Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 397, November 1848

His course in England was in a higher region, and he escaped the mosquitoes which infest the swamps of Irish political life. Among the leaders of English party he had to contend with men of honour, and on the Continent his task was to sustain the cause of Europe. There, mingling with monarchs in the simplicity of a British gentleman, he carried with him all the influence of a great British minister, and entitled himself to that influence by the value of his services. Yet, among the highest distinctions of his statesmanship, we have but slight hesitation in naming the rapid overthrow of the rebellion. The scene was new, the struggle singularly perplexing. Political artifice was mingled with brute violence. If the spirit of revolt raged in the superstition, the fears, and the rude memories of peasant life, it was still more hazardously spread among the professional ranks, whose ambition was frenzied by the prospect of a republic, or whose guilt was to be screened by its establishment. He has been charged with tyranny and torture in its suppression; his correspondence in these volumes shows the manly view which he took of the true condition of Ireland.

The question of the safety of Ireland has now come before the legislature once again, in all its breadth. Is Ireland to be a perpetual seat of rebellion? is every ruffian to find there only an armoury? is every faction to find there only a parade-ground? Is its soil to be a perpetual fount of waters, that can flow only to poison the healthful channels of society? Is the power of government to be employed only in the hideous duties of the gaoler and the executioner? Is the noblest constitution that man has ever seen to be utterly paralysed, from the moment when it touches a soil containing millions of our fellow subjects? – and to be paralysed by the act of these millions?

These are the questions which well may disturb the pillow of the statesmen of England. We have no hesitation in answering them. As the ruin of Ireland has been the act of a false religion, its renovation must be the act of the true. This is no time for tardiness in this experiment. Revolt has thrown aside its arms, but its antipathy remains. We shall have revolt upon revolt, until the country is turned into a field of battle or a sepulchre. If the rude, vulgar, and cowardly conspirators of the present hour have found followers, what might not be the national hazard if some valorous hand and vivid intellect – some one of those mighty men who are born to take the lead of nations, should marshal the willing multitudes at a time when England was once again struggling for the liberties of Europe? Are we to leave Ireland, with all its natural advantages, to the unchecked progress of superstition, until, like the Roman Campagna, under the same auspices, it exhibits nothing but a desert, where man by daylight should put on his swiftest speed, and where he should not sleep by night, unless he had already taken measure of his grave?

The Memoir prefixed to the official papers in these volumes touches with singular brevity on the personal characteristics of the late Marquis of Londonderry.

But the true biography of a public man is to be found in his public career. There flattery can deceive no longer, and panegyric is brought to the test of posterity. It fell to the lot of Lord Castlereagh to take a lead in the four most memorable transactions of his time; – in the overthrow of the Irish Rebellion; in the establishment of the Union; in the downfall of the French empire; and in the settlement of the peace of Europe at the Congress of Vienna. Those four are his claims on the living gratitude of his country, and on the homage of the generations to come. The mind which was equal to those tasks must have been a mind of power; the determination which could have sustained him, in defiance of all personal and public danger, must have been of the highest order of personal and public intrepidity; and the patriotism which, in every advance of his official distinctions, and every act of his ministerial duty, directed his steps, as it then raised him above all the imputations of party, now retains his memory in that elevation, which partisanship can no more reach than it can comprehend. Estimable in all the relations of private life, and honourable in all the trusts of statesmanship, the bitterness of Opposition has never dared to touch his personal character; and even faction has shown its sense of his services, by never venturing to insult his tomb. If the enemies of Ireland remember him with hatred, the historian of Ireland must record him with honour. If faction in England cannot yet be reconciled to the man who kept it at bay, it must remember him as the statesman who was neither to be bought nor baffled; whose life was a security to the constitution, and whose conduct formed the most prominent contrast to that of those subsequent possessors of office, whom it found the means alternately to corrupt and to control.

