Browning and His Century Part 7

The combined forces were led by Feargus O'Connor, an Irish barrister, who madly spent his force and energy for ten years in carrying forward the movement, and, at last, confronted by disagreement in the ranks of the Chartists and the Duke of Wellington and his troops, gave it up in despair. He was a martyr to the cause, for he took its failure so much to heart that he ended his days in a lunatic asylum.

This final failure came many years after "Sordello" was finished, but the poet's conclusions in "Sordello" seem almost prophetic in the light of the pa.s.sage in the poem already quoted, in which the poet declares himself grown wiser than he was at home, where he had asked the utmost for all men, and now realized that this cannot be attained in one leap.

Agitation about the relations between England and Ireland were also filling public attention at this time, but most important of all the contemporary movements was the League for the Repeal of the Corn Laws. The story of the growth and the peaceful methods by which it attained its growth is one of the most interesting in the annals of England's political development. It meant the adoption of the great principle of free trade, to which England has since adhered. For eight years the agitation in regard to it was continued, during which great meetings were held, thousands of pounds were subscribed to the cause, and the names of Sir Richard Cobden and John Bright became famous as leaders in the righteous cause of untaxed food for the people. John Bright's account of how he became interested in the movement and a.s.sociated himself with Cobden in the work, told in a speech made at Rochdale, gives a vivid picture of the human side of the problem which by the conservatives of the day was treated as a merely political issue:

"In the year 1841 I was at Leamington and spent several months there.

It was near the middle of September there fell upon me one of the heaviest blows that can visit any man. I found myself living there with none living of my house but a motherless child. Mr. Cobden called upon me the day after that event, so terrible to me and so prostrating. He said, after some conversation, 'Don't allow this grief, great as it is, to weigh you down too much. There are at this moment in thousands of homes in this country wives and children who are dying of hunger--of hunger made by the law. If you come along with me, we will never rest till we have got rid of the Corn Law.' We saw the colossal injustice which cast its shadow over every part of the nation, and we thought we saw the true remedy and the relief, and that if we united our efforts, as you know we did, with the efforts of hundreds and thousands of good men in various parts of the country, we should be able to bring that remedy home, and to afford that relief to the starving people of this country."

The movement thus inaugurated was, as Molesworth declares, "without parallel in the history of the world for the energy with which it was conducted, the rapid advance it made, and the speedy and complete success that crowned its efforts; for the great change it wrought in public opinion and the consequent legislation of the country; overcoming prejudice and pa.s.sion, dispelling ignorance and conquering powerful interests, with no other weapons than those of reason and that eloquence which great truths and strong conviction inspire."

A signal victory for the League was gained in 1843, when the London _Times_, which up to that time had regarded the League with suspicion and even alarm, suddenly turned round and ranged itself with the advancing tide of progress by declaring, "The League is a great fact. It would be foolish, nay, rash, to deny its importance. It is a great fact that there should have been created in the homestead of our manufacturers (Manchester) a confederacy devoted to the agitation of one political question, persevering at it year after year, shrinking from no trouble, dismayed at no danger, making light of every obstacle. It demonstrates the hardy strength of purpose, the indomitable will, by which Englishmen working together for a great object are armed and animated."

The final victory, however, did not come until three years later, when Sir Robert Peel, who became Prime Minister to defend the Corn Laws, announced that he had been completely convinced of their injustice, and that he was an "absolute convert to the free-trade principle, and that the introduction of the principle into all departments of our commercial legislation was, according to his intention, to be a mere question of time and convenience." This was in January, 1845, and shortly after, June, 1846, the bill for the total repeal of the Corn Laws pa.s.sed the House.

How much longer it might have been before the opposition was carried is a question if it had not been for the failure of the grain crops and the widespread potato disease which plunged Ireland into a state of famine, and threatened the whole country with more or less of disaster.

Even when this state of affairs became apparent in the summer of 1845 there was still much delay. The Cabinet met and discussed and discussed; still Parliament was not a.s.sembled; and then it was that the Mansion House Relief Committee of Dublin drew up resolutions stating that famine and pestilence were approaching throughout the land, and impeaching the conduct of the Ministry for not opening the ports or calling Parliament together.

But still Peel, already won over, could not take his Cabinet with him; he was forced to resign. Lord John Russell was called to form a ministry, but failed, when Peel was recalled, and the day was carried.

