Ten Englishmen Of The Nineteenth Century - free ebook by James Richard Joy

TEN ENGLISHMEN OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

By James Richard Joy 1902 To My Daughter Helen With Her Father's Love...

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PREFACE

The object of this work is to set forth with as much clearness as possible the more important facts in the history of England in the nineteenth century. We have chosen to do this through the medium of biography, in the belief that the lives of a few representative men would present better opportunities for interesting and effective treatment than an historical narrative, which must have been encumbered by a mass of detail not capable of effective disposition within the limited space at our comma

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THE STRUGGLE WITH NAPOLEON

The war began in 1793, when the French nation, having overturned its ancient throne, and revolutionized its social and political institutions, set out on a democratic crusade for "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," which involved it in a conflict with the governments of Europe. William Pitt, who had been Prime Minister of George III. since 1783, had twice banded the European states against the French republican armies; but while the English fleets remained masters of the seas, the enthusiasm of

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THE RESETTLEMENT OF EUROPE

Waterloo brought England into new relations with the nations of Europe. The Congress of Vienna, in which the victors endeavored to restore the damage wrought by the Corsican intruder, added Cape of Good Hope, Ceylon, Malta, and a few less important islands, to the growing colonial empire of Great Britain. The Holy Alliance, which had been suggested by the Czar in 1815, at the friendly meeting of the Russian, Austrian, and Prussian sovereigns at Paris, was in theory a compact between these powerf

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RAILWAYS

The perfection of the steam locomotive and the inception and marvelous development of the system of steam railway transportation marked the second quarter of the century. The name of the Stephensons, father and son, is inseparably connected with this work which has affected so deeply the economic and social life of the nation, and has contributed in a thousand indirect ways to the expansion and consolidation of the empire. It has been said that in 1825 the traveler from London to Rome went no fa

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THE REFORM OF PARLIAMENT

The reform of Parliament was the next question to come up for settlement. In 1830 representation in the House of Commons still remained upon a basis which had been established centuries before. Meantime the distribution of the voting population had been totally transformed. The most populous shires had no more seats than the least of all. There were decayed boroughs which had dwindled in population until but a handful of voters remained, yet these "rotten" boroughs retained their right to choose

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ADMINISTRATIVE REFORMS

Great things were expected of the first Parliament which was chosen on the basis of the new law. The seats gained by the disfranchisement of the small and corrupt boroughs were distributed to new constituencies in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Newcastle, and the other modern cities. The more populous counties were subdivided into districts, and the divisions received additional representation. The franchise had also been extended and based upon a moderate property qualificati

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THE POOR LAWS

The reformed Parliaments devoted themselves to certain long- deferred and intensely practical reforms which were social and economic in their nature, leaving the constitution alone for the next twenty years. In these Parliaments and ministries for the next forty years the Whig party usually had the upper hand. In 1834 Parliament revolutionized the system of public relief to the needy which had existed for fifty years, to the extreme demoralization of the poorer working-classes and the frustratio

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ABOLITION OF SLAVERY

In 1834 slavery was abolished throughout the British dominions. The earnest labors of the Abolitionists, Clarkson, Wilberforce, Macaulay, and others, had secured the abolition of the slave trade thirty years before (1807), but the united opposition of the colonial planters to a reform which would deprive them of the services of their chattel laborers postponed the consummation of the humanitarian measure. The reformed Parliament proved less sensitive to the planters' arguments. It destroyed the

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ACCESSION OF VICTORIA

The name of Lord Melbourne has been kept green not only by the Australasian metropolis, but by the fact that it was his duty as Prime Minister to announce to the Princess Alexandrina Victoria the fact—to her so momentous—that her uncle, William IV., was dead (June 20, 1837), and that she, a girl of eighteen, was Queen of England. Victoria, as she was known thenceforward, lived to see the dawn of the twentieth century, to witness the enormous development of the British empire in population, wealt

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O'CONNELL AND REPEAL

The second popular war cry was "Repeal." In this agitation, again O'Connell's was the chief personage, and his eloquence the chief factor. It was in effect another phase of the Irish demand for Home Rule. Since the first day of the new century Ireland had been, for legislative purposes, a part of the United Kingdom. It was the act which had established this "Legislative Union" and abolished the Irish Parliament which O'Connell was determined to repeal. All that monster meetings, soul-moving orat

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THE REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS

The names of Sir Robert Peel and Richard Cobden are indissolubly connected with the legislation which repealed the "Corn Laws" and placed English commerce upon the basis of free trade—Cobden as the theorist and untiring agitator, whose splendid talents were unsparingly devoted to preparing public opinion for the economic revolution, and Peel as the protectionist Prime Minister, who was open-minded enough to become convinced of his error in persisting in the policy in which he had been trained. T

