In 1798, the rebellion was ripe. The conspirators had been fully forewarned of their peril by the vigour of public measures. But, disgusted by the delays of France,—conscious that every hour was drawing detection closer round them; and still more, in that final frenzy which Providence suffers to take possession of men abusing its gifts of understanding,—they at last resolved on raising the flag of rebellion. A return of the rebel force was made by Lord Edward Fitzgerald, stating the number ofarmedmen in Ulster, Leinster, and Munster, at 279,896! and the 23d of May was named as the day of the general insurrection.
Government now began to act. On the 12th of March, it arrested the whole body of the delegates of Leinster, assembled in committee in the metropolis. The seizure of their papers gave the details of the treason. Warrants were instantly issued for the arrest of the remaining leaders, Emmett, M'Nevin, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and others. We hasten on. A second committee was formed; and again broken up by the activity of the government. The French agency was next extinguished, by the arrest of O'Connor, the priest Quigley, and others, on the point of leaving England for France. Seizures of arms were made, the yeomanry were put on duty, the loyalists were formed into corps, armed, and disciplined.
Lord Edward Fitzgerald had escaped, and a reward of £1000 was put upon his head. On the 19th of May, only four days before the outbreak, he was arrested in an obscure lodging in Dublin, stabbed one of his captors in the struggle, was himself wounded, and died in prison of his wound.
During this most anxious period, the life of every leading member of government was in imminent peril. Plots were notoriously formed for the assassination of the commander-in-chief, and the chancellor; but Lord Castlereagh was obviously the especial mark for the conspirators. In scorn of this danger, he gallantly persevered; and, on the 22d of May, the very night before the commencement of the insurrection, he brought down to the House the following message from the Lord-lieutenant:—
"That his excellency had received information, that the disaffected had been daring enough to form a plan, for the purpose of possessing themselves, in the course of thepresent week, of the metropolis; of seizing the seat of government, and those in authority within the city. That, in consequence of that information, he had directed every military precaution to be taken which seemed expedient;that he had made full communication to the magistrates, for the direction of their efforts; and that he had not a doubt, by the measures which would be pursued, that the designs of the rebellious would be effectually and entirely crushed."
To this message the House of Commons voted an immediate answer,—"That the intelligence thus communicated filled them with horror and indignation, while it raised in them a spirit of resolution and energy." And, for the purpose of publicly showing their confidence and their determination, the whole of the Commons, preceded by the speaker and the officers of the House, went on foot, two by two, in procession through the streets, to the castle, to carry up their address to the Viceroy.
Lord Castlereagh, during this most anxious period, was in constant activity, keeping up the correspondence of his government with the British Cabinet and the generals commanding in Ireland. But, the correspondence preserved in the Memoirs is limited to directions to the military officers—among whom were the brave and good Abercromby, and Lake, Moore, and others who, like them, were yet to gain their laurels in nobler fields.
The rebellion, after raging for six weeks in the south, and exhibiting the rude daring of the peasantry, in several desperate attacks on the principal towns garrisoned by the army, was at length subdued by Lord Cornwallis; who, at once issuing an amnesty, and acting at the head of a powerful force, restored the public tranquillity. This promptitude was fortunate; for in August a debarkation was made by General Humbert in the west, at the head of eleven hundred French troops, as the advanced guard of an army. This force, though absurdly inferior to its task, yet, by the rapidity of its marches, and the daring of its commander, revived the spirit of insurrection, and was joined by many of the peasantry. But the whole were soon compelled to lay down their arms to the troops of the Viceroy. Scarcely had they been sent to an English prison, when a French squadron, consisting of a ship of the line and eight frigates, with 5000 troops on board, appeared off the northern coast. They were not left long to dream of invasion. On thevery next day, the squadron under Sir John Borlase Warren was seen entering the French anchorage. The enemy were instantly attacked. The line-of-battle ship, the Hoche, with six of the frigates, was captured after a sharp cannonade; and among the prisoners was found the original incendiary of the rebellion, Wolfe Tone, bearing the commission of a French adjutant-general. On his trial and sentence by a court-martial in Dublin, he solicited to be shot as a soldier, not hanged as a felon. But there was too much blood on his head to alter the forms of law for a villain who had returned for the express purpose of adding the blood of thousands to the past. To escape being hanged, he died by his own hand, deplorably, but suitably, closing a life which honesty and industry might have made happy and honourable, by the last and only crime which he could have added to the long list of his treasons.
The administration of Lord Castlereagh was now to be distinguished by another national service of the highest order. The British government had been awakened, by the rebellion, to thenecessity of a union. The object of the rebels was to separate the two islands by violence: the danger pointed out the remedy, and the object of government was to join them indissolubly by law. The measure had been proposed nearly a century before, by the peerage of Ireland themselves, then shrinking from a repetition of the war of James II., and the sweeping confiscations of the popish parliament. The measure was twice proposed to the British cabinet, in 1703 and 1707. But the restless intrigues of party in the reign of Anne occupied all the anxieties of a tottering government; and the men who found it difficult to float upon the surge, thought themselves fortunate to escape the additional gusts, which might come ruffling the waters from Ireland. The Volunteer armament, with the example of America, if not actually inflaming Ireland to revolution, yet kindling abeacon to every eye which sought the way to republicanism, again awoke the cabinet to the necessity of a union. The regency question, in which the Irish parliament attempted to divide, not only the countries, but the crown—placing one half on the head of the Prince of Wales, and the other half on the head of the King—again startled the cabinet. But, as the peril abated, the means of protection were thrown by. The hurricane of France then came, and dashed against every throne of Europe, sinking some, shattering others, and throwing clouds, still pregnant with storm and flame, over the horizon of the civilised world. But the vices of France suddenly extinguished the European perils of Revolution. The democracy which, proclaiming universal peace and freedom, had summoned all nations to be present at the erection of a government of philosophy, was seen exulting in the naked display of cruelty and crime. In place of a demigod, Europe saw a fiend, and shrank from the altar on which nothing was to be accepted but the spoil and agonies of man.
