"I well of slavery with Pitt, who was his intimate friend. remember," he writes, "after a conversation in the open air at the root of an old tree at Holwood, just above the steep descent into the vale of Keston, I resolved to give notice on a fit occasion in the House of Commons of my intention to bring the subject forward." In the beautiful spot where those two friends sate there is now a stone seat with an inscription, commemorating the conversation which led to such great results. The fight lasted for twenty years before Wilberforce and his allies succeeded. At the end of that time the British trade in slaves was put an end to. No more slaves could be torn from their homes, or sold in the market; but it was more than twenty years longer before slavery itself was abolished in every colony and dependency belonging to England. Not till then could it be boasted that the moment a slave sets foot on English soil he is free. In the very year that slavery was abolished William Wilberforce died. His heart was good to the last, and though his strength had failed, and his bright eye was dimmed, his interest in the cause never abated. It happened to be said in the old man's hearing that "at this moment, probably, the debate on slavery is just commencing," when he sprung from his chair, and with his clear voice startled his surrounding friends by enthusiastically exclaiming, "Hear, hear, hear." 1833. Slavery abolished. Greater 14. Though England had lost a great part of her dominions in North America, she continued to spread abroad in other lands. She gained more and more of India, and the whole island of Ceylon; and she began to plant colonies in New Zealand, Australia, and Tasmania; all these are sometimes very well called "Greater Britain." Thus, though at the end of the many wars with France during all these reigns, both countries left off in Europe about as they had begun, neither of them being much larger or smaller; yet on the whole, looking at the map of the world, England had grown enormously, while France had scarcely grown at all. France is very clever at annex ing, and attaching to her the people she annexes, which England is not; but she is not so clever at colonizing, or taking root in other lands; that is the great forte of England. 15. Soon another and very serious war broke out with France. That country was now in a most deplorable state. The king and the aristocracy had long had their own way; it has been mentioned before how the trading classes and the peasantry were oppressed; how proud and cruel the nobles were; how careless and extravagant the court was; while the poor were ground down to the earth. The clergy and the nobles paid no taxes; all the work and all the money were wrung out of the miserable, starving peasants. The English, half pitiful, half contemptuous, described the state of the French people in two words-" slavery and wooden shoes." The very type and centre of oppression was the Bastile, a great prison fortress in Paris. The king could imprison any one he chose in its strong and gloomy dungeons without any trial, without even telling the victim what was his offence. A sealed letter from the king was enough to tear an innocent man from his home and happiness and bury him alive. The cruel nobles could easily get those sealed letters, and so rid themselves of any one who stood in their way. The English, strong in their own liberty, looked on with wondering indignation. Cowper, the gentlest of Christian poets, wrote thus of the Bastile :— 1785. 1789. The French Revolution. "Ye horrid towers, the abode of broken hearts, There's not an English heart that would not leap 16. At last the French nation would bear it no longer, and the great Revolution began. Four years after Cowper's lines were written the Bastile was stormed, and of those "dungeons and cages of despair" not one stone was left upon another which was not thrown down. How could England but rejoice when she saw France striving to obtain what she herself had so long enjoyed-liberty, justice, and protection for rich and poor? 17. We saw in a former lecture how the spirit of humanity had awakened of late. Even those who were less directly religious in the ordinary sense were full of this genThe feeling erosity and enthusiasm. Of course, then, they felt of England. keenly for the French. The young poets of England thought the Golden Age was coming, that henceforth all would be brothers. Wordsworth, who was living in France when the Revolution broke out, threw himself heart and soul into the cause, and indeed narrowly escaped being massacred. Coleridge burst out into glorious song. "O ye loud waves! and O ye forests high! And O ye clouds that far above me soared! Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be, "When France in wrath her giant limbs upreared, A preacher in London, carried away with joy, after thanking God that he had lived to see it, exclaimed, "I could almost say, 'Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.'" The statesmen of England felt a like thrill of generous sympathy. The more they gloried in their own constitution, and in the Revolution of 100 years before, which had secured it to them, the more they loved the liberty which was an Englishman's birthright, so much the more did they wish other countries to share in such blessings. Pitt and Fox. 18. Pitt, who was now the foremost man in England, hoped great things from the Revolution; he expected to see France stand forth " as one of the most brilliant of European powers." Of the few who could approach him in genius and eloquence, the most notable were Fox and Burke. Fox was one of the most generous, affectionate, and noble-hearted of men. His private life, in his young days at least, was full of faults, and yet everybody loved him. His whole soul overflowed with pity for human sorrow and hatred of cruelty and oppression. When the Revolution began he cried enthusiastically, "How much is it the greatest event that ever happened in the world, and how much the best!" 1792. 