mr. Croker, were all very able ministers, but not to be compared with Sir Robert Peel in shaping the destinies of the country. His administration was an epoch in English political history, to be long remembered as singularly successful and important.

Sir Robert Peel came from the people, although his father was a baronet and a very wealthy man, proud and aristocratic as he was rich. His riches were acquired by manufacturing cotton goods, like those of his father before him, whose business he inherited; but the great-grandfather of Sir Robert was a plain and unimportant cotton spinner in Lancashire, of no social rank whatever. No noble blood flowed in the veins of the great premier, nor was he ever ambitious of aristocratic distinction. He declined an earldom, though rich enough to maintain its rank. He accepted no higher social rank than what he inherited, and which came from successful business.

But Peel was educated with great care by an ambitious father. He was sent to Harrow and Christ Church, and was distinguished as a boy for his classical attainments, as was Canning before him. At an early age he reached all the honors that Oxford could bestow; and when he was only twenty-one was brought into Parliament for the close borough of Cashel, in Ireland, in the gift of some noble lord. He entered the House of Commons in 1809, at the same time with Palmerston, and a few years earlier than Lord John Russell, during that memorable period when Napoleon was in the midst of his victories, and when a noble constellation of English statesmen combined their energies for the good of their country,--Wilberforce, Wyndham, Tierney, Perceval, Grattan, Castlereagh, Canning, Romilly, Brougham, Mackintosh, Huskisson, and others,--all trained in the school of Pitt, Fox, or Burke, who had passed away. Among these great men Peel made his way, not so much by force of original genius--blazing and kindling like the eloquence of Canning and Brougham--as by assiduity in business, untiring industry, and in speech lucidity of statement, close reasoning, and perfect mastery of his subject in all its details. He was pre-eminently a man of facts rather than theories. Like Canning and Gladstone, he was ultra-conservative in his early political life,--probably in a great measure from his father's example as well as from the force of his university surroundings,--and, of course, joined the Tory party, then all-powerful. So precocious were his attainments, and so promising was he from the force of his character, that at the age of twenty-four he was made, by Mr. Perceval, under-secretary for the Colonies; the year after (in 1812) he was promoted, by Lord Liverpool, to the more important post of secretary for Ireland. In the latter post he had to combat Canning himself in the matter of Catholic emancipation, but did his best to promote secular education in that priest-ridden and unhappy country. For his High Church views and advocacy of Tory principles, which he had been taught at Oxford, he was a favorite with the university; and in 1817 he had the distinguished honor of representing it in Parliament. In 1819 he made his financial reputation by advocating a return to specie payments,--suspended in consequence of the Napoleonic wars. In 1820 he was married to a daughter of General Sir John Floyd, and his beautiful domestic life was enhanced by his love of art, of science, of agriculture, and the society of eminent men. In 1822 he entered Lord Liverpool's cabinet as home secretary; and when the ministry was broken up in 1827, he refused to serve in the new government under Canning, on account of the liberal views which the premier entertained in reference to Catholic emancipation.

The necessity of this just measure Sir Robert Peel was made to feel after Canning's death, during the administration of the Duke of Wellington. Conservative as he was, and opposed to all agitations for religious or political change even under the name of "reform," the fiery eloquence of O'Connell and the menacing power of the Catholic Association forced upon him the conviction of the necessity of Catholic emancipation, as the cold reasoning of Richard Cobden afterward turned him from a protectionist to a free-trader. He was essentially an honest man, always open to reason and truth, learning wisdom from experience, and growing more liberal as he advanced in years. He brought the Duke of Wellington to his views in spite of that minister's inveterate prejudices, and the Catholics of Ireland were emancipated as an act of expediency and state necessity. Peel, although only home secretary under Wellington, was the prominent member of the administration, and was practically the leader of the House of Commons, in which character he himself introduced the bill for Catholic relief. This great service was, however, regarded by the ultra Tories as an act of apostasy, and Peel incurred so much reproach from his former friends that he resigned his seat as member for Oxford University, and accepted the constituency of Westbury. During this administration, too, Sir Robert, as home secretary, reorganized the police force of London (whence their popular nicknames of "Peelers" and "Bobbies"), and performed other important services.

In 1830 the Whigs came into power under Lord Grey, and for ten years, with the brief interval of his first administration, Sir Robert Peel was the most able leader of the opposition. In 1833 he accepted the parliamentary membership for Tamworth, which he retained to the end of his great career. He persistently opposed the Reform Bill in all its stages; but when it was finally passed, he accepted it as unmistakably the will of the nation, and even advocated many of the reforms which grew out of it. In 1841 he again became prime minister, in an alarming financial crisis; and it was his ability in extricating the nation from financial difficulties that won for him general admiration.

Thus for thirty years he served in Parliament before he reached the summit of political ambition,--half of which period he was a member of the ministry, learning experience from successive administrations, and forging the weapons by which he controlled the conservative party, until his conversion to the doctrines of Cobden again exposed him to the bitter wrath of the protectionists; but not until he had triumphantly carried the repeal of the corn laws,--the most important and beneficent act of legislation since the passage of the Reform Bill itself.

It was this great public service on which the fame of Sir Robert Peel chiefly rests; but before we can present it according to its Historical importance, we must briefly glance at the financial measures by which he extricated his country from great embarrassments, and won public confidence and esteem. He did for England what Alexander Hamilton did for the United States in matters of finance, although as inferior to Hamilton in original genius as he was superior to him in general knowledge and purity of moral character. No one man can be everything, even if the object of unbounded admiration. To every great man a peculiar mission is given,--to one as lawgiver, to another as conqueror, to a third as teacher, to a fourth as organizer and administrator; and these missions, in their immense variety, constitute the life and soul of history. Sir Robert Peel's mission was that of a financier and political economist, which, next to that of warrior, brings the greatest influence and fame in a commercial and manufacturing country like England. Not for lofty sentiments, such as Burke uttered on the eve of the French Revolution, are the highest rewards given in a material country like that of our ancestors, but for the skill a man shows in expounding the way in which a nation may become prosperous and rich. It was Sir Robert Peel's mission to make England commercially prosperous, even as it was that of Brougham and Russell to give it liberty and political privileges, that of Pitt and Castlereagh to save it from foreign conquest, and that of Wilberforce to rescue it from the disgrace and infamy of negro slavery.

Sir Robert Peel came into power in 1841, the Russell Whig ministry having failed to satisfy the country in regard to financial questions. There had been an annual deficit, and the distress of both the agricultural and manufacturing classes was alarming. The new premier proceeded with caution in the adoption of measures to relieve the burdens of the people and straighten out the finances, which were in great disorder. His first measure had reference to the corn laws, for the price of food in England was greater than in other European countries. He finally proposed to the assembled Parliament, in 1842, to make an essential alteration in the duties; and instead of a fixed duty he introduced a sliding scale, by which the duty on corn should be thirteen shillings a quarter[2] when the price was under sixty shillings, increasing the duty in proportion as the price should fall, and decreasing it as the price should rise,--so that when the price of corn was under fifty shillings the duty should be fixed at twenty shillings, and when the price was above seventy-three the duty should be only a shilling a quarter. This plan, after animated discussion, was approved; for although protection still was continued, the tendency of the measure was towards free-trade, for which the reformers were clamoring. Notwithstanding this measure, which was triumphantly carried through both Houses, the prevailing distress continued, and the revenue was steadily diminishing. To provide revenue, Peel introduced an income tax of seven pence in the pound, to stand for three years; and to offset that again lowered the import duties on domestic animals, dairy products, other articles of food, and some drugs.

[2]

"The fourth of a ton in weight, or eight bushels of grain."

When Parliament assembled in 1843 the discussions centred on free-trade. Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone and Sir James Graham admitted the general soundness of the principles of free-trade, but felt that the time had not yet come for their adoption, fearing an increased distress among the agricultural population. At that time, and for a long period before, the interests of agriculture were regarded as paramount, and those of manufacturing secondary; but, as time passed, it was generally felt that reduced taxes on all the necessities of life were imperative. Fifty years earlier, England produced corn enough for all the wants of the country; but with a population increasing at the rate of two hundred thousand a year, it was obvious that the farmers could not supply the demand. In consequence of which, at then existing tariffs, bread became yearly still dearer, which bore hard on the manufacturing operatives.

The year 1844 opened under happier auspices. The financial measures of the government had answered public expectations, and changed the growing deficiency into an increasing surplus. Improvements in machinery had increased the gains of the manufacturers; a war in India had been terminated successfully, and England was at peace with all the world. The only formidable troubles were in Ireland,--the standing difficulty with all administrations, Conservative or Liberal, and which no administration has ever been able to surmount. Sir Robert Peel had hoped that the Catholic Emancipation Act would lead to the tranquillity of Ireland. But that act did not content the Irish reformers. The fiercest agitation was conducted by O'Connell for the repeal of the Union itself and the restoration of the Irish parliament. At bottom, the demands of the great agitator were not unreasonable, since he demanded equal political privileges for both Ireland and England if the Union should continue,--that, in short, there should be one law for both countries. But since the ministry insisted on governing Ireland as a foreign and conquered country, denying equality of rights, the agitation grew to fearful proportions, chiefly in the shape of monster meetings. At last the government determined on the prosecution of O'Connell and some others for seditious conspiracy, and went so far as to strike off the name of every Catholic on the jury which was to try him. The trial lasted twenty-four days, and the prisoners were convicted. The hard and unjust sentence on O'Connell himself was imprisonment for twelve months and a fine of two thousand pounds. Against this decision an appeal was made to the House of Lords, and the judgment of the court was reversed. But the old man had already been imprisoned several weeks; his condemnation and imprisonment had told on his rugged constitution. He was nearly seventy years of age, and was worn out by excitement and unparalleled labors; and although he tried to continue his patriotic work, he soon after sickened, and in 1847 died on his way to Rome in search of rest.

O'Connell's death did not end the agitations, which have continued from that time to this with more or less asperity, and probably will continue until justice shall be done to Ireland. It is plain that either Ireland should be left free to legislate for herself, which would virtually be the dismemberment of the empire; or should receive equal privileges with the English; or should be coerced with an iron hand, which would depopulate the country. It would seem that Ireland, if it is to form part of the empire,--not as a colony, but an integral part, like the different States of the American Union,--should be governed by the same laws that England has, and enjoy the same representation of its population. Probably there never will be order or tranquillity in the island until it shall receive that justice which the prejudices of the English will not permit them at present to grant,--so slow are all reforms which have to contend with bigotry, ignorance, and selfishness. The chain which binds nations and communities together must be a chain of love, without reference to differences in color, religion, or race.

In the session of 1844 the factory question occupied a large share of public attention. Lord Ashley, whose philanthropic aims commanded great respect, contended for a limitation of the hours of labor. The ministry insisted upon twelve hours; but Lord Ashley carried his measure, with some amendments, the government being brought over to the side of humanity. The result was that the working-hours of children under thirteen was limited to six and a half hours, and the amount of fines imposed for a violation of the laws was lowered; while a provision was made for the instruction of children employed in the mills of three hours in summer, and two and a half in the winter.

The confidence in the government showed itself in the rise of public securities, so that it became practicable to reduce the interest on consols (the consolidated government debt) from three and a half to three percent, by which a saving accrued to the country of £1,250,000, indicating general prosperity. The income increased with the revival of trade and commerce, and the customs alone increased to nearly £2,500,000, chiefly from duties on tea and sugar, which increasing prosperity enabled the poorer classes to use more freely. The surplus of the revenue amounted to over £4,000,000 sterling, owing largely to the income tax, which now the ministers proposed to reduce. The charter of the Bank of England was renewed in a form which modified the whole banking system in England. The banking business of the Bank was placed on the same footing with other institutions as to its power of issuing notes, which beyond a certain amount should depend on the amount of bullion in the Bank. Substantially, this was the same principle which Daniel Webster advocated in the United States Senate,--that all bank-notes should be redeemable in gold and silver; in other words, that a specie basis is the only sound principle, whether in banking operations or in government securities, for the amount of notes issued. This tended to great stability in the financial world, as the Bank of England, although a private joint-stock association, has from its foundation in 1694 been practically the fiscal agent of the government,--having the management of the public debt, paying dividends upon it, holding the government moneys, making advances when necessary, helping the collection of the public revenue, and being the central bank of the other banks.

In addition to the financial measures by which Sir Robert Peel increased the revenues of the country, and gave to it a greater degree of material prosperity than it had enjoyed during the century, he attempted to soothe the Catholics of Ireland by increasing the grant to the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth, in Ireland; indeed, he changed the annual grant to a permanent endowment, but only through a fierce opposition. He trebled the grant for national education, and exhibited increasing liberality of mind as he gained experience. But his great exploit was the repeal of the corn laws, in a Parliament where more than three quarters of the members represented agricultural districts, and were naturally on the side of a protection of their own interests. In order to appreciate more clearly the magnitude of this movement, we must trace it from the beginning.

The centre of agitation for free-trade, especially in breadstuff's, was Manchester,--the second city of the kingdom for wealth, population, and influence, taking in the surrounding towns,--a very uninteresting place to the tourist and traveller; dingy, smoky, and rainy, without imposing architecture or beautiful streets; but a town of great intellectual activity in all matters pertaining to industrial enterprise and economical science,--the head centre of unpoetical materialism, where most of the well-to-do people dined at one o'clock.

As soon as this town was permitted to send members to Parliament it selected eminent free-traders,--Poulett Thomson and Mark Phillips,--who distinguished themselves for the fearlessness of their speeches on an unpopular subject. The agitation in Parliament had begun in 1836, at a period of great depression in all kinds of business and consequent suffering among the poor; but neither London nor the House of Commons was so favorable to the agitation of the principles of free-trade as Manchester was, and the subject began to be discussed throughout the country. An unknown man by the name of Poulton was the first to gain attention by his popular harangues; and he was soon followed by Richard Cobden,--a successful calico printer.

An Anti-Corn-Law Association was started by these pioneers, and £1,800 were raised by small subscriptions to enlighten the people on the principles of free-trade, when protection was the settled policy of the government. The Association was soon after reinforced by John Bright, an exceedingly brilliant popular orator, who was rich enough to devote a large part of his time to the spread of his opinions. Between him and Cobden a friendship and cordial co-operation sprang up, which lasted to the death of the latter. They were convinced that the cause which they had so much at heart could be effectually advanced only by the widest dissemination of its principles by public meetings, by tracts and by lectures. It was their aim to change public opinion, for all efforts would be in vain unless the people--and especially their leaders--were enlightened on the principles they advocated. They had faith in the ultimate triumph of these principles because they believed them to be true. From simple faith in the power of truth they headed the most tremendous agitation known in England since the passage of the Reform Bill. It was their mission to show conclusively to all intelligent people that it was for the interest of the country to abolish the corn laws, and that the manufacturing classes would be the most signally benefited. To effect this purpose it was necessary to raise a large sum of money; and the friends and advocates of the movement most liberally subscribed to circulate the millions of tracts and newspapers which the Association scattered into every hamlet and private family in England, besides the members personally giving their time and effort in public speeches and lectures in all parts of the country. "It was felt that the battle of free-trade must be fought first by the conversion of individuals, then at the hustings, and lastly in the House of Commons."

The principle of protecting the country against the importation of foreign breadstuffs was upheld as fostering the agricultural interests, as inciting the larger cultivation of poor lands, as providing against dangerous dependence on foreign countries, and as helping the large landowners and their tenants to patronize manufactures and trade; so that, although the high prices of breadstuffs were keeping vast numbers of people in misery and the country on the edge of revolution, the protectionist doctrine was believed in religiously by the laboring classes, the small shopkeepers, nearly all the educated classes, and a large majority of the members of Parliament.

To combat this unshaken traditional belief was a gigantic undertaking. It was the battle of reason and truth against prejudice and bigotry,--the battle of a new enlightenment of general interests against the selfishness of unenlightened classes. While Villiers and Thomson appealed to members in the House of Commons, Cobden and Bright with still greater eloquence directly addressed the people in the largest halls that could be found. In 1838 Cobden persuaded the Chamber of Commerce in Manchester to petition Parliament for a repeal of the duties on corn. In 1839, the agitation spreading, petitions went up from various parts of the country bearing two million signatures. The motion to repeal, however, was lost by a large majority in the Commons. Then began the organization of Free-Trade Leagues. In 1841 a meeting in Manchester was held, at which were present seven hundred nonconformist ministers, so effectually had conversions been made among intelligent men. Nor did the accession of the conservative Sir Robert Peel to power discourage the agitators, for in the same year (1841) Cobden was sent to Parliament. Meetings were still more frequently held in all the towns of the kingdom, A bazaar held in favor of the cause in the Theatre Royal, Manchester, in 1842, produced a clear profit of £10,000. In 1843 the great Free-Trade Hall was opened in Manchester, built expressly for public meetings for the anti corn-law agitation, and the sum of £150,000 was raised by private subscription to disseminate knowledge. At last, recognizing with keen instinct the inevitable turn in public opinion, the "Times" came out with a leading article of great power, showing a change of views on the subject of protection. Great noblemen, one after another, joined the League, and the Marquis of Westminster contributed £500 to the cause.

The free-trade movement was now recognized as a great fact which it was folly to ignore. Encouraged by the constant accession to the ranks of reform, the leaders of the League turned their attention to the registration of voters, by which many spurious claims for seats were annulled, and new members of Parliament were chosen to advocate free-trade. At last, in 1846, Sir Robert Peel himself, after having been for nearly his whole career a protectionist, gave in his adhesion to the new principles. Cobden, among others, had convinced him that the prosperity of the country depended on free-trade, and he nobly made his recantation, to the intense disgust of many of his former followers,--especially of Disraeli, who now appears in Parliament as a leader of the protectionists.

This brilliant man, who in 1837, at the age of thirty-two, took his seat in Parliament, had made no impression in that body for several years; but having learned from early failures his weak points, and by careful study of the successes of others trained himself to an effective style of parliamentary speech, he became, at the critical time of Peel's change of front, the representative of Shrewsbury, and gradually organized about himself the dissatisfaction and indignation of the landed proprietors with Sir Robert Peel's concessions to the free-trade movement. His strictures on Peel were severe, caustic, and bitter. "What," said this eloquent speaker, "shall we think of the eminent statesman, who, having served under four sovereigns, who, having been called to steer the ship on so many occasions and under such perilous circumstances, has only during the last three or four years found it necessary entirely to change his convictions on that most important topic, which must have presented itself for more than a quarter of a century to his consideration? I must, sir, say that such a minister may be conscientious, but he is unfortunate.... It is all very well for the right honorable gentleman to come forward and say, 'I am thinking of posterity; my aim is heroic; and, appealing to posterity, I care neither for your cheers nor for your taunts,' It is very well for the right honorable gentleman to take this high-flying course, but I can but say that my conception of a great statesman is one who represents a great idea,--I do not care whether he is a manufacturer or a manufacturer's son. I care not what may be the position of a man who never originates an idea,--a watcher of the atmosphere,--a man who, as he says, 'takes his observations,' and when he finds the wind in a certain quarter trims his sails to suit it. Such a man may be a powerful minister, but he is no more a great statesman than a man who gets up behind a carriage is a great whip."

All this tirade was very unjust,--though it pleased the protectionists,--for Sir Robert Peel was great enough to listen to arguments and reason, and give up his old sentiments when he found them untenable, even if he broke up his party. His country was greater in his eyes than any party.

As prime minister, Peel then unfolded his plans. He announced his intention to abandon the sliding scale entirely, and gradually reduce the duty on corn and other articles of necessity so that at the end of three or four years the duty would be taken off altogether. This plan did not fully satisfy the League, who argued for immediate repeal. Indeed, there was a necessity. The poor harvests in England and the potato-rot in Ireland were producing the most fearful and painful results. A large part of the laboring population was starving. Never before had there been greater distress. On the 2d of March, 1846, the ministerial plan had to go through the ordeal of a free-trade attack. Mr. Villiers proposed an amendment that would result in the immediate and total repeal of the corn laws. Nevertheless, the original bill passed the Commons by a majority of ninety-eight.

It was at once carried to the House of Lords, where it encountered, as was expected, the fiercest opposition, no less than fifty-three lords taking part in the discussion. The Duke of Wellington, seeing that the corn laws were doomed, and that further opposition would only aggravate the public distress, supported the bill, as did Lord Aberdeen and other strong conservatives, and it was finally carried by a majority of forty-seven.

Before the bill for the virtual repeal of the corn laws was passed by the House of Lords, the administration of Sir Robert Peel abruptly closed. An Irish coercion bill had been introduced by the government, not very wisely, even while the corn bill was under discussion by the Commons. The bill was of course opposed by the Irish followers of O'Connell, and by many of the Liberal party. The radical members, led by Cobden and Bright, were sure to oppose it. The protectionists, full of wrath, and seeing their opportunity to overthrow the government, joined the Liberals and the Irish members, and this coalition threw out the bill by a majority of seventy-three. The government of course resigned.

Nor was the premier loath to throw off his burdens amid calumny and reproach. He cheerfully retired to private life. He concluded the address on his resignation, after having paid a magnificent tribute to Cobden--by whose perseverance, energy, honesty of conviction, and unadorned eloquence the great corn-law reform had been thus far advanced--in these words: "In quitting power, I shall leave a name severely blamed, I fear, by many men, who, without personal interest but only with a view of the public good, will bitterly deplore the rupture of party ties, from a belief that fidelity to party engagements and the maintenance of great parties are powerful and essential means of government. [I fear also] that I shall be blamed by others who, without personal interest, adhere to the principles of protection, which they regard as necessary to the prospects of the country; that I shall leave a name detested by all monopolists, who, from less honorable motives, claim a protection by which they largely profit. But I shall perhaps leave a name which will sometimes be pronounced by expressions of good-will by those whose lot in this world is to labor, who in the sweat of their brow eat their daily bread; and who may remember me when they renew their strength by food at once abundant and untaxed, and which will be the better relished because no longer embittered by any feeling of injustice." He then resumed his seat amidst the loudest applause from all sides of the House; and when he left Westminster Hall, leaning on the arm of Sir George Clark, a vast multitude filled the street, and with uncovered heads accompanied him in respectful silence to the door of his house.

Sir Robert Peel continued to attend the meetings of Parliament as an independent member, making no factious opposition, and giving his support to every measure he approved,--more as a sage than a partisan, having in view mainly the good of the country whose government he no longer led.

It was soon after Peel's retirement from office that O'Connell, too, made his last speech in the House of Commons, not as formerly in trumpet tones, but with enfeebled voice. "I am afraid," said the fainting athlete, "that the House is not sufficiently aware of the extent of the misery in Ireland. I do not think that members understand the accumulated miseries under which the people are at present suffering. It has been estimated that five thousand adults and ten thousand children have already perished with famine, and that twenty-five per cent of the whole population will perish, unless the House will afford effective relief. I assure the House most solemnly that I am not exaggerating; I can establish all that I have said by many and painful proofs. And the necessary result must be typhus fever, which in fact has already broken out, and is desolating whole districts; it leaves alive only one in ten of those whom it attacks." This appeal doubtless had its effect in demonstrating the absolute need of a repeal of the corn laws. But it is as the "liberator" of the Roman Catholic population of Ireland in the great emancipation struggle,--triumphantly concluded as early as 1829,--and the incessant labors after that for the enlargement of Irish conditions, that O'Connell will be remembered. "Honor, glory, and eternal gratitude," exclaimed Lacordaire, "to the man who collected in his powerful hand the scattered elements of justice and deliverance, and who, pushing them to their logical conclusions with a vigorous patience which thirty years could not exhaust, at last poured on his country the unhoped-for delight of liberty of conscience, and thus deserved not only the title of Liberator of his Country but the oecumenical title of Liberator of his Church."

O'Connell, Cobden, and Sir Robert Peel,--what great names in the history of England in the agitating period between the passage of the Reform Bill and that of the repeal of the corn laws! I could add other illustrious names,--especially those of Brougham and Lord John Russell; but the sun of glory around the name of the first was dimmed after his lord chancellorship, while that of the latter was yet to blaze more brightly when he assumed the premiership on the retirement of his great predecessor, with such able assistants as Lord Palmerston, Earl Grey, Macaulay, and others. These men, as Whigs, carried out more fully the liberal and economic measures which Sir Robert Peel had inaugurated amid a storm of wrath from his former supporters, reminding one of the fury and disappointment of the higher and wealthy classes when Mr. Gladstone--a still bolder reformer, although nursed and cradled in the tenets of monopolists--introduced his measures for the relief of Ireland.

During the administration of Sir Robert Peel there was another agitation which at one time threatened serious consequences, but as it came to nothing it has not the historical importance of the Anti-Corn-Law League. It was a fanatical uprising of the lower classes to obtain still greater political privileges, led by extreme radicals, of whom Mr. Feargus O'Connor was the most prominent leader, and Mr. Henry Vincent was the most popular speaker. The centre of this movement was not Manchester, but Birmingham. The operatives of Manchester wanted cheaper bread; those of Birmingham wanted an extension of the franchise: and as Lord John Russell had opposed the re-opening of the reform question, the radicals were both disappointed and infuriated. The original leaders of parliamentary reform had no sympathy with such a rabble as now clamored for extended reform. They demanded universal suffrage, annual Parliaments, vote by ballot, abolition of property qualifications, payment of members of Parliament, and the division of the country into equal electoral districts. These were the six points of the people's charter,--not absurd to the eyes of Americans, but utterly out of the question in such an aristocratic country as England, and advocated only by the working-classes and their incendiary leaders. Discontent and misery were the chief causes of the movement, which was managed without ability. The agitation began in 1836 and continued to 1848. At first the government allowed it, so far as it was confined to meetings, speeches, and the circulation of tracts,--knowing full well that, as it made no appeal to the influential and intelligent classes, it would soon expend itself. I was lecturing at the time in Birmingham, and the movement excited contempt rather than alarm among the people I met. I heard Vincent two or three times in his chapel,--for I believe he was educated as a dissenting minister of some sort,--but his eloquence made no impression upon me; it was clever and fluent enough, but shallow and frothy. At last he was foolishly arrested by the government, who had really nothing to fear from him, and imprisoned at Newport in Wales.

In England reforms have been effected only by appeals to reason and intelligence, and not by violence. Infuriated mobs, successful in France in overturning governments and thrones, have been easily repressed in England with comparatively little bloodshed; for power has ever been lodged in the hands of the upper and middle classes, intolerant of threatened violence. In England, since the time of Cromwell, revolutions have been bloodless; and reforms have been gradual,--to meet pressing necessities, or to remove glaring injustice and wrongs, never to introduce an impractical equality or to realize visionary theories. And they have ever been effected through Parliament. All popular agitations have failed unless they have appealed to reason and right.

Thus the People's Charter movement, beginning about 1838, was a signal failure, because from the practical side it involved no great principles of political economy, nothing that enriches a nation; and from the side of popular rights it was premature, crude, and represented no intelligent desire on the part of the people. It was a movement nursed in discontent, and carried on with bitterness and illegal violence. It was wild, visionary, and bitter from the start, and arose at a period when the English people were in economic distress, and when all Europe was convulsed with insurrectionary uprisings, and revolutionary principles were mixed up with socialism and anarchy. The Chartist agitation continued with meetings and riots and national conventions until 1848, when the Revolution in France gave a great impulse to it.

At last some danger was apprehended from the monster meetings and inflammatory speeches of the Chartists, and government resolved to suppress the whole movement by the strong arm. The police force throughout the kingdom was strengthened, and one hundred and seventy thousand special constables were sworn in, while extensive military preparations were intrusted to the Duke of Wellington. The Chartists, overrating their strength, held a great meeting on Kensington Common, and sent a petition of more than five millions of names to the House of Commons; but instead of half a million who were expected to assemble on the Common with guns and pikes, only a few thousand dared to meet, and the petition itself was discovered to be forged, chiefly with fictitious names. It was a battle on the part of the agitators without ball cartridges, in which nothing was to be seen but smoke. Ridicule and contempt overwhelmed the leaders, and the movement collapsed.

Although the charter failed to become law, the enfranchisement of the people has been gradually enlarged by Parliament in true deliberate English fashion, as we shall see in future lectures. Perhaps the Chartist movement may have ripped up the old sod and prepared the soil for the later peaceful growth; but in itself it accomplished nothing for which it was undertaken.

The repeal of the corn laws in 1846 was followed, as was the Reform Bill of 1832, by a series of other reforms of a similar kind,--all in the direction of free-trade, which from that time has continued to be the established principle of English legislation on all the great necessities of life. Scarcely had Lord John Russell in 1846 taken the helm of state, when the duties on sugar were abolished, no discrimination being shown between sugar raised in the British colony of Jamaica and that which was raised in Cuba and other parts of the world. The navigation laws, which prohibited the importation of goods except in British ships, or ships which belonged to the country where the goods were produced, were repealed or greatly modified. The whole colonial system was also revised, especially in Canada; and sanitary measures were taken to prevent disease in all the large towns of the country.

In the midst of these various reforms, which the government under Lord John Russell prosecuted with great zeal and ability, and by which a marked improvement took place in the condition of the people, Sir Robert Peel was thrown from his horse in London, June 29, 1850, and survived but a few days. His accidental death created universal lamentation, for everybody felt that a great national loss had occurred. In spite of the bitterness of the monopolists, disappointed in their gains, no death was ever more seriously and universally lamented in England. Other statesmen blazed upon their contemporaries with more brilliant original genius than Peel, but no one ever had more force of character than he, or was more respected for his candor, truthfulness, and patriotism. If he had not the divination to originate, he showed transcendent ability in appropriating and making his own the worthy conceptions of others. He was among those few statesmen who are willing to renounce the dearest opinions of youth and the prejudices of manhood when convinced of their unsoundness.

Peel was a great administrator and a great debater. His character was austere, his temperament was cold, his manners were awkward and shy; he was chary in the bestowal of pensions and rewards; and by reason of his rather unsympathetic nature he never was a favorite with artists and literary men. It was his conviction that literary men were not sufficiently practical to be intrusted with political office. Hence he refused to make Monckton Milnes an under-secretary of state. When Gladstone published his book on Church and State, being then a young man, it is said that Peel threw it contemptuously on the floor, exclaiming, "What a pity it is that so able a man should injure his political prospects by writing such trash!" Nor was Peel sufficiently passionate to become a great orator like O'Connell or Mirabeau; and yet he was a great man, and the nation was ultimately grateful for the services he rendered to his country and to civilization. Had his useful and practical life been prolonged, he probably would again have taken the helm of state. He was always equal to the occasion; but no occasion was sufficiently great to give him the éclat which Pitt enjoyed in the wars of Napoleon. Under the administration of Peel the country was at peace, and no such internal dangers threatened it as those which marked the passage of the Reform Bill.

Sir Robert Peel was one of the most successful ministers that England ever had. Certainly no minister was ever more venerated than he; and even the Duke of Wellington did nothing without his advice and co-operation. In fact, he led the ministry of the duke as Canning did that of the Earl of Liverpool; and had he been less shy and reserved, he would not have passed as so proud a man, and would have been more popular. There is no trait of character in a great man less understood than what we call pride, which often is not pride at all, but excessive shyness and reserve, based on sensitiveness and caution rather than self-exaggeration and egotism.

Few statesmen have done more than Peel to advance the material interests of the people; yet he never was a popular idol, and his history fails to kindle the enthusiasm with which we study the political career of Pitt or Canning or Disraeli or Gladstone. He was regarded as a great potentate rather than as a great genius; and he loved to make his power felt irrespective of praise or censure from literary men, to whom he was civil enough, but whose society he did not court. Politics were the element in which he lived, and politicians were his chief associates outside the family circle, which he adorned. And yet when distinguished merit in the Church or in the field of literature was brought to his notice, he was ready to reward it.

As a proof of the growing fame of Sir Robert Peel, no less than three biographies of him have lately been issued from the Press. Such, after a lapse of forty years, indicates the lasting reputation he has won as a statesman; but as a statesman only. He filled no other sphere. He was not a lawyer like Brougham; not a novelist like Beaconsfield; not a historian like Macaulay; not an essayist and reviewer like Gladstone. He was contented to be a great parliamentary leader alone.

AUTHORITIES.

Molesworth's History of England; Miss Martineau's History of England; Justin McCarthy's Life of Sir Robert Peel; Alison's History of Europe,--all of which should be read in connection with the Lives of contemporary statesmen, especially of Cobden, Bright, and Lord John Russell. The Lives of foreign statesmen shed but little light, since the public acts of Sir Robert Peel were chiefly confined to the domestic history of England.

CAVOUR.

1810-1861.

UNITED ITALY.

The most interesting and perhaps important event in the history of Europe in the interval between the fall of Napoleon I. and that of Napoleon III., a period of fifty-six years,--from 1815 to 1871,--was that which united the Italians under the government of Victor Emmanuel as a constitutional monarchy, free of all interference by foreign Powers.

The freedom and unity of Italy are to be considered, however, only from a political point of view. The spiritual power still remains in the hands of the Pope, who reigns as an ecclesiastical monarch over not only Italy but all Roman Catholic countries, as the popes have reigned for a thousand years. That venerable and august despotism was not assailed, or even modified, in the separation of the temporal from the spiritual powers. It was rather, probably, increased in influence. At no time since the Reformation has the spiritual authority of the Roman Pontiff been greater than it is at the present day. Nor can any one, however gifted and wise, foretell when that authority will be diminished. "The Holy Father" still reigns and is likely long to reign as the vicegerent of the Almighty in all matters of church government in Catholic countries, and as the recognized interpreter of their religious faith. So long as people remain Roman Catholics, they must remain in allegiance to the head of their church. They may cease to be Catholics, and no temporal harm will happen to them; but the awful power remains over those who continue to abide within the pale of the Church. Of his spiritual subjects the Pope exacts, as he has exacted for centuries, absolute and unconditional obedience through his ministers,--one great hierarchy of priests; the most complete and powerful mechanism our world has seen for good or evil, built up on the experience of ten centuries, and generally directed by consummate sagacity and inflexibility of purpose.

I have nothing here to say against this majestic sovereignty, which is an institution rather than a religion. Most of the purely religious dogmas which it defends and enforces are equally the dogmas of a majority of the Protestant churches, founded on the teachings of Christ and his apostles. The doctrines of Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, the great authorities of the Catholic Church, were substantially embraced by Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, and the Westminster divines. The Protestants rebelled mainly against the usurpations and corruptions of the Catholic Church as an institution, not against the creed of the Fathers and schoolmen and theological doctors in all Catholic countries. The Nicene and Apostles' creeds bind together all orthodox Christians, whether of the Roman or Greek or Protestant churches.

Thus, in speaking of the liberation and unity of Italy as effected by an illustrious band of patriots, aided by friendly powers and fortunate circumstances, I mean freedom in a political sense. The papal yoke, so far as it was a yoke, was broken only in a temporal point of view. The Pope lost only his dominions as a temporal sovereign,--nothing of his dignity as an ecclesiastical monarch; and we are to consider his opposition to Victor Emmanuel and other liberators chiefly as that of a temporal prince, like Ferdinand of Naples. The great Italian revolution which established the sovereignty of the King of Sardinia over the whole peninsula was purely a political movement. Religious ideas had little or nothing to do with it. Communists and infidels may have fought under the standards of Mazzini and Garibaldi, but only to gain political privileges and rights. Italy remained after the revolution, as before, a Catholic country.

In considering this revolution, which destroyed the power of petty tyrants and the authority of foreign despots, which gave a free constitution and national unity to the whole country,--the rule of one man by the will of the people, and the checks which a freely elected legislature imposes,--it will be my aim to present chiefly the labors and sacrifices of a very remarkable band of patriots, working in different ways and channels for the common good, and assisted in their work by the aid of friendly States and potentates. But underneath and apart from the matchless patriotism and ability of a few great men like D'Azeglio, Mazzini, Garibaldi, Manin, Cavour, and, not least, the King of Sardinia himself,--who reigned at Turin as a constitutional monarch before the revolution,--should be mentioned the almost universal passion of the Italian people to throw off the yokes which oppressed them, whether imposed by the King of Naples, or by the Pope as a temporal prince, or by Austria, or by the various princes who had divided between them the territories of the peninsula,--diverse, yet banded together to establish their respective tyrannies, and to suppress liberal ideas of government and all reforms whatsoever. All who could read and write, and even many who could not, except those who were dependent on the government or hopelessly wedded to the ideas and institutions of the Middle Ages,--that conservative class to be found in every country, who cling to the past and dread the future,--had caught the contagion spread by the apostles of liberty in France, in Spain, in Greece, in England. The professors and students in the universities, professional men, and the well-to-do of the middle classes were foremost in their discontent and in their zeal for reform. They did not agree in their theories of government, nor did they unite on any definite plan for relief. Many were utterly impractical and visionary; some were at war with any settled government, and hated all wholesome restraints,--communists and infidels, who would destroy, without substituting anything better instead; some were in favor of a pure democracy, and others of representative governments; some wanted a republic, and others a constitutional monarchy: but all wanted a change.

There was one cry, one watchword common to all,--Personal liberty!--freedom to act and speak without the fear of inquisitions, spies, informers, prisons, and exile. In Naples, in Rome, in Bologna, in Venice, in Florence, in Milan, in Turin, there was this universal desire for personal liberty, and the resolution to get it at any cost. It was the soul of Italy going out in sympathy with all liberators and patriots throughout the world, intensified by the utterances of poets and martyrs, and kept burning by all the traditions of the past,--by the glories of classic Rome; and by the aspirations of the renaissance, when art, literature, and commerce revived. The common people united with their intellectual leaders in seeking something which would break their chains. They alike responded to the cries of patriotism, in some form or other. "Emancipate us from our tyrants, and we will follow you wherever you choose to lead," was the feeling of all classes. "We don't care who rules us, or what form government may take, provided we are personally free."

In addition to this passion for personal liberty was also the desire for a united Italy,--a patriotic sentiment confined however to men of great intelligence, who scarcely expected such a boon, so great were the difficulties and obstacles which stared them in the face. It was impossible for the liberators of Italy to have effected so marvellous a movement if the material on which they worked had not been so impulsive and inflammable.

It required an uncommon degree of patriotic ardor on the part of the mass of the people to follow leaders like Garibaldi and Mazzini,--one of whom was rash to audacity, and the other visionary; and neither of whom had the confidence of the government at Turin, which, however, was not disposed to throw cold water on their enterprises or seriously to interfere with them. One thing is clear,--that had not the Italians, on the whole, been ripe for revolution it could not have succeeded; as in France the coup d'état of 1851, which enabled Louis Napoleon to mount the throne, could not have succeeded twenty years earlier when he made his rash attempt at Strasburg. All successful revolutions require the ready assent--nay, even the enthusiasm--of the people. The Italian revolution was based on popular discontent in all parts of the country where the people were oppressed, and on their enthusiastic aspirations for a change of rulers. What could any man of genius, however great his abilities, have done without this support of the people? What could the leaders of the American Revolution have done unless the thirteen colonies had rallied around them? Certainly no liberated people ever supported their leaders with greater enthusiasm and more self-sacrifices than the Italians. Had they been as degraded as has sometimes been represented, they would not have fought so bravely.