Those facts are alluded to, simply to extinguish the gross and common charge, that the British cabinet fostered the rebellion, only to compel the country to take refuge in the Union. It is unquestionable, that the wisdom of its policy had been a maxim for a hundred years; that the plan was to be found in the portfolio of every cabinet; that all administrative foresight acknowledged that the timemustcome when it would be inevitable, yet put off the hour of action; that it haunted successive cabinets like a ghost, in every hour of national darkness, and that they all rejoiced at its disappearance at the return of day. But when rebellion broke out in Ireland itself—when it was no longer the reflection from the glare of American democracy, nor the echo from the howl of France; when the demand of separation was made by the subjects of the British crown, in the sight of England—the necessity was irresistible. There was no longer any alternative between binding in fetters, and binding in law. Then the resolve of Pitt was made, and its performance was committed to the hands of a fearless and faithful man. Ireland was relieved from the burden of a riotous and impoverished independence, and England was relieved from the contemptible policy of acting by party, which she despised, and paying a parliament to protect a constitution.
But we must hasten to other things. There was, of course, an infinite outcry among all the tribes who lived upon popular corruption. In closing the gates of the Irish parliament, they had been shut out from the mart where they had flocked night and day to sell their influence, their artifices, and themselves. The voluntary slave-trade was broken up; and the great dealers in political conscience regarded themselves as robbed of a right of nature. The kings of Benin and Congo could not be more indignant at the sight of a British cruiser blockading one of their rivers. The calamity was universal; the whole body of parliamentary pauperism was compelled to work or starve. The barrister was forced to learn law; the merchant to turn to his ledger; the country gentleman, who had so long consoled himself for his weedy fallows, by the reflection that, if theygrewnothing else, they could at least grow forty-shilling voters, found "Othello's occupation gone." The whole flight of carrion-crows, whom the most distant scent of corruption brought upon the wing; all the locust race, which never alighted, but to strip the soil; the whole army of sinecurism, the countless generation of laziness and license, who, as in the monkish days, looked to receiving their daily meal at the doors of the treasury, felt the sudden sentence of starvation.
But this, too, passed away. Jobbery, a more than equivalent for the exemption of the land from the viper, became no longer a trade; faction itself, of all existing things the most tenacious of life, gradually dropped off; the natural vitality of the land, no longer drained away by its blood-suckers, began to show itself in the vigour of the public mind; peace did its office in the renewal of public wealth, and perhaps the happiest years of Ireland were those which immediately followed the Union. If Ireland was afterwards overshadowed,the cause was to be found in that sullen influence which had thrown Europe into darkness for a thousand years.
Lord Castlereagh was now advanced an important step in public life. Mr Pelham, who from ill health had long been an absentee, resigned his office. The services of his manly and intelligent substitute had been too prominent to be overlooked. A not less trying scene of ministerial courage and ability was about to open, in the proposal of the Union; and no man could compete withhimwho had extinguished the rebellion.
A letter from his friend Lord Camden (November 1798) thus announced the appointment:—"Dear Castlereagh,—I am extremely happy to be informed by Mr Pitt that the wish of the Lord-lieutenant that you should succeed Mr Pelham (since he has relinquished the situation of secretary) has been acceded to by the King and his ministers; and that the consent of the English government has been communicated to Lord Cornwallis."
On the 22d of January, a message to the English House of Commons was brought down, recommending the Union, on the ground of "the unremitting industry with which the enemies of the country persevered in their avowed design of separating Ireland from England." On the 31st, Pitt moved eight resolutions as the basis of the measure. Sheridan moved an amendment, which was negatived by one hundred and forty to fifteen votes. In the Lords, the address in answer to the message was carried without a division. It was clear that the question in England was decided.
In Ireland the discussion was more vehement, and more protracted; but the decision was ultimately the same. Parliament went the way of all criminals. It must be allowed, that its scaffold was surrounded with popular clamour, to an extraordinary extent. It faced its fate with national haughtiness, and vigorously proclaimed its own virtues to the last. But, when the confusion of the scene was over, and the scaffold was moved away, none lingered near the spot to wring their hands over the grave.
The unquestionable fact is, that there was a national sense of the unfitness of separate legislatures for two countries, whose closeness of connexion was essential to the existence of both. The Protestant felt that, by the fatal folly of conceding votes to the popish peasantry—votes amounting to universal suffrage—parliament must, in a few years, become popish in all but the name. The landlords felt that, the constant operation of party on the peasantry must rapidly overthrow all property. The still more enlightened portion of society felt that every hour exposed the country more perilously to civil commotion. And even the narrowest capacity of judging must have seen, in the smoking harvest, ruined mansions, and slaughtered population of the revolted counties, the hazard of trusting to a native parliament; which, though it might punish, could not protect; and which, in the hour of danger, could not stir hand or foot but by the help of their mighty neighbour and fast friend.
