ALISON'S HISTORY OF EUROPE.
TIIE fifth volume of this work commences will the Peace of Amiens, in October 1801, and closes with the end of 1806. The
leading warlike subjects are the morainic actions, which were crowned by the victory of' Trafalgar ; the Austrian and Russian war, that produced the strategical triumph of Ulm, as well as
the more dazzling victory of Austerlitz ; and the Prussian cam- paign, which ended in the prostration of that monarchy by the battles of Jena and Auerstadt. The chief political events are the negotiations with the French Consul springing out of the Peace of Atniens; the various intrigues set on foot by PITT to form Continental coalitions; and the useless endeavours of Fox to restore peace, on his accession to power in 1806. The death of Mr. PITT enables the author to devote an episodical chapter to a consideration of the general and financial policy of " the heaven- born minister."
The magnitude of the events themselves, the exciting nature of some of' their circumstances, the heroic character of others, and the important effects which they directly and indirectly pro- duced upon the civilized world, Oyu an intrinsic interest to the subjects of' the work, which scarcely any mode of narration could altogether destroy. The present volume, however, is not the happiest specimen of Mr. ALISON'S powers as an historical com- piler. Whether it be that he has bestowed less care upon his task, or that the modern French historians have been less avail- able as guides, the result is a falling-uff; compared with the preceding voluines. His military uarratives would have gained both spirit and force by condensation. His accounts of civil effairs are overlaid by long quotations from documents of which the pith alone was required. The author has abstracted his au- thorities, rather than distilled them.
Mr. ALISON'S strong political bias is more visible than here- tofore; not only causing the reader to entertain a doubt as to the statements and conclusious of the writer, but even vitiating his production in point of literary taste, He cannot endeavour to estimate the probable result of BONAPARTE'S projected invasion of Great Britain without jumping over thirty years to talk of the " stimulant" of the Reform Bill, and to pour final " the painful doubt whether NAPOLEON did not know us better than we knew ourselves," in the democratic " seductions" lie bad prepared for us had fortune carried him to London. To such a length, indeed, do his prejudices transport him, that Isis conclusions are often in- dependent of Isis reasons ; being sometimes right in spite of his arguments, while at other times his premises lead to deductions just contrary to those he comes to. Thus he continually finds opportunities to wail over the condemnation of' Sir ROBERT CALDER; who, be says, was perfectly justified in retiring from the contest with VILLENEUVE, as the French commander might have been joined by two other fleet. But Sir ROBERT was not accused on any such doubtful point as the propriety of retiring be- fore a probable combination of overwhelming forces: he was tried for remaining a whole day in the presence of a fleet which he had repulsed with loss the day before, without making any attempt to renew the engagement. The most illogical piece of writing in the book, however, is the chapter devoted to "the great man now no more." Mr. WILLIAM PITT is held up as the Deus majorum gen- hum—the heaven-born minister, whose principles of government were and will be unrivalled. Unfortunately, when Mr. Mascot de- scends to the facts from whose agglomeration the principle is to be derived, Truth becomes too mighty for Toryism. He is compelled to admit, "that Mr. PITT had but little capacity for military com- binations ;" that, after plunging the nation into the Revolutionary war, he did not in time least know how to conduct it; that from 1793 to 1799, he squandered, independent of the annual taxation, loans amounting to a hundred and fifty millions sterling, and left off worse than he began. After three years of protracted strife, says Mr. ALISON in his summing up, "the Republican armies, in the close of 179.5, were still combating for extstenta on the Rhine, and gladly accepted a tempormy respite from the victorious arms of Clairfait : after three additional years of despetate warfare, they were strug-
glint/ fin the frontiers of the Var and the Jura, with the terrible armies of Suwarrow and the Archduke Charles. No doubt can remain, therefore, that
