The French Revolution--The Continental Policy of Mr. Pitt--The
Policy of Mr. Fox and his Followers--The Continental Wars--Mr.
Sheridan--Mr. Burke--Mr. Perceval.
In determining whether the policy which Pitt and his successors pursued
towards France, from 1792 to 1815, was wise for England and beneficial
to Europe, an American republican will remember that it was sustained by
the party which ever resisted all social and political improvement among
the people--that the enemies of change warred on the Directory, the
Consulate, the Empire--that the patrons of existing abuses restored the
Bourbons. Nor will he forget that this policy was steadily opposed by
the friends of enlightened progress and useful reform--the champions of
civil and religious freedom. The specious reasoning and showy
declamations of a score of Alisons will never destroy these facts.
France, equally with Great Britain, had the right to enjoy the
Government of its choice. But the latter, early in 1793, declined to
negotiate or correspond with the former, because it was a republic; and
refusing to receive the credentials of its minister, ordered him to quit
the kingdom. France, sustained by the law of nations, declared war
against the Power which had insulted her. Pitt asserted that the French
revolution had no sufficient cause in the nature of the Government or
the condition of the people, and was the offspring of a reckless spirit
of innovation. He avowed his determination to put down the republic,
restore the monarchy, and maintain the cause of legitimacy in Europe.
This avowal was met by the declaration of the liberal party, that the
true cause of the revolution was the undue restriction and limitation of
the rights and privileges of the people; and that, however it might be
perverted, its real object was to wrest from the Government what had
been unjustly withheld from its subjects. They demanded, therefore, that
the diplomatic representative of France should be received by the
ministry; and they resisted all interference with its internal affairs,
all attempts to suppress liberal movements in Europe, all efforts to
uphold its crumbling thrones. They plead for peace and an armed
neutrality. And, after Napoleon's schemes of conquest were disclosed,
they contended that England ought not to unite in a coalition for his
overthrow, so long as it was a battle among kings, but should wait till
_the people_ of the continent requested assistance; and even then, that
it ought not to be given till the rulers of the endangered States were
pledged to grant reasonable privileges to their subjects. On this
elevated ground did the liberal party take its stand. But Pitt,
representing only the monarchical and privileged orders, at the outset
of the conflict pledged the power and resources of England to the
accomplishment of his ends; and his policy was steadily followed, with
ruinous and mortifying results, until the European combination of
1814-15 finally crushed Napoleon at Waterloo, and restored the Bourbon
to his throne.
And what did England gain by her armies and fleets, her intrigues in
foreign cabinets and subsidies of men and money? True, Napoleon was
prostrated, But she had spent L600 000,000 in doing it. At the
commencement of the war, her debt was less than L240,000,000. At its
close, it had swelled to more than L840,000,000! Centuries of taxation
to restore the Bourbons to a throne which they cannot retain, and to
postpone for fifty years the general overthrow of monarchy in Europe!
The seventh descending son of the youngest Englishman alive will curse
the day that Pitt entered on this crusade against Destiny. When the
unnatural fever of the contest abated, the reaction, the retribution,
came. Peace had returned, but she was not accompanied by her
twin-sister, Plenty. English trade, commerce, manufactures, agriculture,
languished--laborers wandered through the provinces in search of
employment--the country sunk exhausted into the arms of bankruptcy. The
smoke of battle no longer blinding the eye, the people began to look
about and inquire, "What have we gained by all this outgush of blood and
treasure?" The wealthy saw before them ages of remorseless taxation--the
poor clamored in the streets for bread--all but the extreme privileged
classes regarded the result of the war as a triumph over themselves. At
peace with all the world, (almost the first time for three-fourths of a
century), the nation was the scene of internal discords more threatening
than foreign levy. Nothing but general lassitude, and the pressure of
misfortunes common to all, prevented a revolution.
This contest was injurious to England in another way. It so _possessed_
the public mind that there was little room left for domestic
improvement. Meanwhile, the cause of reform was turned out of doors. The
French Revolution was a God-send to Pitt and the Tories. Seizing upon
its early excesses, they conjured with them thirty years, frightening
the middling men from their propriety, and terrifying even the giant
soul of Burke. The "horrors of the French revolution" were thrown in the
face of every man who demanded reform. The clamors of the tired and
fleeced suitors in Lord Eldon's court were silenced by "the horrors of
the French revolution." Old Sarum and Grampound lengthened out their
"rotten" existence by supping on "the horrors of the French revolution."
