On July 15 Ollivier p.r.o.nounced in the Chamber the declaration that had been drawn up by himself and the Duc de Gramont. It was to the effect that the Cabinet had throughout made every possible exertion to preserve peace, but that their patience was exhausted when they found that the King of Prussia had sent an aide-de-camp to the French amba.s.sador informing him that no more interviews could be granted, and that the Prussian Government, by way of giving point and unequivocal significance to this message, had circulated it to all other foreign governments in Europe. Having spared no pains to avoid war, the ministers would now accept the challenge, and prepare for the consequences.
M. Ollivier has given a vivid description of the scene that ensued.
His final words were barely audible in the storm of applause that swept through the a.s.sembly, and the vote of urgency for the motion to provide the necessary war-funds was demanded with enthusiastic outcries, varied by angry vituperation of the few deputies who stood up to oppose it. But Thiers immediately arose and, in spite of many disorderly interruptions, made a pa.s.sionate appeal to the a.s.sembly to reflect before precipitating the country into war. His speech, with the violent cries of dissent interjected by the war-party, is reproduced by M. Ollivier in order, as he says, that his readers may judge for themselves how far it merited the unstinted eulogy that has since been bestowed upon it; for M. Ollivier evidently considers that those who have credited Thiers with heroic patriotism in making this strenuous effort to avert the catastrophe have over-praised him. Yet with this view we believe that few of those who read the pages in this volume which contain the speech will agree. They will admire, rather, the courage and fervid eloquence of a veteran statesman who vainly strove to persuade a frantic a.s.sembly that it was fatally misled, that it was plunging the nation into war on a mere point of form, grasping at a shadow after the substantial and reasonable demand for satisfaction had been obtained by Leopold"s renunciation; who reminded the deputies that the official papers authenticating the supposed insult had never been laid before them, and implored them not to risk the issues of a terrible contest upon a doubtful question of national susceptibility. M. Ollivier goes so far as to affirm that no one could be more justly accused of having brought on the war of 1870 than Thiers himself, because it was his vehement condemnation of the policy which allowed Prussia to beat down Austria in 1866, and to set up a formidable military power on the frontier of France, that inspired the whole French people with the suspicion, jealous animosities, and alarm which rendered a war on the Rhine between the two nations eventually unavoidable. But Thiers in his speech emphatically repeated his conviction that sooner or later France must fight Prussia to redress the balance of military power between the rival countries; and the whole point of his speech lay in one sentence: "Je trouve l"occasion detestablement choisie" ("Your _casus belli_ is ill chosen and utterly indefensible"). It cannot be denied that in 1870 the public opinion of Europe was on his side: for England and Austria, whose goodwill toward France was unquestionable, were foremost in their efforts to deter the French ministers from war and in deploring their infatuation when it had been proclaimed. At St. Petersburg the Russian emperor told the French amba.s.sador plainly that the demand for guarantees was unreasonable. Nor is it likely that the general judgment of the time--that Thiers did his best to save the empire from a disastrous blunder--will have been revoked by posterity, or affected by anything that has since been pleaded in extenuation.
"If (said Thiers) the Hohenzollern candidature had not been withdrawn, all France would have rallied to the support of your declaration, and all Europe would have held you to be in the right; but it _has_ been withdrawn with the approbation of the Prussian king, and you had absolutely no pretext for making any further demand. What will Europe say when you shed torrents of blood on a point of form?" M. Thiers concluded his speech by urging the ministers to lay before the Chamber the actual doc.u.ments which, as they a.s.serted, rendered war inevitable.
