south and north of France, as regularly as they did into Paris or London. "It is not to be told," said Soult, in his despatch to Napoleon, "what mischief this system of the English general has done us. Every peasant wishes to be under his protection." It is this circumstance which gives the campaigns and military measures of Wellington their great and lasting interest: it is their moral character which stamped upon them immortality. Not only was he intrusted with a noble cause, but he defended it by noble deeds. Repudiating the worldly doctrine, that the end will justify the means, he adhered to the opposite rule, that evil is not to be done that good may come of it. He preferred to bear obloquy, to submit to privation, to be cramped in resources, to be fettered in action, to reaping, when he might have done so, the fruits of injustice. He toiled on through poverty, hardship, and suffering, while his enemies were rioting in the fruits of rapine. He was content to be poor as a general as well as an individual, so as he was just. He did to others as he would have been done by. Intrusted with the defence of order, morality, and religion, he combated with the arms of justice alone. Long and severe in consequence was his trial, but great and glorious was his reward. He found it in the smiling and prosperous realms which he had protected by his arms; he found it in the wasted and desolate kingdoms which he wrested from the enemy; he found it in the unanimous horror which the injustice of his opponents produced; he found it in the universal gratitude of the world at their deliverance by his arms. Observe with how piercing an eye, and graphic a hand, Wellington, after the first capture of Paris in 1814, painted the dreadful and lasting social as well as political evils which had been bequeathed to it by the Revolution: evils so far from being worn out, that they are only in their commence ment: "Cette malheureuse Révolution et ses suites ont ruiné le pays de fond en comble. Tout le monde est pauvre, et ce qui est pis, leurs institutions empêchent qu'aucune famille devienne riche et puissante. Tous doivent donc nécessairement viser à remplir des emplois publics, non comme autrefois pour l'honneur de les remplir, mais pour avoir de quoi vivre. Tout le monde donc cherche de l'emploi public. Buonaparte laissa une armée d'un million d'hommes en France, outre les officiers prisonniers en Angleterre et en Russie. Le roi ne peut pas en maintenir le quart. Tous ceux non employés sont mécontens. Buonaparte gouvernait directement la moitié de l'Europe, et indirectement presque l'autre moitié. Pour des causes à présent bien développées et connues, il employait une quantité infinie de personnes dans ses administrations; et tous ceux employés ou dans les administrations extérieures, civiles, ou dans les administrations militaires des armées, sont renvoyés, et beaucoup de ceux employés dans les administrations intérieures. A cette classe nombreuse ajoutez la quantité d'émigrés et de personnes rentrés, tous mourant de faim, et tous convoitant de l'emploi public afin de pouvoir vivre; et vous trouverez que plus de trois quarts de la classe de la société non employée à la main-d'œuvre ou à labourer la terre, sont en état d'indigence, et par conséquence mécontens. Si vous considérez bien ce tableau, qui est la stricte vérité, vous y verrez la cause et la nature du danger du jour. L'armée, les officiers surtout, sont mécontens. Ils le sont pour plusieurs raisons inutiles à détailler ici; mais ce mécontentement pourra se vaincre en adoptant des mesures sages pour améliorer l'esprit." * The historian of the Restoration, and its fall, will do well to ponder on this brief but comprehensive passage. Nowhere else in an equal space will he find an equally convincing and lucid description of the difficulties, in truth insurmountable, which attended the Restoration. They arose out of the entire destruction of the whole former foundation of society in France by the Revolution, and the reconstruction of the nation upon a foundation brilliant and dazzling, but of all others the most perilous-viz., on the plunder and oppression of other states. When the means of carrying on this iniquitous system of spoliation and injury were taken away, by the French armies being driven into their own territory, and their authority circumscribed by its limits, misery and penury at once became general, and discontent universal. It was like the curse suddenly shooting into the brain of Ladurlad, the moment he descended from the enchanted precincts of Mount Meru. All this discontent, vexation, and disappointment, was visited on the head of Louis XVIII. and the government of the Restoration, merely because they had the misfortune to be the public guardians at the time when the suffering was felt. The French were discontented at them, as a spoilt child is with its nurse, because it happens to be under his charge when its playthings are taken away. That was the real cause of the calamitous revolt of the Hundred Days: it was the cause of the equally calamitous Revolution of the Barricades: and when the sagacious intellect of Louis Philippe has ceased to direct the overgrown multitude of needy aspirants, it will * Wellington to Dumouriez, Nov. 20, 1814. GURWOOD, xi. 496. again involve France in convulsion, and Europe in war and devastation." "I would sacrifice Gwalior, or every portion of India, ten times over, to preserve our credit for scrupulous good faith, and the advantages and honour we gained by the late war and the peace; and we must not fritter them away in arguments drawn from overstrained principles of the law of nations, which are not understood in this country. What brought me through the many difficulties in the war, and the negotiations for peace? The British good faith, and nothing else."t What a testimony to the cardinal point of Indian, as of all other really wise and profound policy, by the conqueror of Assaye! But at the same time, no one more clearly saw, or has more clearly expressed, the vital distinction between Asiatic and European politics, or the absurdity of applying our European rules regarding state policy and the law of nations to a cluster of communities, where neither the one nor the other is in the slightest degree understood, but one, and one only maxim is invariably followed, which is, to yield to force. Speaking in 1804 on this subject, he says:— "The Asiatic governments do not acknowledge, and hardly know of the rules and systems which have long been observed in Europe. Their governments are arbitrary; the objects of their policy are always shifting; they have no regular or established system, the object of which is to protect the weak against the strong. On the contrary, the object of each of