Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 71, No. 436, February 1852
The danger of acting upon such Utopian ideas has been much augmented, in the case of this country, by the commercial policy at the same time pursued by the dominant class who had come to entertain them. If it be true, as the wisest of men have affirmed in every age, and as universal experience has proved, that the true source of riches, as well as independence, is to be found in the cultivation of the soil, and that a nation which has come to depend for a considerable part of its subsistence on foreign states has made the first step to subjugation, the real patriot will find ample subject of regret and alarm in the present condition of Great Britain. Not only are ten millions of quarters of grain, being a full fifth of the national consumption, now imported from abroad, but nearly the half of this immense importation is of wheat, the staple food of the people, of which a third comes from foreign parts. Not only is the price of this great quantity of grain – certainly not less than twelve millions sterling – lost to the nation, but so large a portion of its food has come to be derived from foreign nations, that the mere threat of closing their harbours may render it a matter of necessity for Great Britain to submit to any terms which they may choose to exact. Our Colonies, once so loyal and great a support to the mother country, have been so thoroughly alienated by the commercial policy of the last few years, which has deprived them of all the advantages they enjoyed from their connection with it, that they have become a burden rather than a benefit. One-half of our diminutive army is absorbed in garrisoning their forts to guard against revolt. Lastly, the navy, once our pride and glory, and the only certain safeguard either against the dangers of foreign invasion, or the blockade of our harbours and ruin of our commerce, is fast melting away; for the reciprocity system established in 1823, and the repeal of the navigation laws in 1849, have given such encouragement to foreign shipping in preference to our own, that in a few years, if the same system continue, more than half of our whole commerce will have passed into the hands of foreign states, which may any day become hostile ones.
To complete the perils of Great Britain, arising out of the very magnitude of its former triumphs and extent of its empire, while so many causes were conspiring to weaken its internal strength, and disqualify it for withstanding the assault of a formidable enemy, others, perhaps more pressing, were alienating foreign nations, breaking up old alliances, and tending more and more to isolate England in the midst of European hostility. The triumph of the democratic principle, by the Revolution of 1830 in France, was the cause of this; for it at once induced an 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 with 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 counter balance the coalition of despots in Eastern, Europe. This system has been constantly pursued, and for long with ability and success by our Government. Strong in the support of France, whether under a "throne, surrounded by republican institutions," or under 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 Petersburg, Vienna, and Berlin. While the French alliance continued, these powers were constrained to devour their indignation in silence; they did not venture, with the embers of revolt slumbering in their own dominions, to brave the combined hostility of France and England. But all alliances formed on identity of feeling, not interest, are ephemeral in their duration. A single day destroyed the whole fabric on which we rested for our security. Revolutionary violence everywhere worked out its natural and unavoidable result in the principal continental states. A military despotism was, after a sanguinary struggle, established in Austria and Prussia; the 2d December arrived in France, and that power in an instant was turned over to the side of the absolute governments on the Continent. Our efforts to revolutionise Europe have ended in the establishment of military despotisms in all its principal states, supported by fifteen hundred thousand armed men – our boasted alliance with France, in the placing of it in the very front rank of what may eventually become the league of our enemies.
Lord Palmerston, by whom our foreign policy for the last twenty years has been mainly conducted, is a man of great talent, both for eloquence and business, and of extraordinary energy and powers of application. The charm and grace of his manners are such that they disarm the most hostile of his opponents in the intercourse of private society; and such was the vigour of his application, that he conducted nearly the whole business of the Foreign Office himself, and reduced the labour of his secretaries and clerks to the mere copying of despatches and answering routine letters. He was perfectly master of all the details of his department, and is probably better acquainted than any man alive with the intricacies of a diplomacy, which, from the commanding position of England, has come to embrace the whole civilised world. No man, when called to account in Parliament for any of his acts which had brought the country to the very verge of hostility, could defend himself with more intrepidity, or carry away the House by a more eloquent and intrepid assertion of the principles, or appeal to the feelings, which find a responsive echo in the most moving, because the noblest and most disinterested, chords of the British heart.
