Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 67, No. 411, January 1850. Various
and the nobility; to what the American freeholders did in 1837, when they destroyed five-sixths commercial wealth of the country, by raising the cry "Bank, or no Bank: " or what the British ten-pounders have done with the other classes of society, and, eventually, though they did not intend it, with themselves, by their measures of free trade and a restricted currency. Beyond all doubt, these measures would at once be repealed by an extended constituency; but are we sure they would stop there? What security have we they would not apply the sponge to the National Debt, confiscate the church property, and openly, or by a graduated assessment on land, divide the estates of the nobility?
But perhaps the most powerful agent, which has been at work, in stopping the progress of revolution in Europe, has been the public and private Insolvency which in an abandoned state of society inevitably and rapidly follows such convulsions. This is the great check upon the government and the madness of the people. That France, ever since the revolution of February 1848, has been in a state of almost hopeless monetary embarrassment, is well known to all the world. In fact, nothing but the most consummate prudence, and the adoption of the wisest measures on the part of the Bank of France, has saved them from a general public and private bankruptcy. What those measures were, will immediately be explained. In the mean time, to show the magnitude of the difficulties against which they had to make head, it is sufficient to observe, that in twenty-one months the Revolutionary Government has incurred a floating debt of £22,000,000; and that the deficiency for the year 1849, wholly unprovided for – and which must be made good by Exchequer bills, or other temporary expedients – is no less than eleven millions and a half sterling. It is not surprising it should have swelled to this enormous amount; for the very first demand of revolutionists, when they have proved victorious, is to diminish the public burdens and increase the public expenditure. And they did this so effectually in France, that in one year after the revolution of 1848, they had increased the public expenditure by 162,000,000 francs, or about £6,500,000; while they had caused the public revenue to fall by 248,000,000 francs, or nearly £10,000,000!
The dreadful prostration of industry which such a state of the public revenue implies, would have proved altogether fatal to France, had it not been rescued from the abyss by the surpassing wisdom with which, in that crisis, the measures of the Bank of France were conducted. But the conduct of that establishment, at that trying crisis, proved that they had taken a lesson from the archives of history. Carefully shunning the profuse and exorbitant issue of paper which, under the name of assignats, effected so dreadful a destruction of property in France in the first revolution, they imitated the cautious and prudent policy by which Mr Pitt surmounted the crisis of 1797, and brought the nation triumphant through the whole dangers of the war. They obtained an act from the legislature authorising the issue, not of £600,000,000 sterling of notes, as in 1793 and 1794, but of 400,000,000 francs, or £16,000,000 sterling, not convertible into gold and silver. This, and this alone, it was that brought France through the crisis of the Revolution. Specie, before this aid was obtained, was fast disappearing from circulation; the Bank of France had suspended cash payments; three of the principal banks in Paris had become bankrupt; the payment of all bills was suspended by act of government – for this plain reason, that no debtor could find cash to discharge his engagements. But this wise measure gave the French people that most inestimable of all blessings in a political and monetary crisis – a currency which, without being redundant, is sufficient, and, being not convertible into the precious metals, neither augments the strain on them, nor is liable to be swept away by foreign export. In consequence of this seasonable advance, the crisis was surmounted, though not without most acute general suffering; and industry, since a government comparatively stable was established, in the person of Prince Louis Napoleon, has revived to a surprising degree over the whole country. Indeed, it may be doubted whether the general misery which prevailed in France, desolated by a revolution, but sustained by a moderate inconvertible paper currency, was greater than was felt in the manufacturing cities of Great Britain, saved by the firmness of government and the good sense of the nation from a political convulsion, but withering under the fetters of a contracted currency, and unrestricted admission of foreign produce.4
One thing is perfectly apparent from the result of the revolution in Italy, that the establishment of either civil liberty or political independence is hopeless in that beautiful peninsula. The total and easy rout of the Piedmontese and Tuscan forces by Radetsky is a proof of this. Venice was defended by its Lagunæ – Rome not by the descendants of the ancient masters of the world, but by the revolutionary mercenaries of Poland, Hungary, and Germany, whom the Austrian victories drove back from the banks of the Po to those of the Tiber. On the other hand, the example of Naples, where the firmness of the king has preserved in the end his dominions entire, though Sicily for a time was severed from the kingdom, and Naples itself was the theatre of a bloody convulsion, proves alike of what flimsy materials revolution is composed in the south of Europe, and through what a perilous crisis a nation can be safely conducted, when the depositaries of power are not unworthy of the elevated duties with which they are entrusted.
