Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated)

by Rudyard Kipling

  Nor while their new-built cities breathed

  Secure behind her might;

  Not while she poured from Pole to Line

  Treasure and ships and men —

  These worshippers at Freedom’s shrine

  They did not quit her then!

  Not till their foes were driven forth

  By England o’er the main —

  Not till the Frenchman from the North

  Had gone, with shattered Spain;

  Not till the clean-swept ocean showed

  No hostile flag unrolled,

  Did they remember what they owed

  To Freedom — and were bold!

  Soon after the peace of 1763, we began to perceive one result of the conquest of Canadawhich few people had expected. Our American colonies, having no French to fear any longer,

  wanted to be free from our control altogether.

  They utterly refused to pay a penny of the two hundred million pounds that the war had cost us; and they equally refused to maintain a garrison of British soldiers. -They intended to shake off all our restrictions on their trade,

  and to buy and sell in whatever market they could find. When our Parliament proposed in 1764 to make them pay a small fraction of the cost of the late war, they called it “ oppression,” and prepared to rebel. “ We are Whigs,”

  they said: “Whigs always resist oppression.

  You English Whigs did so in 1688.”

  There were two results from this: In the first place, the great Whig families were already sore at King George’s attempts to take his ministers without consulting them. And, when they saw the King and his ministers set upon compelling the Americans to pay the tax,

  they began to denounce the very things of which they had formerly been the champions,

  namely, the Empire, the Army, and the Navy.

  America was right, they said, to resist such

  “oppression.” Even the great William Pitt,

  now Earl of Chatham, said this. And so the whole meanings of the words “Whig” and

  “Tory” were completely changed. The Whig

  became a person who cared little for the Empire,

  and, occasionally, even supported the enemies of his country, just as the Tory of Anne’s reign had done. And the Tories became, for a season, the true patriots, as the Whigs of

  Anne’s reign had been.

  The second result was that we had to fight our colonies, and that we failed to beat them.

  It was a hopeless business from the first. The distance was too great, the spaces of America were too vast for us to hold by force, even if we had won in battle. The quarrels in our

  Parliament were too fierce to allow of success.

  We had no great minister at home, and no great general in America. The colonists called a

  Congress at Philadelphia; declared themselves co be independent; and in 1776 took the name,

  of the “United States of America.” Blood had already been shed when this happened.

  A real hero, patient, resourceful, and brave,

  called George Washington, commanded the

  American army. We never sent enough troops;

  we had not, in fact, enough troops to send.

  Though we often won battles, we suffered some very severe disasters.

  The Americans very soon sought French help, and France was delighted at such a chance of avenging her losses in the former war. The

  French fleet, though small, had been much

  improved since that war, and was able to draw away our ships from the coast of America to all quarters of the world. We were just able to defend the rest of our Empire (except Minorca, which we now lost again); but not to beat our colonists at the same time. Spain, and even our ally Holland, soon joined France;

  and for a few months, we had the navies of all the world against us. So, when Lord Cornwallis, with seven thousand men, was obliged to surrender to a French and American force at Yorktown in 1781, we determined to withdraw from America; after which, having our hands free, we finished the naval war victoriously in other quarters of the world. Rodney smashed a great French fleet in the West

  Indies; and Lord Heathfield, at Gibraltar,

  beat off the siege of that rock, which had lasted for three years. By a treaty signed in 1783

  we acknowledged the Independence of America,

  gave back Florida and Minorca to Spain, and some small West Indian Islands, as well as

  Senegal in WTest Africa, to France. These were serious losses; yet France had been even harder hit by the war than we had been. She had hoped,

  in return for her help to receive valuable trading privileges with America; but the Americans showed no more gratitude to her than they had previously shown to us, and she received none.

  The snow lies thick on Valley Forge

  The ice on the Delaware,

  But the poor dead soldiers of King George

  They neither know nor care

  Not though the earliest primrose break

  On the sunny side of the lane,

  And scuffling rookeries awake

  Their England’s spring again.

  They will not stir when the drifts are gone

  Or the ice melts out of the bay,

  And the men that served with Washington

  Lie all as still as they.

  They will not stir though the mayflower blows

  In the moist dark woods of pine,

  And every rock-strewn pasture shows

  Mullein and columbine.

  Each for his land, in a fair fight,

  Encountered, strove, and died,

  And the kindly earth that knows no spite

  Covers them side by side.

  She is too busy to think of war;

  She has all the world to make gay,

  And, behold, the yearly flowers are

  Where they were in our fathers’ day!

  Golden-rod by the pasture wall

  When the columbine is dead,

  And sumach leaves that turn, in fall,

  Red as the blood they shed.