19. But after a year or two the French became so furious and committed such awful crimes that the English were horrified. The French king and queen, who in a vague way meant well, but were quite helpless in the face of a wild and raging nation, were dragged down the torrent and put to death. Innumerable people, many of them perfectly innocent, were massacred. Burke. 20. Now England began to shrink back. Burke, whose name was known through all Europe as the champion of freedom and justice, was appalled. He at first gazed with astonishment at the French struggle, hardly knowing whether to praise or blame. But he drew back aghast before all this brutality and savagery. The fate of the queen stirred his whole heart. He had seen her years before, when she first came to France, a beautiful young girl. "I saw her," he wrote, “just above the horizon, glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendour and joy. . . . I thought ten thousand swords would have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult." He saw in her fall the fall of "chivalry." In a sense he no doubt saw truly. That fatal flaw in chivalry which we noticed centuries ago in its palmy days, the sharp separation of classes, the honour to ladies and gentlemen," the scorn of the poor, had gone on widening and widening, till the great crash came. "Never, never more," said Burke, "shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive even in servitude the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone. . . . Their liberty is not liberal. Their science is presumptuous ignorance. Their humanity is savage and brutal." 21. Were those sad words true? Was chivalry really dead? or was it soon to begin a higher and a wider life? Reverence for rank and birth might be abating, but surely a nobler and more manly reverence was arising. If, as Burke complained, "on this scheme of things a king is but a man," the new chivalry would see something to honour in every man; if “a queen is but a woman," the new chivalry would render homage to every woman. In every man and every woman, the poorest and the weakest, would be seen the trace of "the image of God." 22. Such hopes, or some such hopes, might have been in the minds of the French and of those who sympathized with them, but the terrible course which events took as the Revolution progressed soon smothered them all. Some of the lower and discontented people in England were still inclined to side with France, but they were put down and kept down by the strong hand. All the upper classes, all the middle classes, in fact, almost all England, were indignant and alarmed. The French Revolutionists, on their part, wanted to force their principles on all the world, and invited all nations to rise against their governments, and so England and France were soon at war again. Pitt hoped for peace to the last, but it could not be; the two countries were each longing for the combat, and though France actually declared war, England was only too eager to accept it. 1793. War declared. LECTURE LV.-THE LAST WAR WITH FRANCE. The English sailors. 1. PITT remained at the head of everything, but he did not know how to manage a war. Things went on very ill; the allies of England were not to be depended upon, and every one grew discontented. It was only at sea that England prospered. Our navy was, as it ever has been, the pride of the nation, and it was worthy of its old fame. The sailors indeed were very hardly treated. In those days men were pressed, or seized by force, to serve on the ships; but this custom has long been put an end to, and England is unlike the other countries of Europe in this, that no man is forced to be either soldier or sailor against his will. On board ship at that time the sailors had many grievances, and more than once they mutinied very seriously for better pay and better treatment. Nelson. 2. But when they were in the face of the enemy they showed their gallant English hearts. The brave sailors had brave captains to lead them. The most famous of all was Lord Nelson, who won the two great battles of the Nile and Trafalgar. They say he had a bold, dauntless spirit from his infancy. When quite a young child he was lost in a thunder-storm; after he was found, and his friends asked him if he was not afraid, the little fellow answered, "Afraid! what does that mean?" He was as kind as he was brave. In the Battle of the Nile he was wounded, and carried off the deck to be attended to. The surgeon left a sailor whose wounds he was dressing, and turned to the admiral. But "No," said Nelson, "I will take my turn with my brave fellows." That was the sort of man sailors would live and die for. 1798. Battle of the Nile. 3. His last great victory saved England from the fear of a French |