TWO:On the 17th of October the peace between France and Austria was definitively signed at Campo Formio. To France Austria ceded Belgium, the left bank of the Rhine, including Mayence, the Ionian islands, and the Venetian possessions in Albania, both of which really belonged to Venice. Venice itself, and its territory as far as the Adige, with Istria and Venetian Dalmatia on the other side of the Adriatic, were made over to Austria without ceremony. The Milan and Mantuan states were given up by Austria, with Modena, Massa, Carrara; and the papal provinces of Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna, and the rest of them, as far as the Rubicon, were included in a new so-called Cisalpine Republic belonging to France. Tuscany, Parma, Rome, and Naples were still called Italian, but were as much, Naples excepted, in the power of France as the rest. In fact, except Venetia, which Austria secured, all Italy except Naples was subjected to the French, and the regular process of democratising was going on, in the latter kingdom, for an early seizure.
THREE:Calder had been sent after Nelson, with the hope that, if he missed Villeneuve and Gravina, he (Calder) might fall in with and intercept them. Scarcely was he under sail, when he discovered this fleet, on the 22nd of July, about thirty-nine leagues north-west of Cape Finisterre. Villeneuve and Gravina were congratulating themselves on having made their voyage in safety, when this British squadron stood in their way. They were twenty sail of the line, seven frigates, and two brigs; and Calder had only fifteen sail of the line, two frigates, and two smaller craft. The Spanish and French admirals endeavoured to give them the slip, and get into Ferrol; but Calder would not permit this. He compelled them to fight, and the battle lasted from half-past four in the afternoon till half-past nine in the evening. Calder captured two sail of the line, and killed and wounded between five hundred and six hundred men. He himself lost thirty-nine killed, and he had a hundred and fifty-nine wounded, and his ships, some of them, had suffered much damage. A thick fog parted the combatants for the night, and at daybreak the hostile fleets were distant from each other about seventeen miles. Villeneuve had the wind, and made as if he would renew the battle, but did not; and the same happened on the following day, when he sheered off, and Calder turned homewards without pursuing them. This action, though a victory, was regarded, both in France and England, as inferior to what was expected of British naval commanders. The French claimed a success; the English public murmured at Calder's conduct. They said, "What would Nelson have done had he been there?" Such was the popular discontent, that Sir Robert Calder demanded that his conduct should be submitted to a court-martial, and the verdict of the court confirmed the outcry:"This court," it said, "are of opinion that on the part of Admiral Sir Robert Calder there was no cowardice or disaffection, but error in judgment, for which he deserves to be severely reprimanded, and he is hereby severely reprimanded accordingly."[510] Buonaparte, however, was greatly exasperated at the result, and at Villeneuve putting into Ferrol instead of getting into Brest, where Napoleon wanted him to join the rest of the fleet. After this, endeavouring to obey the Emperor's positive orders to reach Brest, he put to sea, but was glad to run for Cadiz instead, on account of the union of Admiral Collingwood with Calder's fleet. In that harbour now lay five-and-thirty sail of the line, and Collingwood kept watch over them. Indeed, being soon reinforced, he kept a blockade on all the Spanish ports between Cadiz and Algeciras, in the Strait of Gibraltar. It was at this juncture that Napoleon came to the conclusion that it was hopeless to attempt the invasion of England.