The Italian revolution in its origin dates back as early as 1820, when the secret societies were formed--especially that of the Carbonari--with a view to shake the existing despotisms. The Carbonari ("charcoal burners"), as they called themselves, were organized first at Naples. This uprising (at first successful) in Naples and Piedmont was put down by Austrian bayonets, and the old order of things was restored. A constitutional government had been promised to various Italian States by the first Napoleon in 1796. when he invited the Italians to rally to his standard and overthrow the Bourbon and Austrian despotisms; but his promises had not been kept. "Never," said that great liar to Prince Metternich, "will I give the Italians a liberal system: I have granted to them only the semblance of it." Equally false were the promises made by Austrian generals in 1813, when the Italians were urged to join in the dethronement of the great conqueror who had drafted them into his armies without compensation.

Though Italian liberty was suppressed by the strong arm of despotism, its spirit was kept alive by the secret societies, among whom were enrolled men of all classes; but these societies had no definite ends to accomplish. Among them were men of every shade of political belief. In general, they aimed at the overthrow of existing governments rather than at any plan as to what would take their place. When, through their cabals, they had dethroned Ferdinand I. at Naples, he too, like Napoleon, promised a constitution, and swore to observe it; but he also broke both his promises and oaths, and when reinstated by irresistible forces, he reigned more tyrannically than before.

When the revolution in the Sardinian province of Piedmont was suppressed (1821), King Victor Emmanuel I. refused to grant further liberty to his subjects, or to make promises which he could not fulfil. In this state of mind the honest old king abdicated in favor of his brother Charles Felix, who ruled despotically as Austria dictated, but did not belong to that class of despicable monarchs who promise everything and grant nothing.

In 1831, on the death of Charles Felix, the throne of Piedmont--or, rather, Sardinia, as it was called when in 1720 the large island of that name was combined with the principality of Piedmont and other territories to form a kingdom--was ascended by Charles Albert, of the younger branch of the House of Savoy. Charles Albert was an honest sovereign, but perpetually vacillating between the liberal and clerical parties. He hated Austria, but was averse to revolutionary measures. He ruled wisely, however, effecting many useful reforms, and adding to the prosperity of the country, which was the best governed of all the Italian States. It was to him that Mazzini appealed to put himself at the head of the national movement for liberty.

Joseph Mazzini, one of the earliest of the prominent men who aided in the deliverance of Italy, was a native of Genoa, belonging to a good but not illustrious family. He was a boy of twelve years of age when the revolution of 1821 broke out in Piedmont, which was so summarily crushed by Austria. At that early age he had indefinite ideas, but thought that Italians should boldly struggle for the liberty of their country. In 1826, while a student at the university, he published an article on Dante, whose lofty sentiments and independent spirit made a deep impression on his soul. His love for his native land became like a "fire in his bones;" it was a passion which nothing could repress. He was an enthusiast of immense physical and moral courage, pure-minded, lofty in his aspirations, imbued with the spirit of sacrifice. As his mind developed, he became an intense republican. He had no faith in monarchies, even if liberal. Heart and soul he devoted himself to the spread of republican ideas. He early joined the Carbonari, who numbered nearly a million in Italy, and edited a literary paper in Genoa, in which he dared to rebuke the historian Botta for his aristocratic tendencies. He became so bold in the advocacy of extreme liberal opinions that his journal was suppressed by government. When the French insurrection broke out in 1830, he and other young men betook themselves to the casting of bullets. He was arrested, and confined in the fortress of Savona, on the western Riviera. It was while in prison that he conceived the plan of establishing a society, which he called "Young Italy," for the propagation of republican ideas. When liberated he proceeded to Geneva, where he made the acquaintance of Sismondi, the Swiss historian, who treated him with great kindness and urbanity, and introduced him to Pellegrino Rossi, the exiled publicist, at that time professor of law at Geneva. From Geneva Mazzini went to Lyons, and there collected a band of Italian exiles, mostly military men, who contemplated the invasion of Savoy. Hunted as a refugee, he secretly escaped to Marseilles, and thence to Corsica, where the Carbonari had great influence. Returning to Marseilles, he resumed his design of founding the Association of Young Italy, and became acquainted with the best of the exiles who had flocked to that city. It was then he wrote to Charles Albert, who had lately ascended the Sardinian throne, inviting him to place himself at the head of the liberal movement; but the king at once gave orders to arrest the visionary enthusiast if found in his dominions.

The Association of Young Italy which Mazzini founded, and which soon numbered thousands of enthusiastic young men, proclaimed as the basis of its political belief Liberty, Equality, Humanity, Independence, Unity. It was republican, as favoring the only form of government which it was supposed would insure the triumph of these principles. It was unitary, because without unity there was no true nationality or real strength. The means to reach these ends, Mazzini maintained, were not assassination, as represented by the dagger of the Carbonari, but education and insurrection,--and insurrection by guerrilla bands, as the only way for the people to emancipate themselves from a foreign yoke. It was a foreign yoke under which Italy groaned, since all the different states and governments were equally supported by foreign armies.

So far as these principles harmonized with those proclaimed by the French revolutionists, they met very little opposition from the Italian liberals; but national unity, however desirable, was pronounced chimerical. How could Naples, Rome, Venice, Florence, Sardinia, and the numerous other States, be joined together under one government? And then, under what form of government should this union be effected? To the patriots of 1831 this seemed an insoluble problem. Mazzini, from first to last, maintained that the new government should be republican. Yet what more visionary than a united Italy as a republic? The sword, or fortunate circumstances, might effect unity, but under the rule only of one man, whether he were bound by a constitution or not. Such a union Mazzini would not entertain for a moment, and persistently disseminated his principles.

In consequence, a decree of banishment from France was proclaimed against him. He hid himself in Marseilles, and the police could not find him. From his secret retreat his writings continued to be issued, and were scattered over France, Switzerland, and Italy, and found readers and advocates.

At length, in 1833, Mazzini ventured to put his principles into practice, and meditated the invasion of Savoy, to produce an insurrection at Genoa and Alessandra. With amazing perseverance under difficulties, he succeeded in collecting money and men, and, without military education or genius, made his attempt. Defeated by the royal troops, the expedition failed, as might have been expected. Such a man should have fought with the pen and not the sword. The enterprise was a failure from the start. Mazzini was sentenced to death; but again he escaped, and fled to Berne, whence he continued to issue his publications. Thus two or three years were passed, when, through the efforts of sundry Italian governments, the authorities of Berne resolved to disperse the Association of Young Italy.

Mazzini again became a fugitive, and in 1837 found his way to England, without money, without friends, without influence,--a forlorn exile fraternizing with doubt, sorrow, and privation; struggling for more than a year in silence; so poor at one time as to be compelled to pawn his coat and boots to keep himself from absolute starvation, for he was too proud to beg. Thus did he preserve his dignity, and uncomplainingly endure his trials. At last he found means to support himself modestly by literature, and gradually made friends,--among them Thomas Carlyle. He gained social position as a man of genius, of unsullied moral character and of elevated patriotism, although his political opinions found but few admirers. Around his humble quarters the Italian exiles gathered, and received kind words of encouragement and hope; some of them he was able to assist in their struggles with bitter poverty.

Finally, in 1848, Mazzini returned to Italy, no longer molested, to take part in the revolution which was to free his country. He found power in the hands of the moderate progressive party.

The leader of this party was the Marquis Massimo d'Azeglio, belonging to an ancient and aristocratic Piedmontese family. He was a man of great weight of character and intellectual expansion. In 1846 he was ordered to leave Tuscany, for having printed a book of liberal views, which gave offence to the government. He was opposed to the republican opinions of Mazzini, and was a firm advocate of a constitutional monarchy. He desired reforms to be carried on moderately and wisely. Probably he was the most enlightened man in Italy at this time, and of incorruptible integrity. He was well acquainted with the condition of the cities of Italy, having visited most of them, and had great influence with Charles Albert, who was doubtless patriotic in his intentions, but disposed to move cautiously.

It was the aim of D'Azeglio to bring to bear an enlightened public opinion on the evils which were generally admitted, without provoking revolutionary risings, in which he had no faith. Like other Italian patriots, he desired to see his country freed from foreign domination, and was as much disliked by Metternich as by Mazzini. The Austrian statesman ridiculed the idea of Italian unity, and called Italy a "geographical expression." What he considered an impossibility is now realized as a fact. His judgment of the papacy however was wiser. A "liberal Pope," he declared, "is not a possible being." To all the reforms advocated by Italian statesmen the Pope, whatever his name, has remained consistently inflexible. The words ascribed to the Jesuits would apply to all the Popes,--"Let us remain as we are, or let us exist no longer." To every proposition for reform the cry has been, Non possumus. The minutest concession has been obstinately refused,--a fact so well known that even in Rome itself no other course has been possible among its discontented people than absolute rebellion. Something was hoped from Pius IX.; but all hopes of reforms at his hand vanished soon after his elevation in 1846. He did, indeed, soon after his accession, publish an amnesty for political offences; but this was a matter of grace, to show his kindness of heart, not to indicate any essential change in the papal policy.

Benevolence and charity are two different things from sympathy with reform and liberality of mind. The first marked Metternich and Alexander I. of Russia, as well as Pius IX. The most urbane and graceful of princes may be inflexible tyrants so far as government is concerned, like Augustus and Louis XIV. You may be charmed with the manners and genial disposition and unaffected piety of a dignitary of the Church, but there can be no cordial agreement with him respecting the rights of the people any more than as to Church dogmas, even if you yield up ninety-nine points out of a hundred. The intensest bigotry and narrowness are compatible with the most charming manners and the noblest acts of personal kindness. This truth is illustrated by the characters drawn by Sir Walter Scott in his novels, and by Hume in his histories. It explains the inconsistencies of hospitable English Tories, of old-fashioned Southern planters, of the haughty nobles of Austria who gathered around the table of the most accomplished gentleman in Europe,--equally famous for his graceful urbanities and infamous for his uncompromising hostility to the leaders of liberal movements. On the other hand, those who have given the greatest boons to humanity have often been rough in manners, intolerant of infirmities, bitter in their social prejudices, hard in their dealings, and acrid in their tempers; and if they were occasionally jocular, their jokes were too practical to be in high favor with what is called good society.

Now D'Azeglio was a high-born gentleman, aristocratic in all his ideas, and, what was unusual with Italian nobles, a man of enlarged and liberal views, who favored reforms if they could be carried out in a constitutional way,--like Lord John Russell and the great English Whig noblemen who passed the Reform Bill, or like the French statesmen of the type of Thiers and Guizot.

In the general outbreak of revolutionary ideas which convulsed all Europe in 1848, when even Metternich was driven from power, Charles Albert was forced to promise a constitution to his North Italian subjects,--and kept his word, which other Italian potentates did not, when they were restored by Austrian bayonets. He had always been vacillating, but at last he saw the necessities of Italy and recognized the spirit of the times. He was thus naturally drawn into a war with Austria, whose army in Italy was commanded by the celebrated Marshal Radetzky. Though an old man of eighty, the Austrian general defeated the King of Piedmont in several engagements. At Novara, on the 23d of March, 1849, he gained a decisive victory, which led to the abdication of the king; and amidst gloom, disaster, and difficulty, the deposed monarch was succeeded by his son, the Duke of Savoy, under the name of Victor Emmanuel II.

The young king rallied around him the ablest and most patriotic men he could find, including D'Azeglio, who soon became his prime minister; and it was from this nobleman's high character, varied abilities, unshaken loyalty to his sovereign, and ardent devotion to the Italian cause, that Victor Emmanuel was enabled to preserve order and law on the one hand and Italian liberties on the other. All Italy, as well as Piedmont, had confidence in the integrity and patriotism of the king, and in the wisdom of his prime minister, who upheld the liberties they had sworn to defend. D'Azeglio succeeded in making peace with Austria, while, at the same time, he clung to constitutional liberty. Under his administration the finances were improved and national resources were developed. Sardinia became the most flourishing of all the States of Italy, in which both freedom and religious toleration were enjoyed,--for Naples and Rome had relapsed into despotisms, and the iron hand of Austria was still felt throughout the peninsula. Among other reforms, ecclesiastics were placed on the same footing with other citizens in respect to the laws,--a great movement in a Catholic State. This measure was of course bitterly opposed by the clerical and conservative party, but was ably supported in the legislature by the member from Turin,--Count Camillo Cavour; and this great man now became one of the most prominent figures in the drama played by Italian patriots, since it was to his sagacious statesmanship and devoted labors that their efforts were crowned with final success.

Cavour was a man of business, of practical intellect, and of inexhaustible energies. His labors, when he had once entered upon public life, were prodigious. His wisdom and tact were equal to his industry and administrative abilities. Above all, his patriotism blazed with a steady light, like a beacon in a storm, as intense as that of Mazzini, but more wisely directed.

Cavour was a younger son of a noble Piedmontese family, and entered the army in 1826, serving in the engineers. His liberal sentiments made him distrusted by the government of Charles Felix as a dangerous man, and he was doomed to an inactive life in an unimportant post. He soon quitted the army, and embarked in business operations as manager of one of the estates of his family. For twelve years he confined himself to agricultural labors, making himself acquainted with all the details of business and with the science of agriculture, introducing such improvements as the use of guano, and promoting agricultural associations; but he was not indifferent at the same time to public affairs, being one of the most zealous advocates of constitutional liberty. A residence in England gave him much valuable knowledge as to the working of representative institutions. He established in 1847 a political newspaper, and went into parliament as a member of the Chamber of Deputies. In 1848 he used all his influence to induce the government to make war with Austria; and when Charles Albert abdicated, and Victor Emmanuel became king, Cavour's great talents were rewarded. In 1850 he became minister of commerce; in 1852, prime minister. After that, his history is the history of Italy itself.

The Sardinian government took the lead of all the States of Italy for its vigor and its wisdom. To drive the Austrians out of the country now became the first principle of Cavour's administration. For this end he raised the military and naval forces of Sardinia to the utmost practicable point of efficiency; and the people from patriotic enthusiasm, cheerfully submitted to the increase of taxation. He built railways, made commercial treaties with foreign nations, suppressed monasteries, protected fugitives from Austrian and Papal tyranny, gave liberty to the Press, and even meditated the construction of a tunnel under Mont Cenis. His most difficult task was the reform of ecclesiastical abuses, since this was bitterly opposed by the clergy and the conservatives; but he succeeded in establishing civil marriages, in suppressing the Mendicant order of friars, and in making priests amenable to the civil courts. He also repressed all premature and unwise movements on the part of patriotic leaders to secure national deliverance, and hence incurred the hostility of Mazzini.

The master-stroke in the policy of Cavour as a statesman was to make a firm alliance with France and England, to be used as a lever against Austria. He saw the improbability of securing liberty to Italy unless the Austrians were expelled by force of arms. The Sardinian kingdom, with only five millions of people, was inadequate to cope singly with one of the most powerful military monarchies of Europe. Cavour looked for deliverance only by the aid of friendly Powers, and he secured the friendship of both France and England by offering five thousand troops for the Crimean war. On the 10th of January, 1855, a treaty was signed which admitted Sardinia on equal terms as the ally of the Western Powers; and the Sardinian army, under the command of General La Marmora, rendered very substantial aid, and fought with great gallantry in the Crimea. When, in 1856, an armistice took place between the contending Powers, followed by the Congress of Paris, Cavour took his place with the envoys of the great Powers. Furthermore, he availed himself of his opportunities to have private conferences with the Emperor Napoleon III. in reference to Italian matters; and his influence with the foreign statesmen he met in Paris was equally beneficial to the great end to which his life was devoted. His diplomacy was unrivalled for tact, and the ministers of France and England saw and acknowledged it. By his diplomatic abilities he enlisted the Emperor of the French in behalf of Italian independence, and, perhaps more than any other man, induced him to make war on Austria.

Cavour's lucid exposition of the internal affairs of Italy brought out the condemnation of the Russian and Prussian envoys as well as that of the English ministry, and led to their expostulation with the Austrian government. But all in vain. Austria would listen to no advice, and blindly pursued her oppressive policy, to the exasperation of the different leaders whatever may have been their peculiar views of government. All this prepared the way for the acknowledgment of Sardinia as the leader in the matter of Italian emancipation, whom the other Italian States were willing to follow. The hopes of the Italians were now turned to the House of Savoy, to its patriotic chief, and to its able minister, whose counsels Victor Emmanuel in most cases followed. From this time the republican societies which Mazzini had established lost ground before the ascendency which Cavour had acquired in Italian politics. Of the Western Powers, he would have preferred an alliance with Great Britain; but when he found he could expect from the English government no assistance by arms against Austria, he drew closer to the French emperor as the one power alone from whom efficient aid was to be obtained, and set his sharp wits at work to make such a course both easy and profitable to France.

There is reason to believe that Louis Napoleon was sincere in his desire to assist the Italians in shaking off the yoke of Austria, to the extent that circumstances should warrant. Whatever were his political crimes, his personal sympathies were with Italy. His youthful alliance with the Carbonari, his early political theories, the antecedents of his family, and his natural wish for the close union of the Latin races seem to confirm this view. Moreover, he was now tempted by Cavour with the cession of Savoy and Nice to France to strengthen his southern boundaries; and for the possession of these provinces he was willing to put Victor Emmanuel in the way to obtain as a compensation Venetia and Lombardy, then held by the iron hand of Austria. This would double the number of Victor Emmanuel's subjects, and give him the supremacy over the north of Italy. Cavour easily convinced his master that the sacrifice of Savoy, the home of his ancestors, though hard to accept, would make him more powerful than all the other sovereigns of Italy combined, and would pave the way for the sovereignty of Italy itself,--the one object which Cavour had most at heart, and to which all his diplomatic talents were directed.

In the summer of 1858 Napoleon III. invited Cavour to a conference at Plombières, and thither the Italian statesman repaired; but the results of the conference were not revealed to the public, or even to the ministers of Louis Napoleon. Although there were no written engagements, it was arranged that Sardinia should make war on Austria and that France should come to her assistance, as the only practicable way for Italy to shake off the Austrian domination and secure her independence. Ultimately, not only independence but unity was the supreme aim of Cavour. For this great end the Italian statesman labored night and day, under great difficulties, and constant apprehension that something might happen which would compel the French emperor to break his promises, for his situation was also critical. But in reality Louis Napoleon desired war with Austria as much as Cavour, in order to find employment for his armies, to gain the coveted increase of territory, and to increase his military prestige.

Cavour, having completed arrangements with Napoleon III., at once sought the aid of all the Italian patriots. He secretly sent for Garibaldi, and unfolded to him his designs on Austria; and also he privately encouraged those societies which had for their end the deliverance of Italy. All this he did without the knowledge of the French emperor, who equally disliked Garibaldi and Mazzini.

At this time Garibaldi was one of the foremost figures in the field of Italian politics, and, to introduce him, we must go back to an earlier day. Giuseppe Garibaldi was born in 1807, at Nice, of humble parents, who were seafaring people. Although he was a wild youth, full of deeds of adventure and daring, he was destined by his priest-ridden father for the Church; but the boy's desire for a sailor's life could not be resisted. At the age of twenty-one he was second in command of a brig bound for the Black Sea, which was plundered three times during the voyage by Greek pirates. This misfortune left the young Garibaldi utterly destitute; but his wants being relieved by a generous Englishman, he was enabled to continue his voyage to Constantinople, where he was taken sick.

In 1834 he was induced to take part in the revolutionary movement which was going on under Mazzini, who had instituted his Society of Young Italy. On the failure of Mazzini in the rash affair of St. Julien,--an ill-timed insurrection in which Garibaldi took part,--the young sailor fled in disguise to Nice, and thence to Marseilles. Charles Albert was then on the throne of Sardinia, and though the most liberal sovereign in Italy, was tyrannical in his measures. Ferdinand II. ruled at Naples with a rod of iron; the Pontifical States and the Duchies of Modena and Parma were equally under despotic governments, while Venice and Lombardy were ground down by Austria.

In those days of discouragement, when all Italy was enslaved, Garibaldi left his country with a heavy heart, and sailing for South America, entered the service of the Republic of Rio Grande, which had set itself up against the authority of the Emperor of Brazil. In this struggle of a little State against a larger one, Garibaldi distinguished himself not only for his bravery but for his military talent of leadership. He took several prizes as a privateer, but was wounded in some engagement, and fled to Gualeguay, where he was thrown into prison, from which he made his escape, and soon after renewed his seafaring adventures, some of which were marvellous. After six years of faithful service to the Republic of Rio Grande, he bought a drove of nine hundred cattle, and set out for Montevideo with his Brazilian wife and child, to try a mercantile career. This was unsuccessful. He then became a schoolmaster at Montevideo, but soon tired of so monotonous a calling. Craving war and adventure, he buckled on his sword once more in the struggle between Montevideo and Buenos Ayres; and for his gallantry and successes he was made a general, but refused all compensation for his services, and remained in poverty, which he seemed to love as much as some love riches. The reputation which he gained drew a number of Italians to his standard, resolved to follow his fortunes.

In the meantime great things were doing in Piedmont towards reform by the Marquis D'Azeglio,--prime minister of Charles Albert,--who was then irretrievably devoted to the liberal cause. Every mail brought to Montevideo news which made Garibaldi's blood boil, and he resolved to return to Italy and take part in the movements of the patriots. This was in 1848, when not only Italy but all Europe was shaken by revolutionary ideas. He landed in Nice on the 24th of June, and at once went to the camp of Charles Albert, sought an interview, and offered his services, which, however, were not accepted,--the king having not forgotten that Garibaldi was once a rebel against him, and was still an outlaw.

Nothing remained for the adventurous patriot but to continue an inactive spectator or throw in his lot with the republican party. He did not wait long to settle that question, but flew to Milan and organized a force of thirty thousand volunteers for the defence of that city from the Austrians. On the conclusion of an armistice, which filled him with detestation of Charles Albert, he and Mazzini, who had joined the corps, undertook to harass the Austrians among the mountains above Lake Maggiore. Finding it impossible to make head against the Austrians in the midst of their successes, Garibaldi retired to Switzerland, where he lay ill for some time with a dangerous fever. On his recovery he started for Venice with two hundred and fifty volunteers, to join Daniele Manin in his memorable resistance to the Austrians; but hearing at Ravenna that a rebellion had broken out in Rome, he bent his course to the "Eternal City," to swell with fifteen hundred men the ranks of the rebellious subjects of the Pope,--for Pius IX. had repudiated the liberal principles which he had professed at the beginning of his reign.

When the rebellion broke out in Rome the Pope fled to Gaeta, and put himself under the protection of the King of Naples. A Constituent Assembly was called, in which both Mazzini and Garibaldi sat as members. Garibaldi was intrusted with the defence of the city; a triumvirate was formed--of which Mazzini was the inspiring leader--to administer affairs, and the temporal government of the Pope was decreed by the Assembly to be at an end.

Meanwhile, Louis Napoleon, then President of the French Republic, against all his antecedents, sided against the Liberals, and sent General Oudinot with a large army to restore the papal power at Rome. This general was at first defeated, but, on the arrival of reinforcements, he gradually gained possession of the city. The resistance was valiant but useless. In vain Mazzini promised assistance; in vain Garibaldi, in his red shirt and cap, defended the ramparts. On the 21st of June the French effected a breach in the city wall and planted their batteries, and on the 30th of June they made their final assault. Further resistance became hopeless; and Garibaldi, at the head of four thousand fugitives, leaving the city as the French entered it, again became a wanderer.

He first made his way to Tuscany, but at Arezzo found the gates closed against him. Hotly pursued by Austrian troops he crossed the Apennines, and sought the shelter of the little republic of San Marino, the authorities of which, in fear of the Austrians, refused him the refuge he sought, but in full sympathy with his cause connived at his escape. As Venice still held out under Manin, Garibaldi made his way to the Adriatic,--accompanied by his wife, the faithful Anita, about to become a mother,--where he and some of his followers embarked in some fishing-boats and reached the mouth of the Po, still hounded by the Austrians. He and his sick wife and a few followers were obliged to hide in cornfields, among rocks, and in caverns. On the shores of the Adriatic Anita expired in the arms of her husband, who, still hunted, contrived to reach Ravenna, where for a while he was hidden by friends.

It was now useless to proceed to Venice, at this time in the last gasp of her struggle; so Garibaldi made his way to Spezzia, on the Gulf of Genoa, with a single companion-in-arms, but learned that Florence was not prepared for rebellion. The government of Turin, fearing to allow so troublesome a guest to remain at Genoa, held him for a while in honorable captivity, but permitted him to visit his aged mother and his three children at Nice. On his return to Genoa, the government politely requested him to leave Italy. He passed over to the island of Sardinia, still hunted and half a bandit, wandering over the mountains, and, when hard pressed, retiring to the small island-rock of Caprera.

Eventually, finding no hopes of further rising in Italy, Garibaldi found his way to Liverpool, and embarked for New York. Arriving in that city he refused to be lionized, and also declined all contributions of money from admirers, but supported himself for eighteen months by making tallow candles on Staten Island. At the same time French exiles were seeking to gain a living in New York,--Ledru Rollin as a store porter, Louis Blanc as a dancing-master, and Felix Pyat as a scene-shifter. Not succeeding very well in making candles, Garibaldi went again to South America, and became captain of a trading-vessel plying between China and Peru, and then again of a vessel between New York and England. In 1854 he was once more in Genoa, and after cruising about the Mediterranean, he had amassed money enough to buy a portion of the island of Caprera, where he found a resting-place.

Sardinia was then under the guidance of Cavour, who was meditating the gaining of friendship from France by furnishing troops for the Crimean war. The moderate Liberal party had the ascendency in Italy, convinced that all hopes for the regeneration of their country rested on constitutional measures. Venice and Lombardy had settled down once more in subjection to Austria; the Pope reigned as a temporal prince with the assistance of French troops; and at Naples a Bourbon despot had re-established his tyrannical rule.

For ten years Garibaldi led a quiet life at Caprera, the whole island, fifteen miles in circumference, near the coast of Sardinia, having fallen into his possession. Here he cultivated a small garden redeemed from the rocks, and milked a few cows. He had also some fine horses given to him by friends, and his house was furnished in the most simple manner. On this island, monarch of all he surveyed, he diffused an unostentatious but generous hospitality; for many distinguished persons came to visit him, and he amused himself by writing letters and attempting some literary work.

In 1859, under the manipulation of Cavour, French and Italian politics became more and more intertwined,--the war with Austria, the formation of an Italian kingdom from the Alps to the Adriatic, the cession of Nice and Savoy and the marriage of Princess Clotilde to Prince Napoleon being the main objects which occupied the mind of Cavour. Early in the year Victor Emmanuel made public his intention of aiding Venice and Lombardy to throw off the Austrian yoke. It was then that the all-powerful Italian statesman sent for Garibaldi, who at once obeyed the summons, appearing in his red blouse and with his big stick, and was commissioned to fight against the Austrians. Volunteers from all parts of Italy flocked to his standard,--some four thousand disorderly troops, but devoted to him and to the cause of Italian independence. He held a regular commission in the allied armies of France and Sardinia, but was so hampered by jealous generals that Victor Emmanuel--dictator as well as king--gave him permission to quit the regular army, go where he liked, and fight as he pleased. With his volunteers Garibaldi performed many acts of bravery which won for him great éclat; but he made many military mistakes. Once he came near being captured with all his men; but fortune favored, and he almost miraculously escaped from the hands of the Austrians. The scene of his exploits was in the mountainous country around Lake Como.

Meanwhile the allied armies had defeated the Austrians at Magenta and Solferino, and Louis Napoleon had effected the celebrated treaty with Austria at Villa-Franca, arranging for a confederation of all the Italian States under the Papal Protectorate, and the cession of Lombardy to Sardinia. This inconclusive result greatly disgusted all the Italian patriots. Cavour resigned at once, but soon after was induced to resume his post at the head of affairs. Venice and Verona were still in Austrian hands. As the Prussians showed signs of uneasiness, it is probable that Louis Napoleon did not feel justified in continuing the war, in which he had nothing further to gain; at all events, he now withdrew. Garibaldi was exceedingly indignant at the desertion of France, and opposed bitterly the cession of Nice and Savoy,--by which he was brought in conflict with Cavour, who felt that Italy could well afford to part with a single town and a barren strip of mountain territory for the substantial advantages it had already gained by the defeat of the Austrian armies.

The people of the Italian States, however, repudiated the French emperor's arrangements for them, and one by one Modena, Tuscany, Parma, and the Romagna,--the upper tier of the Papal States,--formally voted for annexation to the Kingdom of Sardinia; and the king, nothing loath, received them into his fold in March, 1860. This result was in great measure due to the Baron Ricasoli of Tuscany, an independent country-gentleman and wine-grower, who had taken active interest in politics, and had been made Dictator of Tuscany when her grand duke fled at the outbreak of the war. Ricasoli obstinately refused either to recall the grand duke or to submit to the Napoleonic programme, but insisted on annexation to Sardinia; and the other duchies followed.

Garibaldi now turned his attention to the liberation of Naples and Sicily from the yoke of Ferdinand, which had become intolerable. As early as 1851, Mr. Gladstone, on a visit to Naples, wrote to Lord Aberdeen that the government of Ferdinand was "an outrage on religion, civilization, humanity, and decency." He had found the prisons full of state prisoners in the vilest condition, and other iniquities which were a disgrace to any government. The people had attempted by revolution again and again to shake off the accursed yoke, and had failed. Their only hope was from without.

It was the combined efforts of three men that freed Southern Italy from the yoke,--Mazzini, who opened the drama by recognizing in Sicily a fitting field of action; Cavour, by his diplomatic intrigues; and Garibaldi, by his bold and even rash enterprises. The patriotism of these three men is universally conceded; but they held one another in distrust and dislike, although in different ways they worked for the same end. Mazzini wanted to see a republican form of government established throughout Italy, which Cavour regarded as chimerical. Garibaldi did not care what government was established, provided Italy was free and united. Cavour, though he disapproved the rashness of Garibaldi, was willing to make use of him provided he was not intrusted with too high a command. Moreover, there were mutual jealousies, each party wishing to get the supreme direction of affairs.

The first step was taken in 1860 by Garibaldi, in his usual fashion. Having gathered about a thousand men, he set sail from Genoa to take part in the Sicilian revolution. Cavour, when he heard of the expedition, or rather raid, led by Garibaldi upon Sicily in aid of the insurrectionists, ostensibly opposed it, and sent an admiral to capture him and bring him back to Turin; but secretly he favored it. The government of Turin held aloof from the expedition out of regard to foreign Powers, who were indignant that the peace of Europe should be disturbed by a military adventurer,--in their eyes, half-bandit and half-sailor. Lord John Russell, however, in England, gave his encouragement and assistance by the directions given to Admiral Mundy, who interposed his ships between the Neapolitan cruisers and the soldiers of Garibaldi, then marching on the coast. France remained neutral; Austria had been crippled; and Prussia and Russia were too distant to care much about a matter which did not affect them.

So, with his troop of well-selected men, Garibaldi succeeded in landing on the Sicilian shores. He at once issued his manifesto to the people, and soon had the satisfaction to see his forces increased. He first came in contact with the Neapolitan troops among the mountains at Calatafimi, and defeated them, so that they retired to Palermo. The capital of Sicily could have been easily defended; but, aided by a popular uprising, Garibaldi was soon master of the city, and took up his quarters in the royal palace as Dictator of Sicily, where he lived very quietly, astonishing the viceroy's servants by his plain dinners of soup and vegetables without wine. His wardrobe was then composed "of two pairs of gray trousers, an old felt hat, two red shirts, and a few pocket-handkerchiefs."

On the 17th of July, 1860, Garibaldi left Palermo, and embarked for Milazzo, on the northwest coast of Sicily, where he gained another victory, which opened to him the city of Messina. The Neapolitan government deemed all further resistance on the island of Sicily useless, and recalled its troops for the defence of Naples. At Messina, Garibaldi was joined by Father Gavazzi, the finest orator of Italy, who had seceded from the Romish Church, and who threw his whole soul into the cause of Italian independence. Garibaldi now had a force of twenty-five thousand men under his orders, and prepared to invade the peninsula.

On the 17th of August he landed at Taormina with a part of his army, and marched on Reggio, a strong castle, which he took by assault. This success gave him a basis of operations on the main land. The residue of his troops were brought over from Messina, and his triumphal march to Naples immediately followed, not a hand being raised against him. The young king Francis II. fled as the conqueror approached,--or rather I should say, deliverer; for Garibaldi had no hard battles to fight when once he had landed on the shores of Italy. His popularity was so great, and the enthusiasm of the people was so unbounded, that armies melted away or retired as he approached with his Calabrian sugar-loaf hat; and, instead of fighting, he was obliged to go through the ordeal of kissing all the children and being hugged by all the women.

Naples was now without a government, and Garibaldi had no talent for organization. The consequence was that the city was torn by factions, and yet Garibaldi refused to adopt vigorous measures. "I am grieved," he said, "at the waywardness of my children," yet he took no means to repress disorders. He even reaped nothing but ingratitude from those he came to deliver. Not a single Garibaldian was received into a private house, while three thousand of his men were lying sick and wounded on the stones of the Jesuit College. How was it to be expected that anything else could happen among a people so degraded as the Neapolitans, one hundred years behind the people of North Italy in civilization, in intelligence, in wealth, and in morals,--in everything that qualifies a people for liberty or self-government?

In the midst of the embarrassments which perplexed and surrounded the dictator, Mazzini made his appearance at Naples. Garibaldi, however, would have nothing to do with the zealous republican, and held his lot with the royalists, as he was now the acknowledged representative of the Sardinian government. Mazzini was even requested to leave Italy, which he refused to do. Whether it was from jealousy that Garibaldi held aloof from Mazzini,--vastly his intellectual superior,--or from the conviction that his republican ideas were utterly impracticable, cannot be known. We only know that he sought to unite the north and the south of Italy under one government, as a preparation for the conquest of central Italy, which he was impatient to undertake at all hazards.

At last the King of Naples prepared to make one decisive struggle for his throne. From his retreat at Gaeta he rallied his forces, which were equal to those of Garibaldi,--about forty thousand men. On the 1st of October was fought the battle of Volturno, as to which Garibaldi, after fierce fighting, was enabled to send his exultant dispatch, "Complete victory along the whole line!" Francis II. retired to his strong fortress of Gaeta to await events.

Meanwhile, on the news of Garibaldi's successes, King Victor Emmanuel set out from Turin with a large army to take possession of the throne of Naples, which Garibaldi was ready to surrender. But the king must needs pass through the States of the Church,--a hazardous undertaking, since Rome was under the protection of the French troops. Louis Napoleon had given an ambiguous assent to this movement, which, however, he declined to assist; and, defeating the papal troops under General Lamoricière, Victor Emmanuel pushed on to Naples. As the King of Piedmont advanced from the north, he had pretty much the same experience that Garibaldi had in his march from the south. He met with no serious resistance. On passing the Neapolitan frontier he was met by Garibaldi with his staff, who laid down his dictatorship at his sovereign's feet,--the most heroic and magnanimous act of his life. This was also his proudest hour, since he had accomplished his purpose. He had freed Naples, and had united the South with the North. On the 10th of October the people of the Two Sicilies voted to accept the government of Victor Emmanuel; and the king entered Naples, November 7, in all the pomp of sovereignty.

Garibaldi's task was ended on surrendering his dictatorship; but he had one request to make of Victor Emmanuel, to whom he had given a throne. He besought him to dismiss Cavour, and to be himself allowed to march on Rome,--for he hated the Pope with terrible hatred, and called him Antichrist, both because he oppressed his subjects and was hostile to the independence of Italy. But Victor Emmanuel could not grant such an absurd request,--he was even angry; and the Liberator of Naples retired to his island-home with only fifteen shillings in his pocket!

This conduct on the part of the king may seem like ingratitude; but what else could he do? He doubtless desired that Rome should be the capital of his dominions as much as Garibaldi himself, but the time had not come. Victor Emmanuel could not advance on Rome and Venice with an "army of red shirts;" he could not overcome the armed veterans of Austria and France as Garibaldi had prevailed over the discontented troops of Francis II.,--he must await his opportunity. Besides, he had his hands full to manage the affairs of Naples, where every element of anarchy had accumulated.

To add to the embarrassments of Victor Emmanuel, he was compelled to witness the failing strength and fatal illness of his prime minister. The great statesman was dying from overwork. Although no man in Europe was capable of such gigantic tasks as Cavour assumed, yet even he had to succumb to the laws of nature. He took no rest and indulged in no pleasures, but devoted himself body and soul to the details of his office and the calls of patriotism. He had to solve the most difficult problems, both political and commercial. He was busy with the finances of the kingdom, then in great disorder; and especially had he to deal with the blended ignorance, tyranny, and corruption that the Bourbon kings of Naples had bequeathed to the miserable country which for more than a century they had so disgracefully misgoverned. All this was too much for the overworked statesman, who was always at his post in the legislative chamber, in his office with his secretaries, and in the council chamber of the cabinet. He died in June, 1861, and was buried, not in a magnificent mausoleum, but among his family relations at Santena.

Cavour did not, however, pass away until he saw the union of all Italy--except Venice and Rome--under the sceptre of Victor Emmanuel. Lombardy had united with Piedmont soon after the victory at Solferino, by the suffrages of its inhabitants. At Turin, deputies from the States of Italy,--except Venice and Rome,--chosen by the people, assembled, and formally proclaimed Italy to be free. The population of four millions, which comprised the subjects of Victor Emmanuel on his accession to the throne, had in about thirteen years increased to twenty-two millions; and in February, 1861, Victor Emmanuel was by his Senate and Chamber of Deputies proclaimed King of Italy, although he wisely forbore any attempt actually to annex the Venetian and Papal States.

Rome and Venice were still outside. The Pope remained inflexible to any reforms, any changes, any improvements. Non possumus was all that he deigned to say to the ambassadors who advised concessions. On the 7th of September, 1860, Victor Emmanuel sent an envoy to Rome to demand from his Holiness the dismissal of his foreign troops; which demand was refused. Upon this, the king ordered an army to enter the papal provinces of Umbria and the Marches. In less than three weeks the campaign was over, and General Lamoricière, who commanded the papal troops, was compelled to surrender. Austria, Prussia, and Russia protested; but Victor Emmanuel paid little heed to the protest, or to the excommunications which were hurled against him. The Emperor of the French found it politic to withdraw his ambassador from Turin, but adhered to his policy of non-intervention, and remained a quiet spectator. The English government, on the other hand, justified the government of Turin in thus freeing Italian territory from foreign troops.