them separately, and of all collectively, is to destroy the weak. And if by chance they should, by a sense of common danger, be induced for a season to combine their efforts for their mutual defence, the combination lasts only as long as it is attended with success: the first reverse dissolves it; and, at all events, it is dissolved long before the danger ceases, the apprehension of which originally caused it. The Company's government in India depends much on its reputation; and although it does not do so entirely, as contradistinguished from its real force, yet it is particularly desirable for a government situated as it is, never to engage in any project, the success of which may appear even doubtful. It is bound by acts of Parliament not to undertake any war of aggression, and not to conclude any but defensive alliances. These considerations prove that no permanent system can be adopted in India which shall preserve the weak against the strong, or keep all for any length of time in their relative situations, and the whole in peace. One power is indispensable, which, either by the superiority of its strength, its military system, or its resources, shall preponderate, and be able to protect all."‡ How just and prophetic a view, formed forty years ago, of the peculiar circumstances of the Indian Peninsula, and the necessities of Indian policy, which subsequent experience has done so much to confirm ! * Written in 1843. The Revolution and disastrous wars of 1848 were the accomplishment of this prediction. Despatch, March 17, 1804. Maxims and Opinions, p. 87. Wellington to Lord Wellesley, July 19, 1804. Maxims and Opinions, p. 88. The despatches of the Duke of Wellington since 1815 have not been published, and probably will not be so during the lifetime of the present generation, as they relate of course to political and domestic concerns only. We are deprived, therefore, during the momentous period of British history which has since intervened, of the inestimable advantage of reading, as it were, his mind, in the confidential and unreserved communication of his ideas on passing events, in correspondence with his intimate friends. It may confidently be anticipated, that when his correspondence for that period comes to be published, embracing his views on so many changes, vital to the history and future fate of England-the Roman Catholic Relief Bill, the Reform Bill, Negro Emancipation, Free Trade and Protection, the Affghanistan and Chinese wars-it will exceed even the despatches relating to the war in interest and importance. At present we are confined on these interesting topics to selections from the Duke's parliamentary speeches, in which, though the same vigour of thought and brevity of expression are always conspicuous, we are not equally sure of finding the real opinions of the man, from the necessity under which the Minister often laboured of expressing the opinions of the cabinet, not his own; and the restraints under which the statesman was always laid, of using measured and often simulate expressions in parliamentary debate. Yet do the extracts from these speeches compose a rich fund of political wisdom, and convey as great an impression of the varied capacity of the Duke's mind; illustrating the truth of Johnson's saying, that intellectual strength is capable of being applied to any subject to which the will directs it. "The theory of all legislation is founded in justice, and if we could be certain that legislative assemblies would on all occasions act according to the principles of justice, there would be no occasion for those checks and guards which we have seen established under the best systems. Unfortunately, however, experience tells us, that legislative assemblies are swayed by the fears and passions of individuals: when unchecked, they are tyrannical and unjust; nay more, it unfortunately happens too frequently, that the most tyrannical and unjust measures are the most popular. Those measures are frequently popular which deprive rich and powerful individuals, under the pretence of public advantage; and I tremble for a country in which, as in Spain, there is no barrier for the preservation of private property, excepting the justice of a legislative assembly possessing supreme powers.' * Despatch, Jan. 29, 1813. Maxims and Opinions, 124. VOL. III. L This paragraph, written in relation to the popular legislature in 1813, at Cadiz, which was intriguing with Napoleon, and so nearly made shipwreck of the cause of Spanish independence, as it unquestionably has of that of Spanish freedom, contains a key to the political opinions of the Duke on all the great questions of social contest which afterwards came under his consideration in the internal government of Great Britain. Distrust of patriotic professions-too often, as Johnson said, "the last refuge of a scoundrel;" a thorough perception of the truth, that selfishness is the mainspring of human actions; a strong sense of the necessity of checks to cover this universal and indelible grasping propensity in all classes, formed his ruling principles. It does not appear that he possessed any very extensive historical information; indeed his active life, constantly in harness from the time he left school, rendered such acquisition almost impossible; but he possessed that strong sense and intuitive sagacity, which so often is more valuable to its possessor than profound learning; and which enabled him, from the observation of the events around him, and in which he bore a part, to arrive at the same conclusions which others would do from the most extensive course of historical reading and reflection. On the much-debated question of Interference, or Noninterference, in the internal concerns of another state, he said "Much has been said here and elsewhere, at various times, on the question of interference by one state in the concerns of another. I do not admit the right of one country to interfere with the internal affairs of another country, except when the law of necessity or great political interests may render interference absolutely necessary; but I say that noninterference is the rule, and interference the exception: this is the ground of the policy on which this country acts. She disdains a daily interference with the concerns of other countries."* It is impossible to express more clearly, in a few words, the ruling principle of British policy, as called into action during the whole course of the revolutionary war. Wellington's opinions were always very strongly expressed on the paramount necessity of protection to agriculture in the British Empire; and of the ruinous effects which would result to all classes if the agricultural interests were to be * Speech in Lords, Feb. 11, 1828. Maxims and Opinions, 142. |