1

brother of the guillotined sovereign, was accepted by, or imposed on France. Napoleon, with the title of Emperor, retired, on a French pension, to Elba, which was ridiculously assigned to him as his monarchy. His empress, with her son, returned to the protection of her father, the Emperor of Austria. While the European powers were engaged in congress in the rearrangement of the political system, Napoleon escaped from his assigned atomic kingdom; Louis XVIII. abandoned his newly-acquired throne, and France was again in arms against Europe. The victory of the Allies under the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo (18th June 1815), extinguished Napoleon's political life. His surrender to an English cruiser doomed him to perpetual captivity on the rock of St. Helena.2

On the final defeat of Napoleon, Louis XVIII. was again restored; the European system was rearranged; former families were replaced in their rights, and alterations of territory made at the will of the "Great Powers." Belgium was united to Holland in one kingdom; some of the princes of Germany had their royal titles confirmed or created; many of the smaller states were "mediatised," that is, their princes retained their sovereign titles, but received compensation for the relinquishment of their sovereign authority.3 A "Holy Alliance" between Russia, Austria, and Prussia (1815), invited the European monarchs to unite for the prevention of future revolutionary movements.

The Peace of Paris (1815) terminated the greatest war in the annals of the world, and concluded the vast series of events that were the immediate consequences of the movement in France in 1789. But the impulse which the human mind had received, in the vital questions of social and political rights, though repressed by the watchful policy of governments, and by the exhaustion of a long and universal struggle, was not extinguished.5

1 The unhappy child of Louis XVI., whose name is inserted in the list of French monarchs, perished by the cruelty of the wretches to whom he was confided by the Jacobin government.

2 He died in 1821 his remains now repose under the dome of the Invalides in Paris: they were surrendered to the request of the French government in 1840.

3 Francis II., the last of the elective emperors of Germany (1792-1806), and I., as hereditary Emperor of Austria (1806-1835), was succeeded by the imbecile Ferdinand I., the second hereditary Austrian emperor, who in 1848 resigned his crowns to his nephew Francis-Joseph I.

4 The short war of England with the United States, arising out of questions respecting naval rights in 1812, was terminated at the same period.

5 As in similar circumstances at other eras (see note 1, p. 280), the period of the revolutionary war was accompanied and followed by a great outburst of literature, especially in England and Germany, in almost every department-poetry, philosophy, science, his

Constitutional movements were sternly checked, though certainly shadowy representative constitutions were granted to some States of Germany. Despotism and the Inquisition were in 1823, by the aid of a French army, established by Ferdinand VII. in Spain, and by John VI. in Portugal, notwithstanding their pledged acceptances of free constitutions. In England, bad harvests, commercial distress proceeding from the conclusion of the long monopoly of the ocean which the English had enjoyed during the war, and the weight of taxation arising from a debt of £874,000,000 sterling, created discontents that revived the cry for Reform in Parliament which had been agitated as early as 1793.1 A tbo limited constituency, the power of the aristocracy over numerous "close boroughs" and self-elected corporations, and the non-representation of great towns, were the leading alleged grievances for which a remedy was demanded. But reform in the minds of government, the aristocracy, and the majority of the middle classes, was connected with the terrors of revolution and social disorganization. Severe laws, and a wide system of secret espionage, apparently extinguished the movement; and the detected conspiracies of poverty-stricken fanatics seemed to countenance the severity of government. In 1820 George III.2 was succeeded by his son George IV., who, as regent, had directed the kingdom since 1812. During the succeeding ten years the country recovered its prosperity, and the maxims and practice of administrations were liberalized. Reform did not now wear its former terrific aspect; its advocates were no longer branded with disaffection; and a consciousness of its justice and propriety had spread among all classes. A similar spirit was shewn in the wide sympathy which existed in Britain with the demand of the Catholics in Ireland for a repeal of the laws which limited their civil rights.3 In that country the " agitation," headed by Daniel O'Connel, was supposed to have reduced the Peel and Wellington ministry to the alternative of concession or civil war. The "Emancipation Act" of 18294 accordingly freed the Catholics from civil disabilities, and admitted them to Parliament.

William IV. had just ascended the throne, on his brother's tory, economics, theology; and this literature of the highest class, by commercial enterprise and improvements in manufactures and mechanical contrivance, has been diffused among the humblest classes of society. 1 By Mr. (afterwards Earl) Grey, see p. 296. king's incurable imbecility: his last years