If, in the rebellion, a wall of iron had been drawn round Ireland, and her constitution had been left to the defence furnished by her parliament alone, that constitution would have been but a cobweb; parliament would have been torn down like a condemned building; and out of the ruins would have been instantly compiled some grim and yet grotesque fabric of popular power—some fearful and uncouth mixture of legislation and vengeance: a republic erected on the principles of a despotism; a temple to anarchy, with the passions of the rabble for its priesthood, and the fallen heads of all the noble, brave, and intellectual in the land, for the decorations of the shrine.
The cry of Repeal has revived the recollection of the parliament; but the country has refused to recognise that cry as national, and even the echo has perished. It was notoriously adopted, not for its chance of success, but for itscertaintyof failure. It was meant to give faction aperpetualpretext for mendicancy. But the mendicant and the pretext are now gone together. A few childish people, forgetting its uselessness and its errors, alone continue to whine over it—as a weak parent laments the loss of a son whose life was a burden to him, and whose death was a relief. The Unionwas one of the highest services of Lord Castlereagh.
In corroboration of those sentiments, if they could require any, it is observable how rapidly the loudest opponents of the measure lowered their voices, and adopted the tone of government. Plunket, the ablest rhetorician of the party—who had made his opposition conspicuous by the ultra-poetic extravagance, of pledging himself to swear his sons at the altar, as Hamilcar swore Hannibal to Roman hostility—took the first opportunity of reconciling his wrath to office, and settled down into a chancellor. Foster, the speaker, who had led the opposition, received his salary for life without a pang, and filled the office of chancellor of the Irish exchequer. Bushe, the Cicero of the house, glowing with oratorical indignation, condescended to be chief-justice. All the leaders, when the battle was over, quietly slipped off their armour, hung up sword and shield on their walls, put on the peace costume of handsome salary, and subsided into title and pension.
No one blamed them then, nor need blame them now. They had all beenactors—and who shall reproach the actor, when the lamps are put out and the audience gone, for thinking of his domestic meal, and dropping into his bed? Nature, like truth, is powerful, and the instinct of the lawyermustprevail.
One man alone "refused to be comforted." Grattan, the Demosthenes of Ireland, for years kept, without swearing it, the Carthaginian oath, which had slipped out of the mind of Plunket. He talked of the past with the rapt anguish of a visionary, and eschewed human occupation with the rigid inutility of a member of La Trappe. Grattan long continued to linger in Ireland, until he was hissed out of his patriotic romance, and laughed into England. There, he found, that he had lost the better part of his life in dreams, and that the world demanded evidence that he had not lived in vain. Fortunately for his own fame, he listened to the demand; forgot his sorrows over the dead in the claims of the living; threw in his share to the general contribution of the national heart against the tyranny of Napoleon; and by some noble speeches vindicated the character of his national eloquence, and left an honourable recollection of himself in that greatest temple of fame and free minds which the world has ever seen—the parliament of England.
Lord Castlereagh, on the final dissolution of the Irish legislature, transferred his residence to London, where (in July 1802) he took office under the Addington ministry as President of the Board of Control—an appointment which, on the return of Pitt, he retained, until (in 1805) he was placed by the great minister in the office of secretary for the war and colonial department.
The death of Pitt (1806) surrendered the cabinet to the Whigs, and Lord Castlereagh retired with his colleagues. The death of Fox soon shook the new administration, and their own imprudence broke it up, (1807.) The Grey and Grenville party were superseded by Perceval; and Lord Castlereagh returned to the secretaryship at war, which he held until 1809, when his duel with Canning caused the retirement of both.
In the Memoir, the circumstances of this painful transaction are scarcely more than referred to; but the reply to a letter from Lord Castlereagh to the King, distinctly shows the sense of his conduct entertained in the highest quarter.
"The King has no hesitation in assuring Lord Castlereagh that he has, at all times, been satisfied with the zeal and assiduity with which he has discharged the duties of the various situations which he has filled, and with the exertions which, under every difficulty, he has made for the support of his Majesty's and the country's interest.
"His Majesty must ever approve of the principle which shall secure the support and protection of government to officers exposing their reputation, as well as their lives, in his service; when their characters and conduct are attacked, and aspersed on loose and insufficient grounds, without adverting to embarrassments and local difficulties, of which those on the spot alone can form an adequate judgment." This, of course, settled the royal opinion; and the ministerial confidenceshortly after reposed in Lord Castlereagh, in the most conspicuous manner, fully clears his reputation from every stain.
But the letter confirms one fact, hitherto not much known, yet which would alone entitle him to the lasting gratitude of the empire. In allusion to the campaign of Portugal under Moore, and the appointment of a successor, it adds,—"It was also this impression which prompted the King to acquiesce in the appointment of so young a lieutenant-general as Lord Wellington to the command of the troops in Portugal." Thus, it is to Lord Castlereagh's sense of talent, and to his public zeal, that we ministerially owe the liberation of the Peninsula. His selection of the great duke, in defiance of the claims of seniority, and probably of parliamentary connexion, gave England seven years of victory, and finally gave Europe the crowning triumph of Waterloo.
But a still more extensive field of statesmanship was now opened to him. Canning had left the Foreign Office vacant; before the close of the year it was given to Lord Castlereagh. Another distinction followed. The unhappy assassination of Perceval left the premiership vacant; and Lord Castlereagh, though nominally under Lord Liverpool, virtually became, by his position in the House of Commons, prime minister.
