CHAP. I. causes had arisen mainly from the magnitude of the successes with which the war had been attended. The great aristocratic party, whether in land or money, had been so triumphant that they deemed their power beyond the reach of attack; compromise, concession, or even consideration for their opponents, was out of the question. They neither considered their interests in legislation, nor had regard to their feelings in manner. The capital which had been realised during the war had been so great, the influence of the monied interest so powerful, that the legislature became affected by their desires. The Monetary Bill of 1819, before many years had elapsed, added fifty per cent to the value of money, and weight of debts and taxes, and took as much from the remuneration of industry. Hence a total change in the feelings, influences, and political relations of society. The territorial aristocracy was weakened as much as the commercial was aggrandised; small landed proprietors were generally ruined from the fall of prices; the magnates stood forth in increased lustre from the enhanced value of their revenues. Industry was querulous, from long-continued suffering; wealth ambitious, from sudden exaltation. Political power was coveted in one class, from the excess of its riches; in another, from the depth of its misery. The emancipation of the Roman Catholics severed the last bond, that of a common religion, which had hitherto held together the different classes, and imprinted on the minds of a large and sincere class a thirst for vengeance, which overwhelmed every consideration of reason. The result of these concurring causes was that the institutions of England were essentially altered by the earthquake of 1830, and a new class elevated to supreme power by means, bloodless indeed, but scarcely less violent than the revolution which had overturned Charles X. The revolution of 1830 elevated the middle class to the direction of affairs, and the Reform Bill in England vested the same class in effect with supreme power in the I. 7. Great effects volution in tries. British empire. Vast consequences followed this all-im- CHAP. portant change in both countries. For the first time in the history of mankind, the experiment was made of vesting the electoral franchise, not in a varied and limited class as of the Rein old England, or in the whole citizens, as in revolu- both countionary France or America, but in persons possessed only of a certain money qualification. The franchise was not materially changed in France; but the general arming of the national guard, and the revolutionary origin of the new government, effectually secured attention to the wishes of the burgher aristocracy. In England they were at once vested with the command of the state, for the House of Commons was returned by a million of electors, who voted for 658 members, of whom two-thirds were the representatives of boroughs, and two-thirds of their constituents shopkeepers, or persons whom they influenced. Thence consequences of incalculable importance in both countries, and effects which have left indelible traces in the future history of mankind. 8. alliance France and lowed this The first effect of this identity of feeling and interest, in the class then for the first time intrusted with the Political practical direction of affairs in both countries, was a close between political alliance between their governments, and an England, entire change in the foreign policy of Great Britain. which fol To the vehement hostility and ceaseless rivalry of four change. centuries succeeded an alliance sincere and cordial at the time, though, like other intimacies founded on identity of passion, not of interest, it might be doubted whether it would survive the emotions which gave it birth. In the mean time, however, the effects of this alliance were novel, and in the highest degree important. When the lords of the earth and the sea united, no power in Europe ventured to confront them; the peace of Europe was preserved by their union. The Czar, in full march towards Paris, was arrested on the Vistula; he found ample employment for his arms in resisting the efforts of the Poles to restore their much-loved nationality. Aus 1. CHAP. tria and Prussia were too much occupied with the surveillance of the discontented in their own diminions to think of renewing the crusade of 1813; nor did they venture to do so when the forces of England were united to those of France. The consequence was that the march of revolution was unresisted in Western Europe, and an entire change was effected in the institutions and dynasties on the throne in its principal continental states. The Orleans family continued firmly, and to all appearance permanently, seated on the throne of France; Belgium was revolutionised, torn from the monarchy of the Netherlands, and the Cobourg family seated on its throne; the monarchies of Spain and Portugal were overturned, and a revolutionary dynasty of queens placed on their thrones, in direct violation of the Treaty of Utrecht; while in the east of Europe the last remnants of Polish nationality were extinguished on the banks of the Vistula. Durable interests were overlooked, ancient alliances broken, long-established rivalries