the forces on the opposite sides of that great coutest were, at that period at least, extremely nearly matched. With what effect, then, might the arms of England have been thrown in upon the seine of warfare ; and how would the balance, so long quivering in equilibrium, have been subverted by the addition of fifty thousand British aoIi1kii on the theatre of Blenheim or Ramifies ! Herein, therefore, lay the capital error of Mr. l'itt's financial system, consi- dered with reference to the warlike operations it was intended to promote,—that While the former was calculated for n temporary effort only, and based on the principle of great results lying obtained in a short time by an extravagant sys- tem of expenditure, the latter teas arranged on a plan of the most niggardly exertion of the national strength, and the husbanding of its resources fin tutu re efforts, totally inconsistent with the lavish dissipation of its present funds. No one would b rve regretted the great loans from 179a to 170, amounting though they did ta a huudred and fifty millions sterling, if proportional efforts in the field had at the same time been made; and it was evident that nothing hail beim omitted which could have conduced to the earlier termination of the war : but our feelings are very different when we recollect, that during these six years, big with the fate of England and the world, only 208,000 men Were raised for the regular army; and that a nation reposing securely in a sea-girt and inacres- sable citadel never had above twenty thousand soldiers in the field, and that only in the two first years of the war, out of a ifisposable force of above a hundred thousand. Air. Pitt's plans for military operations wereall based on the action of Continental armies, while the troops of his own country were chiefly em- ployed in distant colonial expeditions; picking up pawns in this manner at the extremity of the board, when. by concentrated inoves he might have given checkmate to his adversary at the commencement of the game. Ills military successes, in consequence, amounted to Nothing, while Ins financial measures teere daily increasing the debt in ii geometr iced progression ; and thence, in a great measure, the long duration and heavy burdens of the war."
Hut, though no great shakes in the heroic wav, what a financier, ye Gods I was WILLIAM PITT!—Mr. Aus0t4 does not indeed pro- fess to say the " Pilot that weathered the storm " iuvented the funding system, inasmuch as borrowing is as old as modern civi- lization, and was always as unlimited as the debtor's credit. Ile Las just now told us, that whilst Mr. PITT got and squandered upon the "principle of great results being obtained in a short time by an extravagant system of expenditure," he planned his warlike preparations in such a niggardly way that it seemed as if be were economically "husbanding the national resources for future efforts." Nor was his mode of raising the supplies distin- guished by skill, prudence, or forethought. His plan of borrow- ing in the Three per Cents was, according to our author, "a ruinous system." " The benefit," he continues, " was temporary and inconsiderable, the evil permanent and most material." . . . . " If the whole debt (contracted in this fund) were to be paid off at par, the nation would have to pay in all 250 millions more than it ever received. Supposing it to be redeemed by a sinking-fund at 80, the surplus to be paid above what was received would still be 200 millions."
Nor have the evils of this most improvident system of borrowing been limited to the great addition thus unnecessarily made to the capital of the National Debt. Its effect upon the burden of the interest has been equally urfortunate. Doubtless the loans were, in the first instance, contracted during the war on more favourable terms, as to interest, than could have been obtained if the mon-I had been borrowed in the Five per Cents; that is, if a bond 11o. I00/. bad been given for each 1001. only paid into the Treasury. But, as a set-off against this temporary and inconsiderable advantage, (only varying, Inc else- where calculates, from to per cent.) what is to be said to the experienced impossibility, with funds so contracted, of hovering the interest in time of peace ? It is impossible to lower the interest of the Three per Cents, till inte- rest generally falls below 3 per cent.; because if it were attempted when the rate was higher, all the stockholders would immediately demand their money, and Coverument, being unable to borrow below the market-rute, would becorne bankrupt. Nevertheless, it may safely be affirmed, that interest, on an average since pin, has not exceeded if it has reached 4 per cent. lined the National Debt all been contracted in the Five per Cents, it might all have been subjected to the operation which in 1824 proved so successful with the Five per Cents. ; _awl which, on 157,009,000/. only of the Debt, the amount of that stock, saved the nation at that time 1,700,0001. a year, to which is to be added the half of that sum since gained by the reduction of the same stock to :4; which, after taking into view the dissentients, has saved the nation, fin. ever, 2,400,000L yearly. Calculating the interest of the 600,000,000/. in the Three per Cents (360,000,000/. sterling), at 18,000,0001. a year, the proportion of this annual burden, which would have been saved by the first teducrion of 1 per cent. 'would have been 3,600,0001., and by the second of 6 per cent. 1,800.000/. more; in all 5,400,0001. for ever. the sum already saved to the nation, on interest alone, paid since 1824, would have been above fifty millions sterling. Every twenty years in future, the sum saved, with interest, would exceed a hun- died and fifty millions a year."