THREE:As in the whole history of the world, perhaps, so great a calamity as the Irish famine never called for sympathy and relief, so never was a more generous response elicited by any appeal to humanity. The Government and the Legislature did all that was possible with the means at their disposal, and the machinery that already existed, or could be hastily constructed, to meet the overwhelming emergency. The newly established Poor Law system, though useful as far as it went, was quite inadequate to meet such great distress. It had been passed while the country was comparatively prosperous, and contained no provision for such a social disorganisation as this famine. By the Acts of 1 and 2 Victoria, c. 56, no outdoor relief whatever could be given in any circumstances. The size of the unions was also a great impediment to the working of the Poor Law. They were three times the extent of the corresponding divisions in England. In Munster and[544] Connaught, where there was the greatest amount of destitution and the least amount of local agency available for its relief, the unions were much larger than in the more favoured provinces of Ulster and Leinster. The union of Ballina comprised a region of upwards of half a million acres, and within its desert tracts the famine assumed its most appalling form, the workhouse being more than forty miles distant from some of the sufferers. As a measure of precaution, the Government had secretly imported and stored a large quantity of Indian corn, as a cheap substitute for the potato, which would have served the purpose much better had the people been instructed in the best modes of cooking it. It was placed in commissariat dep?ts along the western coast of the island, where the people were not likely to be supplied on reasonable terms through the ordinary channels of trade. The public works consisted principally of roads, on which the people were employed as a sort of supplement to the Poor Law. Half the cost was a free grant from the Treasury, and the other half was charged upon the barony in which the works were undertaken. The expense incurred under the Labour Rate Act, 9 and 10 Victoria, c. 107," amounted to 4,766,789. It was almost universally admitted, when the pressure was over, that the system of public works adopted was a great mistake; and it seems wonderful that such grievous blunders could have been made with so many able statesmen and political economists at the head of affairs and in the service of the Government. The public works undertaken consisted in the breaking up of good roads to level hills and fill hollows, and the opening of new roads in places where they were not requiredwork which the people felt to be useless, and which they performed only under strong compulsion, being obliged to walk to them in all weathers for miles, in order to earn the price of a breakfast of Indian meal. Had the labour thus comparatively wasted been devoted to the draining, subsoiling, and fencing of the farms, connected with a comprehensive system of arterial drainage, immense and lasting benefit to the country would have been the result, especially as works so well calculated to ameliorate the soil and guard against the moisture of the climate might have been connected with a system of instruction in agricultural matters of which the peasantry stood so much in need, and to the removal of the gross ignorance which had so largely contributed to bring about the famine. As it was, enormous sums were wasted. Much needless hardship was inflicted on the starving people in compelling them to work in frost and rain when they were scarcely able to walk, and, after all the vast outlay, very few traces of it remained in permanent improvements on the face of the country. The system of Government relief works failed chiefly through the same difficulty which impedes every mode of relief, whether public or privatenamely, the want of machinery to work it. It was impossible suddenly to procure an efficient staff of officers for an undertaking of such enormous magnitudethe employment of a whole people. The overseers were necessarily selected in haste; many of them were corrupt, and encouraged the misconduct of the labourers. In many cases the relief committees, unable to prevent maladministration, yielded to the torrent of corruption, and individual members only sought to benefit their own dependents. The people everywhere flocked to the public works; labourers, cottiers, artisans, fishermen, farmers, men, women, and childrenall, whether destitute or not, sought for a share of the public money. In such a crowd it was almost impossible to discriminate properly. They congregated in masses on the roads, idling under the name of work, the really destitute often unheeded and unrelieved because they had no friend to recommend them. All the ordinary employments were neglected; there was no fishing, no gathering of seaweed, no collecting of manure. The men who had employment feared to lose it by absenting themselves for any other object; those unemployed spent their time in seeking to obtain it. The whole industry of the country seemed to be engaged in road-making. It became absolutely necessary to put an end to it, or the cultivation of the land would be neglected. Works undertaken on the spur of the momentnot because they were needful, but merely to employ the peoplewere in many cases ill-chosen, and the execution equally defective. The workers, desirous to protect their employment, were only anxious to give as little labour as possible, in which their overlookers or gangers in many cases heartily agreed. The favouritism, the intimidation, the wholesale jobbing practised in many cases were shockingly demoralising. The problem was to support 2,000,000 or 3,000,000 of destitute persons, and this was in a great measure effected, though at an enormous cost to the empire.
THREE:But the most remarkable growth of religion was through the instrumentality of the Wesleyan Methodists. These spread over all the country, through town and village, into places where the ministers of the Establishment had fallen into a spiritual sleep from want of rivalry. In Wales they found a great and almost unoccupied field. In Cornwall, where Wesley had been abused and pelted with stones, they became universal, and still continue to astonish the visitor to that county by their extraordinary numbers, almost every Cornish miner being of that sect. Throughout England the spread of Methodism has been a most influential cause of the revival of activity and discipline in the Established Church itself; for it soon became evident that the Church must exert itself, or the body of the people, especially in the country and in manufacturing districts, would be absorbed by the Wesleyan interest.
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