THE NEW ZEALAND TABLET THURSDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1905. BEFORE AND AFTER TRAFALGAR

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 19, Issue 42, 19 October 1905, Page 17

THE NEW ZEALAND TABLET

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1905. BEFORE AND AFTER TRAFALGAR

To promote the cause of Religion and Justice by the ways of Truth and Peace. LEO. TTTT, to the N.Z. TiiBIiBT

4 EAN SWIFT lived long enough to see some of the smalL beginnings of England's great industrial revolution Wore his troiuWed frame was committed to the tomb ' where ' (as his epitaph hath it) ' fierce indignation rends the heart no longer.' He saw farther . than most men through the political awl - social iron-doors of his day, and he wrote, lung before his passing in 1715 : ' The power whicth; used to follow land has gone over to money.' Dr« Johnson dwelt in the land of the living for some forty jears after the Dean of St. Patrick's' had flitted 1 from the scone. He saw the invention of the spinninig-jeomy in 1770, of the water-frame in 17,71, and of the ' mtolo * (which superseded both) in 1779, the breaking^-oiip of tho old 'domestic system ol manufactures and the inauguration of tbe era of the crowded factory, that brought so muoh wealth and so much woe to industrial England. He d»d mot live to see the power-loom, nor yet the steam-engine, which latter completed England's .great, industrial revolution. But what he did witness in his 1 day forced upon him a disco\ery which got him dowfa. and shook him with surprise— namely, that a man. engaged in commerce, or at least his son or grandson, might bo a gentl-emvun. For the capitalist manufacture!: had become a new and important factor in the national life. The aristocracy of money-biagls bad arisen. It finally unseated the aristocracy of blue blood and TjToad acies, and became itself the man on horseh/ack. Towards the close of the eighteenth century — and long befoie tii)e click-clack of the stoam-'snjgine 'had replaced tlhe hum and grind of the water-wheel — the capitalists were able to stand on flqinai terms with the lancL-owners aa the ruling class of Great Britain. Pitt was the great statesman of the moneyed manufacturers. In theirinterests he committed the country to that policy of commcrcfal wars and territorial expansion which' has been such a marked and constant feature of the history of all the g-rcat European Powers almost since his day.)

The peaceful revolution wrought by the inventions of' Ilargreavos and Arkwright led (as GiWbons points out in his >' Industrial History of England ') to Pitt's endeavor, in 1703, to strike down France, and thus secure for his country ' control of the world's markets,' It was a long and bull-do^ struggle that dragged its weary lcjigth along m succcssne l ronnuds ' from 1793 till 1815. It cost the nations engaged in it 1,900,000 lhcs. England poured out treasure upon it to tire grand tune of £S U ,l'l(i, 11'). But its chief purpose was effected. lit 17 !).'•! — the year in which the band began to play— her exports wene ofiicially Aalued at £17,000,000. In 1800 they ha-d liseiv In £31,000,00') ; and in 1815, when Johnny came marching home from Waterloo, England's evports had an officially declared value of £58,000,000. -

In that war of giants England had one signal advian I-ta-L,o over Continental nations. While they, with Britain's effective aid, were carving each other up on thoix own soil— to the hopeless ruin of their manufacturing

indus'ferie®— she was the oniy country in i?faich ,war was not actually carried 00. Thromgtooßit, her miaaufa«t i ures were practically undisturbed, amid at the close cf tine struggle the ocean-carrying trade was left seouie to her by her undisputed supremacy at sea. This was secured to her by the headlong victory which Nelson achieved over the combined Fretnoh and Spanish fleets off Cape Trafalgar on October 21, 1805. It was indeed ' a famous victory '— flhe most notaJble, perhaps, that had till then 'been won by men that go down to the sea in ships. The first centenary of that famous sea-fight is to be oeklb rated at the close of the present week. The victor was struck down in the hour of his triumph', buitj tho two rival navies were annihilated. It was the Tsushima of the old 'wooden waits '—the most dramatic incident in a 'bout at reprisals that arose immediately out of Napoleon's annexation of Piedmont and Parma, his occupation of Switzerland ; Britain's protests against this course of restless *a;g|giras,Siion'; France's counter-demands for the expulsion of the French refugees within her borders aiud the surrender of Malta ; and, finally, the menacing armaments gathered together by ' the little Corporal ' for the invasion of England. That day off Cape Trafalgar settled many things. Its most immediate effect was (as Green happily phrases it) that ' the danger of any invasion of England rolled away like a; dream.' It secured, moreover, to the victors a supremacy of sea-power which has never siwco been seriously (Questioned. And this in turn fixed and facilitated the policy of territorial expansion and commercial wars' and warlets — a policy which has guided successive British administrations from Trafalgar day down to the- close of Ihat strange combination of comedy, farce, and tragedy— of Falstafi, Bombastes, and Henry V.— which ended in South Africa in 1902. As for France : Siho has fallen since 1805 from the first to the sixth place among the Great Powers. And in a few years Italy will relegate her to the seventh pliace. But this decadence of the erstwhile loading nation has not been brought about by the clash of combat either by field or flood. It is the melancholy and for seen result of the long and deadly war of the Revolution and the Lodges against religion and Christian morality' — a war which is at its height at this -\ety hour, and v, h'di has left the nurseries scantily peopled and partially 'broken down the only true support of domestic and social life.

Formerly men slit each others' throats for a seivtimorrt, or in the interests of a dynasty. Since the days of Pitt war has been almost unanably waged for the capture of gold or diamond fields, or the finding or keeping of markets for the cotton goods and iron spoons and crockeryware of the groat capitalist manufacturers.