Wellington’s Peninsular Campaign – 3

During the earlier years of the war, indeed, the increase of wealth had been enormous. England was sole mistress of the seas.

Continuing Wellington’s Peninsular Campaign,
our selection from John Richard Green. The selection is presented in four easy 5 minute installments.

Previously in Wellington’s Peninsular Campaign.

Time: 1808-1813
Place: Spain

He [Napoleon – jl] seized on the offer with which America had closed her efforts against the two combatants, and after promising to revoke his Berlin and Milan decrees he called on America to redeem her pledge. In February, 1811, therefore, the United States announced that all intercourse with Great Britain and her dependencies was at an end. The effect of this step was seen in a reduction of English exports during this year by a third of their whole amount. It was in vain that Britain pleaded that the Emperor’s promises remained unfulfilled, that neither of the decrees was withdrawn, that Napoleon had failed to return the American merchandise seized under them, and that the enforcement of non-intercourse with England was thus an unjust act and an act of hostility. The pressure of the American policy, as well as news of the warlike temper which had at last grown up in the United States, made sub mission inevitable; for the industrial state of England was now so critical that to expose it to fresh shocks was to court the very ruin which Napoleon had planned.

During the earlier years of the war, indeed, the increase of wealth had been enormous. England was sole mistress of the seas. The war gave her possession of the colonies of Spain, of Holland, and of France; and if her trade was checked for a time by the Berlin Decree, the efforts of Napoleon were soon rendered fruitless by the smuggling system which sprang up along the southern coasts and the coast of North Germany. English exports indeed had nearly doubled since the opening of the century. Manufactures were profiting by the discoveries of Watt and Arkwright; and the consumption of raw cotton in the mills of Lancashire rose during the same period from fifty to a hundred mill ions of pounds. The vast accumulation of capital, as well as the vast increase of the population at this time, told upon the land, and forced agriculture into a feverish and unhealthy prosperity. Wheat rose to famine prices, and the value of land rose in proportion with the price of wheat. Enclosures went on with prodigious rapidity; the income of every landowner was doubled, while the farmers were able to introduce improvements into the processes of agriculture which changed the whole face of the country. But if the increase of wealth was enormous, its distribution was partial.

During the fifteen years which preceded Waterloo, the number of the population rose from ten to thirteen millions, and this rapid increase kept down the rate of wages, which would naturally have advanced in a corresponding degree with the increase in the national wealth. Even manufactures, though destined in the long run to benefit the laboring classes, seemed at first rather to depress them; for one of the earliest results of the introduction of machinery was the ruin of a number of small trades which were carried on at home and the pauperization of families who relied on them for support. In the winter of 1811 the terrible pressure of this transition from handicraft to machinery was seen in the Luddite, or machine-breaking, riots which broke out over the northern and midland counties, and which were only suppressed by military force. While labor was thus thrown out of its older grooves, and the rate of wages kept down at an artificially low figure by the rapid increase of population, the rise in the price of wheat, which brought wealth to the landowner and the farmer, brought famine and death to the poor, for England was cut off by the war from the vast corn-fields of the Continent or of America, which nowadays redress from their abundance the results of a bad harvest. Scarcity was followed by a terrible pauperization of the laboring classes. The amount of the poor-rate rose 50 per cent. and, with the increase of poverty, followed its inevitable result, the increase of crime.

With social and political troubles thus awaking anew to life about them, even Tory statesmen were not willing to face the terrible consequences of a ruin of English industry such as might follow from the junction of America with Napoleon. They were in fact preparing to withdraw the orders in council, when their plans were arrested by the dissolution of the Perceval Ministry. Its position had from the first been a weak one. A return of the King’s madness made it necessary in the beginning of 1811 to confer the regency on the Prince of Wales; and the Whig sympathies of the Prince threatened for a while the Cabinet with dismissal. Though this difficulty was surmounted, their hold of power remained insecure, and the insecurity of the Ministry told on the conduct of the war; for the apparent inactivity of Wellington during 1811 was really due to the hesitation and timidity of the Cabinet at home. But in May, 1812, the assassination of Perceval by a madman named Bellingham brought about the dissolution of his Ministry; and fresh efforts were made by the Regent to install the Whigs in office.

Mutual distrust, however, again foiled his attempts; and the old Ministry returned to office under the headship of Lord Liver pool, a man of no great abilities, but temperate, well informed, and endowed with remarkable skill in holding discordant col leagues together. The most important of these colleagues was Lord Castlereagh, who became Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Time has long ago rendered justice to the political ability of Castlereagh, disguised as it was to men of his own day by a curious infelicity of expression; and the instinctive good sense of Englishmen never showed itself more remarkably than in their preference at this crisis of his cool judgment, his high courage, his discernment, and his will, to the more showy brilliancy of Canning. His first work indeed as a minister was to meet the danger in which Canning had involved the country by his orders in council. On June 23rd, only twelve days after the Ministry had been formed, these orders were repealed. But quick as was Castlereagh’s action, events had moved even more quickly.

Continued.

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