M. Ollivier, in his reply, declined to communicate certain doc.u.ments which, he said, were confidential and could not be produced without infringement of diplomatic rules; and he laid stress on the impossibility of tolerating the affront which had been intentionally put upon France by Bismarck"s circular telegram. And it was at the end of this speech that he made use of the phrase which has become historical as the typical expression of the levity and rashness with which his ministry threw their nation into a tremendous war, insomuch that it has become one main cause why he is so commonly charged, very unfairly, with the whole responsibility for the blind haste that led to the defeat and dismemberment of his country. "Oui, de ce jour commence pour les ministres mes collegues et pour moi, une grande responsabilite. Nous l"acceptons le coeur leger." The words were at once taken up sharply and severely; and M. Ollivier went on to explain that he meant a heart not weighted by remorse, since he and his colleagues had done everything that was consistent with humanity and with honour to avert a dire necessity; and since the armies of France would be upholding a cause that was just. He now comments bitterly on the malignity which has fastened this stigma on his name, merely because in the heat and flurry of debate, which left him not a moment to pick his words or arrange his sentences, he said something that he is sure no honest man who listened to his explanation could misconstrue into unfeeling frivolity. And in his criticism of the speech in which M. Thiers so vehemently condemned the conduct of the ministers he repeats emphatically that the war was not brought on by the demand for guarantees, but by Bismarck"s false and insulting publication of the king"s refusal to consider that demand. This affront, he maintains, was insufferable. Yet we learn from his narrative that before entering the Chamber on this eventful day M.
Ollivier had found at the Foreign Office Benedetti, just arrived from Ems, who had already seen Bismarck"s telegram in a newspaper, and could have a.s.sured the ministers that it was a perfidious misrepresentation, since the king had not treated him with actual discourtesy. Nevertheless M. Ollivier quotes and entirely adopts the "proud and manly" utterances of the Duc de Gramont who stood up and addressed the a.s.sembly towards the close of the debate.
"After what you have just heard," he said, "one fact is enough. The Prussian Government has informed all the Cabinets of Europe of the refusal to receive our amba.s.sador or to continue the discussion with him. That is an affront to the emperor and to France, and if (_par impossible_) a Chamber could be found in my country to bear or suffer it, I would not remain Minister of Foreign Affairs for five minutes."
These haughty words (we are told) electrified the Chamber, and a committee to examine the papers on which the ministers relied to prove their case was immediately appointed. These were brought by Gramont, who, however, said that he would not lay before the committee the precise words of Bismarck"s insulting telegram, because his knowledge of it came only from a very confidential communication made to him by the French representatives at certain foreign courts who had been permitted to see the original, so that the authentic text was not in his possession. This excuse was accepted, somewhat imprudently, by the committee; and their chairman proceeded to question Gramont closely on one point--whether, after Leopold"s retirement had become known, the King of Prussia had been required at one and the same time to approve it formally and to promise that the candidature should never be revived. During the debate it had been objected by those who opposed the war-party that after obtaining the king"s approval, and not till then, the Foreign Secretary demanded this promise, and that on this new demand the king took offence and briefly declined any further interview with Benedetti. Gramont answered the chairman with a direct affirmative; he stated that the two concessions had been required simultaneously, and M. Ollivier undertakes to prove that this statement was correct. He argues, if we understand him rightly, that before Leopold had withdrawn his candidature, the king had been pressed to advise or order him to do so, and that this requisition included by implication the demand for a guarantee against its renewal. When Leopold had retired without the king"s intervention, the royal order became unnecessary; but the implied demand still remained in force, and was merely repeated in subsequent telegrams.[51] On this we must remark that both Benedetti and the Prussian king entirely missed the alleged implication; that the question of guarantees was never raised by the telegrams interchanged between Gramont and Benedetti before Leopold"s retirement had become public, when both the king and the amba.s.sador treated it as entirely new; and that at any rate such an important and highly contentious demand should obviously have been stated with unequivocal distinctness, since any other course was quite certain to produce misunderstandings and recriminations. And it is no matter for surprise that various French writers have since accused the Duc de Gramont of misstating the facts upon which the committee reported to the Chamber that the papers laid before them amply sustained the ministerial request for the grant of an urgent war-subsidy, which was thereupon voted by an immense majority. In the Senate, where the money was granted with even more prompt.i.tude and with zealous unanimity, the proceedings were expedited by a report from Marshal Le Boeuf that the enemy had already crossed the French frontier, and M. Rouher, a thorough Imperialist, headed a deputation of senators to congratulate the emperor, in the name of the Senate, on having drawn the sword when the Prussian king rejected the demand for guarantees. M. Ollivier reasonably complains that this unauthorised demonstration was awkward and mischievous; for while the Senate was thus made to attribute the rupture to the king"s refusal, the ministry was declaring war on account of the "soufflet de Bismarck"--the insult embodied in the Prussian telegram. Yet M. Ollivier, looking back in the calm evening of life on these stormy days, might have brought himself by reflection to admit that between these two pretexts there was little to choose--that neither of them justified a government in staking the fortunes of the nation and the empire on the hazard of a great war. When Rouher had read his address, the sovereigns conversed with the senators, and it was remarked that while the empress was lively and confident of success, the emperor spoke sadly of the long and difficult task, requiring a most violent effort, that lay before them.
