THE NORTH BRITISH REVIEW, No. LIV. FOR NOVEMBER, 1857. ART. I.-1. History of Europe, from the ] There can be no doubt, that to write a Fall of Napoleon in 1815 to the Acces- history of the great drama of the last sixty sion of Louis Napoleon in 1852. By or seventy years involves great difficulties, Sir ARCHIBALD ALISON, Bart., D.C.L. 6 or, at least, that it calls for the exercise of Vols. 1852-57. 2. History of Europe, from the Commencement of the French Revolution to the Restoration of the Bourbons in 1815. By Sir ARCHIBALD ALISON, Bart., D.C.L. 14 Vols. 1850. Ir the time shall ever arrive-and the contingency is not more improbable than a realization of many of the prophecies contained in these works-when every other contemporaneous record shall have perished, the histories of Sir Archibald Alison will be regarded as a colossal political pamphlet, written in an age of longeval patriarchs and in a land of polemical giants. The author who can devote twelve thousand pages to the perishable vindication of party "cries," will be assumed to have been of a people who yet enjoyed a life of primitive duration, and with whom everything but their reasoning was proportionate to their physical stature. We may question, however, the success of a monster pamphleteering, which is at once the jest of Liberal politicians, and which an eminent Conservative leader (with marked ingratitude) has characterized as a history of Europe written in twenty volumes, to prove that Providence was on the side of the Tories. Yet it must not be forgotten that Sir A. Alison's writings claims credit for the most startling revelations of modern research :-they have discovered that the Reform Act was produced by the contraction of the currency, and that the Roman Empire fell to destruction because it had no Corn Laws! extraordinary qualifications. This is even more true of the later than of the earlier of the two periods of which Sir Archibald has treated. In dealing indeed with bare facts, there exists, in the abstract, more information, in proportion to our proximity to the events that we record. But in questions involving the relations of cabinets, it often happens that this testimony is not available. For a narrative of battles, there are eyewitnesses among our contemporaries whose knowledge is more often freely imparted, and whose considerate statements rarely conflict with one another. But the very existence of these sources of direct and authentic knowledge renders it the more difficult to rely upon the second or third hand statements which have meanwhile appeared, and have not yet been subjected to criticism and analysis. Their existence renders it especially perilous to allow our own imagination to supply the particulars which our library does not yield. But, in passing from facts to opinions, and in dealing with the tendencies of events whose results are yet incompletely developed, the qualification required for a contemporary historian of Europe is yet more various and more rare. He requires a profound knowledge of the state of government and of the state of society-of the nature and working of laws and institutions, and of the bent and action of opinion-in every important commonwealth. He requires, above all things, a calm judgment, an entire absence of partisan bias, a total freedom from prepossessions, and a clearness of fore sight only to be obtained at once from the absolutely nil. The style of his criticisms deepest and the most comprehensive thought. similarly alternates between wearisome He must write in a concise style, if he flippancy, and the assumption of a compaswould appreciably advance his unwieldy sionate intellectual pre-eminence, which dissubject within any practicable compass. He dains a sarcasm. It is, therefore, the aim must remember that the disposition of so- of the present criticism of Sir A. Alison's ciety to look upon political prophets in the works, not to provoke and initiate controlight of spurious diviners, is founded on a versy, but simply to take up the gauntlet pretty wide induction that their divinations which the author has already thrown down. are almost inevitably wrong. He must Either of these histories devotes itself, as combine with these qualities an imitation of is well known, into one of the two great the immortal experiment of Thucydides, periods of which the interval between the whose conciseness of narration is exactly French Revolution and the accession of proportioned to the relation of details to Louis Napoleon is composed. These pethe main action of his story; and whose riods are very fairly defined by the author philosophy of contemporary events is, not as periods of equal and corresponding acthe vaticination of the theorist, but the calm tivity, respectively in war and in peace. reasoning of the statesman in anticipation of There is, however, this broad distinction to their developed tendency. be borne in mind, that the military activity It will be seen that, of these difficulties, of the former age was (with the exception as they apply to Sir A. Alison's works, part of its first few years) the instigating activity are inherent in the subject, and part are of of the few, while the pacific activity of the the author's own making. He might surely, later age was the instigating activity of the for instance, have left the Peninsular war to many. It follows from this distinction, that Sir William Napier, who had preceded him the changes which this pacific activity has in the field. He has at least failed to dis- produced, are not alone likely to be more place that author, or even to put himself durable; but that they form an inherent in any sort of comparison with him; and he part of the social condition of Europe. has braved a civilian's difficulty of strate- When, therefore, the virtual direction of gic criticism. His elaborate descriptions of the national life had passed into hands so Russia (in his new work) are as inferior to different from those by which that life had those of Haxthausen, as his