There never was a moment of European history, when higher interests were suspended on the intrepidity, the firmness, and the wisdom of British council. The Spanish war, difficult, though glorious, was at all risks to be sustained; Austria had taken up arms, (in 1809,) was defeated, and was forced to make the bitter peace that follows disaster. Napoleon, at Erfurth, sat on a throne which looked over Europe, and saw none but vassals. At home, Opposition flung its old predictions of evil in the face of the minister, and incessantly charged him with their realisation. An infirm minister in England at that crisis would have humiliated her by a treaty; that treaty would have been but a truce, and that truce would have been followed by an invasion. But the Secretary never swerved, and his confidence in the courage of England was rewarded by the restoration of liberty to Europe.
The fortunes of Napoleon were at length on the wane. France had been stripped of her veterans by the retreat from Moscow, and the Russian and German armies had hunted the wreck of the French across the Rhine. But, in sight of final victory, the councils of the Allies became divided, and it was of the first importance to reunite them. An interesting letter of the late Lord Harrowby, to the present Marquis of Londonderry, gives the narrative of this diplomatic mission.
"I cannot recollect dates, but it was at the time when you, Lord Aberdeen, and Lord Cathcart, were accredited to the three sovereigns. It was mooted in Cabinet, I think, by Lord Castlereagh, whether it would not be desirable, in order to carry the full weight of the British Government to bear upon the counsels of the assembled sovereigns, that some one person should be appointed who might speak in its name to them all.
"The notion was approved of; and after the Cabinet was over, Castlereagh called me into his private room, and proposed the mission to me. I was, of course, highly flattered by such a proposal from such a person; but I had not a moment's hesitation in telling him, that I had tried my hand unsuccessfully on a somewhat similar mission to Berlin, where I had also been accredited to the two Emperors; that I had found myself quite incompetent to the task, which had half-killed me; that I thought the measure highly advisable, but that there was one person only who could execute it, and that person was himself. He started at first. How could he, as Secretary of State, undertake it? The thing was unheard of. I then told him, that it was not strictly true that it had never been done: that Lord Bolingbroke went to Paris in a diplomatic capacity when Secretary of State; and that, though in that case the precedent was not a good one, it was still a precedent, and I believed there were more. The conclusion to which this conversation led was, that 'he would talk it over with Liverpool;' and the consequence was that, the next day, or the day after, his mission was decided."
A letter, not less interesting, from Lord Ripon, gives some striking particulars of this mission. Lord Ripon had accompanied him to the Congress. "I allude to his first mission to the Continent, at the close of 1813. I travelled with him from the Hague to Bâle, where he first came in contact with any of the ministers of the Allied powers; and thence we proceeded to Langres, where the headquarters of the Grand Army were established, and where the allied sovereigns, the Emperors of Austria and Russia and the King of Prussia, with their respective ministers, were assembled."
The letter proceeds to state the views of the mission, much of whose success it attributes to the combined suavity and firmness of Lord Castlereagh's conduct. But, an instance of his prompt and sagacious decision suddenly occurred. Blucher's impetuous advance had been checked, with serious loss, by a desperate assault of Napoleon, who, availing himself of this success, had fallen upon all the advanced forces of the Allies. There was wavering at headquarters, and there were even proposals of retiring beyond the Rhine. It was essential to reinforce Blucher, but there were no troops at hand. Lord Castlereagh demanded, "Where were any to be found?" He was answered, that there were two strong corps of Russians and Prussians under the command of Bernadotte; but that he was "very tenacious of his command," and they could not be withdrawn without a tedious negotiation,—in other words, we presume, without fear of giving that clever but tardy commander a pretext for abandoning the alliance altogether. The difficulty was, by a high authority, pronouncedinsurmountable. Lord Castlereagh, who was present at the council, simply demanded, "whether the reinforcement wasnecessary;" and, on being answered in the affirmative, declared that the order must be given; that England had a right to expect that her allies should not be deterred from a decisive course by any such difficulties; and that he would take upon himself all the responsibility that might arise, regarding the Crown-Prince of Sweden.
The order was issued: Blucher was reinforced; Napoleon was beaten at Laon; and the campaign rapidly approached its close. Still, formidable difficulties arose. Napoleon, though he had at last found that he could not face the army of the Allies, conceived the daring manœuvre of throwing himself in their rear—thus alarming them for their communications, and forcing them to follow him back through France. The consequences of a desultory war might have been the revival of French resistance, and the ruin of the campaign. The manœuvre became the subject of extreme anxiety in the Allied camp, and some of the chief authorities were of opinion, that he ought to be pursued. It is said (though the Memoir has not yet reached that part of the subject,) that the decision of leaving him behind, and marching direct on Paris, was chiefly owing to Lord Castlereagh; who pointed out the weakness of taking counsel from an enemy, the advantage of finding the road to Paris open at last, and the measureless political importance of having the capital in their possession.
This advice prevailed: a few thousand cavalry were sent in the track of Napoleon, to entrap him into the idea that he was followed by the Grand Army, while Schwartzenberg marched in the opposite direction; and the first intelligence which reached the French army was in the thunderclap which announced the fall of the Empire!
Lord Harrowby's letter, in referring to a subsequent period, gives a curious instance of the chances on which the highest events may turn.
"Now for my other service in the dark. After the attempt to assassinate the Duke of Wellington at Paris, the Government was naturally most anxious to get him away. But how? Under whatever pretext it might be veiled,hewould still call it running away, to which he was not partial. But, when Castlereagh was obliged to leave Vienna, in order to attend his duty in parliament, I was fortunate enough to suggest that the Duke should be sent to replace him; and that would be a command which he could not refuse to obey.
