Part 29

In the struggle now taking place, his lordship was possessed with one great object: in 1814 he had made some concessions to France, and he considered the affair terminated when her ancient limits, augmented by Savoy and the Comté Venaissin, were assigned to her, under the government of her ancient dynasty; but he now found all his work had fallen to the ground, and he concluded from thence that the power of France was still too great, and predominated too much on the Continent: for the sake, therefore, of obtaining the applause of Germany and the support of Prussia, he entered unhesitatingly into all the hatred vowed to us by them. Waterloo had placed France under the especial direction of England and Prussia, and deprived her of the Russian influence; therefore his lordship was at liberty to explain his ideas, and there was every facility for the execution of his system. His principles being in perfect agreement with those of the Duke of Wellington, he communicated to him his opinion about the future condition of France. In the first place, the ministerial system must be entirely English; and as a good understanding had existed between him and Talleyrand at Vienna, he chose him to fill the situation of prime minister. Then again, the Tories do not like revolutionists; but as these last assumed a suppliant attitude before the English, and that the patriots, under the shield of Fouché and of the representative chamber, were at the feet of the Duke of Wellington, even to obtain a foreign prince, they decided Fouché should be appointed to the ministry with Talleyrand.

But this was only the commencement of the system. Lord Castlereagh had observed that the material power of France was too considerable for the balance of power in Europe, and also that Belgium was not sufficiently protected; he therefore considered it necessary another frontier should be adopted, to prevent any irruption on that side; and as England wanted to secure the good will of Germany, he agreed to support, if necessary, the proposal for the cession of Alsace and Lorraine to the Germanic confederation. These ideas gave birth to the hard conditions insisted upon by England, and rendered it necessary that France should have recourse to the Emperor Alexander to obtain better terms after her heavy afflictions.

With regard to Buonaparte, the minister's conduct was perfectly consistent. In 1814 he had strenuously opposed the idea of an independent sovereignty in the island of Elba, and the enemy of England was now again in his power. It has been written and currently reported, that Napoleon's resolution to throw himself for protection upon the generosity of England was a free and spontaneous action; but such was far from being the case: too well did he know the unpitying and irritated feelings entertained against him by that nation, but he went on board the English man-of-war because he could no longer escape the cruisers, and perhaps the sailors in those vessels might have done him some injury, in vengeance of the sufferings of Captain Wright, who died in so mysterious a manner in the Temple. His letter to the Prince Regent was only an attempt to escape his fate by assuming the position of a free agent, when a few hours later he would have been a prisoner of war. As soon as Buonaparte was on board the Bellerophon, Lord Castlereagh hastened to acquaint the plenipotentiaries of the allied powers, assembled at Paris, with the fact; and then he naturally returned to his original and favourite idea of placing him under the charge of the Allies, in some spot sufficiently remote from the Continent to secure Europe against the risk of any further bold attempt on his part. This proposal did not arise from any personal hatred or feeling of animosity, but was the result of a profound and well-considered conviction. As for the rest, every thing was done with proper attention and consideration; but no one ever shewed more sulkiness, ill-humour, and I may say more littleness, than did Napoleon in adversity. How had he treated the Duc d'Enghien? Had he not pursued and striven to ensnare Louis XVIII. in every part of Europe? Was it too much, immediately after his adventure of the hundred days, which had cost us so dear, to send him to a place of security, from whence he would no longer be able to torment Europe? Buonaparte took offence because the title of majesty was refused him, and because he was not permitted to live quietly like one of the citizen classes in England or the United States (a proposition he made with just the same degree of sincerity as his request to be appointed _juge de paix_ of his district before the 18 Brumaire). Imagine Buonaparte a citizen of Westminster or Charleston! After so long a drama on the theatre of the world, if a man has not been able to die he ought to know how to submit to obscurity; but he, at St. Helena, did not exhibit the greatness that ought to have arisen from his recollections and his glory, and I would willingly believe his flatterers garbled his conversations in the narratives published of his exile.