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HUMANITARIAN LEGISLATION

The sudden and enormous expansion of English industry in the early part of the century brought special hardship to several classes in the community. The substitution of the factory system for cottage industry destroyed home life for thousands of families, and the pressure of poverty and the greed of manufacturers ground the poor mill operatives between the upper and nether millstones. To Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, more than to any other is due the persistent investigation and di

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PALMERSTON AND FOREIGN RELATIONS

The era which had been marked by such political, social, and economic reforms and agitations came to a close in the middle of the century. The Whigs came into power in Parliament in 1846 for a long term. Foreign affairs supplied the most notable topics for the next twenty years. The foreign minister during much of this time was Lord Palmerston. He it was who piloted the nation without disaster through the rocks of 1848-51, when thrones were toppling in every European kingdom, and England was bei

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THE EASTERN QUESTION

The "Eastern Question" now came up. The Czar of Russia, an object of suspicion to England, because of his rivalry with her for the possession of India, endeavored to secure from the Sultan of Turkey official recognition of his government as the legitimate protector of Christians in the Ottoman empire. Such a responsibility would have afforded many opportunities for interfering in Turkish affairs. France opposed the demand, and Palmerston placed England on the side of Napoleon III., against the C

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THE GREAT SEPOY MUTINY

The British possessions in India had been more than doubled in extent since the opening of the century. In 1833 the trade monopoly of the East India Company had been broken, but its civil and military servants continued to administer the government. Their ability was displayed especially in the rapidity with which they were extending British authority over the native states when the outbreak came. A conspiracy was laid among the Sepoys, the native soldiers in the regiments of "John Company." as

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GLADSTONE AND DISRAELI

At the head of the Liberals was William Ewart Gladstone, who in his younger days had followed his master, Peel, out of the old Tory lines into the camp of the free traders, and had been Russell's chief lieutenant, and Palmerston's financial minister for the last half-dozen years. He was a man of splendid intellectual power, sterling morality, an adept at parliamentary management, a shrewd financier, and held a deep conviction that it was the part of statesmanship to embody in law what he conceiv

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LIBERAL REFORMS

"Whenever that man gets my place we shall have strange doings," Palmerston had said toward the end of his life, alluding to the open-minded Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Gladstone, and had he remained on earth for another generation, he would indeed have seen much done by his erstwhile followers under Gladstone's direction which he would have accounted passing strange. Admitting the democratic principle that the state owed it to itself to provide every man's child with an education, Gladstone

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THE CAUSE OF IRELAND

But it was to the grievances of Ireland that Gladstone bent the readiest ear, and it was upon that reef that his political career made shipwreck at the last. In his first ministry he undertook and carried the disestablishment of the Irish Church, by which the Irish Catholics were relieved of an odious burden. His Irish Land Act of 1870 aimed to give the tenant-farmer certain valuable rights in the land which he rented. The result was rather to redouble the cry against "landlordism," with its cor

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DISRAELI AND IMPERIALISM

Foreign affairs were the field of Disraeli's most brilliant exploits. "He had two ruling ideas," says the historian Oman, "the first was the conception of England as an imperial world- power, interested in European politics, but still more interested in the maintenance and development of her vast colonial and Indian empire. This is the notion which friends and enemies now using the word in different senses call 'imperialism.' The second ruling thought in Disraeli's mind was the conviction that t

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AFTER A HUNDRED YEARS

The century closes upon another England than that which was struggling against Napoleon at its dawn. Instead of the "right little tight little island," a compact and self-contained nation, it is now the head of an empire comparable in extent and population with no other since the Rome of Augustus. Canada, Federal Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa form a Greater Britain, while the subject lands and islands dot the globe. The problem which confronts the English at the end of the century is

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QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. How was England situated at the opening of the nineteenth century? 2. What did the names Hohenlinden, Trafalgar, and Austerlitz mean to England? 3. Sum up briefly the career of Wellesley. 4. How did Canning's policy mark a turning-point in British foreign affairs? 5. What was the result of the Catholic agitation? 6. How did the locomotive influence England's empire? 7. How was Parliament changed by the Reform Bill? 8. What changes in the Poor Laws were at once undertaken? 9. What action regar

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QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. What share had England taken in the French struggle previous to 1802? 2. What did the Peace of Amiens prove to be? 3. In what ways and with what success did England struggle against Napoleon up to the Peninsular War? 4. Describe the early life of Wellesley. 5. What military experience did lie gain in India? 6. What policy did Napoleon pursue in Spain and Portugal? 7. What qualities fitted Wellesley to command the Peninsular Campaign? 8. Describe Wellington's campaigns up to 1813? 9. How was t

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QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. How did England join with the rest of Europe in undoing the work of Napoleon? 2. Give the chief events in the early life of Canning. 3. Why did Canning authorize an attack on Denmark? 4. What was his relation to the Peninsular War? 5. What was his "lost opportunity" of 1812? 6. How did he set forth his plans when he became foreign secretary in 1821? 7. What interference in the affairs of Europe did the Holy Alliance attempt? 8. How did Canning defend his recognition of Spanish-American indepe

