Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century | Page 3

laid.
The French Revolution had given currency to opinions which no
congress of sovereigns could wholly repress, and now the policy of the
"Alliance," to strangle all constitutional aspirations and rivet the chains
of Bourbonism upon limbs that had once known the bliss of freedom,
led to fierce intellectual revolt, and sometimes to physical violence.
England had made common cause with Turk and Christian, Kaiser and
King, against Napoleon, and for a time her statesmen viewed with

complacency the Holy Alliance, so reassuring in its name and so pure
in its professions; but when it became evident that this mighty league
was to be thrown against every liberty-loving people in the Old World
and the New, George Canning broke the irksome bond, and put the land
of parliaments and constitutional liberty in its rightful place as the
friend of freedom and the foe to the oppressor. It was the spirit if not
the voice of Canning which was powerful to save Portugal from the
Bourbon, to recognize the independence of the revolted American
colonies of Spain, and to restrain the enemies of freedom from handing
insurgent Greece back to the Turk. His predecessors had been
accustomed to sink the interests and desires of England in regard for
what the continental power called "the good of Europe." He was the
first statesman of his generation who dared to take an independent
position on "European" questions--"to write 'England,'" as he phrased it,
"where it had been the custom to write 'Europe.'" The policy which he
inaugurated marks a turning- point in the history of British foreign
affairs.
Catholic Emancipation
George IV., who had been regent since his father's illness in 1812,
reigned in his own name from 1820 to 1830, though his voice in the
affairs of state was small indeed. His Ministers, Liverpool, Canning,
Goderich, and Wellington, were confronted by serious problems of
domestic policy which had sprung up during the long period of foreign
wars and partly in direct consequence of those disturbing conditions.
The one recurrent question which found definite settlement in this reign
was that of Catholic emancipation. The penal laws against Roman
Catholics had disgraced the English statute-books for two centuries. On
the first of January, 1801, the Legislative Union of Great Britain and
Ireland had gone into effect under the name of the United Kingdom.
The Irish Parliament, which had met in Dublin since 1782, went out of
existence, and in the place of "Home Rule" Ireland was represented in
both houses of the Imperial Parliament at Westminster. Pitt had
promised the numerous Catholics of Ireland that the laws which made
them ineligible to represent their country in Parliament should be
repealed, and had abandoned office in disgust when George III. refused

to sanction his project of Catholic emancipation. In 1807 the Whig
ministry espoused the same cause, and in turn resigned because of the
opposition of the Crown. In Daniel O'Connell the cause at length found
a spokesman whose eloquence, wit, and talent for "agitation" soon
combined his Irish partisans into "The Catholic Association." Working
in conjunction with the Whigs of England, O'Connell's followers
formed a body which could not be neglected. Soon after Canning's
untimely death the Duke of Wellington had taken office. He was a Tory,
with all the prejudices of that political faith deepened by his birth and
training as an Irish Protestant, but the agitation had reached such
proportions that he saw in it a menace of civil war, to avoid which he
was willing to abandon his most cherished opinions on the Catholic
question. Accordingly, in 1829, the Iron Duke faced about and brought
in the bill which, becoming a law by Whig and Canningite votes,
admitted Roman Catholics to Parliament, and to civil rights only a little
short of complete. But instead of removing the Irish question from
politics, it was only prepared for more strenuous presentation in a new
guise, for O'Connell was returned to Parliament at the head of some
fifty Catholic members to agitate for Irish independence.
RAILWAYS
The perfection of the steam locomotive and the inception and
marvelous development of the system of steam railway transportation
marked the second quarter of the century. The name of the Stephensons,
father and son, is inseparably connected with this work which has
affected so deeply the economic and social life of the nation, and has
contributed in a thousand indirect ways to the expansion and
consolidation of the empire. It has been said that in 1825 the traveler
from London to Rome went no faster than the courier of the Caesars,
eighteen hundred years before. Thanks to George Stephenson's
inventive genius, the traveler of today consumes scarcely more time
between London and Peking.
THE REFORM OF PARLIAMENT
The reform of Parliament was the next question to come up for
settlement.