defeat Peel, and on June 25, the day on which the Corn Bill passed the Lords, the Irish Bill was thrown out by the Commons. On the 27th Peel resigned office. 14. The Russell Ministry. 1846-1847.-Lord John Russell had no difficulty this time in forming a ministry, and though his followers were in a minority in the House of Commons, he was sure of the support of Peel and of the Peelites, as those Conservatives were called who had voted with their leader for the abolition of Sir Robert Peel: from the bust by Noble in the the Corn Law. Russell had in 1846 to face a state of things in Ireland even more deplorable than that which had compelled his predecessor in 1845 to abandon Protection. In 1846, the failure of the potato crop was even more complete than it had been in 1845, and at the same time it was found that the system of public works established by Peel had led to gross abuses. Thousands of men who applied to mend the roads made them worse instead of better, whilst they neglected opportunities of working for private persons, because the public authorities exacted less work and gave 1847 THE FIRST russelL MINISTRY 933 higher pay than the private employer. Russell did what was possible to check these abuses, and in the session of 1847 he passed a Bill for enabling the guardians to give outdoor relief, which they had been forbidden to do by the Act which in 1838 established a Poor Law (see p. 917). Such a change in the law was imperatively demanded, as in the existing poor-houses there was only room for three out of every hundred starving persons. 15. Irish Emigration. 1847.-No poor law, however, could do more than mitigate the consequences of famine, especially as the slow forms of parliamentary procedure delayed the remedy, and as those who had to administer the new law were interested rather in keeping rates down than in saving life. The misery was too wide-spread to be much allayed by any remedy, and such English charity as was added to the relief provided by law was almost as ineffectual. Thousands perished by starvation, and many thousands more emigrated to America, many of them perishing on board ship from disease engendered in bodies enfeebled by previous want of nourishment. Those who reached America preserved and handed down to their children a hatred of the English name and government, to which they attributed their sufferings. By starvation and emigration the population of Ireland fell from 8,000,000 to 5,000,000. 16. Landlord and Tenant in Ireland. 1847. Russell was statesman enough to perceive that the legal relations between landlord and tenant needed alteration, if the deep-seated causes of Irish misery were to be removed. Many of the landlords were hopelessly in debt. Out of a gross rental of 17,000,000l. 9,000,000l. was mortgaged, and the remaining 8,000,000l. was insufficient to provide for the support of the starving poor and to meet the expenses of the landlords. Impoverished landlords were consequently tempted to bear hardly on their tenants. Improvements in the English sense were few, but it often happened that a poor tenant on a wild hillside would erect a fence or clear off the stones from his rough farm, thus making it more productive than before. In too many cases the landlord, or more often the landlord's agent when the landlord was an absentee, pounced down on the struggling improver, and either forced him to pay a higher rent, or evicted him in order to replace him by someone who offered more. The evicted tenant not unfrequently revenged himself by murdering the landlord or his agent, or else the new tenant who had ousted him from his holding. 17. The Encumbered Estates Act. 1848.-Russell proposed to meet the evil by a double remedy. On the one hand he brought in a Bill which became law in 1848 as the Encumbered Estates Act, for the sale of deeply mortgaged estates to solvent purchasers, in the hope that the new landlords might be sufficiently well off to treat their tenants with consideration. At the same time he proposed another measure to compel landlords to compensate their evicted tenants for improvements which the tenants had themselves made, and he would gladly have supported a further measure which he did not venture even to introduce, forbidding the eviction of any tenant who had held land exceeding a quarter of an acre for more than five years, without compensation for the loss of his tenure. English opinion, however, prevented even the Bill for compensation for actual improvements from becoming law; on the other hand, the Bill for buying out the owners of encumbered estates was readily passed, and was also accompanied by a Coercion Act, milder, indeed, than that which had been proposed by Peel (see p. 931). The Encumbered Estates Act standing alone was a curse rather than a blessing, as many of the indebted landowners had been easy-going, whereas many of the new landowners, having paid down ready money, thought themselves justified in applying purely commercial principles to their relations with the tenants, and exacted from them every penny that could be wrung from men who had no protection for the results of their own industry upon the soil. Those who suffered smarted from a sense of wrong, which in 1848 became stronger and more likely to lead to acts of violence, because in that year the course of affairs in Europe gave superabundant examples of successful resistance to govern ments. 18. European Revolution. 1848.