Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

While one set of causes thus prepared, in the triumph of Conservative and protective principles, the strongest possible reaction against them, and prognosticated, at no distant period, their general banishment from popular thought, another, and a not less powerful set, flowing from the same cause, gave these principles the means of acquiring a political supremacy, and ruling the government of the state. The old policy of England, it has been already observed, for a hundred and fifty years, had been to take care of the producers, and let the consumers take care of themselves. Such had been the effects of this protective policy, that, before the close of the Revolutionary war, during which it received its full development, the producing classes, both in town and country, had become so rich and powerful, that it was easy to see they would ere long give a preponderance to urban over rural industry. The vast flood of agricultural riches poured for expenditure into towns; that of the manufacturers and merchants seldom left it. The great manufacturing and mercantile places, during a century, had advanced in population tenfold, in wealth thirty-fold. The result of this change was very curious, and in the highest degree important. Under the _shadow of protection_ to industry in all its branches, riches, both in town and country, had increased so prodigiously, that the holders of it had _acquired a preponderance over the classes in the state yet engaged in the toilsome and hazardous work of production_. The owners of realised capital had become so numerous and weighty, from the beneficial effects of the protective system under which the country had so long flourished, that they formed an important _class apart, which began to look to its separate interests_. The consumers had become so numerous and affluent, that they were enabled to bid defiance to the producers. The maxim became prevalent, "Take care of the consumer, and let the producer take care of himself." Thence the clamour for free trade. Having passed the labour of production, during which they, or their fathers, had strenuously supported the protective principles, by which they were making their money, the next thing was to support the opposite principles, by which the value of the _made money might be augmented_. This was to be done by free trade and a contracted currency. Having made millions by protection, the object now was to add a half to every million by raising its value. The way to do this seemed to be by cheapening the price of every other article, and raising the price of money: in other words, the system of cheapening everything without reference to its effect on the interests of production.

Parliamentary reform, for which the Whigs, disappointed by long exclusion from office, laboured strenuously, in conjunction with the commercial and moneyed classes, enriched by protection, gave them the means of carrying both objects into execution, because it made two-thirds of the House of Commons the representatives of burghs. The cry of cheap bread was seductive to all classes in towns:--to the employer, because it opened the prospect of reducing the price of labour, and to the operative, because it presents that of lowering that of provisions. To these two objects, accordingly, of raising the value of money and lowering the remuneration of industry, the Reform parliament, the organ of the moneyed interest and consuming classes, has, through all the changes of party, been perfectly steady. It is no wonder it has been so, for it was the first-born of those interests. Twenty years before the cry for reform convulsed the nation--in 1810--the Bullion Committee brought forward the principle of a metallic, and, consequently, a contracted currency; and they recommended its adoption in the very crisis of the war, when Wellington lay at Torres Vedras, and when the monetary crisis to which it must have led would have made us a province of France. Reform was the consequence of the change in the currency, not its cause. The whole time from 1819 to 1831, with the exception of 1824 and 1825, was one uninterrupted period of suffering. Such was the misery it produced that the minds of men were prepared for any change. A chaos of unanimity was produced by a chaos of suffering.

Thus, by a singular and most interesting chain of causes and effects, it was the triumph of Conservative and protective principles in the latter years of the war, and the entire demonstration thus afforded of their justice and expedience, which was the immediate cause of their subsequent abandonment, and all the misery which has thence arisen, and with which we are still everywhere surrounded. For it at once turned all the intellectual energies of the great liberal party to oppose, in every particular, the system by which their opponents had been glorified, and concentrated all the energies of the now powerful moneyed classes to swell, by a change of policy, the fortunes on which their consequence depended, and which had arisen from the long prevalence of the opposite system. For such is the tendency to action and reaction, in all vigorous and intellectual communities, that truth itself is for long no security against their occurrence. On the contrary, so vehement are the passions excited by a great and lasting triumph of one party, even though in the right, that the victory of truth, whether in politics or religion, is often the immediate cause of the subsequent triumph of error. The great Roman Catholic reaction against the Reformation, which Ranke has so clearly elucidated, and Macaulay has so powerfully illustrated, has its exact counterpart in the great political reaction of the Whig party, of which Macaulay is himself the brightest ornament.

That this is the true explanation of the strange and tortuous policy, both in domestic and foreign affairs, under which the nation has so long suffered, is apparent on the slightest survey of political affairs in the last and present century.

The old principle of the English constitution, which had worked itself into existence, or grown up from the necessities of men, during a long course of years, was, that the whole _interests_ of the state should be represented, and that the House of Commons was the assembly in which the representatives of all those varied interests were to be found. For the admission of these varied interests, a varied system of electoral qualifications, admitting all interests, noble, mercantile, industrial, popular, landed, and colonial, was indispensable. In the old House of Commons, all these classes found a place for their representatives, and thence the commercial protection it afforded to industry. According to the new system, a vast majority of seats was to be allotted to _one class only_, the householders and shopkeepers of towns. That class was the moneyed and consuming class; and thence the whole subsequent course of British policy, which has been to sacrifice everything to their interests.

