Liberty In The Nineteenth Century Part 2

This position was entrusted to part of the Swiss who had defended the Louvre; but the others were soon driven out by men and boys who swarmed in at unguarded doors and windows. All the soldiers took flight that noon from Paris.

All this time the King was amusing himself at St. Cloud, and boasting that there would be no concessions. He now offered to dismiss his Ministry and revoke the ordinances; but more than a thousand lives had been lost. The Parisians marched against him: he abdicated and fled: the Bourbons had ceased to reign. The men who had fought against him called for a republic with universal suffrage and no State church; but the wealthier citizens were afraid of war with Russia and Austria. A descendant of Louis XIII. and a friend of Thiers was made King by the Legislature. He called himself Louis Philippe, and promised cordially to carry out the Const.i.tution, which now meant freedom of the press, and equal privileges for all Christian churches. The supremacy of Rome in France was at an end. Seats in the Upper House could no longer be inherited; and the right to vote for deputies was given to twice as many Frenchmen as before. Patriots in all nations were encouraged; and the Swiss cantons became more democratic; but Hegel was frightened to death.

Among other results were unsuccessful revolts in Rome and Warsaw, with successful ones in Brussels, Ca.s.sell, and Dresden. The subjection to Holland, which had been imposed by the Congress of Vienna, was hated by the Belgians, partly because it made education secular, and partly because it gave them only half the Legislature, and very few offices elsewhere, although they formed three-fifths of the population. Priests were active in stirring up the revolt which began at Brussels on August 25, 1830, after the performance of an opera telling how Masaniello had set Naples free. The Dutch were driven out; Belgium was made a separate const.i.tutional monarchy by the vote of a convention of deputies; France and England helped her maintain political independence; but it was to the loss of intellectual liberty.

V. The success of rebellion with the pressure of hard times enabled the Whigs to carry England for parliamentary reform. Peel and Wellington hastened their fall by boasting that there could be no improvement of a Legislature which accepted members for places without any inhabitants, but not for Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, or some parts of London, and which actually enabled one Scotchman to elect himself as sole representative of fourteen thousand people, in a district where he was the only voter.

The people were so discontented with the whole system of Church and State, that thousands of sympathisers gathered around Cobbett in July, 1831, when he was tried for printing a statement that riots of farm hands were doing good in forcing the clergy to reduce their t.i.thes. Lord Brougham, who had been made Chancellor, was among the witnesses to the generally pacific tendency of Cobbett's writings. The jury did not agree; and the Government gave up the case. There was but little more political persecution of British authors.

Reform triumphed that autumn in the House of Commons. The House of Lords would then have been conquered, if the bishops had acted like successors of the apostles; but twenty-one out of twenty-three voted for prolonging their own dominion. Their conduct made it unsafe for them to wear their peculiar costume in the streets. Bells tolled, and newspapers put on mourning. There were riots in all the cathedral towns. A duke's castle was burned, because he insisted that the votes of his tenants were his private property, and attempts to punish the incendiaries brought Bristol, one Sunday, into the hands of a mob which burned the bishop's palace, the custom-house, and many other buildings. It was agreed by a meeting of a hundred thousand people at Birmingham, that no more taxes should be paid until Parliament was reformed; and on very many houses, especially in London, there was the following notice: "To save the Collector unnecessary trouble, he is informed that No Taxes on this house will be paid, until the Reform Bill pa.s.s into a Law." It was at a meeting to encourage this course that Sydney Smith, who had done good service for Catholic emanc.i.p.ation, told how vainly Mrs. Partington tried to sweep back the Atlantic, during a great storm, and added: "Be quiet and steady. You will beat Mrs. Partington."

The episcopal Partingtons continued to be even more hostile than the lay members of the House of Lords; but all finally yielded to the threat that there would be new peers enough created to vote them down. A popular song made the Reform Bill boast that, "Twenty peers shall carry me, If twenty won't, then forty will; For I 'm his Majesty's bouncing Bill."

The throne was then filled by William IV., who reigned from 1830 to 1837, and who gave his consent, though sometimes unwillingly, to several of the greatest reforms ever pa.s.sed in England. The bill which he signed on June 7, 1832, enabled 141 members of Parliament to be elected by populous districts. .h.i.therto unrepresented, instead of by little boroughs where the voters were so few as to be bought up easily, or else intimidated constantly; and the franchise was also much extended, though not outside of the middle cla.s.s. Thus Great Britain ceased to be governed by a league of irresponsible n.o.bles, bishops, and other lords of vast estates.

