BRITAIN'S STRESS IN TWO WARS.

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2343, 28 December 1914, Page 6

BRITAIN'S STRESS IN TWO WARS.

THE EMPIRE TO-DAY. AND ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. To find a parallel to the condition of Europe to-day, it is necessary to go back to the Napoleonic wars, and it is interesting to notice tho startling similarity which Jinks the two great conflicts. Those were hard times in Britain; and starvation was an ever.-pro-sent menace. Then, as now, the country entered war fresh from the turmoil of a deep social unrest Then, as -now, Ireland was conspicuously to the fore. But in;the midst of all, the life of the country went on in m.uch the usual routine—exactly as it is doing now— and l men and women declined to permit themselves to be perturbed by the threatening spectre of the Corsican's armies encamped just across the Channel at Boulogne—Boulogne, which is now one of the Oases of that British army battling sido by side with the French againsf a common enemy. .The opening of the year 1800 was gloomy, • indeed. So utter was the want that it had been communicated to the highest quarters. .'.The civil list was more than a year in arrears, and the King's servants wore obliged to present him with a petition begging that some portion of their wages be paid them. It was several; years before the King caught up .with nis expenditure. In _ that: year, too, the Irish 1 '• Act, of Union was passed, in consequence of tho ever-present ■. menace of revolt'.revived by the''9B uprising and the, meddling of the French. Public sentiment was exceedingly uneasy concerning the war. People did not at. first display tho same calm confidence which strikes observers' in England to-day,, although! later, as.they became used to it, thenationallife returned to , its accustomed channels. Gold was so scarce that it had risen to £4 ss. an \ounce, a price whiph tempted many persons to melt guineas and dispose of them as •bullion. ■' . .. ' .... • '

• Law Against Forestalling. , There was a scarcity of food,,too, and riots were frequent.' • The acts ■against merchants.who purchased stocks of food to lay up in 'order to command higher prices were put, in force. The value of a load of had increased from £2 2e. in-1773: to £7 in 1800. Meat had risen from fourpenoe a pound to'ninepence. Butter, was one shilling and fourponce where it had been sixpence. Sugar had plimbed from eightpence ;to one shilling and fourpence.. Dandles, had! almost doubled in price.. But perhaps nothing served better to ■Hlustrate the hardships of ■ the period than- the. rise in the poor-rates, from one shilling a quarter in 1773 to five shillings.in 1800. ~ ' ; >''.'., Seridus note occurred all Wer'the country thai-summer, and in September the resentmont of the poorer classes reached London. A number of bakers' and butchers' shops were sacked, and. tho Lord Mayor found it necessary to call out the volunteers.; An immediate result-'of. the rioting-was a fall in the price of wheat from 10 t0.15 shillings a quarter. ■ The authorities, too, were prompted' to'take ,-uote .of the practice of certain merchants to forestall, ae , it was -called —that is; hoard .up produce .against a tighter markot—and a number of convictions of such persons were obtained. . Bread was actually 1 shilling 10£ pence the quartern-loaf, and. con-, siderin'g the diiferenco in the value of money to-day, 60 per cent, to this'to gauge the real Value set upon thia food ■ staple. In other words, bread was 63 cents,'the quar-tern-loat.. '. .-.'.

Yet, notwithstanding the hardships that-prevailed everywhere, Parliament was induced to turn its "attention to ordering the first census ever attempted in the : United Kingdom. The baclcers of the project estimated that the total population of the three kingdoms and \Vales would be between 8,000,000 and ll,000;000. Aβ a matter of -fact, the returns showed that tho population was , just short of 16,000,000 . \ , Feeding French Prisoners. 'So short was the supply, of wheat that in. 1801 the Government forbade the sale of fine, flour, ordering that only the unrefined flour, which contains tho bran, should be used. In Parliament, the Earl of. Warwick declared that the farmers were making .200 per cent, profit, and it <was. true that the- farmers were the most prosperous class in England. The budget that year provided for an increase of, but £Ij7SO,OUO. .Of this sum, it was'estimated that £170,000 would be produced: by a iax on pleasure horses of 10s. per horse; £17,000 would come from an increase of the penny post to twopence,: while a tax of 20 pence per hundred weight on sugar was to return £166,000. -J .-..■' England's troubles were further -increased about this time by an announcement by the Frenoh Government, that' it refused any longer to be responsible for the feeding of French prisoners in English hands—a unique arrangement this.effect having 'been entered into by! .the two countries, in consequence of Napoleon having adopted the attitude that otherwise;his soldiers and sailors would starve, an attitude; too, it may be seen, he abandoned.the moment it became evident that a. reverse policy would be more annoying to his enemies. There were nearly' 26,000 of the French prisoners in England, and their feeding was no slight, undertaking. Conditions were bettered somewhat in the fall o£ 1801 with the signing of the phantasmal treaty of.peace which was to last until--Napoleon was ready to resume the' struggle again. Naturally,, an immediate result of the peace was to relieve' the shortage of rood, and send prices down. Retrenchment .in armaments also served to lessen for a brief interval the tax burdens of the population. An idea of the tumultuous nature of industrial conditions may be gained from the riots in Wiltshire in August, 1803, caused by the introduction of machinery into the making of cloth. ' The mill-hands thought this i<tep forecasted a cutting down of employees, and in furious mobs they, wrought damage to £100,000 to the looms and propertyof tho niill-ownors. It was towards the end of this year of peace, too, that one of the last plots, to assassinate an English., ruler was uncovered. Col. Despard, a former Irish soldier and the ringleader, and a number of his accomplice.) were arrested; and on the following 21st of February, 1803, Despard and six others wore hanged or beheaded They were the last criminals in England to suffer the latter indignity, but at the time the sentence was thought not unduly, severe, particularly as the judges had very kindly consented to. remit the full sentence; which required the taking out and hurniug of their bowels aud the quartering of their bodies.