Garibaldi was not long contented with his retirement at Caprera. In July, 1862, he rallied around him a number of followers, determined to force the king's hand, and to complete the work of unity by advancing on Rome as he had on Naples. His rashness was opposed by the Italian government,--wisely awaiting riper opportunity,--who sent against him the greatest general of Italy (La Marmora), and Garibaldi was taken prisoner at Aspromonte. The king determined to do nothing further without the support of the representatives of the nation, but found it necessary to maintain a large army, which involved increased taxation,--to which, however, the Italians generously submitted.

In 1866, while Austria was embroiled with Prussia, Victor Emmanuel, having formed an alliance with the Northern Powers, invaded Venetia; and in the settlement between the two German Powers the Venetian province fell to the King of Italy.

In 1867 Garibaldi made another attempt on Rome, but was arrested near Lake Thrasimene and sent back to Caprera. Again he left his island, landed on the Tuscan coast, and advanced to Rome with his body of volunteers, and was again defeated and sent back to Caprera. The government dealt mildly with this prince of filibusters, in view of his past services and his unquestioned patriotism. His errors were those of the head and not of the heart. He was too impulsive, too impatient, and too rash in his schemes for Italian liberty.

It was not until Louis Napoleon was defeated at Sedan that the French troops were withdrawn from Rome, and the way was finally opened for the occupation of the city by the troops of Victor Emmanuel in 1870. A Roman plebiscite had voted for the union of all Italy under the constitutional rule of the House of Savoy. From 1859 to 1865 the capital of the kingdom had been Turin, the principal city of Piedmont; with the enlargement of the realm the latter year saw the court removed to Florence, in Tuscany; but now that all the States were united under one rule, Rome once again, after long centuries had passed, became the capital of Italy, and the temporal power of the Pope passed away forever.

On the fall of Napoleon III. in 1870 Italian nationality was consummated, and Victor Emmanuel reigned as a constitutional monarch over united Italy. To his prudence, honesty, and good sense, the liberation of Italy was in no small degree indebted. He was the main figure in the drama of Italian independence, if we except Cavour, whose transcendent abilities were devoted to the same cause for which Mazzini and Garibaldi less discreetly labored. It is remarkable that such great political changes were made with so little bloodshed. Italian unity was effected by constitutional measures, by the voice of the people, and by fortunate circumstances more than by the sword. The revolutions which seated the King of Piedmont on the throne of United Italy were comparatively bloodless. Battles indeed were fought during the whole career of Victor Emmanuel, and in every part of Italy; but those of much importance were against the Austrians,--against foreign domination. The civil wars were slight and unimportant compared with those which ended in the expulsion of Austrian soldiers from the soil of Italy. The civil wars were mainly popular insurrections, being marked by neither cruelty nor fanaticism; indeed, they were the uprising of the people against oppression and misrule. The iron heel which had for so many years crushed the aspirations of the citizens of Venice, of Milan, and Rome, was finally removed only by the successive defeats of Austrian armies by Prussia and France.

Although the political unity and independence of Italy have been effected, it is not yet a country to be envied. The weight of taxation to support the government is an almost intolerable burden. No country in the world is so heavily taxed in proportion to its resources and population. Great ignorance is still the misfortune of Italy, especially in the central and southern provinces. Education is at a low ebb, and only a small part of the population can even read and write, except in Piedmont. The spiritual despotism of the Pope still enslaves the bulk of the people, who are either Roman Catholics with mediaeval superstitions, or infidels with hostility to all religion based on the Holy Scriptures. Nothing there as yet flourishes like the civilization of France, Germany, and England.

And yet it is to be hoped that a better day has dawned on a country endeared to Christendom for its glorious past and its classic associations. It is a great thing that a liberal and enlightened government now unites all sections of the country, and that a constitutional monarch, with noble impulses, reigns in the "Eternal City," rather than a bigoted ecclesiastical pontiff averse to all changes and improvements, having nothing in common with European sovereigns but patronage of art, which may be Pagan in spirit rather than Christian. The great drawback to Italian civilization at present is the foolish race of the nation with great military monarchies in armies and navies, which occupies the energies of the country, rather than a development of national resources in commerce, agriculture, and the useful arts.

AUTHORITIES.

Alison's History of Europe; Lives of Cavour, Mazzini, Garibaldi; Fyffe's Modern Europe; Mackenzie's History of the Nineteenth Century; Biography of Marshal Radetsky; Annual Register; Biography of Charles Albert; Ellesmere, as quoted by Alison; Memoirs of Prince Metternich; Carlo Botta's History of Italy.

CZAR NICHOLAS.

1796-1855.

THE CRIMEAN WAR.

For centuries before the Russian empire was consolidated by the wisdom, the enterprise, and the conquests of Peter the Great, the Russians cast longing eyes on Constantinople as the prize most precious and most coveted in their sight.

From Constantinople, the capital of the Greek empire when the Turks were a wandering and unknown Tartar tribe in the northern part of Asia, had come the religion that was embraced by the ancient czars and the Slavonic races which they ruled. To this Greek form of Christianity the Russians were devotedly attached. They were semi-barbarians, and yet bigoted Christians. In the course of centuries their priests came to possess immense power,--social and political, as well as ecclesiastical. The Patriarch of Moscow was the second personage of the empire, and the third dignitary in the Greek Church. Religious forms and dogmas bound the Russians with the Greek population of the Turkish empire in the strongest ties of sympathy and interest, even when that empire was in the height of its power. To get possession of those principalities under Turkish dominion in which the Greek faith was the prevailing religion had been the ambition of all the czars who reigned either at Moscow or at St. Petersburg. They aimed at a protectorate over the Christian subjects of the Porte in Eastern Europe; and the city where reigned the first Christian emperor of the old Roman world was not only sacred in their eyes, and had a religious prestige next to that of Jerusalem, but was looked upon as their future and certain possession,--to be obtained, however, only by bitter and sanguinary wars.

Turkey, in a religious point of view, was the certain and inflexible enemy of Russia,--so handed down in all the traditions and teachings of centuries. To erect again on the lofty dome of St. Sophia the cross, which had been torn down by Mohammedan infidels, was probably one of the strongest desires of the Russian nation; and this desire was shared in a still stronger degree by all the Russian monarchs from the time of Peter the Great, most of whom were zealous defenders of what they called the Orthodox faith. They remind us of the kings of the Middle Ages in the interest they took in ecclesiastical affairs, in their gorgeous religious ceremonials, and in their magnificent churches, which it was their pride to build. Alexander I. was, in his way, one of the most religious monarchs who ever swayed a sceptre,--more like an ancient Jewish king than a modern political sovereign.

But there was another powerful reason why the Russian czars cast their wistful glance on the old capital of the Greek emperors, and resolved sooner or later to add it to their dominions, already stretching far into the east,--and this was to get possession of the countries which bordered on the Black Sea, in order to have access to the Mediterranean. They wanted a port for the southern provinces of their empire,--St. Petersburg was not sufficient, since the Neva was frozen in the winter,--but Poland (a powerful kingdom in the seventeenth century) stood in their way; and beyond Poland were the Ukraine Cossacks and the Tartars of the Crimea. These nations it was necessary to conquer before the Muscovite banners could float on the strongholds which controlled the Euxine. It was not until after a long succession of wars that Peter the Great succeeded, by the capture of Azof, in gaining a temporary footing on the Euxine,--lost by the battle of Pruth, when the Russians were surrounded by the Turks. The reconquest of Azof was left to Peter's successors; but the Cossacks and Tartars barred the way to the Euxine and to Constantinople. It was not until the time of Catherine II. that the Russian armies succeeded in gaining a firm footing on the Euxine by the conquest of the Crimea, which then belonged to Turkey, and was called Crim Tartary. The treaties of 1774 and 1792 gave to the Russians the privilege of navigating the Black Sea, and indirectly placed under the protectorate of Russia the territories of Moldavia and Wallachia,--provinces of Turkey, called the Danubian principalities, whose inhabitants were chiefly of the Greek faith.

Thus was Russia aggrandized during the reign of Catherine II., who not only added the Crimea to her dominions,--an achievement to which Peter the Great aspired in vain,--but dismembered Poland, and invaded Persia with her armies. "Greece, Roumelia, Thessaly, Macedonia, Montenegro, and the islands of the Archipelago swarmed with her emissaries, who preached rebellion against the hateful Crescent, and promised Russian support, Russian money, and Russian arms." These promises however were not realized, being opposed by Austria,--then virtually ruled by Prince Kaunitz, who would not consent to the partition of Poland without the abandonment of the ambitious projects of Catherine, incited by Prince Potemkin, the most influential of her advisers and favorites. She had to renounce all idea of driving the Turks out of Turkey and founding a Greek empire ruled over by a Russian grand duke. She was forced also to abandon her Greek and Slavonic allies, and pledge herself to maintain the independence of Wallachia and Moldavia. Eight years later, in 1783, the Tartars lost their last foothold in the Crimea by means of a friendly alliance between Catherine and the Austrian emperor Joseph II., the effect of which was to make the Russians the masters of the Black Sea.

Catherine II., of German extraction, is generally regarded as the ablest female sovereign who has reigned since Semiramis, with the exception perhaps of Maria Theresa of Germany and Elizabeth of England; but she was infinitely below these princesses in moral worth,--indeed, she was stained by the grossest immoralities that can degrade a woman. She died in 1796, and her son Paul succeeded her,--a prince whom his imperial mother had excluded from all active participation in the government of the empire because of his mental imbecility, or partial insanity. A conspiracy naturally was formed against him in such unsettled times,--it was at the height of Napoleon's victorious career,--resulting in his assassination, and his son Alexander I. reigned in his stead.

Alexander was twenty-four when, in 1801, he became the autocrat of all the Russias. His reign is familiar to all the readers of the wars of Napoleon, during which Russia settled down as one of the great Powers. At the Congress of Vienna in 1814 the duchy of Warsaw, comprising four-fifths of the ancient kingdom of Poland, was assigned to Russia. During fifty years Russia had been gaining possession of new territory,--of the Crimea in 1783, of Georgia in 1785, of Bessarabia and a part of Moldavia in 1812. Alexander added to the empire several of the tribes of the Caucasus, Finland, and large territories ceded by Persia. After the fall of Napoleon, Alexander did little to increase the boundaries of his empire, confining himself, with Austria and Prussia, to the suppression of revolutionary principles in Europe, the weakening of Turkey, and the extension of Russian influence in Persia. In the internal government of his empire he introduced many salutary changes, especially in the early part of his reign; but after Napoleon's final defeat, his views gradually changed. The burdens of absolute government, disappointments, the alienation of friends, and the bitter experiences which all sovereigns must learn soured his temper, which was naturally amiable, and made him a prey to terror and despondency. No longer was he the frank, generous, chivalrous, and magnanimous prince who had called out general admiration, but a disappointed, suspicious, terrified, and prematurely old man, flying from one part of his dominions to another, as if to avoid the assassin's dagger. He died in 1825, and was succeeded by his brother,--the Grand Duke Nicholas.

The throne, on the principles of legitimacy, properly belonged to his elder brother,--the Grand Duke Constantine. Whether this prince shrank from the burdens of governing a vast empire, or felt an incapacity for its duties, or preferred the post he occupied as Viceroy of Poland or the pleasures of domestic life with a wife to whom he was devoted, it is not clear; it is only certain that he had in the lifetime of the late emperor voluntarily renounced his claim to the throne, and Alexander had left a will appointing Nicholas as his successor.

Nicholas had scarcely been crowned (1826) when war broke out between Russia and Persia; and this was followed by war with Turkey, consequent upon the Greek revolution. Silistria, a great fortress in Bulgaria, fell into the hands of the Russians, who pushed their way across the Balkan mountains and occupied Adrianople. In the meantime General Paskievitch followed up his brilliant successes in the Asiatic provinces of the Sultan's dominions by the capture of Erzeroum, and advanced to Trebizond. The peace of Adrianople, in September, 1829, checked his farther advances. This famous treaty secured to the Russians extensive territories on the Black Sea, together with its navigation by Russian vessels, and the free passage of Russian ships through the Dardanelles and Bosphorus to the Mediterranean. In addition, a large war indemnity was granted by Turkey, and the occupancy of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Silistria until the indemnity should be paid. Moreover, it was agreed that the hospodars of the principalities should be elected for life, to rule without molestation from the Porte upon paying a trilling tribute. A still greater advantage was gained by Russia in the surrender by Turkey of everything on the left bank of the Danube,--cities, fortresses, and lands, all with the view to their future annexation to Russia.

The territory ceded to Russia by the peace of Adrianople included the Caucasus,--a mountainous region inhabited by several independent races, among which were the Circassians, who acknowledged allegiance neither to Turkey nor Russia. Nicholas at first attempted to gain over the chieftains of these different nations or tribes by bribes, pensions, decorations, and military appointments. He finally was obliged to resort to arms, but without complete success.

Such, in brief, were the acquisitions of Russia during the reign of Nicholas down to the time of the Crimean war, which made him perhaps the most powerful sovereign in the world. As Czar of all the Russias there were no restraints on his will in his own dominions, and it was only as he was held in check by the different governments of Europe, jealous of his encroachments, that he was reminded that he was not omnipotent.

For fifteen years after his accession to the throne Nicholas had the respect of Europe. He was moral in his domestic relations, fond of his family, religious in his turn of mind, bordering on superstition, a zealot in his defence of the Greek Church, scrupulous in the performance of his duties, and a man of his word. The Duke of Wellington was his admiration,--a model for a sovereign to imitate. Nicholas was not so generous and impulsive as his brother Alexander, but more reliable. In his personal appearance he made a fine impression,--over six feet in height, with a frank and open countenance, but not expressive of intellectual acumen. His will, however, was inflexible, and his anger was terrible. His passionate temper, which gave way to bursts of wrath, was not improved by his experiences. As time advanced he withdrew more and more within himself, and grew fitful and jealous, disinclined to seek advice, and distrustful of his counsellors; and we can scarcely wonder at this result when we consider his absolute power and unfettered will.

Few have been the kings and emperors who resembled Marcus Aurelius, who was not only master of the world, but master of himself. Few indeed have been the despots who have refrained from acts of cruelty, or who have uniformly been governed by reason. Even in private life, very successful men have an imperious air, as if they were accustomed to submission and deference; but a monarch of Russia, how can he be otherwise than despotic and self-conscious? Everybody he sees, every influence to which he is subjected, tends to swell his egotism. What changes of character marked Saul, David, and Solomon! So of Nicholas, as of the ancient Caesars. With the advance of years and experience, his impatience grew under opposition and his rage under defeat. No man yet has lived, however favored, that could always have his way. He has to yield to circumstances,--not only to those great ones which he may own to have been determined by Divine Providence, but also to those unforeseen impediments which come from his humblest instruments. He cannot prevent deceit, hypocrisy, and treachery on the part of officials, any easier than one can keep servants from lying and cheating. Who is not in the power, more or less, of those who are compelled to serve; and when an absolute monarch discovers that he has been led into mistakes by treacherous or weak advisers, how natural that his temper should be spoiled!

Thus was Nicholas in the latter years of his reign. He was thwarted by foreign Powers, and deceived by his own instruments of despotic rule. He found himself only a man, and like other men. He became suspicious, bitter, and cruel. His pride was wounded by defeat and opposition from least expected quarters. He found his burdens intolerable to bear. His cares interfered with what were once his pleasures. The dreadful load of public affairs, which he could not shake off, weighed down his soul with anxiety and sorrow. He realized, more than most monarchs, the truth of one of Shakespeare's incomparable utterances,--

     "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."

The mistakes and disappointments of the Crimean war finally broke his heart; and he, armed with more power than any one man in the world, died with the consciousness of a great defeat.

It would be interesting to show how seldom the great rulers of this world have had an unchecked career to the close of their lives. Most of them have had to ruminate on unexpected falls,--like Napoleon, Louis Philippe, Metternich, Gladstone, Bismarck,--or on unattained objects of ambition, like the great statesmen who have aspired to be presidents of the United States. Nicholas thought that the capital of the "sick man" was, like ripe fruit, ready to fall into his hands. After one hundred years of war, Russia discovered that this prize was no nearer her grasp. Nicholas, at the head of a million of disciplined troops, was defeated; while his antagonist, the "sick man," could scarcely muster a fifth part of the number, and yet survived to plague his thwarted will.

The obstacles to the conquest of Constantinople by Russia are, after all, very great. There are only three ways by which a Russian general can gain this coveted object of desire. The one which seems the easiest is to advance by sea from Sebastopol, through the Black Sea, to the Bosphorus, with a powerful fleet. But Turkey has or had a fleet of equal size, while her allies, England and France, can sweep with ease from the Black Sea any fleet which Russia can possibly collect.

The ordinary course of Russian troops has been to cross the Pruth, which separates Russia from Moldavia, and advance through the Danubian provinces to the Balkans, dividing Bulgaria from Turkey in Europe. Once the Russian armies succeeded, amid innumerable difficulties, in conquering all the fortresses in the way, like Silistria, Varna, and Shumla; in penetrating the mountain passes of the Balkans, and making their way to Adrianople. But they were so demoralized, or weakened and broken, by disasters and privations, that they could get no farther than Adrianople with safety, and their retreat was a necessity. And had the Balkan passes been properly defended, as they easily could have been, even a Napoleon could not have penetrated them with two hundred thousand men, or any army which the Russians could possibly have brought there.

The third way open to the Russians in their advance to Constantinople is to march the whole extent of the northern shores of the Black Sea, and then cross the Caucasian range to the south, and advance around through Turkey in Asia, its entire width from east to west, amidst a hostile and fanatical population ready to die for their faith and country,--a way so beset with difficulties and attended with such vast expense that success would be almost impossible, even with no other foes than Turks.

The Emperor Nicholas was by nature stern and unrelenting. He had been merciless in his treatment of the Poles. When he was friendly, his frankness had an irresistible charm. During his twenty-seven years on the throne he had both "reigned and governed." However, he was military, without being warlike. With no talents for generalship, he bestowed almost incredible attention upon the discipline of his armies. He oppressively drilled his soldiers, without knowledge of tactics and still less of strategy. Half his time was spent in inspecting his armies. When, in 1828, he invaded Turkey, his organizations broke down under an extended line of operations. For a long time thereafter he suffered the Porte to live in repose, not being ready to destroy it, waiting for his opportunity.

When the Pasha of Egypt revolted from the Sultan, and his son Ibrahim seriously threatened the dismemberment of Turkey, England and France interfered in behalf of Turkey; and in 1840 a convention in London placed Turkey under the common safeguard of the five great Powers,--England, France, Prussia, Austria, and Russia,--instead of the protectorate exercised by Russia alone. After the fall of Hungary, a number of civil and military leaders took refuge in Turkey, and Russia and Austria demanded the expulsion of the refugees, which was peremptorily refused by the Sultan. In consequence, Russia suspended all diplomatic intercourse with Turkey, and sought a pretext for war. In 1844 the Czar visited England, doubtless with the purpose of winning over Lord Aberdeen, then foreign secretary, and the Duke of Wellington, on the ground that Turkey was in a state of hopeless decrepitude, and must ultimately fall into his hands. In this event he was willing that England, as a reward for her neutrality, should take possession of Egypt.

It is thus probable that the Emperor Nicholas, after the failure of his armies to reach Constantinople through the Danubian provinces and across the Balkans, meditated, after twenty years of rest and recuperation, the invasion of Constantinople by his fleet, which then controlled the Black Sea.

But he reckoned without his host. He was deceived by the pacific attitude of England, then ruled by the cabinet of Lord Aberdeen, who absolutely detested war. The premier was almost a fanatic in his peace principles, and was on the most friendly terms with Nicholas and his ministers. The Czar could not be made to believe that England, under the administration of Lord Aberdeen, would interfere with his favorite and deeply meditated schemes of conquest. He saw no obstacles except from the Turks themselves, timid and stricken with fears; so he strongly fortified Sebastopol and made it impregnable by the sea, and quietly gathered in its harbor an immense fleet, with which the Turkish armaments could not compare. The Turkish naval power had never recovered from the disaster which followed the battle of Navarino, when their fleet was annihilated. With a crippled naval power and decline in military strength, with defeated armies and an empty purse, it seemed to the Czar that Turkey was crushed in spirit and Constantinople defenceless; and that impression was strengthened by the representation of his ambassador at the Porte,--Prince Mentchikof, who almost openly insulted the Sultan by his arrogance, assumptions, and threats.

But a very remarkable man happened at that time to reside at Constantinople as the ambassador of England, one in whom the Turkish government had great confidence, and who exercised great influence over it. This man was Sir Stratford Canning (a cousin of the great Canning), who in 1852 was made viscount, with the title Lord Stratford de Redcliffe. He was one of the ablest diplomatists then living, or that England had ever produced, and all his sympathies were on the side of Turkey. Mentchikof was no match for the astute Englishman, who for some time controlled the Turkish government, and who baffled all the schemes of Nicholas.

England--much as she desired the peace of Europe, and much as Lord Aberdeen detested war--had no intention of allowing the "sick man" to fall into the hands of Russia, and through her ambassador at Constantinople gave encouragement to Turkey to resist the all-powerful Russia with the secret promise of English protection; and as Lord Stratford distrusted and disliked Russia, having since 1824 been personally engaged in Eastern diplomacy and familiar with Russian designs, he very zealously and with great ability fought the diplomatic battles of Turkey, and inspired the Porte with confidence in the event of war. It was by his dexterous negotiations that England was gradually drawn into a warlike attitude against Russia, in spite of the resolutions of the English premier to maintain peace at any cost.

In the meantime the English people, after their long peace of nearly forty years, were becoming restless in view of the encroachments of Russia, and were in favor of vigorous measures, even if they should lead to war. The generation had passed away that remembered Waterloo, so that public opinion was decidedly warlike, and goaded on the ministry to measures which materially conflicted with Lord Aberdeen's peace principles. The idea of war with Russia became popular,--partly from jealousy of a warlike empire that aspired to the possession of Constantinople, and partly from the English love of war itself, with its excitements, after the dulness and inaction of a long period of peace and prosperity. In 1853 England found herself drifting into war, to the alarm and disgust of Aberdeen and Gladstone, to the joy of the people and the satisfaction of Palmerston and a majority of the cabinet.

The third party to this Crimean contest was France, then ruled by Louis Napoleon, who had lately become head of the State by a series of political usurpations and crimes that must ever be a stain on his fame. Yet he did not feel secure on his throne; the ancient nobles, the intellect of the country, and the parliamentary leaders were against him. They stood aloof from his government, regarding him as a traitor and a robber, who by cunning and slaughter had stolen the crown. He was supposed to be a man of inferior intellect, whose chief merit was the ability to conceal his thoughts and hold his tongue, and whose power rested on the army, the allegiance of which he had seduced by bribes and promises. Feeling the precariousness of his situation, and the instability of the people he had deceived with the usual Napoleonic lies, which he called "ideas," he looked about for something to divert their minds,--some scheme by which he could gain éclat; and the difficulties between Russia and Turkey furnished him the occasion he desired. He determined to employ his army in aid of Turkey. It would be difficult to show what gain would result to France, for France did not want additional territory in the East. But a war would be popular, and Napoleon wanted popularity. Moreover, an alliance with England, offensive and defensive, to check Russian encroachments, would strengthen his own position, social as well as political. He needed friends. It was his aim to enter the family of European monarchs, to be on a good footing with them, to be one of them, as a legitimate sovereign. The English alliance might bring Victoria herself to Paris as his guest. The former prisoner of Ham, whom everybody laughed at as a visionary or despised as an adventurer, would, by an alliance with England, become the equal of Queen Victoria, and with infinitely greater power. She was a mere figure-head in her government, to act as her ministers directed; he, on the other hand, had France at his feet, and dictated to his ministers what they should do.

The parties, then, in the Crimean war were Russia, seeking to crush Turkey, with France and England coming to the rescue,--ostensibly to preserve the "balance of power" in Europe.

But before considering the war itself, we must glance at the preliminaries,--the movements which took place making war inevitable, and which furnished the pretext for disturbing the peace of Europe.

First must be mentioned the contest for the possession of the sacred shrines in the Holy Land. Pilgrimages to these shrines took place long before Palestine fell into the hands of the Mohammedans. It was one of the passions of the Middle Ages, and it was respected even by the Turks, who willingly entered into the feelings of the Christians coming to kneel at Jerusalem. Many sacred objects of reverence, if not idolatry, were guarded by Christian monks, who were permitted by the government to cherish them in their convents. But the Greek and the Latin convents, allowed at Jerusalem by the Turkish government, equally aspired to the guardianship of the Holy Sepulchre and other sacred shrines in Jerusalem. It rested with the Turkish government to determine which of the rival churches, Greek or Latin, should have the control of the shrines, and it was a subject of perpetual controversy,--Russia, of course, defending the claims of the Greek convents, who at this time had long been the appointed guardians, and France now taking up those of the Latin; although Russia was the more earnest in the matter, as holding a right already allowed.

The new President of the French republic, in 1851, on the lookout for subjects of controversy with Russia, had directed his ambassador at Constantinople to demand from the Porte some almost forgotten grants made to the Latin Church two or three hundred years before. This demand, which the Sultan dared not refuse, was followed by the Turks' annulling certain privileges which had long been enjoyed by the Greek convents; and thus the ancient dispute was reopened. The Greek Church throughout Russia was driven almost to frenzy by this act of the Turkish government. The Czar Nicholas, himself a zealot in religion, was indignant and furious; but the situation gave him a pretext for insults and threats that would necessarily lead to war, which he desired as eagerly as Louis Napoleon. The Porte, embarrassed and wishing for peace, leaned for advice on the English ambassador, who, as has been said, promised the mediation of England.

Then followed a series of angry negotiations and pressure made by Russia and France alternately on the Sultan in reference to the guardianship of the shrines,--as to who should possess the key of the chief door of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem and of the church at Bethlehem, Greek or Latin monks.

As the pressure made by France was the most potent, the Czar in his rage ordered one of his corps d'armée to advance to the frontiers of the Danubian provinces, and another corps to hold itself in readiness,--altogether a force of one hundred and forty-four thousand men. The world saw two great nations quarrelling about a key to the door of a church in Palestine; statesmen saw, on the one hand, the haughty ambition of Nicholas seeking pretence for a war which might open to him the gates of Constantinople, and, on the other hand, the schemes of the French emperor--for the ten-year president elected in 1851 had in just one year got himself "elected" emperor--to disturb the peace of Europe, which might end in establishing more securely his own usurpation.

The warlike attitude of Russia in 1853 alarmed England, who was not prepared to go to war. As has been said, Mentchikof was no match in the arts of diplomacy for Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, and an angry and lively war of diplomatic notes passed between them. The Czar discovered that the English ambassador had more influence with the Porte than Mentchikof, and became intensely angry. Lord Stratford ferreted out the schemes of the Czar in regard to the Russian protectorate of the Greek Church, which was one of his most cherished plans, and bent every energy to defeat it. He did not care about the quarrels of the Greek and Latin monks for the guardianship of the sacred shrines; but he did object to the meditated protectorate of the Czar over the Greek subjects of Turkey, which, if successful, would endanger the independence of the Sultan, so necessary for the peace of Europe. All the despatches from. St. Petersburg breathed impatience and wrath, and Mentchikof found himself in great difficulties. The Russian ambassador even found means to have the advantage of a private audience with the Sultan, without the knowledge of the grand vizier; but the Sultan, though courteous, remained firm. This ended the mission of the Russian ambassador, foiled and baffled at every turn; while his imperial master, towering into passion, lost all the reputation he had gained during his reign for justice and moderation.

Within three days of the departure of Prince Mentchikof from Constantinople, England and France began to concert measures together for armed resistance to Russia, should war actually break out, which seemed inevitable, for the Czar was filled with rage; and this in spite of the fact that within two weeks the Sultan yielded the point as to the privileges of Greek subjects in his empire,--but beyond that he stood firm, and appealed to England and France.

The Czar now meditated the occupation of the Danubian principalities, in order to enable his armies to march to Constantinople. But Austria and Prussia would not consent to this, and the Czar found himself opposed virtually by all Europe. He still labored under the delusion that England would hold aloof, knowing the peace policy of the English government under the leadership of Lord Aberdeen. Under this delusion, and boiling over with anger, he suddenly, without taking counsel of his ministers or of any living soul, touched a bell in his palace. The officer in attendance received an order for the army to cross the Pruth. On the 2d of July, 1853, Russia invaded the principalities. On the following day a manifesto was read in her churches that the Czar made war on Turkey in defence of the Greek religion; and all the fanatical zeal of the Russians was at once excited to go where the Czar might send them in behalf of their faith. Nothing could be more popular than such a war.

But the hostile attitude taken by all Europe on the invasion of the principalities, and by Austria in particular, was too great an obstacle for even the Czar of all the Russias to disregard, especially when he learned that the fleets of France and England were ordered to the Dardanelles, and that his fleet would be pent up in an inland basin of the Black Sea. It became necessary for Russia to renew negotiations. At Vienna a note had been framed between four of the great Powers, by which it was clear that they would all unite in resisting the Czar, if he did not withdraw his armies from the principalities. The Porte promptly determined on war, supported by the advice of a great Council, attended by one hundred and seventy-two of the foremost men of the empire, and fifteen days were given to Russia to withdraw her troops from the principalities. At the expiration of that term, the troops not being withdrawn, on October 5 war was declared by Turkey.

The war on the part of Turkey was defensive, necessary, and popular. The religious sentiment of the whole nation was appealed to, and not in vain. It is difficult for any nation to carry on a great war unless it is supported by the people. In Turkey and throughout the scattered dominions of the Sultan, religion and patriotism and warlike ardor combined to make men arise by their own free-will, and endure fatigue, danger, hunger, and privation for their country and their faith. The public dangers were great; for Russia was at the height of her power and prestige, and the Czar was known to have a determined will, not to be bent by difficulties which were not insurmountable.

Meanwhile the preachers of the Orthodox Greek faith were not behind the Mohammedans in rousing the martial and religious spirit of nearly one hundred millions of the subjects of the Russian autocrat. In his proclamation the Czar urged inviolable guaranties in favor of the sacred rights of the Orthodox Church, and pretended (as is usual with all parties in going to war) that he was challenged to the fight, and that his cause was just. He then invoked the aid of Almighty Power. It was rather a queer thing for a warlike sovereign, entering upon an aggressive war to gratify ambition, to quote the words of David: "In thee, O Lord, have I trusted: let me not be confounded forever."

Urged on and goaded by the French emperor, impatient of delay, and obtuse to all further negotiations for peace, which Lord Aberdeen still hoped to secure, the British government at last gave orders for its fleet to proceed to Constantinople. The Czar, so long the ally of England, was grieved and indignant at what appeared to him to be a breach of treaties and an affront to him personally, and determined on vengeance. He ordered his fleet at Sebastopol to attack a Turkish fleet anchored near Sinope, which was done Nov. 30, 1853. Except a single steamer, every one of the Turkish vessels was destroyed, and four thousand Turks were killed.

The anger of both the French and English people was now fairly roused by this disaster, and Lord Aberdeen found himself powerless to resist the public clamor for war. Lord Palmerston, the most popular and powerful minister that England had, resigned his seat in the cabinet, and openly sided with the favorite cause. Lord Aberdeen was compelled now to let matters take their course, and the English fleet was ordered to the Black Sea; but war was not yet declared by the Western Powers, since there still remained some hopes of a peaceful settlement.

Meanwhile Prussia and Austria united in a league, offensive and defensive, to expel the Russians from the Danubian provinces, which filled the mind of Nicholas with more grief than anger; for he had counted on the neutrality of Austria and Prussia, as he had on the neutrality of England. It was his misfortune to believe what he wished, rather than face facts.

On the 27th of March, 1854, however, after a winter of diplomacy and military threatenings and movements, which effected nothing like a settlement, France and England declared war against Russia; on the 11th of April the Czar issued his warlike manifesto, and Europe blazed with preparations for one of the most needless and wicked contests in modern times. All parties were to blame; but on Russia the greatest odium rests for disturbing the peace of Europe, although the Czar at the outset had no idea of fighting the Western Powers. In a technical point of view the blame of beginning the dispute which led to the Crimean war rests with France, for she opened and renewed the question of the guardianship of the sacred shrines, which had long been under the protection of the Greek Church; and it was the intrigues of Louis Napoleon which entangled England. The latter country was also to blame for her jealousy of Russian encroachments, fearing that they would gradually extend to English possessions in the East. Had Nicholas known the true state of English public opinion he might have refrained from actual hostilities; but he was misled by the fact that Lord Aberdeen had given assurances of a peace policy.

Although France and England entered upon the war only with the intention at first of protecting Turkey, and were mere allies for that purpose, yet these two Powers soon bore the brunt of the contest, which really became a strife between Russia on the one side and England and France on the other. Moreover, instead of merely defending Turkey against Russia, the allied Powers assumed the offensive, and thus took the responsibility for all the disastrous consequences of the war.

The command of the English army had been intrusted to Lord Raglan, once known as Lord Fitzroy Somerset, who lost an arm at the battle of Waterloo while on the staff of Wellington; a wise and experienced commander, but too old for such service as was now expected of him in an untried field of warfare. Besides, it was a long time since he had seen active service. When appointed to the command he was sixty-six years old. From 1827 to 1852 he was military secretary at the Horse Guards,--the English War Office,--where he was made master-general of the Ordnance, and soon after became a full general. He was taciturn but accessible, and had the power of attracting everybody to him; averse to all show and parade; with an uncommon power for writing both good English and French,--an accomplished man, from whom much was expected.

The command of the French forces was given to Marshal Saint-Arnaud, a bold, gay, reckless, enterprising man, who had distinguished himself in Algeria as much for his indifference to human life as for his administrative talents,--ruthless, but not bloodthirsty. He was only colonel when Fleury, the arch-conspirator and friend of Louis Napoleon, was sent to Algeria to find some officer of ability who could be bribed to join in the meditated coup d'état. Saint-Arnaud listened to his proposals, and was promised the post of minister of war, which would place the army under his control, for all commanders would receive orders from him. He was brought to Paris and made minister of war, with a view to the great plot of the 2d of December, and later was created a Marshal of France. His poor health (the result of his excesses) made him unfit to be intrusted with the forces for the invasion of the Crimea; but his military reputation was better than his moral, and in spite of his unfitness the emperor--desirous still further to reward his partisan services--put him in command of the French Crimean forces.

The first military operations took place on the Danube. The Russians then occupied the Danubian principalities, and had undertaken the siege of Silistria, which was gallantly defended by the Turks, before the allied French and English armies could advance to its relief; but it was not till the middle of May that the allied armies were in full force, and took up their position at Varna.

Nicholas was now obliged to yield. He could not afford to go to war with Prussia, Austria, France, England, and Turkey together. It had become impossible for him to invade European Turkey by the accustomed route. So, under pressure of their assembling forces, he withdrew his troops from the Danubian provinces, which removed all cause of hostilities from Prussia and Austria. These two great Powers now left France and England to support all the burdens of the war. If Prussia and Austria had not withdrawn from the alliance, the Crimean war would not have taken place, for Russia would have made peace with Turkey. It was on the 2d of August, 1854, that the Russians recrossed the Pruth, and the Austrians took possession of the principalities.

England might now have withdrawn from the contest but for her alliance with France,--an entangling alliance, indeed; but Lord Palmerston, seeing that war was inevitable, withdrew his resignation, and the British cabinet became a unit, supported by the nation. Lord Aberdeen still continued to be premier; but Palmerston was now the leading spirit, and all eyes turned to him. The English people, who had forgotten what war was, upheld the government, and indeed goaded it on to war. The one man who did not drift was the secretary for foreign affairs, Lord Palmerston, who went steadily ahead, and gained his object,--a check upon Russia's power in the East.

This statesman was a man of great abilities, with a strong desire for power under the guise of levity and good-nature. He was far-reaching, bold, and of concentrated energy; but his real character was not fully comprehended until the Crimean war, although he was conspicuous in politics for forty years. His frank utterances, his off-hand manner, his ready banter, and his joyous eyes captivated everybody, and veiled his stern purposes. He was distrusted at St. Petersburg because of his alliance with Louis Napoleon, his hatred of the Bourbons, and his masking the warlike tendency of the government which he was soon to lead, for Lord Aberdeen was not the man to conduct a war with Russia.

At this point, as stated above, the war might have terminated, for the Russians had abandoned the principalities; but at home the English had been roused by Louis Napoleon's friends and by the course of events to a fighting temper, and the French emperor's interests would not let him withdraw; while in the field neither the Turkish nor French nor English troops were to be contented with less than the invasion of the Russian territories. Turkey was now in no danger of invasion by the Russians, for they had been recalled from the principalities, and the fleets of England and France controlled the Black Sea. From defensive measures they turned to offensive.

The months of July and August were calamitous to the allied armies at Varna; not from battles, but from pestilence, which was fearful. On the 26th of August it was determined to re-embark the decimated troops, sail for the Crimea, and land at some place near Sebastopol. The capture of this fortress was now the objective point of the war. On the 13th of September the fleets anchored in Eupatoria Bay, on the west coast of the Crimean peninsula, and the disembarkation of the troops took place without hindrance from the Russians, who had taken up a strong position on the banks of the Alma, which was apparently impregnable. There the Russians, on their own soil and in their intrenched camp, wisely awaited the advance of their foes on the way to Sebastopol, the splendid seaport, fortress, and arsenal at the extreme southwestern point of the Crimea.

There were now upon the coasts of the Crimea some thirty-seven thousand French and Turks with sixty-eight pieces of artillery (all under the orders of Marshal Saint-Arnaud), and some twenty-seven thousand English with sixty guns,--altogether about sixty-four thousand men and one hundred and twenty-eight guns. It was intended that the fleets should follow the march of the armies, in order to furnish the necessary supplies. The march was perilous, without a base of supplies on the coast itself, and without a definite knowledge of the number or resources of the enemy. It required a high order of military genius to surmount the difficulties and keep up the spirits of the troops. The French advanced in a line on the coast nearest the sea; the English took up their line of march towards the south, on the left, farther in the interior. The French were protected by the fleets on the one hand and by the English on the other. The English therefore were exposed to the greater danger, having their entire left flank open to the enemy's fire. The ground over which the Western armies marched was an undulating steppe. They marched in closely massed columns, and they marched in weariness and silence, for they had not recovered from the fatal pestilence at Varna. The men were weak, and suffered greatly from thirst. At length they came to the Alma River, where the Russians were intrenched on the left bank. The allies were of course compelled to cross the river under the fire of the enemies' batteries, and then attack their fortified positions, and drive the Russians from their post.

