1819-1919

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 255, 23 July 1919, Page 7

1819-1919

QUEEN VICTORIA'S CENTENARY

A RECORD OF CHANGE

(From the London "Times" of Saturday, May 24.) AVe celebrate to-day a memorable anniversary. Just .1 hundred years ago— on (May 24,. 1819—there was born at Kensington Palaco a child who was destined, as Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India, to enjoy the longest roign in our history, to rule with extraordinary success over an Empire constantly growing in extent, population, wealth, and power, and to givo her name to what was, by whatever tests wo try it, the most wonderful age that our British raco has ever known. It is fitting that, amid' the stirring events and anxieties of to-day, we should pause for a moment to'compare past and' present, to count on our fingers, as it were,_ somo of the point of contrast between ISI'D and 1919, and to ask what men and movements were chiefly responsible for the .astonishing change,

A Comparison. We stand to-day at the conclusion of a great and victorious war, waiting for the treaties which, as we all fervently hope, are to restore peace to a. shattered world. We. have passed through four-and-a-quartef years of effort, of heroisjn, of sacrifice; years which, though they welded together the British Empire and brought us into close alliance with the other free nations of the world in defence of a free civilisation, yet cost us more than a million of precious lives,' strained our public and private resources to the utmost, and imposed upon us and our children's children an unheard-of burden of debt. And now tho leading men of two continents aro striving, in solemn conference, to make such a peace as shall render the world habitable once more, and shall keen it so, not byeuoh a "Holy Alliance" as , that constructed by their reactionary predecessors at A r ienna, but by a "League of Nations." Everybody wishes well to ihe scheme; averybody hopes for its success; and ye* everybody is anxious, for we all know the.strength of national antipathies and national • interests, just as all thinking people in all countries are _ conscious of the . bitter class antagonism that lurk under nhat rppears to be a harmonious surface. Well, we had troubles enough in England a century ago, and we surmounted thyn. In 1819, as now, England had lately emerged from a great European war, and had conquered. The instruments of victory were essentially those of to-day— the courage and good discipline of our soldiera and the efficiency of ou.r Navy. Judged by present-day standards, indeed, the war in tho low Countries was a small affair; as has often been said, Waterloo might have been won and iost in a corner of tho Somme battlefield, with no decisive effect on tho result. But, relatively to tho population and wealth of 1 Great Britain, the cost of the Napoleonic wars' in men and money, was formidable indeed. The census of 1821 gave the population of England, Wales, and Scotland at just about H millions; that of 1911 makes it just nnder 41 millions. In 1789, the first year of . the FTench Revolution, : the public revenue of the country (called "Ways and Means") amounted to ,£11,039,000; while in 1819, just 30 years later, it had risen—i.e., taxation had risen—to 77 millions. At that date the National Dfbt had reached 763 millions, with interest (generally sneaking) at 8 per cent.; now the Great War has brought it up to ten tim'es that 6um, on which, for tho most part, the rate of interest is _ 5 or 5J per cent., though a large portion is returned to the country as income taxi These few figures are enough to show that at. each end of the hundred- years' of which we are dealing the public burden of this country pretty nearly reached the limit of the endurable. Social Discontent. But this is almost the only point of close similarity between the tiro epochs. In 1819,' though tho. Industrial .'.Eevoiution of the 18th cerituirv had greatly increased the wealth -of the few, the state of the many was lamentable indeed. It is true, that the efforts of Romilly, "ten years before, had somewhat softened the horrible penal laws, but they were still a reproach to civilisaion; and low wages, long hours, the employment of women and children, and the odious "truck" system had made a . hell upon earth of many of tho manufacturing districts. Discontent, of course, was rife, and was met by repression, or at best by feeble tinJeering with a few grievances. By a strange coincidence, tho year of Queen Victoria's birth was tho year of the ''Peterloo massacre" and the Six Acts— both fruits of the panic into which the j signs of n. people's awakening had thrown the upper classes. The Peterloo affair , was not a massacre, for onlv one man J was killed; but it was a violent attack ' by a troop of Yeomanry upon a perfectly legal and peaceful meeting of some £0,000 reformers, whose very mass cnu s ed the Manchester magistrates to lose their brads. The most serious part of the matter was, not that several persons were injured, but that the Prince Regent at once sent pompous congratulations' to the colonel, and, when Lord Fiizwilliam gathered the Whig notabilities of Yorkshire to protest, promptly dismissed the tori from his Lord Lieutenancy-. The Six Acts" followed, all strongly reactionary, one practically stopping the i«sue of cheap "halfpenny trash" and the rest), and another •in effect forbidding popular meetings Of course, discontent was onlv driven "deeper, -and the Thistlewood plot soon justified Lord Holland's warning that to prevent the, free expression of it would encourage secret conspiracies. Hapnilv Parliament was wise in time, and Canning, as. Leader of tho House, with Huskisson- and Peel to support him, carried a multitude of remedial measures reforming the Penal Laws, abolishing useless offices, drastically amending the J.ombinanon Laws, encouraging trade improving the relations between Britain and her colonies bv a reform of theNnviP 21! VS| nn( '' in ft word, starting the country on a career of humamiv find commercial reform.