elaborate de- previously been controlled, it was impossiscriptions of Turkey are inferior to those of ble but that great changes should result, Ubicini. These authors had also preceded both in the external and internal relations him and institutions dating long prior to of nearly every state. It was to be prethe period of the history can have no other sumed that these changes in the national concern with it than as they are directly in- life would demand a corresponding change volved in the narrative of events. This in those relations. system of describing governments and man- It is precisely at this point that Sir A. ners extends to other states (in which also Alison joins issue with nearly the whole of we have ourselves travelled); and the de- his generation. He looks upon every scriptions combine a maximum of tedious- change in our domestic government, every ness with a minimum of fidelity. Sir Ar- fresh phasis in our foreign alliances, and chibald's desire to hit his political opponents every expansion in our social and commeris so keen and predominant, in every sub- cial life, as an evidence of our national ject of discussion, that he strikes on all decline. He regards the European settlesides with an aimlessness which frequently ment of 1814-15 as a righteous and designresults (as we shall see) in his hitting his edly-eternal settlement; and he ascribes to own party harder than his opponents, and popular violence every instance of its inhimself hardest of all. His assertions of fraction, and the whole responsibility for policy, which contravene the avowed the tyranny and insecurity that have since opinion of the greatest living reputations, been experienced. The general wisdom of are continually put forward without a sha- that settlement will hardly, indeed, be disdow of reasoning. Where, on the other puted, in all the difficulties which then prehand, argument is offered on a few favourite vailed; but it will nevertheless be seen topics of declamation, it is offered so singu that those European Governments which larly without any defined view or clear no- are the author's archetypes of Conservatism, tion, that, if we collate the argumentative were the first to violate its fundamental passages which are scattered over different provisions. Sir Archibald entertains the volumes, on any one subject, the result of same view of the actual constitution of the author's deductions is seen, upon his England in 1815: and from that startingown showing, to be nearly worthless, if not point he traces our decline, successively, in the contraction of the Currency; in "the gular discovery, which throws Liebig and calamity of Free Trade;" in our Colonial Playfair into the shade at once-and grantpolicy; in the repeal of the Test Act, and ing that the author cannot really have inin Catholic Emancipation; in the alleged tended what he nevertheless states, let us substitution of "Liberal" for "Conserva- glance next at the anachronism which this tive" alliances abroad; and in Parliament- statement involves. He takes the increase ary Reform. or decrease of population as the true index of the expediency of the measures meanwhile in force. We say nothing more of the potato blight in this place; although it is well known that the famine produced by that blight was at its height before the corn laws were, even theoretically, repealed. Waiv. The first chapter of Sir A. Alison's new work is devoted to a general survey of this gloomy picture; and it is, in a certain sense, an analysis of all that follows. It ought not therefore to be entirely overlooked, as it at once evinces the manner in which the whole of this great and paradoxi-ing this anachronism also, we pass to the cal proposition is sustained. We will take, in the first place, the author's argument from free trade, viewed in reference to emigration and to the alleged consequent decline of the population of these islands : "Great and important as were these results [the Anglo-French alliance] of the social convulsions of France and England in the first instance, they sank into insignificance compared with those author's next assertion, of "the virtual closing of the market of England to Irish produce, by the inundation of grain from foreign states." That Sir A. Alison refers to the operation of this system during 1846-50 is perfectly clear; since he regards the decline of population as the immediate result of the abolition of the corn laws, and specifies that decline during those years. Now, is it possible that he is not aware that the which followed the change in the commercial policy and the increased stringency in the monerepeal of the corn laws did not come into tary laws of Great Britain. The effect of these operation until 1849, and that therefore all-important measures, from which so much was these results, during three of these years at expected and so little, save suffering, received, least, actually co-existed with protective was to augment, to an extraordinary and unpa- laws? To this it may be replied, perhaps, ralleled degree, the outward tendency of the that Sir Archibald intended to include the British people. The agricultural population, especially in Ireland, were violently torn up from commercial legislation of 1842, as well as the land of their birth by woeful suffering: a fa- that of 1846. We answer, therefore, at mine of the thirteenth appeared in the population once, that he is precluded from the benefit of the nineteenth century; and to this terrible of this hypothesis by the very figures which but transient source of suffering was superadded constitute his own argument against the lethe lasting discouragement arising from the virtual gislation of 1846. For (at p. 56) he appeals closing of the market of England to their pro- to the contrast between the decline of the duce, by the inundation of grain from foreign population in 1846-51, and its previous increase in 1841-46, as an evidence of the distinctive results of free trade. states. which for four centuries had been regularly increasing, declined a million in the five years from 1846 to 1850 1851?] in the two islands, and two millions in Ireland 'taken separately."