All this was done successfully. The battle of the Alma was gained by the invaders, but only with great losses. Prince Mentchikof, who commanded the Russians, beheld with astonishment the defeat of the troops he had posted in positions believed to be secure from capture by assault. The genius of Lord Raglan, of Saint-Arnaud, of General Bosquet, of Sir Colin Campbell, of Canrobert, of Sir de Lacy Evans, of Sir George Brown, had carried the day. Both sides fought with equal bravery, but science was on the side of the allies. In the battle, Sir Colin Campbell greatly distinguished himself leading a Highland brigade; also General Codrington, who stormed the great redoubt, which was supposed to be impregnable. This probably decided the battle, the details of which it is not my object to present. Its great peculiarity was that the Russians fought in solid column, and the allies in extended lines.

After the day was won, Lord Raglan pressed Saint-Arnaud to the pursuit of the enemy; but the French general was weakened by illness, and his energies failed. Had Lord Raglan's counsels been followed, the future disasters of the allied armies might have been averted. The battle was fought on the 20th of September; but the allied armies halted on the Alma until the 23d, instead of pushing on directly to Sebastopol, twenty-five miles to the south. This long halt was owing to Saint-Arnaud, who felt it was necessary to embark the wounded on the ships before encountering new dangers. This refusal of the French commander to advance directly to the attack of the forts on the north of Sebastopol was unfortunate, for there would have been but slight resistance, the main body of the Russians having withdrawn to the south of the city. All this necessitated a flank movement of the allies, which was long and tedious, eastward, across the north side of Sebastopol to the south of it, where the Russians were intrenched. They crossed the Belbec (a small river) without serious obstruction, and arrived in sight of Sebastopol, which they were not to enter that autumn as they had confidently expected. The Russian to whom the stubborn defence of Sebastopol was indebted more than to any other man,--Lieut.-Colonel Todleben,--had thoroughly and rapidly fortified the city on the north after the battle of the Alma.

It was the opinion of Todleben himself, afterward expressed,--which was that of Lord Raglan, and also of Sir Edmund Lyons, commanding the fleet,--that the Star Fort which defended Sebastopol on the north, however strong, was indefensible before the forces that the allies could have brought to bear against it. Had the Star Fort been taken, the whole harbor of Sebastopol would have been open to the fire of the allies, and the city--needed for refuge as well as for glory--would have fallen into their hands.

The condition of the allied armies was now critical, since they had no accurate knowledge of the country over which they were to march on the east of Sebastopol, nor of the strength of the enemy, who controlled the sea-shore. On the morning of the 25th of September the flank march began, through tangled forests, by the aid of the compass. It was a laborious task for the troops, especially since they had not regained their health from the ravages of the cholera in Bulgaria. Two days' march, however, brought the English army to the little port of Balaklava, on the south of Sebastopol, where the land and sea forces met.

Soon after the allied armies had arrived at Balaklava, Saint-Arnaud was obliged by his fatal illness to yield up his command to Marshal Canrobert, and a few days later he died,--an unprincipled, but a brave and able man.

The Russian forces meanwhile, after the battle of the Alma, had retreated to Sebastopol in order to defend the city, which the allies were preparing to attack. Prince Mentchikof then resolved upon a bold measure for the defence of the city, and this was to sink his ships at the mouth of the harbor, by which he prevented the English and French fleets from entering it, and gained an additional force of eighteen thousand seamen to his army. Loath was the Russian admiral to make this sacrifice, and he expostulated with the general-in-chief, but was obliged to obey. This sinking of their fleet by the Russians reminds one of the conflagration of Moscow,--both desperate and sacrificial acts.

The French and English forces were now on the south side of Sebastopol, in communication with their fleet at Balaklava, and were flushed with victory, while the forces opposed to them were probably inferior in number. Why did not the allies at once begin the assault of the city? It was thought to be prudent to wait for the arrival of their siege guns. While these heavy guns were being brought from the ships, Todleben--the ablest engineer then living--was strengthening the defences on the south side. Every day's delay added to the difficulties of attack. Three weeks of precious time were thus lost, and when on the 17th of October the allies began the bombardment of Sebastopol, which was to precede the attack, their artillery was overpowered by that of the defenders. The fleets in vain thundered against the solid sea-front of the fortress. After a terrible bombardment of eight days the defences of the city were unbroken.

Mentchikof, meanwhile, had received large reinforcements, and prepared to attack the allies from the east. His point of attack was Balaklava, the defence of which had been intrusted to Sir Colin Campbell. The battle was undecisive, but made memorable by the sacrifice of the "Light Brigade,"--about six hundred cavalry troops under the command of the Earl of Cardigan. This arose from a misunderstanding on the part of the Earl of Lucan, commander of the cavalry division, of an order from Lord Raglan to attack the enemy. Lord Cardigan was then directed by Lucan to rescue certain guns which the enemy had captured. He obeyed, in the face of batteries in front and on both flanks. The slaughter was terrible,--in fact, the brigade was nearly annihilated. The news of this disaster made a deep impression on the English nation, and caused grave apprehensions as to the capacity of the cavalry commanders, neither of whom had seen much military service, although both were over fifty years of age and men of ability and bravery. The "Heavy Brigade" of cavalry, commanded by General Scarlett, who also was more than fifty years old and had never seen service in the field, almost redeemed the error by which that commanded by Lord Cardigan was so nearly destroyed. With six hundred men he charged up a long slope, and plunged fearlessly into a body of three thousand Russian cavalry, separated it into segments, disorganized it, and drove it back,--one of the most brilliant cavalry operations in modern times.

The battle of Balaklava, on the 25th of October, was followed, November 5, by the battle of Inkerman, when the English were unexpectedly assaulted, under cover of a deep mist, by an overwhelming body of Russians. The Britons bravely stood their ground against the massive columns which Mentchikof had sent to crush them, and repelled the enemy with immense slaughter; but this battle made the capture of Sebastopol, as planned by the allies, impossible. The forces of the Russians were double in number to those of the allies, and held possession of a fortress against which a tremendous cannonade had been in vain. The prompt sagacity and tremendous energy of Todleben repaired every breach as fast as it was made; and by his concentration of great numbers of laborers at the needed points, huge earthworks arose like magic before the astonished allies. They made no headway; their efforts were in vain; the enterprise had failed. It became necessary to evacuate the Crimea, or undertake a slow winter siege in the presence of superior forces, amid difficulties which had not been anticipated, and for which no adequate provision had been made.

The allies chose the latter alternative; and then began a series of calamities and sufferings unparalleled in the history of war since the retreat of Napoleon from Moscow. First came a terrible storm on the 14th of November, which swept away the tents of the soldiers encamped on a plateau near Balaklava, and destroyed twenty-one vessels bringing ammunition and stores to the hungry and discouraged army. There was a want of everything to meet the hardships of a winter campaign on the stormy shores of the Black Sea,--suitable clothing, fuel, provisions, medicines, and camp equipage. It never occurred to the minds of those who ordered and directed this disastrous expedition that Sebastopol would make so stubborn a defence; but the whole force of the Russian empire which could be spared was put forth by the Emperor Nicholas, thus rendering necessary continual reinforcements from France and England to meet armies superior in numbers, and to supply the losses occasioned by disease and hardship greater than those on the battlefield. The horrors of that dreadful winter on the Crimean peninsula, which stared in the face not only the French and English armies but also the Russians themselves, a thousand miles from their homes, have never been fully told. They form one of the most sickening chapters in the annals of war.

Not the least of the misfortunes which the allies suffered was the loss of the causeway, or main road, from Balaklava to the high grounds where they were encamped. It had been taken by the Russians three weeks before, and never regained. The only communication from the camp to Balaklava, from which the stores and ammunition had to be brought, was a hillside track, soon rendered almost impassable by the rains. The wagons could not be dragged through the mud, which reached to their axles, and the supplies had to be carried on the backs of mules and horses, of which there was an insufficient number. Even the horses rapidly perished from fatigue and hunger.

Thus were the French and English troops pent up on a bleak promontory, sick and disheartened, with uncooked provisions, in the middle of winter. Of course they melted away even in the hospitals to which they were sent on the Levant. In those hospitals there was a terrible mortality. At Scutari alone nine thousand perished before the end of February, 1855.

The reports of these disasters, so unexpected and humiliating, soon reached England through the war correspondents and private letters, and produced great exasperation. The Press was unsparing in its denunciations of the generals, and of the ministry itself, in not providing against the contingencies of the war, which had pent up two large armies on a narrow peninsula, from which retreat was almost impossible in view of the superior forces of the enemy and the dreadful state of the roads. The armies of the allies had nothing to do but fight the elements of Nature, endure their unparalleled hardships the best way they could, and patiently await results.

The troops of both the allied nations fought bravely and behaved gallantly; but they fought against Nature, against disease, against forces vastly superior to themselves in number. One is reminded, in reading the history of the Crimean war, of the ancient crusaders rather than of modern armies with their vast scientific machinery, so numerous were the mistakes, and so unexpected were the difficulties of the attacking armies. One is amazed that such powerful and enlightened nations as the English and French could have made so many blunders. The warning voices of Aberdeen, of Gladstone, of Cobden, of Bright, against the war had been in vain amid the tumult of military preparations; but it was seen at last that they had been thy true prophets of their day.

Nothing excited more commiseration than the dreadful state of the hospitals in the Levant, to which the sick and wounded were sent; and this terrible exigency brought women to the rescue. Their volunteered services were accepted by Mr. Sidney Herbert, the secretary-at-war, and through him by the State. On the 4th of November Florence Nightingale, called the "Lady-in-Chief," disembarked at Scutari and began her useful and benevolent mission,--organizing the nurses, and doing work for which men were incapable,--in those hospitals infected with deadly poisons.

The calamities of a questionable war, made known by the Press, at last roused public indignation, and so great was the popular clamor that Lord Aberdeen was compelled to resign a post for which he was plainly incapable,--at least in war times. He was succeeded by Lord Palmerston,--the only man who had the confidence of the nation. In the new ministry Lord Panmure (Fox Maule) succeeded the Duke of Newcastle as minister of war.

After midwinter the allied armies began to recover their health and strength, through careful nursing, better sanitary measures, and constant reinforcements, especially from France. At last a railway was made between Balaklava and the camps, and a land-transport corps was organized. By March, 1855, cattle in large quantities were brought from Spain on the west and Armenia on the east, from Wallachia on the north and the Persian Gulf on the south. Seventeen thousand men now provided the allied armies with provisions and other supplies, with the aid of thirty thousand beasts of burden.

It was then that Sardinia joined the Western Alliance with fifteen thousand men,--an act of supreme wisdom on the part of Cavour, since it secured the friendship of France in his scheme for the unity of Italy. A new plan of operations was now adopted by the allies, which was for the French to attack Sebastopol at the Malakoff, protecting the city on the east, while the English concentrated their efforts on the Redan, another salient point of the fortifications. In the meantime Canrobert was succeeded in the command of the French army by Pélissier,--a resolute soldier who did not owe his promotion to complicity in the coup d'état.

On the 18th of June a general assault was made by the combined armies--now largely reinforced--on the Redan and the Malakoff, but they were driven back by the Russians with great loss; and three months more were added to the siege. Fatigue, anxiety, and chagrin now carried off Lord Raglan, who died on the 28th of June, leaving the command to General Simpson. By incessant labors the lines of the besiegers were gradually brought nearer the Russian fortifications. On the 16th of August the French and Sardinians gained a decisive victory over the Russians, which prevented Sebastopol from receiving further assistance from without. On September 9 the French succeeded in storming the Malakoff, which remained in their hands, although the English were unsuccessful in their attack upon the Redan. On the fall of the Malakoff the Russian commander blew up his magazines, while the French and English demolished the great docks of solid masonry, the forts, and defences of the place. Thus Sebastopol, after a siege of three hundred and fifty days, became the prize of the invaders, at a loss, on their part, of a hundred thousand men, and a still greater loss on the part of the defenders, since provisions, stores, and guns had to be transported at immense expense from the interior of Russia. In Russia there was no free Press to tell the people of the fearful sacrifices to which they had been doomed; but the Czar knew the greatness of his losses, both in men and military stores; and these calamities broke his heart, for he died before the fall of the fortress which he had resolved to defend with all the forces of his empire. Probably three hundred thousand Russians had perished in the conflict, and the resources of Russia were exhausted.

France had now become weary of a war which brought so little glory and entailed such vast expense. England, however, would have continued the war at any expense and sacrifice if Louis Napoleon had not secretly negotiated with the new Czar, Alexander II.; for England was bent on such a crippling of Russia as would henceforth prevent that colossal power from interfering with the English possessions in the East, which the fall of Kars seemed to threaten. The Czar, too, would have held out longer but for the expostulation of Austria and the advice of his ministers, who pointed out his inability to continue the contest with the hostility of all Europe.

On the 25th of February, 1856, the plenipotentiaries of the great Powers assembled in Paris, and on the 30th of March the Treaty of Paris was signed, by which the Black Sea was thrown open to the mercantile marine of all nations, but interdicted to ships of war. Russia ceded a portion of Bessarabia, which excluded her from the Danube; and all the Powers guaranteed the independence of the Ottoman Empire. At the end of fourteen years, the downfall of Louis Napoleon enabled Russia to declare that it would no longer recognize the provisions of a treaty which excluded its war-ships from the Black Sea. England alone was not able to resist the demands of Russia, and in consequence Sebastopol arose from its ruins as powerful as ever.

The object, therefore, for which England and France went to war--the destruction of Russian power on the Black Sea--was only temporarily gained. From three to four hundred thousand men had been sacrificed among the different combatants, and probably not less than a thousand million dollars in treasure had been wasted,--perhaps double that sum. France gained nothing of value, while England lost military prestige. Russia undoubtedly was weakened, and her encroachments toward the East were delayed; but to-day that warlike empire is in the same relative position that it was when the Czar sent forth his mandate for the invasion of the Danubian principalities. In fact, all parties were the losers, and none were the gainers, by this needless and wicked war,--except perhaps the wily Napoleon III., who was now firmly seated on his throne.

The Eastern question still remains unsettled, and will remain unsettled until new complications, which no genius can predict, shall re-enkindle the martial passions of Europe. These are not and never will be extinguished until Christian civilization shall beat swords into ploughshares. When shall be this consummation of the victories of peace?

AUTHORITIES.

A. W. Kinglake's Invasion of the Crimea; C. de Bazancourt's Crimean Expedition; G. B. McClellan's Reports on the Art of War in Europe in 1855-1856; R. C. McCormick's Visit to the Camp before Sebastopol; J. D. Morell's Neighbors of Russia, and History of the War to the Siege of Sebastopol; Pictorial History of the Russian War; Russell's British Expedition to the Crimea; General Todleben's History of the Defence of Sebastopol; H. Tyrrell's History of the War with Russia; Fyffe's History of Modern Europe; Life of Lord Palmerston; Life of Louis Napoleon.

LOUIS NAPOLEON.

1808-1873.

THE SECOND EMPIRE.

Prince Louis Napoleon, or, as he afterward became, Emperor Napoleon III., is too important a personage to be omitted in the sketch of European history during the nineteenth century. It is not yet time to form a true estimate of his character and deeds, since no impartial biographies of him have yet appeared, and since he died less than thirty years ago. The discrepancy of opinion respecting him is even greater than that concerning his illustrious uncle.

No one doubts that the first Napoleon was the greatest figure of his age, and the greatest general that the world has produced, with the exception alone of Alexander and Caesar. No one questions his transcendent abilities, his unrivalled fame, and his potent influence on the affairs of Europe for a quarter of a century, leaving a name so august that its mighty prestige enabled his nephew to steal his sceptre; and his character has been so searchingly and critically sifted that there is unanimity among most historians as to his leading traits,--a boundless ambition and unscruplous adaptation of means to an end: that end his self-exaltation at any cost. His enlarged and enlightened intellect was sullied by hypocrisy, dissimulation, and treachery, accompanied by minor faults with which every one is familiar, but which are often overlooked in the immense services he rendered to his country and to civilization.

Napoleon III., aspiring to imitate his uncle, also contributed important services, but was not equal to the task he assumed, and made so many mistakes that he can hardly be called a great man, although he performed a great rôle in the drama of European politics, and at one time occupied a superb position. With him are associated the three great international wars which took place in the interval between the banishment of Napoleon I. to St. Helena and the establishment of the French Republic on its present basis,--a period of more than fifty years,--namely, the Crimean war; the war between Austria, France, and Italy; and the Franco-Prussian war, which resulted in the humiliation of France and the exaltation of Prussia.

When Louis Napoleon came into power in 1848, on the fall of Louis Philippe, it was generally supposed that European nations had sheathed the sword against one another, and that all future contests would be confined to enslaved peoples seeking independence, with which contests other nations would have nothing to do; but Louis Napoleon, as soon as he had established his throne on the ruins of French liberties, knew no other way to perpetuate his dominion than by embroiling the nations of Europe in contests with one another, in order to divert the minds of the French people from the humiliation which the loss of their liberties had caused, and to direct their energies in new channels,--in other words, to inflate them with visions of military glory as his uncle had done, by taking advantage of the besetting and hereditary weakness of the national character. In the meantime the usurper bestowed so many benefits on the middle and lower classes, gave such a stimulus to trade, adorned his capital with such magnificent works of art, and increased so manifestly the material prosperity of France, that his reign was regarded as benignant and fortunate by most people, until the whole edifice which he had built to dazzle the world tumbled down in a single day after his disastrous defeat at Sedan,--the most humiliating fall which any French dynasty ever experienced.

Louis Napoleon offers in his own person an example of those extremes of fortune which constitute the essence of romantic conditions and appeal to the imagination. The third son of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland (brother of Napoleon), and Hortense Beauharnais, daughter of the Empress Josephine by her first marriage, he was born in Paris, in the palace of the Tuileries, April 20, 1808. Living in Switzerland, with his mother and brother (Napoleon Louis), he was well-educated, expert in all athletic sports,--especially in riding and fencing,--and trained to the study and practice of artillery and military engineering. The two brothers engaged in an Italian revolt in 1830; both fell ill, and while one died the other was saved by the mother's devotion. In 1831 the Poles made an insurrection, and offered Louis Napoleon their chief command and the crown of Poland; but the death, in 1832, of the only son of his uncle aroused Louis's ambition for a larger place, and the sovereignty of France became his "fixed idea." He studied hard, wrote and published several political and military works, and in 1836 made a foolish attempt at a Napoleonic revolt against Louis Philippe. It ended in humiliating failure, and he was exiled to America, where he lived in obscurity for about a year; but he returned to Switzerland to see his dying mother, and then was obliged to flee to England. In 1838 he published his "Napoleonic Ideas;" in 1840 he made, at Boulogne, another weak demonstration upon the French throne, and was imprisoned in the fortress of Ham. Here he did much literary work, but escaped in 1848 to Belgium, whence he hurried back to Paris when the revolution broke out. Getting himself elected a deputy in the National Assembly, he took his seat.

The year 1848, when Louis Napoleon appeared on the stage of history, was marked by extraordinary political and social agitations, not merely in France but throughout Europe. It saw the unexpected fall of the constitutional monarchy in France, which had been during eighteen years firmly upheld by Louis Philippe, with the assistance of the ablest and wisest ministers the country had known for a century,--the policy of which was pacific, and the leading political idea of which was an alliance with Great Britain. The king fled before the storm of revolutionary ideas,--as Metternich was obliged to do in Vienna, and Ferdinand in Naples,--and a provisional government succeeded, of which Lamartine was the central figure. A new legislative assembly was chosen to support a republic, in which the most distinguished men of France, of all opinions, were represented. Among the deputies was Louis Napoleon, who had hastened from England to take part in the revolution. He sat on the back benches of the Chamber neglected, silent, and despised by the leading men in France, but not yet hated nor feared.

When a President of the Republic had to be chosen by the suffrages of the people, Louis Napoleon unexpectedly received a great majority of the votes. He had been quietly carrying on his "presidential campaign" through his agents, who appealed to the popular love for the name of Napoleon.

The old political leaders, amazed and confounded, submitted to the national choice, yet stood aloof from a man without political experience, who had always been an exile when he had not been a prisoner. Most of them had supposed that Bonapartism was dead; but the peasantry in the provinces still were enthralled by the majesty and mighty prestige of that conqueror who had been too exalted for envy and too powerful to be resisted. To the provincial votes chiefly Louis Napoleon owed his election as President,--and the election was fair. He came into power by the will of the nation if any man ever did,--by the spontaneous enthusiasm of the people for the name he bore, not for his own abilities and services; and as he proclaimed, on his accession, a policy of peace (which the people believed) and loyalty to the Constitution,--Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality, the watchwords of the Revolution,--even more, as he seemed to represent the party of order, he was regarded by such statesmen as Thiers and Montalembert as the least dangerous of the candidates; and they gave their moral support to his government, while they declined to take office under him.

The new President appointed the famous De Tocqueville as his first prime minister, who after serving a few months resigned, because he would not be the pliant tool of his master. Louis Napoleon then had to select inferior men for his ministers, who also soon discovered that they were expected to be his clerks, not his advisers. At first he was regarded by the leading classes with derision rather than fear,--so mean was his personal appearance, so spiritless his address, so cold and dull was his eye, and so ridiculous were his antecedents. "The French," said Thiers, long afterward, "made two mistakes about Louis Napoleon,--the first, when they took him for a fool; the second, when they took him for a man of genius." It was not until he began to show a will of his own, a determination to be his own prime minister, that those around him saw his dangerous ambition, his concealed abilities, and his unscrupulous character.

Nothing of importance marked the administration of the President, except hostility to the Assembly, and their endless debates on the constitution. Both the President and the Assembly feared the influence of the ultra-democrats and Red Republicans,--socialists and anarchists, who fomented their wild schemes among the common people of the large cities. By curtailing the right of suffrage the Assembly became unpopular, and Louis Napoleon gained credit as the friend of order and law.

As the time approached when, by the Constitution, he would be obliged to lay down his office and return to private life, the President became restless, and began to plot for the continuance of his power. He had tasted its sweets, and had no intention to surrender it. If he could have been constitutionally re-elected, he probably would not have meditated a coup d'état, for it was in accordance with his indolent character to procrastinate. With all his ambition, he was patient, waiting for opportunities to arise; and yet he never relinquished an idea or an intention,--it was ever in his mind: he would simply wait, and quietly pursue the means of success. He had been trained to meditation in his prison at Ham; and he had learned to disguise his thoughts and his wishes. The power which had been developed in him in the days of his obscurity and adversity was cunning. As a master of cunning he saw the necessity of reserve, mistrust, and silence.

The first move of the President to gain his end was to secure a revision of the Constitution. The Assembly, by a vote of three-fourths, could by the statutes of 1848 order a revision; a revision could remove the clause which prohibited his re-election, and a re-election was all he then pretended to want. But the Assembly, jealous of its liberties, already suspicious and even hostile, showed no disposition to smooth his way. He clearly saw that some other means must be adopted. He naturally turned to the army; but the leading generals distrusted him, and were in the ranks of his enemies. They were all Orléanists or Republicans.

The ablest general in France was probably Changarnier, who had greatly distinguished himself in Algeria. He had been called, on the change of government, to the high post of commander of the National Guards and general of the first military division, which was stationed at Paris. He had been heard to say that if Louis Napoleon should undertake a coup d'état, he would conduct him as a prisoner to Vincennes. This was reported to the President, who at once resolved to remove him, both from hostility and fear. On Changarnier's removal the ministry resigned. Their places were taken by tools still more subservient.

Nothing now remained but to prepare for the meditated usurpation. The first thing to be done was to secure an able and unscrupulous minister of war, who could be depended upon. As all the generals received their orders from the minister of war, he was the most powerful man in France, next to the President. Such was military discipline that no subordinate dared to disobey him.

There were then no generals of ability in France whom Louis Napoleon could trust, and he turned his eyes to Algeria, where some one might be found. He accordingly sent his most intimate friend and confidant, Major Fleury, able but unscrupulous, to Algeria to discover the right kind of man, who could be bribed. He found a commander of a brigade, by name Saint-Arnaud, extravagant, greatly in debt, who had done some brave and wicked things. It was not difficult to seduce a reckless man who wanted money and preferment. Fleury promised him the high office of minister of war, when he should have done something to distinguish himself in the eyes of the Parisians. Saint-Arnaud, who proved that he could keep a secret, was at once promoted, and a campaign was arranged for him in the summer of 1851, in which he won some distinction by wanton waste of life. His exploits were exaggerated, the venal Press sounded his praises, and he was recalled to Paris and made minister of war; for the President by the Constitution could nominate his ministers and appoint the high officers of State. Other officers were brought from Algeria and made his subordinates. The command of the army of Paris was given to General Magnan, who was in the secret. The command of the National Guards was given to a general who promised not to act, for this body was devoted to the Assembly. M. Maupas, another conspirator, of great administrative ability, was made prefect of police.

Thus in September, 1851, everything was arranged; but Saint-Arnaud persuaded the President to defer the coup d'état until winter, when all the deputies would be in Paris, and therefore could be easily seized. If scattered over France, they might rally and create a civil war; for, as we have already said, the Assembly contained the leading men of the country,--statesmen, generals, editors, and great lawyers, all hostile to the ruler of the Republic.

So the President waited patiently till winter. Suddenly, without warning, in the night of the 2d of December, all the most distinguished members of the Assembly were arrested by the police controlled by Maupas, and sent to the various prisons,--including Changarnier, Cavaignac, Thiers, Bedeau, Lamoricière, Barrot, Berryer, De Tocqueville, De Broglie, and Saint-Hilaire. On the following morning strong bodies of the military were posted at the Palais Bourbon (where the Assembly held its sessions), around all the printing-presses, around the public buildings, and in the principal streets. In the meantime, Morny was made minister of the interior. Manifestoes were issued which announced the dissolution of the Assembly and the Council of State, the restoration of universal suffrage, and a convocation of the electoral college to elect the Executive. A proclamation was also made to the army, containing those high-sounding watchwords which no one was more capable of using than the literary President,--eloquent, since they appealed to everything dear to the soldiers' hearts, and therefore effective. Louis Napoleon's short speeches convinced those for whom they were intended. He was not so fortunate with his books.

The military and the police had now the supreme control of Paris, while the minister of the interior controlled the municipalities of the various departments. All resistance was absurd; and yet so tremendous an outrage on the liberties of the nation provoked an indignation, especially among the Republicans, which it was hard to suppress. The people rallied and erected barricades, which of course were swept away by the cannon of General Magnan, accompanied by needless cruelties and waste of blood, probably with the view to inspire fear and show that resistance was hopeless.

Paris and its vicinity were now in the hands of the usurper, supported by the army and police, and his enemies were in prison. The Assembly was closed, as well as the higher Courts of Justice, and the Press was muzzled. Constitutional liberty was at an end; a despot reigned unopposed. Yet Louis Napoleon did not feel entirely at his ease. Would the nation at the elections sustain the usurpation? It was necessary to control the elections; and it is maintained by some historians that every effort to that end was made through the officials and the police. Whether the elections were free or not, one thing astonished the civilized world,--seven millions of votes were cast in favor of Louis Napoleon; and the cunning and patient usurper took possession of the Tuileries, re-elected President to serve for ten years. Before the year closed, in December, 1852, he was proclaimed Emperor of the French by the vote and the will of the people. The silent, dull, and heavy man had outwitted everybody; and he showed that he understood the French people better than all the collected statesmen and generals who had served under Louis Philippe with so much ability and distinction.

What shall we say of a nation that so ignominiously surrendered its liberties? All we can say in extenuation is that it was powerless. Such men as Guizot, Thiers, Cousin, Changarnier, Cavaignac, Molé, Broglie, Hugo, Villemain, Lamartine, Montalembert, would have prevented the fall of constitutional government if their hands had not been tied. They were in prison or exiled. Some twenty-five thousand people had been killed or transported within a few weeks after the coup d'état, and fear seized the minds of those who were active in opposition, or suspected even of being hostile to the new government. France, surprised, perplexed, affrighted, must needs carry on a war of despair, or succumb to the usurpation. The army and the people alike were governed by terror.

But although France had lost her freedom, it was only for a time; and although Louis Napoleon ruled as an absolute monarch, his despotism, sadly humiliating to people of intelligence and patriotism, was not like that of Russia, or even like that of Prussia and Austria. The great men of all parties were too numerous and powerful to be degraded or exiled. They did not resist his government, and they held their tongues in the cafés and other assemblies where they were watched by spies; but they talked freely with one another in their homes, and simply kept aloof from him, refusing to hold office under him or to attend his court, waiting for their time. They knew that his government was not permanent, and that the principles of the Revolution had not been disseminated and planted in vain, but would burst out in some place or other like a volcano, and blaze to heaven. Men pass away, but principles are indestructible.

Louis Napoleon was too thoughtful and observant a man not to know all this. His residence in England and intercourse with so many distinguished politicians and philosophers had taught him something. He feared that with all his successes his throne would be overturned unless he could amuse the people and find work for turbulent spirits. Consequently he concluded on the one hand to make a change in the foreign policy of France, and on the other to embellish his capital and undertake great public works, at any expense, both to find work for artisans and to develop the resources of the country.

When Louis Napoleon made his first attack on the strong government of Louis Philippe, at Strasburg, he was regarded as a madman; when he escaped from Ham, after his failure at Boulogne, he was looked upon by all Europe as a mere adventurer; and when he finally left England, which had sheltered him, to claim his seat in the National Assembly of republican France, and even when made President of the republic by the suffrages of the nation, he was regarded as an enigma. Some thought him dull though bold, and others looked upon him as astute and long-headed. His heavy look, his leaden eye, his reserved and taciturn ways, with no marked power but that of silence and secrecy, disarmed fear. Neither from his conversations nor his writings had anybody drawn the inference that he was anything remarkable in genius or character. His executive abilities were entirely unknown. He was generally regarded as simply fortunate from the name he bore and the power he usurped, but with no striking intellectual gifts,--nothing that would warrant his supreme audacity. He had never distinguished himself in anything; but was admitted to be a thoughtful man, who had written treatises of respectable literary merit. His social position as the heir and nephew of the great Napoleon of course secured him many friends and followers, who were attracted to him by the prestige of his name, and who saw in him the means of making their own fortune; but he was always, except in a select and chosen circle, silent, non-committal, heavy, reserved, and uninteresting.

But the President--the Emperor--had been a profound student of the history of the first Napoleon and his government. He understood the French people, too, and had learned to make short speeches with great effect, in which adroitness in selecting watchwords--especially such as captivated the common people--was quite remarkable. He professed liberal sentiments, sympathy with the people in their privations and labors, and affected beyond everything a love of peace. In his manifestoes of a policy of universal peace, few saw that love of war by which he intended to rivet the chains of despotism. He was courteous and urbane in his manners, probably kind in disposition, not bloodthirsty nor cruel, supremely politic and conciliating in his intercourse with statesmen and diplomatists, and generally simple and unstilted in his manners. He was also capable of friendship, and never forgot those who had rendered him services or kindness in his wanderings. Nor was he greedy of money like Louis Philippe, but freely lavished it on his generals. Like his uncle, he had an antipathy to literary men when they would not condescend to flatter him, which was repaid by uncompromising hostility on their part. How savage and unrelenting was the hatred of Victor Hugo! How unsparing his ridicule and abuse! He called the usurper "Napoleon the Little," notwithstanding he had outwitted the leading men of the nation and succeeded in establishing himself on an absolute throne. A small man could not have shown so much patience, wisdom, and prudence as Louis Napoleon showed when President, or fought so successfully the legislative body when it was arrayed against him. If the poet had called him "Napoleon the Wicked" it would have been more to the point, for only a supremely unscrupulous and dishonest man could have meditated and executed the coup d'état. His usurpation and treachery were gigantic crimes, accompanied with violence and murder. Even his crimes, however, were condoned in view of the good government which he enforced and the services he rendered; showing that, if he was dishonest and treacherous, he was also able and enlightened.

But it is not his usurpation of supreme power for which Louis Napoleon will be most severely judged by his country and by posterity. Cromwell was a usurper, and yet he is regarded as a great benefactor. It was the policy which Napoleon III. pursued as a supreme ruler for which he will be condemned, and which was totally unlike that of Cromwell or Augustus. It was his policy to embroil nations in war and play the rôle of a conqueror. The policy of the restored Bourbons and of Louis Philippe was undeniably that of peace with other nations, and the relinquishment of that aggrandizement which is gained by successful war. It was this policy,--upheld by such great statesmen as Guizot and Thiers,--conflicting with the warlike instincts of the French people, which made those monarchs unpopular more than their attempts to suppress the liberty of the Press and the license of popular leaders; and it was the appeal to the military vanity of the people which made Napoleon III. popular, and secured his political ascendency.

The quarrel which was then going on between the Greek and Latin monks for the possession of the sacred shrines at Jerusalem furnished both the occasion and the pretence for interrupting the peace of Europe, as has been already stated in the Lecture on the Crimean war. The French usurper determined to take the side of the Latin monks, which would necessarily embroil him with the great protector of the Greek faith, even the Emperor Nicholas, who was a bigot in all matters pertaining to his religion. He would rally the French nation in a crusade, not merely to get possession of a sacred key and a silver star, but to come to the assistance of a power no longer dangerous,--the "sick man," whom Nicholas had resolved to crush. Louis Napoleon cared but little for Turkey; but he did not want Constantinople to fall into the hands of the Russians, and thus make them the masters of the Black Sea. France, it is true, had but little to gain whoever possessed Constantinople; she had no possessions or colonies in the East to protect. But in the eye of her emperor it was necessary to amuse her by a war; and what war would be more popular than this,--to head off Russia and avenge the march to Moscow?

Russia, moreover, was the one power which all western Europe had cause to dread. Ever since the Empress Catherine II., the encroachments and territorial aggrandizement of this great military empire had been going on. The Emperor Nicholas was the most powerful sovereign of the world, having a million of men under arms, ready to obey his nod, with no check whatever on his imperial will. He had many fine qualities, which commanded esteem; but he was fitful, uncertain, ambitious, and warlike. If an aggressive war to secure the "balance of power" could ever be justified, it would seem to have been necessary in this case. It was an aggressive war on the part of France, since the four great Powers--Austria, Prussia, France, and England--were already united to keep the Czar in check, and demanded his evacuation of the Danubian provinces which he had invaded. Nicholas, seeing this powerful combination against him, was ready to yield, and peace might have been easily secured, and thus the Crimean war been avoided; but Louis Napoleon did not want peace, and intrigued against it.

Resolved then on war, the real disturber of the peace of Europe, and goaded on by his councillors,--the conspirators of the 2d of December, Morny, Fleury, Maupas, etc.,--Louis Napoleon turned around to seek an ally; for France alone was not strong enough to cope with Russia. Austria having so much to lose, did not want war, and was afraid of Nicholas. So was Prussia. It was the policy of both these Powers to keep on good terms with Nicholas. It always will be the policy of Germany to avoid a war with Russia, unless supported by England and France. The great military organization which Bismarck and Moltke effected, the immense standing army which Germany groans under, arises not from anticipated dangers on the part of France so much as from fear of Russia, although it is not the policy of German statesmen to confess it openly. If France should unite with Russia in a relentless war, Germany would probably be crushed, unless England came to the rescue. Germany, placed between two powerful military monarchies, is obliged to keep up its immense standing army, against its will, as a dire necessity. It is Russia she is most anxious to conciliate. All the speeches of Bismarck show this.

In view of this policy, Louis Napoleon turned his eyes to England as his ally in the meditated war with Russia, notwithstanding the secret hostilities and jealousies between these nations for five hundred years. Moreover, the countries were entirely dissimilar: England was governed by Parliament, based on free institutions; France was a military despotism, and all who sought to establish parliamentary liberties and government were banished when their efforts became dangerous or revolutionary. Louis Napoleon showed great ability for intrigue in forcing the English cabinet to adopt his warlike policy, when its own policy was pacific. It was a great triumph to the usurper to see England drifting into war against the combined influence of the premier, of Gladstone, of the Quakers, and of the whole Manchester school of political economists; and, as stated in the Lecture on the Crimean war, it was an astounding surprise to Nicholas.

But this misfortune would not have happened had it not been for the genius and intrigues of a statesman who exercised a commanding influence over English politics; and this was Lord Palmerston, who had spent his life in the foreign office, although at that time home secretary. But he was the ruling spirit of the cabinet,--a man versatile, practical, amiable, witty, and intensely English in all his prejudices. Whatever office he held, he was always in harmony with public opinion. He was not a man of great ideas or original genius, but was a ready debater, understood the temper of the English people, and led them by adopting their cause, whatever it was. Hence he was the most popular statesman of the day, but according to Cobden the worst prime minister that England ever had, since he was always keeping England in hot water and stirring up strife on the Continent. His supreme policy, with an eye to English interests on the Mediterranean and in Asia, was to cripple Russia.

Such a man, warlike, restless, and interfering in his foreign policy, having in view the military aggrandizement of his country, eagerly adopted the schemes of the French emperor; and little by little these two men brought the English cabinet into a warlike attitude with Russia, in spite of all that Lord Aberdeen could do. Slight concessions would have led to peace; but neither Louis Napoleon nor Palmerston would allow concessions, since both were resolved on war. Never was a war more popular in England than that which Louis Napoleon and Palmerston resolved to have. This explains the leniency of public opinion in England toward a man who had stolen a sceptre. He was united with Great Britain in a popular war.

The French emperor, however, had other reasons for seeking the alliance of England in his war with Russia. It would give him a social prestige; he would enter more easily into the family of European sovereigns; he would be called mon frère by the Queen of England, which royal name Nicholas in his disdain refused to give him. If the Queen of England was his friend and ally, all other sovereigns must welcome him into their royal fraternity in spite of his political crimes, which were universally detested. It is singular that England, after exhausting her resources by a war of twenty years to dethrone Napoleon I., should become the firmest ally and friend of Napoleon III., who trampled on all constitutional liberty. But mutual interests brought them together; for when has England turned her back on her interests, or what she supposed to be her interests?

So war became inevitable. Napoleon III. triumphed. His co-operation with England was sincere and hearty. Yea, so gratified and elated was he at this stroke of good fortune, that he was ready to promise anything to his ally, even to the taking a subordinate part in the war. He would follow the dictation of the English ministers and the English generals.

It was the general opinion that the war would be short and glorious. At first it was contemplated only to fight the Russians in Bulgaria, and prevent their march across the Balkans, and thence to Constantinople. The war was undertaken to assist the Turks in the defence of their capital and territories. For this a large army was not indispensable; hence the forces which were sent to Bulgaria were comparatively small.