It is not our wish to offer a rash and groundless panegyric to any man. We refer simply to the facts – to the eminence of England under his policy, and to its sudden difficulties under the abandonment of his principles. We think Lord Castlereagh entitled to the full tribute which can be paid by national respect to the memory of a statesman distinguished by courage and conduct, by unblemished honesty, and by unfailing honour. We think him fully entitled to bear upon his monument the name of – A Great British Minister.

The most passionate avidity for renown cannot desire a nobler name.

A CALL

There is a cry throughout the land,
The needy loudly ask for bread;
Craving and unappeased they stand,
They cannot all be duly fed.
The rich in vain large alms bestow —
They fail to stem the rising tide
Of want, and beggary, and woe,
That hems them in on every side.

Lo! from the stream that overflows,
Fresh gushing rivulets roll wide,
And far from where their source arose,
They bless the land through which they glide.
Shall Britain let such lesson fail?
Shall not her overburthen'd soil
Afar, where skill and strength avail,
Send forth the hardy sons of toil?

Arise, ye peasants, bold and strong!
Courage! relieve your burthen'd land,
Toward a gracious country throng
That needs the willing heart and hand:
There with a cheerful vigour strive
For the reward denied ye here,
Through wholesome industry to thrive,
With lessening labour, year by year.

Your many children, that ye feel
Here as a burthen on your hands,
There shall enrich ye through their zeal,
And tend your flocks, and till your lands.
No cry for bread shall pierce your ear,
Full harvests shall requite your toil,
And, bounteously your age to cheer,
Shall yield ye corn, and wine, and oil.

Behold the paupers of our land,
By want made dissolute and rude,
With sullen heart and wasted hand
Asking an alms of broken food!
Behold, and snatch them from despair —
Give them for effort a fair field,
With labour their free limbs may bear —
And toil from vice shall be their shield.

And ye whose lot is cast above
Want's perilous and grievous woes!
Be yours a full free work of love,
The debt that man his brother owes.
Bestow not that ye prize the least —
Give knowledge, valour, skill, and worth.
Statesman and soldier, lawyer, priest,
Physician, merchant, go ye forth.

And, Britain's daughters! give your aid,
Arise, make ready, cross the wave!
Ye, for meet help and solace made,
Go forth to cheer, to bless, to save!
Let not the exiles vainly ask
For home and sweet domestic cares;
Fulfil your high and gracious task —
Go forth, join heart and hand with theirs.

And ask ye all, as forth ye go,
The guidance of a light divine,
That through the darkest hours shall glow,
And steadfast in all peril shine.
Go forth with a believing heart,
Your Guard is sure by night and day;
Forth through the wilderness depart —
Ye shall find manna on your way.

    Julia

WHAT IS SPAIN ABOUT?

Whilst France, writhing under self-inflicted wounds, is preserved from anarchy only by despotism; whilst Germany, convulsed by the imitative folly of her children, enacts a travestie of Paris tragedies; and Italy, like a froward child, screaming to go alone before she can walk, kicks at her leading-strings, and falls upon her nose – the affairs of a third-rate power, such as Spain has dwindled into, have naturally enough been overlooked and forgotten. It is time to recur to them for a moment. Spain has once been, and yet again may be, a leading member of the European family. Under a better government, she again may see days of prosperity and peace. Again her merchant-fleets may cover the seas, her traders be renowned for enterprise and wealth, her population be commensurate with the extent and productiveness of her territory. And this may occur whilst nations, but yesterday paramount in riches and power, sink by their own madness into impotence and poverty. Her rise will not be more astonishing than their decadence.