VI. They had kept the lower cla.s.ses ignorant, in order to secure obedience; and their methods were not given up at once. Newspapers had already become the chief teachers of politics; and therefore they were under a triple tax. A duty on paper added one-fourth to the cost of publication. There was also a tax of three-and-sixpence on each advertis.e.m.e.nt; and more of this lucrative business was done by the publishers in New York City than by all those in Great Britain. A third exaction was that of fourpence for a stamp on every copy; and prices were thus prevented from falling below seven-pence, except in case of violation of the laws. These threatened fine or imprisonment to whoever should publish or sell any periodical costing less than sixpence, and containing "news, intelligence, occurrences, and remarks and observations thereon, tending to excite hatred and contempt of the government and const.i.tution of this country as by law established, and also to vilify religion." This purpose was avowed explicitly, in so many words, by _The Poor Man's Guardian_, which announced that it was published "contrary to law" and would be sold for one penny. The circulation was twice that of _The Times_, and the language often violent. The publisher, Hetherington, was sent twice to prison for six months; and could not go about except disguised as a Quaker. His papers were packed in chests of tea, by an agent who was afterwards mayor of Manchester. Another publisher, who devoted himself to reports of criminal trials, used to send them out in coffins. Many unstamped periodicals were in circulation. Some dealers carried them about in their hats and pockets. Others hawked them in the streets, and declared, when sentenced to prison, that they should resume the business on the same spot as soon as they were released. Paid informers and spies helped the Whig Government carry on more than two hundred prosecutions in 1835, and more than five hundred previously. Subscription boxes for the relief of the martyrs could be seen everywhere. Remonstrances were signed and indignation meetings held in London and Manchester. "The Society for the Repeal of All Taxes on Knowledge" kept up a vigorous agitation, which was aided by Bulwer in Parliament. At last the publishers who bought stamps found they could not compete with men who bought none. This duty, and also that on advertis.e.m.e.nts, were reduced in 1836; and the result was so gratifying, even to publishers of the best periodicals, that all these taxes have been abolished.

Protestant bigotry had not prevented unsectarian public schools from being opened in Ireland in 1833; and that year is also memorable for the abolition of slavery in the West Indies, the extension of universal suffrage in Scotland, the beginning of free trade with India and China, the removal of disability for office from Hindoo subjects of Great Britain, the protection of children from being overworked in factories, and the suppression of supernumerary bishops and rectors in Ireland.

During the next three years, the local government of most English towns and cities, though not yet of London, was taken from corrupt oligarchies and given to all inhabitants who paid even a moderate rent; seamen ceased to be impressed; Irish Catholics and English dissenters were enabled to marry without apostasy; vexatious methods of collecting t.i.thes were abolished in England; the poor-laws were made less favourable to the increase of pauperism; and the growth of prosperity and independence among the poor was a.s.sisted by the introduction of a system of unsectarian education, in 1839, though the bishops would have preferred that one-third of the people of England should remain illiterate. Penny postage was established in 1840, the last year when Great Britain was governed by the Whigs.

Parliament was so philanthropic and tolerant as to reject repeatedly a proposal to impose heavy fines for attending secular meetings, visiting eating-houses, travelling, fis.h.i.+ng, or hiring horses on Sunday. Labour, too, was to be forbidden, but not that of "menial servants." This bill would have prevented the poor from enjoying their only holiday; but there was to be no interference with the pleasures of the rich; and the fact was pointed out by a young man, whose _Pickwick Papers_ had just begun to appear in monthly parts. His ill.u.s.trated pamphlet is ent.i.tled: _Sunday as it Is; as Sabbath Bills would Make it; as it might be Made_.

It has been reprinted with his plays and poems. He tells how much was done for the health and happiness of London by those privileges which the Sabbatarians were trying to abolish; and he shows what gain there would be in knowledge and virtue from opening all the museums and galleries Sunday afternoons.