The old maxim of government, alike with Whigs and Tories, was, that native industry of all sorts, and especially agricultural industry, was to be protected, and that foreign competition was to be admitted only in so far as was not inconsistent with this primary object. The new philosophy taught, and the modern liberals carried into execution, a different principle. They went on the maxim that the interests of the consumers alone were to be considered: that to cheapen everything was the great object; and that it mattered not how severely the producers of articles suffered, provided those who purchased them were enabled to do so at a reduced rate. This policy, long lauded in abstract writings and reviews, was at length carried into execution by Sir R. Peel, by the tariff of 1842 and the free-trade measures of 1846.

To protect and extend our colonial dependencies was the great object of British policy, alike with Whigs and Tories, from the time of Cromwell to the fall of Napoleon. In them, it was thought our manufacturers would find a lasting and rapidly increasing market for their produce, which would, in the end, enable us equally to defy the hostility, and withstand the rivalry of foreign states. The new school held that this was an antiquated prejudice: that colonies were a burden rather than a blessing to the mother country: that the independence of America was the greatest blessing that ever befell Great Britain; and that, provided we could buy colonial produce a little cheaper, it signified nothing though our colonies perished by the want of remuneration for their industry, or were led to revolt from exasperation at the cruel and unnatural conduct of the mother country.

The navy was regarded by all our statesmen, without exception, from Cromwell to Pitt, as the main security of the British empire; its bulwark in war; the bridge which united its far-distant provinces during peace. To feed it with skilled seamen, the Navigation Laws were upheld even by Adam Smith and the first free-traders, as the wisest enactments which were to be found in the British statute-book. But here, too, it was discovered that our ancestors had been in error: the system under which had flourished for two centuries the greatest naval power that ever existed, was found to have been an entire mistake; and provided freights could be had ten per cent cheaper, it was of no consequence though the fleets of France and Russia blockaded the Thames and Mersey, and two-thirds of our trade was carried on in foreign bottoms.

To provide a CURRENCY equal to the wants of the nation, and capable of growth in proportion to the amount of their numbers and transactions, was one main object of the old policy of Great Britain. Thence the establishment of banks in such numbers in every part of the empire during the eighteenth century, and the introduction of the suspension of the obligation to pay in gold in 1797, when the necessities of war had drained nearly all that part of the currency out of the country, and it was evident that, unless a substitute for it in sufficient quantities was provided, the nation itself, and all the individuals in it, would speedily become bankrupt. The marvels of British finance from that time till 1815, which excited the deserved astonishment of the whole world, had no effect in convincing the impassioned opponents of Mr Pitt, that this was the true system adapted for that or any similar crisis. On the contrary, it left no doubt in their minds that it was entirely wrong. The whole philosophers and liberal school of politicians discovered that the very opposite was the right principle; that gold, the most variable in price and evanescent, because the most desired and portable of earthly things, was the only safe foundation for a currency; that paper was worthless and perilous, unless in so far as it could be instantly converted into that incomparable metal; and that, consequently, the more the precious metals were withdrawn from the country, by the necessities of war or the effects of adverse exchanges, the more the paper circulation should be contracted. If the last sovereign went out, they held it clear the last note should be drawn in. The new system was brought into practice by Sir R. Peel, by the acts of 1844 and 1845, simultaneously with a vast importation of grain under the free-trade system--and we know the consequence. We were speedily near our last sovereign and last note also.

To establish a sinking fund, which should secure to the nation during peace the means of discharging the debt contracted amidst the necessities of war, was one of the greatest objects of the old English policy, which was supported with equal earnestness by Mr Pitt and Mr Fox, by Mr Addington and Lord Henry Petty. So steadily was this admirable system adhered to through all the dangers and necessities of the war, that we had a clear sinking fund of £15,000,000 a-year, when the contest terminated in 1815, which, if kept up at that amount, from the indirect taxes from which it was levied during peace, would, beyond all question, as the loans had ceased, have discharged the whole debt by the year 1845. But the liberals soon discovered that this was the greatest of all errors: it was all a delusion; the mathematical demonstration, on which it was founded, was a fallacy; and the only wisdom was to repeal the indirect taxes, from which the sinking fund was maintained, and leave posterity to dispose of the debt as they best could, without any fund for its discharge. This system was gradually carried into effect by the successive repeal of the indirect taxes by different administrations; until at length, after thirty-three years of peace, we have, instead of the surplus of fifteen millions bequeathed to us by the war, an average _deficit_ of fifteen hundred thousand pounds; and the debt, after the longest peace recorded in British history, has undergone scarcely any diminution.