Point to the festering corruption of the Church Establishment, and it
lifted up its holy hands at "the horrors of the French revolution." The
Catholics were persecuted, the Irish gibbeted, and printers transported,
to atone for "the horrors of the French revolution." The poor starved
in damp cellars, whilst the landlord fattened his protected soil with
"the horrors of the French revolution." In a word, these "horrors"
constituted the chief staple of Tory argument and declamation, and were
a conclusive answer to all who asked for cheap bread, religious
toleration, law reform, reduced taxes, and an enlarged suffrage.
The lessons of wisdom, so dearly purchased by this scheme of Continental
interference, have not been thrown away on a nation which spent so much
to gain so little. The second French revolution was followed by England
granting Parliamentary Reform, to prevent a revolution at home. The
third revolution, which prostrated a monarchy, and reared a republic in
a day, was promptly recognized and respected by England, whose Premier
declared that she heartily accorded to the people of France the right to
ordain for themselves such a system of Government as they might choose!
Men may prate eternally about the virtues of Louis XVI, the grasping
ambition of Napoleon, the far-seeing sagacity of Burke, and the wisdom
and firmness of Pitt, and it will still remain true, that the principles
thrown up with the fire and blood of the great French eruption will yet
work out the regeneration of Europe.
MR. SHERIDAN was as steady a supporter of freedom, and as inflexible an
opponent of Pitt, as a man of so volatile a temperament could well be.
This gentleman is best known on our side of the Atlantic as the author
of the comedy the "School for Scandal," and of a speech on the trial of
Warren Hastings. The comedy still holds a deservedly high place on the
stage. The speech, which once claimed a position at the head of English
forensic oratory, is no doubt much overrated. The intense interest
pervading the public mind in respect to the impeachment of the conqueror
and ruler of a hundred millions of the people of India--the august
character of the tribunal, the peers and judges of the realm--the
imposing talents of the committee by whom the Commons sent up the
articles of impeachment, consisting of Burke, Fox, North, Grey, Wyndham,
Sheridan, with other lights worthy to shine in such a constellation--the
romantic branch of Hastings's administration, the opening of which was
assigned to Sheridan--the gorgeous colors which he spread upon the
oriental canvas--the theatrical style in which he pronounced his oration
before a learned, fashionable, and sympathizing audience, all conspired
to give to his effort a temporary fame alike extraordinary and undeserved.
Nor was the immediate effect of his two days' coruscation diminished by
the tragical manner in which he contrived, at its close, to sink backward
into the arms of Burke, who, transported beyond measure, hugged him as
unaffectedly as if his generous and unsuspecting nature had not been duped
by a mere stage trick.
But though he occasionally used the clap-traps of the theater, Sheridan
was a debater to be shunned rather than encountered. Pitt dreaded him.
Lying in wait till the Minister had addressed the House, the Drury Lane
manager used to let fly at him such a cloud of stinging arrows, pointed
with sarcasm and poisoned with invective, that the stately Premier could
not conceal his mortification, nor hardly retain his seat till the storm
had passed away. No Parliamentarian ever inspired so much dread in his
opponents, and won so much applause from his friends, with so scanty a
stock of statesmanlike acquirements. His political knowledge was
gathered from the columns of the current newspapers and the discussions
in the club-rooms, and his literary stores were made up from the modern
poetry and drama of England. True, he was educated at Harrow, but he
threw aside Demosthenes and Cicero for Congreve and Vanburgh, and wrote
comedies when he should have studied mathematics. He never claimed to be
a statesman, and only aspired to be an orator. To shine as a dazzling
declaimer, he bent all the powers of his intense and elastic mind. He
attended debating clubs, and caught up the best sayings--practiced
attitudes and tones in the green-room--set down every keen thought which
occurred to him in a note-book--conned his lesson--then entered the
House, and rushing into the arena of debate with the bound and air of a
gladiator, won the reputation of being the readiest wit, the most
skillful off-hand disputant, and the most gorgeous orator of the day.
And it was the day of Burke, Pitt, Fox, Erskine, Grattan, and Wyndham!
