 Section 1 of A History of Our Own Times from the Accession of Queen Victoria to the General Election of 1880, Volume 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Pamela Nagami. A History of Our Own Times from the Accession of Queen Victoria to the General Election of 1880, Volume 2, by Justin McCarthy. Chapter 18 Chartism and Young Ireland, Part 1 The year 1848 was an era in the modern history of Europe. It was the year of unfulfilled revolutions. The fall of the dynasty of Louis Philippe may be said to have set the revolutionary tide flowing. The event in France had long been anticipated by keen-eyed observers. There are many predictions delivered and recorded before the revolution was yet near, which show that it ought not to have taken the world by surprise. The reign of the bourgeois king was unsuited in its good and in its bad qualities alike to the genius and the temper of the French people. The people of France have defects enough which friends and enemies are ready to point out to them. But it can hardly be denied that they like at least the appearance of a certain splendor and magnanimity in their systems of government. This is indeed one of their weaknesses. It lays them open to the allurements of any brilliant adventurer, like the First Napoleon or the Third, who can promise them national greatness and glory at the expense perhaps of domestic liberty. But it makes them peculiarly intolerant of anything mean and sorted in a system or a ruler. There are peoples, no doubt, who could be persuaded and wisely persuaded to put up with a good deal of the ignoble and the shabby in their foreign policy for the sake of domestic comfort and tranquility. But the French people are always impatient of anything like meanness in their rulers and the government of Louis Philippe was especially mean. Since foreign policy was treacherous, its diplomatists were commissioned to act as tricksters, the word of a French minister at a foreign court began to be regarded as on a level of credibility with a dicer's oath. The home policy of the king was narrow-minded and repressive enough, but a man who played upon the national weakness more wisely might have persuaded his people to be content with defects at home for the sake of prestige abroad. From the hour when it became apparent in France that the nation was not respected abroad, the fall of the dynasty was only a matter of time and change. The terrible story of the Dupralon family helped to bring about the catastrophe. The alternate weakness and obstinacy of the government forced it on, and the king's own lack of decision made it impossible that when the trial had come it could end in any way but one. Louis Philippe fled to England, and his flight was the signal for long pent-up fires to break out all over Europe. Revolution soon was aflame over nearly all the courts and capitals of the continent. Revolution is like an epidemic. It finds out the weak places in systems. The two European countries which being tried by it stood at best were England and Belgium. In the latter country the king made frank appeal to his people and told them if they wished to be rid of him he was quite willing to go. Language of this kind is new in the mouths of sovereigns and the Belgians are a people well able to appreciate it. They declared for their king and the shock of the revolution passed harmlessly away. In England and Ireland the effect of the events in France was instantly made manifest. The chartist agitation at once came to a head. Some of the chartist leaders called out for the dismissal of the ministry, the dissolution of the parliament, the charter and no surrender. A national convention of chartists began its sittings in London to arrange for a monster demonstration on April 10. Some of the speakers openly declared that the people were now quite ready to fight for their charter. Others more cautious advised that no step should be taken against the law until at least it was quite certain that the people were stronger than the upholders of the existing laws. The all the leading chartists spoke of the revolution in France as an example offered in good time to the English people and it is somewhat curious to observe how it was assumed in the most evident good faith that what we may call the wage receiving portion of the population of these islands constitutes exclusively the English people. What the educated, the wealthy, the owners of land, the proprietors of factories, the ministers of the different denominations, the authors of books, the painters of pictures, the bench, the bar, the army, the navy, the medical profession. What all these or any of them might think with regard to any proposed constitutional changes was accounted a matter in no wise affecting the resolve of the English people. The moderate men among the chartists themselves were soon unable to secure a hearing and the word of order went round among the body that the English people must have the Charter or a Republic. What had been done in France enthusiasts fancied might well be done in England. It was determined to present a monster petition to the House of Commons demanding the Charter and in fact offering a last chance to parliament to yield quietly to the demand. The petition was to be presented by a deputation who were to be conducted by a vast procession up to the doors of the House. The procession was to be formed on Kennington Common, the space then unenclosed which is now Kennington Park on the south side of London. There the chartists were to be addressed by their still trusted leader Fergus O'Connor and they were to march in military order to present their petition. The object undoubtedly was to make such a parade of physical force as should overall the legislature and the government and demonstrate the impossibility of refusing a demand backed by such a reserve of power. The idea was taken from O'Connor's policy in the monster meetings, but there were more of the chartists who hoped for something more than a mere demonstration of physical force and who would have been heartily glad if some untimely or unreasonable interference on the part of the authorities had led to a collision. A strong faith still survived at that time in what was grandiosly called the might of earnest numbers. Ardent young chartists who belong to the time of life when anything seems possible to the brave and faithful and when facts and examples count for nothing unless they favor one's own views, fully believed that it needed but the firing of the first shot, the sparkle of the first sword drawn to give success to the arms, though but the bare arms of the people and to inaugurate the reign of liberty. Therefore however differently and harmlessly events may have turned out, we may be certain that there went to the rendezvous at Kennington Common on that April 10th many hundreds of ignorant and excitable young men who desired nothing so much as a collision with the police and the military and the reign of liberty to follow. The proposed procession was declared illegal and all peaceful and loyal subjects were warned not to take any part in it, but this was exactly what the more ardent among the chartists expected and desired to see. They were rejoiced that the government had proclaimed the procession unlawful. Was not that the proper occasion for resolute patriots to show that they represented a cause above despotic law? Was not that the very opportunity offered to them to prove that the people were more mighty than their rulers and that the rulers must obey or abdicate? Was not the whole sequence of proceedings thus far exactly after the pattern of the French Revolution? The people resolve that they will have a certain demonstration in a certain way. The oligarchical government declared that they shall not do so. The people persevere, and, of course, the next thing must be that the government falls exactly as in Paris. When poor Dick Swiveller and Dickens's story is recovering from his fever, he looks forth of his miserable bed and makes up his mind that he is under the influence of some such magic spell as he has become familiar with in the Arabian Nights. This poverty-stricken little nurse claps her thin hands with joy to see him alive, and Dick makes up his mind that the clapping of the hands is the sign understood of all who read Eastern Romance and that next must appear at the princess's summons, the row of slaves with jars of jewels on their heads. Poor Dick, reasoning from his experiences in the Arabian Nights, was not one wit more astray than enthusiastic chartists reasoning for the sequence of English politics from the evidence of what had happened in France. The slaves with the jars of jewels on their heads were just as likely to follow the clap of the poor girl's hands as the events that had followed a popular demonstration in Paris to follow a popular demonstration in London. To begin with, the chartists did not represent any such power in London as the liberal deputies of the French Chamber did in Paris. In the next place London does not govern England, and in our time at least never did. In the third place the English government knew perfectly well that they were strong in the general support of the nation and were not likely to yield for a single moment to the hesitation which sealed the fate of the French monarchy. The chartists fell to disputing among themselves very much as O'Connell's repealers had done. Some were for disobeying the rules of the authorities and having the procession, provoking rather than avoiding a collision. At a meeting of the chartist's convention held the night before the demonstration, the eve of liberty as some of the orators eloquently termed it, a considerable number were foregoing armed to Kennington common. Fergus O'Connell had, however, sensing of still left to throw the weight of his influence against such an insane proceeding and to insist that the demonstration must show itself to be, as it was from the first proclaimed to be, a strictly pacific proceeding. This was the parting of the ways in the chartist as it had been in the repeal agitation. The more ardent spirits at once withdrew from the organization. Those who might even at the very last have done mischief if they had remained part of the movement withdrew from it, and chartism was left to be represented by an open-air meeting and a petition to parliament, like all the other demonstrations that the metropolis had seen to pass, hardly heeded across the field of politics. But the public at large was not aware that the fangs of chartism had been drawn before it was let loose to play on Kennington common that memorable tenth of April. London awoke in great alarm that day. The chartists in their most sanguine moments never ascribed themselves half the strength that honest alarmists of the bourgeois class were ready that morning to ascribe to them. The wildest rumors were spread abroad in many parts of the metropolis. Long before the chartists had got together on Kennington common at all, various remote quarters of London were filled with horrifying reports of encounters between the insurgents and the police or the military in which the chartists invariably had the better, and as a result of which they were marching in full force to the particular district where the momentary panic prevailed. London is worse off than most cities in such a time of alarm. It is too large for true accounts of things rapidly to diffuse themselves. In April 1848 the street telegraph was not in use for carrying news through cities, and the rapidly succeeding additions of the cheap papers were as yet unknown. In various quarters of London, therefore, the citizen was left through the greater part of the day in all the