statesmen of England. We have no hesitation in answering them. As the
ruin of Ireland has been the act of a false religion, its renovation
must be the act of the true. This is no time for tardiness in this
experiment. Revolt has thrown aside its arms, but its antipathy
remains. We shall have revolt upon revolt, until the country is
turned into a field of battle or a sepulchre. If the rude, vulgar,
and cowardly conspirators of the present hour have found followers,
what might not be the national hazard if some valorous hand and
vivid intellect--some one of those mighty men who are born to take
the lead of nations, should marshal the willing multitudes at a time
when England was once again struggling for the liberties of Europe?
Are we to leave Ireland, with all its natural advantages, to the
unchecked progress of superstition, until, like the Roman Campagna,
under the same auspices, it exhibits nothing but a desert, where man
by daylight should put on his swiftest speed, and where he should not
sleep by night, unless he had already taken measure of his grave?
The Memoir prefixed to the official papers in these volumes touches
with singular brevity on the personal characteristics of the late
Marquis of Londonderry.
But the true biography of a public man is to be found in his
public career. There flattery can deceive no longer, and panegyric
is brought to the test of posterity. It fell to the lot of Lord
Castlereagh to take a lead in the _four_ most memorable transactions
of his time;--in the overthrow of the Irish Rebellion; in the
establishment of the Union; in the downfall of the French empire;
and in the settlement of the peace of Europe at the Congress of
Vienna. Those four are his claims on the living gratitude of his
country, and on the homage of the generations to come. The mind
which was equal to those tasks must have been a mind of power; the
determination which could have sustained him, in defiance of all
personal and public danger, must have been of the highest order
of personal and public intrepidity; and the patriotism which, in
every advance of his official distinctions, and every act of his
ministerial duty, directed his steps, as it then raised him above all
the imputations of party, now retains his memory in that elevation,
which partisanship can no more reach than it can comprehend.
Estimable in all the relations of private life, and honourable in all
the trusts of statesmanship, the bitterness of Opposition has never
dared to touch his personal character; and even faction has shown
its sense of his services, by never venturing to insult his tomb. If
the enemies of Ireland remember him with hatred, the historian of
Ireland must record him with honour. If faction in England cannot yet
be reconciled to the man who kept it at bay, it must remember him as
the statesman who was neither to be bought nor baffled; whose life
was a security to the constitution, and whose conduct formed the most
prominent contrast to that of those subsequent possessors of office,
whom it found the means alternately to corrupt and to control.
It is not our wish to offer a rash and groundless panegyric to any
man. We refer simply to the facts--to the eminence of England under
his policy, and to its sudden difficulties under the abandonment
of his principles. We think Lord Castlereagh entitled to the full
tribute which can be paid by national respect to the memory of a
statesman distinguished by courage and conduct, by unblemished
honesty, and by unfailing honour. We think him fully entitled to bear
upon his monument the name of--A GREAT BRITISH MINISTER.
The most passionate avidity for renown cannot desire a nobler name.
FOOTNOTE:
[9] _Memoirs and Correspondence of_ VISCOUNT CASTLEREAGH, (_second_
MARQUIS OF LONDONDERRY.) Edited by his brother, CHARLES VANE, MARQUIS
OF LONDONDERRY. 2 vols. London: Colburn.
A CALL.
There is a cry throughout the land,
The needy loudly ask for bread;
Craving and unappeased they stand,
They cannot all be duly fed.
The rich in vain large alms bestow--
They fail to stem the rising tide
Of want, and beggary, and woe,
That hems them in on every side.
Lo! from the stream that overflows,
Fresh gushing rivulets roll wide,
And far from where their source arose,
They bless the land through which they glide.
Shall Britain let such lesson fail?
Shall not her overburthen'd soil
Afar, where skill and strength avail,
Send forth the hardy sons of toil?
Arise, ye peasants, bold and strong!
Courage! relieve your burthen'd land,
Toward a gracious country throng
That needs the willing heart and hand:
There with a cheerful vigour strive
For the reward denied ye here,
Through wholesome industry to thrive,
With lessening labour, year by year.
Your many children, that ye feel
Here as a burthen on your hands,
There shall enrich ye through their zeal,
And tend your flocks, and till your lands.
No cry for bread shall pierce your ear,
Full harvests shall requite your toil,
And, bounteously your age to cheer,
Shall yield ye corn, and wine, and oil.