  All this time there were fierce quarrels in

  Parliament, between Whigs and Tories, on many questions besides the war. Every act of Government, good or bad, was torn to pieces and called “infamous” by the Whigs, some of whom sought for popularity by writing in the newspapers, and even by appealing to the passions of the London mob. That mob more than once broke loose and enjoyed some highly exciting riots, in suppressing which King George showed great personal courage. One of the cries raised at this time, both in and outside

  Parliament, was for a better representation of the people of Britain in the House of Commons. It was really a very reasonable cry,

  for the existing system was absurd.

  By that system each county sent two members to Parliament, whatever its population.

  And in the counties only actual owners of land could vote at elections. You might be enormously rich and have a long lease of an enormous estate; but unless you owned land you had no vote. Then the boroughs, which also sent two members each, were still the same towns whichhad sent members to the Tudor Parliaments.

  From many of these towns, all trade, riches and importance had long departed, and some boroughs had hardly any inhabitants at all!

  Side by side with these were great cities grown and growing up, which sent no members to Parliament. Now, if the Tories had been wise,

  they would have taken up this question, and made a proper and moderate “reform” of the

  House of Commons. The Whigs, who called themselves “champions of the people,” could hardly with decency have opposed it. But when William Pitt, the younger son of the great Minister of the Seven Years’ War, took up the question in 1785, he could get very little support from his own party. So this question fell into the hands of noisy agitators outside

  Parliament, who cried out for a “Radical

  Reform,” and got the name of “Radi
cals.”

  The ten years that followed the peace of

  1783 were years of great prosperity in Britain.

  The Americans continued to trade with us as before, though, of course, we could no longer compel them to do so. Our Indian Empire had been enormously increased since 1761 by

  Clive and Warren Hastings, and by a long line of heroic soldiers and statesmen. The

  East India Company was now a sovereign power, and the greatest military power in India.

  Parliament had begun to take notice of it, not always favourable or wise notice, and passed laws to help it to govern its territories. The

  Crown now appointed a Governor-General,

  a council, and judges for British India. One of the favourite tricks of the Whigs was to accuse the Company and its agents of cruelty,

  extortion, and so on. The first GovernorGeneral, Warren Hastings, was so accused, and though he was acquitted, his trial dragged on for many years. Still further away the voyages of

  Captain Cook had recently revealed to Europe the huge continent of Australia, the islands of New Zealand, and numerous other islands in the Pacific Ocean. Our first colonies began to be planted in Australia in 1787.

  At home great changes were beginning which were going to turn Britain from a corn-growing and wool-growing country into the workshop of the wo d. These changes have got the name of the “Industrial Revolution.” They took more than a century to work out, and the result of them has been that we now buy nearly all our food from distant lands, and buy it with the goods which we make in our great cities, principally iron, cotton, and woollen goods. It is sometimes a little difficult to arrange for an uninterrupted supply of food for forty million people. Until about the middleof the eighteenth century the south and east of England had been the richest counties. Now the north and west, South Wales and Southern

  Scotland quickly began to supplant them because in these parts iron and coal are found close together. The invention of numerous machines also began to save hand-labour,

  and weaving and spinning, which were formerly done in country cottages, were now done in great factories, which could only exist in great towns. The most important of all discoveries of this period is that of the steam engine.

  For, by the force of steam, all machines could be worked for all manufactures much more cheaply and powerfully than by hand-labour or by water-mills. England used steam in all her manufactures twenty years before any other nation, and so no other nations could at first compete with her. The sad result has been that the country districts have gradually been deserted and the towns have become more important than the farming land. But the full result was not generally realized until far into the nineteenth century. At first,

  the faster population increased in the towns,

  the greater was the demand for corn to feed it. Very little corn could yet be brought from abroad, because few countries had any corn to spare before the vast spaces of America and

  Canada were cultivated. So the price of corn began to go up and up; and, though wages went up too, they never went up fast enough.

  When the harvest fell short, the poor were often very badly off for food, and had to have relief given them out of the Poor Rates. Poor

  Rates had existed since the reign of Elizabeth,

  but had not increased much or been felt as a great burden until this period; now they began to increase enormously. There were also riots in every year of bad harvest, and many of these riots were directed against the new machinery,

  which foolish men said “took the bread out of their mouths.” In that belief the rioters made a point of breaking the machines. So, side ,

  by side with the enormous increase of the country’s wealth, there was often found increase of misery and discontent among the poor.

