In the history of states, two periods usually occur. When there is a strong inclination to foreign wars, it very seldom occurs that there is much agitation among parties at home, because when society is hurried with violence into affairs of great importance, she has no time for considering her own troubles or inquiring closely into her domestic afflictions; but when the war is over she turns her attention upon herself, and internal dissensions take place. This was the case in England after the treaty of Paris in 1815, extreme irritation was displayed in her troubles; and this requires some explanation: that there was much suffering among the various classes of British subjects is an undoubted fact, and it proceeded from many different causes. The successive debts she had been obliged to contract had inordinately increased the taxes; a war, lasting for twenty years, had been suddenly succeeded by a peace which had injured the interests of many people, because war, by occasioning an unnatural excitement to industry of every kind, had given employment to thousands, for the commerce of the world was in the hands of England. Peace opened an immense competition; Great Britain, formerly alone in the market, now met with the French and Americans, and the ports were no longer exclusively open to her manufactures. Besides this, pauperism, that species of leprosy in a nation, had greatly increased, and it had now become an actual sore in the British government, a vermin on the velvet robes of her rulers. A radical and deep-seated movement had also taken place in the public mind. Great excitement always leaves a degree of fermentation behind; the revolutionary doctrines had sheltered themselves behind the shield of parliamentary reform, and this very reform became a pretext gladly seized upon by agitators; thus England found herself covered, not with secret societies, for on her soil people breathe freely, but with clubs and inflammatory meetings, so that the country resounded with petitions. On this occasion it again became necessary to display a degree of firmness; the inflexible character of Lord Castlereagh was alone capable of opposing to doctrines which manifested themselves by riotous assemblies of 100,000 men in various cities.