Lord Chesterfield was not so very wrong when he told his son that, even
in Parliament, more depended upon the manner of saying a thing, than
upon the matter of which it was composed. Though his taste was formed on
the flashy model of the modern drama, and in the composition of his
numerous tropes and metaphors he did not always distinguish between
tinsel and gold, between painted glass and pure diamonds, yet he
generally succeeded in doing what he intended--producing a tremendous
sensation. His rockets set the hemisphere in a blaze; nor was he always
careful on whose head the sticks fell; for he spared neither friends nor
foes, if he must thereby lose a good hit.
Though Sheridan regarded the color of the husk more than the character
of the kernel, he uttered much that will perish only with the English
tongue. In an attack on Ministers, who were attempting to carry a bill
against the freedom of the press, he exclaimed, "Give them a corrupt
House of Lords; give them a venal House of Commons; give them a
tyrannical Prince; give them a truckling Court--and let me but have an
unfettered press, and I will defy them to encroach a hair's breadth upon
the liberties of England"--a passage worthy of Chatham. During the
treason trials, in 1794, he poured a torrent of ridicule upon the
proceedings, which did not a little toward restoring a panic-stricken
public to its senses. An extract will give an idea of his sarcasm. In
replying to Pitt, he said, "I own there was something in the case; quite
enough to disturb the virtuous sensibilities and loyal terrors of the
right honorable gentleman. But, so hardened is this side of the House,
that our fears did not much disturb us. On the first trial, one pike was
produced. This was, however, withdrawn. Then a terrific instrument was
talked of, for the annihilation of his Majesty's cavalry, which, upon
evidence, appeared to be a _te-totum_ in a window at Sheffield. But I
had forgot--there was also a camp in a back shop; an arsenal provided
with nine muskets; and an exchequer, containing exactly the same number
of pounds--no, let me be accurate, it was nine pounds and one bad
shilling. * * * * The alarm had been brought in with great pomp and
circumstance on a Saturday morning. At night, the Duke of Richmond
stationed himself, among other curiosities, at the Tower, and a great
municipal officer, the Lord Mayor, made an appalling discovery in the
East. He found out that there was in Cornhill a debating society, where
people went to buy treason at sixpence a head; where it was retailed to
them by inch of candle; and five minutes, measured by the glass, were
allowed to each traitor, to perform his part in overturning the State.
In Edinburgh an insurrection was planned; the soldiers were to be
corrupted: and this turned out to be--by giving each man sixpence for
porter. Now, what the scarcity of money and rations may be in that part
of the country, I cannot tell; but it does strike me that the system of
corruption has not been carried to any great extent. Then, too, numbers
were kept in pay; they were drilled in a dark room, by a sergeant in a
brown coat; and on a given signal they were to sally from a back
kitchen, and overturn the Constitution."
Though this celebrated orator was wayward in his pursuits, and
habitually intemperate, yet, from the time he entered Parliament in 1780
till his sun began to decline, he ever sustained the liberal cause, and
his rare talents bore with striking effect against the Continental
policy of Pitt, and in favor of Irish Regeneration, Parliamentary
Reform, the freedom of the press, and the rights of the people.
I have spoken of EDMUND BURKE, than whom, no man could afford a stronger
contrast to Sheridan. He had an original, daring genius, but it was
sustained by a broad and comprehensive judgment. His imagination was as
gorgeous as ever plumed the wing of eloquence, but it was enriched and
invigorated by learning vast and varied. Until his mind became
engrossed, not to say _possessed_ with the subject which occupied the
latter years of his great life, (the French revolution,) he was the
advocate and ornament of progressive freedom. He first led and then
followed Fox in all the lines of policy which the liberal party pursued
from 1765 to 1790, when they separated, and Burke became not so much the
advocate of Pitt and his Tories, as the opponent of France and its
Republicans; choosing thereafter, as he expressed it, to be a Whig,
"without coining to himself Whig principles from a French die, unknown
to the impress of our fathers in the Constitution." He left Parliament
in 1794, and died in 1797. During the last six years of his life he
seemed almost diseased by the excesses of the French revolution; and
whatever subject he surveyed, on whatever ground he looked, he appeared
to see naught but the convulsions of that tragedy. The vivid impressions
which he received he transferred to publications which glowed with his
fervid soul, and produced a prodigious sensation amongst the higher
orders of his countrymen. But take him all in all, his was the most
magnificent mind of modern England. If called to designate the most