agonies of doubt and uncertainty. There was no lack, however, of public precautions against an outbreak of armed chartism. The Duke of Wellington took charge of all the arrangements for guarding the public buildings and defending the metropolis generally. He acted with extreme caution and told several influential persons that the troops were in readiness everywhere, but that they would not be seen unless an occasion actually rose for calling on their services. The coolness and presence of mind of the stern old soldier are well illustrated in the fact that to several persons of influence and authority who came to him with suggestions for the defense of this place or that, his almost invariable answer was done already or done two hours ago or something of the kind. A vast number of Londoners enrolled themselves as special constables for the maintenance of law and order. Only two hundred thousand persons, it is said, were sworn in for this purpose, and it will always be told as an odd incident of that famous scare that the Prince Louis Napoleon then living in London was one of those who volunteered to bear arms in the preservation of order. Not a long time was to pass before the most lawless outrage on the order and life of a peaceful city was to be perpetrated by the special command of the man who was so ready to lend the saving aid of his constable's staff to protect English society against some poor hundreds or thousands of English working men. The crisis, however, luckily proved not to stand in need of such saviours of society. The Chartist demonstration was a wretched failure. The separation of the Chartists who wanted force from those who wanted orderly proceedings reduced the project to nothing. The meeting on Kennington Commons, so far from being a gathering of half a million of men, was not a larger concourse than a temperance demonstration had often drawn together on the same spot. Some twenty or twenty-five thousand persons were on Kennington Common, of whom at least half were said to be mere lookers-on, come to see what was to happen, and carrying nothing whatever about the people's charter. The procession was not formed, O'Connor himself strongly insisting on obedience to the orders of the authorities. There were speeches of the usual kind by O'Connor and others, and the opportunity was made available by some of the more extreme and consequently disappointed Chartists to express in very vehement language their not unreasonable conviction that the leaders of the convention were humbugs. The whole affair in truth was an absurd anachronism. The lovers of law and order could have desired nothing better than that it should thus come forth in the light of day and show itself. The clap of the hand was given, but the slaves with the jars of jewels did not appear. It is not that the demands of the Chartists were anachronisms or absurdities. We have already shown that many of them were just and reasonable, and that all came within the fair scope of political argument. The anachronism was in the idea that the display of physical force could any longer be needed or be allowed to settle a political controversy in England. The absurdity was in the notion that the wage receiving classes and they alone are the people of England. The great Chartist petition itself which was to have made so profound an impression on the House of Commons proved as utter a failure as the demonstration on Kennington Common. Mr. O'Connor in presenting this portentous document boasted that it would be found to have five million seven hundred thousand signatures in round numbers. The calculation was made in very round numbers indeed. The Committee on Public Petitions were requested to make a minute examination of the document and to report to the House of Commons. The Committee called in the service of a little army of law stationers, clerks, and went to work to analyze the signatures. They found to begin with that the whole number of signatures genuine or otherwise fell short of two millions, but that was not all. The Committee found in many cases that whole sheets of the petition were signed by the one hand and that eight percent of the signatures were those of women. It did not need much investigation to prove that a large proportion of the signatures were not genuine. The name of the Queen, of Prince Albert, of the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, Lord John Russell, Colonel Sipthorpe, and various other public personages appeared again and again on the chartest roll. Some of these eminent persons would appear to have carried their zeal for the People's Charter so far as to keep signing their names untiringly all over the petition. A large number of yet stranger allies would seem to have been drawn to the cause of the Charter. Cheeks the Marine was a personage very familiar at that time to the readers of Captain Marriott's sea stories, and the name of that mythical hero appeared with bewildering iteration in the petition. So did Davy Jones. So did various persons describing themselves as pugnose, flat nose, wooden legs, and by other such epithets acknowledging curious personal defects. We need not describe the laughter and scorn which these revelations produced. There really was not anything very marvellous in the discovery. The petition was got up in great haste and with almost utter carelessness. Its sheets used to be sent anywhere and left lying about anywhere on a chance of obtaining signatures. The temptation to schoolboys and practical jokers of all kinds was irresistible. Whenever there was a mischievous hand that could get hold of a pen, there was some name of a royal personage or some Cheeks the Marine had once added to the muster role of the Chartists. As a matter of fact, almost all large popular petitions are found to have some such buffooneries mixed up with their serious business. The Committee on Petitions, have on several occasions had reason to draw attention to the obviously fictitious nature of signatures appended to such documents. The petitions in favour of O'Connell's movement used to lie at the doors of chapels all Sunday long in Ireland with pen and ink ready for all who approved to sign, and it was many a time the favourite amusement of schoolboys to scrawl down the most grotesque names and nonsensical imitations of names. But the Chartist petition had been so loudly boasted of, and the whole Chartist movement had created such a scare that the delight of the public generally at any discovery that threw both into ridicule was overwhelming. It was made certain that the number of genuine signatures was ridiculously below the estimate formed by the Chartist leaders, and the agitation after terrifying respectability for a long time suddenly showed itself as a thing only to be laughed at. The laughter was stentorian and overwhelming. The very fact that the petition contained so many absurdities was in itself an evidence of the sincerity of those who presented it. It was not likely that they would have furnished their enemies with so easy attempting a way of turning them into ridicule if they had known or suspected that there was any lack of genuineness in the signatures, or that they would have provided so ready a means of decrying their truthfulness as to claim five millions of names for a document which they knew to have less than two millions. The Chartist leaders in all their doings showed a want of accurate calculation, and of the frame of mind which desires or appreciates such accuracy. The famous petition was only one other example of their habitual weakness. It did not bear testimony against their good faith. The effect, however, of this unlucky petition on the English public was decisive. From that day Chartism never presented itself to the ordinary middle-class Englishmen as anything but an object of ridicule. The terror of the agitation was gone. There were efforts made again and again during the year by some of the more earnest and extreme of the Chartist leaders to renew the strength of the agitation. The outbreak of the young Ireland movement found many sympathizers among the English Chartists, more especially in its earlier stages, and some of the Chartists in London and other great cities endeavored to light up the fire of their agitation again by the help of some brands caught up from the pile of disaffection which Mitchell and Mar were setting ablaze in Dublin. The monster-gathering of Chartists was announced for Witt Monday, June 12, and again the metropolis was thrown into a momentary alarm. Very different in strength, however, from that of the famous 10th of April. Even precautions were taken by the military authorities against the possible rising of an insurrectionary mob. Nothing came of this last gasp of Chartism. The times of the following day remarked that there was absolutely nothing to record, nothing except the blankest expectation, the most miserable gaping, gossiping and grumbling of disappointed listeners, the standing about, the roaming to and fro, the dispersing and the sneaking home of some poor simpletons who had wandered forth in the hope of some miraculous crisis in their affairs. It is impossible not to pity those who were thus deceived, not to feel some regret for the earnestness, the hope, and the ignorant, passionate energy which was thrown away. Nor can we feel only surprise and contempt for those who imagined that the Charter and the rule of what was called in their jargon the people would do something to regenerate their miserable lot. They had at least seen that up to that time Parliament had done little for them. There had been a Parliament of aristocrats and landlords, and it had for generations troubled itself little about the class from whom Chartism was recruited. The scepter of legislative power had passed into the hands of a Parliament made up in great measure of the wealthy middle ranks, and it had thus far shown no inclination to distress itself over much about them. Almost every single measure Parliament has passed to do any good for the wage-receiving classes, and the poor generally has been passed since the time when the Chartists began to be in power. Our corn laws repeal, our factory acts, our sanitary legislation, our measures referring to the homes of the poor. All these have been the work of later times than those which engendered the Chartist movement. It is easy to imagine a Chartist replying in the early days of the movement to some grave remonstrances from wise legislators. He might say, You tell me I am mad to think the Charter can do anything for me in my class. But can you tell me what else ever has done or tried to do any good for them? You think I am a crazy person because I believe that a popular Parliament could make anything of the task of government. I ask you, what have you and your like made of it already? Things are well enough, no doubt, for you and your class, a pitiful minority, but they could not be any worse for us, and we might make them better so far as the great majority are concerned. We may fairly crave a trial for our experiment. No matter how wild and absurd it may seem, it could not turn out for the majority any worse than your scheme has done. It would not have been very easy then to answer a speaker who took this line of argument. In truth, there was, as we have already insisted, grievance enough to excuse the Chartist agitation and hope enough in the scheme the Chartists proposed to warrant its fair discussion. Such movements are never to be regarded by sensible persons as the work merely of knaves and dupes. Chartism bubbled and sputtered a little yet in some of the provincial towns and even in London. There were Chartist riots in Ashton, Lancashire, and an Afray with the