By the treaty concluded in the month of November, which was the completion of the transactions at Vienna, a magnificent position was allotted to England. In the south of Europe her influence over Portugal was secured, and the family compact was broken; in the north, a kingdom was constructed of Holland and Belgium, under her patronage, for the Prince of Orange, one of her generals; Prussia was closely attached to her system, and the Elbe opened to her the road to Germany; Hanover belonged to the British crown; she absorbed the factories and establishments of France in India, and acquired the Cape of Good Hope, the Isle of France, and Ceylon, besides Malta and the Seven Islands in the Mediterranean. She had reached the highest degree of power permitted to a state, and it was the firm and resolute conduct of Lord Castlereagh that had led to these great results; for had the weak and unconnected opinion of the Whigs carried the day, had peace been signed with Buonaparte, based on the terms approved by Fox and Grenville, never would England have attained to such a pitch of power and splendour. In mortal struggles like these one party must perish; and as it was, Napoleon sunk under the efforts of Britain. The captive of St. Helena was well aware of this, for he never accused any one of his fall but Lord Castlereagh and the English aristocracy, whom he devoted to the execration of future ages; no doubt for thus having succeeded in exalting the grandeur of England, as he had dreamed of doing with the magnificence of his nation and his race.

In the history of states, two periods usually occur. When there is a strong inclination to foreign wars, it very seldom occurs that there is much agitation among parties at home, because when society is hurried with violence into affairs of great importance, she has no time for considering her own troubles or inquiring closely into her domestic afflictions; but when the war is over she turns her attention upon herself, and internal dissensions take place. This was the case in England after the treaty of Paris in 1815, extreme irritation was displayed in her troubles; and this requires some explanation: that there was much suffering among the various classes of British subjects is an undoubted fact, and it proceeded from many different causes. The successive debts she had been obliged to contract had inordinately increased the taxes; a war, lasting for twenty years, had been suddenly succeeded by a peace which had injured the interests of many people, because war, by occasioning an unnatural excitement to industry of every kind, had given employment to thousands, for the commerce of the world was in the hands of England. Peace opened an immense competition; Great Britain, formerly alone in the market, now met with the French and Americans, and the ports were no longer exclusively open to her manufactures. Besides this, pauperism, that species of leprosy in a nation, had greatly increased, and it had now become an actual sore in the British government, a vermin on the velvet robes of her rulers.

A radical and deep-seated movement had also taken place in the public mind. Great excitement always leaves a degree of fermentation behind; the revolutionary doctrines had sheltered themselves behind the shield of parliamentary reform, and this very reform became a pretext gladly seized upon by agitators; thus England found herself covered, not with secret societies, for on her soil people breathe freely, but with clubs and inflammatory meetings, so that the country resounded with petitions. On this occasion it again became necessary to display a degree of firmness; the inflexible character of Lord Castlereagh was alone capable of opposing to doctrines which manifested themselves by riotous assemblies of 100,000 men in various cities.

Independent of these domestic troubles, there were also difficulties connected with foreign affairs that exhibited a no less serious aspect. Ever since the year 1792 but one great danger had occupied the mind of Europe, the absorbing and inordinate power of the republic and empire of Napoleon. England having always been at the head of the implacable movement which attacked the revolutionary power in France, had also naturally taken the lead in the political transactions; and Europe did not stop to examine whether the cabinet of London assumed too great an influence while protecting the general interest; for Buonaparte excited alarm, and the assistance of Great Britain was required to oppose him: but as soon as this powerful Colossus was overthrown, a continental system was formed under the influence of the Emperor of Russia, and led to all those congresses, annually repeated, in which England could not take an active or predominant part. The statesmen of Great Britain, both Whigs and Tories, rejected all the theories of absolute power; they had been educated in the principles of 1688, and neither would, nor could, adopt the maxim of the divine right of kings. Thus Lord Castlereagh could not unite in all the manifestoes and declarations of principles which the Emperor Alexander issued in his mystical ideas of the Holy Alliance. We must not lose sight of this circumstance in the last four years of the minister's life. The treaty of 1815 had hardly been signed before a formidable conspiracy of Radicalism in arms arose in England, not merely easily suppressed riots, but bodies of 100,000, who broke the power-looms and pillaged the houses, and the ancient aristocracy appeared threatened with the most imminent danger; yet such is the spirit of order in that country, and the reliance to be placed on the English population, that these tumults were not attended with danger. On this occasion the firm repressive spirit of Lord Castlereagh was fully manifested; without hesitation, he demanded from parliament the suspension of all liberty, even of the _habeas corpus_, that powerful security of the English citizen. The troops ordered to act vigorously against the rioters, shewed no compassion, because there appeared no limit to the disturbances. How many accusations were brought against Lord Castlereagh after the riots at Manchester and Birmingham! The pamphlets published on the occasion represented him as a butcher of human victims, and Lord Byron wrote some lines on the cold impassiveness of his countenance. Was England to be allowed to perish to please the poets? or were the designs of housebreakers and destroyers of machinery to be seconded? The minister only did his duty as a statesman--he saved society, and what do people want more? He did it even at the peril of his fame--a great sacrifice for those who devote themselves to the idea of order in the midst of disorder. Very vigorous bills were passed, on the demand of the minister, against foreigners, and against the instigators of the disturbances, and he undertook in parliament the painful task of obtaining repressive measures. In England there are resources, even in times of the greatest danger, because there exists a race of statesmen, the Tories, who never give way to public clamour; in the midst of the most formidable riot a degree of respect for the laws is still felt, and people submit to the summons of a constable.