Having brought his narrative up to the moment when the Chamber by voting the subsidy had practically determined upon war, M. Ollivier stops to comment upon and explain the strenuous opposition made to the vote by M. Thiers and by the small section of deputies who represented the Radical Left. He is convinced that this latter party were mainly actuated in their ardent protests by a desire to embarra.s.s and, if possible, to overthrow his Government, of which they had been consistent adversaries. They had calculated, he explains, on the probability that the ministry would flinch from the rupture with Prussia, would adopt some pacific compromise that would be rejected with indignation by the Chamber, and would be contemptuously expelled from office. When this calculation had been foiled by the resolutely courageous att.i.tude of the Cabinet, they foresaw (he believes) that a triumphant campaign would greatly strengthen the Government and would utterly discredit the Opposition, so they changed their tactics and fought against the ministerial proposals with accusations of criminal recklessness and prophecies of disaster. It is hardly possible, after so long an interval of time, to form any opinion upon these somewhat invidious suggestions. The action of those who opposed the war, whatever may have been their motives, was outwardly consistent enough, and the construction placed upon it by M. Ollivier may seem rather subtle and far-fetched. At the present day, however, this question does not particularly concern any one, though we may agree that at that moment no one in France contemplated the possibility of defeat in the field. The French army was a.s.sumed by all parties to be invincible, and the minority in opposition did undoubtedly believe and fear that the empire would be consolidated by victories. M. Thiers in his speech only touched generally upon the chances and perils of war, and even Gambetta voted with the Government upon the conviction that success was beyond doubt; while not only in Paris, but in all the great towns, the determination to fight was acclaimed because a triumphant campaign was supposed to be certain. It was to be antic.i.p.ated, indeed, that a brave and high-spirited nation, very sensitive on the point of honour, and confident in its military superiority, would respond enthusiastically to the signal of war against a rival whose ill-will was notorious, who was accused of plotting the injury of their country and of deliberately insulting their Government.
A public declaration of hostilities was sent to Berlin, though M.
Ollivier tells us that his ministry regarded it as a superfluous formality which they would have preferred leaving to Prussia.
"La declaration fut libellee d"une maniere a.s.sez maladroite par les commis des Affaires etrangeres, et elle ne fut pas meme lue au Conseil. Elle fut communiquee uniquement par la forme et sans discussion aux a.s.semblees, et envoyee a la Prusse le 19 juillet."
This perfunctory method of composition is characteristic of the prevailing official atmosphere.
The doc.u.ment was delivered by the French charge d"affaires to Bismarck, and in the dialogue that followed between the two diplomatists, which M. Ollivier relates in full, we have an excellent sample of the Prussian Chancellor"s sardonic and incisive manner.
Bismarck a.s.serted that if he had been present at the interviews with Benedetti he might have prevented the war, whereas the king"s conciliatory tone at Ems had misled the French ministers into the blunder of using threats and making intolerable demands, until at last they found themselves confronted by a strong Government, backed by the Prussian nation in the firm resolution to defend itself. In reporting this conversation to the Foreign Office the charge d"affaires said that Bismarck appeared to be sincerely afflicted with regret for the rupture between the two countries, that he evidently saw, too late, his error in having secretly encouraged the Hohenzollern candidature, and that the result of all these unhappy complications had left the well-meaning chancellor inconsolable. Such a candid confession of remorse and regret moved the Frenchman"s compa.s.sion to a degree that profoundly irritates M. Ollivier:
"Un tel exces de credulite finit par exasperer. Et la plupart des diplomates de ce temps-la etaient de cette force. Bien pietre serait l"histoire qui se modelerait sur leurs appreciations."