police, and the killing before the Afray, it is painful to have to say of one policeman. There were Chartists arrested in Manchester on the charge of preparing insurrectionary movements. In two or three public houses in London some Chartist hunters were arrested, and the police believed they had got evidence of a projected rising to take in the whole of the Metropolis. It is not impossible that some wild and frantic schemes of the kind were talked of and partly hatched by some of the disappointed fanatics of the movement. Some of them were fiery and ignorant enough for anything, and throughout this memorable year, thrones and systems kept toppling down all over Europe in a manner that might well have led feather-headed agitators too fancy that nothing was stable and that in England, too, the whistle of a few conspirators might bring about a transformation scene. All this folly came to nothing but a few arrests and a few not heavy sentences. Among those tried in London on charges of sedition merely was Mr. Ernest Jones, who was sentenced to two years imprisonment. Mr. Jones has been already spoken of as a man of position and high culture, a poet whose verses sometimes might almost claim for their author the possession of genius. He was an orator whose speeches then and after obtained the enthusiastic admiration of John Bright. He belonged rather to the School of Revolutionist, which established itself as young Ireland than to the class of poor fossils and coffees and uneducated working men who made up the foremost ranks of the aggressive Chartist movement in its later period. He might have had a brilliant and a useful career. He outlived the Chartist era, lived to return to peaceful agitation, to hold public controversy with the eccentric and clever Professor Blackie of Edinburgh on the relative advantages of republicanism and monarchy, and to stand for a parliamentary borough at the general election of 1868, and then his career was closed by death. The close was sadly premature even then. He had plunged immaturely into politics, and although a whole generation had passed away since his debut, he was but a young man comparatively when the last scene came. Here comes not inappropriately to an end the history of English Chartism. It died of publicity, of exposure to the air, of the anti-corn law league, of the evident tendency of the time to settle law questions by reason, argument, and majorities, of growing education, of a strengthening sense of duty among all the more influential classes. When Sir John Campbell spoke its obituary years before as we have seen, he treated it as simply a monster killed by the just severity of the law. Ten years' experience taught the English public to be wiser than Sir John Campbell. Chartism did not die of its own excesses. It became an anachronism. No one wanted it any more. All that was sound in its claims asserted itself and was in time conceited, but its active or aggressive influence ceased with 1848. The history of the reign of Queen Victoria has not any further to concern itself about Chartism. Not since that year has there been serious talk or thought of any agitation asserting its claims, by the use or even the display of armed force in England. The spirit of the time had meanwhile made itself felt in a different way in Ireland. For some months before the beginning of the year the Young Ireland Party had been established as a rival association to the repealers who still believed in the policy of O'Connell. It was inevitable that O'Connell's agitation should beget some such movement. The great agitator had brought the temperament of the younger men of his party up to a fever heat, and it was out of the question that all that heat should subside in the veins of young collegians and schoolboys at the precise moment when the leader found that he had been going too far and gave the word for peace and retreat. The influence of O'Connell had been waning for a time before his death. It was a personal influence depending on his eloquence and his power, and these, of course, had gone down with his physical decay. The Nation newspaper, which was conducted and written for by some rising young men of high culture and remarkable talent, had long been writing in a style of romantic and sentimental nationalism which could hardly give much satisfaction to, or derive much satisfaction from, the somewhat cunning and trickish agitation which O'Connell had set going. The Nation and the clever youths who wrote for it were all for nationalism of the Hellenic or French type, and were disposed to laugh at constitutional agitation and to chafe against the influence of the priests. The famine had created an immense amount of unreasonable but certainly not unnatural indignation against the government who were accused of having pultured with the agony and danger of the time and having clung to the letter of the doctrines of political economy when death was invading Ireland in full force. The Young Ireland Party had received a new support by the adhesion of Mr. William Smith O'Brien to their ranks. Mr. O'Brien was a man of considerable influence in Ireland. He had large property and high rank. He was connected with or related to many aristocratic families. His brother was Lord Inchiquin. The title of the Marquisate of Toman was in the family. He was undoubtedly descended from the famous Irish hero and King Brian Baru, and was almost inordinately proud of his claims of long descent. He had the highest personal character and the finest sense of honour, but his capacity for leadership of any movement was very slender. A poor speaker with little more than an ordinary country gentleman's share of intellect, O'Brien was a well-meaning but weak and vain man, whose head at last became almost turned by the homage which his followers and the Irish people generally paid to him. He wasn't short of sort of Lafayette Monquet. Under the happiest auspices he could never have been more than a successful Lafayette. But his adhesion to the cause of Young Ireland gave the movement a decided impulse. His rank, his legendary descent, his undoubted chivalry of character and purity of purpose lent a romantic interest to his appearance as the recognized leader, or at least the figurehead of the young Irelanders. Smith O'Brien was a man of more mature years than most of his companions in the movement. He was some forty-three or four years of age when he took the leadership of the movement. Thomas Francis Marr, the most brilliant orator of the party, a man who under other conditions might have risen to great distinction in public life, was then only about two or three and twenty. Even Duffy, who were regarded as elders among the Young Irelanders, were perhaps each some thirty years of age. There were many men more or less prominent in the movement who were still younger than Marr. One of these, who afterwards rose to some distinction in America, and has long since died, wrote a poem about the time when the Young Ireland movement was at its height in which he commemorated sadly his attainment of his eighteenth year and deplored that at an age when Chatterton was mighty and Keats had glimpses into spirit land, the age of eighteen to it, he, this young Irish patriot, had yet accomplished nothing for his native country. Most of his companions sympathized fully with him and thought his impatience natural and reasonable. The Young Ireland agitation was at first a sort of college debating society movement, and it never became really national. It was composed for the most part of young journalists, young scholars, amateur literatures, poets on erb, orators molded on the finest patterns of Athens and the French Revolution and aspiring youths of the Cherubino time of life who were ambitious of distinction as heroes in the eyes of young ladies. Among the recognized leaders of the party there was hardly one in want of money. Some of them were young men of fortune, or at least the sons of wealthy parents. Not many of the dangerous revolutionary elements were to be found among these clever, respectable, and precocious youths. The Young Ireland movement was as absolutely unlike the Chartist movement in England as any political agitation could be unlike another. Unreal and unlucky as the Chartist movement proved to be, its ranks were recruited by genuine passion and genuine misery. Before the death of O'Connell, the formal secession of the Young Ireland party from the regular repealers had taken place. It arose out of an attempt of O'Connell to force upon the whole body a declaration condemning the use of physical force, of the sword, as it was grandiosely called, in any patriotic movement whatever. It was in itself a sign of O'Connell's failing powers and judgment that he expected to get a body of men about the age of Maher to make a formal declaration against the weapon of theonitus and multieties, and all the other heroes dear to classically instructed youth. Maher declaimed against the idea in a burst of poetic rhetoric, which made his followers believe that a new gratin of boulder style was coming up to recall the manhood of Ireland that had been banished by the agitation of O'Connell and the priests. I am not one of those tame moralists, the Young Order exclaimed, who say that liberty is not worth one drop of blood. Against this miserable maxim, the noblest virtue that has saved and sanctified humanity appears in judgment. From the blue waters of the Bay of Solemnus, from the valley over which the sun stood still, and lit the Israelite to victory, from the cathedral in which the sword of Poland has been sheathed in the shroud of Kosciuszko, from the convent of St. Isidor, where the fiery hand that rent the ensign of St. George upon the plains of Ulster has moldered into dust, from the sands of the desert where the wild genius of the Algerine so long has scared the eagle of the Pyrenees, from the Dukal Palace in this kingdom where the memory of the gallant and seditious Geraldine enhances more than royal favor the splendor of his race, from the solitary grave within this mute city which a dying bequest has left without an epitaph. Oh, from every spot where heroism has had a sacrifice or a triumph, a voice breaks in upon the cringing crowd that cherishes this maxim crying away with it, away with it. The reader will probably think that a generation of young men might have enjoyed as much as they could get of this sparkling declamation without much harm being done thereby to the cause of order. Only a crowd of well-educated young Irishmen, fresh from college and with the teaching of their country's history which the nation was pouring out weekly in pros and poetry, could possibly have understood all its historical illusions. No harm indeed would have come of this graceful and poetic movement were it not for events which the young Ireland party had no share in bringing about. The Continental Revolutions of the year 1848 only converted the movement from a literary and poetical organization into a rebellious conspiracy. The fever of that wild epoch spread itself at once over Ireland. When crowns were going down everywhere, what wonder if Hellenic young Ireland isn't believed that the moment had come when the crown of the Saxon Invader II was destined to fall. The French Revolution and the Flight of Louis Philippe set Ireland in a rapture of hope and rebellious joy. La Martin became the hero of the hour. A copy of his showy, superficial Girondiste was in the hand of every true young Irelander. Maurer was at once declared to be the vernio of the Irish Revolution. Smith O'Brien was called upon to become its Lafayette. A deputation of young Irelanders with O'Brien and Maurer at their head waited upon La Martin and