A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year Part 20

In truth Cobbett's pure, virile, racy, Saxon style, while it delighted men of taste, was also intelligible to the humblest commoner, and accounted in some measure for the tremendous popularity of his journal, the "Political Register." The government was unable to secure Cobbett's conviction and he was suffered to escape punishment by a disagreement of the jury. After this interlude the debate on the Reform Bill went on. On the second night of the debate Thomas Babington Macaulay delivered his first reform speech.

When he sat down he had taken rank among the best Parliamentary orators.

"Portions of the speech," said Sir Robert Peel, "were as beautiful as anything I have ever heard or read. It reminded me of old times. The names of Burke, Fox and Canning during the evening were linked with that of Mr.

Macaulay." The "Spectator" computed the number of speeches which were delivered in committee between the middle and end of July at more than two hundred. Sir Robert Peel alone spoke forty-eight times, while Wetherell, the Tory wag of the House, spoke fifty-eight times. Finally the Opposition was caught unawares late one night on September 19, when they could muster but fifty-eight votes before the doors closed for division, and the bill was thus pa.s.sed to its third reading. The Tories took pains to be present in force a few days afterward, when the final pa.s.sage of the bill was moved. After a last pa.s.sionate debate lasting through three days and nights the Commons pa.s.sed the bill by a majority of 106 votes. That same night Earl Grey proposed the bill before the Lords. Addressing himself to the bishops he said significantly: "I specially beg the spiritual portion of your lordships to pause and reflect. If this bill shall be thrown out by a narrow majority and the scale should be turned by the votes of the prelates, what would be their situation? Let them set their houses in order!" These menacing words gave great offence to the clergy. The Duke of Wellington spoke strongly against the measure. The bill was thrown out by the Lords after an all-night debate.

[Sidenote: Riots in England]

The immediate effect was a sharp decline in stocks. A few hours after the House of Peers adjourned at six o'clock in the morning, a run for gold began on the Bank of England. The simultaneous effort of the French to abolish their hereditary peerage was hailed as an omen of what was coming in England. Riots broke out all over England. The return to Bristol of Sir C. Wetherell, one of the chief opponents of the bill, was made the occasion of ominous demonstrations. A riotous mob burned the mansion house over his head. Next, the Bishop of Bristol was driven from his episcopal seat. The mob fired the mansion house, the bishop's palace, the excise office, the custom house, three prisons, four toll houses, and forty-two private houses of prominent Tories.

No one was injured until the troops were called in to disperse the mob.

Then a number of rioters were sabred and shot. About the same time riots broke out at Bath, Worcester, Coventry, Warwick, Lichfield, Nottingham and Canterbury. With difficulty Archbishop Howley of Canterbury was rescued from the hands of an infuriated mob. The Bishops of Winchester and Exeter were burned in effigy before their very palaces. The Bishop of London did not dare to hold services at Westminster. The news from France served to increase the alarm. Disturbances of a far more serious character were reported from Lyons.

[Sidenote: Reform Bill up again]

Late in the year, after another rejection of the Reform Bill by the Lords, the bill was triumphantly reintroduced in the Commons. The question now was no longer, "What will the Lords do?" but, "What will be done with the Lords?" Rather than risk the threatening downfall of the House of Peers, the Ministers reluctantly determined to pack the Upper House by the creation of a sufficient number of new peers pledged to vote for the Reform Bill. A verse attributed to Macaulay ran:

What though now opposed I be, Twenty peers shall carry me, If twenty won't, thirty will, For I'm his Majesty's bouncing Bill.

"Thus," as Molesworth, the historian of the Reform Bill, has put it, "amid the anxieties of the reformers on one hand, and the dread of revolution on the other, amid incendiary fires and Asiatic cholera spreading throughout the country, amid distress of trade and dread of coming bankruptcy, the year 1831 went gloomily out."

1832

[Sidenote: English sedition trials]

[Sidenote: Fall of Grey's Cabinet]

[Sidenote: Wellington impotent]

[Sidenote: The King humiliated]

[Sidenote: Pa.s.sage of Reform Bill]

[Sidenote: Changes effected]