Still more important is the lesson read to the world by the attempted revolution in England and Ireland. That Great Britain was threatened with the convulsions, in the throes of which France and Germany were labouring, is universally known. The Chartists openly declared that monarchy could not stand two months in England or Scotland; the Repealers were counting the hours till the Saxon was expelled from the Emerald Isle, and a Hibernian republic proclaimed in Dublin, in close alliance with the great parent democracy in Paris. Where are these boasters now? The English revolutionists were morally slaughtered in London on the 10th April: the Irish rebels were blown into the air by the fire of the police in the cabbage garden. They have been more than vanquished; they have been rendered ridiculous. In despair, they are now leaving in crowds their wo-stricken isle; and it is to be hoped a better race, more industrious habits, and a more tractable people, will gradually be introduced into the deserts which Celtic improvidence and folly has made. It is a glorious spectacle to see an attempted revolution which broke out in both islands suppressed almost without the effusion of blood; and England, the first-born of freedom in modern times, reasserting, in its advanced period of existence, at once the order and moderation which are the glorious inheritance of genuine Liberty.
Would that we could say that our foreign policy during the two last eventful years has been as worthy of praise, as the conduct of our government in combating our internal enemies has been. But here the meed of our approbation must fail. Contrary alike to our obvious interests and to our real and long-established principles, we have apparently been guided by no other principle but that of fomenting revolution, after the example of France, in every country which the contagion had reached. We all but severed Sicily from Naples, and openly assisted the Sicilian insurgents with arms and ammunition. We once stopped, for "humanity's sake," the Neapolitan expedition from sailing to combat the rebels: we more than once interposed in favour of Charles Albert and the Piedmontese revolutionists: we have alienated Austria, it is to be feared, beyond redemption, by our strange and tortuous policy in regard to the Hungarian insurrection: we, without disguise, countenanced the revolutionary Germans in their attack upon the Danes. What object Ministers had in that, or how they thought the interests of England, a great commercial and exporting nation, were to be forwarded by throwing its whole customers into confusion and misery, we cannot divine. Apparently, their sympathy with revolution anywhere but at home, was so strong, that they could not abstain from supporting it all around them, though to the infinite detriment of their own people. And it is a most curious circumstance, that, while the Chancellor of the Exchequer constantly told us – no doubt with a certain degree of truth – that the failure of our exports, and the general distress of the country, was, in a great degree, to be ascribed to the European revolutions, the whole policy of the Foreign Office, during the same period, was directed to countenance and support these very revolutions.
But from the painful contemplation of the follies and aberrations of man, let us turn, with thankfulness, to the contemplation of the great moral lessons which the events of the two last years teach us as to the wisdom and beneficence of Nature. It is now clear beyond the possibility of doubt, that the wisdom of Providence has provided barriers against the passions, vices, and follies of men; and that if the leaders in thought and station fail in their duty, an invisible bulwark against the progress of anarchy is provided in the general misery which is the consequence of their excesses.
In Paris, after the Revolution in April and May, it was stated there were 300,000 persons out of employment, including the dependants of those without work. This number was, doubtless, fearfully great out of a population of 1,200,000 souls. But it was exceeded in some parts of Great Britain. In April 1848, the number of unemployed persons in and around Glasgow was so excessive, that an examination of them was made, by order of the magistrates of that city, with a view to an application to government for assistance. The men out of work were found, in that city and its vicinity, to be 31,000, which, allowing two and a half dependants to each male, implies 93,000 persons destitute of employment, out of a population at that time estimated at 360,000; being somewhat more than 300,000 out of 1,200,000 in Paris.