remarkable name which adorns its later annals, to whose would we so
unhesitatingly point as to his? Is he not entitled to a place among the
five most extraordinary men which that kingdom has produced--Bacon,
Shakspeare, Newton, Milton, Burke? He possessed the multifarious
learning of our Adams, the intellectual grasp of our Marshall, the
metaphysical subtlety of our Edwards, the logical energy of our Webster,
the soaring imagination of our Wirt, the fervid glow of our Clay; and he
was the equal of each in his most cultivated field. As a Parliamentary
leader, he was inferior to Fox and Pitt. His essay-like style was not
adapted to so popular a body as the House of Commons. His speeches wore
the air of the academy rather than the forum; and much of his discourse
was too elaborate, too learned, too philosophical, too ornate, to be
appreciated by the general run of commonplace sort of men that drift
into the halls of legislation. During the thirty years he participated
in affairs, there fell from his lips and pen an amount of political
sagacity, far-seeing statesmanship, philosophical disquisition, and
oratorical display, all set off and adorned by an amplitude of learning,
a majesty of diction, and a brilliancy of imagery, the fourth of which
would have carried their author's name to posterity as one of the
remarkable men of his time. He who thinks this eulogium extravagant has
only to find its confirmation in the mines of intellectual wealth which
lie embedded in the sixteen volumes of the works he has given to his
country and the world, to his cotemporaries and to posterity. True,
there will be found, mingled with these strata of pure gold, veins of
impracticability, sophistry, prejudice, extravagance, and violence. His
later writings, and in many respects his most grand and beautiful, are
disfigured by a morbid dread of change, and obscured by a gloomy
distrust of the capacities of man for self-government; proving, that
though gifted with genius beyond most mortals, he was not endowed with
the Divine spirit of prophecy. But it is equally true, that while the
English language is read, the speeches and writings of Edmund Burke will
be classed with the richest treasures of the statesman, the philosopher,
and the scholar.
Next to the curse of a military chieftain attempting to adapt the
tactics of the camp to the regulations of the cabinet, is the nuisance
of a narrow-minded lawyer carrying the prim rules of the bar into the
councils of the State, and aiming to be a statesman when he is only
capable of being a pettifogger. On the downfall of the Grenville-Fox
ministry, MR. PERCEVAL took the leading place in his Majesty's
Government. He was a lawyer with a keen intellect, and a soul shriveled
by the most limited views and bigoted prejudices. When ruling England,
he looked upon her position in reference to Continental affairs, and
the part she was to perform in the drama of nations, much as he was wont
to regard the ten-pound case of a plaintiff whose brief and retainer he
held. He argued the great questions which nightly agitated the House of
Commons, and whose decisions were to affect not only his own time, but
coming ages, like a mere lawyer struggling for a verdict. His weapon was
sharp, and he applied its edge in the same way, whether analyzing the
title of James Jackson to a ten-acre lot in Kent, or of Louis XVIII to
the throne of France. He discussed a financial scheme in Parliament to
raise twenty millions sterling to carry on the war, just as he argued
the consideration of a twenty-pound note before a jury of Yorkshire
plowmen. Yet he was a good tactician; saw a _point_ readily and clearly,
though he saw nothing but a point; knew how to touch the prejudices of
bigots; was great at beating his opponents on small divisions; rarely
lost his temper under the severest provocations; was quick at a turn and
keen at a retort; and spoke in a lively, colloquial, straight-forward
style, which pleased the fat country gentlemen much better than the
classical allusions and ornate periods of Mr. Canning. He kept on the
even tenor of his way till assassinated by a madman in the lobby of the
House, in 1812.
And this is the man who shaped the financial policy of England during
six of the most eventful years of her existence, and whom she permitted
to plunge her into debt to the amount of L150,000,000! "How could this
be?" The answer is plain. Mr. Perceval stood firmly by the King and the
Bishops, flattering the prejudices of the one and the bigotry of the
other; and never flinched from eulogizing royalty, when the rude hand of
popular clamor drew the vail from the immoralities of the Prince Regent
and his brother of York. Then he was a thorough business man; never
alarmed "Church and State" by wandering, like Canning and Peel, out of
the beaten Tory track; and, so far from giving up a bad cause in the
worst of times, he raised his voice the more sternly as the storm of
public discontent whistled louder, and cheered his flagging comrades to
their daily round of degrading toil. Such a minister was fit to be
beloved by a bigoted king and his profligate heir.