  Foolishly, but naturally, the poor used to blame the government and the laws for their misery. But the condition of the lowest class of the people, both in the old and the new towns, had long been attracting the attention of serious people. In the reigns of George I

  and George II, though many bishops and clergy did their duty earnestly, there were many who did not, and perhaps we may admit that the Church of England had, as a whole, rather

  “gone to sleep.” It was this which gave such

  effect to the preaching of the brothers John and

  Charles Wesley from about 1730. They went into the poorest slums and the most deserted parishes and preached, often in the open air,

  the need of repentance and the duty of listening to that message. The result was the foundation of the “Methodist” and Wesleyan

  Communities, which gradually grew into dissenting churches, separated, much against the original intentions of their founder, from the

  National Church. John Wesley lived to a great age and continued to preach till the day of his death in 1791.

  It was during the long ministry of William :

  Pitt the younger, the son of the man who won j

  Canada for us, that these great changes began ‘

  to bear their first fruit. Pitt was Prime Minister from 1783 to 1801, and again from 1804 to

  1806. For nine years he kept the peace, and undertook an infinite number of valuable reforms in every department of the State save one. He simplified taxes and the Customs’

  duties and the method of collecting them;

  he began to pay off the National Debt. He tried to reform the House of Commons, to abolish the cruel trade of carrying slaves from

  Africa to the West Indies; he tried to pacify

  Ireland and give it perfect free trade with

  Britain; and he would have liked to abolish

  the laws which still shut out the Catholics from

  Parliament. Every wise and moderate change which took place during the nineteenth century had already been conceived by this great and wise man. But many of his proposals were upset or spoiled either by the opposition of the

  Whigs, the stupidity of the Tories, or the prejudices of King George. The one mistake

  Pitt made was in refusing to set the Army and

  Navy on a proper footing to meet a future war.

  He seemed to think that Europe was going to be at peace forever; whereas the greatest war that had ever threatened Great Britain was just going to burst upon her and continue for twenty-two years. Then all Pitt’s projects for reform had to be thrown to the winds and the nation had to harden itself to fight to the death.

  This great war was caused by the “French

  Revolution.” It was the old story of France desiring to dominate the world; and it began in this way: The French people had a series of real grievances against their clumsy, stupid,

  old-fashioned system of government by an

  “absolute” king; and they demanded a parliamentary system and a “limited” monarchy like our own. But at the first touch the whole fabric of old France fell to pieces. Kings, nobles,

  society itself were hurled down; all in the nameof some imaginary “natural rights” of everybody to have an equal share in government.

  A Republic was set up; King Louis XVI was put to death. A new kind of “Gospel” was preached; “all men are equal,” “all government is tyranny, all religion is a sham,” “down with everything and up with ourselves” (“ourselves” being the bloodthirsty mobs of Paris and other great cities). This precious Republic proceeded to offer its alliance to all the peoples of Europe who wished to abolish their kings, and “recover their liberty.” It declared war on Austria and Prussia, and began by invading Belgium and threatening Holland, which had been our ally since 1688.

  Then, at the opening of 1793, Pitt felt bound to interfere. The nation was heartily at his back. Scenes of the utmost horror and cruelty had taken place in France, and the French people, once the most civilized in Europe, seemed to have gone mad. There were a few noisy politicians in Britain, both in and outside Parliament, who sympathized with the French, and cried out for “Radical Reform” and a “Nation
al Convention” of the whole British people;

  but they were very few. The worst of them was the Whig orator, Charles Fox, who had rejoiced over every disaster of his country during the war against America. A good dealof wild nonsense was also written in some of the Whig newspapers. Daily newspapers began early in the eighteenth century; but they were still expensive, and, as yet, few of the poorer classes could read, so the newspapers used to be passed from hand to hand, or read aloud in the public-house. On the whole, the voice of the newspapers was thoroughly patriotic.

  But if there were few sympathizers with

  France in Britain, there were many in Ireland.

  Ireland still had real grievances, though during the last thirty years they had steadily been removed. She had shown little gratitude for their removal, and many Irishmen had openly sympathized with the American rebellion. In

  1782 her Parliament had been declared to be absolutely free from the laws of the British

  Parliament, and there was therefore a real danger that Ireland might refuse to go to war to help Great Britain. The Catholics were still shut out from this Parliament; but, excepting in Ulster, nearly all the poorer Irishmen were Catholics. Pitt, as I told you,

  wanted to admit Catholics to both Parliaments;

  but it was not the time to make such a great change, when Britain was in the middle of a dangerous war, and when the mass of the Irish peasants, poor, disloyal, and ignorant, were quite ready to welcome a French invasion of

  Ireland. From 1795 there was almost a state of civil war between Irish Protestants and

  Catholics; and, in 1798, the latter openly rebelled. England had very few troops to spare, and the rebellion took nearly a year to put down. French invasion was hourly expected, though only once a very few French troops were able to land. When the rebellion was over, Pitt rightly decided that the best thing for both countries was to abolish the