The new year opened in England with a series of trials arising out of the disturbances which followed the rejection of the Reform Bill in the House of Lords. A great number of rioters were convicted. Altogether, seven men were put to death at Bristol and Nottingham. The officers who commanded the troops during the riots were court-martialed. When Parliament rea.s.sembled, the Commons once more pa.s.sed the Reform Bill and carried it up to the Lords. In the course of the renewed debate on the Reform Bill in the House of Peers the Duke of Wellington announced that he had reason to believe that the King did not approve of the bill. The statement was confirmed by the King's refusal to create new peers wherewith to pa.s.s the bill through the Upper House. Thereupon Lord Grey and his colleagues resigned from the Ministry. The King accepted their resignation. Monster pet.i.tions were immediately sent in to the Commons from Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and other great centres of population, urging the Commons to refuse the supplies until reform should have been secured. Once more stocks fell sharply. For the express purpose of embarra.s.sing the King's chosen successors for the Cabinet, runs were made on the Bank of England, and on the savings banks at Birmingham and Manchester. The streets of London were covered with placards: "Go for gold and stop the Duke!" In the face of this agitation the Duke of Wellington declined the King's offer to form a Ministry. Sir Robert Peel likewise declined. As a last resort Wellington consented to form a Ministry, but could not get together a Cabinet strong enough to stem the storm. The Iron Duke's popularity as well as the King's was at an end. When the King came up to London, accompanied by his sons, they were received with hoots and insults. Missiles were thrown at the royal carriage, and the Life Guards had to fight a way through the mob with their swords. The King was driven to the humiliating expedient of recalling his dismissed Ministers. William IV. now consented to create the required number of new peers. Lord Brougham gave mortal offence to the King by a request that he should put his promise in writing. With the King's written pledge in their hands the Ministers obtained an agreement from their opponents to pa.s.s the bill without further coercion. Early in June, at length, the Reform Bill pa.s.sed through the House of Lords after a third reading. One hundred and six peers voted for it and only twenty-two against it. On this occasion Sir Robert Peel made a remark to which his subsequent change of front gave peculiar significance: "Whenever the government comes to deal with the corn laws, the precedent formed by the present occasion will be appealed to." The reform measure, as at last adopted, swept away 142 seats in the Commons. It gave to the counties sixty-five additional representatives and conferred the right of sending members to Parliament on Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and thirty-nine other large towns. .h.i.therto unrepresented. The King showed his disapproval of the reform by peremptorily declining to give his a.s.sent to the bill in person. The Crown's sanction was given by commission. This ended all agitation for the time being.

[Sidenote: Otto, King of Greece]

It was in May that the great Powers, in response to another appeal from Greece, suggested Prince Otto of Wittelsbach, the second son of the Philh.e.l.lene King of Bavaria, for the vacant throne. This choice was ratified in October amid general rejoicings by the population of Greece.

[Sidenote: Foreign intervention in Italy]

In Italy, early in the year, the Pope's failure to carry out his promise of reform created new troubles. An amnesty, which had been granted by the legate Benvenuti, was disregarded and the papal soldiery practiced all manner of repression. Another revolt broke out and once more the Austrians, at the Pope's request, crossed the frontier. They restored order so well that they were actually welcomed as protectors against the ruthless condottieri of the papal troops. Austria's intervention was resented by France as a breach of the peace. Casimir Perier, now on his deathbed, despatched a French force to Ancona. The town was seized before the Austrians could approach it. Austria accepted the situation, and both powers in Italy remained face to face jealously watching each other. Had Casimir Perier lived he might have made Ancona a lever for effecting the desired reforms at Rome. As it was, the French garrison at Ancona remained merely as a balancing point between the contending parties in Italy.

[Sidenote: Death of Cuvier]

[Sidenote: Cuvier's Works]

France in the same year lost one of its distinguished men of science, by the death of Baron Cuvier, the great naturalist. Georges Leopold Cuvier was born in 1769 at Montbeliard. After studying at Stuttgart he became private tutor in the family of Count D'Hericy in Normandy, where he was at liberty to devote his leisure to natural science and in particular to zoology. A natural cla.s.sification of the _Vermae_ or worms was his first achievement.

The ability and knowledge shown in this work procured him the friendship of the greatest naturalists of France. He was invited to Paris, took a chair at the Ecole Centrale, and was received by the Inst.i.tute as a member of the first cla.s.s. His lectures on natural history, distinguished not less for the elegance of their style than for profound knowledge and daring speculation, were attended by some of the most accomplished persons of Paris. In January, 1800, Cuvier was appointed to the College de France.

Under Napoleon, who fully recognized his merits, Cuvier held important offices in the department of public instruction. Under the Restoration he was made one of the forty members of the French Academy. In 1831, a year prior to his death, he was appointed a Peer of France. Among the numerous works by which Cuvier greatly expanded the study of natural history may be mentioned as foremost "Researches into Fossil Bones," "Discourse of the Revolutions on the Surface of the Globe," "A Course of Comparative Anatomy," "Natural History of Fishes," and his great work, "The Animal Kingdom," with its subdivisions into the four great cla.s.ses--vertebrates, mollusks, articulates and radiates.