The Doggerel of the Day. Before that year was half over England nud Prance wero at war again. It was this resumption of hostilities, which served to steel every British heart against Napoleon, and which may bo said to have caused a crystallisation of sentiment in favour of war to the bitter eud. And, by the way, lest anybody be disposed to criticise too harshly the poetry turned out within tho last few weeks by the Poet Laureate and other literary lights of Britain, it should bo said that,.bad as wore some of the recent patriotic verses, they were far and away suporior to the balderdash that rocked the United Kingdom with emotion in 1803: My I.iicy said, no . longer stay, 'J'l'ie country tails thee, hence away, Ulieu! may wigele round fchco-liov'er, Put uo iilttvo slum bo lay kvw,

The donunoiations of tho present ruler , of Germany pale besido tne assaults upon "Bonoy" by a. certain ecction of tho' British Press a contury and nioro ago. His groat-grandfather, Englislimon wero told in all gravity, had boon a koopor of a wine-shop, was sontoncod to tho galleys, and died at an oar. His great-grandmother had died in tlio house of correction at Genoa. His grandfather waß a- butcher, and his grandmother a journoynian tanner's daughter. His father had boen a corrupt lawyer, who had actod as a spy for the: French when they came to Corsica. The statements mado regarding Napoleon's .mother and sisters could not bo printed.in. any reput--ablo publication to-day. Even his paternity, was denied him by the same journals which delighted to besliowor with mud the man ho'called his father.

Recruiting was the order of the day, and, although there was no Lord Kitchener at the War Office thon—England's generals of that time were fieldcommanders, and politicians < ran the administrative end—and the country possessed possibly a tenth of the resources now at its disposal, within eleven weeks of tho issuing of the declaration of war neaflly 400,000 men had been enrolled in the Army, and the Fleet was equipped and at sea. There was a patriotic fund, much like the Princo of Wales Fund we read so much about to-day, and instances were not lacking of individual generosity, as. intho oase of a weQl-known firm which voluntarily offered "the Government 400 horses, 50 wagons, and 28 boats. Then, as Now, the Spy Mania. There was also a spy epidemic in 1803. This story, which appeared in the "Times", of August 29, might almost have been clipped from a "Times" of the same date, 1914, bearing the quaint phraseology: . . ■ '..: ' "A respectable person in town a short time agjo, went on a party of pleasure to the Isle of Wight, andj being anxious to see ali tho. beauties of the place, ho rose early one day to indulge himself with, a .long morning's walk. In Ins way he took great pleasure, in viewing the vessels at sea with •his glass. ;,In the. midst of his obserwas interrupted- by an officer, who, after a few questions, took mm into .custody upon- suspicion of being a- spy. After a proper. myp.stiration of 'his character, he was liberals;!." The fall of the year lfiOo saw Trafalgar,, Nelson's death,-.and;the end of' tho bogey of a French invasion-of England. One wonders if, the simultaneous victory and death' of any modern British admiral: would create the furore that was caused by Nelson's passing. His state funeral cost £15,000,, a considerable sum, for those days, and it was the grandest- ever accorded a subject in England. Parliament also voted £300,000. to be distributed among the sailors of his fleet. .... : ■.-. . ' So the years dragged on. One finds .that the British of a hundred years ago wrangled with each, other, berated their rulers, all but starved, confronted outbreaks of industrial violence which were, identical to the sabotage' of the twentieth century. Tho political warfare between the several parties wae intense-' ly bitter. Great.reputations were made in military and naval, undertakings, and at the same time great names were spotted.'.-. The', efficiency of the troops and. fleets in. battlo was 'established, but, on. theother hand, consider the blight on the navy's records caused by that dreadful mutiny, at the Noro or the dismal failure of the Walcheren expedition. Ooneider, too, that in those battles on land and sen—even at Waterloo, Vimiora, Euentes d'Onoro, at Copenhagen, Aboukir, Trafalgar—the men behind the guns were largely pressed l men or gaolbirds or. wastrels, sent to the ranks. as; punishment for crime. Such startling diversities as these serve only to make more pointed the amazing appositoness of the life of Britain then and now. Remember, too, that pressed men and gaolbirds fought like heroes. - -'•■ . : ■:- ;.. -.