It was in the eighteenth century that the expansion of England advanced most rapidly. If therefore we would understand the nature of that expansion, and measure how much it absorbed of the energy and vitality of the nation, we cannot do better than consult the records of the eighteenth century. Those records too, if I mistake not, will acquire new interest from being regarded from this point of view.
I constantly remark, both in our popular histories and in occasional allusions to the eighteenth century, what a faint and confused impression that period has left upon the national memory. In a great part of it we see nothing but stagnation. The wars seem to lead to nothing, and we do “not perceive the working of any new political ideas. That time seems to have created little, so that we can only think of it as pros- perous, but not as memorable. Those dim figures George I. and George II., the long tame administra-
LECT. II ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUKY 21 tions of Walpole and Pelham, the commercial war with Spain, the battles of Dettingen and Fontenoy, the foolish Prime Minister Newcastle, the dull brawls of the Wilkes period, the miserable American war ; everywhere alike we seem to remark a want of great ness, a distressing commonness and flatness in men and in affairs. But what we chiefly miss is unity. In France the corresponding period has just as little greatness, but it has unity ; it is intelligible ; we can describe it in one word as the age of the approach of the Eevolution. But what is the English eighteenth century, and what has come of it? What was ap- proaching then 1 But do we take the right way to discover the unity of a historical period 1 We have an unfortunate habit of distributing historical afiairs under reigns. We do this mechanic ally, as it were, even in periods where we recognise, nay, where we exaggerate, the insignificance of the monarch. The first Georges were, in my opinion, by no means so insignificant as is often supposed, but even the most influential sovereign has seldom a right to give his name to an age. Much miscon ception, for example, has arisen out of the expression. Age of Louis XIV. The first step then in arranging and dividing any period of English history is to get rid of such useless headings as Keign of Queen Anne, Reign of George I., Reign of George II. In place of these we must study to put divisions founded upon some real stage of progress in the national life. We must look onward not from king to king, but from 22 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leoT.
great event to great event. And in order to do this we must estimate events, measure their greatness ; a thing which cannot be done without considering them and analysing them closely. When with respect to any event we have satisfied ourselves that it deserves to rank among the leading events of the national history, the next step is to trace the causes by which it was produced. In this way each event takes the character of a development, and each development of this kind furnishes a chapter to the national history, a chapter which will get its name from the event.
For a plain example of the principle take the reign of George III. What can be more absurd than to treat this long period of sixty years as if it had any historical unity, simply because one man was king during the whole of iti What then are we to substitute for the king as a principle of division 1 Evidently great events. One part of the reign will make a chapter by itself as the period of the loss of America, another as that of the struggle with the French Revolution.
But in a national history there are large as well as smaller divisions. Besides chapters there are, as it were, books or parts. This is because the great events, when examined closely, are seen to be con- nected with each other; those which are chrono logically nearest to each other are seen to be similar ; they fall into groups, each of which may be regarded as a single complex event, and the complex events give their names to the parts, as the simpler events II ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUKT 23 give their names to the separate chapters, of the history.
In some periods of history this process is so easy that we perform it almost unconsciously. The events bear their significance written on their face, and the connection of events is also obvious. When you read the reign of Louis XV. of France, you feel without waiting to reason that you are reading of the fall of the French Monarchy. But in other parts of history the clue is less easy to find, and it is here that we feel that embarrassment and want of interest which, as I have said. Englishmen are conscious of when they look back upon their eighteenth century. In most cases of this kind the fault is in the reader ; he would be interested in the period if he had the clue to it, and he would find the clue if he sought it deliberately. We are to look then at the great events of the eighteenth century, examine each to see its precise significance, and compare them together with a view to discovering any general tendency there may be. I speak roughly of course when I say the eighteenth century. More precisely I mean the period which begins with the Revolution of 1688 and ends with the peace of 1815. Now what are the great events during this period? There are no revolutions. In the way of internal disturbance all that we find is two abortive Jacobite insurrections in 1715 and 1745. There is a change of dynasty, and one of an unusual kind, but it is accomplished peacefully by Act of Parliament. The great events are all of one sort, they are foreign wars.
