VII. 1811. monetary crises of 1825, 1838, 1847, and 1857, hap- CHAP. pening on any of these occasions, to form a conception of what must have occurred if the recommendation of the Bullion Committee had been carried into effect. Ruin, irrecoverable ruin, to British credit and finances, must have been the result, and with it the destruction of the whole system of European opposition to French domination on the Continent, at the very moment when it had been organised with the fairest prospect of success! If ever a country was saved by the efforts of individual men, it was by Mr Vansittart and Lord Castlereagh on this occasion. 33. reagh's the battle Ill health prevented Lord Castlereagh from taking a part in the debate on the Peninsular triumphs, and the Lord Castlevote of thanks to Lord Wellington for the campaign of speech on 1810, when several of the Opposition, and in particular of Albuera. Mr Whitbread, so honourably retracted their former strictures on his military conduct. But on 7th June 1811, on occasion of the thanks of Parliament being moved to General Beresford for the victory of Albuera, he said: "Lord Wellington was under the necessity of showing a front to the enemy both at Badajos and Almeida, and it fell to General Beresford to decide whether he should wait for the reinforcements under Wellington, which he knew were approaching, or act with promptitude on the moment, trusting to his own resources. He took the manly and judicious step. A more glorious battle than that which ensued never was fought by the British, as was too fatally proved by the loss, which was as great, considering the numbers engaged, as even in the desperate struggle at Assaye. The intercepted letter of Soult proved how severely he had suffered the British army remained in possession of the field, and was enabled to advance a corps against the retreating enemy. Deeply as every one must lament the heavy loss sustained in this memorable battle, yet we should err if we compared it with the results merely of the battle itself. The true CHAP. VII. 1811. 34. test was to weigh it against the advantages of the whole campaign; and if this was done, it would be found that in no campaign had the sacrifice of human life been so small compared with the results produced by it. Lord Wellington had proved himself to be as sparing of the life of the soldier as he was careful of his health; and, checking his propensity to seek for glory, he bent his whole efforts to economising the existence of those placed under his command. The proportion of loss during the whole Peninsular campaign between the British and French armies, was immeasurably in favour of the former. Glorious as the struggle in Portugal had been, a great feature would be awanting if, after its conclusion, a trial of strength between the rival nations had not taken place upon the frontier. "Up to the present moment, France has made but little Concluded. real impression upon Spain. After all her victories, she has never been able to send forward one Spanish regiment to assist in the subjugation of the country. Whatever defects may exist in her military system, we must all recollect that Spain is not divided: she is not conquered. The same peculiarities, it may be defects, in her national character, which render her unmanageable in the hands of her friends, and incapable of efficient military co-operation, render her only the more indomitable towards her enemies. No nation has ever proved more true to herself than Spain, under circumstances the most adverse, has done. What might not be expected from her soldiers if they were taken into British pay, and disciplined by British officers, as the Portuguese have been! That alternative has never yet been presented to them, and it is doubtful whether but for that advantage the Portuguese would have offered the same resistance to the enemy that the Spaniards had done. But I do not wish to draw any invidious comparisons : both nations are fighting for their liberties; they have both displayed great energies; and I will only repeat what has been already said, that this great contest must be run out, and we must do our utmost in it. No man can predict VII. 1811. the final result; but the best way in which we can dis- CHAP. charge our duty to posterity, and that which we owe to the present, is by doing our best, and leaving the rest in the hands of Providence. No one can doubt that the war as at present maintained is a great burden, but is any man 1 Parl. Deb. prepared to say that the time has arrived when it should 527. be abandoned?"1 This 1 xx. 526, tress in time. Lord Castlereagh strongly felt that at this juncture 35. (June 7, 1811) the war had become burdensome; for the Great disfact was, that it had become so to such a degree that even Great Brithe most sanguine were beginning to be inspired with tain at this desponding views in regard to its ultimate result. arose, not so much from any want of success in the field, or doubts as to our ability to maintain the Peninsular contest and to defend Portugal, as from the exhausting effects of the struggle upon the industry and commerce of the country, and the multitudes of persons who had been reduced to short time, or thrown out of employment altogether, in