"When I mentioned this to the Duke, just after I left you—for I was then quite full of the memory of mylittle exploits—he quite agreed that, if he had been at Paris, on the return of Buonaparte to France, it would have beenhighly probable that they would have seized him.
"Small events are great to little men; and it is notnothing, to have contributed in the smallest degree to the success of the Congress at Vienna, (nor was it then so called,) and of the subsequent campaign, and to the saving of the Duke forWaterloo!"
After this triumphant course of political life, with every gift of fortune around him, and perhaps the still higher consciousness of having achieved a historic name, how can we account for the closing of such a career in suicide?
The only probable cause was the intolerable burden of public business, by his having in charge the chief weight of the home department as well as the foreign. His leadership of the House of Commons was enough to have worn him out. Canning once said—"that no vigour of mind or body can stand the wear and tear of a minister, above ten years." Castlereagh had been immersed in indefatigable toil since 1794. He had stood "the wear and tear" for thirty years. His life was wholly devoted to business. During the summer he rose at five, in winter at seven, and frequently laboured for twelve or fourteen hours in succession.
In person he was tall, with a mild and very handsome countenance in early life, of which we must regret that the portrait in the first volume of the Memoir gives but an unfavourable resemblance. The most faithful likeness is that by Sir Thomas Lawrence, in the Windsor Gallery of Statesmen, though it has the effeminate air which that admirable painter had the unlucky habit of giving to his men.
The death of Lord Castlereagh seems to have been justly attributed to mental exhaustion, with the addition of a fit of the gout, for which he had taken some depressing medicines. The state of his spirits was marked by the King, on his Majesty's departure for Scotland. At the Cabinet Council, he had been observed to remain helplessly silent, and his signature to public papers had become suddenly almost illegible. On those symptoms, he was expressly put into the hands of his physician, and sent to Foot's Cray, his villa in Kent. The physician attended him until the Monday following. Early on that day he was hastily summoned, and found his Lordship dead in his dressing-room.
A letter from the Duke of Wellington conveyed the lamentable intelligence to the present Marquis, who was then at Vienna. After some prefatory remarks, the Duke says—"You will have seen, that I witnessed the melancholy state of mind which was the cause of the catastrophe. I saw him after he had been with the King on the 9th instant, to whom he had likewise exposed it. But, fearing that he would not send for his physician, I considered it my duty to go to him; and not finding him, to write to him, which, considering what has since happened, was a fortunate circumstance.
"You will readily believe what a consternation this deplorable event has occasioned here. The funeral was attended by every person in London of any mark or distinction, of all parties; and the crowd in the streets behaved respectfully and creditably."
The Duke's remarks on "the fortunate circumstance" of applying to the physician, we presume to have meant, the vindication of the Marquis's character from the guilt of conscious suicide. For the same reason, we have given the details. They relieve the mind of the Christian and the Englishman from the conception, that the most accomplished intellect, and the highest sense of duty, may not be protective against the mingled crime and folly of self-murder.
We have now given a general glance at thematérielof those volumes. They contain a great variety of public documents, valuable to the future historian, though tooofficialfor the general reader. One, however, is too curious to be altogether passed by: it is from Lord Brougham, (dated 1812,) offering himself for employment in American affairs:—
"My Lord,—I am confident that the step which I am now taking cannotbe misconstrued by your lordship. Under the present circumstances, I beg to make a tender of my services to his Majesty's government in the conduct of the negotiation with the United States, wheresoever the same may be carried on.
"I am induced to think that I might be of use as a negotiator in this affair. I trust it is unnecessary to add, that I can have no motive of a private or personal nature in making this offer. Should it be accepted, I must necessarily sustain a considerable injury in my professional pursuits," &c.
We think that, in giving these volumes to the country, the present Marquis of Londonderry has not merely fulfilled an honourable fraternal duty, but has rendered a service to public character. Faction had calumniated Lord Castlereagh throughout a large portion of his career. The man who breaks down a fierce rebellion, and who extinguishes a worthless legislature, must be prepared to encounter the hostility of all whose crimes he has punished, or whose traffic he has put to shame. The felon naturally hates the hand which holds the scales of justice, and, if he cannot strike, is sure to malign. The contemptuous dignity with which Lord Castlereagh looked down upon his libellers, and his equally contemptuous disregard of defence, of course only rendered libel more inveterate; and every low artifice of falsehood was exerted against the administration of a man who was an honour to Ireland.
His course in England was in a higher region, and he escaped the mosquitoes which infest the swamps of Irish political life. Among the leaders of English party he had to contend with men of honour, and on the Continent his task was to sustain the cause of Europe. There, mingling with monarchs in the simplicity of a British gentleman, he carried with him all the influence of a great British minister, and entitled himself to that influence by the value of his services. Yet, among the highest distinctions of his statesmanship, we have but slight hesitation in naming the rapid overthrow of the rebellion. The scene was new, the struggle singularly perplexing. Political artifice was mingled with brute violence. If the spirit of revolt raged in the superstition, the fears, and the rude memories of peasant life, it was still more hazardously spread among the professional ranks, whose ambition was frenzied by the prospect of a republic, or whose guilt was to be screened by its establishment. He has been charged with tyranny and torture in its suppression; his correspondence in these volumes shows the manly view which he took of the true condition of Ireland.