24 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND leot.
These wars are on a much larger scale than any which England had waged before, since the Hundred Years’ War of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They are also of a more formal business-like kind than earlier wars. For England has now for the first \l time a standing army and navy. The great English navy first took definite shape in the wars of the Commonwealth, and the English Army, founded on the Mutiny Bill, dates from the reign of William III.
Between the Kevolution and the Battle of Waterloo it may be reckoned that we waged seven great wars, of which the shortest lasted seven years and the longest about twelve. Out of a hundred and twenty six years, sixty-four years, or more than half, were spent in war.
That these wars were on a greater scale than any which had preceded, may be estimated by the burden which they laid upon the country. Before this period England had of course often been at war ; still at the commencement of it England had no consider- able debt—her debt was less than a million—but at the end of this period, in 1817, her debt amounted to eight hundred and forty millions. And you are to beware of taking even this large amount as measuring the expensiveness of the wars. Eight hundred and forty millions was not the cost of the wars; it was only that part of the cost which the nation could not meet at once; but an enormous amount had been paid at once. And yet this debt alone, contracted in a period of a hundred and twenty years, is equivalent to seven millions a yearII ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUKY 25 spent on war during the whole time, while for a good part of the eighteenth century the whole annual cost of government did not exceed seven millions.
This series of great wars is evidently the characteristic feature of the period, for not only dof;s it begin with this period, but also appears to end with it. Since 1815 we have had local wars in India and some of our colonies, but of struggles against great European Powers, such as this period saw seven times, we have only seen one in a period more than half as long, and it lasted but two years.
Let us pass these wars in review. There was first the European war in which England was involved by the Eevolution of 1688. It is pretty well remembered, since the story of it has been told by Macaulay. It lasted eight years, from 1689 to 1697. There was then the great war called from the Spanish Succession, which we shall always remember, because it was the war of Marlborough’s victories. It lasted eleven years, from 1702 to 1713. The ^2 next great war has now passed almost entirely out of 1^ memory, not having brought to light any very great commander, nor achieved any definite result. But we have all heard speak of the fable of Jenkins’ ears, and we have heard of the battles of Dettingcn and Fontenoy, though perhaps few of us could give a rational account either of the reason for fighting them ^or of the result that came of them. And yet this war too lasted nine years, from 1739 to 1748. Next / “r comes the Seven Years’ War, in which we have not forgotten the victories of Frederick. In the English
26 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect.
part of it we all remember one grand incident, the battle of the Heights of Abraham, the death of Wolfe, and the conquest of Canada. And yet in the case of this war also it may be observed how much the eighteenth century has faded out of our imagin ations. We have quite forgotten that that victory was one of a long series, which to contemporaries seemed fabulous, so that the nation came out of the struggle intoxicated with glory, and England stood upon a pinnacle of greatness which she had never reached before. We have forgotten how, through all that remained of the eighteenth century, the nation looked back upon those two or three splendid years^ as upon a happiness that could never return, and how long it continued to be the unique boast of the Englishman That Chatham’s language was his mother-tongue And Wolfe’s great heart compatriot with his own.