forgotten, in the fleeting passions of the moment. Confederacies the most opposite to the lasting policy of the very nations who contracted them, were not only formed, but acted upon. Europe beheld with astonishment the arms of Prussia united with those of Russia to destroy the barrier of the Continent against the Muscovite power on the Sarmatian plains; the Leopards of England joined to the tricolor standard to wrest Antwerp from Holland, and secure the throne of the Netherlands to a son-in-law of France; and the scarlet uniforms blended with the ensigns of revolution to beat down the liberties of the Basque provinces, and prepare the heiress of Spain for the arms of a son of France, on the very theatre of Wellington's triumphs. Novel and extraordinary as were the results of the Revolution of 1830 upon the political relations of Europe, its effects upon the colonial empire of England, and, through it, upon the future destinies of the human spe For I. 9. Effects of upon the empire of cies, were still greater and more important. To the end CHAP. of the world, the consequences of the change in the policy of England will be felt in every quarter of the globe. Its first effect was to bring about the emancipation of the the change negroes in the West Indies. Eight hundred thousand colonial slaves in the British colonies, in that quarter of the globe, England. received the perilous gift of unconditional freedom. the first time in the history of mankind, the experiment was made, of extending the institutions of Japhet to the sons of Ham. As a natural result of so vast and sudden a change, and of the conferring of the institutions of the Anglo-Saxons upon unlettered savages, the proprietors of those noble colonies were ruined, their affections alienated, and the authority of the mother country preserved only by the terror of arms. Canada shared in the moral earthquake which shook the globe; and that noble offshoot of the empire was alone preserved to Great Britain by the courage of its soldiers, and the loyalty of its English and Highland citizens. Australia rapidly advanced in wealth, industry, and population during these eventful years; every commercial crisis which paralysed industry, every social struggle which excited hope, every successful innovation which diminished security, added to the stream of hardy and enterprising emigrants who crowded to its shores. New Zealand was added to the already colossal empire of England in Oceania; and it was already apparent that the foundations were laid in a fifth hemisphere of another nation destined to rival, perhaps eclipse, Europe itself in the career of human improvement. For the first time in the history of mankind, the course of advancement ceased to be from East to West; but it was not destined to be arrested by the Rocky Mountains ;-the mighty day of four thousand years was drawing to its close; but before its light was extinguished in the West, civilisation had returned to the land of its birth; and ere its orb had set in the waves of the Pacific, the sun of knowledge was illuminating the isles of the Eastern Sea. CHAP. I. 10. Still greater the Free Great and important as were these results of the social convulsions of France and England in the first instance, they sank into insignificance compared to those which folresults of lowed the change in the commercial policy, and the intrade policy creased stringency of the monetary laws of Great Britain. of England. The effect of these all-important measures, from which so much was expected, and so little, save suffering, received, was to augment to an extraordinary and unparalleled degree the outward tendency of the British people. The agricultural population, especially in Ireland, were violently torn up from the land of their birth by woeful suffering; a famine of the thirteenth appeared amidst the population of the nineteenth century; and to this terrible, but transient, source of suffering, was superadded the lasting discouragement arising from the virtual closing of the market of England to their produce, by the inundation of grain from foreign states. When the barriers raised by human regulations were thrown down, the eternal laws of nature appeared in full operation; the old and rich state can always undersell the young and poor one in manufactures, and is always undersold by it in agricultural produce. The fate of old Rome apparently was reserved for Great Britain; the harvests of Poland, the Ukraine, and America, began to prostrate agriculture in the British Isles as effectually as those of Sicily, Libya, and Egypt had done that of the old Patrimony of the Legions; and after the lapse of eighteen hundred years, the same effects appeared. The great cities flourished, but the country decayed; the exportation of human beings, and the importation of human food, kept up a gainful traffic in the seaport towns; but it was every day more and more gliding into the hands of the foreigners; and while exports and imports were constantly increasing, the mainstay of national strength, the cultivation of the soil, was rapidly declining. The effects upon the strength, resources, and population of the empire, and the growth of its colonial possessions, were equally important. Europe, before the middle of |