were received by him with a cool, good sense which made Englishmen greatly respect his judgment and prudence, but which much disconcerted the hopes of the young Irelanders. Many of these latter appear to have taken in their most literal sense, some words of La Martin's, about the sympathy of the new French Republic with the struggles of oppressed nationalities, and to have fancied that the Republic would seriously consider the propriety of going to war with England at the request of a few young men from Ireland headed by a country gentleman and member of Parliament. In the meantime, a fresh and a stronger influence than that of O'Brien or Maurer had arisen in young Irelandism. Young Ireland itself now split into two sections, one for immediate action, the other for caution and delay. The party of action acknowledged the leadership of John Mitchell. The organ of this section was the newspaper started by Mitchell in opposition to the nation which had grown too slow for him. The new journal was called the United Irishmen and in a short time it had completely distanced the nation in popularity and in circulation. The deliberate policy of the United Irishmen was to force the hand first of the government and then of the Irish people. Mitchell had made up his mind so to rouse the passion of the people as to compel the government to take steps for the prevention of rebellion by the arrest of some of the leaders. Then Mitchell calculated upon the populace rising to defend or rescue their heroes and then the game would be afoot. Ireland would be entered in rebellion and the rest would be for fate to decide. This looks now a very wild and hopeless scheme, so of course it proved itself to be, but it did not appear so hopeless at the time, even to cool heads. At least it may be called the only scheme which had the slightest chance of success. We do not say of success in establishing the independence of Ireland, which Mitchell sought for, but in setting a genuine rebellion afoot. Mitchell was the one formidable man among the rebels of forty-eight. He was the one man who distinctly knew what he wanted and was prepared to run any risk to get it. He was cast in the very mold of the genuine revolutionist and under different circumstances might have played a formidable part. He came from the northern part of the island and was a Protestant dissenter. It is a fact worthy of note that all the really formidable rebels Ireland has produced in modern time, from wolf tone to Mitchell, have been Protestants. Mitchell was a man of great literary talent, indeed a man of something like genius. He wrote a clear, bold, incisive prose, keen in its scorn and satire, going directly to the heart of its purpose. As mere prose, some of it is worth reading even today for its cutting force and pitiless irony. Mitchell issued in his paper, week after week, a challenge to the government to prosecute him. He poured out the most fiery sedition and used every incentive that words could supply to rouse a hot-headed people to arms or an impatient government to some act of severe oppression. Mitchell was quite ready to make a sacrifice of himself if it were necessary. It is possible enough that he had persuaded himself into the belief that a rising in Ireland against the government might be successful. But there is good reason to think that he would have been quite satisfied if he could have stirred up, by any process, a genuine and sanguinary insurrection which would have read well in the papers and redeemed the Irish nationalists from what he considered the disgrace of never having shown that they knew how to die for their cause. He kept on urging the people to prepare for war-like effort, and every week's united Irishmen contained long descriptions of how to make pikes and how to use them, how to cast bullets, how to make the streets as dangerous for the hoofs of cavalry horses as Bruce made the field of Bannockburn. Some of the recipes, if we may call them so, were of a peculiarly ferocious kind. The use of vitriol was recommended among other destructive agencies. A feeling of detestation was not unnaturally aroused against Mitchell, even in the minds of many who sympathized with his general opinions, and those whom we may call the gyrondice of the party somewhat shrank from him and would gladly have been rid of him. It is true that the most ferocious of these vitriolic articles were not written by him, nor did he know of the famous recommendation about the throwing of vitriol until it appeared in print. He was, however, justly and properly, as well as technically responsible for all that appeared in a paper started with such a purpose as that of the united Irishmen, and it is not even certain that he would have disapproved of the vitriol throwing recommendation if he had known of it in time. He never disavowed it, nor took any pains to show that it was not his own. The fact that he was not his author is therefore only mentioned here as a matter more or less interesting, and not at all as any excuse for Mitchell's general style of newspaper warmaking. He was a fanatic, clever, and fearless. He would neither have asked quarter nor given it, and undoubtedly if Ireland had had many men of his desperate resolve she would have been plunged into a bloody, and obstinate, and a disastrous contest against the strength of the British government. In the meantime that government had to do something. The Lord Lieutenant could not go on forever allowing a newspaper to scream out appeals to rebellion and to publish every week minute descriptions of the easiest and quickest way of killing off English soldiers. The existing laws were not strong enough to deal with Mitchell and to suppress his paper. It would have been of little account to proceed against him under the ordinary laws which condemned seditious speaking or writing. Prosecutions were, in fact, set on foot against O'Brien and Mower, and Mitchell himself for ordinary offenses of that kind, but the accused men got bail and went on meantime speaking and writing as before, and when the cases came to be tried by a jury the government failed to obtain a conviction. The government therefore brought in a bill for the better security of the Crown and government, making all written incitement to insurrection or resistance to the law felony punishable with transportation. This measure was passed rapidly through all its stages. It enabled the government to suppress newspapers like the United Irishmen and to keep in prison without bail while awaiting trial, anyone charged with an offense under the new act. Mitchell soon gave the authorities an opportunity of testing the efficacy of the act in his person. He repeated his incitements to insurrection, was arrested, and thrown into prison. The climax of the excitement in Ireland was reached when Mitchell's trial came on. There can be little doubt that he was filled with a strong hope that his followers would attempt to rescue him. He wrote from his cell that he could hear around the walls of his prison every night the trap of hundreds of sympathizers, felons and heart and soul. The government for their part were in full expectation that some sort of rising would take place. For the time, Smith O'Brien, Maurer and the other young Irelanders were thrown into the shade, and the eyes of the whole country were turned upon Mitchell's cell. Had there been another Mitchell out of doors, as fearless and reckless as the Mitchell in the prison, a sanguinary outbreak would probably have taken place. But the leaders of the movement outside were by no means clear in their own minds as to the course they ought to pursue. Many of them were well satisfied of the hopelessness and folly of any rebellious movement, and nearly all were quite aware that in any case the country just then was wholly unprepared for anything of the kind. Not a few had a shrewd suspicion that the movement never had taken any real hold on the heart of the country. Some were jealous of Mitchell's sudden popularity and in their secret hearts were disposed to curse him for the trouble he had brought on them. But they could not attempt to give open utterance to such sentiment. Mitchell's boldness and resolve had placed him at a sad disadvantage. He had that superiority of influence over them that downright determination always gives a man over colleagues who do not quite know what they would have. One thing, however, they could do and that they did. They discouraged any idea of an attempt to rescue Mitchell. His trial came on, he was found guilty. He made a short but powerful and impassioned speech from the dock. He was sentenced to fourteen years' transportation. He was hurried under an escort of cavalry through the streets of Dublin, put on board a ship of war, and in a few hours was on his way to Bermuda. Dublin remained perfectly quiet. The country outside hardly knew what was happening until Mitchell was well on his way and far-seeing persons smiled to themselves since had the danger was all over. So, indeed, it proved to be. The remainder of the proceedings partook rather of the nature of burlesque. The young Ireland leaders became more demonstrative than ever. The nation newspaper now went in openly for rebellion, but rebellion at some unnamed time and when Ireland should be ready to meet the Saxon. It seemed to be assumed that the Saxon with a characteristic love of fair play would let his foes make all the preparations they pleased without any interference, and that when they announced themselves ready, then, but not until then, would he come forth to fight with them. Smith O'Brien went about the country holding reviews of the Confederates as the young Irelanders call themselves. The government, however, showed a contempt for the rules of fair play, suspended the habeas corpus act in Ireland, and issued warrants for the arrest of Smith O'Brien and Mauer and other Confederate leaders. The young Irelanders received the news of this unshivalric proceeding with an outburst of anger and surprise which was evidently genuine. They had clearly made up their minds that they were to go on playing at preparation for rebellion as long as they liked to keep up the game. They were completely puzzled by the new condition of things. It was not very clear what Leonidus or Verneau would have done under such circumstances. It was certain that if they were all arrested the country would not stir hand or foot on their behalf. Some of the principal leaders therefore, Smith O'Brien, Mauer, Dillon and others, left Dublin and went down into the country. It is not certain even yet whether they had any clear purpose of rebellion at first. It seems probable that they thought of evading arrest for a while and trying meantime if the country was ready to follow them into an armed movement. They held a series of gatherings which might be described as meetings of agitators or marshallings of rebels according as one was pleased to interpret their purpose. But this sort of thing very soon drifted into rebellion. The principal body of the followers of Smith O'Brien came into collision with the police at a place called Ballingerie in Tipperary. They attacked a small force of police who took refuge in the cottage of a poor widow named Cormac. The police held the house as a besieged fort and the rebels attacked them from the famous cabbage garden outside. The police fired a few volleys, the rebels fired with what wretched muskets and rifles they possessed, but without harming a single policeman. After a few of them had been killed or wounded it never was perfectly certain that any were actually killed. The rebel army dispersed and the rebellion was all over. In a few days after poor Smith O'Brien was taken quietly at