We may agree that the sympathy of the charge d"affaires with Bismarck"s ingenuous contrition was ill-bestowed. But the tendency to fix upon French diplomacy a responsibility for national calamities that is much more justly chargeable to the account of the Imperial Government, is somewhat unduly prominent in certain parts of M.
Ollivier"s otherwise fair and conscientious narrative of the transactions that culminated in the war.
When Bismarck announced to the Prussian Reichstag that war had been declared, he was interrupted by an outburst of long and enthusiastic cheering. He said, briefly, that he had no papers to lay before them, because the single official doc.u.ment received from the French Government was the declaration of war; and the only motive for hostilities he understood to be his own circular _telegramme de journal_ addressed to Prussian envoys abroad and to other friendly Powers for the purpose of explaining what had occurred. This, he observed, was not at all an official doc.u.ment. He added that a demand for a letter of excuses had been made through Werther to the king; and the real origin of the war he alleged to be the hatred and jealousy with which the independence and prosperity of Germany were regarded in France. Upon this adroit but incomplete exposition of causes and circ.u.mstances M. Ollivier comments with intelligible severity, laying stress on the fact that afterwards Bismarck threw off his disguise, and openly took to himself the credit of having deliberately contrived to bring on the war at his own time. In fact, the later German historians have confirmed this statement by their critical examination of the records and other evidence; though instead of concluding that his conduct was immoral they unite, according to M. Ollivier, in applauding his political genius. Almost the whole story of the connected machinations by which France was led step by step into war have since been disclosed, and the only part which is still unrevealed relates to the original devices by which Bismarck and Marshal Prim concerted the preliminaries to the offer of the Spanish throne to Leopold.[52]
It is cheerfully admitted by the German historians who are cited in this volume that the train of incidents which produced so well-timed an explosion was scientifically laid by the Prussian chancellor. But they maintain that he was only countermining the underground combinations of the French, who were known to be organising a triple alliance with Italy and Austria for a combined a.s.sault upon Prussia; and that the journey of the Austrian Archduke Albert to Paris in March 1870 convinced Bismarck that he had no time to lose, because war must be provoked before these alliances were consummated. And they cite the example of Frederick the Great, who disconcerted the secret preparations of his enemies by the sudden dash upon Dresden which opened the Seven Years" War. This defence of his own very skilful and not less astute manoeuvres was endorsed by Bismarck in a speech before the Chamber in 1876; nor does it appear to us so untenable as M. Ollivier holds it to be. He argues that the fear of being attacked by France, if it had really influenced Bismarck"s conduct in 1870, must have been a wild hallucination, for the chancellor must have been well aware that the emperor"s policy at that time was decidedly pacific, and that his own (Ollivier"s) views were still more so. He a.s.sures us that the project of a triple alliance was intended to be exclusively defensive, that it never pa.s.sed beyond the "academic"
stage, or reached any practical form. The confidential negotiations of 1869 with Austria and Italy had been left, he says, in the stage of unfinished outline, nor was it even suspected either by the French or by the Italian ministry that they had been carried further. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that in 1869 these negotiations had been carried quite far enough to inspire the Prussian chancellor with serious disquietude, if, as is very probable, he had good information of them. We know, from M. Ollivier"s very interesting account of what pa.s.sed at the first meeting of the Cabinet on July 6, when the ministers resolved to announce to the Chamber their determination to resent and resist the Hohenzollern candidature, that the emperor and M. de Gramont regarded the understanding with Italy and Austria as being much more than academic. It is there stated that when Ollivier hesitated to accept Gramont"s a.s.surance that the a.s.sistance of these two Powers, in the event of hostilities with Prussia, had been virtually secured, the Emperor Napoleon took from a drawer in his bureau certain letters written in 1869 by the Austrian emperor and the King of Italy, and, after reading them aloud, told the ministers that these writings undoubtedly amounted to promises of help in the circ.u.mstances that were then actually under discussion. The Cabinet accepted these proofs that the alliances might be reckoned upon as substantial, so that it is not unreasonable to suppose that Bismarck had drawn the same conclusion from the intimations that had reached him, and had set himself to provoke a war before the secret combinations against him should be ready for action. It must be borne in mind that from 1866 he had been deliberately preparing for it, being convinced, as he said later, that until France had been defeated in the field, his grand design of founding a German empire, with its capital at Berlin, could not be realised.