Indirect taxation was the main basis of the British finance in old times--equally when directed by the Whigs as the Tories. Direct taxes were a last and painful resource, to be reserved for a period during war, when it had become absolutely unavoidable. So efficacious was this system proved to be by the event, when acting on a nation enjoying protected industry, and an adequate and irremovable currency, that, before the end of the war, £72,000,000 was, amidst universal prosperity, with ease raised from eighteen millions of people in Great Britain and Ireland. This astonishing result, unparalleled in the previous history of the world, had no influence in convincing the modern liberals that the system which produced it was right. On the contrary, it left no doubt in their minds that it was entirely wrong. They introduced the opposite system: in twenty-five years, they repealed £40,000,000 of indirect taxes; and they reintroduced the income tax as a permanent burden during peace. We see the result. The sinking fund has disappeared; the income tax is fixed about our necks; a deficit of from a million and a half to two millions annually incurred; and it is now more difficult to extract fifty-two millions annually from twenty-nine millions of souls, than, at the close of the war, it was to raise seventy-two millions from eighteen millions of inhabitants.

To discourage revolution, both abroad and at home, and enable industry, in peace and tranquillity, to reap the fruits of its toil, was the grand object of the great contest which Pitt's wisdom bequeathed to his successors, and Wellington's arm brought to a glorious termination. This, however, was ere long discovered to be the greatest error of all. England, it was found out, had a decided interest in promoting the cause of revolution all over the world. So enamoured did we soon become of the propagandist mania, that we pursued it in direct opposition to our planned national interests, and with the entire abrogation of our whole previous policy, for which we had engaged in the greatest and most costly wars, alike under Whig and Tory administrations. We supported revolutions in the South American states, though thereby we reduced to a half of its former amount the supply of the precious metals throughout the globe; and, in consequence, increased immensely the embarrassment which a contracted paper currency had brought upon the nation: we supported revolution in Belgium, though thereby we brought the tricolor standard down to Antwerp, and surrendered to French influence the barrier fortresses won by the victories of Marlborough and Wellington: we supported it during four years of carnage and atrocity in Spain, though thereby we undid the work of our own hands, in the treaty of Utrecht, surrendered the whole objects gained by the War of the Succession, and placed the female line upon the throne, as if to invite the French princes to come and carry off the glittering prize: we supported revolutions in Sicily and Italy, though thereby we gave such a blow to our export trade, that it sank £1,400,000 in the single month of last May, and above £5,000,000 in the course of the year 1848.

To abolish the slave trade was one of the objects which Whigs and Tories had most at heart in the latter years of the old system; and in that great and glorious contest Mr Pitt, Mr Fox, and Mr Wilberforce stood side by side. But this object, so important in its results, so interesting to humanity from its tendency to alleviate human suffering, ere long yielded to the enlightened views of modern liberals. It was discovered that it was much more important to cheapen sugar _for a time_[8] than to rescue the African race from perdition. Free trade in sugar was introduced, although it was demonstrated, and, indeed, confessed, that the effect of it would be to ruin all the free-labour colonies, and throw the supply of the world into the hands of the slave states. Provided, for a few years, you succeeded in reducing the average retail price of sugar a penny a pound, it was deemed of no consequence though we extinguished the growth of free-labour sugar--destroyed colonies in which a hundred millions of British capital were invested, and doubled the slave trade in extent, and quadrupled it in horror, throughout the globe.

[8] Observe, _for a time_! We shall see anon what the price of
sugar will be when the English colonies are destroyed and the slave
plantations have the monopoly of the market in their hands.

It had been the constant policy of the British government, under all administrations, for above a century and a half, to endeavour to reclaim the Irish population by introducing among them colonies of English who might teach them industry, and Protestant missionaries who might reclaim them from barbarism. The Irish landlords and boroughs were the outposts of civilisation among a race of savages; the Irish Church the station of Christianity amidst the darkness of Romish slavery. So effectual was this system, and so perfectly adapted to the character of the Celtic race--capable of great things when led by others, but utterly unfit for self-government, and incapable of improvement when left to itself,--that even in the ruthless hands of Cromwell, yet reeking with the slaughter of stormed cities, it soon spread a degree of prosperity through the country then unknown, and rarely if ever since equalled in that ill-starred land.[9] But the experience of the utter futility of all attempts, during a century and a half, to leave the native Irish Celts to themselves or their own direction, had no effect whatever in convincing our modern liberals that they were incapable of self-direction, and would only be ruined by Saxon institutions. On the contrary, it left no doubt in their minds that the absence of self-government was the sole cause of the wretchedness of the country, and that nothing was wanting but an entire participation in the privileges of British subjects, to render them as industrious, prosperous, and loyal as the yeomen of Kent or Surrey. In pursuance of those principles, Catholic Emancipation was granted: the Whigs had effected one revolution in 1688, by coalescing with the whole Tories to exclude the Catholics from the government; they brought about another revolution, in 1829, by coalescing with a section of the Tories to bring them in. In furtherance of the new system, so plausible in theory, so dangerous in practice, of extending to all men, of all races, and in all stages of political advancement, the same privileges, the liberals successively gave the Irish the command of their boroughs, the abridgment of the Protestant Church, and the abolition of tithes as a burden on the tenant. They encouraged agitation, allowed treason to be openly spoken in every part of the country, and winked at monster meetings, till the community was wellnigh thrown into convulsions. Meanwhile, agriculture was neglected--industry disappeared--capital was scared away. The land was run out, and became unfit for anything but lazy-beds of potatoes. The people became agitators, not cultivators: they were always running about to meetings--not frequenting fairs. The potato-blight fell on a country thus prepared for ruin, and the unparalleled misery of 1847, and the rebellion of 1848, were the consequence.