This is the fourth war. It is in sharp contrast with the fifth, which we have tacitly agreed to mention as / seldom as we can. What we call the American war, which from the first outbreak of hostilities to the Peace of Paris lasted eight years, from 1775 to 1783, ^ Mark how the unenthusiastic “Walpole writes of them " Intrigues of the Cabinet or of Parliament scarcely existed at that period. All men were, or seemed to be, transported with the success of their country, and content with an Administration which outwent their warmest wishes or made their jealousy ashamed to show itself. One episode indeed there was, in which less heroic aifections were concerned … it will diversify the story, and by the intermixture of human passions serve to convince posterity that such a display of immortal actions as illustrate the following pages is not the exhibition of a fabulous age.” II ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 27 was indeed ignominious enough in America, but iu its latter part it spread into a grand naval war, in which England stood at bay against almost all the world, and in this, through the victories of Eodney, we came off with some credit. The sixth and seventh are the two great wars with Revolutionary France, which we are not likely to forget, though we ought to keep them more separate in our minds than we do. The first lasted nine years from 1793 to 1802, the second twelve, from 1803 to 1815.
Now probably it has occurred to few of us to connect these wars together, or to look for any unity of plan or purpose pervading them. If such a thought did occur, we should probably find ourselves hopelessly baffled in our first attempts. In one war the question appears to be of the method of suc- cession to the CroAvn of Spain, in another war of the Austrian succession and of the succession to the Empire. But if there seems so far some resemblance, what have these succession questions to do with the right of search claimed by the Spaniards along the Spanish Main, or the limits of Acadie, or the principles of the French Revolution? And as the grounds of quarrel seem quite accidental, so we are bewildered by the straggling haphazard character of the wars themselves. Hostilities may break out in the Low Countries or in the heart of Germany, but the war is waged, so it seems, anywhere or every- where, at Madras, or at the mouth of the St, Lawrence, or on the banks of the Ohio. Thus Macaulay says in speaking of Frederick’s invasion of 28. EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect.
Silesia, " In order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel and red men scalped each other by the Great Lakes of North America.” On a first survey such is the confused appearance which these wars present.
But look a little closer, and after all you will discover some uniformities. For example, out of these seven wars of England five are wars with France from the beginning, and both the other two, though the belligerent at the outset was in the first Spain and in the second our own colonies, yet became in a short time and ended as wars with France.
Now here is one of those general facts which we are in search of. The full magnitude of it is not usually perceived, because the whole middle part of the eighteenth century has passed too much into oblivion. We have not forgotten that there were two great wars with France just about the junction of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and two other great wars with France about the junction of the seventeenth and eighteenth, but we have half forgotten that near the middle of the eighteenth century there Avas another great war of England and France, and that, as prelude and afterpiece to this war, there was a war with Spain which turned into a war with France, and a war with America which turned into a war with France. The truth is, these wars group themselves very symmetrically, and the whole period stands out as an age of ^^aiitio rivalry_ between England and France, a kind of second
n ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 29 Hundred Years’ War. In fact in those times and down to our own memory the eternal discord of England and France appeared so much a law of nature that it was seldom spoken of. The wars of their own times, blending with a vague recollection of Cr^cy, Poictiers and Agincourt, created an im pression in the minds of those generations, that England and France always had been at war and \y always would be. But this was a pure illusion. In^ the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries England and France had not been these persistent enemies. The two states had often been in alliance against Spain. In the seventeenth century an Anglo-French Alliance had been almost the rule. Elizabeth and Henri IV. are allies, Charles I. has a French queen, Cromwell acts in concert with Mazarin, Charles II. and James II. make themselves dependent upon Louis XIV.
But may not this frequent recurrence of war with France have been a mere accident, arising from the nearness of France and the necessary frequency of collisions with her % On examination you will find that it is not merely accidental, but that these wars are connected together in internal causation as well as in time. It is rather the occasional cessation of war that is accidental ; the recurrence is natural and inevitable. There is indeed one long truce of twenty seven years after the Peace of Utrecht ; this was the natural effect of the exhaustion in which all Europe was left by the war of the Spanish Succession, a war almost as great in comparison with the then magnitude 30 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT.