This agitated situation lasted nearly five years; the counties were in a blaze; and at last the Queen's trial became the pretext for fresh disorders. No one could take any interest in a queen who, in the decline of life, had carried on her intrigues in Syria, in Greece, and in Italy, with true English disregard of public opinion, which is in itself an eccentricity. Every one was aware of the irregularities of the Princess of Wales, now queen by the death of George III., and retaining in her service the witness and partaker of her excesses, her chamberlain, Bergami. But the Radical party did not look so closely at the affair; all they wanted was a pretext to excite the public mind, and they had recourse to the queen's trial as a means of occasioning riot and disorder. The Tories, deeply sensible of the embarrassed state of the country, and desirous, if possible, of avoiding a scandalous trial, proposed a middle course to the princess. Her name was not to be mentioned in the Liturgy, but she would still be queen, only she would be required to remain abroad, constantly travelling about, and a large pecuniary allowance would be made to her; but upon the Radical party being consulted, the old queen refused all the offers, and a long and disgraceful trial was obliged to take place. Lord Castlereagh determined upon the measure with firm and respectful energy; the more unwilling he had been to resort to this mode of proceeding, the more vigorously he was resolved to carry it through. When we contemplate the angelic figure of Anne Boleyn, beside the gross and sensual Henry VIII., every one feels a strong and lively interest in the unfortunate victim; but who could have the slightest feeling for a queen grown old with the most degrading passions?

The minister here again was opposed by his old adversary Canning, who was then aiming at extreme popularity. He had constituted himself the Queen's champion, not because he esteemed her, but because this course furnished him with the means of the most violent opposition to the ministry over which Castlereagh presided. The trial began, and was followed by debates, and the disgraceful and disgusting revelations are too well known. The oratorical fame of Brougham and Canning was greatly augmented by these proceedings; their popularity became immense, and their opponents were visited with a degree of reprobation to which men of distinguished capacity must accustom themselves in the course of their painful and wearisome task.

All these domestic events occurred at a period when Europe, still full of agitation, was constantly holding congresses, in order to declare her principles, or to decide upon general arrangements. Since the declaration of Alexander, bearing the title of the Holy Alliance, England had taken up a separate position; her statesmen, more especially Lord Castlereagh, had declared the principles of that convention to be too vague to allow the English ministers to admit them, under their legal responsibility. From this first separation of interests from the rest of Europe, two political systems resulted: the one Russian, whose ascendency over the congress was almost absolute; the other English, which opposed any general deliberation upon interests now divided.

