THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE.

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 333, 25 April 1885, Page 8

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE.

This is the title of a pamplet of the " Row in Dame Europa's School" and "Battle of Dorking " class. It purports to b*e written from Auckland a.d. 2884, by Edward Gibbons, M.A., F.R.S.L., and it is published by Field and Tver, Simpkin, Marshall and Co., and Hamilton, Adams and Co., London. The writer begins by describing the vast Empire swayed by Britain in the 19th century, which embraced the wealthiest portions of the globe and the most admirable of its commercial situations. The ancient reputation of ■ Britain's arms by sea and land still warranted towards the termination of the century the most remote colonist in reposing in cheerful serenity and placid security beneath the banner which boasted to have braved for a thousand years the battle and the breeze. Remnants of personal liberty still permitted the opening of taverns for the retailing of potent beverages even on Sundays ; while gambling in clubs and upon racecourses and J other licentious pleasures had not yet been rendered by statute amenable to the police. But the armies of the Empire numbered but one in ten in proportion to those of the great European powers, and the peaceful citizens of the Empire, whether posting their letters and ledgers beneath the murky skies of Biitain or under the gorgeous sunshine of some tropical dependency, alike complacently entrusted the security of their lives and chattels to the disciplined courage of British soldiers, or, still more confidently, to the unconquered fidelity of British seamen. Even the famous Empire of Old Imperial Eome faded into insignificance before the splendour and resources of that swayed by tne Sovereign of Great Britain, Ireland, and their numerous dependencies, when towards the termination of the Nineteenth Century the imperial style was openly assumed by the British monarch. The Queen Empress might have summoned to a review in the Park of Hyde the most amazing p sseniblage of troops of all creeds and complexions which had ever paraded beneath one banner. The Highlanders of Scotland — whose sable plumes nodded in similitude to those which adorned or rendered awful the death coaches of the period, while their bare knees illustrated, in the absence of breeks, the frugality or parsimony of their race — must, even at that period of elaborate and fanciful costumes, have afforded the civilised world matter for amazement. But the fierce and motley foreigners, who maintained in distant dependencies the honour pf the British Standard, could scarcely have been contemplated by the more tinidrous citizens without nervous apprehension. The more philosophical would have discerned occasion for alarm in the existence of mercenaries ; some of whom had been in times comparatively recent, engaged in the fiercest conflict with those whom they now acknowledged as their masters. TurbanedPunjabees, Ghoorkas, distinguished by the broad-bladed crooked knives at their girdles, flashing-eyed Rajoots and the array of the swarthy tribes of Hindostan, with trains of artillery, drawn by its mighty elephants, might have preceded yellow Malays and West Indian Zouaves. Fantees from the Gold Coast might have followed, and light infantry from our own extinct aboriginees, equipped with boomerangs and poisoned spears; even tatooed Maoris from New Zealand, who had volunteered their services in defence of that mighty empire. All the races of the globe, Aryan and Semitic, Mongolian and Turanian, might have shown the illustrious pre-eminence of the British Empire. The soldiers of the regular army, in uniforms of ensanguined hue, and the citizen volunteers, might have seemed as invincible as awe-inspiring. Employing only the comparatively puny power of gunpowder, with the barbarous alternative of the bayonet, no warriors of the mediaeval world were individually equal to the British. The "streak of. silver sea" in the conception of England's veluble Premier, afforded sufficient guarantee against Ihe invasions of the massive battalions of the Slav and Teuton, or the agile conscripts of France. The writer then proceeds to show that towards the close of the reign of Victoria the British Empire comprised about oneseventh of the land surface of the globe, and nearly a fourth of its population. England was practically ruled by /'The People's William," as he had been styled at one period of his polemically varied career, ■educated in the versatile principles of nine-teenth-century politics, rather than in the dignified precepts o£ -more ancient chivalry, he only believed in the virtue and necessity of war when victory might be predicted with confidence. At this period when England had reached and was declining from the apex of her glory, the Brahmin-cozened Hindus were already extensively emulated in the propagation of the placid precepts of abstinence from potent potations and flesh-pots. It may be a mournful, but still it appears to be a salutary and veracious reflection that the vigor and ferocity, or even steadfast valour of mankind are extensively dependent upon the voracity •of 'their appetites. In an interesting alimentary experiment it was observed that a pig nurtured upon rum exhibited most bellicose propensities, that whisky produced in another gaiety continued with a courageous demeanour, while gin. imparted to a third an aspect of abject melancholy. On rum the British sailors of the early part of the

