XIV.

1815.

Lord Castlereagh's efforts in preparing the means of CHAP. withstanding the new and tremendous danger with which Great Britain was now threatened, confined to words and Parliamentary declamations. Acts important and decisive followed quickly after his orations. On the 6th April 6. April a message officially announced to both Houses of Parliament the events which had recently occurred in France as direct contraventions of the treaty of Paris, the communications entered into with the Allies on the subject, and the necessity of augmenting the military forces, by sea and land, which, during the last year, had been largely reduced. The address which, as usual on such occasions, was an echo of the message, was moved in the House of Lords by the Earl of Liverpool, and in the Commons by Lord Castlereagh; and so strongly were the members of both Houses impressed with the awful nature of the crisis, and the necessity of making a vigorous effort in the outset to meet it, that it was agreed to in the Commons without a dissenting voice, and in the House of Lords by a majority of 183—the numbers being 220 to 37. Lord Castlereagh concluded his speech, which was loudly cheered, with these words, "Some may think that an armed peace would be preferable to a state of war; but in determining that question, the danger must be fairly looked at. Good faith is the very reverse of the system of the party to whom we are opposed: his rule of conduct is self-interest, regardless of every other 1 Parl. Deb. consideration; and whatever measures you adopt, or de- xxx. 356, cision you arrive at, must rest on your own power, and 463. not on that of reliance on the man."

"1

371, 418,

The financial and military preparations made to meet 83. the danger were not unworthy of these gallant senti- Great prements. The income-tax, albeit felt as so sore a burden parations of by the nation in consequence of the general fall of prices, was laid on again at ten per cent, by a majority of 125. Napoleon.

only one result."--LORD CASTLEREAGH's Speech, March 20, 1815; Castlereagh Correspondence, i. 58, 59.

Great Bri

tain for the

war with

CHAP. Eighteen millions sterling were voted for the navy,

XIV.

1815.

£24,000,000 for the army, besides £3,800,000 for the ordnance; by which means 207,000 regular soldiers and 80,000 militia were maintained, besides 340,000 local militia. To provide for these immense armaments loans to the amount of £39,000,000 were authorised and even treated for; and the total expenditure of the year reached £110,000,000, of which £13,000,000 was for the sinking fund, which, on the heroic principles of those days, was maintained even in that year of unexampled financial 1 Finance strait and difficulty. The subsidies to foreign Powers 1816; Parl. Were no less than £11,000,000, of which Austria got Deb. xxxi. £1,796,000; Russia, £3,241,000; and Prussia, £2,382,000. Such were Lord Castlereagh's preparations to meet the danger, and such the price which Great Britain paid for deliverance from Gallic invasion.1

Accounts,

795, 814;

Treaty, April 30, 1815.

84.

the House

of Com

his defence

of Vienna.

March 20.

When Lord Castlereagh first made his appearance in Lord Castle- the House of Commons on his return from Vienna, the reagh's reception in whole house spontaneously rose, and received him with such cheers as had never before been heard within the mons, and walls of Parliament. The grandeur of the mission on of the Treaty which he had been sent that of establishing, by the moral weight and great services of Great Britain, the Continent on a new and more secure basis-the acknowledged ability with which he had discharged the duties with which he had been intrusted-the proud position in which his country stood, and in placing her in which he had had so large a share, overcame for the moment all other feelings, and caused the House to ring for some minutes with the acclamations of generous emotion. But great and glorious as the treaty was which he had so ably accomplished, there were parts of it which at the time, as since, were far from meeting with equally general approval, and they gave rise to frequent and acrimonious debates in the House of Commons, in which the leaders of the Opposition, Mr Whitbread, Mr Ponsonby, and Mr Tierney, particularly signalised themselves. On one of these occa

CHAP.