[9] "Cromwell supplied the void made by his conquering sword,
by pouring in numerous colonies of the Anglo-Saxon blood and of
the Calvinistic faith. Strange to say, under that iron rule the
conquered country began to wear an outward face of prosperity.
Districts, which had recently been as wild as those where the
first white settlers of Connecticut were contending with the
Red Men, _were in a few years transformed into the likeness of
Kent and Norfolk_. New buildings, roads, and plantations were
everywhere begun. The rent of estates rose fast: and some of the
English landowners began to complain that they were met in every
market by the products of Ireland, and to clamour for protecting
laws."--MACAULAY'S _History_, i., 130.

It would be easy to carry these illustrations farther, and to trace the working of the principles we have mentioned through the whole modern system of government in Great Britain. Enough has been said to show that the system is neither founded on the principles contended for by the old Whigs, nor on any appreciation of, or attention to, the national interests, or the dictates of experience in any respect. It has arisen entirely from a blind desire of change, and an opposition to the old system of government, whether of Whig or Tory origin, and a selfish thirst for aggrandisement on the part of the moneyed and commercial classes, whom that system had elevated to riches and power. Experience was not disregarded by this school of politicians; on the contrary, it was sedulously attended to, its lessons carefully marked. But it was considered as a beacon to be avoided, not a light to be followed. Against its conclusions the whole weight of declamation and shafts of irony were directed. It had been the _cri de guerre_ of their enemies, the standard of Mr Pitt's policy; therefore the opposite system was to be inscribed on their banners. It was the ruling principle of their political opponents; and, worst of all, it was the system which, though it had raised the country to power and greatness, had for twenty years excluded themselves from power. Thence the modern system, under which the nation has suffered, and is suffering, such incalculable misfortunes. It has been said, by an enlightened Whig of the old school, that "this age appears to be one in which _every conceivable folly_ must be believed and _reduced to practice_ before it is abandoned." It is really so; and the reason is, it is an age in which the former system of government, founded on experience and brought about by necessity, has been supplanted by one based on a systematic and invariable determination to change the old system in every particular. The liberals, whether factious or moneyed, of the new school, flattered themselves they were making great advances in political science, when they were merely yielding to the same spirit which made the Calvinists stand up when they prayed, because all the world before them had knelt down, and sit still during psalms, because the Roman Catholics had stood up.

But truth is great, and will prevail; experience is its test, and is perpetually contradicting the theories of man. The year 1848 has been no exception to the maxims of Tacitus and Burke. Dreadful indeed in suffering, appalling in form, are the lessons which it has read to mankind! Ten months have not elapsed, since, by a well-concerted urban tumult, seconded by the treachery of the national guard, the throne of the Barricades was overturned in France--and what do we already see on the continent of Europe? Vienna petitioning for a _continuation_ of the state of siege, as the only security against the tyranny of democracy: Berlin hailing with rapture the dissolution of the Assembly, and reappearance of the king in the capital: Milan restored to the sway of the Austrians: France seeking, in the _quasi_ imperial crown of Prince Louis Napoleon, with 90,000 soldiers in its capital, a refuge from the insupportable evils of a democratic republic. The year 1848 has added another to the numerous proofs which history affords, that popular convulsions, from whatever cause arising, can terminate only in the rule of the sword; but it has taught two other lessons of incalculable importance to the present and future tranquillity of mankind. These are, that soldiers who in civil convulsions fraternise with the insurgents, and violate their oaths, are the _worst enemies_ of the people, for they inevitably induce a military despotism, which extinguishes all hopes of freedom. The other is, that the institution of a national guard is in troubled times of all others the most absurd; and that, to put arms into the hands of the people, when warmed by revolutionary passions, is only to light the torch of civil discord with your own hand, and hand over the country to anarchy, ruin, and slavery.

Nor has the year been less fruitful of civil premonitions or lessons of the last importance to the future tranquillity and prosperity of Great Britain. Numerous popular delusions have been dispelled during that period. The dreams of Irish independence have been broken; English Chartism has been crushed. The revolutionists see that the people of Great Britain are not disposed to yield their property to the spoiler, their throats to the murderer, their homes to the incendiary. Free trade and a fettered currency have brought forth their natural fruits--national embarrassment, general suffering, popular misery. One half of the wealth of our manufacturing towns has been destroyed since the new system began. Two years of free trade and a contracted currency have undone nearly all that twenty years of protection and a sufficient currency had done. The great mercantile class have suffered so dreadfully under the effect of their own measures, that their power for good or for evil has been essentially abridged. The colossus which, for a quarter of a century, has bestrode the nation, has been shaken by the earthquake which itself had prepared. Abroad and at home, in peace and in war, delusion has brought forth suffering. The year of revolutions has been the NINTH OF THERMIDOR, OF LIBERAL PRINCIPLES, for it has brought them to the test of experience.