[Sidenote: Death of Goethe]

On March 22, Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany's foremost man of letters, expired at Weimar. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born in 1749, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, the son of a councillor under the old German empire.

His best traits were inherited from his mother. As he himself sang in later years:

Vom Vater hab ich die Statur, Des Lebens ernstes Fuhren, Vom Mutterchen die Frohnatur Und l.u.s.t zum Fabuliren.[A]

[Footnote A: From my father I have my stature And serious view of life; From dear little mother my glad heart And fondness for telling stories.]

[Sidenote: Goethe's career]

[Sidenote: "Goetz von Berlichingen"]

[Sidenote: "The Sorrows of Werther"]

[Sidenote: Goethe at Weimar]

[Sidenote: "Hermann und Dorothea"]

His father had him educated for the study of law. In his sixteenth year he was sent to the University at Leipzig. Later he went to Strasburg, where he became acquainted with the poet Herder, and had his first love affair with Friederike Brion of Sesenheim, whose charm has been kept alive in Goethe's autobiography, "Dichtung und Wahrheit." In 1772 he returned to Frankfort and practiced law. While thus engaged he wrote his first romantic-historical play, "Goetz von Berlichingen." In the following year he published his sentimental romance, "The Sorrows of Werther," based in a measure on one of his own unfortunate love affairs at Wetzlar. Both of these early works achieved instant success. "The Sorrows of Werther"

inaugurated in German literature what is known as the period of storm and stress. Disenchantment of life, or "Weltschmerz," became a fashionable malady. The romantic suicide of Goethe's sentimental hero Werther was aped by a number of over-susceptible young persons. Wieland drew the attention of the Duke of Weimar to Goethe, and the young poet was invited to Weimar.

He remained under the patronage of this enlightened prince until the end of his days. At Weimar, Goethe was the centre of a court comprising some of the foremost spirits of Germany. The little capital became a Mecca for poets, scholars, artists and musicians from all over the world. Goethe's only rival poet in Germany, Schiller, was drawn into the circle and the two became life-long friends. Most of Goethe's lyric poems were written during the first ten years at Weimar. At the outbreak of the French Revolution he accompanied the Duke of Weimar in one of the campaigns against France. The thrilling atmosphere of the Revolution furnished him with a literary background for his epic idyl, "Hermann und Dorothea." Goethe's subsequent journey to Italy, which was a turning-point in the poet's career, was commemorated in his "Letters from Italy"--a cla.s.sic among German books of travel. Another eminently successful creation was the epic of "Reynard, the Fox," modelled after the famous bestiary poems of early Flemish and French literature.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE KING OF ROME Painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence]

[Sidenote: Goethe's dramas]

[Sidenote: "Wilhelm Meister"]

[Sidenote: "Dichtung und Wahrheit"]

[Sidenote: "Faust"]

During the same period Goethe wrote four of his greatest dramas, "Iphigenie in Tauris," "Torquato Ta.s.so," "Egmont," and the first part of "Faust."

Later he wrote his great prose work, "Die Wahlverwandtschaften," a quasi-physiological romance; "Wilhelm Meister's Lehr und Wander Jahre," a narrative interspersed with some of Goethe's finest lyrics, such as the songs of Mignon and of the old harper, as well as the famous critique of Hamlet. The height of Goethe's superb prose style was reached in "Dichtung und Wahrheit," which stands as one of the most charming autobiographies of all times. Goethe's versatility as a writer and man was shown not only by his free use of all literary forms, but also by his essays on such abstruse subjects as astrology, optics, the theory of color, comparative anatomy and botany. Shortly before his death, the poet finished the greatest of his works, the tragedy "Faust." He died in the eighty-third year of his life, uttering the words "More Light." Goethe was entombed in the ducal vault at Weimar, by the side of his friends, Friedrich Schiller and Carl August of Weimar.

[Sidenote: Goethe's genius]

Like Heine, Goethe offended his fellow Germans by his apparent lack of purely national and patriotic sentiments. To the present day his outspoken admiration of Napoleon and his cold abstention from the ardent enthusiasm of the Prussian war of Liberation have not been forgiven by certain Germans. As a man, Goethe has been denounced as an egotist, for the apparently selfish character of his relations with women, ending with his marriage to a woman far below him. On the other hand, Goethe must be regarded as the most universal literary genius produced by Germany. He stands in line with those master spirits of all ages, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare and Moliere.

[Sidenote: Death of Scott]

[Sidenote: Walter Scott's poems]