XIV.

sions, on 20th March 1815, Lord Castlereagh made an elaborate defence of the treaty of Vienna. The speech he delivered on that occasion is highly valuable, both as con- 1815. taining the views on which his foreign policy had been formed, and as being the best specimen of his parliamen- 1 Lond. Pretary speaking; and as the report was corrected by himself, face, Cast. it is given in the material parts in the note below as one 24. of the most valuable historical monuments of the age.' *

"The question this night is not merely whether the particular interests of this country have been upheld and preserved by the administration to which I have the honour to belong at this perilous moment, but whether the councils of those sovereigns, upon whom our prospect of safety and tranquillity depend, have conducted themselves with integrity and wisdom during the course of the late important discussions.

I

"In this instance I beg to decline the shield which the honourable member (Mr Whitbread) has so kindly attempted to afford me. It is not my wish, whatever may be his, to be considered under the present circumstances, and after what has passed, as only an individual member of the Government. disdain to shelter myself from any responsibility that ought to attach to the functions which I was commissioned to discharge, by being considered as an individual member only of the Councils of my Sovereign, all of whom were equally liable to such responsibility with myself. I should be ashamed presumptuously to arrogate to myself any responsibility not belonging to the office that I hold, or to assume any pre-eminence in those Councils to which I am proud to belong; but circumstanced as I have been, I feel that I could not accept the cover that has been offered without a degradation of my personal character. If I were to lead the House to suppose that, in the arduous transactions in which I have been engaged, I had at any time suffered the machine of Congress to stand still, in order to screen my conduct and determinations under the cover of previous instructions from my Government, when the public interests might suffer from delay, or that I had withheld that impulse which the influence of Great Britain, when applied with decision, was calculated to give, I should think that I had grossly betrayed the trust reposed in me. If it shall appear, as the honourable member has on this night, and on many others, contended, that the honour of the Crown has been sullied, and the good faith of the country broken, or her policy and interests disregarded, and her character degraded in the eyes of Europe, I desire to be considered alone responsible: I am ready alone to meet the attack and repel the charge.

"With regard to the slave trade, if foreign Powers have withstood those temptations held out for their conditional acceptance, while our exertions were continued without relaxation to bring them to a more favourable decision, it is fair for Parliament to conclude that there were serious difficulties in the way of those Governments immediately lending themselves to our wishes, and that we are bound to make allowance for the motives which induced them not to embark in what they held to be a dangerous experiment. With a view to the ultimate success of our own object, we ought not to disgust them by inconsiderate reproaches. Though the slave trade is not actually abolished, yet I have the satisfaction to announce that a great step has been made towards its suppression. The eight Powers who were parties to the Treaty of Paris have published a solemn declaration that it was fit that this detestable traffic should be

Cor. i. 23,

CHAP.

XIV.

It does not fall within the province of this work to give an account of the short campaign of 1815, or the glorious 1815. battle of Waterloo by which it was decided. The decisive event was announced in a short but characteristic holoWaterloo, graph note by Marshal Blucher to Sir Charles (now Lord) Stewart at Vienna,* where it excited, as his Lordship exsovereigns. pressed it, "the most unbounded enthusiasm among these

85. Battle of

and its

effects on

the Allied

swept from the face of the earth. The claim which particular Powers who still traffic in slaves make for themselves is, that so much time shall be allowed for its discontinuance as is necessary for the welfare, security, and internal tranquillity of their respective dominions, and more especially of their colonies; and they pledge themselves to the world then to put an end to this nefarious traffic. I am happy to be able to congratulate the House on this important result. It will be obvious that no small step has been gained by inducing every Power in Europe, not only to pronounce in the general principle against the traffic in human beings, but to fix a period for its actual, early, and final extinction. Spain and Portugal, who have hitherto made the least progress towards the final accomplishment of the object, have declared eight years to be the utmost interval before it is abolished by them, and I do not despair that even this period may be reduced. With respect to France, although I have not yet been able to persuade the French Government to depart from their original determination on this subject, yet from all the intercourse which I have had with the minister of his most Christian Majesty, my belief is that they are sincerely desirous to put the earliest period to this trade which is consistent with the general opinion and prevailing prejudices of their own nation. "With regard to the European Powers, if the assembled sovereigns had put forward a declaration to the effect that all the ancient governments of Europe, which time had swept away, should be recreated; that those rude and shapeless fabrics which had been thrown down, and had long ceased to exist in any tangible form, should be reconstructed, without any general or fixed principle for the reconstruction; if this was to be done without any regard to the corruptions that had grown up under those antiquated and ruinous institutions, without recollecting that those very Governments had produced the calamities by which Europe had been so long and severely tried, and which might in the end have the effect of recreating the dangers from which we have just escaped; if such a declaration had been issued, I should have felt ashamed that my country had belonged to a confederacy founded upon the principle of imbecility. The true question is, whether the deliberations and decisions of Congress were guided by an ascertained and worthy principle; whether the basis they laid of a solid and lasting pacification was or was not in itself sound; and whether for the attainment of any partial or selfish views any of the parties, but more especially this country, had betrayed the trust reposed in them by the confidence of Europe. It is upon these grounds, and these only, that I will argue the question.