FRENCH CONQUERORS AND COLONISTS.

The extraordinary deficiency recently exhibited by a great Continental nation in two qualities eminently prized by Englishmen--in common consistency, namely, and in common sense--has cast into the shade all previous shortcomings of the kind, making them appear remote and trivial. A people of serfs, ruled for centuries with an iron rod, pillaged for their masters' profit, and lashed at the slightest murmur, were excusable if, on sudden emancipation from such galling thraldom, their joyful gambols exceeded the limits prescribed by public decorum, and by a due regard to their own future prosperity. They might be forgiven for dancing round maypoles, and dreaming of social perfection. It would not be wonderful if they had difficulty in immediately replacing their expelled tyrants by a capable and stable government, and if their brief exhilaration were succeeded by a period of disorganisation and weakness. Such allowances cannot be made for the mad capers of republican France. The deliverance is inadequate to account for the ensuing delirium. The grievances swept away by the February revolution, and which patience, prudence, and moderation, could not have failed ultimately to remove--as thoroughly, if less rapidly--were not so terrible as to justify lunacy upon redress. Nevertheless, since then, the absurdities committed by France, or at least by Paris, are scarcely explicable save on the supposition of temporary aberration of intellect. Unimaginative persons have difficulty in realising the panorama of events, alternately sanguinary and grotesque, lamentable and ludicrous, spread over the last ten months. Europe--the portion of it, that is to say, which has not been bitten by the same rabid and mischievous demon--has looked on, in utter astonishment, at the painful spectacle of a leader of its civilisation galloping, with Folly on its crupper, after mad theories and empty names, and riding down, in the furious chase, its own prosperity and respectability.

