Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/384

Rh ENGLAND [HISTORY. The Pen insular war. Battle of Water loo. Aineri- uan war. First years of peace, decree, forbidding neutrals to trade in any article imported from any part of the British dominions. The Orders in Council cost England a war with America. The Berlin and Milan decrees contributed largely to the overthrow of Napoleon s power. Every poor man who was debarred from the means of providing sugar or cloth for his family felt the grievance. The French Republic had declared war against the nobles and the higher classes ; Napoleon de creed an oppression which was bitterly felt in every cottage. In pursuit of his design of forcing the Continental system, as he termed it, on Portugal, Napoleon sent Junot to occupy Lisbon, and dethroned the king in 1807. In 1808 he seized on the royal family of Spain, and offered the crown to his brother Joseph. When the Spaniards resisted, the English Government sent troops to the Peninsula. Defeated at Vimeira, Junot was allowed to evacuate Portugal. Napoleon came to the rescue of his lieutenants in Spain, and though he retired without effect ing the expulsion of the English, Sir John Moore vaa slain at Corunna (1809) after inflicting a repulse on the French, and his army was shipped for England. In the summer Wellesley landed in Portugal. Thanks to a fresh aggressive war of Napoleon against Austria, he was able to make his footing sure, though the English ministry sent large forces to perish in the marshes of Walcheren, which might have been better employed in supporting Wellesley at the time when he was driven to retreat before superior numbers after the fruitless victory of Talavera. In 1810 Wellesley, now known under the name of Wellington, beat back the masses of the French forces under Massena from behind the lines of Torres Vedras. Wellington s resistance was great as a military exploit. But it was far more than a military exploit. It would have been of little avail to linger, however safely, in a corner of Portugal unless he were sure of better allies than the wretched Spanish soldiers who had looked on whilst he fought for them at Talavera. Wellington saw clearly that there is no ally so strong as the arrogance and injustice of an enemy. His firm hope was that Napoleon would ruin himself, and his hope did not deceive him. In 1812 Napoleon wrecked his finest army on the snows of Russia. Wellington had breathing space to issue forth from Portugal, to seize the frontier fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos, and to win the battle of Salamanca. In 1813 Germany rose against its oppressor. The victory of Leipsic drove the despot over the Rhine, and the victory of Vittoria drove his lieutenants over the Pyrenees. The peoples of Europe were against him. In 1814 he was driven into exile at Elba. Wellington s last victory in this war was won at Toulouse after the abdication of the emperor. In 1815 the emperor returned and seized the throne once more. England and Prussia were the first in the field, and the crushing blow at Waterloo consigned him to a life long exile at St Helena. The war with America, begun in 1812, had been caused by the pressure of the English naval force on neutral com merce under the Orders in Council, which the British Government refused to withdraw till it was too late, and by its claim to impress British seamen when serving on board American ships. The war was brought to an end by the treaty of Ghent (1814). After a long war the difficulties of the victors are often greater than those of the conquered. The conquered have their attention directed to the reparation of losses, and are inspired by a patriotic desire to submit to sacrifices for the sake of their country. The victors are in the frame of mind which expects everything to be easy, and they have been accustomed to direct their energies to the business of overpowering foreign enemies, and to hide their eyes from the constant watchfulness required by the needs of the population at home. The war out of which England had come was more than ever calculated to foster this tendency to domestic inaction. To the governing classes despotism, revolution, and reform were almost synonymous. Ministries had succeeded one another : Perceval followed Portland in 1809, and Liverpool followed Perceval in 1812. They were all alike in abhorrence of the very idea of change, in the entire abandonment of those principles of active and intelligent government by which Pitt, whose followers they professed to be, had been always inspired. The supremacy of the proprietors of land, and absolute resistance to reform, were accepted as the rule of government. It made no difference that the king had become permanently insane in 1810, and that the base and sensual prince of Wales became regent in 1811, till he ascended the throne in 1820 as George IV. The wrongs of the propertied classes could make them- Strife of selves heaid. In 1815 a corn law had been passed pro- classes, hibiting the import of corn till the price was above 80s. a quarter. In 1816 the ministry were compelled to submit to the repeal of the property tax, and abandoned the malt tax without pressure. In the meanwhile the agricultural and industrial poor were on the verge of starvation. It would be absurd to draw too close a comparison between the position of the English upper classes at this time and of the French upper classes before the Revolution. But there was the same tendency to use political power as a support for their own material interests, the same neglect of the wants and feelings of those who had none to help them. Those in authority were natural^ startled when, at a time when mobs driven to desperation were breaking Demanc machines and burning ricks, Cobbett in his Weekly Polili- for P ar - cal Register was advocating universal suffrage and annual liament parliaments. The revolution struck down in France j- orm appeared to be at the doors in England. In great part, no doubt, the misery was brought about by causes over which no Government could have had any control, by the breaking up of the irregular channels through which commerce had flowed during the war. But it was in great part, too, owing to the incidence of the pro tective system to which the Government, widely departing from the track marked out by the early steps of Pitt, was giving effect with the full support of the manufacturing as well as the landowning class. A riot in London (1816), and a missile thrown at the Repres carriage of the prince regent, roused in parliament some- sive m&amp;lt; thing like the repressive violence of 1794. Even the brilliant Canning, the ablest of the disciples of Pitt, declaimed against the parliamentary reform which was now asked for in so many quarters. Acts, of which the suspen sion of the Habeas Corpus Act was the most severe, were passed to strengthen the hands of the ministry. Seditious meetings, mingled with real or imaginary projects of insur rection, kept the alarm of the upper classes on the stretch. But, as in 1794, juries were suspicious of evidence fur nished by spies, and refused to convict on insufficient proof. The strife between classes culminated in 1819. Large meetings in the open air were held in the great towns, and inflammatory speeches were freely addressed^ to them. Some of the speakers were arrested. At Stockport the constable in clnrge of one of the prisoners was attacked and shot. Birmingham, a great unrepresented town, elected a &quot; legislatorial attorney.&quot; A large meeting was summoned at Manchester, another great unrepresented town, to follow The the example. The meeting was declared by the magistrates t to be illegal, and another meeting was accordingly sum- sacre moned for the undoubtedly legal purpose of petitioning for parliamentary reform. On the appointed day thousands