The question of the safety of Ireland has now come before the legislature once again, in all its breadth. Is Ireland to be a perpetual seat of rebellion? is every ruffian to find there only an armoury? is every faction to find there only a parade-ground? Is its soil to be a perpetual fount of waters, that can flow only to poison the healthful channels of society? Is the power of government to be employed only in the hideous duties of the gaoler and the executioner? Is the noblest constitution that man has ever seen to be utterly paralysed, from the moment when it touches a soil containing millions of our fellow subjects?—and to be paralysed by the act of these millions?
These are the questions which well may disturb the pillow of the statesmen of England. We have no hesitation in answering them. As the ruin of Ireland has been the act of a false religion, its renovation must be the act of the true. This is no time for tardiness in this experiment. Revolt has thrown aside its arms, but its antipathy remains. We shall have revolt upon revolt, until the country is turned into a field of battle or a sepulchre. If the rude, vulgar, and cowardly conspirators of the present hour have found followers, what might not be the national hazard if some valorous hand and vivid intellect—some one of those mighty men who are born to take the lead of nations, should marshal the willing multitudes at a time when England was once again struggling for the liberties of Europe? Are we to leave Ireland, with all its natural advantages, to the uncheckedprogress of superstition, until, like the Roman Campagna, under the same auspices, it exhibits nothing but a desert, where man by daylight should put on his swiftest speed, and where he should not sleep by night, unless he had already taken measure of his grave?
The Memoir prefixed to the official papers in these volumes touches with singular brevity on the personal characteristics of the late Marquis of Londonderry.
But the true biography of a public man is to be found in his public career. There flattery can deceive no longer, and panegyric is brought to the test of posterity. It fell to the lot of Lord Castlereagh to take a lead in thefourmost memorable transactions of his time;—in the overthrow of the Irish Rebellion; in the establishment of the Union; in the downfall of the French empire; and in the settlement of the peace of Europe at the Congress of Vienna. Those four are his claims on the living gratitude of his country, and on the homage of the generations to come. The mind which was equal to those tasks must have been a mind of power; the determination which could have sustained him, in defiance of all personal and public danger, must have been of the highest order of personal and public intrepidity; and the patriotism which, in every advance of his official distinctions, and every act of his ministerial duty, directed his steps, as it then raised him above all the imputations of party, now retains his memory in that elevation, which partisanship can no more reach than it can comprehend. Estimable in all the relations of private life, and honourable in all the trusts of statesmanship, the bitterness of Opposition has never dared to touch his personal character; and even faction has shown its sense of his services, by never venturing to insult his tomb. If the enemies of Ireland remember him with hatred, the historian of Ireland must record him with honour. If faction in England cannot yet be reconciled to the man who kept it at bay, it must remember him as the statesman who was neither to be bought nor baffled; whose life was a security to the constitution, and whose conduct formed the most prominent contrast to that of those subsequent possessors of office, whom it found the means alternately to corrupt and to control.
It is not our wish to offer a rash and groundless panegyric to any man. We refer simply to the facts—to the eminence of England under his policy, and to its sudden difficulties under the abandonment of his principles. We think Lord Castlereagh entitled to the full tribute which can be paid by national respect to the memory of a statesman distinguished by courage and conduct, by unblemished honesty, and by unfailing honour. We think him fully entitled to bear upon his monument the name of—A Great British Minister.
The most passionate avidity for renown cannot desire a nobler name.
There is a cry throughout the land,The needy loudly ask for bread;Craving and unappeased they stand,They cannot all be duly fed.The rich in vain large alms bestow—They fail to stem the rising tideOf want, and beggary, and woe,That hems them in on every side.Lo! from the stream that overflows,Fresh gushing rivulets roll wide,And far from where their source arose,They bless the land through which they glide.Shall Britain let such lesson fail?Shall not her overburthen'd soilAfar, where skill and strength avail,Send forth the hardy sons of toil?Arise, ye peasants, bold and strong!Courage! relieve your burthen'd land,Toward a gracious country throngThat needs the willing heart and hand:There with a cheerful vigour striveFor the reward denied ye here,Through wholesome industry to thrive,With lessening labour, year by year.Your many children, that ye feelHere as a burthen on your hands,There shall enrich ye through their zeal,And tend your flocks, and till your lands.No cry for bread shall pierce your ear,Full harvests shall requite your toil,And, bounteously your age to cheer,Shall yield ye corn, and wine, and oil.Behold the paupers of our land,By want made dissolute and rude,With sullen heart and wasted handAsking an alms of broken food!Behold, and snatch them from despair—Give them for effort a fair field,With labour their free limbs may bear—And toil from vice shall be their shield.And ye whose lot is cast aboveWant's perilous and grievous woes!Be yours a full free work of love,The debt that man his brother owes.Bestow not that ye prize the least—Give knowledge, valour, skill, and worth.Statesman and soldier, lawyer, priest,Physician, merchant, go ye forth.And, Britain's daughters! give your aid,Arise, make ready, cross the wave!Ye, for meet help and solace made,Go forth to cheer, to bless, to save!Let not the exiles vainly askFor home and sweet domestic cares;Fulfil your high and gracious task—Go forth, join heart and hand with theirs.And ask ye all, as forth ye go,The guidance of a light divine,That through the darkest hours shall glow,And steadfast in all peril shine.Go forth with a believing heart,Your Guard is sure by night and day;Forth through the wilderness depart—Ye shall find manna on your way.
There is a cry throughout the land,The needy loudly ask for bread;Craving and unappeased they stand,They cannot all be duly fed.The rich in vain large alms bestow—They fail to stem the rising tideOf want, and beggary, and woe,That hems them in on every side.
