The Evolution of an Empire: A Brief Historical Sketch of England Part 10

And when the measure was finally carried the good old Duke of Wellington said sadly, "We must hope for the best; but the most sanguine cannot believe we shall ever again be as prosperous."

By this Act 56 boroughs were disfranchised, and 43 new ones, with 30 county const.i.tuencies, were created.

[Sidenote: "Reform Bill, 1832"]

It was in the contest over this Reform Bill that the Tories took the name of "Conservatives" and their opponents "Liberals." Its pa.s.sage marks a most important transition in England. The workingman was by it enfranchised, and the House of Commons, which had hitherto represented _property_, thenceforth represented _manhood_.

Nor were political reforms the only ones. Human pity awoke from its lethargy. The penalties for wrongdoing became less brutal, the prisons less terrible. No longer did gaping crowds watch s.h.i.+vering wretches brought out of the jails every Monday morning, in batches of twenty and thirty, to be hung for pilfering or something even less. Little children were lifted out of the mines and factories and chimneys and placed in schools, which also began to be created for the poor.

Numberless ways were devised for making life less miserable for the unfortunate, and for improving the social conditions of toiling men and women.

[Sidenote: Slaves Emanc.i.p.ated, 1833.]

While white slavery in the collieries and factories was thus mitigated, Wilberforce removed the stain of negro slavery from England in securing the pa.s.sage of a Bill which, while compensating the owners (who received 20,000,000 pounds), set 800,000 human beings free (1833).

CHAPTER XIII.

[Sidenote: Accession of Victoria, 1837.]

William IV. died at Windsor Castle, and at 5 o'clock on the morning of June 2oth, 1837 (just 58 years from the day this is written), a young girl of eighteen was awakened to be told she was Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Victoria was the only child of Edward, Duke of Kent, brother of William IV. Her marriage in 1840 with her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg, was one of deep affection, and secured for her a wise and prudent counsellor.

[Sidenote: Famine in Ireland, 1846.]

On account of the high price of corn, Ireland had for years subsisted entirely upon potatoes. The failure of this crop for several successive seasons, in 1846 produced a famine of such appalling dimensions that the old and the new world came to the rescue of the starving people.

Parliament voted 10,000,000 pounds for food. But before relief could reach them, two millions, one-fourth of the population of Ireland, had perished. The anti-corn measures, championed by Richard Cobden and John Bright, which had been bitterly opposed by the Tories under the leaders.h.i.+p of Disraeli, were thus reinforced by unexpected argument; foreign breadstuffs were permitted free access and free trade was accepted as the policy of England.

Nicholas, the Czar of Russia, was, after the fas.h.i.+on of his predecessors (and his successors), always waiting for the right moment to sweep down upon Constantinople. England had become only a land of shopkeepers, France was absorbed with her new Empire, and with trying on her fresh imperial trappings. The time seemed favorable for a move.

The pious soul of Nicholas was suddenly stirred by certain restrictions laid by the Sultan upon the Christians in Palestine. He demanded that he be made the Protector of Christianity in the Turkish Empire, by an arrangement which would in fact transfer the Sovereignty from Constantinople to St. Petersburg.

That ma.s.s of Oriental corruption known as the Ottoman Empire, held together by no vital forces, was ready to fall into ruin at one vigorous touch. It was an anachronism in modern Europe, where its cruelty was only limited by its weakness. That such an odious, treacherous despotism should so strongly appeal to the sympathies of England that she was willing to enter upon a life-and-death struggle for its maintenance, let those believe who can.--Her rus.h.i.+ng to the defence of Turkey, was about as sincere as Russia's interest in the Christians in Palestine.

The simple truth beneath all these diplomatic subterfuges was of course that Russia wanted Constantinople, and England would at any cost prevent her getting it. The keys to the East must, in any event, not belong to Russia, her only rival in Asia.

France had no Eastern Empire to protect, so her partic.i.p.ation in the struggle is at first not so easy to comprehend, until we reflect that she had an ambitious and _parvenu_ Emperor. To have Europe see him in confidential alliance with England, was alone worth a war; while a vigorous foreign policy would help to divert attention from the recent treacheries by which he had reached a throne.

[Sidenote: War with Russia, 1854.]

Such were some of the hidden springs of action which in 1854 brought about the Crimean War,--one of the most deadly and destructive of modern times. Two great Christian kingdoms had rushed to the defence of the worst Government ever known, and the best blood in England was being poured into Turkish soil.

The Russians soon found that the English were no less skilled as fighters, than as shopkeepers. They were victorious from the very first, even when the numbers were ill-matched. But one immortal deed of valor must have made her tremble before the spirit it revealed.

Six hundred cavalrymen, in obedience to an order which all knew was a blunder, dashed into a valley lined with cannon, and charged an army of 30,000 men!

"Was there a man dismayed?

Not though the soldiers knew Some one had blundered.

Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do,--and die, As into the Valley of Death Rode the six hundred."

The horrible blunder at Balaklava was not the only one. One incapable general was followed by another, and routine and red-tape were more deadly than Russian shot and sh.e.l.l.