After the Reform Act. • . It was much, but . not enough. Class interest was still immensely strong, and the grievances of the poor remained terribly serious. The great Keform Act of 1532 gave much power to the middle clasa, bul tho new Poor Law of 1831, though 'an improvement on the old anarchical system or no-system, was at t nl. es ' ) . pr » tel .-V unpopular, and the .rise 01 Onanism in the 'succeeding years showed tluvt political agitation was still very much alive. Disraeli's "Sybil" was published in 1812. and its gruesome description of the collieries and the factories rhetorically as it is written is absolutely confirmed by the reports of more than one Parliamentary Commissioii. nut there were agencies at work Tvlnch were soon to bring about, a transformation. They were—the public conscience acting upon Parliament through certain leading men; the ideas of other leading men, expressed in literature and the Pi ess; and steam transport by land and sea. These causes, of course, interacted. If during tho thirties and early forties the railway and telegraph systems nad miwlo rapid communication what it is to-day, a matter of daily habit, ? r 11 weekly Press had been fully organised, such measures as Lord Ashley s great Factory Acts could never have been as they were, delayed for 11 years.'. They wero so delayed; tliG inoro honour to th<ifc bravo roan for carrying on the fight from 1833 £0 1846, when he quitted Parliament and left the chief measure to be passed in tho next year by others. But he had already abolished the horrible "apprenticeship system ' in mines and collieries, and had thus established the principle that the public authority has tho right to control private abuses. A princinle of wide application, assuredly l In 0110 sense, half the legislation of the last two reigns may bo said to derive from it, and there has often been reason in the complaints of those who declared that the evils of over-individual-ism were being replaced by the evils of over-government. The hand of authority is everywhere. Either directly, or through the vast system of local government under which wo now live, it acts upon all. It controls the hours and the wages of agricultural and much other labour; it provides and enforces elementary, and to a. certain "extent secondary, education; it makes provision fo- tie publio health, and will soon do the same

for housing. And at tl)is moment there is no domestic matter that is arousing keener interest than tho question whother tho working of our mines and collieries, the primum mobile of our trade, is to bo left to individual ownership or is to bo taken over by tho Stato and managed by Government officials. Thirty years ago Sir William Harcourt said half-jokingly. "We are all Socialists now." ' The question of tho moment is, where will common senso draw the lino? Trade and Transport. Tlie groat expansion of British trade inav.be said to have begun with the second quarter at' the century of which ws are treating—that is to say, with tho first years of Queen Victoria's reign. Peel became Prime Minister in 1841, but refused to declare his policy until lie Had thoroughly "surveyed tho national necessities." The result of that survey was quickly seen; it may be stated in a sentence—that between 1841 and 1846 he reorganised our bonking system, abolished duties on GOS articles and reduced those on 1035 more, the most important of these changes being the abolition of tho Com Law, which after many vicissitudes and struggles was finally carried in the Lords on Juno 25, 1840. Peel never claimed exclusive credit for this great measure; be declared two things —that Richard Cobden had been,, his teacher, and that in advocating Free Trade he was acting as a Conservative Minister "to ensure tho united action of an ancient Monarchy, to a proud aristocracy, and a reformed" constituency" (January 22, 18-16;.' As is well known the final push that destroyed tho old Corn Lmv had been given a few months before by the "rains of July," which washed away the British harvest and ruined tho Irish potato crop. In the face of. famine, not even tho landlords could resist the argument that the claims of the consumer must come .first; ; cheap bread was' the prime necessity. But, as we have indicated, there was present in tho situation another element quite as important as the conversion of the Tory leader: the means of conveying not only corn, but everything else were ready to hand. In 1830 the short railway from Manchester to Liverpool had been opened; by the time of the Queen's accession 200 miles were laid; and in 184G, thanks to the energy and skill of George and Robert Stephenson and to the lead;' support of the public, tho figure had grown to 3900 miles. Thero had naturally been much wild speculation; there was, indeed, in these last two years (1845-6) a "railway mania,?" which 'ruined hundreds of people; but nevertheless the great trunk lines that we all know so well were in working order, and goods and passengers wero being taken from London to Lancashire or Scotland almost as fast as they are taken to-day. So, too, even in the early years of the Queen's reign, the development of steam transport by sea was 'amazingly rapid; the tonnage of British steamships .entered and cleared at British ports rose from 400,000 in 1836 to 1,100,000 10 years later. By tho first Jubilee this figure had grown to 40 millions. This means, of course, that quick transit had brought about a huge development of trade; but what is at least as important is the change that it has effected' on life. With railways, steamships, the "penny post," and still more with those wonderful modern institutions, the telegraph and the telephone, the old isolation is no longer possible. Nay, it is no longer desired—except, indeed, as a relief from the pressure of crowds and of affairs. A century ago half the people lived, like Parnell's Hermit, '"Far in a wild, remote from, public view." Even if they had wished, they could not pass out of their village or their neighbourhood-except with much trouble and at no small expense. So a man's interest tended ,to be purely personal and local. Sans th'e railway, sans the Press, and often sans .schooling, what could the world be to him, or he to the world But now all these things are with- us, and they havo transformed the life of men, and still more, wrhaps. of women. For these the old ideal of a life of seclusion tempered by shopping has passed away: they go to schools and colleges; they proved themselves immensely efficient in munition works and hospitals during the war; they can enter professions; above all, for good or evil, they have got the vote.

