Chapter XII (3)

But if the policy of 1814-15 in the affairs of Belgium and Piedmont only proves how little an average collection of statesmen can see into the future, the policy which, in spite of Waterloo, left France in possession of an undiminished territory, does no discredit to the foresight, as it certainly does the highest honour to the justice and forbearance of Wellington, whose counsels then turned the scale. The wisdom of the resolution has indeed been frequently impugned. German statesmen held then, and have held ever since, that the opportunity of disarming France once for all of its weapons of attack was wantonly thrown away. Hardenberg, when his arguments for annexation of the frontier-fortresses were set aside, predicted that streams of blood would hereafter flow for the conquest of Alsace and Lorraine, [248] and his prediction has been fulfilled. Yet no one perhaps would have been more astonished than Hardenberg himself, could he have known that fifty-five years of peace between France and Prussia would precede the next great struggle. When the same period of peace shall have followed the acquisition of Metz and Strasburg by Prussia, it will be time to condemn the settlement of 1815 as containing the germ of future wars; till then, the effects of that settlement in maintaining peace are entitled to recognition. It is impossible to deny that the Allies, in leaving to France the whole of its territory in 1815, avoided inflicting the most galling of all tokens of defeat upon a spirited and still most powerful nation. The loss of Belgium and the frontier of the Rhine was keenly enough felt for thirty years to come, and made no insignificant part of the French people ready at any moment to rush into war; how much greater the power of the war-cry, how hopeless the task of restraint, if to the other motives for war there had been added the liberation of two of the most valued provinces of France. Without this the danger was great enough. Thrice at least in the next thirty years the balance seemed to be turning against the continuance of peace. An offensive alliance between France and Russia was within view when the Bourbon monarchy fell; the first years of Louis Philippe all but saw the revolutionary party plunge France into war for Belgium and for Italy; ten years later the dismissal of a Ministry alone prevented the outbreak of hostilities on the distant affairs of Syria. Had Alsace and Lorraine at this time been in the hands of disunited Germany, it is hard to believe that the Bourbon dynasty would not have averted, or sought to avert, its fall by a popular war, or that the victory of Louis Philippe over the war-party, difficult even when there was no French soil to reconquer, would have been possible. The time indeed came when a new Bonaparte turned to enterprises of aggression the resources which Europe had left unimpaired to his country; but to assume that the cessions proposed in 1815 would have made France unable to move, with or without allies, half a century afterwards, is to make a confident guess in a doubtful matter; and, with Germany in the condition in which it remained after 1815, it is at least as likely that the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine would have led to the early reconquest of the Rhenish provinces by France, or to a war between Austria and Prussia, as that it would have prolonged the period of European peace beyond that distant limit which it actually reached.

[English efforts at the Congress to abolish the slave-trade.]

Among the subjects which were pressed upon the Congress of Vienna there was one in which the pursuit of national interests and calculations of policy bore no part, the abolition of the African slave-trade. The British people, who, after twenty years of combat in the cause of Europe, had earned so good a right to ask something of their allies, probably attached a deeper importance to this question than to any in the whole range of European affairs, with the single exception of the personal overthrow of Napoleon. Since the triumph of Wiberforce's cause in the Parliament of 1807, and the extinction of English slave-traffic, the anger with which the nation viewed this detestable cruelty, too long tolerated by itself, had become more and more vehement and widespread. By the year 1814 the utterances of public opinion were so loud and urgent that the Government, though free from enthusiasm itself, was forced to place the international prohibition of the slave-trade in the front rank of its demands. There were politicians on the Continent credulous enough to believe that this outcry of the heart and the conscience of the nation was but a piece of commercial hypocrisy. Talleyrand, with far different insight, but not with more sympathy, spoke of the state of the English people as one of frenzy. [249] Something had already been effected at foreign courts. Sweden had been led to prohibit slave-traffic in 1813, Holland in the following year. Portugal had been restrained by treaty from trading north of the line. France had pledged itself in the first Treaty of Paris to abolish the commerce within five years. Spain alone remained unfettered, and it was indeed intolerable that the English slavers should have been forced to abandon their execrable gains only that they should fall into the hands of the subjects of King Ferdinand. It might be true that the Spanish colonies required a larger supply of slaves than they possessed; but Spain had at any rate not the excuse that it was asked to surrender an old and profitable branch of commerce. It was solely through the abolition of the English slave-trade that Spain possessed any slave-trade whatever. Before the year 1807 no Spanish ship had been seen on the coast of Africa for a century, except one in 1798 fitted out by Godoy. [250] As for the French trade, that had been extinguished by the capture of Senegal and Goree; and along the two thousand miles of coast from Cape Blanco to Cape Formosa a legitimate commerce with the natives was gradually springing up in place of the desolating traffic in flesh and blood. It was hoped by the English people that Castlereagh would succeed in obtaining a universal and immediate prohibition of the slave-trade by all the Powers assembled at Vienna. The Minister was not wanting in perseverance, but he failed to achieve this result. France, while claiming a short delay elsewhere, professed itself willing, like Portugal, to abolish at once the traffic north of the line; but the Government on which England had perhaps the greatest claim, that of Spain, absolutely refused to accept this restriction, or to bind itself to a final prohibition before the end of eight years. Castlereagh then proposed that a Council of Ambassadors at London and Paris should be charged with the international duty of expediting the close of the slave-trade; the measure which he had in view being the punishment of slave-dealing States by a general exclusion of their exports. Against this Spain and Portugal made a formal protest, treating the threat as almost equivalent to one of war. The project dropped, and the Minister of England had to content himself with obtaining from the Congress a solemn condemnation of the slave-trade, as contrary to the principles of civilisation and human right (Feb., 1815).

The work was carried a step further by Napoleon's return from Elba. Napoleon understood the impatience of the English people, and believed that he could make no higher bid for its friendship than by abandoning the reserves made by Talleyrand at the Congress, and abolishing the French slave-trade at once and for all. This was accomplished; and the Bourbon ally of England, on his second restoration could not undo what had been done by the usurper. Spain and Portugal alone continued to pursue--the former country without restriction, the latter on the south of the line--a commerce branded by the united voice of Europe as infamous. The Governments of these countries alleged in their justification that Great Britain itself had resisted the passing of the prohibitory law until its colonies were far better supplied with slaves than those of its rivals now were. This was true, but it was not the whole truth. The whole truth was not known, the sincerity of English feeling was not appreciated, until, twenty years later, the nation devoted a part of its wealth to release the slave from servitude, and the English race from the reproach of slave holding. Judged by the West Indian Emancipation of 1833, the Spanish appeal to English history sounds almost ludicrous. But the remembrance of the long years throughout which the advocates of justice encountered opposition in England should temper the severity of our condemnation of the countries which still defended a bad interest. The light broke late upon ourselves: the darkness that still lingered elsewhere had too long been our own.