Browning's brief but pertinent allusion to this struggle in "The Englishman in Italy" shows clearly how strongly his sympathies were with the League and how disgusted he was with the procrastination of Parliament in taking a perfectly obvious step for the betterment of the people.

"Fortnu, in my England at home, Men meet gravely to-day And debate, if abolis.h.i.+ng Corn laws Be righteous and wise If 'twere proper, Scirocco should vanish In black from the skies!"

An occasional allusion or poem like this makes us aware from time to time of Browning's constant sympathy with any movement which meant good to the ma.s.ses. Even if he had not written near the end of his life "Why I am a Liberal," there could be no doubt in any one's mind of his political ideals. In "The Lost Leader" is perhaps his strongest utterance upon the subject. The fact that it was called out by Wordsworth's lapse into conservatism after the horrors of the French Revolution had brought him and his _sans culotte_ brethren, Southey and Coleridge, to pause, a fact very possibly freshened in Browning's mind by Wordsworth's receiving a pension in 1842 and the poet-laureates.h.i.+p in 1843, does not affect the force of the poem as a personal utterance on the side of democracy.

Browning, himself, considered the poem far too fierce as a portrayal of Wordsworth's case.[2] He evidently forgot Wordsworth, and thought only of a renegade liberal as he went on with the poem. It was written the same year that there occurred the last attempt to postpone the pa.s.sing of the Anti-Corn Law Bill, when the intensity of feeling on the part of all who believed in progress was at its height, and the bare thought of a deserter from Liberal ranks would be enough to exasperate any man who had the nation's welfare at heart. That Browning's feeling at the time reached the point not only of exasperation but of utmost scorn for any one who was not on the liberal side is shown most forcibly in the bitter lines:

"Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, One task more declined, one more footpath untrod, One more devil's triumph and sorrow for angels, One more wrong to man, one more insult to G.o.d!"

Browning speaks of having thought of Wordsworth at an unlucky juncture.

Whatever the exact episode which called forth the poem may have been, we are safe in saying that at a time when Disraeli was attacking Sir Robert Peel because of his honesty in avowing his conversion to free trade, and because of his bravery in coming out from his party, in breaking up his cabinet and regardless of all costs in determining to carry the bill or resign, and finally carrying it in the face of the greatest odds--at such a time, when a great conservative leader had shown himself capable of being won over to a great liberal principle; the spectacle of a deserter from the cause, and that deserter a member of one's own brotherhood of poets, would be especially hard to bear.

One feels a little like asking why did not Browning let his enthusiasm carry him for once into a contemporary expression of admiration for Sir Robert Peel? Perhaps the tortuous windings of parliamentary proceedings obscured to a near view the true greatness of Peel's action.

The year of this great change in England's policy was the year of Robert Browning's marriage and his departure for Italy, where he lived for fifteen years. During this time and for some years after his return to England there is no sign that he was taking any interest in the political affairs of his country. Human character under romantic conditions in a social environment, or the thought problems of the age, as we have already seen, occupied his attention, and for the subject matter of these he more often than not went far afield from his native country.

In "Prince Hohenstiel-Schw.a.n.gau" is the poet's first deliberate portrayal of a person of contemporary prominence in the political world. The alliance of Napoleon III with England brought his policy of government into strong contrast with that of the liberal leaders in English politics, a contrast which had been emphasized through Lord Palmerston's sympathy with the _coup d'etat_.

The news of the manner in which Louis Napoleon had carried out his policy of smas.h.i.+ng the French const.i.tution caused horror and consternation in England, and the Queen at once gave instructions that nothing should be done by her amba.s.sador in Paris which could be in any way construed as an interference in the internal affairs of France. Already, however, Lord Palmerston had expressed to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs his entire approbation in the act of Napoleon and his conviction that he could not have acted otherwise than as he had done. When this was known, the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, wrote Palmerston a letter, causing his resignation, which was accepted very willingly by the Queen. The letter was as follows:

"While I concur in the foreign policy of which you have been the adviser, and much as I admire the energy and ability with which it has been carried into effect, I cannot but observe that misunderstandings perpetually renewed, violations of prudence and decorum too frequently repeated, have marred the effects which ought to have followed from a sound policy and able admirers. I am, therefore, most reluctantly compelled to come to the conclusion that the conduct of foreign affairs can no longer be left in your hands with advantage to the country."