Behold the paupers of our land,
By want made dissolute and rude,
With sullen heart and wasted hand
Asking an alms of broken food!
Behold, and snatch them from despair--
Give them for effort a fair field,
With labour their free limbs may bear--
And toil from vice shall be their shield.
And ye whose lot is cast above
Want's perilous and grievous woes!
Be yours a full free work of love,
The debt that man his brother owes.
Bestow not that ye prize the least--
Give knowledge, valour, skill, and worth.
Statesman and soldier, lawyer, priest,
Physician, merchant, go ye forth.
And, Britain's daughters! give your aid,
Arise, make ready, cross the wave!
Ye, for meet help and solace made,
Go forth to cheer, to bless, to save!
Let not the exiles vainly ask
For home and sweet domestic cares;
Fulfil your high and gracious task--
Go forth, join heart and hand with theirs.
And ask ye all, as forth ye go,
The guidance of a light divine,
That through the darkest hours shall glow,
And steadfast in all peril shine.
Go forth with a believing heart,
Your Guard is sure by night and day;
Forth through the wilderness depart--
Ye shall find manna on your way.
JULIA
WHAT IS SPAIN ABOUT?
Whilst France, writhing under self-inflicted wounds, is preserved
from anarchy only by despotism; whilst Germany, convulsed by the
imitative folly of her children, enacts a travestie of Paris
tragedies; and Italy, like a froward child, screaming to go alone
before she can walk, kicks at her leading-strings, and falls upon
her nose--the affairs of a third-rate power, such as Spain has
dwindled into, have naturally enough been overlooked and forgotten.
It is time to recur to them for a moment. Spain has once been, and
yet again may be, a leading member of the European family. Under a
better government, she again may see days of prosperity and peace.
Again her merchant-fleets may cover the seas, her traders be renowned
for enterprise and wealth, her population be commensurate with the
extent and productiveness of her territory. And this may occur whilst
nations, but yesterday paramount in riches and power, sink by their
own madness into impotence and poverty. Her rise will not be more
astonishing than their decadence.
At present, it appears the destiny of Spain to be misgoverned at home
and misunderstood abroad. The insurrection now budding into life and
vigour in so many of her provinces illustrates this proposition.
Originating in the grossest maladministration, out of Spain its
scope and nature, and the possible importance of its results, are
misconceived and underrated. It differs from any previous revolt
since the death of Ferdinand VII., inasmuch as it is less the
effort of a party, striving for the success of a principle and a
man, than the uprising of a nation struggling to shake off the yoke
of a galling and intolerable tyranny. There can be no doubt that
a very large majority of the Spanish people heartily wish success
to the movement against the existing government of the country.
Unfortunately, a majority of this majority confine themselves to
wishing, instead of putting their hand to the work, which then
would soon be done. Their lukewarmness, however, can hardly be
wondered at, when we remember how many of them have sacrificed
property and security to their political convictions, and ruined
themselves in the strife of parties. Of these parties, the two most
numerous, long opposed to each other, and whose tenets once stood
wide as the poles asunder, have forgotten old hatreds, made mutual
sacrifices, and joined heart and hand against the common foe. The
result is, the division of the country into two camps. On the one
hand is the Queen-mother--in whose dexterous fingers Isabella is a
mere puppet--Narvaez, O'Donnell, and the rest of the corrupt cabal
from the Rue de Courcelles. These have possession of the machinery
and _matériel_ of the state. They hold the purse, which places at
their devotion two armies, one of soldiers, the other of policemen,
_employés_, spies, and venal emissaries of all kinds. To use a simile
appropriate to the times, they have got upon the engine and tender,
coals and water are at their command; but they misguide the train and
ill-treat the passengers, clamorous for escape from their control.
Spain, let Madrid papers argue and deny as they will, is in a state
of general fermentation and violent discontent; on the brink of a
convulsion which may very possibly end in the ousting of Isabella
II., and in the enthronement of her cousin, the Count de Montemolin.