consequence of the combined effect of Napoleon's Continental System, and the British retaliatory policy of the Orders in Council. It is well known that immediately after entering Berlin, in October 1806, in consequence of the battle of Jena, Napoleon, irritated by the blockades. of the harbours in the north of Germany, which Mr Fox had proclaimed without, as he said, any sufficient force at sea to maintain it, issued the famous Berlin Decree, which declared all British goods found anywhere on the Continent, in the territories in alliance with France, or occupied by French armies, liable to confiscation, and ordered them to be instantly committed to the flames; and this was followed next year by a decree in similar, and still more stringent terms, issued from Milan, on the Emperor's return from the Polish war, after the battle of Friedland and treaty of Tilsit. These decrees by no means remained a dead letter. They were instantly acted upon with the utmost rigour in every place subject to the control of the French armies; and as that embraced at that period the CHAP. Whole territory from Cadiz to the Niemen, this amounted VII. to an entire exclusion of British commerce, except in re1811. gard to that part of it, comparatively trifling, which could be introduced by smuggling. 36. in Council issued by the British Government. It was very natural that the British Government, seeing The Orders such extreme measures adopted by the enemy, and the industry of its people so much injured by their effects, should have thought of retaliating in kind, and causing the subjects of the French Emperor to feel in their own persons the evils that the novel and outrageous method of war which he had adopted was causing them to experience. By so doing they might hope either to oblige him to return to the usual system of hostility between belligerent nations; or, if he persevered in it, to excite so widespread and intense a feeling of indignation against his government as might eventually lead to his overthrow. It was with this view that the British Orders in Council were issued, which in effect declared every vessel, with its cargo, good prize on the high seas, bound for any harbour under the French power, which had not touched at a British harbour. Thus Napoleon confiscated the vessels and their cargo if they had come from England, and the British Government confiscated them if they had not. It was difficult to see how neutral vessels or cargoes could avoid confiscation at the hand of one or other of these powers, or how any trade from foreign parts could by possibility be carried on. In fact, it would have been totally extirpated had not the licensing system been introduced, which, in consideration of large sums paid to the belligerent powers, granted licences from both to particular parties, securing them from capture or detention. As Lord Castlereagh was Minister at War, not for Foreign Affairs, at the time when this ruthless system of hostility was introduced, he was not peculiarly responsible for it; but its energetic character entirely coincided with his disposition; and although the Orders in Council were the work of the whole Cabinet, he was too manly not to take his full share of the responsibility connected with their CHAP. adoption. VII. 1811. 37. in Great Had there been no neutral powers whose trade was considerable to be affected by these measures, it was pos- Their disas sible that the retaliatory system of the British Government trous effects might have proved effective, and that Napoleon, finding Britain. he suffered more than his enemies from these extreme measures, might have been led to abandon them. But nothing is more certain than that, if continental Europe was affected, England was injured in a still greater degree. This might have been anticipated when a struggle who was to starve first began. The commercial emporium, the manufacturing state, which exported its produce to all other countries, suffered more from a stoppage of trade than the other nations, which each in a lesser degree shared its advantages. In the one case the misery was concentrated in the centre; in the other it was diffused over the circumference. Sugar and coffee rose 100 per cent in the Continental markets, but bread and beef rose nearly as much in the British. Wheat was 105s. a-quarter, meat 1s. a-pound in England. Worse than this, the great diminution of the foreign trade deprived a great part of the working classes of the means of purchasing provisions at these extravagant rates. The exports of the empire, which, in 1809, in consequence of the withdrawing of the French Coast Guards from the north of Germany, after the battle of Aspern, had risen to £46,000,000, sank in 1811 to £29,000,000, lower than they had been since the renewal of the war. The consequence was, that distress in all the manufacturing districts was universal and intense beyond all precedent; and the unhappy operatives, ascribing their misery to the introduction of machinery, formed combinations in many places for its destruction; and the disorders thence arising were quelled only by the interposition of the military, and repeated melancholy exhibitions on the scaffold. Experience soon showed that the greater part of this |