The pamphlet shows that delight in the bright side of life, and that sympathy with the pleasures of the poor, which won popularity for _The Pickwick Papers_ in 1836, and afterwards for _The Old Curiosity Shop_ and the _Christmas Carol_. The novels most like _Sunday as it Is_, however, are such protests against bigotry and cruelty as _Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, and Barnaby Rudge_. Powerful pictures of the gloom of that British Sabbath which locked up everything "that could by any possibility afford relief to an overworked people," may be found in _Little Dorrit_; and the plot turns on the Sabbatarianism of a cruel fanatic who had made felony part of her religion. Much was done by this novel, as well as by _Pickwick_ and _Nicholas Nickleby_ towards the abolition of imprisonment for debt in 1869. His tone was very mild, compared with that of the popular orators. Resistance to bad laws was urged by Richard Carlile; and a clergyman named Taylor, who held the Gospel to be a solar myth, was imprisoned on October 24, 1827, for saying that the first martyrs for Jesus Christ were the Gadarene pigs.

Another London lecturer declared on Sunday evening, December 2, 1832, that "The elective franchise should belong to women, as a part of the people," and again that "Women are qualified to elect and to be elected to all public offices." "Any argument for exclusion is of that kind which has justified every tyranny," says this discourse, which was printed for the first time, on May 11, 1833, in an American newspaper, _The Free Enquirer_. Its columns show that a young lady had already presented very advanced ideas as a lecturer at the Rotunda in London; but the general opinion of the s.e.x was expressed by the wife of the Rev. John Sandford, whose popular book declared that "There is something unfeminine in independence. A really sensible woman... is conscious of inferiority." The Irish have supported themselves so successfully in America, and obeyed the laws so generally, as to prove that failure to do either in Ireland should not be attributed to their race or their religion, but wholly to their oppression. Memory of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was all the more bitter in the nineteenth, because the dest.i.tution of the peasantry was increasing hopelessly. Removal of religious disabilities and reform of Parliament did not prevent bands of armed peasants from fighting against attempts to take away their cattle in payment of the t.i.thes exacted by well-paid dignitaries of the hated Church. It sometimes happened that a dozen of the combatants were killed. Sydney Smith estimated that this way of keeping up a state church cost a million lives, from first to last, and Ireland had to be as heavily garrisoned as India, until a less vexatious system was established in 1838. Munic.i.p.al government was wholly in the hands of little corporations, which had the sole power of electing new members and seldom admitted a Catholic. The ruling oligarchy was to the population as one to two hundred in Limerick, and only as one to twenty-five hundred in Protestant Belfast. The right of local self-government was given to the people of these cities and a few others in 1840; but even this small and tardy justice provoked an English bishop to threaten that it would call down vengeance from G.o.d. Full munic.i.p.al suffrage throughout the island and a domestic Parliament were demanded by all Ireland, under the guidance of the mighty orator O'Connell; but the prejudice against his cause in Great Britain was made invincible by his denouncing "the Saxons," as he called the English, for the crimes of their ancestors.

VII. All reforms stopped in 1841, when the Whigs lost the supremacy.

It was not their fault that excess in speculation on both sides of the Atlantic had brought on a panic which threw thousands of people out of work in the factory towns, and reduced other thousands to earning only twopence a day. A succession of bad harvests, just before 1841, made wages very low on the farms, and food too dear everywhere. Bread was sold in halfpenny slices; labourers robbed pigs of swill; children fought with dogs for bones in the streets; one person in every eleven was a pauper; and England seemed to d.i.c.kens like one vast poorhouse. The old ways of giving charity had been so lavish and indiscriminate as to encourage pauperism; the new system of relief proved really kinder; but at first it was administered too slowly and cautiously for the emergency; and there was some ground for the complaints in _Oliver Twist_. Knowledge that paupers were neglected strengthened the belief of the working-men, that all they needed to make them as well off as their brethren in America was the ballot. Paine, Cobbett, and Hetherington were widely read; manhood suffrage and a secret ballot were called "the People's Charter"; and there were more than a million signatures to the Chartist pet.i.tion in 1839. These demands were just; but about one Englishman in three was unable to write his name at this time; and many who had acquired this accomplishment knew dangerously little about politics. When we think how much mischief has recently been done in the United States by illiterate and venal votes, we cannot blame Englishmen of the upper and middle cla.s.ses for delaying to grant universal suffrage. They ought to have made rapid preparation for it, by liberal encouragement of popular education through free schools and a cheap press; but even the Whigs were too indignant at the violence of the Chartists, who made b.l.o.o.d.y riots in 1841. How ignorant these men were was shown by their doing their worst that year to help carry the elections against the Whigs, who were much less hostile to Chartism than the Conservatives, as those Tories were called who still condescended to politics.

