CASSELL'S ILLUSTRATED

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

New and Revised Edition.

VOL. IX.

FROM THE DEATH OF THE PRINCE CONSORT TO THE GENEVA CONVENTION.

CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:

LONDON, PARIS & NEW YORK.

[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]

PREFACE.

N this, the Ninth Volume of CASSELL'S ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF ENGLAND, an exceedingly welldefined and interesting period has been dealt with, beginning with the lamented death of the Prince Consort, and ending with a record of the Alabama Convention at Geneva, and of the doings of the Commune in Paris after the Franco-German War. The reader will not fail to note the striking difference between the complexion of the story of England's fortunes as traced in the preceding volume, and that which is exhibited here. In the twelve years from 1860 to 1872 no Crimean War stirred every English heart to its depths no mortal struggle against a revolted army made critical appeal to the valour and energy of the English race. As if dissatisfied with the result of the war with Russia, England, during the period now under review, refrained from taking an active part in foreign politics; and neither the dismemberment of Denmark, in 1864, nor the violent destruction of the independence of Hanover, nor the rending of Alsace and Lorraine from France, appeared to our Parliament and people a sufficient cause for armed interference. Yet, moving ever onwards in the path of industrial and social progress, England has effected, since 1861, a variety of changes in her domestic polity, and extended the dominion of man over nature by a thousand new applications of science to the useful arts, the record of which in the following pages will be found of no ordinary interest. A new Reform Bill has brought the masses who earn their bread by the labour of their hands within the pale of the Constitution; and the education of the whole people, for the first time in English history, has been made a matter of public enactment and provision. Of the memorable struggles which attended the passing of these measures through Parliament the reader will here find a full and coherent account. To the exposition of the industrial progress of the nation during the last twenty years the six closing chapters of the Volume have been devoted. The movement of population, the development of commerce, the invention of new methods for facilitating human intercourse and quickening the transmission of ideas, and the wonderful growth of all forms of industry connected with the working of metals, especially of iron -on all these points the concluding chapters will be found to contain a large amount of information, compiled from authentic sources.

The peaceful tenor of the public life of England during the period comprised in the present Volume has not been shared by our kinsmen across the Atlantic, nor by the neighbour nations of the Continent. A conflict of four years' duration was necessary before the Northern States succeeded in overcoming the resistance of the South, and preventing the dissolution of that federal union to which they are so justly attached. Since the date at which our last Volume closed, Denmark has been deprived of the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, Austria utterly defeated in a seven weeks' war and driven out of Germany, the unification of the kingdom of Italy continued and completed, Germany transformed from an unwieldy confederation into a powerful Protestant empire; while France, crushed and conquered in a brief war, has been compelled to surrender two fair provinces to Germany. Perhaps no period of ten years in the history

of Europe ever witnessed more memorable events, more extraordinary and unexpected vicissitudes. These things, in spite of our neutrality, cannot but be deeply interesting to Englishmen, and the reader will accordingly find the great wars, revolutions, and negotiations of America and the Continent described at some length in the following pages.

The differences between Great Britain and the United States, arising out of the depredations of the Alabama and other cruisers of her class-the negotiations which succeeded in adjusting those differences by a treaty referring them to international arbitration-and the proceedings of the Tribunal of Arbitration appointed under that treaty, will be found narrated, in their proper sequence and connection, in the forty-fifth and forty-sixth chapters.

That a due proportion has invariably been observed in the narration of events so near to us, or that amidst the embarrassing abundance of materials nothing has been omitted which ought to have been noticed, nothing related which ought to have been omitted, it would perhaps be hazardous to assert. It is hoped, however, that the moving picture of English and European life, from 1861 to 1872, has, on the whole, been transferred to these pages with fidelity and impartiality.

It only remains to be added that in the Tenth Volume of CASSELL'S ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF ENGLAND the narrative of events will be continued from the point at which it has been suspended in this volume, and be brought down to the present day.

The Portrait of H.R.H. the Princess of Wales (see Frontispiece) is copied, by permission, from a Photograph by Messrs. W. and D. Downey.