We repeat, then, that these great follies of to-day eclipse the minor ones of yesterday. When we see France destroying, in a few weeks, her commerce and her credit, and doing herself more harm than as many years will repair, we overlook the fact, that for upwards of fifteen years she has annually squandered from three to five millions sterling upon an unproductive colony in North Africa. France used not to be petty in her wars, or paltry in her enterprises. If she was sometimes quarrelsome and aggressive, she was wont at least to fasten on foes worthy of her power and resources. Since 1830 she has derogated in this particular. A complication of causes--the most prominent being the vanity characteristic of the nation, the crooked policy of the sovereign, and the morbid love of fighting bequeathed by the warlike period of the Empire--has kept France engaged in a costly and discreditable contest, whose most triumphant results could be but inglorious, and in which she has decimated her best troops, and deteriorated her ancient fame, whilst pursuing, with unworthy ferocity and ruthlessness, a feeble and inoffensive foe. This is no partial or malicious view of the character of the Algerine war. Deliberately, and after due reflection, we repeat, that France has gravely compromised in Africa her reputation as a chivalrous and clement nation, and that she no longer can claim--as once she was wont to do--to be as humane in victory as she is valiant in the fight. For proof of this we need seek no further than in the speeches and despatches of French generals, of men who themselves have served and commanded in Africa. We will judge France by the voices of her own sons, of those she has selected as worthiest to govern her half-conquered colony, and to marshal her legions against a handful of Arabs. More than one of these officers testify, voluntarily or unwittingly, to the barbarity of the system pursued in Africa. What said General Castellane, in his well-known speech in the Chamber of Peers, on the 4th July 1845? "We have reduced the country by an arsenal of axes and phosphorus matches. The trees were cut down, the crops were burned, and soon the mastery was obtained of a population reduced to famine and despair." And elsewhere in the same speech: "Few soldiers perish by the hand of the enemy in this war--a sort of _man-hunt_ on a large scale, in which the Arabs, ignorant of European tactics, having no cannon-balls to exchange against ours, do not fight with equal arms." Monsieur A. Desjobert, long a deputy for the department of the Lower Seine, is the author of a volume, and of several pamphlets, upon the Algerine question. In the most recent of these we find the following remarkable note:--"In February 1837, General Bugeaud said to the Arabs, 'You shall not plough, you shall not sow, nor lead your cattle to the pasture, without our permission.' Later, he gives the following definition of a razzia: 'A sudden irruption, having for its object to surprise the tribes, in order to kill the men, and to carry off the women, children, and cattle.' In 1844, he completes this theory, by saying to the Kabyles, 'I will penetrate into your mountains, I will burn your villages and your crops, I will cut down your fruit-trees.' (Proclamation of the 30th March.) In 1846, rendering an account of his operations against Abd-el-Kader, he says to the authorities of Algiers, 'The power of Abd-el-Kader consists in the resources of the tribes; hence, to ruin his power, we must first ruin the Arabs; therefore have we burned much, destroyed much.' (From the _Akhbar_ newspaper of February 1846.)" These are significant passages in the mouth of a general-in-chief. Presently, when we come to details, we shall show they were not thrown away upon his subordinates. The extermination of the Arabs was always the real aim of Marshal Bugeaud; he took little pains to cloak his system, and is too great a blunderer to have succeeded, had he taken more. A man of greater presumption than capacity, his audacity, obstinacy, and unscrupulousness knew no bounds. Before this African _man-hunt_, as M. Castellane calls it, he was unknown, except as the Duchess de Berry's jailer, as the slayer of poor Dulong, and as a turbulent debater, whose noisy declamation, and occasional offences against the French language, were a standing joke with the newspapers. A few years elapse, and we find him opposing his stubborn will to that of Soult, then minister at war, and successfully thwarting Napoleon's old lieutenant. This he was enabled to do mainly by the position he had made himself in Africa. He had ridden into power and importance on the shoulders of the persecuted Arabs, by a system of razzias and village-burning, of wholesale slaughter and relentless oppression. Brighter far were the laurels gathered by the lieutenant of the Empire, than those plucked by Louis Philippe's marshal amidst the ashes of Bedouin douars and the corpses of miserable Mussulmans, slain in defence of their scanty birthright, of their tents, their flocks, and the free range of the desert. Poor was the defence they could make against their skilful and disciplined invaders; slight the loss they could inflict in requital of the heavy one they suffered. Again we are obliged to M. Desjobert for statistics, gathered from reports to the Commission of Credits, and from Marshal Bugeaud's own bulletins. From these we learn that the loss in battle of the French armies, during the first ten years of the occupation of Algeria, was an average of one hundred and forty men per annum. In the four following years, eight hundred and eighty-five men perished. The capture of Constantine cost one hundred men, the much-vaunted affair of the Smala _nine_, the battle of Isly TWENTY-SEVEN! We well remember, for we chanced to be in Paris at the time, the stir produced in that excitable capital by the battle of Isly. No one, unacquainted with the facts, would have doubted that the victory was over a most valiant and formidable foe. People's mouths were filled with this revival of the military glories of Gaul. Newspapers and picture-shops, poets and painters, combined to celebrate the exploit and sound the victors' praise. One engraving _de circonstance_, we remember, represented a sturdy French foot-soldier, trampling, like Gulliver, a host of Lilliputian Moors, and carrying a score of them over his shoulder, spitted on his bayonet. "Out of my way!" was the inscription beneath the print--"_Les Français seront toujours les Français._" Horace Vernet, colourist, by special appointment, to the African campaign, pictorial chronicler of the heroic feats of the house militant of Orleans, prepared his best brushes, and stretched his broadest canvass, to immortalise the marshal and his men. After a few days, two dingy tents and an enormous umbrella were exhibited in the gardens of the Tuileries; these were trophies of the fight--the private property of Mohammed-Abderrhaman, the vanquished prince of Morocco, the real merit of whose conquerors was about as great as that of an active tiger who gloriously scatters a numerous flock of sheep. From one of several books relating to Algeria, now upon our table, we will take a French officer's account of the affair of Isly. The story of Escoffier, a trumpeter who generously resigned his horse to his dismounted captain, himself falling into the hands of the Arabs, whose prisoner he remained for about eighteen months, is told by M. Alby, an officer of the African army. Although a little vivid in the colouring, and comprising two or three very tough "yarns,"--due, we apprehend, to the imagination of trumpeter or author--its historical portion professes to be, and probably is, correct; and, at any rate, there can be no reason for suspecting the writer of depreciating his countrymen's achievements, and understating their merits. The account of the battle, or rather of the chase, for fighting there was none, is given by a deserter from the Spahis, who, after the defeat of the Moors, joined Abd-el-Kader. The Emir and his Arabs took no part in the affair.[10]

[10] _A Campaign in the Kabylie._ By DAWSON BORRER, F.R.G.S., &c.
London, 1848.

_La Kabylie._ Par un Colon. Paris, 1846.

_La Captivité du Trompette Escoffier._ Par ERNEST ALBY. 2 vols.
Brussels, 1848.

"I deserted, with several of my comrades, during the night-march stolen by the French upon the Moors. We sought the emperor's son in his camp, and informed him of the movement making by the French column. The emperor's son had our horses taken away, and gave orders not to lose sight of us. Then he said to us:--

"'Let them come, those dogs of Christians; they are but thirteen thousand strong, and we a hundred and sixty thousand: we will receive them well.'

"The day was well advanced before the Moors perceived the French. Then the emperor's son ordered his horsemen to mount and advance. The French marched in a square. They unmasked their artillery, and the guns sent their deadly charge of grape into the ranks of the Moors, who immediately took to flight, and the French had nothing to do but to sabre them."

"The Moors," says M. Alby, "had fine horses and good sabres; but their muskets were bad; and the men, softened by centuries of peace and prosperity, smoking keef[11] and eating copiously, might be expected to run, as they did, at the first cannon-shot."

[11] The Moors smoke the leaves of hemp instead of tobacco. This
_keef_, as it is called, easily intoxicates, and renders the
head giddy. Abd-el-Kader forbade the use of it, and if one of
his soldiers was caught smoking keef, he received the bastinado.
_Captivité d'Escoffier_, vol. i. p. 221.

