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FORE: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.[See larger version]FORE:This naturally roused the States, who made a very different statement; contending that, by the treaties, every ally was bound to do all in its power to bring the common enemy to terms; that England, being more powerful than Holland, ought to bear a larger share of the burden of the war; yet that the forces of Holland had been in the Netherlands often upwards of a hundred thousand, whilst those of England had not amounted to seventy thousand; that this had prevented the Dutch from sending more soldiers to Spain; and that, whilst England had been at peace in her own territory, they (the Dutch) had suffered severely in the struggle. To this a sharp answer was drawn up by St. John, and despatched on the 8th of March, of which the real gist was that,[3] according to the Dutch, England could never give too much, or the United Provinces too little. Nothing could exceed the bitterness of tone which existed between England and the Allies, with whom it had so long manfully contended against encroaching France; for the whole world felt how unworthily the English generally were acting under the Tory Ministry, and this did not tend to forward the negotiations, which had been going on at Utrecht since the 29th of January. To this conference had been appointed as the British plenipotentiaries, the new Earl of Straffordwhom Swift, a great partisan of the Tory Ministry, pronounced a poor creatureand Robinson, Bishop of Bristol, Lord Privy Seal. On the part of France appeared the Marshal d'Uxelles, the Abb de Polignac, and Mesnager, who had lately been in England settling the preliminaries. On the part of the Dutch were Buys and Vanderdussen; and, besides these, the Emperor, the Duke of Savoy, and the lesser German princes had their representatives.FORE:The next day the Great Mogul went over to the stronger party. He had no further hope of assistance from Sujah Dowlah, and so he rode, with a few followers, to the British camp. He was received most willingly, for, though the British had shown no disposition to recognise his authority, now he was in their hands they acknowledged him as the rightful sovereign of Hindostan, and lost no time in concluding a treaty with him; and, on condition of his yielding certain territories to them, they agreed to put him in possession of Allahabad and the other states of the Nabob of Oude. After this, Munro continuing the war against Sujah Dowlah, endeavoured to take the hill fort of Chunar, in which all the treasures of Cossim were said to be deposited, but failed. On his part, Sujah Dowlah had obtained the assistance of Holkar, a powerful Mahratta chief, and, with this advantage, endeavoured to make a better peace with Munro; but that officer declined treating, unless Cossim and the assassin, Sombre, were first given up to[318] him. Dowlah proposed, instead of this surrender of those who had sought his protection, the usually triumphant argument with the English, a large sum of money. But Munro replied that all the lacs of rupees in Dowlah's treasury would not satisfy him without the surrender of the murderers of his countrymen at Patna. Dowlah, though he would not surrender the fugitives, had no objection to give a secret order for the assassination of Sombre; but Munro equally spurned this base proposal, and the war went on. Munro was victorious, and early in 1765, having reduced the fort of Chunar and scattered Dowlah's army, he entered Allahabad in triumph, and put the Mogul in possession of it.FORE:The debates were very animated, and excited the liveliest interest. The Bill was read the first time by a majority of five. On the 10th of May the House divided on the second reading, which was carried by a majority of twelve, the numbers being, for the Bill, two hundred and thirty-five; noes, two hundred and twenty-three. The exertions made to defeat this Bill were extraordinary. There were twenty-seven pairs of members who appeared in the House. The Duke of York canvassed against it in all directions with the utmost zeal and activity. It was felt that if it passed into law, the admission of Roman Catholics into the Lower House must follow as a matter of course. The Bill, however, was thrown out by the Lords.Of Napoleon's monster army, Marshal Macdonald commanded the left wing; the Austrians were on the right under Schwarzenberg; and the main body consisted of a succession of vast columns commanded by the most famous French generals, including Bessires, Lefebvre, Mortier, Davoust, Oudinot, Ney, Grouchy, King Jerome of Westphalia, Junot, Poniatowski, Regnier, Eugene Viceroy of Italy, etc.; and Murat commanding all the cavalry. Buonaparte led this centre of two hundred and fifty thousand men with his Imperial[42] Guard. To oppose this huge army, composed of numbers and of officers such as the world had not seen before, Alexander had about two hundred and sixty thousand men. He lay at Wilna, with Barclay de Tolly and one hundred and twenty thousand men. In different positions, more northwards, lay Count Essen, Prince Bagration, the Hetman Platoff, with twelve thousand Cossacks; and, watching the Austrian right in Volhynia, lay General Tormasoff, with twenty thousand men. Advancing on them in three vast masses, the French army approached the Niementhe King of Westphalia directing his march on Grodno, the Viceroy of Italy on Pilony, and Buonaparte himself on Nagaraiski, three leagues beyond Kovno. On the 23rd of June the head of Napoleon's column came upon the Niemen, and saw the other bank covered with vast and gloomy forests. As the Emperor rode up to reconnoitre this scene, his horse stumbled and threw him; and a voice, from the crowd behind him, was heard saying, "A bad omen! A Roman would return!" When the head of the column the next morning crossed the river, a single Cossack issued from the solemn woods, and demanded their reason for violating the Russian soil. The soldiers replied, "To beat you, and take Wilna!" The Cossack disappeared, and left all solitary as before. Three days were required to get the army across, and before they could pitch their tents they were assailed by a violent thunderstorm, accompanied by torrents of rain.FORE:SIR RALPH ABERCROMBY. (After the Portrait by J. Hoppner, R.A.)