When England's fears that Louis Napoleon would emulate his ill.u.s.trious predecessor and invade her sh.o.r.es were allayed, her att.i.tude was modified.

She forgot the horrors of the _coup d'etat_ and formed an alliance with him, and her hospitable island became his refuge in his downfall.

A prominent figure in European politics for many years, Louis Napoleon had just that combination of greatness and mediocrity which would appeal to Browning's love of a human problem. Furthermore, Napoleon was brought very directly to the poet's notice through his Italian campaign and Mrs.

Browning's interest in the political crisis in Italy, which found expression in her fine group of Italian patriotic poems.

The question has been asked, "Will the unbiased judgment of posterity allow to Louis Napoleon some extenuating circ.u.mstances, or will it p.r.o.nounce an unqualified condemnation upon the man who, for the sake of consolidating his own power and strengthening his corrupt government, spilled the blood of no less than a hundred thousand Frenchmen?"

When all Europe was putting to itself some such question as this, and answering it with varying degrees of leniency, Browning conceived the idea of making Napoleon speak for himself, and at the same time he added what purports to be the sort of criticism of him indulged in by a Thiers or a Victor Hugo. The interest of the poem centers in Napoleon's own vindication of himself as portrayed by Browning. What Browning wrote of the poem in a letter to a friend in 1872 explains fully his aim, as well as showing by indirection, at least, how much he was interested in political affairs at this time, though so little of this interest crops out in his poetry: "I think in the main he meant to do what I say, and but for weakness--grown more apparent in his last years than formerly--would have done what I say he did not. I thought badly of him at the beginning of his career, _et pour cause_; better afterward, on the strength of the promises he made and gave indications of intending to redeem. I think him very weak in the last miserable year. At his worst I prefer him to Thiers's best." At another time he wrote: "I am glad you like what the editor of the _Edinburgh_ calls my eulogium on the Second Empire, which it is not, any more than what another wiseacre affirms it to be, 'a scandalous attack on the old constant friend of England.' It is just what I imagine the man might, if he pleased, say for himself."

Browning depicts the man as perfectly conscious of his own limitations. He recognizes that he is not the genius, nor the creator of a new order of things, but that his power lies in his faculty of taking an old ideal and improving upon it. He contends that in following out his special gifts as a conservator he is doing just what G.o.d intended him to do, and as to his method of doing it that is his own affair. G.o.d gives him the commission and leaves it to his human faculties to carry it out, not inquiring what these are, but simply asking at the end if the commission has been accomplished.

Once admit these two things--namely, that his nature, though not of the highest, is such as G.o.d gave him, and his lack of responsibility in regard to any moral ideal, so that he accomplishes the purpose of this nature--and a loophole is given for any inconsistencies he may choose to indulge in in bringing about that strengthening of an old ideal in which he believes. The old ideal is, of course, the monarchical principle of government, administered, however, in such a manner that it will be for the good of society in all its complex manifestations of to-day. His notion of society's good consists in a balancing of all its forces, secured by the smoothing down of any extreme tendencies, each having its...o...b..t marked but no more, so that none shall impede the other's path.

"In this wide world--though each and all alike, Save for [him] fain would spread itself through s.p.a.ce And leave its fellow not an inch of way."

Browning makes him indulge in a curiously sophisticated view of the relativity of good and evil in the course of his argument, to the effect that since there is a further good conceivable beyond the utmost earth can realize, therefore to change the agency--the evil whereby good is brought about, try to make good do good as evil does--would be just as foolish as if a chemist wanting white and knowing that black ingredients were needed to make the dye insisted these should be white, too. A bad world is that which he experiences and approves. A good world he does not want in which there would be no pity, courage, hope, fear, sorrow, joy--devotedness, in short--which he believes form the ultimate allowed to man; therefore it has been his policy not to do away with the evil in the society he is saving. To mitigate, not to cure, has been his aim.

Browning would, himself, answer the sophistry, here, by showing that evil though permitted by divine power was only a means of good through man's working against whatever he conceives to be evil with the whole strength of his being. To deliberately follow the policy of conserving evil would be in the end to annihilate the good. Prince Hohenstiel-Schw.a.n.gau could not see so far as this.

It is not astonis.h.i.+ng that with such a policy as this his methods of carrying it out might seem somewhat dubious if not positively criminal.