In Spain a republic is an impossibility, and almost without
partisans; and if the present queen be swept away by the tide of
national indignation against her unscrupulous mother, the crown must
naturally devolve upon the son of Don Carlos. At least, he is the
only eligible candidate--we may even say, the only possible one. Don
Francisco, the Incapable, would of course depart with his wife; his
brother, Don Enrique, convicted of instability and of treachery to
his party, would have nobody's support; and the Duke of Montpensier
is so totally out of the question, so wholly without adherents
as an aspirant to the Spanish throne, that we have difficulty in
crediting a statement confidently made by persons worthy of belief,
that the recent victim of a great revolution still directs, from his
retirement in this country, intrigues designed to place a crown upon
the head of the youngest hope of the house of Orleans. On the other
hand, the Carlist party is still strong in Spain--much stronger,
comparatively speaking, than it was two or three years ago; for it
has clung together and preserved its integrity, whilst other parties
have split and become dismembered. And although the bulk of the
Spanish people may be less anxious to get any one man, or set of
men, into power, than to get rid of those who at present so brutally
roughride them; yet the conviction has been gradually gaining
strength that, by character, education, and fair promises, the Count
de Montemolin offers the best guarantees for that firm, impartial,
and just government, under which alone is there a chance of Spain
being raised from her present sunken and unprosperous condition. The
Progresistas, who fiercely hated and fought against the father, rally
round the son, persuaded that from Isabella, so long their idol, they
would in vain look for a realisation of their political programme. Of
their cordial understanding and co-operation with the Carlists there
now can hardly exist a doubt. A very brief retrospect will suffice to
explain its causes and foundation.
When Louis Philippe completed the job of the Spanish marriages,
the Carlists--who, although grievously stricken and disheartened
by the treaty of Bergara, had never entirely ceased to labour for
the attainment of their one great end--rested upon their arms,
and awaited in comparative inaction the dawn of better days. They
abandoned not hope, nor abjured intrigue; but they may be said to
have ceased, for a while, to conspire. In their fallen state, with
their slender resources, what could they do against the puissant King
of the French? For he it was against whom they must contend, did they
venture to assail the throne of Isabella, and to dispute the rule of
Christina. In England, too, their old enemies, the Whigs, had just
come into power; the name of Palmerston was a sound of ill omen to
Carlist ears; Bilbao and British marines, Passages and Commodore Hay,
were words inseparably coupled, and pregnant with fatal memories
to the upholders of legitimacy in Spain. Supposing that, by dint
of indefatigable exertions, they succeeded in raising funds, in
mustering an army, ill entering Spain sword in hand--forthwith they
were met by that ugly and unnatural monster, the Quadruple Alliance,
waiting, open-mouthed, to blast them to the four winds of heaven.
An attempt, under such circumstances, would have been worse than
useless; it would have been squandering a chance, and the Carlists
had none to throw away. So they waited and watched. Meanwhile, what
did the rulers of Spain--the persons governing behind the mask of
that poor, ill-brought-up, ill-used princess, Isabella? It was
natural to suppose that, having many enemies in the country--many
persons and parties whose ambitions and interests were checked
and thwarted by their ascendency--they would endeavour, as far as
possible, to conciliate and gain over these, or at any rate to secure
the support of the masses, by moderation and good government. A very
moderate amount of this latter, be it observed, would have sufficed
to gain them popularity, and to give stability to their reign. The
nation had endured so much--had suffered so terribly from civil wars,
rebellions, reactions, and the like--that all they expected, almost
all they asked, was to be kicked gently. They dared not think the
screw would be altogether taken off; but, considering the damaged
state of their articulations, they did hope it would be a little
eased. A man who had undergone a course of knout, might look upon
a cat-o'-nine tails as a blessed exchange, and be ready to hug the
drummers who applied it. This was exactly the case with Spain, long
drained by war-contributions and ravaged by contending factions.
From her state of exhaustion and suffering she had not had time to
recover during the honest and conscientious, but brief and too gentle
rule of Espartero. Never was there a finer chance for a party coming
into power than the Christinos or Moderados had, when they seized
the reins. The ball was at their foot, and they had but to pick it
up. Instead of that, they kicked it away. A little of the moderation
their political designation implies--a little, a very little, of
the patriotism and disinterestedness always so loud in their mouths,
and so wanting in their deeds, and they might have won the hearts
of their weary, war-worn countrymen. That moderation--they had it
not, and when vaunting their patriotism they thought only of their
profit. No sooner were they in power than they abandoned themselves
to their vicious instincts, and thought but of filling their pockets.
