8. HISTORY OF THE 19TH CEN TURY. The history of the British people in the 19th century is dominated by three facts or tendencies, themselves the outcome of its past history and its physical environment: (1) a portentous development of the national re sources, resulting from the industrial revolu tion, improved agriculture, and the colonial ex pansion of the 18th and 19th centuries; (2) consequent collisions or friction with other growing nations, especially Imperial France and Imperial Germany; (3) a revolution of feeling in favor of peace, attention to domestic reforms and commercial expansion by pacific methods. These three phases of national life are closely related; the first is connected with the life of the 18th century of whose achievements scientific and mechanical, military and maritime —it was the continuation. The second or war like movement originated in the effort of an ex pansive but insular people to seek over-seas the material resources wanting at home, and prompted the efforts associated with the names of Nelson and Wellington, Dalhousie and Dufferin, John A. Macdonald, Parkes, Roberts, Kitchener and Cecil Rhodes. The third ten dency, prudential or philanthropic in its origin, has as spokesmen Fox, Bentham, Shaftesbury, Peel, Cobden and Gladstone. The following brief sketch is not intended to be a commentary on these statements; but they may be regarded as sign-posts helping the historical traveler along paths which, though far from easy, yet frequently run on parallel or converging lines.
The first 15 years of the century witnessed a phenomenal development both of the material resources of Great Britain and of the strife with France — both of them well marked features of the previous years. In the years 1801-15 the inventions of Watt, Cartwright, Trevithick and George Stevenson led to an enormous expansion of the factory system and means of locomotion. But in those same years the material resources of the land were con sumed in a struggle for national existence. The year 1803, which saw the renewal of war be tween England and France after the brief truce of Amiens, is marked by the exhibition of Tre vithick's first locomotive. In the year of
Waterloo (1815) Stevenson proved his Kill ingworth locomotive to be a practical success. The skill and expansive energies of man, which went to feed the flames of the great war, were also in large measure its cause. The rise of Napoleon to absolute power in France and his masterful interventions in neighboring states (especially in the Netherlands, where British rulers have never suffered a hostile military power to take root), his prohibition of British imports, and his endeavor to found a Colonial Empire at the expense of that of Britain brought about the mightiest of all Anglo-French wars, that of 1803-14. It is worthy of notice that the influence of the auto crat brought back the struggle from the sphere of opinion to that of material and colonial in terests characteristic of the 18th century. The war had three well marked stages. Toward the close of 1805 Trafalgar left England mis tress of the seas, while Austerlitz made Napoleon master of the Continent. In the next two years he strove to mass all the continental states against her in a commercial war styled the Continental System. Its pressure seemed to be bringing England to the verge of bank ruptcy; but in 1806 the revolt of Spain threw open the Iberian Peninsula and the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in America to British trade. The defection of Russia in 1812 ruined Napoleon's prospects, and the subsequent cam paigns (1813-15) assured the triumph of Eng land and the overthrow of the great emperor. Her gains were colonial. Mauritius, Tobago and Saint Lucia wereyielded up by France. For the Cape of Good Hope, Dutch Guiana and Curacoa, conquered during the war, the victor paid to Holland a sum of 155,000,000. Malta, 'Heligoland and a protectorate over the Ionian Isles were the sole acquisitions in Europe from a war which added more than *00,000,000 to the national debt. The strain had been terrible and nothing but the new strength gained from the 'factory system, im proved agriculture, and the mastery of the seas, could have brought the country through. Pitt, the pilot who weathered the storm," died in 1806; but his heirs, the Tories, held on to power until 1830.