We may therefore be permitted to suggest that the discussion with which M. Ollivier closes this volume is to some extent superfluous, for it is incontestable that Bismarck had reasons for desiring the war, and that France was inveigled into declaring it. In the final section he returns to the question whether France or Prussia were responsible for the rupture; and after summing up the evidence he p.r.o.nounces judgment against Prussia. It was Prussia that invented the Hohenzollern candidature, against which France was bound to protest forcibly; and even if it be admitted, he says, that the French Cabinet was wrong in taking mortal offence at the insolent official version of the king"s refusal to receive the French amba.s.sador, there can be no doubt that this public affront infuriated the French nation, and drove it to the extremity of war. That the explosion was instantaneous he regards as a proof that it had not been expected nor premeditated by France. All these things are, indeed, neither denied nor deniable, for Bismarck"s own arrogant revelations leave no doubt that the war had been desired and premeditated by that astute and far-seeing politician; and though upon the methods by which the Hohenzollern candidature was originally started Bismarck is judiciously silent, we may be morally certain that the instigation came from Berlin. The maxim _Fecit cui prodest_ affords fair ground for this inference, particularly when we remember the obvious improbability that the Spanish ministry would have gratuitously set up a candidature which must infallibly have brought their country into collision with its formidable neighbour.
How the French Government fell into a net that had been spread for them is to most of us sufficiently clear. Whether the emperor and his ministers ought to have detected and avoided it, is the real question, and it is practically the only question that concerns M. Ollivier. In the final pages of his book, which touch in dignified and pathetic words upon the injustice of the reproaches that have been heaped upon him and the rancorous calumnies by which he has been pursued, his readers are told that, having done his best to defend the cause of his nation, he will terminate his work without taking up his personal justification, though on one point he desires not to be misunderstood.
It has been pleaded on his behalf, he says, that he was in fact opposed to the declaration of war, but agreed to it under the violent pressure of public opinion, or else from reluctance to betray internal dissensions that would have broken up the ministry, or for other reasons. M. Ollivier insists, on the contrary, that after Bismarck"s "soufflet" he was convinced that peace could be maintained only at the price of his country"s abject humiliation; and that he chose the alternative of war as infinitely preferable, without the least regard to his personal reputation or interests. We may willingly agree that M. Ollivier acted throughout from motives of high-minded patriotism, and although we cannot acquit him on the charge of grave imprudence we may freely admit that he was entangled in a situation of extraordinary difficulty. To Englishmen, who are familiar with the regular and recognised working of const.i.tutional government, it will be plain that he was the victim of a system that had placed him before the public as the nominal head of a Cabinet that he was supposed to have formed, and of a party in the Chamber that he was expected to lead. Whereas in fact he had no proper control over the policy of the Cabinet, and no solid support in the Chamber. The emperor presided at the meetings of the Cabinet; and it is clear that the ultimate decision in the supremely important departments of the army and of foreign affairs was still reserved to the sovereign, on whom the Foreign Secretary (as we should call him) could urge his views separately, and from whom he could take orders independently of the first minister. In this radically false position M. Ollivier found himself committed to measures on which he had not been consulted, and hurried into dangerous courses of action for which he had no recognised official responsibility, since they were sanctioned by the emperor"s unquestionable authority. We have to remember, also, that in July 1870, liberal inst.i.tutions had been no more than six months under trial after eighteen years of autocratic rule, that the advocates of the old _regime_ were numerous and openly hostile to the reforms, and that all the ministers of the new _regime_ lacked experience in the art and practice of const.i.tutional administration. It is among those conditions and circ.u.mstances that we must find some explanation of their imprudence, and of their inability to make a stand against the emperor"s weakness, the clamour of hot-headed deputies, and the war-cries of journalists; some excuse, in short, for the heedlessness with which a well-meaning ministry stepped into the snare that had been laid for them.