The most culpable blunder of the Whigs had been that of allowing the revenue to fall below the expenses; and the policy they had proposed for making up the deficit was too much like that halfhearted way of dealing with slavery which brought ruin upon the party of the same name in America. The British tariff was raised by the war against Napoleon, as the American was under similar pressure afterwards, so high as in some cases to prohibit imports and actually check revenue. Either tariff could have been used as an almost complete list of the world's products; and both were framed on the principle of protecting everybody, except consumers, against compet.i.tion. Great Britain unfortunately could produce only part of the food needed by the people; and the tariff was so much in the interest of owners of land as to make bread and meat dearer than if the island had been barren. Importation of cattle was prohibited; and that of wheat and other grain was not permitted until prices were high enough to cause famine. Then importation would begin slowly, and keep increasing until the supply of both foreign- and home-grown wheat would become large enough to glut the market and make farmers bankrupt. These duties on grain, which were known as the corn laws, acted with similar taxes on all other necessaries of life in impoveris.h.i.+ng factory hands and other members of the working cla.s.s. They were told that the laws which kept living dear kept wages high; but we shall see that this turned out not to be the fact. The only real gainers by the corn laws were those wealthy owners of great estates of whom Parliament was composed entirely, with the exception of a few members of the House of Commons.

That body allowed Manchester and other factory towns to send representatives who had found out the tendency of protectionism from their own business experience, as well as from study of political economy. Among these men was Cobden, who had already planted himself in the road to wealth, but who preferred to remain poor that he might make England rich. He and his a.s.sociates knew that imports are paid for by exporting what can be produced most profitably; that nothing is imported which could be produced as cheaply at home; that large imports make large exports; that the average Englishman knows how to carry on his own business; and that the Government could not encourage any otherwise unprofitable industry without checking the really profitable ones. On these facts were based the following predictions. In the first place, free trade in grain and cattle would lower the average price of food in England, and make the supply so regular that there would be no more famines. Second, those countries which were allowed to send grain and cattle, cotton and other raw materials, etc., to England would buy British manufactures in return. Third, removal of duties from raw materials would enable factories to produce goods more cheaply, and sell larger quant.i.ties at home as well as abroad. Then, fourth, this increased activity in manufacturing would raise wages, while remission of duties would make all the necessaries of life cheaper, so that pauperism would diminish and prosperity become more general in the working cla.s.s. And finally, the commerce of England with other countries would grow rapidly to their mutual benefit; and thus international relations would be kept friendly by free trade.

In this faith the reformers at Manchester and Birmingham a.s.serted the right of all men to buy and sell freely, and demanded the removal of all duties except those best adapted to bring in necessary revenue. They were wise enough to attack the monstrous tariff at its weakest point, the tax on bread. The Anti-Corn-Law League was organised in 1839; the spot where the Peterloo ma.s.sacre had been perpetrated, twenty years before, was soon used for a free trade banquet in which five thousand working-men took part; and appeals to the people were made in all parts of England. The Conservatives were all protectionists; and so many Whigs were on that side that those leaders who were opposed to the bread tax did not dare to come out against it. They did propose in 1841 to meet the deficit in the revenue by reducing some duties which were so high as to prevent importation, for instance, the tax on all sugar not grown in British colonies. The protectionist Whigs voted with the Conservatives against the Ministry; and it had to go out of office without having done enough against the corn laws to secure the support of the League.

Protectionists, Chartists, and opponents of the new poor-law helped to give the Conservatives control of the next Parliament, where the free-traders were one to four.

Such was the state of things in October, 1841, when the League went to work more vigorously than before in educating the people, and especially voters of the poorer cla.s.s. During the next twelve months, half a million dollars was spent in this work. In 1843, there were fourteen regular lecturers in the field, besides countless volunteers, and five hundred distributors of tracts. The annual number of publications was about ten million copies; and the annual weight exceeded a hundred tons.

The dissenting ministers did good work for reform; but the Episcopalian clergy were too friendly to a tax which kept up the value of t.i.thes. The League soon had the support of John Bright, who was one of the greatest of British orators. Prominent among opponents was the Chartist leader, Feargus O'Connor; and those Chartists who were not protectionists held that their cause ought to take the lead. Public opinion was so strongly for free trade in 1845 that Parliament took off the duties from cotton and other raw materials, in hope of conciliating the manufacturers; but these latter redoubled their efforts to abolish the tax on food.