This is pretty well for a " heaven-born " minister : but although PITT, according to Mr. ALIsors, could neither raise money skil- fully nor spend it advantageously, and was quite an incapable in -waging war, yet he invented—what? The Sinking-fund. It is • true that, in planning this grand state juggle, and calculating the -" wonder-working powers of compound interest," Mr. Par was .out to the tune of some fifty or sixty per cent., and, looking for- -ward, to the extent of a hundred; as he "forgot the certain en- hancement of the price of stock" that must take place by the necessary operation of his own scheme, or the mere return to peace. But no matter. Had not economical philosophers dis- ,covered and pointed out the absurdity of borrowing with one band to pay with the other, and not unfrequently perhaps at dis- advantage,—had not the Opposition advocated these opinions,— had not the people become impatient of a taxation that was grind- ing them to the earth, and the successors of the prophet been un- worthy of his mantle, either basely yielding to a love of popularity, or lasing stupidly convinced by the arguments of their opponents,— the soundness of Mr. Peris plan would have been developed in the year 1846, by the extinction of the debt; although, where the means were to come from to pay it with, would puzzle any one to tell.
It will neither be desired nor expected that we should follow Mr. Ausozt through the longis ambagibus (whose substance has already appeared in Blackwood some time since) by which he en- deavours to maintain the exploded nostrum of flying kites upon a grand scale; or to prove the self-evident proposition, that if a sur- plus income be systematically devoted to pay off debts, and the interest of the debt cancelled added to the surplus income, the debt in time will be paid off. Let it sullice to say, that he seems so ignorant of the commonest principles of the commonest kind of book-keeping, as not to know that there are two sides to an ac- count,—receiving all the returns of" debt redeemed "as bona fide operations, without a thought of the other side of the sheet con- taining debt contracted. Of his castle-building propensities it may be enough to observe, that he stuffs his book with tables showing how much debt might have been paid off since 1816 with a sinking-fund of ten or fifteen millions accumulating at interest. Nothing is easier than forming figures on paper ; but where were the millions to come from? Does he not know that the debt contracted in 1816 was larger than the debt redeemed ? and that, so far from there being the means of forming a sinking-fund, the payments exceeded the receipts by more than two millions. If any one would leave us eight hundred millions, we would pay oft' the debt at once. " If the sky would fall, whet lurks we should catch!" " There is great virtue in little if." But, though the want of logic and inurfination are bad in an ample and ambitious octavo of more than 800 pages, falsehood is worse; and when Mr. ALISON groaningly tells us, that de- mocratic ambition in 183'2 destroyed the last remnants of the Sinking-fund, his words are untrue, let his meaning be what it may. If he intends to assert, that the great Pm' juggle was put an end to then, the answer is, that it received its coup de grace years before. If he means, that the popular demand for a reduction of taxation led to its destruction "to all prac- tical purposes," the statement is equally incorrect. Mr. Gout- ulnae, under the Duke of WELLINGTON, applied its amount to repeal the duties on beer and leather; but the commencement of their operation being postponed till he left office, the reduction seemed to arise from Lord AnTnone's mismanagement, although he was too incapable to account for it, when GOULBURN taunted him with the decrease of income. The repeals of the last-named blunder caused, indeed, the temporary suspension of the Sinking- fund Commissioners for want of means : but Mr. ALISON, if ho had looked at a single return upon the subject, must have known that it was immediately afterwards again in operation, and is so at this present writing.
Previous page
