But the canker had eaten so deeply into their souls that it culminated in fierce riots breaking out in Lancashire and London which spread to other parts and were only suppressed by measures that are familiar to the arrogant despots who, by their clumsy acts, are the immediate cause of revolt.  Pitt and Castlereagh were the High Commissioners of the military spirit which the Whigs detested, and when the former died in 1806 the latter became the natural leader.

Pitt was buried peaceably enough in the Abbey, but when his successor’s tragic end came in 1822, the populace avenged themselves of the wrongs for which they believed he was responsible by throwing stones at the coffin as it was being solemnly borne to its last resting place beside William Pitt.  Both men made war on Napoleon because they believed him to be the implacable disturber of peace and a danger to their country.  Pitt, as we have seen, left among his MS. his opinion of the great soldier, and here is the latter’s opinion of Pitt, expressed to his ministers on the eve of his leaving Paris for his last campaign against his relentless foes.

“I do not know,” he said (to his ministers in speaking to them of the new constitution he had granted), “how in my absence you will manage to lead the Chambers.  Monsieur Fouche thinks that popular assemblies are to be controlled by gaining over some old jobbers, or flattering some young enthusiasts.  That is only intrigue, and intrigue does not carry one far.  In England, such means are not altogether neglected; but there are greater and nobler ones.  Remember Mr. Pitt, and look at Lord Castlereagh!  With a sign from his eyebrows, Mr. Pitt could control the House of Commons, and so can Lord Castlereagh now!  Ah! if I had such instruments, I should not be afraid of the Chambers.  But have I anything to resemble these?"[22]

This piece of pathetic history is given to us by the French historian, M. Thiers, the lifelong enemy of his Imperial master, Napoleon III.  We are faced now with the Power that we helped to build up against ourselves at the expense of the wreck of the First French Empire.

The political situation then and now bears no comparison.  We made war on the French without any real justification, and stained our high sense of justice by driving them to frenzy.  We bought soldiers and sailors to fight them from impecunious German and Hanoverian princes.  We subsidized Russia, Prussia, Austria, Portugal, Spain, and that foul cesspool, Naples, at the expense of the starvation of the poorest classes in our own country.  The bellicose portion of the population, composed mainly of the upper and middle classes, shrieked their deluded terrors of extinction into the minds of the people and believed that if we did not make common cause with the downtrodden sanctified allies who were fighting a man-eating ogre who was overrunning their respective countries, putting every one to the sword, we should become the objects of his fierce attention, be invaded and ground down to slavery for ever and ever.  Our statesmen, hypocritically full of the gospel of pity, could not speak of our ally of other days without weeping, while at the same time pouring further subsidies into their greedy traitorous laps, in order that they might secure their co-ordination.