Lo! from the stream that overflows,Fresh gushing rivulets roll wide,And far from where their source arose,They bless the land through which they glide.Shall Britain let such lesson fail?Shall not her overburthen'd soilAfar, where skill and strength avail,Send forth the hardy sons of toil?
Arise, ye peasants, bold and strong!Courage! relieve your burthen'd land,Toward a gracious country throngThat needs the willing heart and hand:There with a cheerful vigour striveFor the reward denied ye here,Through wholesome industry to thrive,With lessening labour, year by year.
Your many children, that ye feelHere as a burthen on your hands,There shall enrich ye through their zeal,And tend your flocks, and till your lands.No cry for bread shall pierce your ear,Full harvests shall requite your toil,And, bounteously your age to cheer,Shall yield ye corn, and wine, and oil.
Behold the paupers of our land,By want made dissolute and rude,With sullen heart and wasted handAsking an alms of broken food!Behold, and snatch them from despair—Give them for effort a fair field,With labour their free limbs may bear—And toil from vice shall be their shield.
And ye whose lot is cast aboveWant's perilous and grievous woes!Be yours a full free work of love,The debt that man his brother owes.Bestow not that ye prize the least—Give knowledge, valour, skill, and worth.Statesman and soldier, lawyer, priest,Physician, merchant, go ye forth.
And, Britain's daughters! give your aid,Arise, make ready, cross the wave!Ye, for meet help and solace made,Go forth to cheer, to bless, to save!Let not the exiles vainly askFor home and sweet domestic cares;Fulfil your high and gracious task—Go forth, join heart and hand with theirs.
And ask ye all, as forth ye go,The guidance of a light divine,That through the darkest hours shall glow,And steadfast in all peril shine.Go forth with a believing heart,Your Guard is sure by night and day;Forth through the wilderness depart—Ye shall find manna on your way.
Julia
Whilst France, writhing under self-inflicted wounds, is preserved from anarchy only by despotism; whilst Germany, convulsed by the imitative folly of her children, enacts a travestie of Paris tragedies; and Italy, like a froward child, screaming to go alone before she can walk, kicks at her leading-strings, and falls upon her nose—the affairs of a third-rate power, such as Spain has dwindled into, have naturally enough been overlooked and forgotten. It is time to recur to them for a moment. Spain has once been, and yet again may be, a leading member of the European family. Under a better government, she again may see days of prosperity and peace. Again her merchant-fleets may cover the seas, her traders be renowned for enterprise and wealth, her population be commensurate with the extent and productiveness of her territory. And this may occur whilst nations, but yesterday paramount in riches and power, sink by their own madness into impotence and poverty. Her rise will not be more astonishing than their decadence.
At present, it appears the destiny of Spain to be misgoverned at home and misunderstood abroad. The insurrection now budding into life and vigour in so many of her provinces illustrates this proposition. Originating in the grossest maladministration, out of Spain its scope and nature, and the possible importance of its results, are misconceived and underrated. It differs from any previous revolt since the death of Ferdinand VII., inasmuch as it is less the effort of a party, striving for the success of a principle and a man, than the uprising of a nation struggling to shake off the yoke of a galling and intolerable tyranny. There can be no doubt that a very large majority of the Spanish people heartily wish success to the movement against the existing government of the country. Unfortunately, a majority of this majority confine themselves to wishing, instead of putting their hand to the work, which then would soon be done. Their lukewarmness, however, can hardly be wondered at, when we remember how many of them have sacrificed property and security to their political convictions, and ruined themselves in the strife of parties. Of these parties, the two most numerous, long opposed to each other, and whose tenets once stood wide as the poles asunder, have forgotten old hatreds, made mutual sacrifices, and joined heart and hand against the common foe. The result is, the division of the country into two camps. On the one hand is the Queen-mother—in whose dexterous fingers Isabella is a mere puppet—Narvaez, O'Donnell, and the rest of the corrupt cabal from the Rue de Courcelles. These have possession of the machinery andmatérielof the state. They hold the purse, which places at their devotion two armies, one of soldiers, the other of policemen,employés, spies, and venal emissaries of all kinds. To use a simile appropriate to the times, they have got upon the engine and tender, coals and water are at their command; but they misguide the train and ill-treat the passengers, clamorous for escape from their control. Spain, let Madrid papers argue and deny as they will, is in a state of general fermentation and violent discontent; on the brink of a convulsion which may very possibly end in the ousting of Isabella II., and in the enthronement of her cousin, the Count de Montemolin. In Spain a republic is an impossibility, and almost without partisans; and if the present queen be swept away by the tide of national indignation against her unscrupulous mother, the crown must naturally devolve upon the son of Don Carlos. At least, he is the only eligible candidate—we may even say, the only possible one. Don Francisco, the Incapable, would of course depart with his wife; his brother, Don Enrique, convicted of instability and of treachery to his party, would have nobody's support; and the Duke of Montpensier is so totally out of the question, so wholly without adherents as an aspirant to the Spanish throne, that we have difficulty in crediting a statement confidently made by persons worthy of belief, that the recent victim of a great revolution still directs, from his retirement inthis country, intrigues designed to place a crown upon the head of the youngest hope of the house of Orleans. On the other hand, the Carlist party is still strong in Spain—much stronger, comparatively speaking, than it was two or three years ago; for it has clung together and preserved its integrity, whilst other parties have split and become dismembered. And although the bulk of the Spanish people may be less anxious to get any one man, or set of men, into power, than to get rid of those who at present so brutally roughride them; yet the conviction has been gradually gaining strength that, by character, education, and fair promises, the Count de Montemolin offers the best guarantees for that firm, impartial, and just government, under which alone is there a chance of Spain being raised from her present sunken and unprosperous condition. The Progresistas, who fiercely hated and fought against the father, rally round the son, persuaded that from Isabella, so long their idol, they would in vain look for a realisation of their political programme. Of their cordial understanding and co-operation with the Carlists there now can hardly exist a doubt. A very brief retrospect will suffice to explain its causes and foundation.