"The whole of the negotiations lately held for the attainment of a general

* "My dear Friend,―The first battle has been fought, and the most glorious victory gained. The details will accompany this. I think we have pretty nearly finished Master Buonaparte's history. La Belle Alliance on the 19th, in the morning. I can write no more: all my limbs tremble; the exertion has been too much.-Ever yours, BLUCHER.”—Londonderry MS.

great and warlike nations." But before the decisive struggle arose, Lord Castlereagh was indefatigable in his efforts to keep together the Grand Alliance, and prepare the means of resisting the formidable enemy by whom they had again been threatened. Napoleon did his ut

and lasting peace, founded on the principle that it was necessary to reconstruct the two great military monarchies of central Europe, which had been almost annihilated to accomplish the designs of the late ruler of France,-I mean Austria and Prussia. The object, as all must be aware, was to gain and permanently secure greater safety on both flanks of the two States which were to form the immediate bulwarks of Europe; and to give adequate power by means of the additional strength which they could supply to that State of Northern Germany which should wish the preservation of that portion of Europe. It was also desirable that a strong barrier should be interposed between the states of Italy and France, to prevent them from ever arraying themselves against each other. It was further wished that Switzerland should be re-established in her influence and independence, and that Germany might be again confederated in the same system to render it an impregnable bulwark between the great States in the east and west of Europe. The question is, Have these arrangements been calculated to produce such a state of things as all professed to be desirous of creating; or have particular powers been unjustly aggrandised; and have the potentates acted at the Congress, in the honest and faithful execution of the trust reposed in them, and of the general purpose which it was their interest to keep in view? "With respect to Italy, the House will recollect that the charge is that this country, and her allies, have been guilty of a breach of faith towards Genoa, and failed in supporting the aspirations of the Italians after unity. Most solemnly do I declare that if there has been any breach of faith it is not on the part of our Government. The reproach and the blame, if there be any, must be heaped on me alone. Deeply as I should feel such a reproach, it is better that I should be accused, and suffer all the odium that should belong to this proceeding, than that the good faith of the country, which I conceive to be the very soul and principle of much of our influence with foreign powers, should be hazarded upon it. If, upon solid and substantial grounds, the good faith of England can be called in question in foreign countries, the life and soul which has animated the public affairs of this country is lost and dead, and we should lose that respect and esteem among foreign nations which, as much as our warlike prowess, has been the main source of our brilliant successes. But for this reliance on the character of England for unimpeachable good faith and

* "I beg to express my most hearty congratulations to your Lordship upon the glorious and most important victory of the 18th, the accounts of which have reached the Russian, Prussian, and Austrian Courts and generals here this evening. These all express themselves in the highest terms in praise of the Duke of Wellington, and of the distinguished bravery and discipline of the forces under his command, particularly the British; and indeed from these accounts it would appear that more intrepidity and greater talents in a general, or more bravery in soldiers, never were displayed. Lord Stewart met the Emperor of Russia at Prince Schwartzenberg's, who expressed the most rapturous joy at the victory, and on its being gained by the Duke of Wellington."-LORD CATHCART to LORD CASTLEREAGH, June 21, 1815; Castlereagh Correspondence, x. 382.

VOL. II.

2Q

CHAP.

XIV.

1815.