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FORE:But Austria had not the prudence to guide herself by these considerations. Her ablest statesman, Metternich, and the ablest statesman of France, Talleyrand, had many private conferences with the Russian ambassador, Romanzoff, to endeavour to concert some scheme by which this war could be prevented, but in vain. Austria believed that the time for regaining her position in Germany, Italy, and the Tyrol, was come; and Talleyrand knew that Buonaparte would make no concession to avoid the threatened collision, because it would argue at once a decline of his power. All that he could do, he did, which was on his hasty return to Paris from Spain: he opened communications with Austria, intended to defer the declaration of war for a few months whilst he made his preparations. He had little fear of crushing Austria summarily. He believed that Soult, having driven Sir John Moore out of Spain, would prevent the British from sending[587] another army there; and he was confident that his generals there could speedily reduce the Spaniards to submission. On the other hand, Austria, he knew, could have no assistance from Russia, Prussia, or the other Northern Powers. All he wanted, therefore, was a little time to collect his armies. Austria had made gigantic exertions, and had now on foot a greater host than she had ever brought into the field before. It was said to comprehend half a million of men, two hundred thousand of whom were under the command of the Emperor's brother, the Archduke Charles, and posted in Austria to defend the main body of the empire. Another large army was, under the command of the Archduke John, in Carinthia and Carniola, ready to descend on the north of Italy; and a third was posted in Galicia, under the Archduke Ferdinand, to defend Poland. John was to co-operate with Charles through the defiles of the Tyrol, which, having been given over, by the pressure of Buonaparte at the Treaty of Pressburg, to Bavaria, was ready to rise and renew its ancient and devoted union with Austria.FORE:Whilst these violent dissensions had sprung up from the French Revolution, Wilberforce and his coadjutors had been active in their exertions to abolish the Slave Trade. Thomas Clarkson, now devoted heart and soul to this object, was, with Dr. Dickson, sent out by the parent Anti-Slavery Society through the country, to call into life provincial societies and committees, and found themselves zealously supported and warmly welcomed by philanthropists, and especially by the Society of Friends. They circulated the evidence taken before the House of Commons' Committee, and made a great impression. On the other hand, the French Revolution proved as antagonistic to the cause of the abolitionists as it had to the friendship of Burke and Fox. The dreadful insurrection in St. Domingo was attributed to the formation of the Society in Paris of Les Amis des Noirs, and many otherwise enlightened men took the alarm, lest similar scenes in our West Indian colonies should be the result of the doctrines of the abolitionists. Few persons could be found willing to entertain the idea of immediate abolition of the trade in slaves; and even Dr. Parr, though a great Whig and adherent of Fox, declared that these Utopian schemes of liberty to blacks were alarming to serious men. Wilberforce was earnestly entreated to reconsider his plan; he was assured that immediate abolition would not pass the Commons, nor even gradual abolition the Lords. Wilberforce, however, could not be deterred from bringing on the question. On the 18th of April he moved for leave to bring in a Bill to prevent the introduction of any more slaves into our colonies. Besides showing the cruelties practised in the collection and transmission of negroes, he brought forward evidence to prove that, so far from this trade being, as had been represented before the Committee of the Commons, the nursery of British seamen, it was their grave. He showed that of twelve thousand two hundred and sixty-three men employed in it, two thousand six hundred and forty-five had been lost in twelve months. This was calculated to produce far less effect than the surrender of hundreds of thousands of negroes, inasmuch as profit and loss was a more telling argument with the slave traders than mere humanity; and they exerted all their influence in defence of their traffic. Wilberforce added that even had this trade really been a beneficial one as regarded mere political economy, there was a smell of blood about it that all the perfumes of Arabia could not disguise. He was ably supported by Fox and Pitt; but, on this occasion, the Prime Minister could not command[381] his large majority; the motion was lost by one hundred and sixty-three against eighty-eight.In April De Crillon arrived, and was followed by the Spanish and French troops from Minorca. From eighteen to twenty thousand men were added to the army already encamped before the place, and the most able engineers were engaged from almost all countries of Europe, at extravagant salaries, and great rewards were offered for inventions which might demolish the formidable works of the English on the rock. Nearly forty thousand troops were now congregated against the old fortress. One hundred and seventy pieces of heavy artillery were directed against it, and immense stores of ammunition were accumulated for this final and triumphant achievement. On the other hand, General Elliot had now repaired and strengthened his defences more than ever. His garrison was augmented to seven thousand men, including a marine brigade; eighty pieces of cannon frowned from the walls, and the bulk of his men were of the best and most seasoned kind.FORE:The fame of this battle, thus fought without any advantage of ground, and with such a preponderance on the side of the French, produced a deep impression both in Great Britain and France. The major part of the British side was composed of British troops, most of the Portuguese having been sent to Marshal Beresford, and this gave a vivid idea of the relative efficiency of British and French troops. Buonaparte had already satisfied himself that Massena was not the man to cope with Wellington, and Marshal Marmont was on the way to supersede him when this battle was fought, but he could only continue the flight of Massena, and take up his headquarters at Salamanca. With Massena returned to France also Ney, Junot, and Loison; King Joseph had gone there before; and the accounts which these generals were candid enough to give, in conversation, of the state of things in Spain, spread a very gloomy feeling through the circles of Paris.
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