At present, it appears the destiny of Spain to be misgoverned at home and misunderstood abroad. The insurrection now budding into life and vigour in so many of her provinces illustrates this proposition. Originating in the grossest maladministration, out of Spain its scope and nature, and the possible importance of its results, are misconceived and underrated. It differs from any previous revolt since the death of Ferdinand VII., inasmuch as it is less the effort of a party, striving for the success of a principle and a man, than the uprising of a nation struggling to shake off the yoke of a galling and intolerable tyranny. There can be no doubt that a very large majority of the Spanish people heartily wish success to the movement against the existing government of the country. Unfortunately, a majority of this majority confine themselves to wishing, instead of putting their hand to the work, which then would soon be done. Their lukewarmness, however, can hardly be wondered at, when we remember how many of them have sacrificed property and security to their political convictions, and ruined themselves in the strife of parties. Of these parties, the two most numerous, long opposed to each other, and whose tenets once stood wide as the poles asunder, have forgotten old hatreds, made mutual sacrifices, and joined heart and hand against the common foe. The result is, the division of the country into two camps. On the one hand is the Queen-mother – in whose dexterous fingers Isabella is a mere puppet – Narvaez, O'Donnell, and the rest of the corrupt cabal from the Rue de Courcelles. These have possession of the machinery and matériel of the state. They hold the purse, which places at their devotion two armies, one of soldiers, the other of policemen, employés, spies, and venal emissaries of all kinds. To use a simile appropriate to the times, they have got upon the engine and tender, coals and water are at their command; but they misguide the train and ill-treat the passengers, clamorous for escape from their control. Spain, let Madrid papers argue and deny as they will, is in a state of general fermentation and violent discontent; on the brink of a convulsion which may very possibly end in the ousting of Isabella II., and in the enthronement of her cousin, the Count de Montemolin. In Spain a republic is an impossibility, and almost without partisans; and if the present queen be swept away by the tide of national indignation against her unscrupulous mother, the crown must naturally devolve upon the son of Don Carlos. At least, he is the only eligible candidate – we may even say, the only possible one. Don Francisco, the Incapable, would of course depart with his wife; his brother, Don Enrique, convicted of instability and of treachery to his party, would have nobody's support; and the Duke of Montpensier is so totally out of the question, so wholly without adherents as an aspirant to the Spanish throne, that we have difficulty in crediting a statement confidently made by persons worthy of belief, that the recent victim of a great revolution still directs, from his retirement in this country, intrigues designed to place a crown upon the head of the youngest hope of the house of Orleans. On the other hand, the Carlist party is still strong in Spain – much stronger, comparatively speaking, than it was two or three years ago; for it has clung together and preserved its integrity, whilst other parties have split and become dismembered. And although the bulk of the Spanish people may be less anxious to get any one man, or set of men, into power, than to get rid of those who at present so brutally roughride them; yet the conviction has been gradually gaining strength that, by character, education, and fair promises, the Count de Montemolin offers the best guarantees for that firm, impartial, and just government, under which alone is there a chance of Spain being raised from her present sunken and unprosperous condition. The Progresistas, who fiercely hated and fought against the father, rally round the son, persuaded that from Isabella, so long their idol, they would in vain look for a realisation of their political programme. Of their cordial understanding and co-operation with the Carlists there now can hardly exist a doubt. A very brief retrospect will suffice to explain its causes and foundation.