the railway station in Thurlis, Tipperary. He was calmly buying a ticket for Limerick when he was recognized. He made no resistance whatever and seemed to regard the whole mummery as at an end. He accepted his fate with the composure of a gentleman and indeed in all the part which was left for him to play he bore himself with dignity. It is but justice to an unfortunate gentleman to say that some reports which were rather ignobly said abroad about his having showed a lack of personal courage in the Balangaria fray were, as all will readily believe, quite untrue. Some of the police deposed that during the fight, if fight it could be called, poor O'Brien exposed his life with entire recklessness. One policeman said he could have shot him easily at several periods of the little drama, but he felt reluctant to be the slayer of the misguided descendant of the Irish kings. It afterwards appeared also that any little chance of carrying on any manner of rebellion was put a stop to by Smith O'Brien's own resolution that his rebels must not seize the private property of any one. He insisted that his rebellion must pay its way and the funds were soon out. The confederate leader woke from a dream when he saw his followers dispersing after the first volley or two from the police. From that moment he behaved like a dignified gentleman equal to the fate he had brought upon him. Maher and two of his companions were arrested a few days after as they were wandering hopelessly and aimlessly through the mountains of Tipperary. The prisoners were brought for trial before a special commission held at Clamel in Tipperary in the following September. Smith O'Brien was the first put on trial and he was found guilty. He said a few words with grave and dignified composure simply declaring that he had endeavored to do his duty to his native country and that he was prepared to abide the consequences. He was sentenced to death after the old form and cases of high treason to be hanged, beheaded, and quartered. Maher was afterwards found guilty. Great commiseration was felt for him. His youth and his eloquence made all men and women pity him. His father was a wealthy man who had had a respected career in Parliament and there had seemed at one time to be a bright and happy life before young Maher. The short address in which Maher vindicated his actions when called upon to show cause why sentence of death should not be passed upon him was full of manly and pathetic eloquence. He had nothing he said to retract or to ask pardon for. I am not here to crave with faltering lip the life I have consecrated to the independence of my country. I offer to my country as some proof of the sincerity with which I have thought and spoken and struggled for her the life of a young heart. The history of Ireland explains my crime and justifies it. Even here where the shadows of death surround me and from which I see my early grave opening for me in no consecrated soil, the hope which beckoned me forth on that perilous sea whereon I have been wrecked, animates, consoles, enraptures me. No, I do not despair of my poor old country, her peace, her liberty, her glory. Maher was sentenced to death with the same hideous formalities as those which had been observed in the case of Smith O'Brien. No one, however, really believed for a moment that such a sentence was likely to be carried out in the reign of Queen Victoria. The sentence of death was changed into one of transportation for life, nor was even this carried out. The convicts were all sent to Australia, and a few years after Mitchell contrived to make his escape followed by Maher. The manner of escape was at least of doubtful credit to the prisoners, for they were placed under parole and a very nice question was raised as to whether they had not broken their parole by the attempt to escape. It was a nice question, which in the case of men of very delicate sense of honour could, one would think, hardly have arisen at all. The point in Mitchell's case was that he actually went to the police court, within whose jurisdiction he was, formally and publicly announced to the magistrate that he withdrew his parole, and invited the magistrate to arrest him then and there. But the magistrate was unprepared for his coming and was quite thrown off his guard. Mitchell was armed and so was a friend who accompanied him and who had planned and carried out the escape. They had horses waiting at the door, and when they saw that the magistrate did not know what to do they left the court, mounted the horses, and rode away. It was contended by Mitchell and by his companion, Mr. P. J. Smith, afterwards a distinguished member of Parliament, that they had fulfilled all the conditions required by the parole and had formally and honorably withdrawn it. One is only surprised how men of honour could thus puzzle and deceive themselves. The understood condition of a parole is that a man who intends to withdraw it shall place himself before his captors in exactly the same condition as he was when on his pledged word of honour they allowed him a comparative liberty. It is evident that a prisoner would never be allowed to go at large on parole if he were to make use of his liberty to arrange all the conditions of an escape, and when everything was ready take his captors by surprise, tell them he was no longer bound by the conditions of the pledge, and that they might keep him if they could. This was the view taken by Smith O'Brien who declined to have anything to do with any plot for escape while he was on parole. The advisers of the Crown recommended that a conditional pardon should be given to the gallant and unfortunate gentleman who had behaved in so honourable a manner. Smith O'Brien received a pardon on condition of his not returning to these islands, but this condition was withdrawn after a while and he came back to Ireland. He died quietly in Wales in 1864. Mitchell settled for a while in Richmond, Virginia, and became an ardent advocate of slavery and an impassioned champion of the Southern Rebellion. He returned to the north after the rebellion and more lately came to Ireland, were owing to some defect in the criminal law he could not be arrested, his time of penal servitude having expired although he had not served it. He was still a hero with a certain class of the people. He was put up as a candidate for an Irish county and elected. He was not allowed to enter the House of Commons, however. The election was declared void and a new writ was issued. He was elected again and some turmoil was expected when suddenly Mitchell, who had long been in sinking health, was withdrawn from the controversy by death. He should have died before. The later years of his life were only an anti-climax. His attitude in the Dock in 1848 had something of dignity and heroism in it, and even the staunchest enemies of his cause admired him. He had undoubtedly great literary ability and if he had never reappeared in politics the world would have thought that a really brilliant light had been prematurely extinguished. Maur served in the Army of the Federal States when the war broke out and showed much of the soldier's spirit and capacity. His end was premature and inglorious. He fell from the deck of a steamer one night. It was dark and there was a strong current running. Help came too late. A false step, a dark night, and the muddy waters of the Missouri closed the career that had opened with so much promise of brightness. Many of the conspicuous young Irlanders rose to some distinction. Charles Gavin Duffy, the editor of the Nation, who was twice put on his trial after the failure of the insurrection, but whom the jury would not, on either occasion, convict, became a member of the House of Commons and afterwards emigrated to the colony of Victoria. He rose to be Prime Minister there and received knighthood and a pension. Thomas Darcy McGee, another prominent rebel, went to the United States and thence to Canada where he rose to be a Minister of the Crown. He was one of the most loyal supporters of the British connection. His untimely death by the hand of an assassin was lamented in England as well as in the colony he had served so well. Some of the young Irlanders remained in the United States in one repute. Others returned to England and of these not a few entered the House of Commons and were respected there. The follies of their youth quite forgotten by their colleagues, even if not disavowed by themselves. A remarkable illustration of the spirit of fairness that generally pervades the House of Commons is found in the fact that everyone there respected John Martin, who to the day of his death, of out himself, in Parliament and out of it, a consistent and unrepentant opponent of British rule in Ireland. He was respected because of the purity of his character in the transparent sincerity of his purpose. Martin had been devoted to Mitchell in his lifetime, and he died a few days after Mitchell's death. The young Irland movement came and vanished like a shadow. It never had any reality or substance in it. It was a literary and poetic inspiration altogether. It never took the slightest hold of the peasantry. It hardly touched any men of mature years. It was rather pretty playing at rebellion. It was an imitation of the French Revolution as the Girondistes imitated the Patriots of Greece and Rome. But it might perhaps have had a chance of doing memorable mischief if the policy of the one only man in the business who really wasn't earnest and was reckless had been carried out. It is another illustration of the fact which O'Connell's movement had exemplified before, that in Irish politics a climax cannot be repeated or recalled. There is something fitful in all Irish agitation. The national emotion can be wrought up to a certain temperature, and if at that boiling point nothing is done, the heat suddenly goes out, and no blowing of a cyclopean bellows can rekindle it. The repeal agitation was brought up to this point when the meeting at Clontarf was convened. The dispersal of the meeting was the end of the whole agitation. With the young Ireland movement the trial of Mitchell formed the climax. After that, a wise legislator would have known that there was nothing more to fear. Petiton, the revolutionary mayor of Paris, knew that when it rained, his partisans could do nothing. There were in 1848 observant Irishmen who knew that after the Mitchell climax had been reached the crowd would disperse not to be collected again for that time. These two agitations, the Chartist and the young Ireland, constituted what may be called our tribute to the power of the insurrectionary spirit that was abroad over Europe in 1848. In almost every other European state, revolution raised its head fiercely and fought out its claims in the very capital under the eyes of bewildered royalty. The whole of Italy from the Alps to the Straits of Messina and from Venice to Genoa was thrown into convulsion. Our Italy once again shone ore with civil swords. There was insurrection in Berlin and in Vienna. The emperor had to fly from the latter city as the pope had fled from Rome. In Paris there came a red republican rising against a republic that strove not to be red and the rising was crushed by Kavenyak with a terrible strenuousness that made some of the streets of Paris literally to run with blood. It was a grim foreshadowing of the commune of 1871. Another remarkable foreshadowing of what was to come was seen in the fact that Prince Louis Napoleon, long in exile from France, had been allowed to return to it and at the close of the year in the passion for law and order at any price born of the red republican excesses had been elected president of the French