Christina reverted to her old system of unscrupulous appropriation;
Narvaez, having filled the higher military grades with his creatures,
and made the army his own by pampering and flattery, gave free play
to the unbounded brutality of his nature. Universal corruption became
the order of the day, extending through every administration, from
the minister of the crown down to subalterns and clerks. The revenue,
increasing in the very teeth of Spanish financiers--and which, by
the commonest honesty and the most ordinary amount of ability, might
soon have been rendered sufficient to meet the expenditure of the
country, and the long-neglected claims of the foreign creditor--was
so extravagantly collected, and paid tribute to so many infamous
peculators, that it was hardly recognisable in the reduced form in
which it ultimately reached the treasury. The country groaned, the
honest were indignant, the oppressed murmured, the boldest plotted.
Groans and indignation, murmurs and plots, were alike in vain; alike
they were arbitrarily silenced and crushed. Narvaez and his bayonets
were there, keeping the peace; whilst Christina and her friends, with
smooth and smiling countenances, picked up the doubloons. Quick! a
short shrift and a sharp cartridge for the first who speaks above
his breath. This did for a time, and might have done longer, for
in Spain he who holds the purse holds the power: besides which,
the red breeks of King Louis Philippe's cohorts showed menacingly
along the Pyrenees; and Lord Palmerston, although he had been so
scurvily treated in the matter of the marriages, might still, it was
thought, be induced, in case of need, to send a frigate or two, and a
battalion of marines, to protect his old ally Christina, should any
serious rebellion break out. But one morning the Parisians turned
their king out of his house; and the day afterwards, the Spanish
government, whilst labouring under delirium of some kind, ejected
Mr Bulwer from his; thus throwing, as the saying goes, the haft
after the blade, quarrelling with England at the very moment they
most needed her assistance, and remaining exposed, without hope of
succour, to the assaults and machinations of their numerous enemies.
Whereupon there was an immediate cocking of every Carlist beaver in
or out of Spain. The old chiefs, who for six years had starved and
struggled in the cause of their king, (succumbing finally before a
general's treachery rather than to the arms of their foes,) looked
out from the nooks where they long had rusted in retirement or exile,
and more than one was heard, in the words of the old Jacobite song,
To shout to the north, where his leader shall roam--
'Tis time now for Charlie, our king, to come home.
There was a like stir amongst the Progresistas, who were being
hanged, banished and imprisoned by the score, on account of revolts
and disturbances in which they had less share than the secret agents
of their persecutors. Either from presumptuous confidence in their
own strength, or because they deemed they had gone too far to recede,
and that it was too late to adopt a conciliatory policy, the clever
gentlemen in power at Madrid, not content with reviving, by their
insane foreign policy, the hopes of two powerful and hostile parties,
continued to increase the number of their domestic enemies by
persevering in a system of tyranny and persecution. The consequence
has been a coalition from which they have every thing to dread--a
coalition which has been denied by those interested to place it in
doubt, but whose existence each succeeding day renders more manifest.
It may be asked how it is possible for stanch absolutists, such as
the Carlists have always been, to coalesce with men of such liberal
principles as the Progresistas profess. This question is replied
to in three words. When he accepted his father's renunciation in
his favour of his claims upon the crown of Spain, Count Montemolin
did not bind himself to adhere to his father's prejudices, or to
the less tolerant part of his political creed. During nine years'
detention and exile, the young prince, whose adherents claim for him
the rights and title of Charles VI. of Spain, has doubtless become
convinced of the impossibility of ever bringing back the country he
aspires to reign over to the old system of irresponsible absolutism
and priestly tyranny,--a system rendered especially odious by the
weakness and vices of the two last monarchs who governed by it.
The Progresistas, on their part, desire no exclusive favour, no
monopoly of power: compelled to withdraw their support from her they
once enthusiastically defended, they have no other candidate to put
forward. Don Enrique, in whom they once were disposed to confide,
basely sold and betrayed them; and as to Espartero, whose ambition
has been the subject of such fierce diatribes on the part of the
ignorant and the malicious, both in Spain and in England--the idea
of his aspiring to regal power appears too ridiculous, to those
acquainted with his simple tastes and unobtrusive worth, to be for an
instant dwelt upon and seriously refuted. No; all the Progresistas
ask is a free press, elections conducted without bribery or bayonets,
security for persons and property. Do one of these things exist in
Spain now? Let facts reply. We read the answer in the suppression or
silence of every Opposition newspaper; in the packed benches of the
Cortes; in the imprisonment, banishment, and confiscation, without
stated accusation or form of trial, of hundreds of innocent persons.
From this tyranny, than which none can be worse, the Count de
Montemolin promises relief. The Progresistas accept his pledge, and
rally round his standard.