When Louis Philippe completed the job of the Spanish marriages, the Carlists—who, although grievously stricken and disheartened by the treaty of Bergara, had never entirely ceased to labour for the attainment of their one great end—rested upon their arms, and awaited in comparative inaction the dawn of better days. They abandoned not hope, nor abjured intrigue; but they may be said to have ceased, for a while, to conspire. In their fallen state, with their slender resources, what could they do against the puissant King of the French? For he it was against whom they must contend, did they venture to assail the throne of Isabella, and to dispute the rule of Christina. In England, too, their old enemies, the Whigs, had just come into power; the name of Palmerston was a sound of ill omen to Carlist ears; Bilbao and British marines, Passages and Commodore Hay, were words inseparably coupled, and pregnant with fatal memories to the upholders of legitimacy in Spain. Supposing that, by dint of indefatigable exertions, they succeeded in raising funds, in mustering an army, ill entering Spain sword in hand—forthwith they were met by that ugly and unnatural monster, the Quadruple Alliance, waiting, open-mouthed, to blast them to the four winds of heaven. An attempt, under such circumstances, would have been worse than useless; it would have been squandering a chance, and the Carlists had none to throw away. So they waited and watched. Meanwhile, what did the rulers of Spain—the persons governing behind the mask of that poor, ill-brought-up, ill-used princess, Isabella? It was natural to suppose that, having many enemies in the country—many persons and parties whose ambitions and interests were checked and thwarted by their ascendency—they would endeavour, as far as possible, to conciliate and gain over these, or at any rate to secure the support of the masses, by moderation and good government. A very moderate amount of this latter, be it observed, would have sufficed to gain them popularity, and to give stability to their reign. The nation had endured so much—had suffered so terribly from civil wars, rebellions, reactions, and the like—that all they expected, almost all they asked, was to be kicked gently. They dared not think the screw would be altogether taken off; but, considering the damaged state of their articulations, they did hope it would be a little eased. A man who had undergone a course of knout, might look upon a cat-o'-nine tails as a blessed exchange, and be ready to hug the drummers who applied it. This was exactly the case with Spain, long drained by war-contributions and ravaged by contending factions. From her state of exhaustion and suffering she had not had time to recover during the honest and conscientious, but brief and too gentle rule of Espartero. Never was there a finer chance for a party coming into power than the Christinos or Moderados had, when they seized the reins. The ball was at their foot, and they had but to pick it up. Instead of that, they kicked it away. A little of the moderation theirpolitical designation implies—a little, a very little, of the patriotism and disinterestedness always so loud in their mouths, and so wanting in their deeds, and they might have won the hearts of their weary, war-worn countrymen. That moderation—they had it not, and when vaunting their patriotism they thought only of their profit. No sooner were they in power than they abandoned themselves to their vicious instincts, and thought but of filling their pockets. Christina reverted to her old system of unscrupulous appropriation; Narvaez, having filled the higher military grades with his creatures, and made the army his own by pampering and flattery, gave free play to the unbounded brutality of his nature. Universal corruption became the order of the day, extending through every administration, from the minister of the crown down to subalterns and clerks. The revenue, increasing in the very teeth of Spanish financiers—and which, by the commonest honesty and the most ordinary amount of ability, might soon have been rendered sufficient to meet the expenditure of the country, and the long-neglected claims of the foreign creditor—was so extravagantly collected, and paid tribute to so many infamous peculators, that it was hardly recognisable in the reduced form in which it ultimately reached the treasury. The country groaned, the honest were indignant, the oppressed murmured, the boldest plotted. Groans and indignation, murmurs and plots, were alike in vain; alike they were arbitrarily silenced and crushed. Narvaez and his bayonets were there, keeping the peace; whilst Christina and her friends, with smooth and smiling countenances, picked up the doubloons. Quick! a short shrift and a sharp cartridge for the first who speaks above his breath. This did for a time, and might have done longer, for in Spain he who holds the purse holds the power: besides which, the red breeks of King Louis Philippe's cohorts showed menacingly along the Pyrenees; and Lord Palmerston, although he had been so scurvily treated in the matter of the marriages, might still, it was thought, be induced, in case of need, to send a frigate or two, and a battalion of marines, to protect his old ally Christina, should any serious rebellion break out. But one morning the Parisians turned their king out of his house; and the day afterwards, the Spanish government, whilst labouring under delirium of some kind, ejected Mr Bulwer from his; thus throwing, as the saying goes, the haft after the blade, quarrelling with England at the very moment they most needed her assistance, and remaining exposed, without hope of succour, to the assaults and machinations of their numerous enemies. Whereupon there was an immediate cocking of every Carlist beaver in or out of Spain. The old chiefs, who for six years had starved and struggled in the cause of their king, (succumbing finally before a general's treachery rather than to the arms of their foes,) looked out from the nooks where they long had rusted in retirement or exile, and more than one was heard, in the words of the old Jacobite song,