Republic. Hungary was in arms, Spain was in convulsion, even Switzerland was not safe. Our contribution to this general commotion was to be found in the demonstration on Kennington Common and the abortive attempt at a rising near Balangari. There could not possibly be a truer tribute to the solid strength of our system. Not for one moment was the political constitution of England seriously endangered. Not for one hour did the safety of our great communities require a call upon the soldiers instead of upon the police. Not one charge of cavalry was needed to put down the fiercest outburst of the rebellious spirit in England. Not one single execution took place. The meaning of this is clear. It is not that there were no grievances in our system calling for redress. It is not that the existing institutions did not bear heavily down on many classes. It is not that our political or social system was so conspicuously better than that of some European countries which were torn and plowed up by revolution. To imagine that we owed our freedom from revolution to our freedom from serious grievance would be to misread all together the lessons offered to our statesmen by that eventful year. We have done the work of whole generations of reformers in the interval between this time and that. We have made peaceful reforms political, industrial, legal, since then, which, if not to be had otherwise, would have justified any appeal to revolution. There, however, we touch upon the lesson of the time. Our political and constitutional system rendered an appeal to force unnecessary and superfluous. No call to arms was needed to bring about any reform that the common judgment of the country might demand. Other peoples flew to arms because they were driven by despair. Because there was no way in their political constitution for the influence of public opinion to make itself felt. Because those who were in power held it by the force of bayonets and not of public agreement. The results of the year were on the whole unfavorable to popular liberty. The results of the year that followed were decidedly reactionary. The time had not come in 1848 or 1849 for liberal principles to assert themselves. Their great deed, to quote some of the words of our English poetess Elizabeth Barrett Browning, was too great. We in this country were saved alike from the revolution and the reaction by the universal recognition of the fact among all who gave themselves time to think that public opinion, being the ultimate ruling power, was the only authority to which an appeal was needed, and that in the end justice would be done. All but the very wildest spirits could afford to wait. And no revolutionary movement is really dangerous which is only the work of the wildest spirits. End of Section 2 Section 3 of a history of our own time's volume 2 by Justin McCarthy. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 19 Don Pacifico, Part 1 The name of Don Pacifico was as familiar to the world some quarter of a century ago as that of Mr. J. Ger was about the time of the French invasion of Mexico. Don Pacifico became famous for a season as the man whose quarrel had nearly brought on a European war, caused a temporary disturbance of good relations between England and France, split up political parties in England in a manner hardly ever known before, and established the reputation of Lord Palmerston as one of the greatest parliamentary debaters of this time. Among the memorable speeches delivered in the English House of Commons that of Lord Palmerston on the Don Pacifico debate must always take place. It was not because the subject of the debate was a great one, or because there were any grand principles involved. The question originally in dispute was unutterably trivial and paltry. There was no particular principle involved. It was altogether what is called in commercial litigation a question of account, a controversy about the amount and time of payment of a doubtful claim. Nor was this speech delivered by Lord Palmerston one of the grand historical displays of oratory that even when the sound of them is lost, send their echoes to roll from soul to soul. It was not like one of Burke's great speeches or one of Chatham's. It was not one calculated to provoke keen literary controversy, like Sheridan's celebrated Begum speech, which all contemporaries held to be unrivaled, but which a later generation assumes to have been rather flashy rhetoric. There are no passages of splendid eloquence in Palmerston's Pacifico speech. Its great merit was its wonderful power as a contribution to parliamentary argument, as a masterful appeal to the feelings, the prejudices, and the passions of the House of Commons, as a complete parliamentary victory over a combination of the most influential eloquent and heterogeneous opponents. Don Pacifico was a Jew, a Portuguese by extraction, but a native of Gibraltar and a British subject. His house in Athens was attacked and plundered in the open day on April 4, 1847 by an Athenian mob, who was headed, it was affirmed, by two sons of the Greek minister of war. The attack came about in this way. It had been customary in Greek towns to celebrate Easter by burning an effigy of Judas Iscariot. In 1847 the police of Athens were ordered to prevent this performance, and the mob, disappointed of their favorite amusement, ascribed the new orders to the influence of the Jews. Don Pacifico's house happened to stand near the spot where the Judas was annually burnt. Don Pacifico was known to be a Jew, and the anger of the mob was wrecked upon him accordingly. There could be no doubt that the attack was lawless and that the Greek authorities took no trouble to protect Pacifico against it. Don Pacifico made a claim against the Greek government for compensation. He estimated his losses, direct and indirect, at nearly 32,000 pounds sterling. Another claim was made at the same time by another British subject, a man of a very different stamp from Don Pacifico. This was Mr. Finley, the historian of Greece. Mr. Finley had gone out to Greece in the enthusiastic days of Byron and Cochran and Church and Hastings, and he settled in Athens when the independence of Greece had been established. Some of his land had been taken for the purpose of rounding off the new palace gardens of King Otto, and Mr. Finley had declined to accept the terms offered by the Greek government to which other landowners in the same position as himself had assented. Some stress was laid by Lord Palmerston's antagonists in the course of the debate on the fact that Mr. Finley thus stood out apart from other landowners in Athens. Mr. Finley, however, had a perfect right to stand out for any price he thought fit. He was in the same position as a Greek resident of London or Manchester whose land is taken for the purpose of a railroad or other public improvement, and who declines to accept the amount of compensation tendered for it in the first instance. The peculiarity of the case was that Mr. Finley was not left, as the supposed Greek gentleman assuredly would be, to make good his claims for himself in the courts of law. Neither Dom Pacifico nor Mr. Finley had appealed to the law courts at all. But about this time our foreign office had had several little complaints against the Greek authorities. We had taken so considerable part in setting up Greece that our ministers, not unnaturally thought, Greece ought to show her gratitude by attending a little more closely to our advice. On the other hand, Lord Palmerston had made up his mind that there was constant intrigue going on against our interests among the foreign diplomatists in Athens. He was convinced that France was perpetually plotting against us there, and that Russia was watching an opportunity to supersede once for all our influence by completely establishing hers. Dom Pacifico's sheets, counterpains and gold watch had the advantage of being made the subject of a trial of strength between England on the one side, and France and Russia on the other. There had been other complaints as well. Ionian subjects of Her Majesty had sent in remonstrances against lawless or high-handed proceedings, and amidst shipment of Her Majesty's ship Phantom, landing from a boat at night on the shore of Patras, had been arrested by mistake. None of these questions would seem at first sight to wear a very grave international character. All they needed for settlement, it might be thought, was a little open discussion and the exercise of some good sense and moderation on both sides. It cannot be doubted that the Greek authorities were lax and careless, and that acts had been done which they could not justify. It is only fair to say that they do not appear to have tried to justify some of them, but they were of opinion that certain of the claims were absurdly exaggerated, and in this belief they proved to be well sustained. The Greeks were very poor and also very dilatory, and they gave Lord Palmerston a reasonable excuse for a little impatience. Unluckily, Lord Palmerston became possessed with the idea that the French minister in Greece was secretly setting the Greek government on to resist our claims. For the foreign office had made the claims ours. They had lumped up the outrages on Ionian seamen, the mistaken arrest of the midshipmen, who had been released with apologies the moment his nationality and position were discovered, Mr. Finley's land, and Don Pacifico's household furniture in one claim, converted it into a national demand, and insisted that Greece must pay up within a given time or take the consequences. Greece hesitated, and accordingly the British fleet was ordered to the Piraeus. It made its appearance very promptly there and seized all the Greek vessels belonging to the government and to private merchants that were found within the waters. The Greek government appealed to France and Russia as powers joined with us in the treaty to protect the independence of Greece. France and Russia were both disposed to make bitter complaint of not having been consulted in the first instance by the British government. Nor was their feeling greatly softened by Lord Palmerston's peremptory reply that it was all a question between England and Greece with which no other power had any business to interfere. The Russian government wrote an angry and indeed an offensive remonstrance. The Russian foreign minister spoke of the very painful impression produced upon the mind of the emperor by the unexpected acts of violence which the British authorities had just directed against Greece, and asked if Great Britain, abusing the advantages which are afforded to her by her immense maritime superiority, intended to disengage herself from all obligation and to authorize all great powers on every fitting opportunity to recognize toward the weak no other rule but their own will, no other right but their own physical strength. The French government, perhaps under the pressure of difficulties and uncertain affairs at home, in their unsettled state showed a better temper and intervened only in the interests of peace and good understanding. Something like a friendly arbitration was accepted from the French, and the French government sent a special representative to Athens to try to come to terms with our minister there. The difficulties appeared likely to be adjusted. All the claims except those of Don Pacifico were a matter of easy settlement, and at first the French commissioner seemed even willing to accept Don Pacifico's dupendous valuation of his household goods. But Pacifico had introduced other demands of a more shadowy character. He said that he had certain claims on the Portuguese government, and that the papers on which these claims rested for support