Subscriptions were larger than ever; and much land was bought by free-traders who wished to qualify themselves as voters for members of the next Parliament, which would have to be elected in or before 1848.

Reform seemed still distant, when Sh.e.l.ley's prophecy was fulfilled.

Freedom's eternal foe, Famine, came suddenly to her help. Dearness of wheat and meat had obliged half of the Irish and many of the English to live entirely on potatoes. Wages were often paid in Ireland by loan of land for raising this crop. The rot which began in August, 1845, soon became so destructive that Peel, who was then Prime Minister, proposed in October that grain should be made free of duty. Wellington and other members of the Cabinet demurred; and the question had to be submitted to Parliament. Disraeli insisted to the last on keeping up the tariff; but famine was increasing; and both Houses finally agreed, after long debate, to accept Peel's proposal, that not only the duties on food and raw materials, but most of the others, should be either reduced or abolished. His conservatism did not keep him from seeing that the whole system of protecting home industries must stand or fall together.

Prominent among obstructionists were the bishops. The House of Lords did not agree before June 25, 1846, to the reform which had been accepted on May 15th by the House of Commons, and which was publicly acknowledged by Wellington to be inevitable. Such was the exasperation of the protectionists that they helped the opponents, of coercion in Ireland to drive Peel out of office, by a vote which was taken in the House of Commons on the very day when his plan of tariff reform gained that victory in the House of Lords which made free trade for ever the system of Great Britain.

About one-half of the import duties are now levied on tobacco, one-fourth more on wine and strong drink; and most of the rest on tea and other groceries. Duties on articles which could be produced in Great Britain are offset by internal-revenue taxes. No monopoly is given to farm or factory; no necessary article is made too dear for the poor; and there are no needless violations of the right of the labourer to spend his wages in the best market.

This reform made the relief of Ireland possible, though the loss of life was terrible. Never again has England been so near to a famine as in 1841. Food is now so plenty that five times as much sugar is used in proportion to population as in 1842, and more than twice as much b.u.t.ter and eggs. This does not mean that the millionaire eats five times as much sugar, or twice as many eggs, as before, but that poor people can now buy freely what formerly were almost unattainable luxuries. The proportion of money in savings banks in England and Wales has doubled; and that of paupers sank from 1 in 11 in 1842 to 1 in 37 in 1895. Wages have risen fifty per cent., while other prices have fallen; and British workmen are better off than any others in Europe. The annual value of English exports declined steadily from 1815 to 1842; but it is now four times as great as in the latter year; and it is more than twice as large in proportion to population as in those highly protected countries, the United States and France. Low tariffs also enable Belgium to export nearly three times as much for each inhabitant as France, and New South Wales to export five times as much as the United States. Large exports do not depend on density of population but on ability to import freely.

Readiness of any country to buy freely of her neighbours keeps them able and willing to buy whatever she has to sell. Free trade has given Great Britain, New South Wales, and Belgium their choice of the world's markets. Great Britain has also been enabled to keep up much more friendly relations with the rest of Europe than would otherwise have been the case. Liberty of commerce has helped her enjoy peace; and peace has preserved free inst.i.tutions.

The reforms which culminated in free trade showed Englishmen that they could right any wrong without resort to violence. The attempt of the Chartists to overawe Parliament in 1848 was seen to be inexcusable; and it failed ridiculously. Never since then has insurrection in England been even possible. The atmosphere of thought has been so quiet that suffrage was greatly extended in 1867, and made practically universal in 1894. Voters gained the protection of a secret ballot in 1872; and munic.i.p.al self-government was given in 1894 to every part of England where it had not already been established.

No wonder that there is little of the revolutionary ardor of Sh.e.l.ley and Byron in Tennyson, Browning, and other recent poets. They have delighted in progress; but they have seen that it must come through such peaceable changes in public opinion, and then in legislation, as are caused by free discussion. The benign influence of peace has enabled them to display such brilliancy as had not been seen in England for more than two hundred years. No other writers ever paid so much attention to public health and the general happiness. The ablest thought of the century has been devoted to enriching human life, and not to destroying it. This has enabled science to make unprecedented progress. A new period of intellectual history has been opened by Spencer and Darwin.