When, in 1871, the ex-emperor was told of M. Ollivier"s earnest protest against the cruel injustice of holding him alone answerable for the national disasters, Napoleon is reported to have replied that this responsibility must be shared by the ministry, the Chamber, and himself.
"Si je n"avais pas voulu la guerre, j"aurais renvoye mes ministres; si l"opposition etait venue d"eux, ils auraient donne leur demission; enfin, si la Chambre avait ete contraire a l"entreprise, elle eut vote contre."[53]
In a broad and general sense this conclusion may be accepted, for all parties concerned were heavily to blame; and manifestly the disasters were the outcome of a situation in which weakness and rashness were matched against unscrupulous statecraft and the deep-laid combinations of a consummate strategist.
FOOTNOTES:
[41] _L"Empire Liberal: etudes, Recits, Souvenirs._ Par emile Ollivier. Vol. xiv.: La Guerre. 1909.--_Edinburgh Review_, January 1910.
[42] "Animo retto e buono" (_Memorie_, p. 407).
[43] Benedetti, _Ma Mission en Prusse_.
[44] _Papiers Secrets: Les Prefets._
[45] _Reflections and Reminiscences of Prince Bismarck._
[46] _Histoire du Second Empire_, vi. 258.
[47] "Rien n"etait plus officiel que l"entretien qui se poursuivait en ce moment entre le ministre des affaires etrangeres et l"amba.s.sadeur de Prusse."--Gramont, _La France et la Prusse_, p. 168.
[48] _La France et la Prusse_ (1872), pp. 131-2.
[49] _L"Empire Liberal_, p. 270.
[50] _Historical Essays_, p. 222.
[51] "Au debut nous avions demande au Roi de conseiller ou d"ordonner a son parent de renoncer, ce qui entrainait implicitement une garantie que la candidature ne se reproduirait plus. Le Roi ayant refuse d"intervenir, et la candidature ayant disparu a son insu, nous avions reclame sous une forme explicite, notre premiere demande."--_L"Empire Liberal_, p. 453.
[52] Some light is thrown on these obscure intrigues by Lord Acton in the essay already cited. He writes that in 1869 Bismarck learned from Florence that Napoleon was preparing a triple alliance against him, and sent a Prussian officer, Bernhardi, to Madrid. "What he did in Spain has been committed to oblivion. Seven volumes of his diary have been published; the family a.s.sures me (Acton) that the Spanish portion will never appear.... The Austrian First Secretary said that he betrayed his secret one day at dinner. Somebody spoke indiscreetly on the subject, and Bernhardi aimed a kick at him under the table, which caught the shin of the Austrian instead. He was considered to have mismanaged the thing, and it was whispered that he had gone too far--I infer that he offered a heavy bribe to secure a majority in the Cortes. Fifty thousand pounds of Prussian bonds were sent to Spain at midsummer 1870.... I know the bankers through whose hands they pa.s.sed."--_Historical Essays_, p. 214.
[53] _L"Empire Liberal_, p. 475, footnote. Prince Napoleon told M.
Ollivier that the emperor repeated this to him several times.
SIR SPENCER WALPOLE[54]
1839-1907
Sir Spencer Walpole"s death in 1907 left a gap in the front rank of contemporary English Historians. To a volume of his collected essays, published in the following year, his daughter, Mrs. F. Holland, prefixed an admirable memoir of his private life and character, with affectionate reminiscences of her father"s "strenuous work, his universal kindliness, and his simplicity of soul." On this personal subject, therefore, little or nothing remains to be said. I will only add that during several years of intimacy with him I had every reason to feel honoured by his friendship, to set high value on his literary judgments, and to appreciate his scrupulous intellectual integrity.
