The History of England by A. E. Pollard
painful organization among the workers, and later on by legislation extorted by their votes. Neither the
Evangelical nor the Oxford movement proved any prophylactic against the immorality of commercial
and industrial creeds. While those two religious movements were at their height, new centres of
industrial population were allowed to grow up without the least regard for health or decency. Under the
influence of laissez-faire philosophy, each wretched slum-dweller was supposed to be capable,
after his ten or twelve hours in the factory, of looking after his own and his children's education, his
main-drainage, his risks from infection, and the purity of his food and his water-supply. The old system
of local government was utterly inadequate and ill adapted to the new conditions; and the social and
physical environment of the working classes was a disgrace to civilization pending the reconstruction of
society, still incomplete, which the Industrial Revolution imposed upon the country in the nineteenth
century.
CHAPTER VIII. A CENTURY OF EMPIRE
1815-1911
The British realms beyond the seas have little history before the battle of Waterloo, a date at which the
Englishman's historical education has commonly come to an end; and if by chance it has gone any
further, it has probably been confined to purely domestic events or to foreign episodes of such ephemeral
interest as the Crimean War. It may be well, therefore, to pass lightly over these matters in order to
sketch in brief outline the development of the empire and the problems which it involves. European
affairs, in fact, played a very subordinate part in English history after 1815; so far as England was
concerned, it was a period of excursions and alarms rather than actual hostilities; and the fortunes of
English-speaking communities were not greatly affected by the revolutions and wars which made and
marred continental nations, a circumstance which explains, if it does not excuse, the almost total
ignorance of European history displayed in British colonies.
The interventions of Britain in continental politics were generally on behalf of the principles of
nationality and self-government. Under the influence of Castlereagh and Canning the British government
gradually broke away from the Holy Alliance formed to suppress all protests against the settlement
reached after Napoleon's fall; and Britain interposed with decisive effect at the battle of Navarino in
1827, which secured the independence of Greece from Turkey. More diplomatic intervention assisted the
South American colonies to assert their independence of the Spanish mother-country; and British
volunteers helped the Liberal cause in Spain and Portugal against reactionary monarchs. Belgium was
countenanced in its successful revolution against the House of Orange, and Italian states in their revolts
against native and foreign despots; the expulsion of the Hapsburgs and Bourbons from Italy, and its
unification on a nationalist basis, owed something to British diplomacy, which supported Cavour, and to
British volunteers who fought for Garibaldi. The attitude of Britain towards the Balkan nationalities,
which were endeavouring to throw off the Turkish yoke, was more dubious; while Gladstone denounced
Turkish atrocities, Disraeli strengthened Turkey's hands. Yet England would have been as enthusiastic
for a liberated and united Balkan power as it had been for a united Italy but for the claims of a rival
liberator, Russia.
Russia was the bugbear of two generations of Englishmen; and classical scholars, who interpreted
modern politics by the light of ancient Greece, saw in the absorption of Athens by Macedon a convincing
demonstration of the fate which the modern barbarian of the north was to inflict upon the British heirs of
Hellas. India was the real source of this nervousness. British dominion, after further wars with the
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