were destroyed in the sacking of his house, and therefore he felt entitled to ask for 26,618 pounds as compensation on that account also. The French commissioner was a little staggered at this demand, and declined to accede to it without further consideration, and as our minister, Mr. Wise, did not believe he had any authority to abate any of the now national demand, the negotiation was, for the time, broken off. In the meantime, however, negotiations had still been going on between the English and the French governments in London, and these had resulted in a convention disposing of all the disputed claims. By the terms of this agreement, a sum of 8,500 pounds was to be paid by the Greek government to be divided among the various claimants, and Greece was also to pay whatever sum might be found to be fairly due on account of Don Pacifigo's Portuguese claims after these had been investigated by arbitrators. This would seem a very satisfactory and honourable arrangement, but some demon of mischief appeared to have this unlucky affair in charge from the first. The two negotiations going on in London and Athens simultaneously got in each other's way. Instructions as to what had been agreed to in London were not forwarded to Athens quickly enough by the English government, and when the French government sent out to their commissioner the news of the convention, he found that Mr. Wise knew nothing about the matter and had no authority which, as he conceived, would have warranted him in departing from the course of action he was following out. Mr. Wise therefore proceeded with his measures of coercion, and at length the Greek government gave way. The convention having, however, been made in the meantime in London there then arose a question as to whether that convention, where the terms extorted at Athens, should be the basis of arrangement. Over this trumpery dispute which a few words of frank good sense and good temper on both sides would have easily settled, a new quarrel seemed at one time likely to break out between England and France. The French government actually withdrew their ambassador, Monsieur Drouin de Louise from London, and it was for a short time a general alarm over Europe. But the question in dispute was really too small and insignificant for any two rational governments to make it a cause of serious quarrel, and after a while our government gave way and agreed to an arrangement which was in the main all that France desired. When after a long lapse of time the arbitrators came to settle the claims of Don Pacifico it was found that he was entitled to about one-thirtieth of the sum he had originally demanded. He had assessed all his claims on the same liberal and fanciful scale as that which he adopted in estimating the value of his household property. Don Pacifico it seems charged in his bill, one-hundred and fifty pounds sterling for a bedstead, thirty pounds for the sheets of the bed, twenty-five pounds for two coverlets and ten pounds for a pillowcase. Cleopatra might have been contented with bed furniture so luxurious that Don Pacifico represented himself to have in his common use. The jewellery of his wife and daughters he estimated at two-thousand pounds. He gave no vouchers for any of these claims, saying that all his papers had been destroyed by the mob. It seemed too that he had always lived in a humble sort of way, and was never supposed by his neighbors to possess such splendor of ornament and household goods. While the controversy between the English and French governments was yet unfinished, a parliamentary controversy between the former government and the opposition in the House of Lords was to begin. Lord Stanley proposed a resolution which was practically a vote of censure on the government. The resolution in fact expressed the regret of the House to find that various claims against the Greek government, doubtful in point of justice, or exaggerated in amount, had been enforced by coercive measures directed against the commerce and people of Greece, and calculated to endanger the continuance of our friendly relations with foreign powers. The resolution was carried after a debate of great spirit and energy by a majority of thirty-seven. Lord Palmerston was not dismayed. A ministry is seldom greatly troubled by an adverse vote in the House of Lords. The Foreign Secretary, writing about the result of the division the following day merely said, We were beaten last night in the Lords by a larger majority than we had up to the last moment expected, but when we took office we knew that our opponents had a larger pack in the Lords than we had, and that whenever the two packs were to be fully dealt out, theirs would show a larger number than ours. Still it was necessary that something should be done in the Commons to counter balance the stroke of the Lords, and accordingly Mr. Robuck acting as an independent member, although on this occasion in harmony with the government, gave notice of a resolution which boldly affirmed that the principles on which the foreign policy of the government had been regulated were such as were calculated to maintain the honour and dignity of this country, and in times of unexampled difficulty to preserve peace between England and the various nations of the world. On June 24, 1850, a night memorable in Parliamentarianals as the opening night of the debate which established Lord Palmerston's position as a great leader of party, Mr. Robuck brought forward his resolution. A reader unaccustomed to parliamentary tactics may fail to observe the peculiar shrewdness of the resolution. It was framed, at least it reads as if it had been framed, to accomplish one purpose while professing to serve another. It was intended, of course, as a reply to the censure of the House of Lords. It was to proclaim to the world that the representative chamber had reversed the decision of the House of Peers and acquitted the ministry. But what did Mr. Robuck's resolution actually do? Did it affirm that the government had acted rightly with regard to Greece? The dealings with Greece were expressly censured by the House of Lords, but Mr. Robuck proposed to affirm that the general policy of the ministry deserved the approval of the House of Commons. It was well known that there were many men of liberal opinions in the House of Commons who did not approve of the course pursued with regard to Greece, but who would yet have been very sorry to give a vote which might contribute to the overthrow of a liberal government. The resolution was so framed as to offer to all such an opportunity of supporting the government and yet satisfying their consciences. For it might be thus put to them. You think the government were too harsh with Greece. Perhaps you are right. But this resolution does not say that they were quite free of blame in their way of dealing with Greece. It only says that their policy on the whole has been sound and successful. And of course you must admit that. They may have made a little mistake with regard to Greece, but admitting that, do you not still think that on the whole they have done very well and much better than any Tory ministry would be likely to do? This is all that Robuck's resolution asks you to affirm, and you really cannot vote against it. End of Section 3. Section 4 of a history of our own times, Volume 2 by Justin McCarthy. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 19 Don Pacifico, Part 2. A large number of liberals were no doubt influenced by this view of the situation and by the framing of the resolution. But there were some who could not be led into any approval of the particular transaction which the resolution, if not intended to cover, would certainly be made to cover. There were others, too, who even on the broader field opened purposely up by the resolution, honestly believed that Lord Palmerston's general policy was an incessant violation of the principle of non-intervention and was therefore injurious to the character and safety of the country. In a prolonged and powerful debate some of the foremost men on both sides of the house supposed and denounced the policy of the government for which as everyone knew Lord Palmerston was almost exclusively responsible. The Allied troops who led the attack, says Mr. Evelyn Ashley in his life of Lord Palmerston, were English protectionists and foreign absolutists. It is strange that an able and usually fair-minded man should be led into such an absurdity. Lord Palmerston himself called it a shot fired by a foreign conspiracy aided and abetted by a domestic intrigue. But Lord Palmerston was the minister personally assailed and might be excused, perhaps for believing at the moment that warring monarchs were giving the fatal wound and that the attack on him was the work of the combined treachery of Europe. An historian looking back upon the events after an interval of a quarter of a century ought to be able to take a calm review of things. Among the English protectionists who took a prominent part in condemning the policy of Lord Palmerston was Mr. Gladston, Mr. Cobden, Sir Robert Peel, Sir William Molesworth and Mr. Sidney Herbert. In the House of Lords Lord Broome, Lord Canning, and Lord Aberdeen had supported the resolution of Lord Stanley. The truth is that Lord Palmerston's proceedings were fairly open to difference of judgment even on the part of the most devoted liberals and the most independent thinkers. It did not need that a man should be a protectionist or an absolutist to explain his entire disapproval of such a course of conduct as that which had been followed out with regard to Greece. It seems to us now, quietly looking back at the whole story, hardly possible that a man with, for example, the temperament in the general views of Mr. Gladston could have approved of such a policy. Obviously impossible that a man like Mr. Cobden could have approved of it. These men simply followed their judgment and their conscience. The principal interest of the debate now rests in the manner of Lord Palmerston's defense. This speech was indeed a masterpiece of parliamentary argument and address. It was in part a complete exposition and defense of the whole course of the foreign policy which the noble speaker had directed. But although the resolution treated only of the general policy of the government, Lord Palmerston did not fail to make a special defense of his action toward Greece. He based his vindication of this particular chapter of his policy on the ground which of all others gave him most advantage in addressing a parliamentary assembly. He contended that in all he had done he had been actuated by the resolve that the poorest claimant who bore the name of an English citizen should be protected by the whole strength of England against the oppression of a foreign government. His speech was an appeal to all the elementary emotions of manhood and citizenship and good fellowship. To vote against him seemed to be to declare that England was unable or unwilling to protect her children. A man appeared to be guilty of an unpatriotic and ignoble act who censured the minister whose only error, if error it were, was a too proud and generous resolve to make the name of England and the rights of Englishmen respected throughout the world. A good deal of ridicule had been heaped not unnaturally on Don Pacifico, his claims, his career and his costly bed furniture. Lord Palmerston turned that very ridicule to good account for his own cause. He repelled with a warmth of seemingly generous indignation the suggestion that because a man was lowly, pitiful, even ridiculous, even of doubtful conduct in his earlier career, therefore he was one with whom a foreign government was not bound to observe any