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IV

[GEORGE STEPHENSON, born, Wylam, near Newcastle, June 9, 1781; died, August 12, 1848; driver lad in a colliery; at fourteen, assistant to his father as fireman of colliery engines; at seventeen, engineman; at eighteen, learned to read in night school; 1812, enginewright at Killingworth colliery; 1814, operated his locomotive, "My Lord"; 1822, engineer of Stockton and Darlington Railroad (opened 1825); engineer of Liverpool and Manchester Railroad (opened 1830); produced locomotive "Rocket," capa

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QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. In what ways did Parliament fail to be "representative" at the opening of the nineteenth century? 2. What circumstances favored agitation of this condition? 3. What was the "Peterloo Massacre"? 4. Who was Lord Russell, and what his early relation to the reform movement? 5. What was the Test and Corporation Act, and when repealed? 6. Describe the first Reform Bill, and its effect upon the House of Commons? 7. How was the second bill treated by the Commons and by the Lords? 8. What circumstance

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QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. What conditions brought about the Corn Laws? 2. What was the object of the "sliding scale"? 3. How did the Corn Laws work against both mill-hand and manufacturer? 4. Give an account of the early life of Richard Cobden. 5. Describe the organization of the Anti-Corn Law Association. 6. What impression did Cobden make in the House of Commons? 7. How was John Bright enlisted in the agitation? 8. Compare the oratorical qualities of the two men. 9. In what varied ways did Cobden's enthusiasm make i

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QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. What unusual preparation had Peel for his public career? 2. Upon what political question did he and his father separate? 3. Describe his relations to Ireland as Chief Secretary. 4. What services did he render to criminal law? 5. What police reform is due to him? 6. What two famous party questions did he resist, but finally of necessity accept? 7. Why was Peel especially fitted to lead the new Conservative party, formed after 1832? 8. What fitness to govern did Peel show in his first ministry?

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QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. What social changes accompanied the industrial expansion of England? 2. What was the "apprentice system"? 3. Under what influences did Lord Ashley pass his childhood and youth? 4. How was the Factory Law of 1833 secured, and what did it require? 5. How did Lord Ashley prepare for a new Factory Act? 6. What opposition did he meet from the Anti-Corn Law workers? 7. How was the passage of the "Ten-Hours Bill" in 1847 received? 8. What conditions were revealed by the report on mines and collierie

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QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. Describe the early career of Palmerston. 2. How was he especially qualified for the position of Secretary of Foreign Affairs? 3. What was the chief principle of his foreign policy? 4. How was the independence of Belgium brought about? 5. What was the work of the Quadruple Alliance? 6. How did Palmerston deal with the Egyptian revolt and why? 7. What was England's attitude toward the "Spanish Marriage"? 8. Describe the "Civis Romanus" speech and the reasons for it. 9. Why was Lord Palmerston d

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

LIFE OF VISCOUNT PALMERSTON. Lord Dolling and Bulwer. VISCOUNT PALMERSTON. L. C. Sanders. HENRY HAVELOCK. (English Men of Action Series.) THE INDIAN MUTINY. G. B. Malleson. THE WAR IN THE CRIMEA. Gen. Sir Edward Hamley. [WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE, born, Liverpool, December 29, 1809; died, Hawarden, Flintshire, Wales, May 19, 1898; educated at Eton and Christ Church College, Oxford University (double first- class, 1831); Member of Parliament for Newark as a Tory, 1832 46; wrote, 1838, "The State in

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QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. Why has Ireland menaced the peace of England for more than a century? 2. What events led up to the organization of the "Young Ireland" Society? 3. What results had the Irish famine of 1846? 4. Describe the Fenian agitations. 5. Give an account of the early career of Gladstone. 6. What two important books did he write on church affairs? 7. What view did he take of the Anti-Corn Law bill? 8. How did he clash with Disraeli on the reform movement of 1866? 9. To what three grievances of Ireland di

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QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. What different elements make up the present British Empire? 2. What prominence did Disraeli gain from his speech against Peel in 1846? 3. Describe his early life and personal appearance. 4. What unsuccessful attempts did he make to enter Parliament? 5. Describe his maiden speech in the House. 6. How did he regard Peel and the Corn Laws? 7. What was "the leap in the dark," which he took in 1867? 8. How had the statesmen immediately preceding Disraeli looked upon English colonial possessions? 9

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APPENDIX

[This dispatch by the Duke of Wellington touching upon the battle of Waterloo is in his usual plain and straightforward manner.] To Marshal Lord Beresford, G. C. B.: You will have heard of our battle of the 18th. Never did I see such a pounding match. Both were what the boxers call "gluttons." Napoleon did not manoeuver at all. He just moved forward in the old style in columns, and was driven off in the old style. The only difference was, that he mixed cavalry with his infantry, and supported bo

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