It is hard to understand how the loss of the French should have amounted to even the twenty-seven men at which it is stated in their general's bulletin. Did M. Bugeaud, unwilling to admit the facility of his triumph, slay the score and seven with his goosequill? But if the victory was easily won, on the other hand, it was largely rewarded. For having driven before him, by the very first volley from his guns, a horde of overfed barbarians, enervated by sloth and narcotics, and total strangers to the tactics of civilised warfare, the marshal was created a duke! Shade of Napoleon! whether proudly lingering within the trophy-clad walls of the Invalides, or passing in spectral review the dead of Austerlitz and Borodino, suspend your lonely walk, curb your shadowy charger, and contemplate this pitiable spectacle! You, too, gave dukedoms, and lavished even crowns, but you gave them for services worth the naming. Ney and the Moskwa, Massena and Essling, Lannes and Montebello, are words that bear the coupling, and grace a coronet. The names of the places, although all three recall brilliant victories, are far less glorious in their associations than the names of the men. But Bugeaud and Isly! What can we say of them? Truly, thus much--they, too, are worthy of each other.

When reviewing, about two years ago, Captain Kennedy's narrative of travel and adventure in Algeria, we regretted he did not speak out about the mode of carrying on the war, and about the prospects of Algerine colonisation; and we hinted a suspicion that the amenities of French military hospitality, largely extended to a British fellow-soldier, had induced him, if not exactly to cloak, at least to shun laying bare, the errors and mishaps of his entertainers. We cannot make the same complaint of the very pretty book, rich in vignettes and cream-colour, entitled, _A Campaign in the Kabylie_. Mr Borrer, whom the Cockneys, contemptuous of terminations, will assuredly confound with his great gipsy cotemporary, George Borrow of the Bible, has, like Captain Kennedy, dipped his spoon in French messes. He has ridden with their regiments, and sat at their board, and been quartered with their officers, and received kindness and good treatment on all hands; and therefore any thing that could be construed into malicious comment would come with an ill grace from his pen. But it were exaggerated delicacy to abstain from stating facts, and these he gives in all their nakedness; generally, however, allowing them to speak for themselves, and adding little in the way of remark or opinion. In pursuance of this system, he relates the most horrible instances of outrage and cruelty with a matter-of-fact coolness, and an absence alike of blame and sympathy, that may give an unfavourable notion of his heart, to those who do not accept our lenient interpretation of his cold-blooded style. The traits he sets down, and which are no more than will be found in many French narratives, despatches, and bulletins, show how well the Franco-African army carry out the merciful maxims of Bugeaud.

Mr Borrer, a geographer and antiquary, passed seventeen months in Algeria; and during his residence there, in May 1846, a column of eight thousand French troops, commanded by the Duke of Isly in person, marched against the Kabyles, "that mysterious, bare-headed, leathern-aproned race, whose chief accomplishment was said to be that of being 'crack-shots,' their chief art that of neatly roasting their prisoners alive, and their chief virtue that of loving their homes." It may interest the reader to hear a rather more explicit account of this singular people, who dwell in the mountains that traverse Algeria from Tunis to Morocco--an irregular domain, whose limits it is difficult exactly to define in words. The Kabyles are, in fact, the highlanders of North Africa, and they hold themselves aloof from the Arabs and Europeans that surround them. Concerning them, we find some diversity in the statements of Mr Borrer, and of an anonymous Colonist, twelve years resident at Bougie, whose pamphlet is before us. Of the two, the Frenchman gives them the best character, but both agree as to their industry and intelligence, their frugality and skill in agriculture. They are not nomadic like the Arabs, but live in villages, till the land, and tend flocks. Dwelling in the mountains, they have few horses, and fight chiefly on foot. Divided into many tribes, they are constantly quarreling and fighting amongst themselves, but they forget their feuds and quickly unite to repel a foreign foe. "Predisposed by his character," says the Colonist, "to draw near to civilisation, the Kabyle attaches himself sincerely to the civilised man when circumstances establish a friendly connexion between them. He is still inclined to certain vices inherent in the savage: but of all the Africans, he is the best disposed to live in friendship and harmony with us, which he will do when he shall find himself in permanent contact with the European population." This is not the general opinion, and it differs widely from that expressed by Mr Borrer. But the Colonist had his own views, perhaps his own interests, to further. He wrote some months previous to the expedition which Mr Borrer accompanied, and which was then not likely to take place, and he strongly advocated its propriety--admitting, however, that public opinion in France was greatly opposed to a military incursion into Kabylia. Himself established at Bougie, of course in some description of commerce, the necessity of roads connecting the coast and the interior was to him quite evident. A good many of his countrymen, whose personal benefit was not so likely to be promoted by causeway-cutting in Algeria, strongly deprecated any sort of road-making that was likely to bring on war with the Kabyles. France began to think she was paying too dear for her whistle. She looked back to the early days of the Orleans dynasty, when Marshal Clausel promised to found a rich and powerful colony with only 10,000 men. She glanced at the pages of the _Moniteur_ of 1837, and there she found words uttered by the great Bugeaud in the Chamber of Deputies. "Forty-five thousand men and one good campaign," said the white-headed warrior, as the Arabs call him, "and in six months the country is pacified, and you may reduce the army to twenty thousand men, to be paid by imposts levied on the colony, consequently costing France nothing." Words, and nothing more--mere wind; the greatest _bosh_ that ever was uttered, even by Bugeaud, who is proverbial for dealing largely in that flatulent commodity. Nine years passed away, and the Commission of the Budget "deplored a situation which compelled France to maintain an army of more than 100,000 men upon that African territory." (Report of M. Bignon of the 15th April 1846, p. 237.) Bugeaud himself had mightily changed his tone, and declared that, to keep Algiers, as large an army would be essential as had been required to conquer it. Lamoricière, a great authority in such matters, confirmed the opinion of his senior. Monsieur Desjobert, and a variety of pamphleteers and newspaper writers, attacked, with argument, ridicule, and statistics, the party known as the _Algérophiles_, who made light of difficulties, scoffed at expense, and predicted the prosperity and splendour of French Africa. Algeria, according to them, was to become the brightest gem in the citizen-crown of France. These sanguine gentlemen were met with facts and figures. During 1846, said the anti-Algerines, your precious colony will have cost France 125,000,000 of francs. And they proved it in black and white. There was little chance of the expense being less in following years. Then came the loss of men. In 1840, said M. Desjobert, giving chapter and verse for his statements, 9567 men perished in the African hospitals, out of an effective army of 63,000. Add those invalids who died in French hospitals, or in their homes, from the results of African campaigning, and the total loss is moderately stated at 11,000 men, or more than one-sixth of the whole force employed. Out of these, only 227 died in action. The thing seemed hopeless and endless. What do we get for our money? was the cry. What is our compensation for the decimation of our young men? France can better employ her sons, than in sending them to perish by African fevers. What do we gain by all this expenditure of gold and blood?--The unreasonable mortals! Had they not gained a Duke of Isly and a Moorish pavilion? M. Desjobert surely forgets these inestimable acquisitions when he asks and answers the question--"What remains of all our victories? A thousand bulletins, and Horace Vernet's big pictures."