When Louis Philippe completed the job of the Spanish marriages, the Carlists – who, although grievously stricken and disheartened by the treaty of Bergara, had never entirely ceased to labour for the attainment of their one great end – rested upon their arms, and awaited in comparative inaction the dawn of better days. They abandoned not hope, nor abjured intrigue; but they may be said to have ceased, for a while, to conspire. In their fallen state, with their slender resources, what could they do against the puissant King of the French? For he it was against whom they must contend, did they venture to assail the throne of Isabella, and to dispute the rule of Christina. In England, too, their old enemies, the Whigs, had just come into power; the name of Palmerston was a sound of ill omen to Carlist ears; Bilbao and British marines, Passages and Commodore Hay, were words inseparably coupled, and pregnant with fatal memories to the upholders of legitimacy in Spain. Supposing that, by dint of indefatigable exertions, they succeeded in raising funds, in mustering an army, ill entering Spain sword in hand – forthwith they were met by that ugly and unnatural monster, the Quadruple Alliance, waiting, open-mouthed, to blast them to the four winds of heaven. An attempt, under such circumstances, would have been worse than useless; it would have been squandering a chance, and the Carlists had none to throw away. So they waited and watched. Meanwhile, what did the rulers of Spain – the persons governing behind the mask of that poor, ill-brought-up, ill-used princess, Isabella? It was natural to suppose that, having many enemies in the country – many persons and parties whose ambitions and interests were checked and thwarted by their ascendency – they would endeavour, as far as possible, to conciliate and gain over these, or at any rate to secure the support of the masses, by moderation and good government. A very moderate amount of this latter, be it observed, would have sufficed to gain them popularity, and to give stability to their reign. The nation had endured so much – had suffered so terribly from civil wars, rebellions, reactions, and the like – that all they expected, almost all they asked, was to be kicked gently. They dared not think the screw would be altogether taken off; but, considering the damaged state of their articulations, they did hope it would be a little eased. A man who had undergone a course of knout, might look upon a cat-o'-nine tails as a blessed exchange, and be ready to hug the drummers who applied it. This was exactly the case with Spain, long drained by war-contributions and ravaged by contending factions. From her state of exhaustion and suffering she had not had time to recover during the honest and conscientious, but brief and too gentle rule of Espartero. Never was there a finer chance for a party coming into power than the Christinos or Moderados had, when they seized the reins. The ball was at their foot, and they had but to pick it up. Instead of that, they kicked it away. A little of the moderation their political designation implies – a little, a very little, of the patriotism and disinterestedness always so loud in their mouths, and so wanting in their deeds, and they might have won the hearts of their weary, war-worn countrymen. That moderation – they had it not, and when vaunting their patriotism they thought only of their profit. No sooner were they in power than they abandoned themselves to their vicious instincts, and thought but of filling their pockets. Christina reverted to her old system of unscrupulous appropriation; Narvaez, having filled the higher military grades with his creatures, and made the army his own by pampering and flattery, gave free play to the unbounded brutality of his nature. Universal corruption became the order of the day, extending through every administration, from the minister of the crown down to subalterns and clerks. The revenue, increasing in the very teeth of Spanish financiers – and which, by the commonest honesty and the most ordinary amount of ability, might soon have been rendered sufficient to meet the expenditure of the country, and the long-neglected claims of the foreign creditor – was so extravagantly collected, and paid tribute to so many infamous peculators, that it was hardly recognisable in the reduced form in which it ultimately reached the treasury. The country groaned, the honest were indignant, the oppressed murmured, the boldest plotted. Groans and indignation, murmurs and plots, were alike in vain; alike they were arbitrarily silenced and crushed. Narvaez and his bayonets were there, keeping the peace; whilst Christina and her friends, with smooth and smiling countenances, picked up the doubloons. Quick! a short shrift and a sharp cartridge for the first who speaks above his breath. This did for a time, and might have done longer, for in Spain he who holds the purse holds the power: besides which, the red breeks of King Louis Philippe's cohorts showed menacingly along the Pyrenees; and Lord Palmerston, although he had been so scurvily treated in the matter of the marriages, might still, it was thought, be induced, in case of need, to send a frigate or two, and a battalion of marines, to protect his old ally Christina, should any serious rebellion break out. But one morning the Parisians turned their king out of his house; and the day afterwards, the Spanish government, whilst labouring under delirium of some kind, ejected Mr Bulwer from his; thus throwing, as the saying goes, the haft after the blade, quarrelling with England at the very moment they most needed her assistance, and remaining exposed, without hope of succour, to the assaults and machinations of their numerous enemies. Whereupon there was an immediate cocking of every Carlist beaver in or out of Spain. The old chiefs, who for six years had starved and struggled in the cause of their king, (succumbing finally before a general's treachery rather than to the arms of their foes,) looked out from the nooks where they long had rusted in retirement or exile, and more than one was heard, in the words of the old Jacobite song,

To shout to the north, where his leader shall roam —