of the European states as the great struggle with Napoleon. But when this truce was over we may almost regard all the wars which followed as con stituting one war interrupted by occasional pauses. ‘At any rate the three wars between 1740 and 1783, those commonly called the War of the Austrian Succession, the Seven Years’ War and the American War, are, so far as they are wars of England and France, intimately connected together, and form as it were a trilogy of wars. I call your attention par ticularly to this, because this group of wars, considered as one great event with a single great object and result, supplies just the grand feature which that time seems so sadly to want. It is only our own blindness and perversity which leads us to overlook the grandeur of that phase in our history, while we fix our eyes upon petty domestic occurrences, parliamentary quarrels, party intrigue, and court gossip. It so happens that the accession of George III. falls in the middle of this period, and seems to us, in consequence of our childish mode of arranging history, to create a division, where there is no real division, but rather unusually manifest continuity. And as in parliamentary and party politics the accession of George III. really did make a consider- able epoch, and the temptation of our historians is always to write the history rather of the Parliament than of the State and nation, a false scent misleads us here, and we remain quite blind to one of the grandest and most memorable turning-points in our history, I say these wars make one grand_^nd II ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CEIJTURY 31 decisive^struggle between England and France. For look at the facts. Nominally the first of these three wars was ended by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. Nominally there followed eight years of peace between England and France. But really it was not so at all. Whatever virtue the treaty of Aix-la- Chapelle may have had towards settling the quarrels of the other European Powers concerned in the war, it scarcely interrupted for a moment the conflict between England and France. It scarcely even appeared to do so, for the great question of the boundary of the English and French settlements in America, of the limits of Acadie and Canada, was disputed with just as much heat after the Treaty as before it. And not in words only but by arms, just as much as if war were still going on. Moreover, what I remark of the American frontier is equally true of another frontier, along which at that time the English and French met each other, namely in India. It is a remarkable, little-noticed fact that some of the most memorable encounters between the English and the French which have ever taken place in the course of their long rivalry, some of the classic occurrences of our military history, took place in these eight years when nominally England and France were at peace. We have all heard how the French built Fort Duquesne on the Ohio River, how our colony of Virginia sent a body of 400 men under the command of George Washington, then a very young man and a British subject, to attack it, and how Washington was surrounded and forced to capitulate. We have 32 , EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect.
heard too of the defeat and death of General Braddock in the same parts. Still better do we remember the struggle between Dupleix and Clive in India, the defence of Arcot and the deeds which led to the founding of our Indian Empire. All these events were part of a desperate struggle for supremacy ~/^” between England and France, but you will find that most of them took place after the Treaty of Aix-la- Chapelle in 1748 and before the commencement of the second war in 1756.
We have then one great conflict lasting from 1744 or a little earlier to the Peace of Paris in 1763 through a period of about twenty years. It ended in the most disastrous defeat that has ever, in modern times, been suffered by France except in 1870, a defeat which in fact sealed the fate of the House of Bourbon. But fifteen years later, and just within the lifetime of the great statesman who had guided us to victory, England and France were at war again. France entered into relations with our insurgent colonies, acknowledged their independence, and as- sisted them with troops. Once more for five years there was Avar by land and sea between England and France. But are we to suppose that this was a wholly new war, and not rather a sort of after-swell of the great disturbance that had so recently been stilled? It was not for a moment dissembled that France now in our hour of distress took vengeance for what she had suffered from us. This was her revenge for the loss of Canada, namely, to create the United States. In the words which on a later occasion tl ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 33 became so celebrated, she " called a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old." Thus these three great wars are more clearly connected together than they might appear to be. But how closely connected they are we shall not see until we ask ourselves what the ground of quarrel was, and whether the same gi-ound of quarrel runs under all of them. At first sight it appears to be other^vise. For the war of England and France does not at any time stand, out distinct and isolated, but ,’ ^is mixed up with other wars which are going on at) the same time. Such immense complex medleys are characteristic of the eighteenth century. What, for instance, can the capture of Quebec have to do with the struggle of Frederick and Maria Theresa for Silesia ? In such medleys there is great room for historical mistakes, for premature generalisation. What is really at issue may be misunderstood ; as for instance, when we remark that in the Seven Years’ War all the Protestant Powers of Europe were ranged on one side, we should go very far astray if we tried to make out that it was Protestantism that prevailed in India or in Canada over the spirit of Catholicism.