2 A tendency to insanity had ended in the were spent in this condition and in blindness. 8 See note 2, p. 286.

4 See note 3, p. 281.

death in June 1830, when a new French Revolution astonished Europe. Louis XVIII. had been succeeded (1824) by. his brother Charles X. The constitution guaranteed to France was reluctantly submitted to by the Bourbon princes. Its implied extinction in the promulgation in July 1830, of three royal ordonnances, abolishing the liberty of the press; altering the electoral law, and dissolving the summoned parliament ("Chambers") before it had met, excited in Paris an insurrection, which in three days expelled the sovereign, and his relative the Duke of Orleans was elected by the French people as their "citizen king," under the appellation of "Louis Philippe I. king of the French." Europe was widely affected by this successful effort of the popular prin ciple against power. Commotions happened in Germany and Switzerland. The Poles with revived hopes once more attempted their freedom from Russian oppression. Their revolt was crushed in 1831; and the emperor Nicholas in 1832 extinguished their national existence by incorporating Poland as a province of the empire. The victory of Russia was accompanied by measures of atrocious barbarity. Catholic Belgium had caught the flame from France in 1830, and a short struggle, aided by France and England, removed the obnoxious Protestant Dutch government, and Leopold of Saxe Coburg was, without farther opposition, acknowledged in 1833 "king of the Belgians." In England the new French Revolution precipitated the question of reform. In November 1830 the Whig ministry, headed by Earl Grey and Lord John Russell, displaced that of the Duke of Wellington, and ended the period of Tory ascendency which had lasted with little interruption since 1760. The Reform Act of 1832, widening the base of representation, and altering the principle of electoral qualification, was followed by the limitation of the East India Company's Charter, and the opening of the trade to China (1833); by the abolition of Negro Slavery, finally sanctioned in 1838; by the Municipal Reform Acts (1835-36), which destroyed the privileges of the old corporations, and placed the elections of Town-Councils in the hands of the parliamentary electors; by the Poor Law Acts for England (1834) and Ireland (1838). Opinions on the wholesomeness and results of these and other reform measures of the Whig party, are of course various; and the effects of the measures themselves have not yet perhaps had time to develop. On the death of William IV. in 1837, his niece, Alexan

drina Victoria, daughter of the late Duke of Kent,1 acceded to the throne at the age of eighteen. In 1840 she married her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Her reign opened with the revolt of Lower Canada, whose population, of French descent and Roman religion, have never been thoroughly well affected to the English government. The revolt was speedily quelled, and the subsequent union of the Upper and Lower Provinces, under one administration and Assembly, gave greater weight to the English element. The tranquillity of India was about the same period disturbed by the Afghan war2 (1839-1841), and subsequently by that with the Sikhs in the Punjaub (1845-1846). The great result of the successful wars with China (1840-1847), was the acquisition of settlements on the coast of that empire; and of the extension of access to Chinese ports by the nations of Europe and America. The disputes with the United States respecting the boundaries in Maine and New Brunswick, in the east, and in the Oregon territory on the Pacific, were amicably adjusted. Internally, thirty years of general peace have given to England a vast accumulation of wealth and prosperity, clouded at times by "commercial crises," and by visitations of Providence. The Asiatic Cholera has repeated its visits since 1832; and a mysterious malaria, which seemed its accompaniment, spread murrain among cattle, and blight over the harvests of Britain and Ireland, reducing the latter unhappy country to a deplorable condition of famine (1846). Of late years reform changes, which were vainly believed in 1832 to be final, have continued to advance in the direction of the freedom of commerce from all restrictive duties. The CornLaws, passed first in 1815 for exclusion of foreign grain from Britain, except when wheat rose to a certain stated price, were the first great object of attack. The minister, Sir Robert Peel, who had set the example of this policy in a revision of the tariff, and the repeal of the sugar duties, acknowledged himself, to the disgust of his "Conservative party," a convert to the arguments of the "Anti-CornLaw League." The "Corn-Laws" were repealed (1847); the "Navigation Laws," which imposed restrictive burdens on commerce, carried on by foreign shipping with British ports, followed them (1849); and the country at present (1851) is in expectation of an extension of the electoral franchise.

1 He died in 1820, eight days before George III. The Duke of Cumberland, king of Hanover, (see note 5, p. 288), is now the sole survivor of George Third's large family. 2 See note 2, p. 299.

The peaceful condition of England, accomplishing important social changes, under the shelter of long established law, to which all differences of opinion reverentially bow; and subduing by the power of the same principle, without a sword drawn, the demonstrations of physical force, by assembled multitudes clamant for alleged rights; nay, quelling even actual overt rebellion by the magic of a constable's baton— presents a powerful contrast with the recent condition of the continent, which revolting nations, rising under the repression of governments founded in force and fear, have covered with tumult and bloodshed. These scenes have again proceeded from a new revolution in France.

Louis Philippe's government, prudent and pacific, was of immense benefit to the progress, industry, and commerce of France. His cautious policy preserved the peace of Europe, endangered in 1844, by disputes respecting the arrangements between the Turkish Sultan Abd-ul-Medjid and Mehemet Ali, Pacha of Egypt. In his later years he exhibited a tendency to personal ambition and aggrandizement, in securing marriagealliances for branches of his house among the neighbouring royal families. He was suspected of designs to prevent the proper working of the constitution, by a system of corruption in his parliaments, and by keeping as narrow as possible the electoral franchise. France contains legitimists, or adherents of the old Bourbons,1 Buonapartists, the partisans of the emperor's family; republicans of all complexions down to the deepest "Red;" the house of Orleans possessed no hold of any historical principle in the associations of the French nation. Insurrections accordingly were frequent in Louis' reign; and attempts on his life of not uncommon occurrence. In 1848 the opposition to his government assumed a threatening aspect; the king believed he was prepared to repress it by an exhibition of force: an insurrection exploded in Paris on the 24th of February. In three hours the royal family were fugitives to different countries, and shortly were united in an English shelter at Claremont. The revolution, to France, which proclaimed "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," passed through various stormy phases under different leaders, and through bloody conflicts with the most violent party, till it settled into the form of a government.(1849), by an Assembly chosen by universal suffrage, headed by a triennial Pre

1 Represented by Henry (V.), Count de Chambord, grandson of the Duke d'Angouleme, 'brother of Louis XVI.