Lord Castlereagh assumed this position when he attended the congresses of Troppau and Laybach; he signed the protocols without adopting the ideas of the Holy Alliance, but simply as the consequence of the treaties of 1815 and the articles of the congress of Vienna. In his conversations with Metternich he advanced this principle, that, although Europe might enter into an agreement to repress disturbances affecting the security of crowned heads, she neither could, nor ought to interfere with any modifications which a people might freely and spontaneously choose to make in their respective governments. This declaration referred to several very important questions that had lately arisen: first, the separation of the Spanish colonies from the mother-country; secondly, the disturbances in Greece; and, thirdly, the revolution in Spain. The emancipation of the Spanish colonies of an ancient date originated in the commercial interests of England, which constantly require to be satisfied; the markets opened by peace must replace those of war, and a new world was requisite for the overflow of her manufactures; under this point of view, therefore, the emancipation of the Spanish colonies secured a market to England, she henceforth became favourable to their independence, and her consuls resided with their _exequatur_ in these colonies. Lord Castlereagh's position at this juncture was rather delicate; for with one hand he favoured the sedition of the colonies, and with the other he severely repressed the riots in the English counties.

Being a partisan of the emancipation of the colonies, he naturally felt no repugnance towards the government of the Cortes at Madrid. What is considered of importance in England, is not the form of government adopted by a power, but its tendency with regard to herself and her interests. She seldom breaks a lance for a mere chivalrous idea. Both Whigs and Tories are equally actuated by the same spirit of national selfishness, which is, in fact, patriotism; and, while holding this doctrine, that England is not to meddle with the internal form of government, the path remains open, so that they can decide according as interest advises. With regard to the emancipation of the Greeks, Lord Castlereagh viewed it in its true light, without weakness, and without sentimental feelings, allowing the question to rest on the ground of Russia and Turkey: thus, to emancipate the Greeks would be to aggrandise Russia, open to her the gates of the Bosphorus, and drive the Turks into Asia, and this policy would be unfaithful and puerile as far as the interests of England were concerned; it was, on the contrary, most advantageous to her to protect the Ottoman empire by the British flag, to develope her strength, and create in that country a commercial alliance for herself. Thus at the same time to give a new world to industry, by the emancipation of the Spanish colonies, to take no heed of the revolutions at Naples and in Spain, but watch Russia and restrain any ambitious projects she might have formed, by supporting the Porte: such were the politics of Lord Castlereagh in the first five years that succeeded his vigorous contest with Napoleon.

The disturbances in England had begun to subside, when the ancient civil war was again renewed in Ireland between the Orangemen and the Catholics; it was a constantly recurring quarrel, as between two races who entertained the greatest detestation for each other. All the people who thought seriously on the subject felt that something must be done for the Catholics; the reason for the former oppression having ceased to exist, Ireland could not always remain in a state of slavery. Lord Castlereagh was well acquainted with this country, where his youth had been passed, and, whenever business left him leisure, was accustomed to visit the ancient towers of Londonderry, the beautiful lakes, and the old fishermen, whom his munificence assisted in rebuilding their villages and their boats, portioning their daughters, or increasing their own comforts. The bill for the admission of the Catholic lords into parliament was then in debate; it was opposed by the Orange party in Ireland, and, after passing the House of Commons, was thrown out by the Lords; and this was the cause of the sanguinary troubles which again threw Ireland into the most fearful state of disorder. The ministry shewed no indulgence, for the country was deluged with blood; and Lord Wellesley, then lord-lieutenant, declared at last that, if they were desirous of saving that country, more agitated than the ocean, it must be placed under a most vigorous system of legislative exception.[52] The old laws of the conquest were put in force against the parties of Whiteboys who ravaged the country, but by degrees these demonstrations gave way before the severe measures used to repress them.

[52] Parliament decided upon the re-enactment of the Insurrection Act, and the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, in Ireland.--_Editor._

As soon as order was restored, it was necessary the ministry should take measures to relieve the sufferings of the three kingdoms, and they devoted themselves with the greatest attention to their difficult task. It is a historical truth worthy of the remembrance of agitators, that they occasion the slavery of all for the sake of the vain pleasure they derive from some ovations to themselves. Despotism is the successor of disorder, and there is more influence in reason and resignation than in the noisy acclamations of the public streets. O'Connell appears to me, to be just the man destined to bring about the complete subjection of Ireland; he will be the destroyer of his country for the sake of a little personal vanity, for the applause of 100,000 men, collected round the hustings. The Tories did every thing that was possible for Ireland when it was quiet: the emancipation of the Catholics was promoted by the Wellesleys, nor did they stop there.