His departure from his early idealism is excused for the reason that idealism is not practicable when the region of talk is left for the real action of life. Every step in his own aggrandizement is apologized for on the ground that what needed to be accomplished could only be done by a strong hand and that strong hand his own. He was in fact an unprincipled utilitarian as Browning presents him, who spoiled even what virtue resides in utilitarianism by letting his care for saving society be too much influenced by his desire for personal glory. One ideal undertaking he permitted himself, the freeing of Italy from the Austrian yoke. But he was not strong enough for any such high flight of idealism, as the sequel proved.

Browning does not bring out in the poem the Emperor's real reasons for stopping short in the Italian campaign, which certainly were sufficient from a practical standpoint, but as Archibald Forbes says in his "Life of Napoleon," should have been thought of before he published his program of freedom to Italy "from the Alps to the Adriatic." "Even when he addressed the Italians at Milan," continues Forbes, "the new light had not broken in upon him which revealed the strength of the quadrilateral, the cost of expelling the Austrians from Venetia, and the conviction that further French successes would certainly bring mobilized Germany into the field.

That new light seems to have flashed upon Napoleon for the first time from the stern Austrian ranks on the day of Solferino. It was then he realized that should he go forward he would be obliged to attack in front an enemy entrenched behind great fortresses, and protected against any diversion on his flanks by the neutrality of the territories surrounding him."

Mrs. Browning, whose consternation and grief over Villafranca broke out in burning verse, yet made a defence of Napoleon's action here which might have been worked into Browning's poem with advantage. She wrote to John Foster that while Napoleon's intervention in Italy overwhelmed her with joy it did not dazzle her into doubts as to the motive of it, "but satisfied a patient expectation and fulfilled a logical inference. Thus it did not present itself to my mind as a caprice of power, to be followed perhaps by an onslaught on Belgium and an invasion of England. Have we not watched for a year while every saddle of iniquity has been tried on the Napoleonic back, and nothing fitted? Wasn't he to crush Piedmontese inst.i.tutions like so many eggsh.e.l.ls? Was he ever going away with his army, and hadn't he occupied houses in Genoa with an intention of bombarding the city? Didn't he keep troops in the north after Villafranca on purpose to come down on us with a grand duke or a Kingdom of Etruria and Plon-Plon to rule it? And wouldn't he give back Bologna to the Pope?... Were not Cipriani, Farini and other patriots his 'mere creatures' in treacherous correspondence with the Tuileries 'doing his dirty work'?" Of such accusations as these the intelligent English journals were full, but she maintains that against "The Inane and Immense Absurd" from which they were born is to be set "a nation saved." She realized also how hard Napoleon's position in France must be to maintain "forty thousand priests with bishops of the color of Monseigneur d'Orleans and company, having, of course, a certain hold on the agricultural population which forms so large a part of the basis of the imperial throne. Then add to that the parties who use this Italian question as a weapon simply."

Many of Napoleon's own statements have furnished Browning with the arguments used in the apology. After deliberately destroying the const.i.tution, for example, and himself being the cause of the violence and bloodshed in Paris, he coolly addressed the people in the following strain, in which we certainly recognize Hohenstiel-Schw.a.n.gau:

"Frenchmen! the disturbances are appeased. Whatever may be the decision of the people, society is saved. The first part of my task is accomplished.

The appeal to the nation, for the purpose of terminating the struggle of parties, I knew would not cause any serious risk to the public tranquillity. Why should the people have risen against me? If I do not any longer possess your confidence--if your ideas are changed--there is no occasion to make precious blood flow; it will be sufficient to place an adverse vote in the urn. I shall always respect the decision of the people."

His cleverness in combining the idea of authority with that of the idea of obeying the will of the people is curiously ill.u.s.trated in his speech at the close of his dictators.h.i.+p, during which it must be confessed that he had done excellently well for the country--so well, indeed, that even the socialists were ready to cry "_Vive l'Empereur!_"

"While watching me reestablish the inst.i.tutions and reawaken the memories of the Empire, people have repeated again and again that I wished to reconst.i.tute the Empire itself. If this had been so the transformation would have been accomplished long ago; neither the means nor the opportunities would have been lacking.... But I have remained content with that I had. Resolved now, as heretofore, to do all in my power for France and nothing for myself, I would accept any modification of the present state of things only if forced by necessity.... If parties remain quiet, nothing shall be changed. But if they endeavor to sap the foundations of my government; if they deny the legitimacy of the result of the popular vote; if, in short, they continually put the future of the country in jeopardy, then, but only then, it might be prudent to ask the people for a new t.i.tle which would irrevocably fix on my head the power with which they have already clothed me. But let us not antic.i.p.ate difficulties; let us preserve the Republic. Under its banner I am anxious to inaugurate once more an epoch of reconciliation and pardon; and I call on all without distinction who will frankly cooperate with me for the public good."