From that memoir I take the main incidents that belong to Sir Spencer Walpole"s personal biography. After leaving Eton he entered the Civil Service at an early age, and worked for some time in the War Office, until he was transferred to a position of larger independence. He was subsequently appointed to the Governorship of the Isle of Man, where he remained for about twelve years; and afterwards he became Secretary to the Post Office until his retirement in 1899. In the discharge of the duties of these offices he was indefatigable; his services were fully approved by all with whom he came into public relations; yet throughout these years he found time for hard and unceasing literary work. In his earlier days he was a regular contributor to the periodical press, mainly on questions of finance; he wrote the lives of two Prime Ministers--his grandfather Spencer Perceval and Lord John Russell--while from 1876 up to the year of his death he was engaged upon his _History of England_. Five volumes were published, at intervals, on the period between 1815 and 1857; and four subsequent volumes, under the t.i.tle of the _History of Twenty-five Years_, brought the whole narrative up to 1880. But the proofs of the two final volumes had not been revised by his hand, when he was struck down by a sudden and fatal malady of the brain. Other recent publications were a small book on the Isle of Man, ent.i.tled the _Land of Home Rule; Studies in Biography_; and the collection of essays to which I have already referred.
It is upon this History of England from 1815 to 1880 that Sir Spencer Walpole"s lasting reputation, as a man of letters, will rest. To have combined the writing of such a book with the duties of a very diligent official is no slight achievement; though one may observe that direct contact with administration, with political affairs, and with parliamentary leaders, is for the historian a distinct advantage. It is worth remarking that his family connections, which brought Walpole into the Civil Service, in no way biased his judgment on public questions. The grandson of a high Tory Prime Minister, the son of a Conservative Secretary of State, he was throughout his life an advanced Liberal, with an unswerving trust in popular government as essential to the welfare of his country and to the just and proper management of its affairs at home and abroad. His literary bent was evidently taken from hereditary a.s.sociation with politics, and from his own official training. As an historian he enters with intense interest into the strife of parties, the parliamentary vicissitudes, into the swing backward and forward of reform and reaction, into the exact causes and incidents that affected the rise and the fall of ministries. In describing the state of manners at certain periods, and the changes wrought in the national life by the efforts of philosophic writers and philanthropists, his facts and figures are always ample and accurate; he pays close attention to financial and economical movements. As a politician he distrusted the spirited policy that involved England in the warlike adventures and hazards of an eventful and stirring time. The Afghan war of 1838-43 was, he said, the most ruinous and unnecessary war which the English had ever waged. The Crimean war he evidently regarded as a useless expenditure of blood and money, which might well have been avoided. On Lord Beaconsfield"s Imperialism he pa.s.ses severe censure: and the interference of that statesman in 1877 to protect the Turkish Sultan against Russia is very sharply condemned. He has even some doubt whether the purchase of the Suez Ca.n.a.l Shares was a wise stroke of policy. This book, in short, is a corroboration of the well-known remark that the history of our country has been mainly written by Whigs and Liberals, with the exception of a few authors who, like Hume and Alison, have hardly preserved an historic reputation. Nevertheless, whether we agree or not with the prudent and pacific views towards which Walpole manifestly leaned, his narrative, his statements of disputable cases, his distribution of the arguments for and against his conclusions, are invariably accurate, fair, and dispa.s.sionate. His anxiety to give full authority for facts and opinions is shown in an almost too copious supply of foot-notes. Lord Acton, who found the late Bishop Creighton too economical of these citations, compares his practice to Mr.
Walpole"s if several hundred references to Hansard and the Annual Register had been struck out from the History of England.
In his preface to the first volume the author explains briefly the method that he has adopted. History, he says, may be written in two ways--you may relate each event in chronological order, or you may deal with each subject in a separate episode--and he tells us that he has chosen the latter way. This method enabled him to introduce sketches of the state of English society at different periods, by way of ill.u.s.trating his narrative, which are certainly attractive and impressive. They are composed to a large degree upon the model set by Macaulay, by grouping together a number of characteristic particulars to bring out into strong relief the morals and manners of the time.