I said that the expansion of England in the New World and in Asia is the formula which sums up for England the history of the eighteenth century. I point out now that the great triple war of the middle of that century is neither more nor less than the^ / great decisive duel between England and France for i ^ the possession of the New World. It was perhaps / 34 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect.
scarcely perceived at the time, as it has been seldom remarked since ; but the explanation of that second Hundred Years’ War between England and France which fills the eighteenth century is this, that they were rival candidates for the possession of the New World, and the triple war which fills the middle of the century is, as it were, the decisive campaign in that great world-struggle.
~- We did not take possession of North America simply because we found it empty and had more ships than other nations by which we might carry colonists into it. Not indeed that we conquered it ^ ‘; from another Power which already had possession of j it. But we had a competitor in the work of settlement, a competitor who in some respects had I 1 got the start of us, namely France. L The simple fact about North America is this, that about the same time that James I. was giving charters to Virginia and New England the French were founding farther North the two settlements of Acadie and Canada, and again, about the time that William Penn got his Charter for Pennsylvania from Charles II., the Frenchman La Salle, by one of the greatest feats of discovery, made his way from the Great Lakes to the sources of the Mississippi, and putting his boats upon the stream descended the whole vast river to the Gulf of Mexico, laying open a great territory, which immediately afterwards became the French colony of Louisiana. Such was the relation of France and England in North America, at the time when the Revolution of 1688 openedII ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 35 what I have called the Second Hundred Years’ War ) of England and France. England had a row of thriving colonies l3ang from North to South along the Eastern coast, but France had the two great rivers, the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi. A political prophet comparing the prospects of the two colon ising Powers at the time of the Revolution, and indeed much later, might have been led by observing what an advantage the two rivers gave to France to think that in the future North America would belong to her rather than to England. _ .
But now it is most important to observe further » that not only in America, but in Asia also, France and England in that age advanced side by side. The conquest of India by English merchants seems a unique and abnormal phenomenon, but we should be mistaken if we supposed that there was anything peculiarly English, either in the originality which conceived the idea or in the energy which carried it into execution. So far as an idea of conquering India was deliberately conceived, it was conceived bvj Frenchmen; Frenchmen first perceived that it was feasible and saw the manner in which it could be done ; Frenchmen first set about it and advanced some way towards accomplishing it. In India indeed they had the start of us much more decidedly than in North America ; in India we had at the outset a sense of inferiority in comparison with them, and fouglit in a spirit of hopeless self-defence. And I find, when I study the English conquest of India, that we were actuated neither by ambition nor yet 36 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect.
by mere desire to advance our trade, but that from first to last—that is, from the first efforts of Clive to the time when Lord Wellesley, Lord Minto and Lord Hastings established our authority over the whole vast peninsula—we were actuated by fear of the French. Behind every movement of the native Powers we saw French intrigue, French gold, French ambition, and never, until we were masters of the whole country, got rid of that feeling that the French were driving us out of it, which had descended from the days of Dupleix and Labourdonnais. This fact then that, both in America and in Asia, France and England stood in direct competition for a prize of absolutely incalculable value, explains the fact that France and England fought a second Hundred Years’ War. This is the ultimate ex- planation, but the true ground of discord was not always equally apparent even to the belligerents themselves, and still less to the rest of the world. For as in other ages so in this, occasional causes of difference frequently arose between such near neigh bours, causes often sufficient by themselves to produce a war ; and it was only in those three wars of the middle of the eighteenth century that they fought quite visibly and apparently on the question of the New World. In the earlier wars of William HI and of Anne other causes are more, or certainly not less, operative, for the New World quarrel is not yet at its height. And again in the later wars, tliat is the two that followed the French Revolution, the question of the New World is again falling into the back- II ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 37 ground, because France has fairly lost her hold both upon America and India, and can now do no more than make despairing efforts to regain it. But in] those three wars between 1740 and 1783 the struggle, as between England and France, is entirely for the New World. In the first of them the issue is fairly joined ; in the second France suffers her fatal fall ; in the third she takes her signal revenge. This is the grand chapter in the history of Greater Britain, for it is the first gi’eat struggle in which the Empire fights as a whole, the colonies and settlements outside Europe being here not merely dragged in the wake of the mother-country, but actually taking the lead. We ought to register this event with a very broad mark in our Calendar of the eighteenth century. The principal and most decisive incidents of it belong to the latter half of the reign of George II.
