FROM THE ACCESSION OF GEORGE III. TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION (JULY, 1792).

With nearly Two Hundred Engravings.

CASSELL, PETTER, AND GALPIN,

LONDON AND NEW YORK.

1861.

15

LONDON:

PETTER AND GALPIN, BELLE SAUVAGE PRINTING WORKS,

LUDGATE-HILL, EQ

PREFACE.

HE History of the Reign of George III. is pregnant with the most momentous principles, and presents to the reader the most momentous lessons possible in the economy of Nations. We call the attention of our readers expressly to these facts, because they have now been admitted as great lessons, and because there yet remain others of the same kind to be learned by England, who, until she has learned them, cannot take that august position before the world which becomes her present status, her present free principles,-a position which is wholly within her power. We call, before all others, on the great body of the People-the working classes-to note these things, because it is this class which, in another generation, when it shall have been duly educated, will possess the deciding influence on the tendencies of the Government.

The English Government, during this reign, committed two capital mistakes: they endeavoured to rule our colonies by coercion, and they interfered to force on the French nation a dynasty which it had repudiated. In both of these efforts they were eventually foiled, and from those defeats they learned two grand principles of international law: that colonies must be left to govern themselves, if they are to be retained; and that no people has, on any pretence whatever, a right to intrude itself into the domestic affairs of another people. In other words, what is called the doctrine of non-intervention has been accepted, and proclaimed by England in the case of Italy, and it must henceforth guide our counsels in all our foreign relations.

We now see free and self-administering constitutions conferred on our colonies, and behold as the result loyalty to the mother country, and prosperity to her commerce. We see, as the consequence of our past bitter experience, our Government, at this moment, refusing to follow the example of France, and to interfere in the movements of Italy for its political regeneration. Having seen that all our efforts to coerce the French people had ended in the rejection of the effete dynasty, which we for twenty years made war to re-establish, and that the kings, whom we supported at an unexampled cost, have remained despots to this day, we have publicly confessed that all our gigantic efforts were worse than useless; that every principle that we laboured to maintain has been overthrown and trodden under foot. But at what a cost has this wisdom been purchased!

Since William III. first imported into this country the practice of meddling in the affairs of our continental neighbours, we have spent THREE THOUSAND MILLIONS STERLING in wars of interference, including that with our American colonies. Of that three thousand millions, eight hundred millions remain as a debt, entailing on us and our posterity twenty-eight millions a-year of taxation to pay the interest. And this is but the smallest part of the mischief. In those wars we have caused the destruction-and it is now confessed the worse than useless destruction-of more than TWO MILLIONS OF OUR OWN COUNTRYMEN, according to the most careful calculations of statisticians; without taking any account of the infinitely greater slaughter of other people in these wars, which could not have been carried on without our money and encouragement. Besides these murders, for principles now abandoned finally by us as mistaken and mischievous, we have encouraged and built up a system of national expenditure which has no counterpart in the history of the wildest doings of the most profligate nations. When William III. commenced the grand delusion of foreign intervention, five millions money were thought a monstrous national expenditure per annum; and this only a hundred and seventy years ago! When William Pitt proclaimed war against France, because it would not re-admit a rejected

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dynasty, TWELVE MILLIONS of money were thought a monstrous annual expenditure; and this only sixty-seven years ago! Yet we have now arrived at an annual expenditure of upwards of SEVENTY MILLIONS of money, though at peace with all Europe! The fashion and spirit of war have enslaved us under the very guise of peace, and there is every prospect that we shall soon have to pay ONE HUNDRED MILLIONS per annum for what our ancestors, little more than sixty years ago, paid only TEN or TWELVE MILLIONS!

Surely these are terrible testimonies of the truth of Christianity, that "he who takes the sword shall perish by the sword!" Surely these are trumpet-tongued reminders that war is as mischievous to all national as to all individual interests—to all public as to all private morals. To what policy, or what event in history-ay, even of pagan nations- -can we turn which has produced the slaughter of two millions of men, the expenditure of three thousand millions of money, and the advance of national taxation from four millions to seventy-six millions in little more than a hundred years, followed by the virtual confession of that nation, that the whole of this cost of money, of human life, and of taxation, has been abortive, utterly wrong, preposterous, and, therefore, monstrously wicked!

But, as we have said, other like confessions yet remain for England. It is time now that she should not only proclaim to the world that she will no longer interfere with internal arrangements of other nations, but that she will renounce all aggressive war-the root and sole root of the frightful waste and bloodshed which she has now repented of. It now becomes her, as a Christian nation, to announce this plain Christian principle. The time must come, in the future enlightenment of man, when she must confess that even defensive war is unchristian, and trust to the Power which has declared this truth for His Divine vindication of it. But the time is now come, when it would be to the glory, as it is the duty, of England to proclaim all aggressive war unchristian, and, therefore, wicked, and pregnant only with crime and misery. It is an example to the nations trodden down and crumbling into financial ruin underneath huge armies, which England ought to exhibit. She has been tempted, stimulated, urged by menace and sarcasm, to arm for Italy: she has resisted, and has won, by her exercise of a wise moral influence instead, the love and gratitude of the Italian people.

We point out these great truths as emblazoned in the pages of the history of George III., to the deep consideration of the English nation, and, above all, to the mass of its people. Every year, as education advances amongst the toiling millions, must augment the influence of the popular mind on the national destinies. Far removed from the corrupt spirit which surrounds the immediate machinery of government, the people, once educated, will survey, through an impartial medium, the impulses of legislation, and the motives of the executive. They will demand, and their collective momentum will enable them to enforce, the adoption of sound principles. No aristocracy cradled in ease and luxury, however amiable and however intelligent, will become deeply imbued with a grand Christian morality. It will continually be swayed by self-interest: it is the people at large, having but one interest-the national one-who, so soon as they are instructed in the true laws of morals, will compel their enforcement.

It is to this great class of the community-destined, in the next generation, to be the ruling class-that we address, with a fitting anxiety, these observations. It is for them that we not only detail facts, but point solemnly to their enunciation of great national laws and principles. We hold up the mighty errors of our predecessors during this reign, written now in oceans of blood, with the pen of truth, and on the parchment of national incumbrance, and we say to those who shall hereafter become the real directors of events-Take warning; there are yet equal errors to be avoided, equally luminous truths to be embraced. You have before you the terrible monuments of the contempt of Christian philosophy by those deemed wisest in their day let not the next generation have to upbraid you with equal blindness to the principles of the New Testament, that in "peace, good-will toward men" exists the prosperity of the earth.

We have closed this volume with a careful and minute picture of the excesses of a nation renouncing Christianity; we shall open the next with the grand error of England, in commencing war to replant an impossible dynasty. Let the reader bear these great facts in mind, and he will draw from them a wisdom which he will find himself hereafter called upon to exercise, in his place and station. for our common country.