principles of fair dealing at all. He protested against having serious things treated joccosly, as if any man in Parliament had ever treated serious things, more often in a jocco spirit. He protested against having the house kept in a roar of laughter at the poverty of one sufferer or at the miserable habitation of another, at the nationality of one man or the religion of another, as if because a man was poor he might be bastonadoed and tortured with impunity, as if a man who was born in Scotland might be robbed without redress or because a man is of the Jewish persuasion he is a fair mark for any outrage. Lord Palmerston had also a great advantage given to him by the argument of some of his opponents that whatever the laws of a foreign country a stranger has only to abide by them, and that a government claiming redress for any wrong done to one of its subjects is completely answered by the statement that he has suffered only as inhabitants of the country themselves have suffered. The argument against Lord Palmerston was pushed entirely too far in this instance and it gave him one of his finest opportunities for reply. It is true as a general rule in the intercourse of nations that a stranger who goes voluntarily into a country is expected to abide by its laws and that his government will not protect him from their ordinary operation in every case where it may seem to press hardly or even unfairly against him. But in this understanding is always involved a distinct assumption that the laws of the state are to be such as civilization would properly recognize, supposing that the state in question professes to be a civilized state. It is also distinctly assumed that the state must be able and willing to enforce its own laws where they are fairly invoked on behalf of a foreigner. If for instance a foreigner has a just claim against some continental government and that government will not recognize the claim or recognizing it will not satisfy it, and the government of the injured man intervenes and asks that his claim shall be met, it would never be accounted a sufficient answer to say that many of the inhabitants of the country had been treated just in the same way and had got no redress. If there were a law in Turkey or any other slave-owning state that a man who could not pay his debts was liable to have his wife and daughter sold into slavery, it is certain that no government like that of England would hear of the application of such a law to the family of a poor English trader settled in Constantinople. There is no clear rule easy to be laid down, perhaps there can be no clear rule on the subject at all, but it is evident that the governments of all civilized countries do exercise a certain protectorate over their subjects in foreign countries and do insist in extreme cases that the laws of the country shall not be applied or denied to them in a manner which a native resident might think himself compelled to endure without protest. It is not even so in the case of manifestly harsh and barbarous laws alone, or of the denial of justice in a harsh and barbarous way. The principle prevails even in regard to laws which are in themselves unexceptionable and necessary. No government, for example, will allow one of its subjects living in a foreign country to be brought under the law for the levying of the conscription there and compelled to serve in the army of the foreign state. All this only shows that the opponents of Lord Palmerston made a mistake when they endeavored to obtain any general assent to the principle that a minister does wrong who asks for his fellow subjects at the hands of a foreign government any better treatment than that which the government in question administers and without revolt to its own people. Lord Palmerston was not the man to lose so splendid an opportunity. He really made it appear as if the question between him and his opponents was that of the protection of Englishmen abroad, as if he were anxious to look after their lives and safety, while his opponents were urging the odious principle that when once an Englishman puts his foot on a foreign shore his own government renounced all intent to concern themselves with any fate that might befall him. Here was a new turn given to the debate, a new opportunity afforded to those who while they did not approve exactly of what had been done with Greece were nevertheless anxious to support the general principles of Lord Palmerston's foreign policy. This speech was a marvelous appeal to what are called English interests. In a proration of thrilling power Lord Palmerston asked for the verdict of the House to decide whether as the Roman in days of old held himself free from indignity when he could say, Kiwis Roman assume, so also a British subject in whatever land he may be shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him against injustice and wrong. When Lord Palmerston closed his speech the overwhelming plaudits of the House foretold the victory he had won. It was indeed a masterpiece of telling defense. The speech occupied some five hours in delivery. It was spoken as Mr. Gladston afterwards said from the dusk of one day to the dawn of the next. It was spoken without the help of a single note. Lord Palmerston always wisely thought that in order to have full command of such an audience a man should if possible never make use of notes. He was quite conscious of his own lack of the higher gifts of imagination and emotion that make the great orator, but he knew also what a splendid weapon of attack and defense was his fluency and readiness, and he was not willing to weaken the effect of its spontaneity by the interposition of a single note. All this great speech, therefore, full as it was of minute details, names, dates, figures, references of all kinds, was delivered with the same facility, the same lack of effort, the same absence of any adventitious age to memory which characterized Palmerston's ordinary style when he answered a simple question. Nothing could be more complete than Palmerston's success. Kiwis Romanus settled the matter. Who was in the House of Commons so rude that he would not be a Roman? Who was there so lacking in patriotic spirit that would not have all his countrymen as good as any Roman citizen of them all? It was to little purpose that Mr. Gladston, in his speech of singular argumentative power, pointed out that a Roman citizen was the member of a privileged cast of a victorious and conquering nation, of a nation that held all others bound down by the strong arm of power, which had one law for him and another for the rest of the world, which asserted in his favour principles which it denied to all others. It was in vain that Mr. Gladston asked whether Lord Palmerston thought that was the position which it would become a civilized and Christian nation like England to claim for her citizens. The glory of being a Kiwis Romanus was far too strong for any mere argument drawn from fact and common sense to combat against it. The phrase had carried the day. When Mr. Cockburn in supporting Lord Palmerston's policy quoted from classical authority to show that the Romans had always avenged any wrongs done to their citizens, incited from one of Cicero's speeches against Veres, Quattela Maiores Nostros et Quanta Suschepisse Arbitramine, Quatt Kiwis Romani in Yuri Ad Afecti, Quatt Nauculari Retenti, Quatt Mercantores Poliati di Carentur, the house cheered more tumultuously than ever. In vain was the calm, grave, studiously moderate remonstrance of Sir Robert Peel, who, while generously declaring that Palmerston's speech made us all proud of the man who delivered it, yet recorded his firm protest against the style of policy which Palmerston's eloquence had endeavored to glorify. The victory was all with Palmerston. He had, in the words of Shakespeare's Rosalind, wrestled well and overthrown more than his enemies. After a debate of four nights a majority of forty-six was given for the resolution. The ministry came out not only absolved, but triumphant. The odd thing about the whole proceeding is that the ministers in general heartily disapproved of the sort of policy which Palmerston put so energetically into action. At least they disapproved, if not his principles, yet certainly his way of enforcing them. Before this debate came on, Lord John Russell had made up his mind that it would be impossible for him to remain in office with Lord Palmerston as Foreign Secretary. Nonetheless, however, did Lord John Russell defend the policy of the Foreign Office in a speech which Palmerston himself described as admirable in first rate. The ministers felt bound to stand by the actions which they had not repudiated at the time when they were done. They could not allow Lord Palmerston to be separated from them in political responsibility when they had not separated themselves from moral responsibility for his proceedings in time. Therefore they had to defend in Parliament what they did not pretend to approve in private. The theory of a cabinet, always united when attacked, rendered doubtless such a course of proceeding necessary in parliamentary tactics. It would perhaps be hard to make it seem quite satisfactory to the simple and unsophisticated mind. No part of our duty calls on us to attempt such a task. It was a famous victory. We must only settle the question as old Caspar disposed of the doubts about the propriety of the praise given to the Duke of Marlborough and our good Prince Eugen. It is not telling a lie, says someone in Thackery. It is only voting with your party. But Thackery had never been in the House of Commons. Of many fine speeches made during this brilliant debate, we must notice one in particular. It was that of Mr. Cockburn, then member for Southampton, a speech to which allusion has already been made. Never in our time has a reputation been more suddenly, completely and deservedly made than Mr. Cockburn won by his brilliant display of ingenious argument and stirring words. The manner of the speaker lent additional effect to his clever and captivating eloquence. He had a clear, sweet, penetrating voice, a fluency that seemed so easy as to make listeners sometimes fancy that it ought to cost no effort, and a grace of gesture such as it must be owned the courts of law where he had had his training did not often teach. Mr. Cockburn defended the policy of Palmerston with an effect only inferior to that produced by Palmerston's own speech, and with a rhetorical grace and finish to which Palmerston made no pretension. In writing to Lord Norman B. about the debate, Lord Palmerston distributed his praise to friends and enemies with that generous impartiality which was a fine part of his character. Gladston's attack on his policy he pronounced a first-rate performance. Peel and disraily he praised likewise, but as to Cockburn's response he said, I do not know that I ever in the course of my life heard a better speech from anybody without any exception. The effect which Cockburn's speech produced on the house was well described in the house itself by one who rose chiefly for the purpose of disputing the principles it advocated. Mr. Cobb then observed that when Mr. Cockburn had concluded his speech, one half of the treasury benches were left empty while honourable members ran after one another, tumbling over each other in their haste to shake hands with the honourable and learned member. Mr. Cockburn's career was safe from that hour. It is needless to say that he well upheld in after years the reputation he won in a night. The brilliant and sudden success of the member from South Hampton was but the fitting prelude to the abiding distinction won by the Lord Chief Justice of England. End of section 4