VIII. Prominent among reformers who had no wish for revolution, and no respect for science, were d.i.c.kens and Carlyle. The latter's ("former's"

Ed.) aversion to political economy as "the dismal science" was echoed in the pages of _Hard Times_; and the absence of any reference in _Dombey and Son_ to the great movement against the corn laws is characteristic of a novelist whose _Pickwick Papers_ made fun of scientific investigation. What was there called the "t.i.ttlebat" is really that nest-building fish, the stickleback. Pa.s.sages ridiculing the use of statistics might be quoted at great length from both authors. d.i.c.kens had too much sympathy with paupers, especially those who suffered under the poor-law of 1834; and Carlyle had much too little. They agreed in opposition to model prisons and other new forms of philanthropy. Perhaps it was mainly the habit of indiscriminate ridicule which suggested such caricatures as Mrs. Jellaby and Mrs. Pardiggle. Carlyle's belief that abolitionism was "an alarming Devil's Gospel" and his denunciation of "the sugary, disastrous jargon of philanthropy" were legitimate results of idolatry of what he called "early, earnest times," namely the Dark Ages. His sympathy with mediaeval methods was so narrow that he spoke of a poet of weak health and high culture, whom he saw suffering under a sentence of two years in a pestilential prison, forbidden books or writing materials, kept most of the time alone and on bread and water, but guilty of nothing worse than a Chartist speech, as "master of his own time and spiritual resources to, as I supposed, a really enviable extent." d.i.c.kens shows much more appreciation of the real superiority of modern times, though personal disappointments, during his visit to America, prevented him from acknowledging the merits of democracy.

Carlyle's reverence for the early Hebrews and other primitive barbarians made him present hero-wors.h.i.+p as the only secure corner-stone of politics. His receipt for a perfect government is this: "Find in any country the ablest man that exists there; raise him to the supreme place; and loyally reverence him." "Such a government is not to be improved by voting or debating." "Neither except in obedience to the Heaven-chosen is freedom so much as conceivable." This theory showed its own absurdity in prompting eulogies on Francia and other despots; but Carlyle's apologies for Cromwell were of some service to the cause of liberty fifty years ago, when England had forgotten to honour the champions of the Long Parliament. d.i.c.kens thought more about the asceticism than the independence of the Puritans. He and Carlyle have dispelled some of the prejudices against the heroes of the First Republic; but they perpetuated others. Carlyle's best work was in encouraging the readers of his first books to think for themselves. The power of d.i.c.kens to call out sympathy with the unfortunate will never cease to bless mankind.

As much pity for the outcast has been shown by his great rival, Victor Hugo, and even more fellow-feeling with the oppressed. The spirit which has made France free animates all his writings, especially those grand poems which were called out by the usurpation of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. His early dramas dealt so vigorously with royal weakness and vice that _Marion de Lorme_ was suppressed by Charles X. and _Le Roi s'amuse_ by Louis Philippe. The work which has made him best known, and which appeared in 1862 in nine languages, is a plea for mercy to criminals, or in his own words, to "the miserable." The chief aim is to show "the oppression of laws," and the mistake of aiding the tyranny of the police by thinking too severely of the fallen. He finds an opportunity to introduce an enthusiastic panegyric on the victories of Napoleon, closing with the question: "What could be more grand?" "To be free," is the reply. Full justice to the French Revolution is done by that most dramatic of novels, _Ninety-Three_. Here he says: "The agony of the nations ended with the fall of the Bastile." "Perhaps the Convention is the culmination of history." "It declared poverty and disability sacred." "It branded the slave-trade, and freed the blacks."

"It decreed gratuitous education." "The object of two-thirds of its decrees was philanthropic." Such facts are all the more worthy of mention, because they were omitted by Carlyle.

SUPPLEMENT TO CHAPTER II

I. Thomas Carlyle's prejudice against democracy was strengthened by the failure of the revolutions of 1848. Const.i.tutional monarchy was as hostile to reform in France as it was friendly in England.

Only one Frenchman in thirty could vote; and the legislature cared nothing for public opinion. Louis Philippe was hated for habitual dishonesty. There had been several attempts at regicide and some b.l.o.o.d.y revolts. One of the latter gave a basis from history for Victor Hugo's _Miserables_. Restrictions on the press and on public meetings increased the unwillingness of the working-men at Paris to be governed by the rich. Socialism was popular, and employment insufficient. The prohibition of a reform banquet caused barricades to be thrown up on February 22d in Paris. The militia took sides with the populace; the King fled to England; and all France accepted the Republic, which was proclaimed on February 24th. Slavery had been reestablished in the colonies by Napoleon; but it was now abolished; and so was capital punishment for political offences.