When Nicholas discovered that he could not force his way to Constantinople over the Balkans, and had withdrawn his forces from the Danubian principalities, peace then might have been honorably declared by all parties. France perhaps might have withdrawn from the contest, which had effected the end at first proposed. But England not only had been entangled in the war by the French alliance, but now was resolved on taking Sebastopol, to destroy the power of Russia on the Euxine; and France was compelled to complete what she had undertaken, although she had nothing to gain beyond what she had already secured. To the credit of Louis Napoleon, he proved a chivalrous and faithful ally, in continuing a disastrous and expensive war for the glory of France and the interests of England alone, although he made a separate peace as soon as he could do so with honor.

It is not my purpose to repeat what I have already written on the Crimean war, although the more I read and think about it the stronger is my disapproval, on both moral and political grounds, of that needless and unfortunate conflict,--unfortunate alike to all parties concerned. It is a marvel that it did not in the end weaken the power and prestige of both Palmerston and Napoleon III. It strengthened the hands of both, as was foreseen by these astute statesmen. Napoleon III. after the war was regarded as a far-seeing statesman, as well as an able administrator. People no longer regarded him as a fool, or even a knave. Success had shut the mouths of his enemies, except of a few obdurate ones like Thiers and Victor Hugo,--the latter of whom in his voluntary exile in Guernsey and Jersey still persisted in calling him "Napoleon the Little." Thiers generally called him Celui-ci,--"That fellow." This illustrious statesman, in his restless ambition and desire of power, probably would have taken office under the man whom he both despised and hated; but he dared not go against his antecedents, and was unwilling to be a mere clerk, as all Louis Napoleon's ministers were, whatever their abilities. He was supported by the army and the people, and therefore was master of the situation. This was a fact which everybody was compelled to acknowledge. It was easy to call him usurper, tyrant, and fool,--anything; but he both "reigned and governed."

"When peace was finally restored, the empire presented the aspect of a stable government, resting solidly upon the approval of a contented and thriving people." This was the general opinion of those who were well acquainted with French affairs, and of those who visited Paris, which was then exceedingly prosperous. The city was filled with travellers, who came to see the glory of success. Great architectural improvements were then in progress, which gave employment to a vast number of men theretofore leading a precarious life. The chief of these were the new boulevards, constructed with immense expense,--those magnificent but gloomy streets, which, lined with palaces and hotels, excited universal admiration,--a wise expenditure on the whole, which promoted both beauty and convenience, although to construct them a quarter of the city was demolished. The Grand Opera-House arose over the débris of the demolished houses,--the most magnificent theatre erected in modern times. Paris presented a spectacle of perpetual fêtes, reviews of troops, and illuminations, which both amused and distracted the people. The Louvre was joined to the Tuileries by a grand gallery devoted chiefly to works of art. The Champs Elysées and the Bois de Boulogne were ornamented with new avenues, fountains, gardens, flowers, and trees, where the people could pursue their pleasure unobstructed. The number of beautiful equipages was vastly increased, and everything indicated wealth and prosperity. The military was wisely kept out of sight, except on great occasions, so that the people should not be reminded of their loss of liberties; the police were courteous and obliging, and interfered with no pleasures and no ordinary pursuits; the shops blazed with every conceivable attraction; the fashionable churches were crowded with worshippers and strangers to hear music which rivalled that of the opera; the priests, in their ecclesiastical uniform, were seen in every street with cheerful and beaming faces, for the government sought their support and influence; the papers were filled with the movements of the imperial court at races, in hunting-parties, and visits to the châteaux of the great. The whole city seemed to be absorbed in pleasure or gain, and crowds swarmed at all places of amusement with contented faces: there was no outward sign of despotism or unhappiness, since everybody found employment. Even the idlers who frequented the crowded cafés of the boulevards seemed to take unusual pleasure at their games of dominoes and at their tables of beer and wine. Visitors wondered at the apparent absence of all restraint from government and at the personal liberty which everybody seemed practically to enjoy. For ten years after the coup d'état it was the general impression that the government of Louis Napoleon was a success. In spite of the predictions and hostile criticisms of famous statesmen, it was, to all appearance at least, stable, and the nation was prosperous.

The enemies that the emperor had the most cause to dread were these famous statesmen themselves. Thiers, Guizot, Broglie, Odillon Barrot, had all been prime ministers, and most of the rest had won their laurels under Louis Philippe. They either declined to serve under Napoleon III. or had been neglected by him; their political power had passed away. They gave vent, whenever they could with personal safety, to their spleen, to their disappointment, to their secret hostility; they all alike prophesied evil; they all professed to believe that the emperor could not maintain his position two years,--that he would be carried off by assassination or revolution. And joined with them in bitter hatred was the whole literary class,--like Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and Cousin,--who hurled curses and defiance from their retreats, or from the fashionable salons and clubs which they frequented. The old noblesse stood aloof. St. Germain was like a foreign city rather than a part of Paris. All the traders among the Legitimists and Orléanists continued in a state of secret hostility, and threw all the impediments they could against the government.

The situation of Louis Napoleon was indeed extremely difficult and critical. He had to fight against the combined influences of rank, fashion, and intellect,--against an enlightened public opinion; for it could not be forgotten that his power was usurped, and sustained by brute force and the ignorant masses. He would have been nothing without the army. In some important respects he showed marvellous astuteness and political sagacity,--such, for instance, as in converting England from an enemy to a friend. But he won England by playing the card of common interests against Russia.

The emperor was afraid to banish the most eminent men in his empire; so he tolerated them and hated them,--suspending over their heads the sword of Damocles. This they understood, and kept quiet except among themselves. But France was a hotbed of sedition and discontent during the whole reign of Louis Napoleon, at least among the old government leaders,--Orléanists, Legitimists, and Republicans alike.

Considering the difficulties and hatreds with which Napoleon III. had to contend, I am surprised that his reign lasted as long as it did,--longer than those of Louis XVIII. and Charles X. combined; longer than that of Louis Philippe, with the aid of the middle classes and the ablest statesmen of France,--an impressive fact, which indicates great ability of some kind on the part of the despot. But he paid dearly for his passion for power in the enormous debts entailed by his first war of prestige, and in the death of more than a hundred thousand men in the camps, on the field of battle, and in the hospitals. If he had had any conscience he would have been appalled; but he had no conscience, any more than his uncle, when anything stood in his way. The gratification of his selfish ambition overmastered patriotism and real fame, and prepared the way for his fall and the ignominy which accompanied it.

Had either of the monarchs who ruled France since the Revolution of 1791 been animated with a sincere desire for the public good, and been contented to rule as a constitutional sovereign, as they all alike swore to rule, I do not see why they might not have transmitted their thrones to their heirs. Napoleon I. certainly could have perpetuated his empire in his family had he not made such awful blunders as the invasion of Spain and Russia, which made him unable to contend with external enemies. Charles X. might have continued to reign had he not destroyed all constitutional liberty. Louis Philippe might have transmitted his power to the House of Orléans had he not sacrificed public interests to his greediness for money and to his dynastic ambition. And Napoleon III. might have reigned until he died had he fulfilled his promises to the parties who elevated him; but he could have continued to reign in the violation of his oaths only so long as his army was faithful and successful. When at last hopelessly defeated and captured, his throne instantly crumbled away; he utterly collapsed, and was nothing but a fugitive. What a lesson this is to all ambitious monarchs who sacrifice the interest of their country to personal aggrandizement! So long as a nation sees the monarch laboring for the aggrandizement and welfare of the country rather than of himself, it will rally around him and venerate him, even if he leads his subjects to war and enrolls them in his gigantic armies,--as in the case of the monarchs of Prussia since Frederic II., and even those of Austria.

Napoleon III. was unlike all these, for with transcendent cunning and duplicity he stole his throne, and then sacrificed the interests of France to support his usurpation. That he was an adventurer--as his enemies called him--is scarcely true; for he was born in the Tuileries, was the son of a king, and nephew of the greatest sovereign of modern times. So far as his usurpation can be palliated,--for it never can be excused,--it must be by his deep-seated conviction that he was the heir of his uncle, that the government of the empire belonged to him as a right, and that he would ultimately acquire it by the will of the people. Had Thiers or Guizot or Changarnier seized the reins, they would have been adventurers. All men are apt to be called adventurers by their detractors when they reach a transcendent position. Even such men as Napoleon I., Cromwell, and Canning were stigmatized as adventurers by their enemies. A poor artist who succeeds in winning a rich heiress is often regarded as an adventurer, even though his ancestors have been respectable and influential for four generations. Most successful men owe their elevation to genius or patience or persistent industry rather than to accidents or tricks. Louis Napoleon plodded and studied and wrote for years with the ultimate aim of ruling France, even though he "waded through slaughter to a throne;" and he would have deserved his throne had he continued true to the principles he professed. What a name he might have left had he been contented only to be President of a great republic; for his elevation to the Presidency was legitimate, and even after he became a despot he continued to be a high-bred gentleman in the English sense, which is more than can be said of his uncle. No one has ever denied that from first to last Louis Napoleon was courteous, affable, gentle, patient, and kind, with a control over his feelings and thoughts absolutely marvellous and unprecedented in a public man,--if we except Disraeli. Nothing disturbed his serenity; very rarely was he seen in a rage; he stooped and coaxed and flattered, even when he sent his enemies to Cayenne.

The share taken by Napoleon III. in the affairs of Italy has already been treated of, yet a look from that point of view may find place here. The interference of Austria with the Italian States--not only her own subjects there, but the independent States as well--has been called "a standing menace to Europe." It was finally brought to a crisis of conflict by the King of Sardinia, who had already provided himself with a friend and ally in the French emperor; and when, on the 29th of April, 1859, Austria crossed the river Ticino in hostile array, the combined French and Sardinian troops were ready to do battle. The campaign was short, and everywhere disastrous to the Austrians; so that on July 6 an armistice was concluded, and on July 12 the peace of Villa Franca ended the war, with Lombardy ceded to Sardinia, while Nice and Savoy were the reward of the French,--justifying by this addition to the territory and glory of France the emperor's second war of prestige.

Louis Napoleon reached the culmination of his fame and of real or supposed greatness--I mean his external power and grandeur, for I see no evidence of real greatness except such as may be won by astuteness, tact, cunning, and dissimulation--when he returned to Paris as the conqueror of the Austrian armies. He was then generally supposed to be great both as a general and as an administrator, when he was neither a general nor an administrator, as subsequent events proved. But his court was splendid; distinguished foreigners came to do him homage; even monarchs sought his friendship, and a nod of his head was ominous. He had delivered Italy as he had humiliated Russia; he had made France a great political power; he had made Paris the most magnificent city of the world (though at boundless expense), and everybody extolled the genius of Hausmann, his engineer, who had created such material glories; his fêtes were beyond all precedent; his wife gave the law to fashions and dresses, and was universally extolled for her beauty and graces; the great industrial exhibition in 1855, which surpassed in attractiveness that of London in 1851, drew strangers to his capital, and gave a stimulus to art and industry. Certainly he seemed to be a most fortunate man,--for the murmurs and intrigues of that constellation of statesmen which grew up with the restoration of the Bourbons, and the antipathies of editors and literary men, were not generally known. The army especially gloried in the deeds of a man whose successes reminded them of his immortal uncle; while the lavish expenditures of government in every direction concealed from the eyes of the people the boundless corruption by which the services of his officials were secured.

But this splendid exterior was deceptive, and a turn came to the fortunes of Napoleon III.,--long predicted, yet unexpected. Constantly on the watch for opportunities to aggrandize his name and influence, the emperor allowed the disorders of civil war in Mexico--resulting in many acts of injustice to foreigners there--to lead him into a combination with England and Spain to interfere. This was in 1861, when the United States were entering upon the terrific struggles of their own civil war, and were not able to prevent this European interference, although regarding it as most unfriendly to republican institutions. Within a year England and Spain withdrew. France remained; sent more troops; declared war on the government of President Juarez; fought some battles; entered the City of Mexico; convened the "Assembly of Notables;" and, on their declaring for a limited hereditary monarchy, the French emperor proposed for their monarch the Archduke Maximilian,--younger brother of Francis Joseph the Austrian emperor. Maximilian accepted, and in June, 1864, arrived,--upheld, however, most feebly by the "Notables," and relying chiefly on French bayonets, which had driven Juarez to the northern part of the country.

But against the expectation of Napoleon III, the great rebellion in the United States collapsed, and this country became a military power which Europe was compelled to respect: a nation that could keep in the field over a million of soldiers was not to be despised. While the civil war was in progress the United States government was compelled to ignore the attempt to establish a French monarchy on its southern borders; but no sooner was the war ended than it refused to acknowledge any government in Mexico except that of President Juarez, which Louis Napoleon had overthrown; so that although the French emperor had bound himself with solemn treaties to maintain twenty-five thousand French troops in Mexico, he was compelled to withdraw these forces and leave Maximilian to his fate. He advised the young Austrian to save himself by abdication, and to leave Mexico with the troops; but Maximilian felt constrained by his sense of honor to remain, and refused. In March, 1867, this unfortunate prince was made prisoner by the republicans, and was unscrupulously shot. His calamities and death excited the compassion of Europe; and with it was added a profound indignation for the man who had unwittingly lured him on to his ruin. Louis Napoleon's military prestige received a serious blow, and his reputation as a statesman likewise; and although the splendor of his government and throne was as great as ever, his fall, in the eyes of the discerning, was near at hand.

By this time Louis Napoleon had become prematurely old; he suffered from acute diseases; his constitution was undermined; he was no longer capable of carrying the burdens he had assumed; his spirits began to fail; he lost interest in the pleasures which had at first amused him; he found delight in nothing, not even in his reviews and fêtes; he was completely ennuied; his failing health seemed to affect his mind; he became vacillating and irresolute; he lost his former energies. He saw the gulf opening which was to swallow him up; he knew that his situation was desperate, and that something must be done to retrieve his fortunes. His temporary popularity with his own people was breaking, too;--the Mexican fiasco humiliated them. The internal affairs of the empire were more and more interfered with and controlled by the Catholic Church, through the intrigues and influence of the empress, a bigoted Spanish Catholic,--and this was another source of unpopularity, for France was not a priest-ridden country, and the emperor was blamed for the growing ecclesiastical power in civil affairs. He had invoked war to interest the people, and war had saved him for a time; but the consequences of war pursued him. As he was still an overrated man, and known to be restless and unscrupulous, Germany feared him, and quietly armed, making preparations for an attack which seemed only too probable. His negotiation with the King of Holland for the cession of the Duchy of Luxemburg, by which acquisition he hoped to offset the disgrace which his Mexican enterprise had caused, excited the jealousy of Prussia; for by the treaties of 1815 Prussia obtained the right to garrison the fortress,--the strongest in Europe next to Gibraltar,--and had no idea of permitting it to fall into the hands of France.

The irresistible current which was then setting in for the union of the German States under the rule of Prussia, and for which Bismarck had long been laboring, as had Cavour for the unity of Italy, caused a great outcry among the noisy but shallow politicians of Paris, who deluded themselves with the idea that France was again invincible; and not only they, but the French people generally, fancied that France was strong enough to conquer half of Europe, The politicians saw in a war with Prussia the aggrandizement of French interests, and did all they could to hasten it on. It was popular with the nation at large, who saw only one side; and especially so with the generals of the army, who aspired to new laurels. Napoleon III. blustered and bullied and threatened, which pleased his people; but in his heart he had his doubts, and had no desire to attack Prussia so long as the independence of the southern States of Germany was maintained. But when the designs of Bismarck became more and more apparent to cement a united Germany, and thus to raise up a most formidable military power, Louis Napoleon sought alliances in anticipation of a conflict which could not be much longer delayed.

First, the French emperor turned to Austria, whom he had humiliated at Solferino and incensed by the aid which he had given to Victor Emmanuel to break the Austrian domination in Italy, as well as outraged its sympathies by his desertion of Maximilian in Mexico. No cordial alliance could be expected from this Power, unless he calculated on its hostility to Prussia for the victories she had lately won. Count Beust, the Austrian chancellor, was a bitter enemy to Prussia, and hoped to regain the ascendency which Austria had once enjoyed under Metternich. So promises were made to the French emperor; but they were never kept, and Austria really remained neutral in the approaching contest, to the great disappointment of Napoleon III. He also sought the aid of Italy, which he had reason to expect from the service he had rendered to Piedmont; but the Garibaldians had embroiled France with the Italian people in their attempt to overthrow the Papal government, which was protected by French troops; and Louis Napoleon by the reoccupation of Rome seemed to bar the union of the Italian people, passionately striving for national unity. Thus the Italians also stood aloof from France, although Victor Emmanuel personally was disposed to aid her.

In 1870 France found herself isolated, and compelled, in case of war with Prussia, to fight single-handed. If Napoleon III. had exercised the abilities he had shown at the beginning of his career, he would have found means to delay a conflict for which he was not prepared, or avoid it altogether; but in 1870 his intellect was shattered, and he felt himself powerless to resist the current which was bearing him away to his destruction. He showed the most singular incapacity as an administrator. He did not really know the condition of his army; he supposed he had four hundred and fifty thousand effective troops, but really possessed a little over three hundred thousand, while Prussia had over one-third more than this, completely equipped and disciplined, and with improved weapons. He was deceived by the reports of his own generals, to whom he had delegated everything, instead of looking into the actual state of affairs himself, as his uncle would have done, and as Thiers did under Louis Philippe. More than a third of his regiments were on paper alone, or dwindled in size; the monstrous corruptions of his reign had permeated every part of the country; the necessary arms, ammunition, and material of war in general were deplorably deficient; no official reports could be relied upon, and few of his generals could be implicitly trusted. If ever infatuation blinded a nation to its fate, it most signally marked France in 1870.

Nothing was now wanting but the spark to kindle the conflagration; and this was supplied by the interference of the French government with the nomination of a German prince to the vacant throne of Spain. The Prussian king gave way in the matter of Prince Leopold, but refused further concessions. Leopold was sufficiently magnanimous to withdraw his claims, and here French interference should have ended. But France demanded guarantees that no future candidate should be proposed without her consent. Of course the Prussian king,--seeing with the keen eyes of Bismarck, and armed to the teeth under the supervision of Moltke, the greatest general of the age, who could direct, with the precision of a steam-engine on a track, the movements of the Prussian army, itself a mechanism,--treated with disdain this imperious demand from a power which he knew to be inferior to his own. Count Bismarck craftily lured on his prey, who was already goaded forward by his home war-party, with the empress at their head; negotiations ceased, and Napoleon III. made his fatal declaration of hostilities, to the grief of the few statesmen who foresaw the end.

Even then the condition of France was not desperate if the government had shown capacity; but conceit, vanity, and ignorance blinded the nation. Louis Napoleon should have known, and probably did know, that the contending forces were uneven; that he had no generals equal to Moltke; that his enemies could crush him in the open field; that his only hope was in a well-organized defence. But his generals rushed madly on to destruction against irresistible forces, incapable of forming a combination, while the armies they led were smaller than anybody supposed. Napoleon III. hoped that by rapidity of movement he could enter southern Germany before the Prussian armies could be massed against him; but here he dreamed, for his forces were not ready at the time appointed, and the Prussians crossed the Rhine without obstruction. Then followed the battle of Worth, on the 6th of August, when Marshal McMahon, with only forty-five thousand men, ventured to resist the Prussian crown-prince with a hundred thousand, and lost consequently a large part of his army, and opened a passage through the northern Vosges to the German troops. On the same day Frossard's corps was defeated by Prince Frederic Charles near Saarbrücken, while the French emperor remained at Metz irresolute, infatuated, and helpless. On the 12th of August he threw up the direction of his armies altogether, and appointed Marshal Bazaine commander-in-chief,--thus proclaiming his own incapacity as a general. Bazaine still had more than two hundred thousand men under his command, and might have taken up a strong position on the Moselle, or retreated in safety to Chalons; but he fell back on Gravelotte, when, being defeated on the 18th, he withdrew within the defences of Metz. He was now surrounded by two hundred and fifty thousand men, and he made no effort to escape. McMahon attempted to relieve him, but was ordered by the government at Paris to march to the defence of that city. On this line, however, he got no farther than Sedan, where all was lost on September 1,--the entire army and the emperor himself surrendering as prisoners of war. The French had fought gallantly, but were outnumbered at every point.

Nothing now remained to the conquerors but to advance to the siege of Paris. The throne of Napoleon III. was overturned, and few felt sympathy for his misfortunes, since he was responsible for the overwhelming calamities which overtook his country, and which his country never forgave. In less than a month he fell from what seemed to be the proudest position in Europe, and stood out to the eye of the world in all the hateful deformity of a defeated despot who deserved to fall. The suddenness and completeness of his destruction has been paralleled only by the defeat of the armies of Darius by Alexander the Great. All delusions as to Louis Napoleon's abilities vanished forever. All his former grandeur, even his services, were at once forgotten. He paid even a sadder penalty than his uncle, who never lost the affections of his subjects, while the nephew destroyed all rational hopes of the future restoration of his family, and became accursed.

It is possible that the popular verdict in reference to Louis Napoleon, on his fall, may be too severe. This world sees only success or failure as the test of greatness. With the support of the army and the police--the heads of which were simply his creatures, whom he had bought, or who from selfish purposes had pushed him on in his hours of irresolution and guided him--the coup d'état was not a difficult thing, any more than any bold robbery; and with the control of the vast machinery of government,--that machinery which is one of the triumphs of civilization,--an irresistible power, it is not marvellous that he retained his position in spite of the sneers or hostilities of statesmen out of place, or of editors whose journals were muzzled or suppressed; especially when the people saw great public improvements going on, had both bread and occupation, read false accounts of military successes, and were bewildered by fêtes and outward grandeur. But when the army was a sham, and corruption had pervaded every office under government; when the expenses of living had nearly doubled from taxation, extravagance, bad example, and wrong ideas of life; when trusted servants were turned into secret enemies, incapable and false; when such absurd mistakes were made as the expedition to Mexico, and the crowning folly of the war with Prussia, proving the incapacity and folly of the master-hand,--the machinery which directed the armies and the bureaus and all affairs of State itself, broke down, and the catastrophe was inevitable.

Louis Napoleon certainly was not the same man in 1870 that he was in 1850. His burdens had proved too great for his intellect. He fell, and disappeared from history in a storm of wrath and shame, which also hid from the eyes of the people the undoubted services he had rendered to the cause of order and law, and to that of a material prosperity which was at one time the pride of his country and the admiration of the whole world.

But a nation is greater than any individual, even if he be a miracle of genius. When the imperial cause was lost, and the armies of France were dispersed or shut up in citadels, and the hosts of Germany were converging upon the capital, Paris resolved on sustaining a siege--apparently hopeless--rather than yield to a conqueror before the last necessity should open its gates. The self-sacrifices which its whole population, supposed to be frivolous and enervated, made to preserve their homes and their works of art; their unparalleled sufferings; their patience and self-reliance under the most humiliating circumstances; their fertility of resources; their cheerfulness under hunger and privation; and, above everything else, their submission to law with every temptation to break it,--proved that the spirit of the nation was unbroken; that their passive virtues rivalled their most glorious deeds of heroism; that, if light-headed in prosperity, they knew how to meet adversity; and that they had not lost faith in the greatness of their future.

Perhaps they would not have made so stubborn a resistance to destiny if they had realized their true situation, but would have opened their gates at once to overwhelming foes, as they did on the fall of the first Napoleon. They probably calculated that Bazaine would make his escape from Metz with his two hundred thousand men, find his way to the banks of the Loire, rally all the military forces of the south of France, and then march with his additional soldiers to relieve Paris, and drive back the Germans to the Rhine.

But this was not to be, and it is idle to speculate on what might have been done either to raise the siege of Paris--one of the most memorable in the whole history of the world--or to prevent the advance of the Germans upon the capital itself. It is remarkable that the Parisians were able to hold out so long,--thanks to the genius and precaution of Thiers, who had erected the formidable forts outside the walls of Paris in the reign of Louis Philippe; and still more remarkable was the rapid recovery of the French nation after such immense losses of men and treasure, after one of the most signal and humiliating overthrows which history records. Probably France was never stronger than she is to-day in her national resources, in her readiness for war, and in the apparent stability of her republican government,--which ensued after the collapse of the Second Empire. She has been steady, persevering, and even patient for a hundred years in her struggles for political freedom, whatever mistakes she has made and crimes she has committed to secure this highest boon which modern civilization confers. A great hero may fall, a great nation may be enslaved; but the cause of human freedom will in time triumph over all despots, over all national inertness, and all national mistakes.

AUTHORITIES.

Abbott, M. Baxter, S.P. Day, Victor Hugo, Macrae, S.M. Smucker, F.M. Whitehurst, have written more or less on Louis Napoleon. See Justin McCarthy's Modern Leaders; Kinglake's Crimean War; History of the Franco-German War; Lives of Bismarck, Moltke, Cavour; Life of Lord Palmerston; Life of Nicholas; Life of Thiers; Harriet Martineau's Biographical Sketches; W.R. Greg's Life of Todleben.

PRINCE BISMARCK.

1815-1898.

THE GERMAN EMPIRE.

Before presenting Bismarck, it will be necessary to glance at the work of those great men who prepared the way not only for him, but also for the soldier Moltke,--men who raised Prussia from the humiliation resulting from her conquest by Napoleon.

That humiliation was as complete as it was unexpected. It was even greater than that of France after the later Franco-Prussian war. Prussia was dismembered; its provinces were seized by the conqueror; its population was reduced to less than four millions; its territory was occupied by one hundred and fifty thousand French soldiers; the king himself was an exile and a fugitive from his own capital; every sort of indignity was heaped on his prostrate subjects, who were compelled to pay a war indemnity beyond their power; trade and commerce were cut off by Napoleon's Continental system; and universal poverty overspread the country, always poor, and now poorer than ever. Prussia had no allies to rally to her sinking fortunes; she was completely isolated. Most of her fortresses were in the hands of her enemies, and the magnificent army of which she had been so proud since the days of Frederic the Great was dispersed. At the peace of Tilsit, in 1807, it looked as if the whole kingdom was about to be absorbed in the empire of Napoleon, like Bavaria and the Rhine provinces, and wiped out of the map of Europe like unfortunate Poland.

But even this did not complete the humiliation. Napoleon compelled the King of Prussia--Frederic William III.--to furnish him soldiers to fight against Russia, as if Prussia were already incorporated with his own empire and had lost her nationality. At that time France and Russia were in alliance, and Prussia had no course to adopt but submission or complete destruction; and yet Prussia refused in these evil days to join the Confederation of the Rhine, which embraced all the German States at the south and west of Austria and Prussia. Napoleon, however, was too much engrossed in his scheme of conquering Spain, to swallow up Prussia entirely, as he intended, after he should have subdued Spain. So, after all, Prussia had before her only the fortune of Ulysses in the cave of Polyphemus,--to be devoured the last.

The escape of Prussia was owing, on the one hand, to the necessity for Napoleon to withdraw his main army from Prussia in order to fight in Spain; and secondly, to the transcendent talents of a few patriots to whom the king in his distress was forced to listen. The chief of these were Stein, Hardenberg, and Scharnhorst. It was the work of Stein to reorganize the internal administration of Prussia, including the financial department; that of Hardenberg to conduct the ministry of foreign affairs; and that of Scharnhorst to reorganize the military power. The two former were nobles; the latter sprung from the people,--a peasant's son; but they worked together in tolerable harmony, considering the rival jealousies that at one time existed among all the high officials, with their innumerable prejudices.

Baron von Stein, born in 1757, of an old imperial knightly family from the country near Nassau, was as a youth well-educated, and at the age of twenty-three entered the Prussian service under Frederic the Great, in the mining department, where he gained rapid promotion. In 1786 he visited England and made a careful study of her institutions, which he profoundly admired. In 1787 he became a sort of provincial governor, being director of the war and Domaine Chambers at Cleves and Hamm.

In 1804 Stein became Minister of Trade, having charge of excise, customs, manufactures, and trade. The whole financial administration at this time under King Frederick William III was in a state of great confusion, from an unnecessary number of officials who did not work harmoniously. There was too much "red tape." Stein brought order out of confusion, simplified the administration, punished corruption, increased the national credit, then at a very low ebb, and re-established the bank of Prussia on a basis that enabled it to assist the government.

But a larger field than that of finance was opened to Stein in the war of 1806. The king intrusted to him the portfolio of foreign affairs,--not willingly, but because he regarded him as the ablest man in the kingdom. Stein declined to be foreign minister unless he was entirely unshackled, and the king was obliged to yield, for the misfortunes of the country had now culminated in the disastrous defeat at Friedland. The king, however, soon quarrelled with his minister, being jealous of his commanding abilities, and unused to dictation from any source. After a brief exile at Nassau, the peace of Tilsit having proved the sagacity of his views, Stein returned to power as virtual dictator of the kingdom, with the approbation of Napoleon; but his dictatorship lasted only about a year, when he was again discharged.

During that year, 1807, Stein made his mark in Prussian history. Without dwelling on details, he effected the abolition of serfdom in Prussia, the trade in land, and municipal reforms, giving citizens self-government in place of the despotism of military bureaus. He made it his business to pay off the French war indemnity,--one hundred and fifty million francs, a great sum for Prussia to raise when dismembered and trodden in the dust under one hundred and fifty thousand French soldiers,--and to establish a new and improved administrative system. But, more than all, he attempted to rouse a moral, religious, and patriotic spirit in the nation, and to inspire it anew with courage, self-confidence, and self-sacrifice. In 1808 the ministry became warlike in spite of its despair, the first glimpse of hope being the popular rising in Spain. It was during the ministry of Stein, and through his efforts, that the anti-Napoleonic revolution began.

The intense hostility of Stein to Napoleon, and his commanding abilities, led Napoleon in 1808 imperatively to demand from the King of Prussia the dismissal of his minister; and Frederick William dared not resist. Stein did not retire, however, until after the royal edict had emancipated the serfs of Prussia, and until that other great reform was made by which the nobles lost the monopoly of office and exemption from taxation, while the citizen class gained admission to all posts, trades, and occupations. These great reforms were chiefly to be traced to Stein, although Hardenberg and others, like Schön and Niebuhr, had a hand in them.

Stein also opened the military profession to the citizen class, which before was closed, only nobles being intrusted with command in the army. It is true that nobles still continued to form a large majority of officers, even as peasants formed the bulk of the army. But the removal of restrictions and the abolition of serfdom tended to create patriotic sentiments among all classes, on which the strength of armies in no small degree rests. In the time of Frederic the Great the army was a mere machine. It was something more when the nation in 1811 rallied to achieve its independence. Then was born the idea of nationality,--that, whatever obligations a Prussian owed to the state, Germany was greater than Prussia itself. This idea was the central principle of Stein's political system, leading ultimately to the unity of Germany as finally effected by Bismarck and Moltke. It became almost synonymous with that patriotism which sustains governments and thrones, the absence of which was the great defect of the German States before the times of Napoleon, when both princes and people lost sight of the unity of the nation in the interests of petty sovereignties.

Stein was a man of prodigious energy, practical good sense, and lofty character, but irascible, haughty, and contemptuous, and was far from being a favorite with the king and court. His great idea was the unity and independence of Germany. He thought more of German nationality than of Prussian aggrandizement. It was his aim to make his countrymen feel that they were Germans rather than Prussians, and that it was only by a union of the various German States that they could hope to shake off the French yoke, galling and humiliating beyond description.

When Stein was driven into exile at the dictation of Napoleon, with the loss of his private fortune, he was invited by the Emperor of Russia to aid him with his counsels,--and it can be scarcely doubted that in the employ of Russia he rendered immense services to Germany, and had no little influence in shaping the movements of the allies in effecting the ruin of the common despot. On this point, however, I cannot dwell.

Count, afterward Prince, Hardenberg, held to substantially the same views, and was more acceptable to the king as minister than was the austere and haughty Stein, although his morals were loose, and his abilities far inferior to those of the former. But his diplomatic talents were considerable, and his manners were agreeable, like those of Metternich, while Stein treated kings and princes as ordinary men, and dictated to them the course which was necessary to pursue. It was the work of Hardenberg to create the peasant-proprietorship of modern Prussia; but it was the previous work of Stein to establish free trade in land,--which means the removal of hindrances to the sale and purchase of land, which still remains one of the abuses of England,--the ultimate effect of which was to remove caste in land as well as caste in persons.

The great educational movement, in the deepest depression of Prussian affairs, was headed by William, Baron von Humboldt. When Prussia lay disarmed, dismembered, and impoverished, the University of Berlin was founded, the government contributing one hundred and fifty thousand thalers a year; and Humboldt--the first minister of public instruction--succeeded in inducing the most eminent and learned men in Germany to become professors in this new university. I look upon this educational movement in the most gloomy period of German history as one of the noblest achievements which any nation ever made in the cause of science and literature. It took away the sting of military ascendency, and raised men of genius to an equality with nobles; and as the universities were the centres of liberal sentiments and all liberalizing ideas, they must have exerted no small influence on the war of liberation itself, as well as on the cause of patriotism, which was the foundation of the future greatness of Prussia. Students flocked from all parts of Germany to hear lectures from accomplished and patriotic professors, who inculcated the love of fatherland. Germany, though fallen into the hands of a military hero from defects in the administration of governments and armies, was not disgraced when her professors in the university were the greatest scholars of the world. They created a new empire, not of the air, as some one sneeringly remarked, but of mind, which has gone on from conquering to conquer. For more than fifty years German universities have been the centre of European thought and scholastic culture,--pedantic, perhaps, but original and profound.

Before proceeding to the main subject, I have to speak of one more great reform, which was the work of Scharnhorst. This was that series of measures which determined the result of the greatest military struggles of the nineteenth century, and raised Prussia to the front rank of military monarchies. It was the levee en masse, composed of the youth of the nation, without distinction of rank, instead of an army made up of peasants and serfs and commanded by their feudal masters. Scharnhorst introduced a compulsory system, indeed, but it was not unequal. Every man was made to feel that he had a personal interest in defending his country, and there were no exemptions made. True, the old system of Frederic the Great was that of conscription; but from this conscription large classes and whole districts were exempted, while the soldiers who fought in the war of liberation were drawn from all classes alike: hence, there was no unjust compulsion, which weakens patriotism, and entails innumerable miseries. It was impossible in the utter exhaustion of the national finances to raise a sufficient number of volunteers to meet the emergencies of the times; therefore, if Napoleon was to be overthrown, it was absolutely necessary to compel everybody to serve in the army for a limited period, The nation saw the necessity, and made no resistance. Thus patriotism lent her aid, and became an overwhelming power. The citizen soldier was no great burden on the government, since it was bound to his support only for a limited period,--long or short as the exigency of the country demanded. Hence, large armies were maintained at comparatively trifling expense.

I need not go into the details of a system which made Prussia a nation of patriots as well as of soldiers, and which made Scharnhorst a great national benefactor, sharing with Stein the glory of a great deliverance. He did not live to see the complete triumph of his system, matured by genius and patient study; but his work remained to future generations, and made Prussia invincible except to a coalition of powerful enemies. All this was done under the eye of Napoleon, and a dreamy middle class became an effective soldiery. So, too, did the peasants, no longer subjected to corporal punishment and other humiliations. What a great thing it was to restore dignity to a whole nation, and kindle the fires of patriotic ardor among poor and rich alike! To the credit of the king, he saw the excellence of the new system, at once adopted it, and generously rewarded its authors. Scharnhorst, the peasant's son, was made a noble, and was retained in office until he died. Stein, however, whose overshadowing greatness created jealousy, remained simply a baron, and spent his last days in retirement,--though not unhonored, or without influence, even when not occupying the great offices of state, to which no man ever had a higher claim. The king did not like him, and the king was still an absolute monarch.

Frederick William III. was by no means a great man, being jealous, timid, and vacillating; but it was in his reign that Prussia laid the foundation of her greatness as a military monarchy. It was not the king who laid this foundation, but the great men whom Providence raised up in the darkest hours of Prussia's humiliation. He did one prudent thing, however, out of timidity, when his ministers waged vigorous and offensive measures. He refused to arm against Napoleon when Prussia lay at his mercy. This turned out to be the salvation of Prussia, A weak man's instincts proved to be wiser than the wisdom of the wise. When Napoleon's doom was sealed by his disasters in Russia, then, and not till then, did the Prussian king unite with Russia and Austria to crush the unscrupulous despot.

The condition of Prussia, then, briefly stated, when Napoleon was sent to St. Helena to meditate and die, was this: a conquering army, of which Blücher was one of its greatest generals, had been raised by the levee en masse,--a conscription, indeed, not of peasants alone, obliged to serve for twenty years, but of the whole nation, for three years of active service; and a series of administrative reforms had been introduced and extended to every department of the State, by which greater economy and a more complete system were inaugurated, favoritism abolished, and the finances improved so as to support the government and furnish the sinews of war; while alliances were made with great Powers who hitherto had been enemies or doubtful friends.

These alliances resulted in what is called the German Confederation, or Bund,--a strict union of all the various States for defensive purposes, and also to maintain a general system to suppress revolutionary and internal dissensions. Most of the German States entered into this Confederacy, at the head of which was Austria. It was determined in June, 1815, at Vienna, that the Confederacy should be managed by a general assembly, called a Diet, the seat of which was located at Frankfort. In this Diet the various independent States, thirty-nine in number, had votes in proportion to their population, and were bound to contribute troops of one soldier to every hundred inhabitants, amounting to three hundred thousand in all, of which Austria and Prussia and Bavaria furnished more than half. This arrangement virtually gave to Austria and Prussia a preponderance in the Diet; and as the States were impoverished by the late war, and the people generally detested war, a long peace of forty years (with a short interval of a year) was secured to Germany, during which prosperity returned and the population nearly doubled. The Germans turned their swords into pruning-hooks, and all kinds of industry were developed, especially manufactures. The cities were adorned with magnificent works of art, and libraries, schools, and universities covered the land. No nation ever made a more signal progress in material prosperity than did the German States during this period of forty years,--especially Prussia, which became in addition intellectually the most cultivated country in Europe, with twenty-one thousand primary schools, and one thousand academies, or gymnasia, in which mathematics and the learned languages were taught by accomplished scholars; to say nothing of the universities, which drew students from all Christian and civilized countries in both hemispheres.

The rapid advance in learning, however, especially in the universities and the gymnasia, led to the discussion of innumerable subjects, including endless theories of government and the rights of man, by which discontent was engendered and virtue was not advanced. Strange to say, even crime increased. The universities became hot-beds of political excitement, duels, beer-drinking, private quarrels, and infidel discussion, causing great alarm to conservative governments and to peaceful citizens generally. At last the Diet began to interfere, for it claimed the general oversight of all internal affairs in the various States. An army of three hundred thousand men which obeyed the dictation of the Diet was not to be resisted; and as this Diet was controlled by Austria and Prussia, it became every year more despotic and anti-democratic. In consequence, the Press was gradually fettered, the universities were closely watched, and all revolutionary movements in cities were suppressed. Discontent and popular agitations, as usual, went hand in hand.

