HKB
[Sidenote: Art and Letters]
The final settlement of Napoleon's great upheaval of Europe left England feverish and exhausted. The prolonged financial strain of twenty years of war had saddled Great Britain with a national debt of eight hundred million pounds. Of material gain there was little to show but the acquisition of Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch; of the former French colony of Mauritius, and of a few West Indian islands. The continued possession of the Rock of Gibraltar, and of Malta, the old stronghold of the Knights of Malta, together with the British protectorate over the Ionic Isles, assured to England her commanding position in the Mediterranean. At home the pressure of the heavy taxes required to meet the financial legacies of the war was imbittered by the general distress of the country. The new tax on the importation of grains resulted in famine prices. Corresponding tariff restrictions abroad kept British markets overstocked with goods. Mills and factories had to be shut down, while at the same time the labor market was glutted with several hundred thousand discharged sailors and soldiers. The starving working people grew bitter in their opposition to new labor-saving devices. Thus the appearance of the first steamship on the Thames and of the earliest ships constructed of iron, followed shortly by Sir Francis Reynold's invention of an electric clock-work telegraph and by James Watt's introduction of stereo plates in book-printing, heightened this feeling. The resentment of laboring men found expression in riotous meetings at Manchester, Littleport and Nottingham. The movement spread to London. A great labor meeting was held there on the Spa fields. The favorite newspaper of the workingmen, Cobbett's radical "Two Penny Register," rivalled the London "Times" in power. In Parliament the leaders of the radical opposition grew ever more importunate. Not until the end of the year did matters mend. The most comforting sign of better times was a partial resumption of specie payments by the Bank of England, followed shortly by the opening of the first Savings Bank in London. Other memorable events of the year were the acquisition of the famous Elgin marbles from the Parthenon in Athens, celebrated in Keats's sonnet "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles," and the publication of Shelley's long poem "Alastor," and Leigh Hunt's "Story of Rimini." A diplomatic setback pregnant with future trouble was the dismissal of Lord Amherst, the British Ambassador at Pekin, for refusing to kow-tow to the Emperor of China.
[Sidenote: Depression in America]
[Sidenote: Financial relief measures]
[Sidenote: Tariff vs. Free Trade]
[Sidenote: Changes in New England]