In contrast to such fair-sounding phrases Napoleon was capable of the most dishonorable tactics in order to gain his ends. Witness the episode of his tempting Bismarck with offers of an alliance against Austria at the same time that he was treating secretly with Francis Joseph for the cession of Venetia in return for Silesia. And while negotiating secretly and separately with these two sworn enemies, he pretended to be so disinterested as to suggest the submission of their quarrel to a European congress.

Browning has certainly presented a good portrait of the man as the history of his own utterances contrasted with the history of his actions proves.

In trying to bridge with this apology the discrepancies between the two he has, however, attributed to Louis Napoleon a degree of self-consciousness beyond any ever evinced by him. The principle of imperialism was a conviction with him. That he desired to help the people of France and to a great extent succeeded, is true; that he combined with this desire the desire of power for himself is true; that he used unscrupulous means to gain whatever end he desired when such were necessary is true; but that he was conscious of his own despicable traits to the extent that the poet makes him conscious of them is most unlikely. Nor is it likely that he would defend himself upon any such subtle ground as that his character and temperament being the gift of G.o.d he was bound to follow out his nature in order that G.o.d's purposes might be accomplished. It is rather an explanation of his life from the philosopher's or psychologist's standpoint than a self-conscious revelation. It is none the less interesting on this account, while the scene setting gives it a thoroughly human and dramatic touch.

Whatever may be said of Napoleon himself, his rule was fraught with consequences of import for the whole of Europe, not because of what he was, but because of what he was not. He was an object lesson on the fallacy of trying to govern so that all parties will be pleased by autocratically keeping each one from fully expressing itself. The result is that each grows more aware of the suppression than of the amount of freedom allowed to it, and n.o.body is pleased. When added to such a policy as this is the surmounting desire for power and the Machiavellian determination to attain it by any means, fair or foul, a principle of statecraft which by the middle of the century could not be practised in its most acute form without arousing the most severe criticism, his power carried within it the seeds of destruction.

It has been said that "never in the history of the world has one man undertaken a task more utterly beyond the power of mortal man than that which Louis Napoleon was pledged to carry through." He professed to be at one and the same time the elect sovereign of the people, a son of the revolution, a champion of universal suffrage, and an adversary of the demagogues. In the first of these characters he was bound to justify his elevation by economic and social reforms, in his second character he had to destroy the last trace of political liberty. He had, in fact, a.s.sumed various utterly incompatible att.i.tudes, and the day that the ma.s.ses found themselves deceived in their expectations, and the middle cla.s.ses found their interests were betrayed, reaction was inevitable.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE]

In spite of his heinous faults, however, historians have grown more and more inclined to admit that Napoleon filled for a time a necessary niche in the line of progress, just that step which Browning makes him say the genius will recognize that he fills--namely, to

"Carry the incompleteness on a stage, Make what was crooked straight, and roughness smooth, And weakness strong: wherein if I succeed, It will not prove the worst achievement, sure In the eyes at least of one man, one I look Nowise to catch in critic company: To-wit, the man inspired, the genius, self Destined to come and change things thoroughly.

He, at least, finds his business simplified, Distinguishes the done from undone, reads Plainly what meant and did not mean this time We live in, and I work on, and transmit To such successor: he will operate On good hard substance, not mere shade and s.h.i.+ne."

That is, at a time when Europe was seething with the idea of a new order, in which the ideal of nationality was to take the place of such decaying ideas as the divine right of kings, balance of power, and so on, Napoleon held on to these ideas just long enough to prevent a general disintegration of society. He held in his hands the balance of power until the nations began to find themselves, and in the case of Italy actually helped on the triumph of the new order.

It is interesting to note in this connection that one of the princ.i.p.al factors in the making of Gladstone into the stanch liberal which he became was the freeing of Italy, in which Napoleon had so large a share.