But in our wars with Louis XIV. before and in our wars with the French Eevolution afterwards, it will be found on examination that, much more than might be supposed, the real bone of contention between England and France is the New World.^ The colonial question had indeed been growing in magnitude throughout the seventeenth century, while the other burning question of that age, the quarrel of the two Churches, had been falling somewhat into the background. Thus when Cromwell made war on Spain, it is a question whether he attacked her as the great Catholic PoAver or as the great monopolist of the New World. In the same age the two great Protestant Powers, England and Holland, who ought 38 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND lect.
in the interest of religion to have stood side by side, are found waging furious war upon each other as rival colonial Powers. Now it was by the great discovery and settlement of Louisiana in 1683 that France was brought into the forefront of colonial Powers, and within six years of that event the /Hundred Years’ War of England and France began. In the first war of the series however, though it stands marked in histories of North America as the “first intercolonial war,” the colonial question is not very prominent. But it is prominent in the second, which has been called the War of the Spanish Suc cession. We must not be misled by this name. Much has been said of the wicked waste of blood and treasure of which we were guilty, when we inter- fered in a Spanish question with which we had no concern, or terrified ourselves with a phantom of French Ascendency which had no reality. How much better, it has been said, to devote ourselves to the civilising pursuits of trade ! But read in Ranke ^ how the war broke out. You will find that it was precisely trade that led us into it. The Spanish Succession touched us because France threatened, by establishing her influence in Spain, to enter into the Spanish monopoly of the New World and to shut us irrevocably out of it. Accordingly the great practical results of this war to England were colonial, namely, the conquest of Acadie and the Asicnto contract,
- Better still in Europdische Oeschichte im %ten Jahrhunderte, by C. V. Noonlen, in wliicli book that great European transition ia for the first time adequately treated.
II ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH GENTUKY 39 which for the first time made England on the great scale a slave-trading Power.
Not less true is it of our wars with the French Revolution and with Napoleon, that the possession of the New World was among the grounds of quarrel. As in the American war France avenges on England her expulsion from the New World, so under Napoleon she makes Titanic efforts to recover her lost place there. This indeed is Napoleon’s fixed \ view with regard to England. He sees in England never the island, the European State, but always the World - Empire, the network of dependencies and colonies and islands covering every sea, among which he was himself destined to find at last his prison and his grave. Thus when in 1798 he was put in charge for the first time of the war with England, he begins by examining the British Channel, and no doubt glances at Ireland. But what he sees does not tempt him, although a few months afterward Ireland broke out in a terrible rebellion, during which if the conqueror of Italy had suddenly landed at the head of a French army, undoubtedly he would have struck a heavier blow at England than any she has yet suffered. His mind is preoccupied with other thoughts. He remembers how France once seemed on the point of conquering India, until England ^ checked her progress ; accordingly he decides and convinces the Directory that the best way to carry on ^ In liis Corsica!! period lie had actually dicained of entering the Anglo-Indian service and coining back a rich nabob. See Jung, Lricien Bonapa/rte et ses Memoi/res 1. p. 74.