Yet, with all this, he was one of the most dangerous Ministers that ever held the portfolio of the Foreign Office in Great Britain; and at the period he was displaced, his removal had become, in a manner, a matter of necessity, if we would avoid an immediate rupture with the principal Continental powers. The reason was, that his ideas were entirely at variance with the policy of the ruling party in the country; and his ambition for his country not less inconsistent with the situation into which, by the general policy of the Cabinet, it had been brought, and the views which he himself entertained on the social institutions of the world. He had been bred in the school of Mr Pitt and Lord Castlereagh, and his ideas of the position and influence of England were founded on the state of the country when it had a million of men in arms and a thousand vessels of war in the royal navy. He forgot that this was not the condition of the country after thirty years of unbroken peace; that the spirit which called forth such vast armaments had expired with the necessities which created it; that 1851 was not 1815, nor the school of Mr Cobden that of Mr Pitt. The consequence was, that by his dignified and patriotic, but withal imprudent and ill-timed assertion of national demands, he brought us repeatedly to the very verge of hostility with the most formidable powers on the Continent, at the very time when, from the total want of any preparation for hostilities in the country, and the pitiable state of weakness to which our defensive establishments had been reduced, nothing but disaster was to be anticipated from their commencement.
These dangers were rendered still more pressing by the extreme divergence between his political principles and those of the cabinets of the ruling powers, formerly the allies of England, who directed the destinies of the Continent. He supported openly, so far as he could – favoured covertly when this was impossible – the cause of revolution all over the world. He aided, by the fleets of England, the establishment of one revolutionary throne in Belgium – by the marines and volunteers, of another in Spain. He concluded the quadruple alliance to force revolutionary queens upon a reluctant people in both kingdoms of the Peninsula. He covertly aided in the spread of liberal ideas in Italy – openly in supporting the insurgents in Sicily. He took Russia by the beard in the Dardanelles, on account of the Hungarian insurgents; and afterwards, for a wretched private dispute at Athens, ranged France by her side; – all but brought on a war with France by the bombardment of Beyrout and hostilities against Greece; and irritated Austria past forgiveness by the open sympathy expressed for the Hungarian insurgents. Such conduct might be manly and consistent: a nation which goes about over the world supporting the cause of revolutions everywhere, and presenting to every state the alternative of war or liberal institutions, may be consistent; but its rulers are next to insane if they are not prepared for the consequences of such aggressions, and provoke the combined hostility of the greatest powers, at a time when their country is barely able to sustain the attack of the smallest.
The great reliance of England throughout this long course of revolutionary encouragement and aggression, was on the alliance with France, and the fond belief entertained by our liberal rulers that the attente cordiale would be perpetual, and form a national compact which would effectually screen us, whatever we did, from the hostility of the despotic powers on the Continent. The Revolution of December 2, 1851, in Paris, and the subsequent approval of military despotism by seven millions and a half of French citizens, may teach us what foundation there is for such a hope, or what reliance, in this free country, there is to be placed on identity of feeling with a military power, which begins its career with the deportation of some thousand citizens to Cayenne without trial, the decimation of the Assembly, dissolution of the National Guard, and promulgation, with general consent, of the despotic institutions of Napoleon. The dangers arising from those changes to the alliance with England, are so obvious that they have attracted universal attention; and Government, however pacifically inclined, and however much under the control of the Manchester clique, are most properly taking measures to provide against the danger. Sheerness and Tilbury forts have been armed, and their magazines filled; two new batteries, of a hundred guns each, traced out at Plymouth; fortified camps, it is said, are to be formed round London, and a considerable addition made to our land and sea forces. We regret as much as any one can do, the necessity which exists for these changes; but the career of Liberalism, and of patronising revolutions all over the world, which we have pursued for the last twenty years, could not by possibility terminate in any other result.