The Growth of Science, If the telegraph and the telephone rank with steam transport in the modern development of means of communication, they may'also be regarded as parts of a still greater whole—as an outcome of that vast growth of electrical science which was one of the dominant features of the 19th century. This science, of which Greece had an inkling and the Renaissance something more, came into being in England with Gilbert, the contemporary of Bacon, began to advance with Boyle and Newton, leapt forward with the inventors of the Leyden jar and with Franklin and Henry Cavendish in the second half of the 18th century, with Galvnni and Volta about 1790, and, 30 years later, with a whole group of British and foreign discoverers, of whom Ampere and Faraday aro perhaps the most famous. In our own day the study has absorbed hundreds of the finest minds in Europe and America; and, both a? a key to many of Nature's strangest secrets and-as a source of ever-new practical inventions, _ it, seems to fascinate all whose ingenuity, patience, and mathematical capacity are equal to tho arduous study. Here it need only be noticed from its practical side. The most obvious results, as we havo said, are the telegraph and its younger sister the telephone, which date in England the one (thanks to Sir Charles Whentstone) from the first year of Queen Victoria's reign, tho other,' the work of Graham Bell in England and Edison in America, from 40 years later. 13olh have long been worked by the State, are regulated by Acts of Parliament, and have a large place in tho great and growing literature of electrical science. They have 'become a- vital necessity of modern business, modern government, and modern war, though tliev form but a part of the gifts bestowed upon us by the science which now lights our streets and houses; runs our tube Tailways, and in scores of other directions is becoming tho victorious rival of steam.

Even if this and other sciences had only a practical side, it would be easy to fill columns with the record of what they have done for mankind during a century of continuous growth. We might dweil 011 the enormous benefits conferred by the chemists and physiologists upon suffering humanity by tracking diseases to their source; oil tho success of their fight against cholera, yellow fever, and other plagues (though not as yet against influenza); 011 the incalculable service done by anaesthetics, never more valued than during the great war; 011 the millions of lives saved through the discoveries of Pasteur and his brethren in all civilised lands. Or we might dwell 011 the utility of the researches into the nature of heat and light; 011 the advance of meteorology; 011 the practical services rendered by geology and minernlogy; and 011 the help given by all sorts of improved apparatus. But,■as Huxley long ago said, science is much more than practical. "The practical advantages attainable through its agency have never, been, and never will be, sufficiently uttractive to men inspired by the inborn genius of the interpreter of nature, to give them courage to undertake the toils and make the sacrifices which tlmt calling requires from its votaries." What does attract them is tho joy of extending the boundaries of knowledge, of carrying "the realm of law and order ever further towards the unattainable goals of tho infinitely great and- the infinitely small, between' which our little race of life is run." This is what has inspired all the great men of science of Victoria's reign, Darwin , abovo all, and which enabled him in 1859 to publish the book which, after the hubbub surrounding it had died down, substituted in every reasoning mind a view of human development resting on fact for one based 011 an enslaving tradition.

Genius and its Successors. Darwin also belongs to literature, and to a great literary epoch. But as our present business is to note changes rather than a placid succession of men and things, we may almost take for granted Hie vast and often noble literary output of the century, which has been marked In- no such sudden revolutions as that which had come over poetry somo twenty years before. Keats, Shelley, and Byron were still living in 1819; Jane Austen had lately died, and Scott was to survive till 1832. Tennyson's boyish poems appeared in 1827, and three years later came "Poems, chiefly Lyrical"; while Browning's "Pauline" was published in 1833. Some of our young poets and critics profess that the world has out-

grown these great writers, but con they match them! J Can they show historians so inspiring as Macaulay and Fronde, nr at once so authoritative and so wise as Grate and Lecky, or political philosophers that give the mind such a shake lis one felt on a first reading of Carlyle and Mill? Immense researches have been made sinco these men wrote, with the result Unit a generation of specialists has been able to correct and develop tliem in a hundred ways; but they may nt least claim they taught the world lo read, and begot their own judges. So uitli art, on which nowadays it is everybody's business to have an opinion.What ono notices in a survey of; the century of constant activity and productiveness accompanied a vast development of museums and specialised knowledge, is not exactly progress but a frequent shifting both of aims and standards. People get tired, and like to burn what they have adored, till another generation begins to adore again. So the elders among us have passed through academism to pre-Raphaelitism, and thence to a variety of 'isms borrowed from France. But the men of l.lie calibre of Turner and Constable, who lived into the Victorian age, not to mention the great artists of 50 years earlier, are not, lis yet, unmistakably manifest. As a Frenchman has said; "Auiourd'hui le talent court les rues, mais les_ demons sont plus rare que jamais." '