As early as 1818 the great reaction against all liberal sentiments in political matters had fairly set in. The king of Prussia neglected, and finally refused, to grant the constitutional government which he had promised in the day of his adversity before the battle of Waterloo; while Austria, guided by Metternich, stamped her iron heel on everything which looked like intellectual or national independence.

This memorable reaction against all progress in government, not confined to the German States but extending to Europe generally, has already been considered in previous chapters. It was the great political feature in the history of Europe for ten years after the fall of Napoleon, particularly in Austria, where hatred of all popular movements raged with exceeding bitterness, intensified by the revolutions in Spain, Italy, and Greece. The assassination of Kotzebue, the dramatic author, by a political fanatic, for his supposed complicity with the despotic schemes of the Czar, kindled popular excitement into a blazing flame, but still more fiercely incited the sovereigns of Germany to make every effort to suppress even liberty of thought.

During the period, then, when ultra-conservative principles animated the united despots of the various German States, and the Diet controlled by Metternich repressed all liberal movements, little advance was made in Prussia in the way of reforms. But a great advance was made in all questions of political economy and industrial matters. Free-trade was established in the most unlimited sense between all the states and provinces of the Confederation. All restraints were removed from the navigation of rivers; new markets were opened in every direction for the productions of industry. In 1839 the Zollverein, or Customs-Union, was established, by which a uniform scale of duties was imposed in Northern Germany on all imports and exports. But no political reforms which the king had promised were effected during the life of Frederick William III. Hardenberg, who with Stein had inaugurated liberal movements, had lost his influence, although he was retained in power until he died.

For the twenty years succeeding the confederation of the German States in 1820, constitutional freedom made little or no progress in Germany. The only advance made in Prussia was in 1823, when the Provincial Estates, or Diets, were established. These, however, were the mere shadow of representative government, since the Estates were convoked at irregular intervals, and had neither the power to initiate laws nor grant supplies. They could only express their opinions concerning changes in the laws pertaining to persons and property.

On the 7th of June, 1840, Frederick William III. of Prussia died, and was succeeded by his son Frederick William IV., a religious and patriotic king, who was compelled to make promises for some sort of constitutional liberty, and to grant certain concessions, which although they did not mean much gave general satisfaction. Among other things the freedom of the Press was partially guaranteed, with certain restrictions, and the Zollverein was extended to Brunswick and Hesse-Homburg. Meantime the government entered with zeal upon the construction of railways and the completion of the Cathedral of Cologne, which tended to a more permanent union of the North German States. "We are not engaged here," said the new monarch, on the inauguration of the completion of that proudest work of mediaeval art, "with the construction of an ordinary edifice; it is a work bespeaking the spirit of union and concord which animates the whole of Germany and all its persuasions, that we are now constructing." This inauguration, amid immense popular enthusiasm, was soon followed by the meeting of the Estates of the whole kingdom at Berlin, which for the first time united the various Provincial Estates in a general Diet; but its functions were limited to questions involving a diminution of taxation. No member was allowed to speak more than once on any question, and the representatives of the commons were only a third part of the whole assembly. This naturally did not satisfy the nation, and petitions flowed in for the abolition of the censorship of the Press and for the publicity of debate. The king was not prepared to make these concessions in full, but he abolished the censorship of the Press as to works extending to above twenty pages, and enjoined the censors of lesser pamphlets and journals to exercise gentleness and discretion, and not erase anything which did not strike at the monarchy. At length, in 1847, the desire was so universal for some form of representative government that a royal edict convoked a General Assembly of the Estates of Prussia, arranged in four classes,--the nobles, the equestrian order, the towns, and the rural districts. The Diet consisted of six hundred and seventy members, of which only eighty were nobles, and was empowered to discuss all questions pertaining to legislation; but the initiative of all measures was reserved to the crown. This National Diet assembled on the 24th of July, and was opened by the king in person, with a noble speech, remarkable for its elevation of tone. He convoked the Diet, the king said, to make himself acquainted with the wishes and wants of his people, but not to change the constitution, which guaranteed an absolute monarchy. The province of the Diet was consultative rather than legislative. Political and military power, as before, remained with the king. Still, an important step had been taken toward representative institutions.

It was about this time, as a member of the National Diet, that Otto Edward Leopold von Bismarck appeared upon the political stage. It was a period of great political excitement, not only in Prussia, but throughout Europe, and also of great material prosperity. Railways had been built, the Zollverein had extended through North Germany, the universities were in their glory, and into everything fearless thinkers were casting their thoughtful eyes. Thirty-four years of peace had enriched and united the German States. The great idea of the day was political franchise. Everybody aspired to solve political problems, and wished to have a voice in deliberative assemblies. There was also an unusual agitation of religious ideas. Rouge had attempted the complete emancipation of Germany from Papal influences, and university professors threw their influence on the side of rationalism and popular liberty. On the whole, there was a general tendency towards democratic ideas, which was opposed with great bitterness by the conservative parties, made up of nobles and government officials.

Bismarck arose, slowly but steadily, with the whole force of his genius, among the defenders of the conservative interests of his order and of the throne. He was then simply Herr von Bismarck, belonging to an ancient and noble but not wealthy family, whose seat was Schönhausen, where the future prince was born, April 1, 1815. The youth was sent to a gymnasium in Berlin in 1830, and in 1832 to the university of Göttingen in Hanover, where he was more distinguished for duels, drinking-parties, and general lawlessness than for scholarship. Here he formed a memorable friendship with a brother student, a young American,--John Lothrop Motley, later the historian of the Dutch Republic. Much has been written of Bismarck's reckless and dissipated life at the university, which differed not essentially from that of other nobles. He had a grand figure, superb health, extraordinary animal spirits, and could ride like a centaur. He spent but three semestres at Göttingen, and then repaired to Berlin in order to study jurisprudence under the celebrated Savigny; but he was rarely seen in the lecture-room. He gave no promise of the great abilities which afterward distinguished him. Yet he honorably passed his State examination; and as he had chosen the law for his profession, he first served on leaving the university as a sort of clerk in the city police, and in 1834 was transferred to Aix-la-Chapelle, in the administrative department of the district. In 1837 he served in the crown office at Potsdam. He then entered for a year as a sharpshooter of the Guards, to absolve his obligation to military service.

The next eight years, from the age of twenty-four, he devoted to farming, hunting, carousing, and reading, on one of his father's estates in Pomerania. He was a sort of country squire, attending fairs, selling wool, inspecting timber, handling grain, gathering rents, and sitting as a deputy in the local Diet,--the talk and scandal of the neighborhood for his demon-like rides and drinking-bouts, yet now studying all the while, especially history and even philosophy, managing the impoverished paternal estates with prudence and success, and making short visits to France and England, the languages of which countries he could speak with fluency and accuracy. In 1847 he married Johanna von Putkammer, nine years younger than himself, who proved a model wife, domestic and wise, of whom he was both proud and fond. The same year, his father having died and left him Schönhausen, he was elected a member of the Landtag, a quasi-parliament of the eight united Diets of the monarchy; and his great career began.

Up to this period Bismarck was not a publicly marked man, except in an avidity for country sports and skill in horsemanship. He ever retained his love of the country and of country life. If proud and overbearing, he was not ostentatious. He had but few friends, but to these he was faithful. He never was popular until he had made Prussia the most powerful military State in Europe. He never sought to be loved so much as to be feared; he never allowed himself to be approached without politeness and deference. He seemed to care more for dogs than men. Nor was he endowed with those graces of manner which marked Metternich. He remained harsh, severe, grave, proud through his whole career, from first to last, except in congenial company. What is called society he despised, with all his aristocratic tendencies and high social rank. He was born for untrammelled freedom, and was always impatient under contradiction or opposition. When he reached the summit of his power he resembled Wallenstein, the hero of the Thirty Years War,--superstitious, self-sustained, unapproachable, inspiring awe, rarely kindling love, overshadowing by his vast abilities the monarch whom he served and ruled.

No account of the man, however, would be complete which did not recognize the corner-stone of his character,--an immovable belief in the feudalistic right of royalty to rule its subjects. Descended from an ancient family of knights and statesmen, of the most intensely aristocratic and reactionary class even in Germany, his inherited instincts and his own tremendous will, backed by a physique of colossal size and power, made effective his loyalty to the king and the monarchy, which from the first dominated and inspired him. In the National Diet of 1847, Herr von Bismarck sat for more than a month before he opened his lips; but when he did speak it became evident that he was determined to support to the utmost the power of the crown. He was plus royaliste que le roi. In the ordinary sense he was no orator. He hesitated, he coughed, he sought for words; his voice, in spite of his herculean frame, was feeble. But sturdy in his loyalty, although inexperienced in parliamentary usage, he offered a bold front to the liberalism which he saw to be dangerous to his sovereign's throne. Like Oliver Cromwell in Parliament, he gained daily in power, while, unlike the English statesman, he was opposed to the popular side, and held up the monarchy after the fashion of Strafford. From that time, and in fact until 1866, when he conquered Austria, Bismarck was very unpopular; and as he rose in power he became the most bitterly hated man in Prussia,--which hatred he returned with arrogant contempt. He consistently opposed all reforms, even the emancipation of the Jews, which won him the favor of the monarch.

When the revolution of 1848 broke out, which hurled Louis Philippe from the French throne its flames reached every continental State except Russia. Metternich, who had been all powerful in Austria for forty years, was obliged to flee, as well as the imperial family itself. All the Germanic States were now promised liberal constitutions by the fallen or dismayed princes. In Prussia, affairs were critical, and the reformers were sanguine of triumph. Berlin was agitated by mobs to the verge of anarchy. The king, seriously alarmed, now promised the boon which he had thus far withheld, and summoned the Second United Diet to pave the way for a constituent assembly. In this constituent assembly Bismarck scorned to sit. For six months it sat squabbling and fighting, but accomplishing nothing. At last, Bismarck found it expedient to enter the new parliament as a deputy, and again vigorously upheld the absolute power of the crown. He did, indeed, accept the principle of constitutional government, but, as he frankly said, against his will, and only as a new power in the hands of the monarch to restrain popular agitation and maintain order. Through his influence the king refused the imperial crown offered by the Frankfort parliament, because he conceived that the parliament had no right to give it, that its acceptance would be a recognition of national instead of royal sovereignty, and that it would be followed probably by civil war. As time went on he became more and more the leader of the conservatives. I need not enumerate the subjects which came up for discussion in the new Prussian parliament, in which Bismarck exhibited with more force than eloquence his loyalty to the crown, and a conservatism which was branded by the liberals as mediaeval. But his originality, his boldness, his fearlessness, his rugged earnestness, his wit and humor, his biting sarcasm, his fertility of resources, his knowledge of men and affairs, and his devoted patriotism, marked him out for promotion.

In 1851 Bismarck was sent as first secretary of the Prussian embassy to the Diet of the various German States, convened at Frankfort, in which Austria held a predominating influence. It was not a parliament, but an administrative council of the Germanic Confederation founded by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. It made no laws, and its sittings were secret. It was a body which represented the League of Sovereigns, and was composed of only seventeen delegates,--its main function being to suppress all liberal movements in the various German States; like the Congress of Vienna itself. The Diet of Frankfort was pretentious, but practically impotent, and was the laughingstock of Europe. It was full of jealousies and intrigues. It was a mere diplomatic conference. As Austria and Prussia controlled it, things went well enough when these two Powers were agreed; but they did not often agree. There was a perpetual rivalry between them, and an unextinguishable jealousy.

There were many sneers at the appointment of a man to this diplomatic post whose manners were brusque and overbearing, and who had spent the most of his time, after leaving the university, among horses, cattle, and dogs; who was only a lieutenant of militia, with a single decoration, and who was unacquainted with what is called diplomacy. But the king knew his man, and the man was conscious of his powers.

Bismarck found life at Frankfort intolerably dull. He had a contempt for his diplomatic associates generally, and made fun of them to his few intimate friends. He took them in almost at a glance, for he had an intuitive knowledge of character; he weighed them in his balance, and found them wanting. In a letter to his wife, he writes: "Nothing but miserable trifles do these people trouble themselves about. They strike me as infinitely more ridiculous with their important ponderosity concerning the gathered rags of gossip, than even a member of the Second Chamber of Berlin in the full consciousness of his dignity.... The men of the minor States are mostly mere caricatures of periwig diplomatists, who at once put on their official visage if I merely beg of them a light to my cigar."

His extraordinary merits were however soon apparent to the king, and even to his chief, old General Rochow, who was soon transferred to St. Petersburg to make way for the secretary. The king's brother William, Prince of Prussia, when at Frankfort, was much impressed by the young Prussian envoy to the Bund, and there was laid the foundation of the friendship between the future soldier-king and the future chancellor, between whom there always existed a warm confidence and esteem. Soon after, Bismarck made the acquaintance of Metternich, who had ruled for so long a time both the Diet and the Empire. The old statesman, now retired, invited the young diplomatist to his castle at Johannisberg. They had different aims, but similar sympathies. The Austrian statesman sought to preserve the existing state of things; the Prussian, to make his country dominant over Germany. Both were aristocrats, and both were conservative; but Metternich was as bland and polished as Bismarck was rough and brusque.

Nothing escaped the watchful eye of Bismarck at Frankfort as the ambassador of Prussia. He took note of everything, both great and small, and communicated it to Berlin as if he were a newspaper correspondent. In everything he showed his sympathy with absolutism, and hence recommended renewed shackles on the Press and on the universities,--at that time the hotbed of revolutionary ideas. His central aim and constant thought was the ascendency of Prussia,--first in royal strength at home, then throughout Germany as the rival of Austria. Bismarck was not only a keen observer, but he soon learned to disguise his thoughts. Nobody could read him. He was frank when his opponents were full of lies, knowing that he would not be believed. He became a perfect master of the art of deception. No one was a match for him in statecraft. Even Prince Gortschakoff became his dupe. By his tact he kept Prussia from being entangled by the usurpation of Napoleon III., and by the Crimean war. He saw into the character of the French emperor, and discovered that he was shallow, and not to be feared. At Frankfort, Bismarck had many opportunities of seeing distinguished men of all nations; he took their gauge, and penetrated the designs of cabinets. He counselled his master to conciliate Napoleon, though regarding him as an upstart; and he sought the friendship of France in order to eclipse the star of Austria, whom it was necessary to humble before Prussia could rise. In his whole diplomatic career at Frankfort it was Bismarck's aim to contravene the designs of Austria, having in view the aggrandizement of Prussia as the true head and centre of German nationality. He therefore did all he could to prevent Austria from being assisted in her war with Italy, and rejoiced in her misfortunes. In the meantime he made frequent short visits to Holland, Denmark, Italy, and Hungary, acquired the languages of these countries, and made himself familiar with their people and institutions, besides shrewdly studying the characters, manners, and diplomatic modes of the governing classes of European nations at large. Cool, untiring, self-possessed, he was storing up information and experience.

At the end of eight years, in 1859, Bismarck was transferred to St. Petersburg as the Prussian ambassador to Alexander II. He was then forty-three years of age, and was known as the sworn foe of Austria. His free-and-easy but haughty manners were a great contrast to those of his stiff, buttoned-up, and pretentious predecessors; and he became a great favorite in Russian court circles. The comparatively small salary he received,--less than twenty thousand dollars, with a house,--would not allow him to give expensive entertainments, or to run races in prodigality with the representatives of England, France, or even Austria, who received nearly fifty thousand dollars. But no parties were more sought or more highly appreciated than those which his sensible and unpretending wife gave in the high society in which they moved. With the empress-dowager he was an especial favorite, and was just the sort of man whom the autocrat of all the Russias would naturally like, especially for his love of hunting, and his success in shooting deer and bears. He did not go to grand parties any more than he could help, despising their ostentation and frivolity, and always feeling the worse for them.

On the 2d of January, 1861, Frederick William IV., who had for some time been insane, died, and was succeeded by the Prince Regent, William I., already in his sixty-fifth year, every inch a soldier and nothing else. Bismarck was soon summoned to the councils of his sovereign at Berlin, who was perplexed and annoyed by the Liberal party, which had the ascendency in the lower Chamber of the general Diet. Office was pressed upon Bismarck, but before he accepted it he wished to study Napoleon and French affairs more closely, and was therefore sent as ambassador to Paris in 1862. He made that year a brief visit to London, Disraeli being then the premier, who smiled at his schemes for the regeneration of Germany. It was while journeying amid the Pyrenees that Bismarck was again summoned to Berlin, the lower Chamber having ridden rough-shod over his Majesty's plans for army reform. The king invested him with the great office of President of the Ministry, his abilities being universally recognized.

It was now Bismarck's mission to break the will of the Prussian parliament, and to thrust Austria out of the Germanic body. He considered only the end in view, caring nothing for the means: he had no scruples. It was his religion to raise Prussia to the same ascendency that Austria had held under Metternich. He had a master whose will and ambition were equal to his own, yet whose support he was sure of in carrying out his grand designs. He was now a second Richelieu, to whom the aggrandizement of the monarchy which he served and the welfare of Fatherland were but convertible terms. He soon came into bitter conflict, not with nobles, but with progressive liberals in the Chamber, who detested him and feared him, but to whom he did not condescend to reveal his plans,--bearing obloquy with placidity in the greatness of the end he had in view. He was a self-sustained, haughty, unapproachable man of power, except among the few friends whom he honored as boon companions, without ever losing his discretion,--wearing a mask with apparent frankness, and showing real frankness in matters which did not concern secrets of state, especially on the subjects of education and religion. Like his master, he was more a Calvinist than a Lutheran. He openly avowed his dependence on Almighty God, and on him alone, as the hope of nations. In this respect we trace a resemblance to Oliver Cromwell rather than to Frederic the Great. Bismarck was a compound of both, in his patriotism and his unscrupulousness.

The first thing that King William and his minister did was to double the army. But this vast increase of military strength seemed unnecessary to the Liberal party, and the requisite increase of taxes to support it was unpopular. Hence, Bismarck was brought in conflict with the lower Chamber, which represented the middle classes. He dared not tell his secret schemes without imperilling their success, which led to grave misunderstandings. For four years the conflict raged between the crown and the parliament, both the king and Bismarck being inflexible; and the lower House was equally obstinate in refusing to grant the large military supplies demanded. At last, Bismarck dissolved the Chambers, and the king declared that as the Three Estates could not agree, he should continue to do his duty by Prussia without regard to "these pieces of paper called constitutions." The next four sessions of the Chamber were closed in the same manner. Bismarck admitted that he was acting unconstitutionally, but claimed the urgency of public necessity. In the public debates he was cool, sarcastic, and contemptuous. The Press took up the fight, and the Press was promptly muzzled. Bismarck was denounced as a Catiline, a Strafford, a Polignac; but he retained a provoking serenity, and quietly prepared for war,--since war, he foresaw, was sooner or later inevitable. "Nothing can solve the question," said he, "but blood and iron."

At last an event occurred which showed his hand. In November, 1863, Frederick VII., the king of Denmark, died. By his death the Schleswig-Holstein question again burst upon distracted Europe,--Who was to reign over the two Danish provinces? The king of Denmark, as Duke of Schleswig and Holstein, had been represented in the Germanic Diet. By the treaty of London, in 1852, he had undertaken not to incorporate the duchies with the rest of his monarchy, allowing them to retain their traditional autonomy. In 1863, shortly before his death, Frederick VII. by a decree dissolved this autonomy, and virtually incorporated Schleswig, which was only partly German, with the Danish monarchy, leaving the wholly German Holstein as before. Bismarck protested against this violation of treaty obligations. The Danish parliament nevertheless passed a law which incorporated the province with Denmark; and Christian IX., the new monarch, confirmed the law.

But a new claimant to the duchies now appeared in the person of Frederick of Augustenburg, a German prince; and the Prussian Chamber advocated his claims, as did the Diet itself; but the throne held its opinion in reserve. Bismarck contrived (by what diplomatic tricks and promises it is difficult to say) to induce Austria to join with Prussia in seizing the provinces in question and in dividing the spoil between them. As these two Powers controlled the Diet at Frankfort, it was easy to carry out the programme. An Austro-Prussian army accordingly invaded Schleswig-Holstein, and to the scandal of all Europe drove the Danish defenders to the wall. It was regarded in the same light as the seizure of Silesia by Frederic the Great,--a high-handed and unscrupulous violation of justice and right. England was particularly indignant, and uttered loud protests. So did the lesser States of Germany, jealous of the aggrandizement of Prussia. Even the Prussian Chamber refused to grant the money for such an enterprise.

But Bismarck laughed in his sleeve. This arch-diplomatist had his reasons, which he did not care to explain. He had in view the weakening of the power of the Diet, and a quarrel with Austria. True, he had embraced Austria, but after the fashion of a bear. He knew that Austria and Prussia would wrangle about the division of the spoil, which would lead to misunderstandings, and thus furnish the pretext for a war, which he felt to be necessary before Prussia could be aggrandized and German unity be effected, with Prussia at its head,--the two great objects of his life. His policy was marvellously astute; but he kept his own counsels, and continued to hug his secret enemy.

On the 30th of October, 1864, the Treaty of Vienna was signed, by which it was settled that the king of Denmark should surrender Schleswig-Holstein and Lauenburg to Austria and Prussia, and he bound himself to submit to what their majesties might think fit as to the disposition of these three duchies. Probably both parties sought an occasion to quarrel, since their commissioners had received opposite instructions,--the Austrians defending the claims of Frederick of Augustenburg, as generally desired in Germany, and the Prussians now opposing them. Prussia demanded the expulsion of the pretender; to which Austria said no. Prussia further sounded Austria as to the annexation of the duchies to herself, to which Austria consented, on condition of receiving an equivalent of some province in Silesia. "What!" thought Bismarck, angrily, "give you back part of what was won for Prussia by Frederic the Great? Never!" Affairs had a gloomy look; but war was averted for a while by the Convention of Gastein, by which the possession of Schleswig was assigned to Prussia, and Holstein to Austria; and further, in consideration of two and a half millions of dollars, the Emperor Francis Joseph ceded to King William all his rights of co-proprietorship in the Duchy of Lauenburg.

But the Chamber of Berlin boldly declared this transaction to be null and void, since the country had not been asked to ratify the treaty. It must be borne in mind that the conflict was still going on between Bismarck, as the defender of the absolute sovereignty of the king, and the liberal and progressive members of the Chamber, who wanted a freer and more democratic constitution. Opposed, then, by the Chamber, Bismarck dissolved it, and coolly reminded his enemies that the Chamber had nothing to do with politics,--only with commercial affairs and matters connected with taxation. This was the period of his greatest unpopularity, since his policy and ultimate designs were not comprehended. So great was the popular detestation in which he was held that a fanatic tried to kill him in the street, but only succeeded in wounding him slightly.

In the meantime Austria fomented disaffection in the provinces which Prussia had acquired, and Bismarck resolved to cut the knot by the sword. Prussian troops marched to the frontier, and Austria on her part also prepared for war. It is difficult to see that a real casus belli existed. We only know that both parties wanted to fight, whatever were their excuses and pretensions; and both parties sought the friendship of Russia and France, especially by holding out delusive hopes to Napoleon of accession of territory. They succeeded in inducing both Russia and France to remain neutral,--mere spectators of the approaching contest, which was purely a German affair. It was the first care of Prussia to prevent the military union of her foes in North Germany with her foes in the south,--which was effected in part by the diplomatic genius of Bismarck, and in part by occupying the capitals of Hanover, Saxony, and Hesse-Cassel with Prussian troops, in a very summary way.

The encounter now began in earnest between Prussia and Austria for the prize of ascendency. Both parties were confident of success,--Austria as the larger State, with proud traditions, triumphant over rebellious Italy; and Prussia, with its enlarged military organization and the new breech-loading needle-gun.

Count von Moltke at this time came prominently on the European stage as the greatest strategist since Napoleon. He was chief of staff to the king, who was commander-in-chief. He set his wonderful machinery in harmonious action, and from his office in Berlin moved his military pawns by touch of electric wire. Three great armies were soon centralized in Bohemia,--one of three corps, comprising one hundred thousand men, led by Prince Charles, the king's nephew; the second, of four corps, of one hundred and sixteen thousand men, commanded by the crown prince, the king's son; and the third, of forty thousand, led by General von Bittenfield. "March separately; strike together," were the orders of Moltke. Vainly did the Austrians attempt to crush these armies in detail before they should combine at the appointed place. On they came, with mathematical accuracy, until two of the armies reached Gitschin, the objective point, where they were joined by the king, by Moltke, by Bismarck, and by General von Roon, the war minister. On the 2d of June, 1866, they were opposite Königgrätz (or Sadowa, as the Austrians called it), where the Austrians were marshalled. On the 3d of July the battle began; and the scales hung pretty evenly until, at the expected hour, the crown prince--"our Fritz," as the people affectionately called him after this, later the Emperor Frederick William--made his appearance on the field with his army. Assailed on both flanks and pressed in the centre, the Austrians first began to slacken fire, then to waver, then to give way under the terrific concentrated fire of the needle-guns, then to retreat into ignominious flight. The contending forces were about equal; but science and the needle-gun won the day, and changed the whole aspect of modern warfare. The battle of Königgrätz settled this point,--that success in war depends more on good powder and improved weapons than on personal bravery or even masterly evolutions. Other things being equal, victory is almost certain to be on the side of the combatants who have the best weapons. The Prussians won the day of Königgrätz by their breech-loading guns, although much was due to their superior organization and superior strategy.

That famous battle virtually ended the Austro-Prussian campaign, which lasted only about seven weeks. It was one of those "decisive battles" that made Prussia the ascendent power in Germany, and destroyed the prestige of Austria. It added territory to Prussia equal to one quarter of the whole kingdom, and increased her population by four and a half millions of people. At a single bound, Prussia became a first-class military State.

The Prussian people were almost frantic with joy; and Bismarck, from being the most unpopular man in the nation, became instantly a national idol. His marvellous diplomacy, by which Austria was driven to the battlefield, was now seen and universally acknowledged. He obtained fame, decorations, and increased power. A grateful nation granted to him four hundred thousand thalers, with which he bought the estate of Varzin. General von Moltke received three hundred thousand thalers and immense military prestige. The war minister, Von Roon, also received three hundred thousand thalers. These three stood out as the three most prominent men of the nation, next to the royal family.

Never was so short a war so pregnant with important consequences. It consolidated the German Confederation under Prussian dominance. By weakening Austria it led to the national unity of Italy, and secured free government to the whole Austrian empire, since that government could no longer refuse the demands of Hungary. Above all, "it shattered the fabric of Ultramontanism which had been built up by the concordat of 1853."

It was the expectation of Napoleon III that Austria would win in this war; but the loss of the Austrians was four to one, besides her humiliation, condemned as she was to pay a war indemnity, with the loss also of the provinces of Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau, and Frankfort. But Bismarck did not push Austria to the wall, since he did not wish to make her an irreconcilable enemy. He left open a door for future and permanent peace. He did not desire to ruin his foe, but simply to acquire the lead in German politics and exclude Austria from the Germanic Confederation. Napoleon, disappointed and furious, blustered, and threatened war, unless he too could come in for a share of the plunder, to which he had no real claim. Bismarck calmly replied, "Well, then, let there be war," knowing full well that France was not prepared, Napoleon consulted his marshals, "Are we prepared," asked he, "to fight all Germany?" "Certainly not," replied the marshals, "until our whole army, like that of Prussia, is supplied with a breech-loader; until our drill is modified to suit the new weapon; until our fortresses are in a perfect state of preparedness, and until we create a mobile and efficient national reserve."

When Carlyle heard the news of the great victories of Prussia, he wrote to a friend, "Germany is to stand on her feet henceforth, and face all manner of Napoleons and hungry, sponging dogs, with clear steel in her hand and an honest purpose in her heart. This seems to me the best news we or Europe have heard for the last forty years or more."

The triumphal return of the Prussian troops to Berlin was followed on the 24th of February, 1867, by the opening of the first North German parliament,--three hundred deputies chosen from the various allied States by universal suffrage. Twenty-two States north of the Main formed themselves into a perpetual league for the protection of the Union and its institutions. Legislative power was to be invested in two bodies,--the Reichstag, representing the people; and the Bundesrath, composed of delegates from the allied governments, the perpetual presidency of which was invested in the king of Prussia. He was also acknowledged as the commander-in-chief of the united armies; and the standing army, on a peace footing, was fixed at one per cent of all the inhabitants. This constitution was drawn by Bismarck himself, not unwilling, under the unquestioned supremacy of his monarch, to utilize the spirit of the times, and admit the people to a recognized support of the crown.

Thus Germany at last acquired a liberal constitution, though not so free and broad as that of England. The absolute control of the army and navy, the power to make treaties and declare peace and war, the appointment of all the great officers of state, and the control of education and other great interests still remained with the king. The functions of the lower House seemed to be mostly confined to furnishing the sinews of war and government,--the granting of money and the regulation of taxes. Meanwhile, secret treaties of alliance were concluded with the southern States of Germany, offensive and defensive, in case of war,--another stroke of diplomatic ability on the part of Bismarck; for the intrigues of Napoleon had been incessant to separate the southern from the northern States,--in other words, to divide Germany, which the French emperor was sanguine he could do. With a divided Germany, he believed that he was more than a match for the king of Prussia, as soon as his military preparations should be made. Could he convert these States into allies, he was ready for war. He was intent upon securing for France territorial enlargements equal to those of Prussia. He could no longer expect any thing on the Rhine, and he turned his eyes to Belgium.

The war-cloud arose on the political horizon in 1867, when Napoleon sought to purchase from the king of Holland the Duchy of Luxemburg, which was a personal fief of his kingdom, though it was inhabited by Germans, and which made him a member of the Germanic Confederation if he chose to join it. In the time of Napoleon I. Luxemburg was defended by one of the strongest fortresses in Europe, garrisoned by Prussian troops; it was therefore a menace to France on her northeastern frontier. As Napoleon III, promised a very big sum of money for this duchy, with a general protectorate of Holland in case of Prussian aggressions, the king of Holland was disposed to listen to the proposal of the French emperor; but when it was discovered that an alliance of the southern States had been made with the northern States of Germany, which made Prussia the mistress of Germany, the king of Holland became alarmed, and declined the French proposals. The chagrin of the emperor and the wrath of the French nation became unbounded. Again they had been foiled by the arch-diplomatist of Prussia.

All this was precisely what Bismarck wanted. Confident of the power of Prussia, he did all he could to drive the French nation to frenzy. He worked on a vainglorious, excitable, and proud people, at the height of their imperial power. Napoleon was irresolute, although it appeared to him that war with Prussia was the only way to recover his prestige after the mistakes of the Mexican expedition. But Mexico had absorbed the marrow of the French army, and the emperor was not quite ready for war. He must find some pretence for abandoning his designs on Luxemburg, any attempt to seize which would be a plain casus belli. Both parties were anxious to avoid the initiative of a war which might shake Europe to its centre. Both parties pretended peace; but both desired war.

Napoleon, a man fertile in resources, in order to avoid immediate hostilities looked about for some way to avoid what he knew was premature; so he proposed submitting the case to arbitration, and the Powers applied themselves to extinguish the gathering flames. The conference--composed of representatives of England, France, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Holland, and Belgium--met in London; and the result of it was that Prussia agreed to withdraw her garrison from Luxemburg and to dismantle the fortress, while the duchy was to continue to be a member of the German Zollverein, or Customs Union. King William was willing to make this concession to the cause of humanity; and his minister, rather than go against the common sentiment of Europe, reluctantly conceded this point, which, after all, was not of paramount importance. Thus was war prevented for a time, although everybody knew that it was inevitable, sooner or later.

The next three years Bismarck devoted himself to diplomatic intrigues in order to cement the union of the German States,--for the Luxemburg treaty was well known to be a mere truce,--and Napoleon did the same to weaken the union. In the meantime King William accepted an invitation of Napoleon to visit Paris at the time of the Great Exposition; and thither he went, accompanied by Counts Bismarck and Moltke. The party was soon after joined by the Czar, accompanied by Prince Gortschakoff, who had the reputation of being the ablest diplomatist in Europe, next to Bismarck. The meeting was a sort of carnival of peace, hollow and pretentious, with fêtes and banquets and military displays innumerable. The Prussian minister amused himself by feeling the national pulse, while Moltke took long walks to observe the fortifications of Paris. When his royal guests had left, Napoleon travelled to Salzburg to meet the Austrian emperor, ostensibly to condole with him for the unfortunate fate of Maximilian in Mexico, but really to interchange political ideas. Bismarck was not deceived, and openly maintained that the military and commercial interests of north and south Germany were identical.

In April, 1868, the Customs Parliament assembled in Berlin, as the first representative body of the entire nation that had as yet met. Though convoked to discuss tobacco and cotton, the real object was to pave the way for "the consummation of the national destinies."

Bismarck meanwhile conciliated Hanover, whose sovereign, King George, had been dethroned, by giving him a large personal indemnity, and by granting home rule to what was now a mere province of Prussia. In Berlin, he resisted in the Reichstag the constitutional encroachments which the Liberal party aimed at,--ever an autocrat rather than minister, having no faith in governmental responsibility to parliament. Only one master he served, and that was the king, as Richelieu served Louis XIII. Nor would he hear of a divided ministry; affairs were too complicated to permit him to be encumbered by colleagues. He maintained that public affairs demanded quickness, energy, and unity of action; and it was certainly fortunate for Germany in the present crisis that the foreign policy was in the hands of a single man, and that man so able, decided, and astute as Bismarck.

All the while secret preparations for war went on in both Prussia and France. French spies overran the Rhineland, and German draughtsmen were busy in the cities and plains of Alsace-Lorraine. France had at last armed her soldiers with the breech-loading chassepot gun, by many thought to be superior to the needle-gun; and she had in addition secretly constructed a terrible and mysterious engine of war called mitrailleuse,--a combination of gun-barrels fired by mechanism. These were to effect great results. On paper, four hundred and fifty thousand men were ready to rush as an irresistible avalanche on the Rhine provinces. To the distant observer it seemed that France would gain an easy victory, and once again occupy Berlin. Besides her supposed military forces, she still had a great military prestige. Prussia had done nothing of signal importance for forty years except to fight the duel with Austria; but France had done the same, and had signally conquered at Solferino. Yet during forty years Prussia had been organizing her armies on the plan which Scharnhorst had furnished, and had four hundred and fifty thousand men under arms,--not on paper, but really ready for the field, including a superb cavalry force. The combat was to be one of material forces, guided by science.

I have said that only a pretext was needed to begin hostilities. This pretext on the part of the French was that their ambassador to Berlin, Benedetti, was reported to have been insulted by the king. He was not insulted. The king simply refused to have further parley with an arrogant ambassador, and referred him to his government,--which was the proper thing to do. On this bit of scandal the French politicians--the people who led the masses--lashed themselves into fury, and demanded immediate war. Napoleon could not resist the popular pressure, and war was proclaimed. The arrogant demand of Napoleon, through his ambassador Benedetti, that the king of Prussia should agree never to permit his relative, Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern, to accept the vacant throne of Spain, to which he had been elected by the provisional government of that country, was the occasion of King William's curt reception of the French envoy; for this was an insulting demand, not to be endured. It was no affair of Napoleon, especially since the prince had already declined the throne at the request of the king of Prussia, as the head of the Hohenzollern family. But the French nation generally, the Catholic Church party working through the Empress Eugenie, and, above all, the excitable Parisians, goaded by the orators and the Press, saw the possibility of an extension of the Roman empire of Charles V., under the control of Prussia; and Napoleon was driven to the fatal course, first, of making the absurd demand, and then--in spite of a wholesome irresolution, born of his ignorance concerning his own military forces--of resenting its declinature with war.

In two weeks the German forces were mobilized, and the colossal organization, in three great armies, all directed by Moltke as chief of staff to the commander-in-chief, the still vigorous old man who ruled and governed at Berlin, were on their way to the seat of war. At Mayence, the king in person, on the 2d of August, 1870, assumed command of the united German armies; and in one month from that date Prance was prostrate at his feet.

It would be interesting to detail the familiar story; but my limits will not permit. I can only say that the three armies of the German forces, each embracing several corps, were, one under the command of General Steinmetz, another under Prince Frederic Charles, and the third under the crown prince,--and all under the orders of Moltke, who represented the king. The crown prince, on the extreme left, struck the first blow at Weissenburg, on the 4th of August; and on the 6th he assaulted McMahon at Worth, and drove back his scattered forces,--partly on Chalons, and partly on Strasburg; while Steinmetz, commanding the right wing, nearly annihilated Frossard's corps at Spicheren. It was now the aim of the French under Bazaine, who commanded two hundred and fifty thousand men near Metz, to join McMahon's defeated forces. This was frustrated by Moltke in the bloody battle of Gravelotte, compelling Bazaine to retire within the lines of Metz, the strongest fortress in France, which was at once surrounded by Prince Charles. Meanwhile, the crown prince continued the pursuit of McMahon, who had found it impossible to effect a junction with Bazaine. At Sedan the armies met; but as the Germans were more than twice the number of the French, and had completely surrounded them, the struggle was useless,--and the French, with the emperor himself, were compelled to surrender as prisoners of war. Thus fell Napoleon's empire.

After the battle of Sedan, one of the decisive battles of history, the Germans advanced rapidly to Paris, and King William took up his quarters at Versailles, with his staff and his councillor Bismarck, who had attended him day by day through the whole campaign, and conducted the negotiations of the surrender. Paris, defended by strong fortifications, resolved to sustain a siege rather than yield, hoping that something might yet turn up by which the besieged garrison should be relieved,--a forlorn hope, as Paris was surrounded, especially on the fall of Metz, by nearly half a million of the best soldiers in the world. Yet that memorable siege lasted five months, and Paris did not yield until reduced by extreme, famine; and perhaps it might have held out much longer if it could have been provisioned. But this was not to be. The Germans took the city as Alaric had taken Rome, without much waste of blood.

The conquerors were now inexorable, and demanded a war indemnity of five milliards of francs, and the cession of Metz and the two province of Alsace-Lorraine (which Louis XIV had formerly wrested away), including Strasburg. Eloquently but vainly did old Thiers plead for better terms; but he pleaded with men as hard as iron, who exacted, however, no more than Napoleon III would have done had the fortune of war enabled him to reach Berlin as the conqueror. War is hard under any circumstances, but never was national humiliation more complete than when the Prussian flag floated over the Arc de Triomphe, and Prussian soldiers defiled beneath it.