What makes us augur more favourably than we have done for long, on the state of the country, notwithstanding these accumulating foreign dangers, is, that the national mind at home seems to be at length awakening to a sense of the perils which threaten the Empire. We have the greatest pleasure in quoting the following article from the Times on this all-important subject, which is the more valuable as that able journal has so long derided the idea of any danger being to be apprehended from foreign hostility: —
"At the accession of Harold to the crown, the English had enjoyed a peace of nearly fifty years, purchased by the final expulsion and destruction of their Danish invaders; they were becoming more and more enamoured of the arts of peace, and had made considerable progress in such civilisation as the times allowed. Agriculture was cultivated with great assiduity and success, and the national mind began to appreciate the benefits to be derived from foreign trade and commerce. The military spirit which had animated the descendants of Hengist and Horsa was gradually dying out, and the nation, united under one head, looked back with disgust and contempt on the obscure and bloody civil wars of the Heptarchy. The fortifications of the towns were allowed to fall into decay, and the equipment and discipline of the troops were almost entirely neglected. Dwelling in peace and security under their free elective institutions, the English looked with gradually increasing disfavour on the profession of arms. While the mailed chivalry of Normandy were carrying their banners even to the islands and peninsulas of the Mediteranean, the Saxon was content to fight on foot and to protect himself from the blows of a steel-clad man-at-arms by the imperfect defence of a surcoat of hide. His offensive arms were as imperfect as his defensive; he relied almost exclusively on the ponderous battleaxe, which, requiring both hands to wield it, necessarily left the person of the soldier exposed to the lance or the arrow. Yet, with all this, the nation was possessed by a spirit of the most overweening confidence and self-satisfied security. Proud of the exploits of their ancestors, believing in the perpetuity of the long peace they had enjoyed, satisfied with their republican institutions, and mistaking internal freedom for external strength, they looked with inert tranquillity on the gradual increase and organization of the power which was to overwhelm them; and when at last the blow fell, the nation, at once confident in its valour and impatient of military fatigue and privations, flung away its hopes in a single unequal conflict rather than endure the slow and desolating tactics which must have worn out the strength of the invader. The English met their enemies with one-third of their number, believing as devoutly as the pothouse heroes of our own times that one Englishman to three Frenchmen was a perfectly equal match, and that the total absence of cavalry and artillery on their side would be easily compensated by superior personal bravery. The nation was, at any rate, content to abide the trial, thinking that even if this army miscarried, it would be easy to overwhelm the invaders by a general rising. The army fell, and the nation with it.
"It may seem almost superfluous to apply this analogy to the state of modern England. We also have been in the enjoyment of a long and profound peace, and have learnt to consider a war as Something almost impossible. We also have entirely outlived the military spirit of the earlier years of this century, and in the pursuit of wealth and in the development of civilization have half learnt to believe in the preachers of a millennium, of the peaceful sweets of which we have already had a foretaste. We also take no care for the fortification of our country or the equipment of our troops. We arm them with weapons which are all but harmless; we load them with accoutrements which are worse than useless; and we sedulously and successfully endeavour to render them incapable of bearing fatigue and hardship. Our navy is employed in training sailors, and, as soon as we have succeeded in rendering them expert seamen and gunners, we dismiss them to enter into the service of foreign nations. Our infantry can hardly march, our cavalry can hardly ride. These troops, so armed, so disciplined, and so accoutred, are extremely scanty in numbers; and those numbers we have materially diminished by sending ten thousand of our best to make war upon savages five hundred miles on the other side of the tropic of Capricorn. Yet, under all these circumstances, we entertain an unbounded confidence in our own resources and position – we mistake the internal balance and equipoise of our polity for the power of resisting external force. We view without apprehension an enormous military power beside us, assuming a position which renders foreign war almost a necessity of its existence. We talk of our old victories by land and by sea, and forget that they were gained by men whose arms and training placed them on an equality with their antagonists. We rely on our insular position, which protected us so efficiently against Napoleon