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the contest with England is by occupying Egypt, and at the same time by stirring up Tippoo Sultan to war with the Calcutta Government. And he actually carries out this plan, so that the whole struggle is transferred from the British Channel into the boundless spaces of Greater Britain, and when the Irish shortly afterwards rise, ihey find to their bitter disappointment that France cannot spare them Bonaparte, but only General Humbert with eleven i hundred men.
When this war was brought to an end by the treaty of Amiens in 1802, the results of it were such as to make a great epoch in the history of Greater Britain. In the first place Egypt is finally evacuated by France, that is to say, Bonaparte’s grand scheme of attack against our Indian Empire has failed, his Citoyen Tipou, as he was called—had ally Tippoo been defeated and slain some time before, and General Baird had moved with an English force up the Ked Sea to take part with General Hutchinson in the expulsion of the French from Egypt. In the colonial world at the same time England remained mistress of Ceylon and Trinidad.
But the last war, that which lasted from 1803 to 1815, was this in any sense a war for the New World 1 It does not seem to be so ; and naturally, because England from the beginning had such a naval superiority, that Napoleon could never again succeed in making his way back into the New World. Never theless I believe that it was intended by Napoleon to be so. In the first place look at the origin and a ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 41 cause of it. It was at the outset a war for Malta, By the treaty of Amiens, England had engaged with in a given time to evacuate Malta, and this for certain reasons, which need not here be discussed, she afterwards refused to do. Now why did Napoleon want her to leave Malta, and why did she refuse to do so ? It was because Malta was the key of Egypt, and she had good reason to believe that he would in a moment reoccupy Egypt, and that the struggle for India would begin again. Thus the war was ulti- mately for India, though it was diverted into Germany by the Third Coalition. Moreover, though by the retention of Malta we did effectually and once for all ward off this attack, yet we did not ourselves know how successful we had been. We still believed India to be full of French intrigue ; we believed the Mahratta and Afghan princes and the Persian Shah to be puppets worked by the French, as indeed they had many French officers in their service. Probably the great Mahratta War of 1803 seemed to Lord Wellesley to be a part of the war with France, and probably Arthur Wellesley believed that at Assaye and Argaum he struck at the same enemy as after- wards at Salamanca and Waterloo. The fact is that Napoleon’s intention in this war is obscured to us by the grand failure of the maritime enterprise which he has planned, and the grand success of the German campaign which he has not planned. He drifts in a direction he does not intend, yet the Continental Sj’stem and the violent seizure of Spain and Portugal (great New World Powers) show that he does not forget his 42 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND LECT.
original object. Moreover, Colonel Malleson shows in his Later Struggles of France in the East, what a destructive privateering war the French were able to keep up in the Indian Ocean from their island of Mauritius long after their naval power had been destroyed at Trafalgar. It was by the conquest of this island and its retention at the Peace by England that the Hundred Years’ War of England and France for the New World came to an end.
This general view of the wars of the eighteenth century will show you that more is meant than might at first appear by the statement that expansion is the chief character of English history in the eighteenth century. At first it seems merely to mean that the conquest of Canada, India and South Africa are greater events in intrinsic importance than such European or domestic events as Marlborough’s war, or the succession of the House of Brunswick, or the Jacobite rebellion, or even the war with the French Revolution. It means in fact, as you will now see, that these other great events which seem to have nothing to do with the growth of Greater Britain, were really closely connected with it, and were indeed only successive moments in the great process. At first it may seem to mean that the European policy of England in that century is of less impor^ ance than its colonial policy. It really means that the European policy and the colonial policy are but different aspects of the same great national develop- ment. And this, nay even more than this, is what I desire to show. This single conception brings II ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 43 together not only the European with the colonial affairs, but also the military struggles with the whole peaceful expansion of the country, with that indus-^ trial and commercial growth, which during the same century exceeded in England all previous example. But in order to understand this it will be necessary for us to examine the peculiar nature of the English colonisation of the New World.