-Vol. i., pp. 10, 11. Europe, before the middle of this century, beheld with astonishment Great Britain, which at the end of the war had been self-supporting, im- To turn to the next question-What are porting ten millions of quarters of grain, being a the merits of this argument of the alleged full fifth of the national subsistence, and a con- decline in the population of the United King stant stream of three hundred thousand emigrants dom? We have already quoted Sir A. Aliannually leaving its shores. Its inhabitants, son's assertion, that the population of the two islands declined by one million, and that of Ireland alone by two millions, in the five years 1846-50. This, to begin with—and accepting the author's index of prosperity in population-is a highly satisfactory indicaThis statement is, without exception, the tion for Great Britain; inasmuch as its postrangest compound of anachronisms and pulation must have increased by one million mi calculations that we ever encountered. in the five years, according to Sir Archibald's The scientific world have been content to own statement. ascribe the potato disease to some chemical What, however, is the correctness of these secret which they cannot solve: Sir A. Ali- figures? If we turn from p. 11, in which son plainly refers this chemical process of they stand, to p. 56, we shall find quite a nature to the repeal of the corn laws and the different statement. We find that the popu contraction of the currency! It will have lation during these five years declined, not been observed that he distinctly recounts by 1,000,000, but simply by 600,000. We the famine of 1846 as among the results of find also, that during the whole ten years, these two measures. But waiving this sin- from 1841 to 1851, it increased from 26, $31,000 to 27,435,000,-or more than 600,- |fornia a stalking-horse wherewith to cover 000. We find, consequently, that the in- the retreat of a defeated policy, whenever crease, during the first half of this decade, the subsequent prosperity of England under was 1,200,000. And during four out of free trade is brought forward, he here omits five of those years, we had a partial free any acknowledgment of this sudden stimutrade in corn, and a total free trade in meat, lus upon Irish emigration. which was one great element of Irish export into England. Here, then, is a fair illustration of Sir A. Alison's method of arguing a party question, But apart from these considerations, is it and of proving the impolicy of a fiscal meatrue that our population did decline in 1846 sure, upon population returns, when those -51, in the common acceptation of the ex- returns show that the births exceeded the pression? Sir A. Alison tells us that emi- deaths of the United Kingdom, during the gration, during these five years, set in at a five years in qestion, by 900,000; and that, rate of 300,000 a-year. This immediately in spite of an emigration from the United accounts for the exclusion of 1,500,000 of Kingdom of a million and a half, the popuBritish born subjects, who were either in lation of Great Britain meanwhile largely these islands in 1846, or were since born on rose; and while a famine in Ireland, and these shores, from the census of 1851. If, gold fields in Australia and California, prethen, the diminution of population, during sented themselves almost simultaneously the same period, was but 600,000, it becomes as concurrent motives to emigration. If clear that, in these very five years (1846- this is all that is to be said for the question 51) there must have been an excess of 900,- that Sir Archibald has raked up, it certainly 000 births over deaths. Although no gene- has received from him a conclusive condemral census of the population has since been nation. taken, it has been ascertained, beyond all reasonable doubt, that emigration, though increasing rather than lessening in actual numbers, has since been outstripped by the excess of population. We think Sir Archibald might have had the candour to acknow." ledge this circumstance in one of his later volumes. We will turn to the next great element of our political retrogression-the political alliance cultivated by this country with France from the Revolution of 1830: "The first effect," says Sir A. Alison, of this identity of feeling and interest in the class then for the first time intrusted with the practical direction of affairs in both countries, was a close political alliance between their Governments, and an entire change in the foreign policy of Great Britain. To the vehement and ceaseless rivalry of four 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."—Vol. i., p. 7. It must be observed also that he discreetly omits reference either to the Irish famine, as disconnected from free trade, or to the gold discoveries in California and Australia; although he is peculiarly au fait of these questions, in their relation to his own cause. He has acknowledged that the actual population of Great Britain did not decrease in numbers, and, on the contrary, that it increased as much as that of Ireland decreased, in stating that the decrease of Ireland was When the author has made up his mind double that of the United Kingdom. We whether the alliance proceeded upon a sense have, therefore, to deal with Ireland alone. of interest or not-a question, by the way, Does Sir A. Alison, then, make no compu- on which his whole argument turns--he will tation for the actual deaths caused by the be able to render himself less unintelligible. fevers and starvation which prevailed in that We take up this passage, however, less with country? Does he make no computation the view of criticising blunders which serve for the apprehension of those recurring mi- to show that the writer can have formed no series which drove the people to increased notion (true or erroneous) in his own mind