Walpole"s picture of the Eton boy in the early nineteenth century, who could write admirable Greek and Latin verse but knew not a word of any modern language--"who regarded the Gracchi as patriots but had only an obscure notion that Adam Smith was a dangerous character"--is almost a parody of Macaulay"s style. Nevertheless these sketches are on the whole truthful and instructive, if we allow for some exuberance of colouring that may have been thought necessary for artistic effect.
But Walpole studied literature, as the measure of intellectual evolution, with the same interest that he devoted to economical and administrative developments. His aim was to show how all kinds of mental and material activity acted and reacted upon each other, how the feelings and aspirations of the nation were reflected in philosophy and in poetry, and how literary genius could stir the imagination of the people. He observes that while English literature had declined towards the close of the eighteenth century, it rose again rapidly with the opening of the nineteenth century. For a short time, indeed, the furious outbreak of the French Revolution had scared men of letters into recoil from the optimistic speculations of the preceding age--they abandoned the worship of Liberty. But the storm blew over; and a general revival of literary animation signalised the end of the long war-time, with a magnificent efflorescence of poetry.
Walpole records, as notable signs of this intellectual expansion, the appearance of women in the field of literature, the immediate success of the two famous reviews, the _Edinburgh_ and the _Quarterly_, and the rapid growth of journalism. The whole subject of mental progress has, indeed, a peculiar charm for him. He insists that "the history of human thought is the most comprehensive and the most difficult subject which can occupy the student"s attention, far more interesting and important than the progress of society." He would probably have agreed with Coleridge that knowledge of current speculative opinions is the surest ground for political prophecy; and he delights in tracing back to distant sources the religious movements of the nineteenth century.
He declares that the heroic measures introduced by legislation within our own recollections are the links of a continuous chain extending from a prehistoric past to an invisible future. We have here a writer who in one chapter handles complicated statistics and economical calculations with obvious relish, and turns from them with equal pleasure to abstruse disquisitions on the filiation of ideas and the march of mind.
There are at least two chapters in the History that exemplify the attention given by Walpole to ecclesiastical controversies, and to the significance of the antagonism between the New Learning and dogmatic orthodoxy. In his fourth volume the story of the Oxford Tractarians is related at some length, and he remarks on the singular coincidence, that almost simultaneously with the secession of the English High Churchmen the Free Church was established by disrupture from the Established Church in Scotland. He affirms that both these schisms, so different in motive and direction, had their origin in events dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The disintegrating forces of geology, astronomy, and scientific research generally upon the received tradition are examined; the beginning of modern Church reform is noted; and in a chapter of the final volume of the _History of Twenty-five Years_ it is maintained that the great question before the religious world in the middle of the nineteenth century was the possibility of resisting the inroads of science. He describes the vigour with which the polemical campaign was conducted on both sides; how the orthodox position was a.s.sailed by writers of the _Essays and Reviews_, by the criticism of Bishop Colenso, by Broad Churchmen and the champions of free thought; how it was defended by prosecutions in the ecclesiastical courts and in appeals to the Privy Council from both parties. It was certainly a remarkable epoch in the history of opinions, when the country was agitated by the ardent zeal of disputants over questions of ritual and dogma that now seem to have fallen into cool neglect; and Walpole gives, as usual, a careful array of the particular cases, with the points in debate, and the characteristics of the prominent leaders in each party. To estimate the position of the clergy as a body, and to show, as Walpole undertakes to do, that in the middle of the nineteenth century they were losing caste as a cla.s.s, and that between the middle and end of that century they had fallen in social status, was a much more difficult and delicate problem. All generalisations upon the condition of society in times that have pa.s.sed away, however recently, are of doubtful value, because the evidence of doc.u.ments must always be incomplete, and even personal recollections are partial and become indistinct; they are all seen in a fading and uncertain light.
Moreover the chronicler of disputations over ritual and articles, and of matters concerning churches and the clergy, may be said to move over the surface of the spiritual waters; and Walpole draws nearer to the deeper undercurrents when he appeals to the higher literature for signs of alternating tendencies of religious thought in that generation; though the famous stanzas from Tennyson"s "In Memoriam,"