Nothing was now left for the aged Prussian king but to put upon his head the imperial crown of Germany, for all the German States were finally united under him. The scene took place at Versailles in the Hall of Mirrors, in probably the proudest palace ever erected since the days of Nebuchadnezzar. Surrounded by princes and generals, Chancellor Bismarck read aloud the Proclamation of the Empire, and the new German emperor gave thanks to God. It was a fitting sequence to the greatest military success since Napoleon crushed the German armies at Jena and Austerlitz. The tables at last were turned, and the heavy, phlegmatic, intelligent Teutons triumphed over the warlike and passionate Celts. So much for the genius of the greatest general and the greatest diplomatist that Europe had known for half-a-century.

Bismarck's rewards for his great services were magnificent, quite equal to those of Wellington or Marlborough. He received another valuable estate, this time from his sovereign, which gift made him one of the greatest landed proprietors of Prussia; he was created a Prince; he was decorated with the principal orders of Europe; he had augmented power as chancellor of confederated Germany; he was virtual dictator of his country, which he absolutely ruled in the name of a wearied old man passed seventy years of age. But the minister's labors and vexations do not end with the Franco-German war During the years that immediately follow, he is still one of the hardest-worked men in Europe. He receives one thousand letters and telegrams a day. He has to manage an unpractical legislative assembly, clamorous for new privileges, and attend to the complicated affairs of a great empire, and direct his diplomatic agents in every country of Europe. He finds that the sanctum of a one-man power is not a bed of roses. Sometimes he seeks rest and recreation on one of his estates, but labors and public duties follow him wherever he goes. He is too busy and preoccupied even for pleasure, unless he is hunting boars and stags. He seems to care but little for art of any kind, except music; but once in his life has he ever visited the Museum of Berlin; he never goes to the theatre. He appears as little as possible in the streets, but when recognized he is stared at as a wonder. He lives hospitably but plainly, and in a palace with few ornaments or luxuries. He enshrouds himself in mystery, but not in gloom. Few dare approach him, for his manners are brusque and rough, and he is feared more even than he is honored. His aspect is stern and haughty, except when he occasionally unbends. In his family he is simple, frank, and domestic; but in public he is the cold and imperative dictator. Even the royal family are uncomfortable in his commanding and majestic presence; everybody stands in awe of him but his wife and children. He caresses only his dogs. He eats but once a day, but his meal is enough for five men; he drinks a quart of beer or wine without taking the cup from his mouth; he smokes incessantly, generally a long Turkish pipe. He sleeps irregularly, disturbed by thoughts which fill his troubled brain. Honored is the man who is invited to his table, even if he be the ambassador of a king; for at table the host is frank and courteous, and not overbearing like a literary dictator. He is well read in history, but not in art or science or poetry. His stories are admirable when he is in convivial mood; all sit around him in silent admiration, for no one dares more than suggest the topic,--he does all the talking himself. Bayard Taylor, when United States minister at Berlin, was amazed and confounded by his freedom of speech and apparent candor. He is frank in matters he does not care to conceal, and simple as a child when not disputed or withstood; but when opposed fierce as a lion,--a spoiled man of success, yet not intoxicated with power. Haughty and irritable, perhaps, but never vain like a French statesman in office,--a Webster rather than a Thiers.

Such was the man who ruled the German empire with an iron hand for twenty years or more,--the most remarkable man of power known to history for seventy-five years; immortal like Cavour, and for his services even more than his abilities. He had raised Prussia to the front rank among nations, and created German unity. He had quietly effected more than Richelieu ever aspired to perform; for Richelieu sought only to build up a great throne, while Bismarck had united a great nation in patriotic devotion to Fatherland, which, so far as we can see, is as invincible as it is enlightened,--enlightened in everything except in democratic ideas.

I will not dwell on the career and character of Prince Bismarck since the Franco-Prussian war. After that he was not identified with any great national movements which command universal interest. His labors were principally confined to German affairs,--quarrels with the Reichstag, settlement of difficulties with the various States of the Germanic Confederation, the consolidation of the internal affairs of the empire while he carried on diplomatic relations with other great Powers, efforts to gain the good-will of Russia and secure the general peace of Europe. These, and a multitude of other questions too recent to be called historical, he dealt with, in all of which his autocratic sympathies called out the censures of the advocates of greater liberty, and diminished his popularity. For twenty years his will was the law of the German Confederation; though bitterly opposed at times by the Liberals, he was always sustained by his imperial master, who threw the burdens of State on his herculean shoulders, sometimes too great to bear with placidity. His foreign policy was then less severely criticised than his domestic, which was alternate success and failure.

The war which he waged with the spiritual power was perhaps the most important event of his administration, and in which he had not altogether his own way, underrating, as is natural to such a man, spiritual forces as compared with material. In his memorable quarrel with Rome he appeared to the least advantage,--at first rigid, severe, and arbitrary with the Catholic clergy, even to persecution, driving away the Jesuits (1872), shutting up schools and churches, imprisoning and fining ecclesiastical dignitaries, intolerant in some cases as the Inquisition itself. One-fourth of the people of the empire are Catholics, yet he sternly sought to suppress their religious rights and liberties as they regarded them, thinking he could control them by material penalties,--such as taking away their support, and shutting them up in prison,--forgetting that conscientious Christians, whether Catholics or Protestants, will in matters of religion defy the mightiest rulers. No doubt the policy of the Catholics of Germany was extremely irritating to a despotic ruler who would exalt the temporal over the spiritual power; and equally true was it that the Pope himself was unyielding in regard to the liberties of his church, demanding everything and giving back nothing, in accordance with the uniform traditions of Papal domination. The Catholics, the world over, look upon the education of their children as a thing to be superintended by their own religious teachers,--as their inalienable right and imperative duty; and any State interference with this right and this duty they regard as religious persecution, to which they will never submit without hostility and relentless defiance. Bismarck felt that to concede to the demands which the Catholic clergy ever have made in respect to religious privileges was to "go to Canossa,"--where Henry IV. Emperor of Germany, in 1077, humiliated himself before Pope Gregory VII. in order to gain absolution. The long-sighted and experienced Thiers remarked that here Bismarck was on the wrong track, and would be compelled to retreat, with all his power. Bismarck was too wise a man to persist in attempting impossibilities, and after a bitter fight he became conciliatory. He did not "go to Canossa," but he yielded to the dictates of patriotism and enlightened policy, and the quarrel was patched up.

His long struggles with the Catholics told upon his health and spirits, and he was obliged to seek long periods of rest and recreation on his estates,--sometimes, under great embarrassments and irritations, threatening to resign, to which his imperial master, grateful and dependent, would never under any circumstances consent. But the prince-president of the ministers and chancellor of the empire was loaded down with duties--in his cabinet, in his office, and in the parliament--most onerous to bear, and which no other man in Germany was equal to. His burdens at times were intolerable: his labors were prodigious, and the opposition he met with was extremely irritating to a man accustomed to have his own way in everything.

Another thing gave him great solicitude, taxed to the utmost his fertile brain; and that was the rising and wide-spreading doctrines of Socialism,--which was to Germany what Nihilism is to Russia and Fenianism was to Ireland; based on discontent, unbelief, and desperate schemes of unpractical reform, leading to the assassination even of emperors themselves. How to deal with this terrible foe to all governments, all laws, and all institutions was a most perplexing question. At first he was inclined to the most rigorous measures, to a war of utter extermination; but how could he deal with enemies he could neither see nor find, omnipresent and invisible, and unscrupulous as satanic furies,--fanatics whom no reasoning could touch and no laws control, whether human or divine? As experience and thought enlarged his mental vision, he came to the conclusion that the real source and spring of that secret and organized hostility which he deplored, but was unable to reach and to punish, were evils in government and evils in the structure of society,--aggravating inequality, grinding poverty, ignorance, and the hard struggle for life. Accordingly, he devoted his energies to improve the general condition of the people, and make the struggle for life easier. In his desire to equalize burdens he resorted to indirect rather than direct taxation,--to high tariffs and protective duties to develop German industry; throwing to the winds his earlier beliefs in the theories of the Manchester school of political economy, and all speculative ideas as to the blessings of free-trade for the universe in general. He bought for the government the various Prussian railroads, in order to have uniformity of rates and remove vexatious discriminations, which only a central power could effect. In short, he aimed to develop the material resources of the country, both to insure financial prosperity and to remove those burdens which press heavily on the poor.

On one point, however, his policy was inexorable; and that was to suffer no reduction of the army, but rather to increase it to the utmost extent that the nation could bear,--not with the view of future conquests or military aggrandizement, as some thought, but as an imperative necessity to guard the empire from all hostile attacks, whether from France or Russia, or both combined. A country surrounded with enemies as Germany is, in the centre of Europe, without the natural defences of the sea which England enjoys, or great chains of mountains on her borders difficult to penetrate and easy to defend, as is the case with Switzerland, must have a superior military force to defend her, in case of future contingencies which no human wisdom can foresee. Nor is it such a dreadful burden to support a peace establishment of four hundred and fifty thousand men as some think,--one soldier for every one hundred inhabitants, trained and disciplined to be intelligent and industrious when his short term of three years of active service shall have expired: much easier to bear, I fancy, than the burden of supporting five paupers or more to every hundred inhabitants, as in England and Scotland.

In 1888, Bismarck made a famous speech in the Reichstag to show the necessity of Prussia's being armed. He had no immediate fears of Russia, he said; he professed to believe that she would keep peace with Germany. But he spoke of numerous distinct crises within forty years, when Prussia was on the verge of being drawn into a general European war, which diplomacy fortunately averted, and such as now must be warded off by being too strong for attack. He mentioned the Crimean war in 1853, the Italian war in 1858, the Polish rebellion in 1863, the Schleswig-Holstein embroilment, which so nearly set all Europe by the ears, the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, the Luxemburg dispute in 1867, the Franco-German war of 1870, the Balkan war of 1877, the various aspects of the Eastern Question, changes of government in France, etc.,--each of which in its time threatened the great "coalition war," which Germany had thus far been kept out of, but which Bismarck wished to provide against for the future.

"The long and the short of it is," said he, "that we must be as strong as we possibly can be in these days. We have the capability of being stronger than any other nation of equal population in the world, and it would be a crime if we did not use this capability. We must make still greater exertions than other Powers for the same ends, on account of our geographical position. We lie in the midst of Europe. We have at least three sides open to attack. God has placed on one side of us the French,--a most warlike and restless nation,--and he has allowed the fighting tendencies of Russia to become great; so we are forced into measures which perhaps we would not otherwise make. And the very strength for which we strive shows that we are inclined to peace; for with such a powerful machine as we wish to make the German army, no one would undertake to attack us. We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world; and it is the fear of God which causes us to love and cherish peace."

Such was the avowed policy of Bismarck,--and I believe in his sincerity,--to foster friendly relations with other nations, and to maintain peace for the interests of humanity as well as for Germany, which can be secured only by preparing for war, and with such an array of forces as to secure victory. It was not with foreign Powers that he had the greatest difficulty, but to manage the turbulent elements of internal hostilities and jealousies, and oppose the anarchic forces of doctrinaires, visionary dreamers, clerical aggressors, and socialistic incendiaries,--foes alike of a stable government and of ultimate progress.

In the management of the internal affairs of the empire he cannot be said to have been as successful as was Cavour in Italy. He was not in harmony with the spirit of the age, nor was he wise. His persistent opposition to the freedom of the Press was as great an error as his persecution of the Catholics; and his insatiable love of power, grasping all the great offices of State, was a serious offence in the eyes of a jealous master, the present emperor, whom he did not take sufficient pains to conciliate. The greatness of Bismarck was not as administrator of an empire, but rather as the creator of an empire, and which he raised to greatness by diplomatic skill. His distinguishable excellence was in the management of foreign affairs; and in this power he has never been surpassed by any foreign minister.

Contrary to all calculations, this great proud man who has ruled Germany with so firm a hand for thirty years, and whose services have been unparalleled in the history of statesmen, was not too high to fall. But he fell because a young, inexperienced, and ambitious sovereign,--apt pupil of his own in the divine right of monarchs to govern, and yet seemingly inspired by a keen sensitiveness to his people's wants and the spirit of the age,--could not endure his commanding ascendency and haughty dictation, and accepted his resignation offered in a moment of pique. He fell even as Wolsey fell before Henry VIII.,--too great a man for a subject, yet always loyal to the principles of legitimacy and the will of his sovereign. But he retired at the age of seventy-five, with princely estates, unexampled honors, and the admiration and gratitude of his countrymen; with the consciousness of having elevated them to the proudest position in continental Europe. The aged Emperor William I. died in 1888, full of years and of honors. His son the Emperor Frederick died a few months later, leaving a deep respect and a genuine sorrow. The grandson, the present Emperor William II., has been called "a modern man, notwithstanding certain proclivities which still adhere to him, like pieces of the shell of an egg from which the bird has issued." He is yet an unsolved problem, but may be regarded not without hope for a wise, strong, and useful reign.

The builder of his country's greatness, however, was too deeply enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen to remain in shadow. After more than three years of retirement, Bismarck received from the young emperor on January 26,1894, an invitation to visit the imperial palace in Berlin. His journey and reception in the capital were the occasion of tumultuous public rejoicings, and when the emperor met him, the reconciliation was complete. The time-worn veteran did not again assume office, but he was the frequent recipient of appreciative mention by the kaiser in public rescripts and speeches, and on his seventy-ninth birthday, April 1,1894, he received from the emperor a greeting by letter and a steel cuirass, "as a symbol of the German gratitude." On the same day the castle at Friederichsruh was filled with rare and costly presents from all over Germany, and "Bismarck banquets" were held in all the principal cities. It was well that before this grand figure passed away forever "the German gratitude" to him should have found expression again, especially from the sovereign who owed to the great chancellor his own peculiar eminence in the earth.

As for Prince Bismarck, with all his faults,--and no man is perfect,--I love and honor this courageous giant, who has, under such vexatious opposition, secured the glory of the Prussian monarchy and the unity of Germany; who has been conscientious in the discharge of his duties as he has understood them, in the fear of God,--a modern Cromwell in another cause, whose fame will increase with the advancing ages.[3]

[3]

Bismarck died July 30, 1898, mourned by his nation, his obsequies honored by the Emperor.

AUTHORITIES.

Professor Seeley's Life of Stein, Hezekiel's Biography of Bismarck, and the Life of Prince Bismarck by Charles Lowe, are the books to which I am most indebted for the compilation of this chapter. But one may profitably read the various histories of the Franco-Prussian war, the Life of Prince Hardenberg, the Life of Moltke, the Life of Scharnhorst, and the Life of William von Humboldt. An excellent abridgment of German History, during this century, is furnished by Professor Müller. The Speech of Prince Bismarck in the German Reichstag, February, 1888, I have found very instructive and interesting,--a sort of resume of his own political life.

WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE.

1809-1898.

THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF THE PEOPLE.

It may seem presumptuous for me at the present time to write on Gladstone, whose public life presents so many sides, concerning which there is anything but unanimity of opinion,--a man still in full life, and likely to remain so for years to come;[4] a giant, so strong intellectually and physically as to exercise, without office, a prodigious influence in national affairs by the sole force of genius and character combined. But how can I present the statesmen of the nineteenth century without including him,--the Nestor among political personages, who for forty years has taken an important part in the government of England?

[4]

This was written by Dr. Lord in 1891. Gladstone died in 1898.

This remarkable man, like Canning, Peel, and Macaulay, was precocious in his attainments at school and college,--especially at Oxford, which has produced more than her share of the great men who have controlled thought and action in England during the period since 1820. But precocity is not always the presage of future greatness. There are more remarkable boys than remarkable men. In England, college honors may have more influence in advancing the fortunes of a young man than in this country; but I seldom have known valedictorians who have come up to popular expectations; and most of them, though always respectable, have remained in comparative obscurity.

Like the statesmen to whom I have alluded, Gladstone sprang from the middle ranks, although his father, a princely Liverpool merchant, of Scotch descent, became a baronet by force of his wealth, character, and influence. Seeing the extraordinary talents of his third son,--William Ewart,--Sir John Gladstone spared neither pains nor money on his education, sending him to Eton in 1821, at the age of twelve, where he remained till 1827, learning chiefly Latin and Greek. Here he was the companion and friend of many men who afterward became powerful forces in English life,--political, literary, and ecclesiastical. At the age of seventeen we find him writing letters to Arthur Hallam on politics and literature: and his old schoolfellows testify to his great influence among them for purity, humanity, and nobility of character, while he was noted for his aptness in letters and skill in debate. In 1827 the boy was intrusted to the care of Dr. Turner,--afterward bishop of Calcutta,--under whom he learned something besides Latin and Greek, perhaps indirectly, in the way of ethics and theology, and other things which go to the formation of character. At the age of twenty he entered Christ Church at Oxford--the most aristocratic of colleges--with more attainments than most scholars reach at thirty, and was graduated in 1831 "double-first class," distinguished not only for his scholarship but for his power of debate in the Union Society; throwing in his lot with Tories and High Churchmen, who, as he afterward confesses, "did not set a due value on the imperishable and inestimable principles of human liberty." With strong religious tendencies and convictions, he contemplated taking orders in the Church; but his father saw things differently,--and thus, with academic prejudices which most graduates have to unlearn, he went abroad in 1832 to complete the education of an English gentleman, spending most of his time in Italy and Sicily, those eternally interesting countries to the scholar and the artist, whose wonders can scarcely be exaggerated,--affording a perpetual charm and study if one can ignore popular degradation, superstition, unthrift, and indifference to material and moral progress. He who enjoys Italy must live in the past, or in the realm of art, or in the sanctuaries where priests hide themselves from the light of what is most valuable in civilization and most ennobling in human consciousness.

Mr. Gladstone returned to England in the most interesting and exciting period of her political history since the days of Cromwell,--soon after the great Reform Bill had been passed, which changed the principle of representation in Parliament, and opened the way for other necessary reforms. His personal éclat and his powerful friends gave him an almost immediate entrance into the House of Commons as member for Newark. The electors knew but little about him; they only knew that he was supported by the Duke of Newcastle and preponderating Tory interests, and were carried away by his youthful eloquence--those silvery tones which nature gave--and that strange fascination which comes from magnetic powers. The ancients said that the poet is born and the orator is made. It appears to me that a man stands but little chance of oratorical triumphs who is not gifted by nature with a musical voice and a sympathetic electrical force which no effort can acquire.

On the 29th of January, 1833, at the age of twenty-four, Gladstone entered upon his memorable parliamentary career, during the ministry of Lord Grey; and his maiden speech--fluent, modest, and earnest--was in the course of the debate on the proposed abolition of slavery in the British colonies. It was in reply to an attack made upon the management of his father's estates in the treatment of slaves in Demerara. He deprecated cruelty and slavery alike, but maintained that emancipation should be gradual and after due preparation; and, insisting also that slaves were private property, he demanded that the interests of planters should be duly regarded if emancipation should take place. This was in accordance with justice as viewed by enlightened Englishmen generally. Negro emancipation was soon after decreed. All negroes born after August 1,1834, as well as those then six years of age were to be free; and the remainder were, after a kind of apprenticeship of six years, to be set at liberty. The sum of £20,000,000 was provided by law as a compensation to the slave-owners,--one of the noblest acts which Parliament ever passed, and one of which the English nation has never ceased to boast.

Among other measures to which the reform Parliament gave its attention in 1833 was that relating to the temporalities of the Irish Church, by which the number of bishops was reduced from twenty-two to twelve, with a corresponding reduction of their salaries. An annual tax was also imposed on all livings above £300, to be appropriated to the augmentation of small benefices. Mr. Gladstone was too conservative to approve of this measure, and he made a speech against it.

In 1834 the reform ministry went out of power, having failed to carry everything before them as they had anticipated, and not having produced that general prosperity which they had promised. The people were still discontented, trade still languished, and pauperism increased rather than diminished.

Under the new Tory ministry, headed by Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Gladstone became a junior lord of the Treasury. His great abilities were already recognized, and the premier wanted his services, as Pitt wanted those of Canning before he was known to fame. Shortly after Parliament assembled, in February, 1835, Mr. Gladstone was made under-secretary for the Colonies,--a very young man for such an office. But the Tory ministry was short-lived, and the Whigs soon returned to power under Lord Melbourne. During this administration, until the death of William IV. in 1837, there was no display of power or eloquence in Parliament by the member for Newark of sufficient importance to be here noted, except perhaps his opposition to a bill for the re-arrangement of church-rates. As a Conservative and a High Churchman, Gladstone stood aloof from those who would lay unhallowed hands on the sacred ark of ecclesiasticism. And here, at least, he has always been consistent with himself. From first to last he has been the zealous defender and admirer of the English Church and one of its devoutest members, taking the deepest interest in everything which concerns its doctrines, its ritual, and its connection with the State,--at times apparently forgetting politics to come to its support, in essays which show a marvellous knowledge of both theology and ecclesiastical history. We cannot help thinking that he would have reached the highest dignities as a clergyman, and perhaps have been even more famous as a bishop than as a statesman.

In the Parliament which assembled after Queen Victoria's accession to the throne, in 1837, the voice of Gladstone was heard in nearly every important discussion; but the speech which most prominently brought him into public notice and gave him high rank as a parliamentary orator was that in 1838, in reference to West India emancipation. The evils of the negro apprenticeship system, which was to expire in 1840, had been laid before the House of Lords by the ex-chancellor, Brougham, with his usual fierceness and probable exaggeration; and when the subject came up for discussion in the House of Commons Gladstone opposed immediate abolition, which Lord Brougham had advocated, showing by a great array of facts that the relation between masters and negroes was generally much better than it had been represented. But he was on the unpopular side of the question, and his speech excited admiration without producing conviction,--successful only as a vigorous argument and a brilliant oratorical display. The apprenticeship was cut short, and immediate abolition of slavery decreed.

At that time, Gladstone's "appearance and manners were much in his favor. His countenance was mild and pleasant; his eyes were clear and quick; his eyebrows were dark and prominent; his gestures varied but not violent; his jet black hair was parted from his crown to his brow;" his voice was peculiarly musical, and his diction was elegant and easy, without giving the appearance of previous elaboration. How far his language and thoughts were premeditated I will not undertake to say. Daniel Webster once declared that there was no such thing as ex tempore speaking,--a saying not altogether correct, but in the main confirmed by many great orators who confess to laborious preparation for their speech-making, and by the fact that many of our famous after-dinner speakers have been known to send their speeches to the Press before they were delivered. The case of Demosthenes would seem to indicate the necessity of the most careful study and preparation in order to make a truly great speech, however gifted an orator may be; and those who, like the late Henry Ward Beecher, have astonished their hearers by their ready utterances have generally mastered certain lines of fact and principles of knowledge which they have at command, and which, with native power and art of expression, they present in fresh forms and new combinations. They do not so much add new stores of fact to the kaleidoscope of oratory,--they place the familiar ones in new positions, and produce new pictures ad infinitum. Sometimes a genius, urged by a great impulse, may dash out in an untried course of thought; but this is not always a safe venture,--the next effort of the kind may prove a failure. No man can be sure of himself or his ground without previous and patient labor, except in reply to an antagonist and when familiar with his subject. That was the power of Fox and Pitt. What gave charm to the speeches of Peel and Gladstone in their prime was the new matter they introduced before debate began; and this was the result of laborious study. To attack such matter with wit and sarcasm is one thing; to originate it is quite another. Anybody can criticise the most beautiful picture or the grandest structure, but to paint the one or erect the other,--hic labor, hoc opus est. One of the grandest speeches ever made, for freshness and force, was Daniel Webster's reply to Hayne; but the peroration was written and committed to memory, while the substance of it had been in his thoughts for half a winter, and his mind was familiar with the general subject. The great orator is necessarily an artist as much as Pascal was in his Pensées; and his fame will rest perhaps more on his art than on his matter,--since the art is inimitable and peculiar, while the matter is subject to the conditions of future, unknown, progressive knowledge. Probably the most effective speech of modern times was the short address of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg; but this was simply the expression of the gathered forces of his whole political life.

In the month of July, 1837, Mr. Gladstone was married to Miss Catherine Glyn, daughter of Sir Stephen Richard Glyn, of Hawarden Castle, in Flintshire, Wales,--a marriage which proved eminently happy. Eight children have been the result of this union, of whom but one has died; all the others have "turned out well," as the saying is, though no one has reached distinguished eminence. It would seem that Mr. Gladstone, occupying for forty years so superb a social and public station, has not been ambitious for the worldly advancement of his children, nor has he been stained by nepotism in pushing on their fortunes. The eldest son was a member of Parliament; the second became a clergyman; and the eldest daughter married a clergyman in a prominent position as headmaster of Wellington College.

It would be difficult to say when the welfare of the Church and the triumph of theological truth have not received a great share of Mr. Gladstone's thoughts and labors. At an early period of his parliamentary career he wrote an elaborate treatise on the "State in its relation to the Church." It is said that Sir Robert. Peel threw the book down on the floor, exclaiming that it was a pity so able a man should jeopardize his political future by writing such trash; but it was of sufficient importance to furnish Macaulay a subject for one of his most careful essays, in which however, though respectful in tone,--patronizing rather than eulogistic,--he showed but little sympathy with the author. He pointed out many defects which the critical and religious world has sustained. In the admirable article which Mr. Gladstone wrote on Lord Macaulay himself for one of the principal Reviews not many years ago, he paid back in courteous language, and even under the conventional form of panegyric, in which one great man naturally speaks of another, a still more searching and trenchant criticism on the writings of the eminent historian. Gladstone shows, and shows clearly and conclusively, the utter inability of Macaulay to grasp subjects of a spiritual and subjective character, especially exhibited in his notice of the philosophy of Bacon. He shows that this historian excels only in painting external events and the outward acts and peculiarities of the great characters of history,--and even then only with strong prejudices and considerable exaggerations, however careful he is in sustaining his position by recorded facts, in which he never makes an error. To the subjective mind of Gladstone, with his interest in theological subjects, Macaulay was neither profound nor accurate in his treatment of philosophical and psychological questions, for which indeed he had but little taste. Such men as Pascal, Leibnitz, Calvin, Locke, he lets alone to discuss the great actors in political history, like Warren Hastings, Pitt, Harley; but in his painting of such characters he stands pre-eminent over all modern writers. Gladstone does justice to Macaulay's vast learning, his transcendent memory, and his matchless rhetoric,--making the heaviest subjects glow with life and power, effecting compositions which will live for style alone, for which in some respects he is unapproachable.

Indeed, I cannot conceive of two great contemporary statesmen more unlike in their mental structure and more antagonistic in their general views than Gladstone and Macaulay, and unlike also in their style. The treatise on State and Church, on which Gladstone exhibits so much learning, to me is heavy, vague, hazy, and hard to read. The subject, however, has but little interest to an American, and is doubtless much more highly appreciated by English students, especially those of the great universities, whom it more directly concerns. It is the argument of a young Oxford scholar for the maintenance of a Church establishment; is full of ecclesiastical lore, assuming that one of the chief ends of government is the propagation of religious truth,--a ground utterly untenable according to the universal opinion of people in this country, whether churchmen or laymen, Catholic or Protestant, Conservative or liberal.

On the fall of the Whig government in 1841, succeeded by that of Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Gladstone was appointed vice-president of the Board of Trade and master of the Mint, and naturally became more prominent as a parliamentary debater,--not yet a parliamentary leader. But he was one of the most efficient of the premier's lieutenants, a tried and faithful follower, a disciple, indeed,--as was Peel himself of Canning, and Canning of Pitt. He addressed the House in all the important debates,--on railways, on agricultural interests, on the abolition of the corn laws, on the Dissenters' Chapel Bills, on sugar duties,--a conservative of conservatives, yet showing his devotion to the cause of justice in everything except justice to the Catholics in Ireland. He was opposed to the grant to Maynooth College, and in consequence resigned his office when the decision of the government was made known,--a rare act of that conscientiousness for which from first to last he has been pre-eminently distinguished in all political as well as religious matters. His resignation of office left him free to express his views; and he disclaimed, in the name of law, the constitution, and the history of the country, the voting of money to restore and strengthen the Roman Catholic Church of Ireland. In deference to Sir Robert Peel and the general cause of education his opposition was not bitter or persistent; and the progressive views which have always marked his career led him to support the premier in his repeal of the corn laws, he having been, like his chief, converted to the free-trade doctrines of Cobden. But the retirement of such prominent men as the Duke of Buccleuch and Lord Stanley (of Alderley) from his ministry, as protectionists, led to its breaking up in 1846 and an attempt to form a new one under Lord John Russell, which failed; and Sir Robert Peel resumed direction of a government pledged to repeal the corn laws of 1815. As the Duke of Newcastle was a zealous protectionist, under whose influence Mr. Gladstone had been elected member of Parliament, the latter now resigned his seat as member for Newark, and consequently remained without a seat in that memorable session of 1846 which repealed the corn laws.

The ministry of Sir Robert Peel, though successful in passing the most important bill since that of Parliamentary reform in 1832, was doomed; as we have already noted in the Lecture on that great leader, it fell on the Irish question, and Lord John Russell became the head of the government. In the meantime, Mr. Gladstone was chosen to represent the University of Oxford in Parliament,--one of the most distinguished honors which he ever received, and which he duly prized. As the champion of the English Church represented by the University, and as one of its greatest scholars, he richly deserved the coveted prize.

On the accidental death of Sir Robert Peel in 1850 the conservative party became disintegrated, and Mr. Gladstone held himself aloof both from Whigs and Tories, learning wisdom from Sir James Graham (one of the best educated and most accomplished statesman of the day), and devoting himself to the study of parliamentary tactics, and of all great political questions. It was then that in the interval of public business he again visited Italy, in the winter of 1850-51; this time not for mere amusement and recreation, but for the health of a beloved daughter. While in Naples he was led to examine its prisons (with philanthropic aim), and to study the general policy and condition of the Neapolitan government. The result was his famous letters to Lord Aberdeen on the awful despotism under which the kingdom of the Two Sicilies groaned, where over twenty thousand political prisoners were incarcerated, and one-half of the Deputies were driven into exile in defiance of all law; where the prisons were dens of filth and horror, and all sorts of unjust charges were fabricated in order to get rid of inconvenient persons. I have read nothing from the pen of Mr. Gladstone superior in the way of style to these letters,--earnest and straightforward, almost fierce in their invective, reminding one in many respects of Brougham's defence of Queen Caroline, but with a greater array of facts, so clearly and forcibly put as not only to produce conviction but to kindle wrath. The government of Naples had sworn to maintain a free constitution, but had disgracefully and without compunction violated every one of its conditions, and perpetrated cruelties and injustices which would have appalled the judges of imperial Rome, and defended them by a casuistry which surpassed in its insult to the human understanding that of the priests of the Spanish Inquisition.

The indignation created by Gladstone's letters extended beyond England to France and Germany, and probably had no slight influence in the final overthrow of the King of Naples, whose government was the most unjust, tyrannical, and cruel in Europe, and perhaps on the face of the globe. Its chief evil was not in chaining suspected politicians of character and rank to the vilest felons, and immuring them in underground cells too filthy and horrible to be approached even by physicians, for months and years before their mock-trials began, but in the utter perversion of justice in the courts by judges who dared not go counter to the dictation or even wishes of the executive government with its deadly and unconquerable hatred of everything which looked like political liberty. All these things and others Mr. Gladstone exposed with an eloquence glowing and burning with righteous and fearless indignation.

The Neapolitan government attempted to make a denial of the terrible charges; but the defence was feeble and inconclusive, and the statesman who made the accusation was not convicted even of exaggeration, although the heartless tyrant may have felt that he was no more guilty than other monarchs bent on sustaining absolutism at any cost and under any plea in the midst of atheists, assassins, and anarchists. It is said that Warren Hastings, under the terrible invectives of Burke, felt himself to be the greatest criminal in the world, even when he was conscious of having rendered invaluable services to Great Britain, which the country in the main acknowledged. In one sense, therefore, a statement may be rhetorically exaggerated, even when the facts which support it are incontrovertible, as the remorseless logic of Calvin leads to deductions which no one fully believes,--the decretum quidem horribile, as Calvin himself confessed. But is it easy to convict Mr. Gladstone of other exaggeration than that naturally produced by uncommon ability to array facts so as to produce conviction, which indeed is the talent of the advocate rather than that of the judge?

The year 1848 was a period of agitation and revolution in every country in Europe; and most governments, being unpopular, were compelled to suppress riots and insurrections, and to maintain order under exceeding difficulties. England was no exception; and public discontents had some justification in the great deficiency in the national treasury, the distress of Ireland, and the friction which new laws, however beneficent, have to pass through.

About this time Mr. Disraeli was making himself prominent as an orator, and as a foe to the administration. He was clever in nicknames and witty expressions,--as when he dubbed the Blue Book of the Import Duties Committee "the greatest work of imagination that the nineteenth century had produced." Mr. Gladstone was no match for this great parliamentary fencer in irony, in wit, in sarcasm, and in bold attacks; but even in a House so fond of jokes as that of the Commons he commanded equal if not greater attention by his luminous statements of fact and the earnest solemnity of his manner. Benjamin Disraeli entered Parliament in 1837, as a sort of democratic Tory, when the death of King William IV. necessitated a general election. His maiden speech as member for Maidstone was a failure; not because he could not speak well, but because a certain set determined to crush him, and made such a noise that he was obliged to sit down, declaring in a loud voice that the time would come when they should hear him. He was already famous for his novels, and for a remarkable command of language; the pet of aristocratic women, and admired generally for his wit and brilliant conversation, although he provoked criticism for the vulgar finery of his dress and the affectation of his manners. Already he was intimate with Lord Lyndhurst, a lion in the highest aristocratic circles, and universally conceded to be a man of genius. Why should not such a man, at the age of thirty-three, aspire to a seat in Parliament? His future rival, Gladstone, though five years his junior, had already been in Parliament three years, and was distinguished as an orator before Disraeli had a chance to enter the House of Commons as a supporter of Sir Robert Peel; but his extraordinary power was not felt until he attacked his master on the repeal of the corn laws, nor was he the rival of Mr. Gladstone until the Tory party was disintegrated and broken into sections. In 1847, however, he became the acknowledged leader of the most conservative section,--the party of protection,--while Gladstone headed the followers of Peel.

On the disruption of the Whig administration in 1851 under Lord John Russell, who was not strong enough for such unsettled times, Lord Derby became premier, and Disraeli took office under him as chancellor of the exchequer,--a post which he held for only a short time, the "coalition cabinet" under Lord Aberdeen having succeeded that of Lord Derby, keeping office during the Crimean war, and leaving the Tories out in the cold until 1858.

Of this famous coalition ministry Mr. Gladstone naturally became chancellor of the exchequer, having exhibited remarkable financial ability in demolishing the arguments of Disraeli when he introduced his budget as chancellor in 1851; but although the rivalry between the two great men began about this time, neither of them had reached the lofty position which they were destined to attain. They both held subordinate posts. The prime minister was the Earl of Aberdeen; but Lord Palmerston was the commanding genius of the cabinet, controlling as foreign minister the diplomacy of the country in stormy times. He was experienced, versatile, liberal, popular, and ready in debate. His foreign policy was vigorous and aggressive, raising England in the estimation of foreigners, and making her the most formidable Power in Europe. His diplomatic and administrative talents were equally remarkable, so that he held office of some kind in every successive administration but one for fifty years. He was secretary-at-war as far back as the contest with Napoleon, and foreign secretary in 1830 during the administration of Lord Grey. His official life may almost be said to have been passed in the Foreign Office; he was acquainted with all its details, and as indefatigable in business as he was witty in society, to the pleasures of which he was unusually devoted. He checked the ambition of France in 1840 on the Eastern question, and brought about the cordial alliance between France and England in the Crimean war.

Mr. Gladstone did not agree with Lord Palmerston in reference to the Crimean war. Like Lord Aberdeen, his policy was pacific, avoiding war except in cases of urgent necessity; but in this matter he was not only in the minority in the cabinet but not on the popular side,--the Press and the people and the Commons being clamorous for war. As already shown, it was one of the most unsatisfactory wars in English history,--conducted to a successful close, indeed, but with an immense expenditure of blood and money, and with such an amount of blundering in management as to bring disgrace rather than glory on the government and the country. But it was not for Mr. Gladstone to take a conspicuous part in the management of that unfortunate war. His business was with the finances,--to raise money for the public exigencies; and in this business he never had a superior. He not only selected with admirable wisdom the articles to be taxed, but in his budgets he made the minutest details interesting. He infused eloquence into figures; his audiences would listen to his financial statements for five continuous hours without wearying. But his greatest triumph as finance minister was in making the country accept without grumbling an enormous income tax because he made plain its necessity.

The mistakes of the coalition ministry in the management of the war led to its dissolution, and Lord Palmerston became prime minister, Lord Clarendon foreign minister, while Mr. Gladstone retained his post as chancellor of the exchequer, yet only for a short time. On the appointment of a committee to examine into the conduct of the war he resigned his post, and was succeeded by Sir G.C. Lewis. At this crisis the Emperor Nicholas of Russia died, and the cabinet, with a large preponderance of Whigs, having everything their own way, determined to prosecute the war to the bitter end.

Yet the great services and abilities of Gladstone as finance minister were everywhere conceded, not only for his skill in figures but for his wisdom in selecting and imposing duties that were acceptable to the country and did not press heavily upon the poor, thus following out the policy which Sir Robert Peel bequeathed. Ever since, this has been the aim as well as the duty of a chancellor of the exchequer whatever party has been in the ascendent.

From this time onward Mr. Gladstone was a pronounced free-trader of the Manchester school. His conscientious studies into the mutual relations of taxation, production, and commerce had convinced him that national prosperity lay along the line of freedom of endeavor. He had taken a great departure from the principles he had originally advocated, which of course provoked a bitter opposition from his former friends and allies. He was no longer the standard-bearer of the conservative party, but swung more and more by degrees from his old policy as light dawned upon his mind and experience taught him wisdom. Perhaps the most remarkable characteristics of this man,--opinionated and strong-headed as he undoubtedly is,--are to be found in the receptive quality of his mind, by which he is open to new ideas, and in the steady courage with which he affirms and stands by his convictions when once he has by reasoning arrived at them. It took thirteen years of parliamentary strife before the Peelites, whom he led, were finally incorporated with the Liberal party.

Mr. Gladstone, now without office, became what is called an independent member of the House, yet active in watching public interests, giving his vote and influence to measures which he considered would be most beneficial to the country irrespective of party. Meantime, the continued mistakes of the war and the financial burdens incident to a conflict of such magnitude had gradually produced disaffection with the government of which Lord Palmerston was the head. The ministry, defeated on an unimportant matter, but one which showed the animus of the country, was compelled to resign, and the Conservatives--no longer known by the opprobrious nickname of Tories--came into power (1858) under the premiership of Lord Derby, Disraeli becoming chancellor of the exchequer and leader of his own party in the House of Commons. But this administration also was short-lived, lasting only about a year; and in June, 1859, a new coalition ministry was again formed under Lord Palmerston, which continued seven years, Mr. Gladstone returning to his old post as chancellor of the exchequer.