Food and supplies beyond their utmost power of consumption, were hurried to the army by grateful England. Thousands of tons of wood for huts, s.h.i.+ploads of clothing and profuse provision for health and comfort, reached Balaklava.

While the tall masts of the s.h.i.+ps bearing these treasures were visible from the heights of Sebastopol, men there were peris.h.i.+ng for lack of food, fuel and clothing. In rags, almost barefoot, half-fed, often without fuel even to cook their food, in that terrible winter on the heights, whole regiments of heroes became extinct, because there was not sufficient administrative ability to convey the supplies to a peris.h.i.+ng army!

So wretched was the hospital service, that to be sent there meant death. Gangrene carried off four out of five. Men were dying at a rate which would have extinguished the entire army in a year and a half. It was Florence Nightingale who redeemed this national disgrace, and brought order, care and healing into the camps.

When England recalls with pride the valor and the victories in the Crimea, let her remember it was the _manhood in the ranks_ which achieved it. When all was over, war had slain its thousands,--but official incapacity its tens of thousands!

It was a costly victory: Russia was humiliated, was even shut out from the waters of her own Black Sea, where she had hitherto been supreme.

To two million Turks was preserved the privilege of oppressing eight million Christians; and for this,--twenty thousand British youth had perished. But--the way to India was un.o.bstructed!

England's career of conquest in India was not altogether of her own seeking. As a neighboring province committed outrages upon its British neighbors, it became necessary in self-defence to punish it; and such punishment, invariably led to its subjugation. In this way one province after another was subdued, until finally in the absorption of the Kingdom of Oude (1856) the natural boundary of the Himalaya Mountains had been reached, and the conquest was complete. The little trading company of British merchants had become an Empire, vast and rich beyond the wildest dreams of romance.

The British rule was upon the whole beneficent. The condition of the people was improved, and there was little dissatisfaction except among the deposed native princes, who were naturally filled with hate and bitterness. The large army required to hold such an amount of territory, was to a great extent recruited from the native population, the Sepoys, as they were called, making good soldiers.

[Sidenote: Sepoy Rebellion, 1857-1858.]

In 1857 the King of the Oude and some of the native princes cunningly devised a plan of undermining the British by means of their Sepoys, and circ.u.mstances afforded a singular opportunity for carrying out their design.

A new rifle had been adopted, which required a greased cartridge, for which animal grease was used. The Sepoys were told this was a deep-laid plot to overthrow their native religions. The Mussulman was to be eternally lost by defiling his lips with the fat of swine, and the Hindu, by the indignity offered to the venerated Cow. These English had tried to ruin them not alone in this world, but in the next.

[Sidenote: Ma.s.sacre at Cawnpore.]

Thrilled with horror, terror-stricken, the dusky soldiers were converted into demons. Mutinies arose simultaneously at twenty-two stations; not only officers, but Europeans, were slaughtered without mercy. At Cawnpore was the crowning horror. After a siege of many days the garrison capitulated to Nana Sahib and his Sepoys. The officers were shot, and their wives, daughters, sisters and babes, 206 in number, were shut up in a large apartment which had been used by the ladies for a ballroom.

After eighteen days of captivity, the horrors of which will never be known, five men with sabres, in the twilight, were seen to enter the room and close the door. There were wild cries and shrieks and groans.

Three times a hacked and a blunted sabre was pa.s.sed out of a window in exchange for a sharper one. Finally the groans and moans gradually ceased and all was still. The next morning a ma.s.s of mutilated remains were thrown into an empty well.

Two days later the avenger came in the person of General Havelock. The Sepoys were conquered and a policy of merciless retribution followed.

In that well at Cawnpore was forever buried sympathy for the mutinous Indian. When we recall that, we can even hear with calmness of Sepoys fired from the cannon's mouth. From that moment it was the cause of men in conflict with demons, civilization in deadly struggle with cruel, treacherous barbarism. We cannot advocate meeting atrocity with atrocity, nor can we forget that it was a Christian nation fighting with one debased and infidel. But terrible surgery is sometimes needed to extirpate disease.

Greed for territory, and wrong, and injustice may have mingled with the acquisition of an Indian Empire, but posterity will see only a majestic uplifting of almost a quarter of the human family from debased barbarism, to a Christian civilization; and all through the instrumentality of a little band of trading settlers from a small far- off island in the northwest of Europe.

CHAPTER XIV.

[Sidenote: Atlantic Cable, 1858.]

But there were other things besides famine and wars taking place in the Kingdom of the young Queen. A greater and a subtler force than steam had entered into the life of the people. A miracle had happened in 1858, when an electric wire threaded its way across the Atlantic, and two continents conversed as friends sitting hand in hand.

[Sidenote: Daguerre's Discovery, 1839.]

Another miracle had then just been achieved in the discovery of certain chemical conditions, by which scenes and objects would imprint themselves in minutest detail upon a prepared surface. A sort of magic seemed to have entered into life, quickening and intensifying all its processes. Enlarged knowledge opened up new theories of disease and created a new Art of healing. Surgery, with its unspeakable anguish, was rendered painless by anaesthetics. Mechanical invention was so stimulated that all the processes of labor were quickened and improved.