emigration? With what possible consisten- in regard to the subject with which he here ey or shadow of sense can he ascribe this deals, than with the aim of pointing out what result to the contingent evils arising from these interests are, which are yearly inte duties to be abolished three years later-grating more firmly the alliance of England and which, in their partial abolition, the Irish with what Sir A. Alison chooses to term the had experienced and not suffered from-and Revolutionary Powers. wholly exclude a consideration of the posi tive evil of starvation by the failure of their own crops, which was actually depopulating them? And though very willing to make the gold discoveries in Australia and Cali If the author had ever analysed the commercial statistics of the last quarter of a century-which are published by Great Britain, France, Sardinia, and some other statesand especially the commercial tables of the statistical department of the Board of Trade | Canning sent the Duke of Wellington to the -he would have perceived that, during that Congress of Verona, to protest against the period, the commercial relations, both direct conduct of the "Conservative Powers," upon and indirect, of this country with the states of Western Europe, have been increasing in a degree which has bound together the maritime states of the west in an alliance founded almost as directly upon reciprocal interests and necessities as the Zollverein itself. It is singular that a writer, the aim of whose whole argument it appears to be to find a solution of every problem in monetary laws, should know so little of the great commercial facts on which those laws must largely depend. the very question for which they were convened. During the four or five subsequent years, we were upon the verge of war with France, chiefly by reason of her very prominence as the agent of the "Conservative Powers," in the invasion of Spain. In 1827, we were dissevered from Austria on the question of Greek Emancipation; and in 1828 and 1829 the Duke of Wellington and Lord Aberdeen are understood to have refrained from direct hostilities with Russia, chiefly through an apprehension that they would have been thereby involved in war with France also. These circumstances do honour to those "To complete the perils of Great Britain, aris- Tory statesmen, whom a paramount sense ing out of the very magnitude of its former tri- of public duty induced virtually to dissever umphs and extent of its empire, while so many their country from the alliances of 1815. causes were conspiring to weaken its internal strength, and disqualifying it for withstanding But nothing can be more clear, from these the assault of a formidable enemy; others, per- examples, than that the inherent divergence haps more pressing, were alienating foreign na- of the English system from the "Conservations, breaking up old alliances, and tending more tive Powers," prevented the existence of and more to isolate England in the midst of Euro- any such alliances as Sir A. Alison has depean hostility. The triumph of the democratic scribed. The state of our alliances with principle, by the Revolution of 1830, in France, those powers in 1830 may be fairly inferred was the cause of this: for it at once induced an from the readiness with which the Duke of entire change of government and foreign policy in England, and substituted new revolutionary for the old conservative alliances. Great Britain no longer appeared as the champion of order, but as the friend of rebellion; revolutionary dynasties were, by her influence, joined to that of France, established in Belgium, Spain, and Portugal; and the policy of our cabinet avowedly was to establish an alliance of constitutional sovereigns in Western, which might counterbalance the coalition of despots in Eastern Europe."-Pp. 27, 28. Wellington and Lord Aberdeen acknow- Strong in the support of France, whether under a throne surrounded by republican institutions, or those institutions themselves, England became indifferent to the jealousy of the other Continental Powers, and in the attempt to extend the spread of liberal institutions, or the sympathy openly expressed for foreign rebels, irritated beyond forgiveness the Cabinets of St. By what ministers of England were these "old Conservative alliances" of Great Bri-Petersburg, Vienna, and Berlin."-P. 28. tain broken up, if broken up they were? They were broken up by Viscount Castle- We do not care to enter upon the legal reagh, by Mr. Canning, by the Duke of question, whether the Poles (who are here Wellington, and by the Earl of Aberdeen. designed) were rebels or not. But as Sir The truth is, that the divergence of Great Archibald assumes the entire harmony of Britain from the policy of the Great Conti- Austria, Russia, and Prussia, in 1830 and nental Powers during the forty years be- 1831, in adhering to the "Conservative tween the Peace of Paris and the war of Alliance," we may as well remind him, 1854, was never so broad, nor the danger of that Austria and Russia were upon the European war so imminent, as between verge of war at this very juncture, and upon 1815 and 1830. From the policy of the this very question. It is perfectly well Holy Alliance, the first act of the Continent-known to all public men in London, that al Great Powers after the restoration of Prince Metternich warmly espoused the peace, Lord Castlereagh at once declared cause of the Polish "rebels," and was prethe divergence of Great Britain. At the paring for an armed intervention in their Congresses of Troppau and Lay bach in 1820 and 1821, the British Government was the chief opponent of the "Great Conservative Powers;" and Lord Castlereagh's circular of that period attests the almost total isolation of England. In 1822, Mr. support, on the condition that an Austrian prince should fill their constitutional throne, when the vigour of the Russians unexpectedly terminated the war. Sir A. Alison thus winds up with the proof of his consistent proposition: |