"How many times," says the same writer, "has not the subjection of the Arabs been proclaimed! In 1844, General Bugeaud gains the battle of Isly. Are the Arabs subdued?

"When the Arabs appear before the judges who dispose of life and death, they confess their faith, and proclaim their hatred of us; and when we are simple enough to tell them that some of their race are devoted to us, they reply, 'Those lie to you, through fear, or for their own interest; and as often as a scheriff shall come whom they believe able to conquer you, they will follow him, even into the streets of Algiers.' (Examination of Bou Maza's brother, 12th November 1845.) Thus spoke the chief. The common Arab had already said to the Christian, "If my head and thine were boiled in the same vessel, my broth would separate itself from thy broth."

This was discouraging to those who had dreamed of the taming of the Arab; and the more sanguinary mooted ideas of extermination. Such a project, clearly written down, and printed, and placed on Parisian breakfast tables, might be startling; in Algeria it had long been put in practice. What said General Duvivier in his _Solution de la Question d'Algérie_, p. 285? "For eleven years they have razed buildings, burned crops, destroyed trees, massacred men, women, and children, with a still-increasing fury." We have already shown that this work of extermination was not carried on with perfect impunity. Here is further confirmation of the fact. "Every Arab killed," says M. Leblanc de Prébois, another officer, who wrote on the Algerian war, and wrote from personal experience, "costs us the death of thirty-three men, and 150,000 francs." Supposing a vast deal of exaggeration in this statement, the balance still remains ugly against the French, for whom there is evidently very little difference between catching an Arab and catching a Tartar. Whilst upon the subject of extermination, Mr Borrer gives an opinion more decidedly unfavourable to his French friends than is expressed in any other part of his book. His estimate of Kabyle virtues differs considerably, it will be observed, from that of the Colonist, and of the two is much nearest the truth.

"The abominable vices and debaucheries of the Kabyle race, the inhuman barbarities they are continually guilty of towards such as may be cast by tempest, or other misfortune, upon their rugged shores; the atrocious cruelties and refined tortures they, in common with the Arab, delight in exercising upon any such enemies as may be so unhappy as to fall alive into their hands, must render the hearts of those acquainted with this people perfectly callous as to what misfortunes may befall them or their country; and many may think that, as far as the advancement of civilisation is concerned, the wiping off of the Kabyle and Arab races of Northern Africa from the face of the earth, would be the greatest boon to humanity. Though, however, they may be fraught with all the vices of the Canaanitish tribes of old, yet the command, 'Go ye after him through the city and smite; let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity; slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women,' is not justifiably issued at the pleasure of man; and we can but lament to see a great and gallant nation engaged in a warfare exasperating both parties to indulge in sanguinary atrocities,--atrocities to be attributed on one side to the barbarous and savage state of those having recourse to them; but on the other, proceeding only from a thirst for retaliation and bloody revenge, unworthy of those enjoying a high position as a civilised people. War is, as we all know, ever productive of horrors: but such horrors may be greatly restrained and diminished by the exertions and example of those in command."