the Great, and insist upon the impregnable trench that surrounds us, although science has effectually bridged it over for Napoleon the Little. We forget the existence of the new power of steam, and the means of organising combined and unlooked-for movements afforded by the electric telegraph. We believe that if the storm with which France is now pregnant does burst, it will be upon the great military powers of the Continent, who sympathise with the proceedings of her government, who possess enormous military resources, and who offer but a poor prize to the victor, instead of upon us, whose free institutions are a daily reproach to the slavery and tyranny which disgrace France, whose military resources are such as we have described, and whose rich shores have not seen the footprint of a foreign army since the days of King John. Stranger still, we believe that we are secure against any sudden blow, and base this agreeable conviction on the good faith of a man who is what he now is solely because he has been able to dissemble and to deceive, to swear and to forswear. Strangest of all, we believe that if a French army should effect a landing, there is some unknown force in the population of this country which would overwhelm and absorb them; and that, while every other people in Europe has proved utterly unable to contend against military discipline, ours, the least warlike of any, will easily succeed where they have failed. The historic parallel seems tolerably close as regards the antecedents; let us hope, for the sake of this island and the cause of civilisation and liberty all over the world, that similar causes may not, in our time, result in a similar catastrophe.
"If disasters are destined for this country in its military and naval operations, they will, at least, not arrive without warning. The visitations of the last year have been absolutely ominous. As if to show us the futility of the resources on which we are relying, our ships have broken down, our stores have been condemned, our firearms have proved useless, and our soldiers are found incapacitated by their equipments from encountering half their number of naked savages. It would be hard to overlook such tokens of evil. If, with all our vaunted wealth and skill, we cannot send reinforcements to the Cape without miscarriages, or victual our vessels without peril of pestilence, what is to become of us in the face of such hostilities as men now living can well remember, and may see again?" —Times, Jan. 8 and 10, 1852.
It is a curious coincidence that the views here so ably and energetically put forth by the great organ of the moneyed and commercial interests, are precisely those which we have been constantly enforcing in this miscellany for many years past, and in an especial manner unfolded on this day year, February 1, 1851.61 No one need be told with what ridicule these views were received by the whole Manchester school of politicians, and especially by the able journal which has now so powerfully advocated them.
If views of this kind are entertained by the influential bodies who now rule the State, and they are acted upon by an able and energetic Government, there is no cause for despondence as to the external dangers which, from the necessary consequences of our own acts, now menace the British Empire. If the powers which may join to assail us are now much stronger and more united than they were in the time of Napoleon, our resources have augmented in a similar proportion. We have the means of defence and security in our own hands, if we will only make use of them. But it is not by a suicidal policy, and sacrificing everything to the foreigner, while he is contemplating the sacrificing us to himself, that this vital object is to be attained. Our whole dangers, external and internal, are of our own creation. But for the infatuation of our rulers and people, not one of them would have had any existence. But for the sacrifice of the national industry to the moneyed and manufacturing interests by our Monetary and Free Trade system, we might, five years ago, by merely keeping up the Sinking Fund as it stood at the battle of Waterloo, have paid off every shilling of our National Debt, and now reduced our taxation from fifty to twenty-five millions, and yet maintained an army of two hundred thousand men, and a fleet of fifty ships of the line and a hundred steamers, which would have enabled us to bid defiance to the hostility, by land and sea, of combined Europe. Instead of our Colonial Empire being on the verge of dissolution, from universal irritation at our Home Government, and the principal states of Europe in a state of suppressed hostility, from injuries that can never be forgiven, we might have had a flourishing and contented Colonial Empire, and steady friends in our old allies among the Continental states. Possibly it is too late to remedy the evils arising from the infatuated policy we have so long pursued at home and abroad; but this much is certain, that if anything can avert our dangers, it is the wisdom which can discern – the courage which can face them – and the magnanimity which can amend the errors from which they have arisen.