The example of Paris was followed in March by successful insurrections at Berlin, Vienna, and other German cities, as well as in Lombardy and Venice. Home rule was demanded by Hungary and Bohemia, and const.i.tutional governments were soon established there as well as in Austria, Prussia, and other German states, and in every part of Italy.

The King of Sardinia took the lead in a war for driving back the Austrians across the Alps. Co-operation of French, German, Hungarian, and Italian patriots might have made all these countries permanently free.

Such a union would have been difficult on account of international jealousies; and it was made impossible by the Socialists at Paris.

Scarcely had a provisional government been set up, when recognition of "the right of employment" was demanded by a workman, who came musket in hand, and was supported by a mult.i.tude of armed artisans. They extorted a decree which promised every citizen work enough for his support. A ten-hour law was pa.s.sed. Co-operative factories were started with aid from the city authorities, and had some success. Opening national workshops was not advised by leading Socialists; but it was considered necessary by some of the Ministry in order to keep the unemployed from revolt. Every applicant drew money constantly, even if not at work. What little labour was actually performed was done so lazily, and paid so highly, that the number of men soon rose to 120,000. The expenses became enormous; and the tax-payers insisted that they too had rights. In order to be able to employ all the labourers a government would have to own all the property; and it would also have to be strong enough to enforce industry. Even Victor Hugo admitted that the experiment had failed. The National a.s.sembly, of which he was a member, notified the men in the shops that they must enlist in the army, or go to work at a safe distance from Paris on state pay, or look out for themselves. They rose in arms against the Republic, and took possession of nearly one-half of the city on June 23, 1848. "Bread or Lead" was the motto on their red flags; and two of their terrible barricades are described at the beginning of the last Part of _Les Miserables_. They held out against regular troops and cannon during four days of such fighting as had never been seen before in Paris. More Frenchmen are supposed to have fallen than in any of Napoleon's battles. Two thousand of the soldiers were slain; but no one knows how many times that number of insurgents perished in the fight or in penal colonies.

Thenceforth the French Government was much more desirous to repress insurrection at home than to sustain it abroad. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was elected President that same year, partly on account of his name, and partly on account of his promise that he would defend the right of private property against Socialism. Austrian generals of the rough and reckless type which Carlyle loved forced Lombardy and Bohemia back into the Empire, and restored absolute monarchy at Vienna, while the King of Sardinia was obliged to abdicate after such a defeat in March, 1849, as almost extinguished liberty in Italy. Venice alone held out against them under that purest of patriots, Manin, and suffered terribly during a siege of twenty-one weeks. Hungary was subdued that summer with the aid of Russia. France did nothing except to revive the papal despotism at Rome. Mazzini's republic was crushed by that which had a Bonaparte for President. His power had been increased by the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of several million French voters of the poorer cla.s.s. His promise to restore universal suffrage joined with memory of the ma.s.sacres of June, 1848, in preventing much resistance to his usurpation of absolute power on December 2, 1851. There was a monstrous vote, next November, for an empire, where the centralisation of administration was complete, and the legislature merely ornamental. Thus the liberation of Europe was prevented, partly by race prejudices, but mainly by attempts to benefit the poor by overtaxing the rich. France and Hungary were left with less political liberty than before; and Italy gained very little; but some of the const.i.tutional freedom acquired in 1848 was retained in Prussia and other parts of Western Germany.

II. It was contrary to the general tendency of wars, that those of the latter half of the century aided the growth of free inst.i.tutions in Italy. An honoured place among nations was given by the Crimean war to Sardinia. Then her patriotic statesman, Cavour, persuaded Napoleon III.

to help him rescue Lombardy from Austria. Garibaldi took the opportunity to liberate Naples; and Victor Emanuel made himself King over all Italy except Rome and Venice. The latter city also was brought under a const.i.tutional and friendly government by a third great war, which made the King of Prussia and his successors Emperors of Germany, while Austria was compelled to grant home rule to Hungary. The liberation and secularisation of Italy were completed in 1870 by the expulsion from Rome of the French garrison. The Emperor had lost his throne by waging war wantonly against a united Germany.