Mr. Gladstone was at this time fifty years of age. His political career thus far, however useful and honorable, had not been extraordinary. Mr. Pitt was prime minister at the age of twenty-eight. Fox, Canning, and Castlereagh at forty were more famous than Gladstone. His political promotion had not been as rapid as that of Lord John Russell or Lord Palmerston or Sir Robert Peel. He was chiefly distinguished for the eloquence of his speeches, the lucidity of his financial statements, and the moral purity of his character; but he was not then pre-eminently great, either for initiative genius or commanding influence. Aside from politics, he was conceded to be an accomplished scholar and a learned theologian,--distinguished for ecclesiastical lore rather than as an original thinker. He had written no great book likely to be a standard authority. As a writer he was inferior to Macaulay and Newman, nor had he the judicial powers of Hallam. He could not be said to have occupied more than one sphere, that of politics,--here unlike Thiers, Guizot, and even Lyndhurst and Brougham.

In 1858, however, Gladstone appeared in a new light, and commanded immediate attention by the publication of his "Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age,"--a remarkable work in three large octavo volumes, which called into the controversial field of Greek history a host of critics, like Mr. Freeman, who yet conceded to Mr. Gladstone wonderful classical learning, and the more wonderful as he was preoccupied with affairs of State, and without the supposed leisure for erudite studies. This learned work entitled him to a high position in another sphere than that of politics. Guizot wrote learned histories of modern political movements, but he could not have written so able a treatise as Gladstone's on the Homeric age. Some advanced German critics took exceptions to the author's statements about early Greek history; yet it cannot be questioned that he has thrown a bright if not a new light on the actors of the siege of Troy and the age when they were supposed to live. The illustrious author is no agnostic. It is not for want of knowledge that in some things he is not up to the times, but for a conservative bent of mind which leads him to distrust destructive criticism. Gladstone has been content to present the ancient world as revealed in the Homeric poems, whether Homer lived less than a hundred years from the heroic deeds described with such inimitable charm, or whether he did not live at all. He wrote the book not merely to amuse his leisure hours, but to incite students to a closer study of the works attributed to him who alone is enrolled with the two other men now regarded as the greatest of immortal poets. Gladstone's admiration for Homer is as unbounded as that of German scholars for Dante and Shakspeare. It is hardly to be supposed that this work on the heroic age was written during the author's retirement from office; it was probably the result of his life-studies on Grecian literature, which he pursued with unusual and genuine enthusiasm. Who among American statesmen or even scholars are competent to such an undertaking?

Two years after this, in 1860, Mr. Gladstone was elected Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh in recognition of his scholarly attainments, and delivered a notable inaugural address on the work of universities.

The chief duty of Mr. Gladstone during his seven years connection with the new coalition party, headed by Lord Palmerston, was to prepare his annual budget, or financial statement, with a proposed scheme of taxation, as chancellor of the exchequer. During these years his fame as a finance minister was confirmed. As such no minister ever equalled him, except perhaps Sir Robert Peel. My limits will not permit me to go into a minute detail of the taxes he increased and those he reduced. The end he proposed in general was to remove such as were oppressive on the middle and lower classes, and to develop the industrial resources of the nation,--to make it richer and more prosperous, while it felt the burden of supplying needful moneys for the government less onerous. Nor would it be interesting to Americans to go into those statistics. I wonder even why they were so interesting to the English people. One would naturally think that it was of little consequence whether duties on some one commodity were reduced, or those on another were increased, so long as the deficit in the national income had to be raised somehow, whether by direct or indirect taxation; but the interest generally felt in these matters was intense, both inside and outside Parliament. I can understand why the paper-makers should object when it was proposed to remove the last protective duty, and why the publicans should wax indignant if an additional tax were imposed on hops; but I cannot understand why every member of the House of Commons should be present when the opening speech on the budget was to be made by the chancellor, why the intensest excitement should prevail, why members should sit for five hours enraptured to hear financial details presented, why every seat in the galleries should be taken by distinguished visitors, and all the journals the next day should be filled with panegyrics or detractions as to the minister's ability or wisdom.

It would seem that no questions concerning war or peace, or the extension of the suffrage, or the removal of great moral evils, or promised boons in education, or Church disestablishment, or threatened dangers to the State,--questions touching the very life of the nation,--received so much attention or excited so great interest as those which affected the small burdens which the people had to bear; not the burden of taxation itself, but how that should be distributed. I will not say that the English are "a nation of shopkeepers;" but I do say that comparatively small matters occupy the thoughts of men in every country outside the routine of ordinary duties, and form the staple of ordinary conversation,--among pedants, the difference between ac and et; among aristocrats, the investigation of pedigrees; in society, the comparative merits of horses, the movements of well-known persons, the speed of ocean steamers, boat-races, the dresses of ladies of fashion, football contests, the last novel, weddings, receptions, the trials of housekeepers, the claims of rival singers, the gestures and declamation of favorite play-actors, the platitudes of popular preachers, the rise and fall of stocks, murders in bar-rooms, robberies in stores, accidental fires in distant localities,--these and other innumerable forms of gossip, collected by newspapers and retailed in drawing-rooms, which have no important bearing on human life or national welfare or immortal destiny. It is not that the elaborate presentations of financial details for which Mr. Gladstone was so justly famous were without importance. I only wonder why they should have had such overwhelming interest to English legislators and the English public; and why his statistics should have given him claims to transcendent oratory and the profoundest statesmanship,--for it is undeniable that his financial speeches brought him more fame and importance in the House of Commons than all the others he made during those seven years of parliamentary gladiatorship. One of these triumphantly carried through Parliament a commercial reciprocity treaty with France, arranged by Mr. Cobden; and another, scarcely less notable, repealed the duty on paper,--a measure of great importance for the facilitation of making books and cheapening newspapers, but both of which were desperately opposed by the monopolists and manufacturers.

Some of Mr. Gladstone's other speeches stand on higher ground and are of permanent value; they will live for the lofty sentiments and the comprehensive knowledge which marked them,--appealing to the highest intellect as well as to the hearts of those common people of whom all nations are chiefly composed. Among these might be mentioned those which related to Italian affairs, sympathizing with the struggle which the Italians were making to secure constitutional liberty and the unity of their nation,--severe on the despotism of that miserable king of Naples, Francis II., whom Garibaldi had overthrown with a handful of men. Mr. Gladstone, ever since his last visit to Naples, had abominated the outrages which its government had perpetrated on a gallant and aspiring people, and warmly supported them by his eloquence. In the same friendly spirit, in 1858, he advocated in Parliament a free constitution for the Ionian islands, then under British rule; and when sent thither as British commissioner he addressed the Senate of those islands, at Corfu, in the Italian language. The islands were by their own desire finally ceded to Greece, whose prosperity as an independent and united nation Mr. Gladstone ever had at heart. The land of Homer to him was hallowed ground.

On one subject Mr. Gladstone made a great mistake, which he afterward squarely acknowledged,--and this was in reference to the American civil war. In 1862, while chancellor of the exchequer, he made a speech at Newcastle in which he expressed his conviction that Jefferson Davis had "already succeeded in making the Southern States of America [which were in revolt] an independent nation." This opinion caused a great sensation in both England and the United States, and alienated many friends,--especially as Earl Russell, the minister of foreign affairs, had refused to recognize the Confederate States. It was the indiscretion of the chancellor of the exchequer which disturbed some of his warmest supporters in England; but in America the pain arose from the fact that so great a man had expressed such an opinion,--a man, moreover, for whom America had then and still has the greatest admiration and reverence. It was feared that his sympathies, like those of a great majority of the upper classes in England at the time, were with the South rather than the North, and chiefly because the English manufacturers had to pay twenty shillings instead of eight-pence a pound for cotton. It was natural for a manufacturing country to feel this injury to its interests; but it was not magnanimous in view of the tremendous issues which were at stake, and it was inconsistent with the sacrifices which England had nobly made in the emancipation of her own slaves in the West Indies. For England to give her moral support to the revolted Southern States, founding their Confederacy upon the baneful principle of human slavery, was a matter of grave lamentation with patriots at the North, to say nothing of the apparent English indifference to the superior civilization of the free States and the great cause to which they were devoted in a struggle of life and death. It even seemed to some that the English aristocracy were hypocritical in their professions, and at heart were hostile to the progress of liberty; that the nation as a whole cared more for money than justice,--as seemingly illustrated by the war with China to enforce the opium trade against the protest of the Chinese government, pagan as it was.

Mr. Gladstone had now swung away from the Conservative party. In 1864 he had vigorously supported a bill for enlarging the parliamentary franchise by reducing the limit of required rental from £10 to £6, declaring that the burden of proof rested on those who would exclude forty-nine-fiftieths of the working-classes from the franchise. He also, as chancellor of the exchequer, caused great excitement by admitting the unsatisfactory condition of the Irish Church,--that is, the Church of England among the Irish people; sustained by their taxes, but ministering to only one-eighth or one-ninth of the population. These and other similar evidences of his liberal tendencies alienated his Oxford constituency, the last people in the realm to adopt liberal measures; and on the proroguement of Parliament in 1865, and the new election which followed, he was defeated as member for the University, although he was a High Churchman and the pride of the University, devoted to its interests heart and soul. It is a proof of the exceeding bitterness of political parties that such ingratitude should have been shown to one of the greatest scholars that Oxford has produced for a century. It was in this year also that on completing his term as Rector of the University of Edinburgh he retired with a notable address on the "Place of Ancient Greece in the Providential Order;" thus anew emphasizing his scholarly equipment as a son of Oxford.

The Liberal party, however, were generally glad of Gladstone's defeat, since it would detach him from the University. He now belonged more emphatically to the country, and was more free and unshackled to pursue his great career, as Sir Robert Peel had been before him in similar circumstances. Instead of representing a narrow-minded and bigoted set of clergymen and scholars, he was chosen at once to represent quite a different body,--even the liberal voters of South Lancashire, a manufacturing district.

The death of Lord Palmerston at the age of eighty, October 17, 1865, made Earl Russell prime minister, while Gladstone resumed under the new government his post as chancellor of the exchequer, and now became formally the leader of the Liberals in the House of Commons.

Irish questions in 1866 came prominently to the front, for the condition of Ireland at that time was as alarming as it was deplorable, with combined Fenianism and poverty and disaffection in every quarter. So grave was the state of this unhappy country that the government felt obliged to bring in a bill suspending the habeas corpus act, which the chancellor of the exchequer eloquently supported. His conversion to Liberal views was during this session seen in bringing in a measure for the abolition of compulsory church-rates, in aid of Dissenters; but before it could be carried through its various stages a change of ministry had taken place on another issue, and the Conservatives again came into power, with Lord Derby for prime minister and Disraeli for chancellor of the exchequer and leader of his party in the House of Commons.

This fall of the Liberal ministry was brought about by the Reform Bill, which Lord Russell had prepared, and which was introduced by the chancellor of the exchequer amid unparalleled excitement. Finance measures lost their interest in the fierceness of the political combat. It was not so important a measure as that of the reform of 1832 in its political consequences, but it was of importance enough to enlist absorbing interest throughout the kingdom; it would have added four hundred thousand new voters. While it satisfied the Liberals, it was regarded by the Conservatives as a dangerous concession, opening the doors too widely to the people. Its most brilliant and effective opponent was Mr. Lowe, whose oratory raised him at once to fame and influence. Seldom has such eloquence been heard in the House of Commons, and from all the leading debaters on both sides. Mr. Gladstone outdid himself, but perhaps was a little too profuse with his Latin quotations. The debate was continued for eight successive nights. The final division was the largest ever known: the government found itself in a minority of eleven, and consequently resigned. Lord Derby, as has been said, was again prime minister.

The memorable rivalry between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli was now continued in deeper earnest, and never ceased so long as the latter statesman was a member of the House of Commons, They were recognized to be the heads of their respective parties,--two giants in debate; two great parliamentary gladiators, on whom the eyes of the nation rested. Mr. Gladstone was the more earnest, the more learned, and the more solid in his blows. Mr. Disraeli was the more adroit, the more witty, and the more brilliant in his thrusts. Both were equally experienced. The one appealed to justice and truth; the other to the prejudices of the House and the pride of a nation of classes. One was armed with a heavy dragoon sword; the other with a light rapier, which he used with extraordinary skill. Mr. G.W.E. Russell, in his recent "Life of Gladstone," quotes the following passage from a letter of Lord Houghton, May, 1867:--

"I met Gladstone at breakfast. He seems quite awed with the diabolical cleverness of Dizzy, 'who,' he says, 'is gradually driving all ideas of political honor out of the House, and accustoming it to the most revolting cynicism,' There is no doubt that a sense of humor has always been conspicuously absent from Mr. Gladstone's character."

Sometimes one of these rival leaders was on the verge of victory and sometimes the other, and both equally gained the applause of the spectators. Two such combatants had not been seen since the days of Pitt and Fox,--one, the champion of the people; the other, of the aristocracy. What each said was read the next day by every family in the land. Both were probably greatest in opposition, since more unconstrained. Of the two, Disraeli was superior in the control of his temper and in geniality of disposition, making members roar with laughter by his off-hand vituperation and ingenuity in inventing nicknames. Gladstone was superior in sustained reasoning, in lofty sentiments, and in the music of his voice, accompanied by that solemnity of manner which usually passes for profundity and the index of deep convictions. As for rhetorical power, it would be difficult to say which was the superior,--though the sentences of both were too long. It would also be difficult to tell which of the two was the more ambitious and more tenacious of office. Both, it is said, bade for popularity in the measures they proposed. Both were politicians. There is, indeed, a great difference between politicians and statesmen; but a man may be politic without ceasing to be a lover of his country, like Lord Palmerston himself; and a man may advocate large and comprehensive views of statesmanship which are neither popular nor appreciated.

The new Conservative ministry was a short one. Coming into power on the defeat of the Liberal reform bill introduced by Mr. Gladstone, the Tory government recognized the popular demand on which that bill had been based; and though Mr. Disraeli coolly introduced a reform bill of their own which was really more radical than the Liberal bill had been, and although at the hands of the opposition it was so modified that the Duke of Buccleuch declared that the only word unaltered was the initial "whereas," its passage was claimed as a great Conservative victory. Shortly after this, the Earl of Derby retired on account of ill-health, and was succeeded by Mr. Disraeli as premier; but the current of Liberalism set in so strongly in the ensuing elections that he was forced to resign in 1868, and Mr. Gladstone now for the first time became prime minister.

This was the golden period of Gladstone's public services. During Disraeli's short lease of power, Gladstone had carried the abolition of compulsory church-rates, and had moved, with great eloquence, the disestablishment of the English Church in Ireland. On the latter question Parliament was dissolved, and an appeal made to the country; and the triumphant success of the Liberals brought Mr. Gladstone into power with the brightest prospects for the cause to which he was now committed. He was fifty-nine years old before he reached the supreme object of his ambition,--to rule England; but in accordance with law, and in the interest of truth and justice. In England the strongest man can usually, by persevering energy, reach the highest position to which a subject may aspire. In the United States, political ambition is defeated by rivalries and animosities. Practically the President reigns, like absolute kings, "by the grace of God,"--as it would seem when so many ordinary men, and even obscure, are elevated to the highest place, and when these comparatively unknown men often develop when elected the virtues and abilities of a Saul or a David, as in the cases of Lincoln and Garfield.

So great was the popularity of Mr. Gladstone at this time, so profound was the respect he inspired for his lofty character, his abilities, his vast and varied learning, his unimpeachable integrity and conscientious discharge of his duties, that for five years he was virtually dictator, wielding more power than any premier since Pitt, if we except Sir Robert Peel in his glory. He was not a dictator in the sense that Metternich or Bismarck was,--not a grand vizier, the vicegerent of an absolute monarch, controlling the foreign policy, the army, the police, and the national expenditures. He could not send men to prison without a trial, or interfere with the peaceful pursuits of obnoxious citizens; but he could carry out any public measure he proposed affecting the general interests, for Parliament was supreme, and his influence ruled the Parliament. He was liable to disagreeable attacks from members of the opposition, and could not silence them; he might fall before their attacks; but while he had a great majority of members to back him, ready to do his bidding, he stood on a proud pedestal and undoubtedly enjoyed the sweets of power. He would not have been human if he had not.

Yet Mr. Gladstone carried his honors with dignity and discretion. He was accessible to all who had claims upon his time; he was never rude or insolent; he was gracious and polite to delegations; he was too kind-hearted to snub anybody. No cares of office could keep him from attending public worship; no popular amusements diverted him from his duties; he was feared only as a father is feared. I can conceive that he was sometimes intolerant of human infirmities; that no one dared to obtrude familiarities or make unseemly jokes in his presence; that few felt quite at ease in his company,--oppressed by his bearing, and awed by his prodigious respectability and grave solemnity. Not that he was arrogant and haughty, like a Roman cardinal or an Oxford Don; he was simply dignified and undemonstrative, like a man absorbed with weighty responsibilities. I doubt if he could unbend at the dinner-table like Disraeli and Palmerston, or tell stories like Sydney Smith, or drink too much wine with jolly companions, or forget for a moment the proper and the conventional. I can see him sporting with children, or taking long walks, or cutting down trees for exercise, or given to deep draughts of old October when thirsty; but to see him with a long pipe, or dallying with ladies, or giving vent to unseemly expletives, or retailing scandals,--these and other disreputable follies are utterly inconceivable of Mr. Gladstone. A very serious man may be an object of veneration; but he is a constant rebuke to the weaknesses of our common humanity,--a wet blanket upon frivolous festivities.

Let us now briefly glance at the work done by Gladstone during the five years when in his first premiership he directed the public affairs of England,--impatient of opposition, and sensitive to unjust aspersions, yet too powerful to be resisted in the supreme confidence of his party.

The first thing of note he did was to complete the disestablishment of the Irish Church,--an arduous task to any one lacking Mr. Gladstone's extraordinary influence. Here he was at war with his former friends, and with a large section of the Conservative party,--especially with ecclesiastical dignitaries, who saw in this measure hostility to the Church as well as a national sin. It was a dissolution of the union between the Churches of England and Ireland; a divestment of the temporalities which the Irish clergy had enjoyed; the abolition of all ecclesiastical corporations and laws and courts in Ireland,--in short, the sweeping away of the annuities which the beneficed clergy had hitherto received out of the property of the Established Church, which annuities were of the nature of freeholds. It was not proposed to deprive the clergy of their income, so long as they discharged their clerical duties; but that the title to their tithes should be vested in commissioners, so that these church freeholds could not be bought and sold by non-residents, and churches in decadence should be taken from incumbents. The peerage rights of Irish bishops were also taken away. It was not proposed to touch private endowments; and glebe-houses which had become generally dilapidated were handed over to incumbents by their paying a fair valuation. Not only did the measure sweep away the abuses of the Establishment which had existed for centuries,--such as endowments held by those who performed no duties, which they could dispose of like other property,--but the regium donum given to Presbyterian ministers and the Maynooth Catholic College grant, which together amounted to £70,000, were also withdrawn, although compensated on the same principles as those which granted a settled stipend to the actual incumbents of the disestablished churches.

By this measure, the withdrawal of tithes and land rents and other properties amounted to sixteen millions; and after paying ministers and actual incumbents their stipends of between seven or eight millions, there would remain a surplus of seven or eight millions, with which Mr. Gladstone proposed to endow lunatic and idiot asylums, schools for the deaf, dumb, and blind, institutions for the training of nurses, for infirmaries, and hospitals for the needy people of Ireland.

There can be no rational doubt that this reform was beneficent, and it met the approval of the Liberal party, being supported with a grand eloquence by John Bright, who had under this ministry for the first time taken office,--as President of the Board of Trade; but it gave umbrage to the Irish clergy as a matter of course, to the Presbyterians of Ulster, to the Catholics as affecting Maynooth, and to the conservatives of Oxford and Cambridge on general principles. It was a reform not unlike that of Thomas Cromwell in the time of Henry VIII., when he dissolved the monasteries, though not quite so violent as the secularization of church property in France in the time of the Revolution. It was a spoliation, in one sense, as well as a needed reform,--a daring and bold measure, which such statesmen as Lords Liverpool, Aberdeen, and Palmerston would have been slow to make, and the weak points of which Disraeli was not slow to assail. To the radical Dissenters, as led by Mr. Miall, it was a grateful measure, which would open the door for future discussions on the disestablishment of the English Church itself,--a logical contingency which the premier did not seem to appreciate; for if the State had a right to take away the temporalities of the Irish Church when they were abused, the State would have an equal right to take away those of the English Church should they hereafter turn out to be unnecessary, or become a scandal in the eyes of the nation.

One would think that this disestablishment of the Irish Church would have been the last reform which a strict churchman like Gladstone would have made; certainly it was the last for a politic statesman to make, for it brought forth fruit in the next general election. It is true that the Irish Establishment had failed in every way, as Mr. Bright showed in one of his eloquent speeches, and to remove it was patriotic. If Mr. Gladstone had his eyes open, however, to its natural results as affecting his own popularity, he deserves the credit of being the most unselfish and lofty statesman that ever adorned British annals.

Having thus in 1869 removed one important grievance in the affairs of Ireland, Mr. Gladstone soon proceeded to another, and in February, 1870, brought forward, in a crowded House, his Irish Land Bill. The evil which he had in view to cure was the insecurity of tenure, which resulted in discouraging and paralyzing the industry of tenants, especially in the matter of evictions for non-payment of rent, and the raising of rents on land which had been improved by them. As they were liable at any time to be turned out of their miserable huts, the rents had only doubled in value in ninety years; whereas in England and Scotland, where there was more security of tenure, rents had quadrupled. This insecurity and uncertainty had resulted in a great increase of pauperism in Ireland, and prevented any rise in wages, although there was increased expense of living. The remedy proposed to alleviate in some respect the condition of the Irish tenants was the extension of their leases to thirty-three years, and the granting national assistance to such as desired to purchase the lands they had previously cultivated, according to a scale of prices to be determined by commissioners,--thus making improvements the property of the tenants who had made them rather than of the landlord, and encouraging the tenants by longer leases to make such improvements. Mr. Gladstone's bill also extended to twelve months the time for notices to quit, bearing a stamp duty of half-a-crown. This measure on the part of the government was certainly a relief, as far as it went, to the poor people of Ireland. It became law on August 1, 1870.

The next important measure of Mr. Gladstone was to abolish the custom of buying and selling commissions in the army, which provoked bitter opposition from the aristocracy. It was maintained by the government that the whole system of purchase was unjust, and tended to destroy the efficiency of the army by preventing the advancement of officers according to merit. In no other country was such a mistake committed. It is true that the Prussian and Austrian armies were commanded by officers from the nobility; but these officers had not the unfair privilege of jumping over one another's heads by buying promotion. The bill, though it passed the Commons, was thrown out by the Lords, who wished to keep up the aristocratic quality of army officers, among whom their younger sons were enrolled. Mr. Gladstone cut the knot by advising her Majesty to take the decisive step of cancelling the royal warrant under which--and not by law--purchase had existed. This calling on the Queen to do by virtue of her royal prerogative what could not be done by ordinary legislation, though not unconstitutional, was unusual. True, a privilege which royalty had granted, royalty could revoke; but in removing this evil Mr. Gladstone still further alienated the army and the aristocracy.

Among other measures which the premier carried for the public good, but against bitter opposition, were the secret ballot, and the removal of University Tests, by which all lay students of whatever religious creed were admitted to the universities on equal terms. The establishment of national and compulsory elementary education, although not emanating from Mr. Gladstone, was also accomplished during his government.

It now began to be apparent that the policy of the prime minister was reform wherever reform was needed. There was no telling what he would do next. Had he been the prime minister of an absolute monarch he would have been unfettered, and could have carried out any reform which his royal master approved. But the English are conservative and slow to change, no matter what party they belong to. It seemed to many that the premier was iconoclastic, and was bent on demolishing anything and everything which he disliked. Consequently a reaction set in, and Mr. Gladstone's popularity, by which he had ruled almost as dictator, began to wane.

The settlement of the Alabama Claims did not add to his popularity. Everybody knows what these were, and I shall merely allude to them. During our Civil War, injuries had been inflicted on the commerce of the United States by cruisers built, armed, and manned in Great Britain, not only destroying seventy of our vessels, but by reason of the fear of shippers, resulting in a transfer of trade from American to British ships. It having been admitted by commissioners sent by Mr. Gladstone to Washington, that Great Britain was to blame for these and other injuries of like character, the amount of damages for which she was justly liable was submitted to arbitration; and the International Court at Geneva decided that England was bound to pay to the United States more than fifteen million dollars in gold. The English government promptly paid the money, although regarding the award as excessive; but while the judicious rejoiced to see an arbitrament of reason instead of a resort to war, the pugnacious British populace was discontented, and again Gladstone lost popularity.

And here it may be said that the foreign policy of Mr. Gladstone was pacific from first to last. He opposed the Crimean war; he kept clear of entangling alliances; he maintained a strict neutrality in Eastern complications, and in the Franco-German embroilment; he never stimulated the passion of military glory; he ever maintained that--

     "There is a higher than the warrior's excellence."

He was devoted to the development of national resources and the removal of evils which militated against justice as well as domestic prosperity. His administration, fortunately, was marked by no foreign war. Under his guidance the nation had steadily advanced in wealth, and was not oppressed by taxation; he had promoted education as wall as material thrift; he had attempted to heal disorders in Ireland by benefiting the tenant class. But he at last proposed a comprehensive scheme for enlarging higher education in Ireland, which ended his administration.

The Irish University Bill, which as an attempted compromise between Catholic and Protestant demands satisfied neither party, met with such unexpected opposition that a majority of three was obtained against the government. Mr. Gladstone was, in accordance with custom, compelled to resign or summon a new Parliament. He accepted the latter alternative; but he did not seem aware of the great change in public sentiment which had taken place in regard to his reforms. Not one of them had touched the heart of the great mass, or was of such transcendent importance to the English people as the repeal of the corn laws had been. They were measures of great utility,--indeed, based on justice,--but were of a kind to alienate powerful classes without affecting universal interests. They were patriotic rather than politic. Moreover, he was not supported by lieutenants of first-class ability or reputation. His immediate coadjutors were most respectable men, great scholars, and men of more experience than genius or eloquence. Of his cabinet, eight of them it is said were "double-firsts" at Oxford. There was not one of them sufficiently trained or eminent to take his place. They were his subordinates rather than his colleagues; and some of them became impatient under his dictation, and witnessed his decline in popularity with secret satisfaction. No government was ever started on an ambitious course with louder pretensions or brighter promises than Mr. Gladstone's cabinet in 1868. In less than three years their glory was gone. It was claimed that the bubble of oratory had burst when in contact with fact, and the poor English people had awoke to the dreary conviction that it was but vapor after all; that Mr. Disraeli had pricked that bubble when he said, "Under his influence [Gladstone's] we have legalized confiscation, we have consecrated sacrilege, we have condoned treason, we have destroyed churches, we have shaken property to its foundation, and we have emptied jails."

Everything went against the government. Russia had torn up the Black Sea treaty, the fruit of the Crimean war; the settlement of the "Alabama" claims was humiliating; "the generous policy which was to have won the Irish heart had exasperated one party without satisfying another. He had irritated powerful interests on all sides, from the army to the licensed victuallers."

On the appeal to the nation, contrary to Mr. Gladstone's calculations, there was a great majority against him. He had lost friends and made enemies. The people seemingly forgot his services,--his efforts to give dignity to honest labor, to stimulate self-denial, to reduce unwise expenditures, to remove crying evils. They forgot that he had reduced taxation to the extent of twelve millions sterling annually; and all the while the nation had been growing richer, so that the burdens which had once been oppressive were now easy to bear. It would almost appear that even Gladstone's transcendent eloquence had lost in a measure its charm when Disraeli, in one of his popular addresses, was applauded for saying that he was "a sophistical rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign his opponents and to glorify himself,"--one of the most exaggerated and ridiculous charges that was ever made against a public man of eminence, yet witty and plausible.

On the retirement of the great statesman from office in 1875, in sadness and chagrin, he declined to continue to be the leader of his party in opposition. His disappointment and disgust must have been immense to prompt a course which seemed to be anything but magnanimous, since he well knew that there was no one capable of taking his place; but he probably had his reasons. For some time he rarely went to the House of Commons. He left the leaders of his party to combat an opponent whom he himself had been unable to disarm. Fortunately no questions came up of sufficient importance to arouse a nation or divert it from its gains or its pleasures. It was thinking of other things than budgets and the small extension of the suffrage, or even of the Eastern question. It was thinking more of steamships and stock speculations and great financial operations, of theatres, of operas, of new novels, even of ritualistic observances in the churches, than of the details of government in peaceful times, or the fireworks of the great magician who had by arts and management dethroned a greater and wiser man than himself.

Although Mr. Gladstone was only occasionally seen, after his retirement, in the House of Commons, it must not be supposed that his political influence was dead. When anything of special interest was to be discussed, he was ready as before with his voice and vote. Such a measure as the bill to regulate public worship--aimed at suppressing ritualism--aroused his ecclesiastical interest, and he was voluminous upon it, both in and out of Parliament. Even when he was absent from his seat, his influence remained, and in all probability the new leader of the Liberals, Lord Hartington, took counsel from him. He was simply taking a rest before he should gird on anew his armor, and resume the government of the country.

Meantime, his great rival Disraeli led his party with consummate skill. He was a perfect master of tactics, wary, vigilant, courteous, good-natured, seizing every opportunity to gain a party triumph. He was also judicious in his selection of ministers, nor did he attempt to lord it over them. He showed extraordinary tact in everything, and in nothing more than in giving a new title to the Queen as Empress of India. But no measures of engrossing interest were adopted during his administration. He was content to be a ruler rather than a reformer. He was careful to nurse his popularity, and make no parliamentary mistakes. At the end of two years, however, his labors and cares told seriously on his health. He had been in Parliament since 1837; he was seventy-one years of age, and he found it expedient to accept the gracious favor of his sovereign, and to retire to the House of Lords, with the title of Earl of Beaconsfield, yet retaining the office of prime minister.

During the five years that Mr. Gladstone remained in retirement, he was by no means idle, or a silent spectator of political events. He was indefatigable with his pen, and ever ready with speeches for the platform and with addresses to public bodies. During this period three new Reviews were successfuly started,--the "Fortnightly," the "Contemporary," and the "Nineteenth Century,"--to all of which he was a frequent contributor, on a great variety of subjects. His articles were marked by characteristic learning and ability, and vastly increased his literary reputation. I doubt, however, if they will be much noticed by posterity. Nothing is more ephemeral than periodical essays, unless marked by extraordinary power both in style and matter, like the essays of Macaulay and Carlyle. Gladstone's articles would make the fortune of ordinary writers, but they do not stand out, as we should naturally expect, as brilliant masterpieces, which everybody reads and glows while reading them. Indeed, most persons find them rather dry, whether from the subject or the style I will not undertake to say. But a great man cannot be uniformly great or even always interesting. How few men at seventy will give themselves the trouble to write at all, when there is no necessity, just to relieve their own minds, or to instruct without adequate reward! Michael Angelo labored till eighty-seven, and Titian till over ninety; but they were artists who worked from the love of art, restless without new creations. Perhaps it might also be said of Gladstone that he wrote because he could not help writing, since he knew almost everything worth knowing, and was fond of telling what he knew.

At length Mr. Gladstone emerged again from retirement, to assume the helm of State. When he left office in 1875, he had bequeathed a surplus to the treasury of nearly six millions; but this, besides the accumulation of over five millions more, had been spent in profitless and unnecessary wars. In 1876 a revolt against Turkish rule broke out in Bulgaria, and was suppressed with truly Turkish bloodthirstiness and outrage. "The Bulgarian atrocities" became a theme of discussion throughout Europe; and in England, while Disraeli and his government made light of them, Gladstone was aroused to all his old-time vigor by his humanitarian indignation. Says Russell: "He made the most impassioned speeches, often in the open air; he published pamphlets, which rushed into incredible circulations; he poured letter after letter into the newspapers; he darkened the sky with controversial post-cards; and, as soon as Parliament met, he was ready with all his unequalled resources of eloquence, argumentation, and inconvenient inquiry, to drive home his great indictment against the Turkish government and its friends and champions in the House of Commons."

Four years of this vigorous bombardment, which included in its objects the whole range of Disraeli's "brilliant foreign policy" of threat and bluster, produced its effect, A popular song of the day gave a nickname to this policy:--

     "We don't want to fight, but, by Jingo, if we do,

     We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money, too."

And Jingoism became in the mouths of the Liberals a keen weapon of satire. The government gained the applause of aristocrats and populace, but lost that of the plain people.

The ninth Victorian Parliament was dying out, and a new election was at hand. Mr. Gladstone, now at the age of seventy, went to Edinburgh, the centre of Scottish conservatism, and in several masterly and memorable speeches, showing that his natural vigor of mind and body had not abated, he exposed the mistakes and shortcomings of the existing government and presented the boons which a new Liberal ministry were prepared to give. And when in 1880 the dissolution of Parliament took place, he again went to Scotland and offered himself for the county of Edinburgh, or Midlothian, making a series of astonishing speeches, and was returned as its representative. The general elections throughout the kingdom showed that the tide had again turned. There was an immense Liberal gain. The Earl of Beaconsfield placed his resignation in the hands of the Queen, and Gladstone was sent for,--once more to be prime minister of England.

And here I bring to a close this imperfect notice of one of the greatest men of modern times,--hardly for lack of sufficient material, but because it is hard to find a proper perspective in viewing matters which are still the subject of heated contest and turmoil. Once again Gladstone was seated on the summit of power, and with every prospect of a long-continued reign. Although an old man, his vigor of mind and body had not abated. He was never stronger, apparently, than when he was past seventy years of age. At no previous period of his life was his fame so extended or his moral influence so great. Certainly no man in England was more revered than he or more richly deserved his honors. He entered upon his second premiership with the veneration of the intelligent and liberal-minded patriots of the realm, and great things were expected from so progressive and lofty a minister. The welfare of the country it was undoubtedly his desire and ambition to promote.

But his second administration was not successful. Had the aged premier been content to steer his ship of State in placid waters, nothing would have been wanting to gratify moderate desires. It was not, however, inglorious repose he sought, but to confer a boon for which all future ages would honor his memory.

That boon was seemingly beyond his power. The nation was not prepared to follow him in his plans for Irish betterment. Indeed, he aroused English opposition by his proposed changes of land-tenure in Ireland, and Irish anger by attempted coercion in suppressing crime and disorder. This, and the unfortunate policy of his government in Egypt, brought him to parliamentary defeat; and he retired in June, 1885, declining at the same time the honor of an earldom proffered by the Queen. The ministry was wrecked on the rock which has proved so dangerous to all British political navigators for a hundred years. No human genius seems capable of solving the Irish question. It is apparently no nearer solution than it was in the days of William Pitt. In attempts to solve the problem, Mr. Gladstone found himself opposed by the aristocracy, by the Church, by the army, by men of letters, by men of wealth throughout the country. Lord Salisbury succeeded him; but only for a few months, and in January, 1886, Mr. Gladstone was for the third time called to the premiership. He now advanced a step, and proposed the startling policy of Home Rule for Ireland in matters distinctly Irish; but his following would not hold together on the issue, and in June he retired again.

From then until 1891 he was not in office, but he was indefatigably working with voice and pen for the Irish cause. He made in his retirement many converts to his opinions, and was again elevated to power on the Irish question as an issue in 1891. Yet the English on the whole seem to be against him in his Irish policy, which is denounced as unpractical, and which his opponents even declare to be on his part an insincere policy, entered upon and pursued solely as a bid for power. It is generally felt among the upper classes that no concession and no boons would satisfy the Irish short of virtual independence of British rule. If political rights could be separated from political power there might be more hope of settling the difficulty, which looks like a conflict between justice and wisdom. The sympathy of Americans is mostly on the side of the "grand old man" in his Herculean task, even while they admit that self-government in our own large cities is a dismal failure from the balance of power which is held by foreigners,--by the Irish in the East, and by the Germans in the West. And those who see the rapid growth of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, especially in those sections of the country where Puritanism once had complete sway, and the immense political power wielded by Roman Catholic priests, can understand why the conservative classes of England are opposed to the recognition of the political rights of a people who might unite with socialists and radicals in overturning the institutions on which the glory and prospects of a great nation are believed to be based. The Catholics in Ireland constitute about seven-eighths of the population, and English Protestants fear to deliver the thrifty Protestant minority into the hands of the great majority armed with the tyrannical possibilities of Home Rule. It is indeed a many-sided and difficult problem. There are instincts in nations, as among individuals, which reason fails to overcome, even as there are some subjects in reference to which experience is a safer guide than genius or logic.

Little by little, however, at each succeeding election the Liberal party gained strength, not only in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, but even in England also, and their power in Parliament increased; until, in 1893, after a long and memorable contest, the Commons passed Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule bill by a pronounced majority. Then it was thrown out by the Lords, with very brief consideration. This, and other overrulings of the Lower House by the Peers, aroused deep feeling throughout the nation. In March, 1894, the venerable Gladstone, whose impaired hearing and sight warned him that a man of eighty-five--even though a giant--should no longer bear the burdens of empire, retired from the premiership, his last speech being a solemn intimation of the issues that must soon arise if the House of Lords persisted in obstructing the will of the people, as expressed in the acts of their immediate representatives in the House of Commons.

But, whatever the outcome of the Irish question, the claim of William Ewart Gladstone to a high rank among the ruling statesmen of Modern Europe cannot be gainsaid. Moreover, as his influence has been so forceful a part of the great onward-moving modern current of democratic enlargement,--and in Great Britain one of its most discreet and potent directors,--his fame is secure; it is unalterably a part of the noblest history of the English people.[5]

[5]

Mr. Gladstone died May 19, 1898. Perhaps at once the most intimate and comprehensive account of him is "The Story of Gladstone's Life," by Justin McCarthy.

AUTHORITIES.

There is no exhaustive or satisfactory work on Gladstone which has yet been written. The reader must confine himself at present to the popular sketches, which are called biographies, of Gladstone, of Disraeli, of Palmerston, of Peel, and other English statesmen. He may consult with profit the Reviews of the last twenty-five years in reference to English political affairs. For technical facts one must consult the Annual Register. The time has not yet come for an impartial review of the great actors in this generation on the political stage of either Europe or America.

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