—The year 1848 was a year of European revolution. France expelled Louis Philippe, and established a second republic, based on universal suffrage. In Italy, not only were constitutional reforms forced on the governments, but Charles Albert, king of Sardinia, led an armed attack on the Austrian power in Lombardy and Venice, by which the despotism of the petty sovereigns of Italy had been bolstered up. In Germany, a parliament met at Frankfurt to devise some scheme for uniting in closer bonds the loose confederation which had been established in 1815 (see p. 873), whilst revolutions at Berlin and Vienna led to the adoption of a constitutional system in Prussia and Austria. The demand for constitutional government was everywhere put forth. In France it was associated with socialism; and an attempt was made to set up national workshops in which every artisan 1848 A YEAR OF REVOLUTIONS 935 might find work. In that country, however, there was no aggressive spirit as in 1792, and no attempt was made to change the frontiers of the State. In central Europe and in Italy, on the other hand, dissatisfaction with existing frontiers was the prominent feature. The peoples were there eager to see real nations, of which the component parts were bound together by the tie of common attachment, taking the place of artificial states the creations of past wars and treaties. Hence the populations of the Italian States drew together in a desire for the expulsion of the Austrians, and the populations of the German states drew together in a desire to give a common government to the German nation. In the heterogeneous Austrian empire, however, the idea of nationality acted as a dissolvent. Austrians, Hungarians, and Slavs, who together formed the vast majority of the population, had no love for each other, and before the end of the year Austria and Hungary were at open war. 19. Renewed Trouble in Ireland. 1848.-In Ireland, a number of young men imagined that they could play the part in which O'Connell had failed, and raise up armed resistance against England. One of these, Smith O'Brien, tried to put in practice their teaching by attacking a police station, but he was easily captured, and no attempt was made to follow his example. The 20. The Chartists on Kennington Common. 1848.- In England the Chartists thought the time had come to gain that supremacy for the mass of the nation which had been gained in France. Their leader, Feargus O'Connor, a half-mad member of Parliament, called on enormous numbers of them to meet on April 10 on Kennington Common,' and to carry to the House of Commons a monster petition for the Charter, said to be signed by 5,700,000 persons. government declared the design to be illegal, as crowds are forbidden by law to present petitions, and called on all who would, to serve as special constables-that is to say, to act as policemen for the day. No less than 200,000 enrolled themselves, whereas, when the appointed day came, no more than 25,000 persons assembled on Kennington Common, many of whom were not Chartists. Those who were Chartists formed a procession intending to cross Westminster Bridge. The Duke of Wellington had posted soldiers in the houses on the Middlesex side of the bridge, to be used in case of necessity, but he left the special constables to stop the procession. This they did without difficulty. There was, however, no attempt to stop the presentation of the petition, which was carried in a cab to the 1 Now Kennington Park. House of Commons, and found to bear 2,000 signatures. Many columns of these were, however, in the same handwriting, and some who actually signed it, wrote the names of celebrated persons, such as Prince Albert and the Duke of Wellington, instead of their own. Others called themselves Pugnose, Woodenlegs, Bread-and-cheese, and so forth. For all this there was a large number of Chartists in England; but, on the other hand, there was a still larger number of persons who were resolved that, whatever changes might be made in the constitution, they should not be brought about by the exertion of physical force. 21. European reaction. 1848-1849. The attempt to change existing European order failed as completely on the Continent as it did in England. In December, 1848, the French nation elected Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, a nephew of the first Napoleon, as President for ten years, on the expectation that he would give to the country a quiet and orderly government. Charles Albert, king of Sardinia, taking up arms to drive the Austrians out of Italy, was defeated by them at Custozza in 1848, and at Novara in 1849. After these successive failures he was forced to abdicate in favour of his son, Victor Emmanuel II., who maintained constitutional government in his own kingdom of Sardinia, whilst the Austrians regained Lombardy and Venetia, and restored the absolute governments in the other Italian states, except in the Papal dominions, where a French army restored the absolute government of the Pope. In Germany the Frankfurt parliament tried to erect a constitutional empire, and was dissolved by force. In Prussia, the King, Frederick William IV., got the better of the revolution, though he established a Parliament which, for the present at least, he was able to control. In the Austrian Empire the war between Austria and Hungary was brought to an end by the intervention of a Russian army in favour of Austria, and the constitution of Hungary was abolished. By the end of 1848 reaction prevailed over the whole Continent. 22. The Decline of the Russell Ministry. 1848-1851. In England the ministry was supported, not merely as the representative of order against turbulence, but also as the representative of free-trade against protection. In 1849 the Navigation Act (see pp. 565, 589) was repealed, and foreign shipping admitted to compete with English. Yet the government only maintained itself by depending on the votes of the Peelites, and in 1850 Peel unfortunately died in consequence of a fall from his horse. Later in the year the Pope appointed Roman Catholic bishops to English sees, |