III. The Third Republic was soon obliged to fight for her life against the same enemy which had wounded her sister mortally. Socialism was still the religion of the working-men of Paris, who now formed the majority of the National Guard. Indignation at the failure of the new Government to repulse the Prussians led, on March 18, 1871, to the capture of all Paris by what was avowedly the revolution of the workmen against the shopkeepers, "in the name of the rights of labour," for "the suppression of all monopolies," "the reign of labour instead of capital," and "the emanc.i.p.ation of the worker by himself." This was in harmony with the teaching of the International Working-men's a.s.sociation, which endorsed the insurrection fully and formally, and which held with Karl Marx that wealth is produced entirely by labour and belongs only to the working cla.s.s. Socialists were active in the rebellion; but property-holders in Paris took no part; and all the rest of France took sides with the Government. What professed to be the rising of the many against the few turned out to be that of the few against the many. Impressment was necessary for manning the barricades, and pillage for raising money. The general closing of stores, factories, and offices showed that capital had been frightened away by the red flag. One of the last decrees of its defenders was, "Destroy all factories employing more than fifteen workers. This monopoly crushes the artisan." This spirit would have caused the confiscation of the funds of the National Bank, if the managers had not said: "If you do that, you will turn the money your own comrades have in their pockets to waste paper." The priceless pictures and statues in the Louvre were condemned to destruction because they represented "G.o.ds, kings, and priests."

Millions of dollars worth of works of art perished in company with docks, libraries, and public buildings; but this vandalism, like the ma.s.sacre of prisoners, was largely the work of professional criminals.

The capture of Paris, late in May, was accompanied with pitiless slaughter of the rebels, though many lives were saved by Victor Hugo.

Since then the French Republic has been able to keep down not only the Socialists but the Bonapartists and Royalists. It has also succeeded, with the help of writers like Renan, in checking the ambition of the clergy. Continuance of peace in Europe has a.s.sisted the growth of local self-government in France, and also in Germany. The famous Prussian victories seem, however, to have increased the power of the German Emperor; and there is still danger that the growth of standing armies may check that of free inst.i.tutions.

CHAPTER III. DEMOCRATS AND GARRISONIANS

I. The fall of the English aristocracy was hastened by the success of democracy in America. Nowhere were the ma.s.ses more willing to obey the law; and nowhere else were they so intelligent and prosperous. The gains of the many made the country rich; territory and population increased rapidly; and Britannia found a dangerous compet.i.tor on every sea.

Political liberty and equality were secured by the almost uninterrupted supremacy of the Democratic party from 1800 to 1860. Twelve presidential elections out of fifteen were carried by Jefferson and his successors; and the Congress whose term began in 1841 was the only one out of the thirty in which both Houses were anti-Democratic.

Political equality was increased in State after State by dispensing with property qualifications for voting or holding office. Jefferson and his successor, Madison, refused to appoint days for fasting and giving thanks, or grant any other special privileges to those citizens who held favoured views about religion. Congress after Congress refused to appoint chaplains; so did some of the States; and a national law, still in force, for opening the post-offices on every day of the week, was pa.s.sed in 1810. Many attempts were made by Sabbatarians to stop the mails; but the Senate voted in 1829, that "Our government is a civil, and not a religious inst.i.tution"; and the lower House denied next year that the majority has "any authority over the minority except in matters which regard the conduct of man to his fellow-man." The opposition made by the Federalists to the establishment of religious equality in Connecticut, in 1816, increased the odium which they had incurred by not supporting the war against Great Britain. Four years later, the party was practically extinct; and the disestablishment of Congregationalism as the state church of Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1833, was accomplished easily.

The Northern States were already so strong in Congress that they might have prevented Missouri from entering the Union that year without any pledge to emanc.i.p.ate her slaves. The sin of extending the area of bondage so far northwards was scarcely palliated by the other conditions of the compromise. The admission of Maine gave her citizens no privileges beyond what they had previously as citizens of Ma.s.sachusetts; and the pledge that slavery should not again be extended north of lat.i.tude thirty-six, thirty, proved worthless.

The North was so far from being united in 1820 that it was not even able to raise the tariff. New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio wished to exclude foreign compet.i.tion in manufacturing; but the embargo was too recent for New England to forget the evils of restricting commerce. The Salem merchants pet.i.tioned for "free trade" "as the sure foundation of national prosperity"; and the solid men of Boston declared with Webster that "A system of bounties and protection" "would have a tendency to diminish the industry, impede the prosperity, and corrupt the morals of the people."