ninteenth century had nobly sustained the honor and interests of their country, but in. the latter part of the century the peaceful, often nerve-racking, stimulant of tea was the principle beverage of England. The British army consisted of 197,414 officers and privates at the commencement of 1884. Of these about one-third were in India, and 6000 had been annihilated or invalided in Egypt. France and Italy landed 200, 000 in Egypt before their debarkation could be prevented by the British fleet, which, however, gallantly steamed _to encounter the navies of the two countries. The so-called reserves were summoned to complete the skeleton regiments, and 20,000 were hastily embarked for Egypt. India was ordered to despatch a second army. Escorted by the navy (which, in a short and sharp engagement, had successfully rammed, jammed, and battered to destruction or confusion the united fleets of France and Italy), the 20,000 landed at Alexandria, under cover of the guns of the ironclads. After a long and desperate encounter the Latin races of the South of Europe again recoiled before the resistless courage and resolution of the Anglo-Saxon, but not before the conquerors had been half annihilated by their victory. Reinforcements were demanded, but the insidious encouragements which had long prevailed in the Radical or Socialistic journals and clubs of Internationalism rather than Patriotism, and of Communism rather than the assertion of Individuality, at length bore ripened fruits. The mild maxims, moreover, of total abstinence revolted from the ensanguined horrors of war ; and proclaimed that peace at any price was holier and more expedient than the mission of breech-loaders. The combination of Communistic and Temperance principals presented overwhelming obstacles to recruiting. The standard of height was reduced to five feet two inches, and of chest measure ment to thirty-one inches and a half. Still were the battalions of the British insufficiently reinforced. An arnuy composed ©f the greater number of the European soldiers in India with an equal number of the native warriors was embarked at Bombay for the Red Sea, while another army from the 350,000 Indian troops was ordered to the same port. England relied on the Sikhs and Afghans to repel any Russian advance, and that the tributary Rajahs would either co-operate or remain passive. One hundred thousand Indian troops were concentrated at Bombay, which had long been a seething hot-bed of Mohammedan discontent. A Secret Council, among whom was a descendant of N"ana Sahib, sowed sedition among the troops, and at a grand parade the signal for revolt was given by the firing of a rifle. The GovernorGeneral and officials were made prisoners, the Nan a was installed in the Government House, and a grand display of fireworks proclaimed the independence of Hindostan. The native warriors of the whole Peninsula joined the revolt. Distracted by difficulties nearer Home the British only achieved victory in Egypt by the exhaustion of their Reserves. But Russia was marching- upon Turkey. The defeat of the Mahdi was followed by his murder at the hands of a rival prophet. Then the armies of Europe assumed the Protectorate of Constantinople and Egypt. Emboldened by the supineness of the Gladstone Government, Italy, France, and Germany severally possessed themselves of Malta, Gibralter, the Channel Islands, and Holland. The importunity and increasing influence of the Irish in the United States prevailed upon the Americans to despatch a fleet and an armament to Ireland. They disembarked by a clever feint, and at length a treaty for the cession of Ireland to the Irish was arranged by the Earl of Birmingham with General Silas K. Washington and Commissioner Jonnadab F. Lincoln. The Papal and Fenian, as opposed to the Orange factions, were with difficulty restrained from civil war. A brilliant and impassioned but virulent and virtuperative series of debates in the Parliament, accompanied by duels in the Phoenix Park, astonished or amused the world. In the next general election the Conservatives were restored to power, and ominous whispers floated in the political air in regard to the re-conquest of India. But physical causes undermined and sapped the very vitals of England as a centre of civilization. A sudden diversion of the Gulf Stream — the magnificent pipe of hot water, which had for so many ages bestowed on the British Islands a temperate clime — caused icebergs to blockade the northern shores. In the reign of Albert Edward VIII., last English sovereign of the dynasty of Guelph, the climates of Great Britain and Ireland were precisely parallel with those of Labrador and the Hudson Bay territory, which are within the same degress of latitude. A remnant of the people still procured a precarious existence by the bounty of the summer's warmth, but the British public had found its home in Australasia or America. The Anglo-Saxon and Celtic races perennially flourished, but the British Empire had declined and fallen. The newspapers at the close of the nineteenth century demonstrated the existence of the utmost ignorance, squalor, and destitution among a great mass of the population, and the enormous fortunes accumulated by several of the nobility. The Duke of Tyburnia had boasted an income of £1000 a day from leaseholds, but in the twentieth century, under the decreasing prestige of the Empire and the decay of" commerce, the palatial edifices had: already begun to display symptoms of desolation. Already iron steamers

were rusting on the Thames, and grass was growing in many of the lanes of the city. The declinejof commerce was exemplified in the elaborate but inconvenient Palace of Justice. Suitors . had become rare ; and briefless barristers mournfully meandered, like melancholy monks, amongst its dim, deserted, and intricate Gothic passages. The Pope was obliged to remove to Malta, the Vatican was renewed in the palace of the old Grand Masters, and the restored Knights of St. John undertook the duties and emulated the fidelity of his "noble" and Swiss Guards. The ancient and venerated statue of St. Peter was removed from its magnificent basilica, which had received its; nomenclature from himself, to the more trustworthy shelter of the stately church of St. John ia Valetta. Here, in the course of centuries, it had lost or abandoned the appellation of St. Peter, and assumed that of St. John. Report has affirmed that it had originally borne a Pagan title before piety had assigned to it the name of the great patron of the western church of Christendom. The establishment of cotton mills in Europe, America, and in India ruined Man- j Chester, and the Belgian industries caused a collapse in Birmingham. In England the final blow to greatness abroad and consolation at home was received in the discovery that the practicable limit of the coalfields had been attained. In the severity of the English climate it rose to famine prices. Australian and American corn and meats undersold the produce of English farms ; agriculturists filled the bankruptcy lists ; the landowners were reduced almost to starvation. The Gulf Stream - was still further deflected. Icebergs blockaded the Thames. A bear was shot near the Royal Exchange. All provisions were at fame prices. All who could leave the country had emigrated. The Powers of Europe and America had seized the territories and fortresses formerly held by England. Heat generated by electricity hindered for a time, but the Arctic severities were irrepressible. Australasia, Hindustan and China, Russia and Sclavonics,. North and South America, and Africa perused with amazement teler grams proclaiming the fall of the British Empire on December 3rd, A.D., 2458, Albert Edward VII., at the invitation of the Aiistralasian Imperial and Constitutional Parliament, abandoned Windsor Castle, crossed the British Channel on sledges with his retinue, and by the railroad of the Euphrates Valley and a special electroship arrived, and amid enthusiastic acclamations, inaugurated the prosperous and fortunate dynasty of his family at the Antipodes. Of course the above is a mere skit, and no one is likely to believe in its probability, but if we may take the present attitude of the English Government towards Russia as a criterion, and compare it with the power and influence of the nation in the Councils of Europe and the world during the first half of the present century, the conclusion would be forced upon us that England's prestige is either on the wane, or that her honour is being trailed in the dust and her power wasted.